<aside> ⚠️ This page is accessible to all members of the Tech Fleet community. Please do not duplicate this document without explicit permission and above all, take care of it.

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<aside> 🛠️ This document is being maintained by @Nendujan Ratnarajah and @Libby Malone alongside members of the Tech Fleet Infrastructure Team.

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What is Tech Fleet

Tech Fleet is a community of learners and mentors working towards helping each other understand and excel within user experience design and development. We do this by partnering with real organizations around the world that hope to build and improve their products.

Find out more at techfleet.org!

The Community

Tech Fleet’s Slack community is a place for anyone to share experiences and support each other, whether it be on a community project or a personal endeavor. You will find channels dedicated to receiving design critiques, outlining the job search experience, finding professional opportunities, and following community projects.

Join us on Slack!

Tech Fleet Projects

Once a partnership with a client is underway, teams are formed within the community and onboarded to get the project started. Projects can vary in duration but are often eight weeks long, broken up into sprints that each last one week. Over the course of a project, teams communicate with the client to understand what they need and plan their sprints (weeks) accordingly. Post-project team members often outline their experiences within their personal portfolios that can be used to look for professional opportunities.

Being an Apprentice

Apprentices on Tech Fleet projects spend ~20 hours/week working within teams to build products for their clients. Teams dedicated to strategy, research, design, writing, and development will work together to organize sprints, create tasks, delegate ownership, and present findings/outcomes. Apprentices will also work with team leads to set learning goals and track their progress throughout a project.

Becoming an Apprentice

Anyone can become an apprentice. There are no requirements. If you are interested in becoming an apprentice on a Tech Fleet project, there are a few things you should do:

1. Be Vigilant - Look out for information on upcoming Tech Fleet projects by following #announcements and #project-postings.
2. Follow & Contribute - At Tech Fleet we believe that contribution = growth. Those who contribute should be awarded more opportunities to contribute further. Being a project observer is a great way of understanding the working dynamics of a Tech Fleet team and making a contribution to the community.
3. Apply! - When project applications open up, they are for anyone wanting to apply. We don’t ask for a resumé or a portfolio. What we are most interested in is your willingness to learn and help others do the same. This sentiment should be reflected in your application.

<aside> 💡 Even though these are volunteer projects, they are still valuable real-life, client-facing experience. When you take an extra moment to put the effort in, it really shows. And when it comes time for the Leads to pick who to interview these responses stand out.

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Application Process