The work is the play is the learning
The CoLab, also known as “Cooperation Laboratory” or “Noob Peer Learning Working Group,” is, as its name implies, a community of individuals cooperating to become self reliant in the emerging technologies surrounding RChain. The term noob, aka newbie, is someone new at a game, concept, or an idea. We bring and share the skills we have with the goal of learning new skills and sharing the work.
Its way of working is decentralized, i.e. having no specific center. There’s no central teacher; we all teach ourselves. It’s method is also sociocratic, i.e. the learning needs of everyone is met. Its education style is also democratic in that “students solve real problems rather than made up ones and earn bounties to incentivize students and coaches to produce something wanted AS A TEAM”.
CoLab is made up of different units which come together to create value for the cooperative. There are more than 10 channels in the CoLab group, with scribes and leaders guiding each channel.
- Workstudy
The workstudy channel is a channel where we talk about how we work and study together. It’s a democratic way of learning where there is no one teacher, everyone is a guide, everyone contributes in their unique way. Specific days in the week are set aside for workstudy. We form work teams in channels where we work, play, and learn together. Join RChain work studies on Zoom Mondays and Tuesdays at 4pm EST, Thursdays at 2pm and 4pm.
- Validator
This is where we do our planning to become validators on the RChain network, cooperating in pools to participate in staking, hosting, and operating nodes in the RChain network. We aim to cooperatively operate the RChain utility ourselves.
- Sysadmin
This channel encourages everyone to be self reliant, managing their own information resources and cooperating with one another. Its channel guides are responsible for management of shared community test, staging, and production environments.
- RChain-tools
This channel is for development and maintenance of the bounty system and tools like the dashboard that create our own interfaces.
- Video-colab
Together we create scripts and videos to teach about RChain, dApp development, and the bounty system. Our focus is on engaging member participation in RChain. Here the channel guides are responsible for managing and indexing of all our recorded workstudy sessions, member meetings, etc. See the current state.
- Rholang-js Using RChain with the web
Here members discuss stuff related to dApp development in JavaScript using node.js and the RChain-API.
- Rhobot
This channel focuses on how to program rhobots interacting with RChain or supporting the RChain community.
The most important thing that the Rhobot does at present is welcome new members and run the Rhobot repl Rholang Interpreter access point. The Rhobot repl sees the most use in the Rholang channel and the oddly named #testprivchan channel. The Rhobot repl is invoked by preceding a line of rholang code with “`rholang: It will reply with a message in the same channel.
- GraphQL
Here we are applying GraphQL to interface with RChain and other information resources to create self-sovereign interfaces that translate user input into GraphQL queries, mutations, and subscriptions across all our information resources. GraphQL is part of our self-sovereign user agent tech stack.
- RNode-runners
Here guides are available for tutoring and workstudy on node testing, node running, etc.
Together we run community nodes we can all share. We help test the latest RNode releases. A number of us are interested in joining validator pools to become part of the RChain decentralized network and earning REV using our spare machine cycles. Become an RChain member and join us.
- Rholang
If you’re a newbie and want to get started on learning rholang code, the rholang channel is where you should look. Guides are available for tutoring on rholang.
We can show you how to access the community RNode site: rchain@rnode.net There you can access a repl and perform evals. In addition, this is where we run the rhobot repl which allows you to send RChain instructions to the community node. The channel where we traditionally experiment with the rhobot repl is #testprivchan.
You can also check out Learn Rholang By Example.
- Social Ledger
Participate in Social Ledger trial
AIM: To provide a framework for building a decentralized self-organizing social structure of our social interaction to foster capitalization on human potential by facilitating working together.
- Skeleton of engagement in activities in teams, in domains, in organizations, interconnections of organizations and federations.
- Maps a body of people to a body of work in the context of the interactions.
- Collectively building the group memory of goals, documents, links, actions, norms, jobs and contracts in the context of the discussions.
- Member roles of guide, scribe and link to other cooperating teams, developing consent across teams where the specific member role becomes defined by the activities a member is engaged in.
- Publication
Here we create and disseminate the vision, technology and personal views promoting RChain.
- Delegation
Here we investigate delegative decision making and representation, enabling quality decisions and working toward defining a superfluid-democracy enabling collective intelligence.
Learning Activities/Skills to be developed
We work and learn together. Our slogan is, “The work is the play is the learning.” It’s also about doing something useful, doing what you can do while learning. Doug Rushkoff’s mandate, “Program or be programmed” should be considered. All those willing to learn could help us take back control of ourselves and our communities from those who may not have our best interests in mind.
We program ourselves and our environment, and in that sense are all programmers. However, the large systems we are part of are largely imposed on us rather than determined by us. We can change that by becoming builders of cooperative systems interacting with one another.
Some of these learning activities are:
- Introduction to functional programming
- Tech self reliance and cooperation
- Blockchain programming
- Learn rholang
- Run RNode
- Develop dApps
- GraphQL
- WebApps
- Bots
- Scala
- Video production
Who might want to join?
We encourage noobs, coaches, and generally anyone who wants to learn to join. If you can Google, copy and paste, and follow instructions, you can provide valuable service to a product development effort and occasionally you may turn out to be a superstar at certain activities.
To join
- Get a GitHub account
- Log your activities in RChain Members
- Join the CoLab channel
Purpose/Benefits of CoLab
Skills have become very specialized and at the same time changing so fast it’s hard to find anybody available having the necessary skills. Using innovative technologies, builders have to learn all new things about every year, bringing both shared knowledge and special skills to the table. Team success is more about employing a sound problem solving process and the willingness to learn.
Taking part in CoLab ensures the following benefits:
- Learning tech self reliance together while creating value for RChain together.
- Engaging members in value production with economic participation.
- Fostering team formation and cooperative work
- Earn DivvyU certifications
- Access to educational tools and resources
- Earn bounties from team participation and idea generation.