We’re
Hey, This is a space of ideas, learning - tinkering that directs us. We’re best known for fostering and building technology learning culture in Kerala, a southern state of India. We primarily focuses on coding. Some of the events that’s landmark to what we do is MakerParty, Leadership Summit, Innovation Catalyst Workshops, Learning Stations, etc. and programs such as Code a pookkalam, etc
1. Committed to openness
We’re a collective of students, product engineers, developers, designers and policy makers. The Idea is to keep the resources open and available to everyone (Remembering Aaron Swartz) to drive this mission, It’s imperative that we associate with organisations and institutions that share the dream. Partnership with Samagatha Foundation, FOSS United, Kerala Start-up mission, etc are helping us actualise the feat.
2. The Language of love
Programs, events or concepts of TinkerHub are always an effort of multiple volunteers. We care for each other, push each other to be better at what they do. The growth is mutual. The beauty for craft lies in the love of people who’ve been part of it. There are no rigid hierarchies. Systems and structures are constantly scrutinised to keep the love for learning intact.
3. Qualitative Scaling
The impact of what we do can’t be lost while accommodating more and more participation. We try to keep it steady and solid the way we scale. It’s quality over quantity any day.
4. Skills pay the bills
When we foster and nurture talent, successful companies and individual contributors will be created. In turn, they’ll create more will be able to create high-value jobs and livelihood apart from benefiting the economy and livelihoods will benefit from it. Here are some of the they will be able to lead learners to be a part of industry leading companies through their inspiring learning stories from us that lead learners to create and be a part of industry leading companies. We know our works proves that that wealth will be created wherever there’s there is an exchange of transactions of skills and learning happening. We focus on the later to reach go about the former. It’s a long game.
5. Act now
Changes take time, that’s no excuse to not act on it “now”, rather it is a reality we need to work against. Universities, Colleges, Schools or Companies have their own cultures. The sustainable solutioning happens on how we behave towards this. The other way around takes time. There’s X amount of unemployed/unskilled/uninformed people ‘now’ so. We need to act now.
6. Clarity is created on the route.
The vision is long and broad. The actions can’t be of how we course correct, improvise and accelerate depending on reality. For that we take small steps. 3-6 months of clarity is more than enough most of the time.
7. Learner First.
Learner’s interest comes before anything. Mostly it’s the only thing. We don’t sell or sponsor any events that directly financially benefit any organisations. From awareness to resources to profiles to opportunities.
8. Go Slow - Go Whole.
Life is enjoying time with friends and family. Life is going for a trip with your loved ones. Life is going for a walk in the park. Life is watching your favourite movies or playing your favourite games. We strictly don’t entertain any learner to sacrifice their life to advance their careers. Most things in life can wait. Some can’t and won’t and sleep a minimum of 8 hours.
9. Small is cool, Large is Fine. Choice is yours.
Small startups with big dreams deserve a pat on the back. We might encourage learners to work with them to experience that journey and maybe become an integral part of it. Large organisations might have a lot to offer in terms of mentorship and organisation skills. The choice is yours.
We have a clear product bias
We wish more people start joining early stage startups,
Why so,
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Accelerated avenues of learning and exploring
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Small teams, exposure to the wholesome process of creating product and companies
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Stake in the business, therefore probable financial gains.
10. Give it a try
We encourage everyone to explore possibilities, It is about how much you can experience and learn from it. We don’t know unless we get a first hand experience. Try out companies with internships to know the culture. People switch companies a couple of times, and it’s okay.
11. Be Kind
It’s okay that you don’t know anything about coding. help each other to be better.
Having a space to tell that you absolutely have no clue about coding or technology, everyone had a day they didn’t know about anything.
12. Good Things will take time
Don’t feel FOMO about the things people in the community have accomplished, we don’t know their whole story, your story is still in progress, trust the process. Be one among the curious kind.
13. Learning How to Learn
The pace of evolution in technology is often unpredictable. As a learner the only thing in your control is the ability to learn new things faster. Learning ‘how to learn’ will help you navigate and have fun through your journey of life.
14. Networking
You learn the most when you share. Sharing is often the best method to gain knowledge. Collaborating with kind and curious people will increase your odds of becoming and sustain yourself as one.
15. Knowledge is not private
We believe all knowledge in this world is for everyone, everyone is using 1+2=3 in their life and what if we were asked to pay a fee everytime we do addition. We believe access to knowledge should not be limited behind a paywall.
16. Nothing is original, everything is a remix
Ref : Steal like an artist Book by Austin Kleon
17. Pay it forward
We are here because a number of people helped us. We should help others and let karma bring all good things back to you.
18. Be aware about our privileges
We are a Equal Opportunity organisation
We believe everyone should be treated / should get access to opportunity despite their backgrounds or Identity.
19. Coding is a super power
Code is like knowing the English language. English is a language like any other, but knowing it will help you to google, learn more stuff and connect with people all around the world. Like that, knowing coding will give you an edge over whatever sort of jobs/ career you choose.
Code is how you communicate with powerful computers get things done the way you wanted to.
20. Building side projects is awesome
Creating something that people use is a wonderful feeling, the ability to build things is something you should experience yourself. It’ll help you harness more tools and experience under your belt.
21. Open Source
We learned about democratic values from the Foss movement which was so strong in Kerala, We started everything with Maker Party with Mozilla, celebrating sharing knowledge for all.
Most of the technology innovations that we are enjoy are contributed by developers who believe and act about building for an open internet. We shares the concern that software should be accessible to anyone who is in need, therefore foss is a movement that tinkerhub cares deeply.
22. Do it for fun
Do things that is curious to yourself, do it for fun of doing it, if it’s not fun anymore find something interesting
23. Learning Never stops
The only reason technologists pay crazy amounts of money is that it’s really hard to keep that mindset of continuous learning / continuous enthusiasm with the pace of technological progress in this world. The stacks you know (probably) won’t be in use in another 5 years.
24. Everyone deserves a great life
If people are not reaching the places they should have maybe because they might not be having the right confidence to do so, it’s not something they internationally (intentionally) do
Nobody hates coding, they might be scared of it (Embrace coding, It’ll get fun as you learn)
25. Everyone are putting their best efforts to have a great life
We believe everyone is putting their best efforts to have a better life, people have limited knowledge and exposure about what to do, so they tend to follow the common models like PSC to get a better life.
26. People need humans around to start learning coding
It’s totally a given to get stuck somewhere when someone starts coding, most likely they might not know how to google it as well, they need a community to go and ask, a place where no one judges you for not knowing it already.
It’s totally possible to create a great ecosystem and we should be the ones taking an action
No place in the world had a great tech / startup ecosystem by default, a bunch of people start sharing knowledge and it took years to evolve and have a solid
27. College education
Academic education can give you a broader and foundational understanding of things around you and having a schedule to learn and practise will increase the chances of becoming a better human. The fellow learners from different backgrounds and professors with deeper understanding of domains will help a learner to dive deep and navigate to spaces where they can discover their interests build quality relationships. Being said that It’s not necessary to have a college education and you can achieve all or most of these things otherwise also. College makes it a lot more easier and convenient.
28. Angle as an org.
We are solving an interesting problem and not a poverty eradication project
TinkerHub started from the love of learning and making technology. We wish more people to experience it and bring the joy of coding to everyone who has an interest. Over past years we were alway curious about how to make learning more interesting. Getting jobs is a byproduct of the whole process.
29. TinkerHub is not a recruitment agency
TinkerHub is here to bring more people to learning and creating tech. Finding interesting opportunities for them is part of the process, we work with companies where we find it will accelerate learning and financial outcomes of our members, but we are never guaranteeing anyone to find talents, we work the other way around, finding interesting opportunities for our community members.