Welcome to the brand new Chessable blog. Here we will aim to talk about a variety of things. Of course, at the very heart of the blog, we will have chess, chess opening theory as well as discuss science as applied to chess.
We will also have other things. For instance, there will be start-up life posts (or rants). There will be Chessable update posts guiding you through new features, and in general, we will be open to any topic as long as we think someone in our audience may find it useful. Do use the category filters to find what interests you!
This first blog post is a start-up life discussion one, about interns and volunteers. More accurately, this is a thanks to the Chessable volunteers who donate some of their spare time to contribute to Chessable wherever they can. By doing this, they not only contribute to the development of a service you love but also help motivate and drive the rest of the team, especially on the days where things can be a bit slow!
It’s always nice to have another team member to discuss things with or bounce ideas off, even if it’s a volunteer! So thank you Kurt (who helped inspire work on some main Chessable functionality), thank you Frank (helped me finally make time to setup and blog on Chessable!). Thank you Simon (for the constant stream of CSS fixes) and thank you, Louisa, for the lovely artwork you’ve made for us. Thanks to anyone else who has contributed to a smaller scale but I have not personally mentioned, this includes all the Trello bug reports (Artem Dragunov has been especially prolific there)! This whole community effort is amazing, and inspiring, so thanks, everyone.
Let this blog post also serve as a testament to a good relationship between interns/volunteers and companies. I often hear sad stories where it is a one-sided relationship, but throughout my start-up career I’ve always strived to make sure we give back to the people who volunteer. Previously, at Sharkius Games, we made sure our volunteers would develop their skills by interacting with the experienced team members on a regular basis. We would encourage and advise them. Very often, this kind of unpaid volunteer or internship position also resulted in a permanent job (if possible) either at our start-up or elsewhere. Here at Chessable, we are maintaining the same philosophy. Wherever possible, we aim to give back to anyone who kindly helps us, in any way we are able to.
Do you think you can help Chessable in any way? Do you have some spare time? We would love to hear from you via the contact us form! As a last note, we can’t always take all volunteer offers as often your skillset may not fit into our current priorities and because it is a two-way relationship, we may not be able to take you on, but our biggest thanks goes out to you also, thank you anyway! 🙂
