About Google Developer Kejar 🏃‍

As explained on this website ↗️, Google Developers Kejar 2018 is ap program initiated by Google Developers to hone the capabilities of Indonesian developers in developing Mobile Application Android based Kotlin and Mobile Web Specialists.

If the previous program labeled Indonesia Android Kejar ↗️ which only had a special program for Android, then in 2018 there is a new branch for web developers specifically for the mobile web.

For mobile web specialist, Google works together with Inixindo ↗️ in running this program. My self this year the confidence to help this program by becoming a facilitator for the city of Jakarta and surrounding areas in the first batch.

How to learn? 🤓

Basically, the participants of this program will be given a learning track from Udacity which covers all technical and non-technical matters regarding creating a good Mobile Web from basic to able to become a progressive Mobile Web Application. It was from Inixindo who provided the material in stages so that the participants could participate gradually. At the end of each topic, a quiz will be given directly from Inixindo which provides and collects the results of the quiz.

In addition to learning online through Udacity, the participants will be gathered in a group with facilitators appointed to discuss various difficulties and share information about the program itself.

Twice in one batch, the participants were required to have an offline meeting with their facilitator to discuss these difficulties in more detail.

At the end of the program, participants will be given a final assignment related to learning from beginning to end.

How do I carry out the role of the Facilitator? 👨‍👧‍👦

As a facilitator, I don’t want to be too patronizing in technical matters, because indeed some of the participants in my group basically have a fair amount of technical knowledge. I prefer to position myself as their ventured friends who share stories about how ups and downs handle the Mobile Web-based on the experience I have gained so far. I also tried to take the time to maintain their enthusiasm to consistently follow this program from beginning to end, I realized that one of our illnesses together was a matter of consistency. I often have a passionate enthusiasm at the beginning, but sagging in the middle until it disappears without news in the end 😂

I give my opinion and as much as I know in building a progressive Mobile Web. I also provide motivation and knowledge about other things outside of learning that I feel will be very useful for them going forward, such as how I learn a technology, how to migrate a framework to another framework, how to contribute to open-source code, and another thing we can discuss together.

Participants in my group might not get much technical assistance about this program, but please ask some participants directly about the experience they gained. Surely there are good and bad things, let’s forget about bad things and think of it as a lesson 😜

Interistingly Offline Meetup ☕️

I held offline meetings twice during this program. At the first meeting, there were about 13 participants if I’m not mistaken (including some who chose to move the facilitator with me) who could come. Basically, I understand their busy schedule and do not force them to come to the offline meeting, but considering the offline meeting is one of the criteria that must be met in this program, I remind them to take the time to come to the meeting.

For me, offline meetings are always more interesting than online. We can get to know someone personally after face to face physical and talk a lot of things. Moreover, I am classified as someone who easily forgets the face and name of someone who even had time to meet. Meeting offline makes it easy for me to talk more about how to build a progressive Mobile Web.

As I mentioned above, consistency becomes an expensive item for us together. After the first meetup was attended by 13 people the second meetup that I held was only attended by only 4 participants.

But for me personally, this is not a problem, as long as there are still one or two people who are eager to attend then I try to come to an agreed-upon meetup. It is not a loss for me to meet these 4 people. they are the ones who are an encouragement for me to complete the responsibility of being a facilitator until the end of the program. People who will easily become friends with me in the future 🤩

Developer Showcase 🌅

A day after the Google For Indonesia event, Google held a Google Developer Showcase event that told the public what Google has been doing lately to build the ecosystem and build human resources in Indonesia, especially to print a lot of new developers through various programs that he declared. Google Developers Kejar itself is one of the many programs created by Google to help this. To attend this event several facilitators and participants were chosen to represent each city.

How is the result? 💎

Like looking for pearls in the middle of the sea, even this program in my opinion personally will not easily print a reliable developer in the end. Too basic the technical material that was presented could be one cause, even about his human being who had become too ignorant and did not try. Like me, which if it’s free makes it seem like it could easily be wasted. This program is free (even funded by Google), this is why many are not highly committed to completing the program until completion. Even if you think it’s funny, those who register themselves, they were have been chosen from the many other participants who register and want to participate, but after being elected there is no interest that this is a responsibility that should not be underestimated.

But I say they are unscrupulous, there will always be elements that complicate even though we make programs as good as any. I am more pleased and proud to say that of the few who are willing to complete this program, I am grateful to meet new friends who are very enthusiastic to learn together with me. I can say they are pearls in the ocean. Being a developer is not just a matter of how we master technical things, but also a willingness to learn new things. Not everyone wants to be told to learn new things.

Talking about the final project given in my opinion is too easy, they are only required to create applications that can run Offline and deployed to Firebase Hosting. The real thing can be done in just a few hours for beginners. To do the final project, I tried to make this an experience that was more than just creating an offline web application. That is why I decided to ask them to submit their duties to me other than Inixindo.

I collected their assignments on Github which you can also see in gdk-mws-2018-participants-code ↗️, I made a collection from their job repository and create a demo page that they can see here ↗️ at any time. Incidentally, when they did the assignment in October, they shared the question about #hacktoberfest. This repository makes it very easy for me to recap the results of their assignments compared to having to look at Google Sheets with too much column data that makes me dizzy. They can also be arrogant with each other regarding the tasks they have completed.

After Done What do you want to do? 🎉

From Inixindo itself said that there will be those who will work together again with Google in taking the next step which is the certification for Mobile Web Specialists. But beyond that, my self want the group of participants who are joined to me to remain a study group, a group where we can learn from each other new things that we find difficult to do in our daily work, groups that trigger each other to do things cool things next, a group that can be coffee friends in the real world.

I also struggle to maintain the enthusiasm of friends in the group to learn new things by providing challenges to create a web with a framework that they like or want to use the same public API, one can find at the link gdk-mws-2018-challenge-01 -ghibli-studio ↗️.

That is a bit of a bitter sweet story from me personally when participating in the 2018 Google Developer Kejar program, all the things I wrote above are my opinions and are not related to any party. Because it is based on personal opinion, it does not make this article true in all efforts. This article is intended for the learning process for us together and is not offered to cancel an institution or a person.