A few ideas for new stuff for you. What do you think?

[r00k (Ben Orenstein)]

1. An app to match up people who want to pair.
2. Streaming The Weekly Iteration live so you can ask questions during. Also recording it, naturally.
3. Weekly Challenges. Here’s a new exercise, best submission in the next week wins something cool. Or, best pull request (as judged by the community) to the Upcase repo adding simple feature X gets merged.
4. Give every member commit rights to the Upcase repos. WHAT WOULD HAPPEN?
5. (Insert your crazy idea. Let’s hear 'em.)

[antwonlee (Anthony Lee)]

Streaming the weekly iteration live and asking question sounds like an amazing idea.

[colbycheeze (Colby Williams)]

I’d love the pairing app. It has been something I’ve been really trying to find. Doesn’t seem like there are many people interested in it from my search, or it is hard to get things set up.

Weekly challenges sound fun. The exercises right now have the code review portion, but the solutions are so expected it’s hard to see deviation. Would be nice to have projects where you could go several ways with the code and get some creativity in there.

[sublimecoder (Jared Smith)]

@benorenstein

An app to match up people who want to pair.

That’s awesome! Pairing is a lot of fun and can be a tremendous boost to learning especially when done with someone more senior, perhaps opportunities to pair with thoughtbot team members?

@benorenstein

Streaming The Weekly Iteration live so you can ask questions during. Also recording it, naturally.

I really like this idea. It makes it half AMA, half weekly iteration. I would say let everyone ask questions but save answering them for the end, so it doesn’t take the iteration on too many tangents.

@benorenstein

Weekly Challenges. Here’s a new exercise, best submission in the next week wins something cool. Or, best pull request (as judged by the community) to the Upcase repo adding simple feature X gets merged.

Love it, love everything about it!

@benorenstein

Give every member commit rights to the Upcase repos. WHAT WOULD HAPPEN?

queue ominous music Finally I can make upcase do the harlem shake

[sublimecoder (Jared Smith)]

@colbycheeze

The exercises right now have the code review portion, but the solutions are so expected it’s hard to see deviation. Would be nice to have projects where you could go several ways with the code and get some creativity in there.

Agreed, it would be nice to have a project idea section, or even further than that a section where you can take project specs for creating a beginner, intermediate, or even advanced level app, and have more of a free choice on how you build it but the guidance of specs on what it needs to do, then get review on those apps. Basically a portfolio app as guided by thoughtbot.

That’s a really cool idea. I realize this is probably a logistical nightmare for the thoughtbot team.

[r00k (Ben Orenstein)]

@Jared_Smith

I realize this is probably a logistical nightmare for the thoughtbot team.

Maybe we can make the core idea work without making ourselves into a bottleneck.

[ridget (Tom Ridge)]

@Jared_Smith

I really like this idea. It makes it half AMA, half weekly iteration. I would say let everyone ask questions but save answering them for the end, so it doesn’t take the iteration on too many tangents.

Totally agree with this, I love the focussed, conceptual style of the weekly iteration, and would prefer to see questions at the end. Honestly the weekly iteration for me is one of the best video series on the market for a developer.