The Collab LabJun 13, 2023

When are changes not changes? When they’re afoot! Hahaha, #DadJoke #SorryNotSorry 😂

But seriously, changes are afoot at The Collab Lab. Read on to find out more!

(Note: We're posting this on behalf of Stacie Taylor, Executive Director for The Collab Lab who’s not on Mastodon. With apologies to her, she would never lead with a dad joke. Love you, Stacie!) ✨

Collab Lab started almost 4 years ago with @segdeha running a single team with 4 developers and grew from there.

We quickly settled on a cadence of running a new cohort of 4-6 teams per quarter. That worked pretty well for most of the last 3 years. But the time has come to change things up!

Under our current structure, we’ve found it tough to catch our collective breath. Our volunteers get burnt out and we struggle to find the time and energy to improve the program.

Turns out running a nonprofit that changes lives on top of one’s day job is tiring, y’all. Who knew?

[continued]

Show threadThe Collab Lab

So, the 1st change we’re implementing is that we’ll be moving from running 4 cohorts per year to running just 2.

Note: The next cohort will be pushed out to August 6. We’ll kick off the following cohort in February of 2024.

“Wait,” you say, “doesn’t that mean fewer people get to participate?”

Yes, at least at first. We love you all and want you to get established in tech! We do plan to run more teams per cohort and eventually expect to be able to serve significantly more of you under this new model! 💪

The 2nd change is that starting in 2024, we will roll out an updated, more integrated curriculum that incorporates both the project work we all value with the best parts of our beloved Career Lab program. It’s likely we’ll change from being an 8-week program with an optional 2 weeks tacked on to offering a single, 10-week experience. We’re excited about this!

Jun 13, 2023 at 3:14amWeb
Show threadThe Collab LabJun 13, 2023
When Stacie & Andrew floated these changes at our last Board meeting, the response was enthusiastic! Turns out we all want to do a better job and creating space between the cohorts is the best way to do it. We’re confident this will make it so we can serve more people more effectively over time. ❤️