First off, I truly think that Wilco is really the next generation of training!

This is how I’m thinking of the generations

The first generation of training is Book learnin, things like https://www.packtpub.com/

Second generation is Video, the amount of information on youtube is staggering!

Third generation is live sandboxed labs, shout out to https://acloudguru.com/ (being able to build stuff in AWS in a sandbox is life changing!)

Fourth generation https://www.trywilco.com/

The best way for me to learn things is to do them. Wilco has you join a fictitious company and do work! (You ever play Job simulator in VR ? Hilarious by the way! )

Like the cloud resume challenge Wilco doesn’t pull any punches. The learning curve is a bit steeeeep!

But the pain and frustration is part of the learning process! There is a sweet spot that you can achieve ‘flow state’ where something is just hard enough to be challenging but not boring. Right off the bat Wilco is going to hit you with a firehose of possibly new-to-you technology. Get Docker (and docker-compose) going, git clone a repository, open a PR and update the documentation 🙂 So, google is your friend.

Wilco is fun! Much humor is applied, I like ‘working’ inside the SNACK interface 🙂

What happens when you get stuck?

After you get stuck and need more help you head over to the Wilco Discord. Each quest has its own channel and a link to FAQ about that quest https://help.trywilco.com/en/collections/3429951-faqs#docker-setup-quest

The channel still tries to only give you hints, since the learning works much better if someone doesn’t straight up give you the answer!

Frustrations –

There will be many! Learn to find your IT Zen 🙂

You will probably solve an issue, but the automated detector won’t see it as being solved. You have to solve it in the way the quest creator envisioned.

You might just hit on bugs in Wilco itself. Sometimes it won’t send you updates (just PM the wilco peeps to help you out)

Overall, I’m really excited for Wilco and what it represents – Your work away from work!