Insane Intense Intellectual Inferno

A few times a year we allocate a whole weekend to do something with which we have zero experience. Several months beforehand we gather everybody's availability with a Google Form, we select the weekend that works for most people and announce the date on Discord. Right before the weekend begins we share the topic of the current event, towards which every team (of ~2 people) will work over the next 48 hours. At the end of the 2 days we meet up in person / online to share the results with each other.

That's completely your team's (and the individuals') decision, both of you can put anywhere from 0 to 48 hours into this event (e.g. 8 hours a day, non-stop, 12 hours on the first day and 3 on the second one, etc). The two members of the team can work on it at different times or different number of hours if they prefer. Please always watch out for your (and your family's) mental health though.

It's also not constrained by us, each team decides on its own. You can meet up at one of your places, in a public space, keep in sync via Discord / Google Meet / other online platforms, etc.

No, every team works in their own pace and only know about each other's results at the end of the event. Of course, you can still have friendly conversations, but please do not work on solutions together - the point of this event is that YOU learn something by yourself (and your small team). The bigger the teams are, the less responsibility (and therefore self-development) each member would have.

Not really. If it helps you giving your best, you can aim to have the coolest result, a healthy competitive attitude can make the Inferno fun! However, there is no ranking or any material rewards at the end of the events - the point is to develop ourselves and to connect with other like-minded people.

Sure! If you prefer to work with somebody though, but you don't have a team member yet, feel free to ask around on the Discord, there might be somebody who'd love to join forces with you!

Since the point is learning something completely new, if you already know much about the subject (e.g. we're learning Finnish and you studied it in the past), then we'll kindly ask you to excuse yourself from the specific event. If you're unsure if your existing knowledge gives you too much advantage or not, just let us know, and we'll either decide together if you joining is appropriate, or we can figure out how to transform the subject a little bit (or give you extra conditions) so that you need to put in the same effort as others.

At the end of the event, we ask each team to provide some retrospective - what have you done, how, what you failed at, what you learned, etc. It's best if you can support it with some photos / videos / presentations to make it fun for other people to read! You can check out some of the blog posts of the past events to see how these submissions usually look. Of course, none of this is mandatory - you can go radio silent if you're only interested in the self-development and not the social part.

In general, you can seek out external non-creative help via any channel - be it a friend, Google, ChatGPT, factory, print service or anything. Some examples for an event where you have to build a cool working radio:

• Asking your friend how radio waves work (inqirying about facts is okay)
• Begging your sister to brainstorm on the most fun radio designs (getting creative help should be avoided)
• Contracting a company to print the plastic container you have designed (paying for tools and manufacturing is okay if that's not the main goal of the current event)
• Hiring a freelancer to make a design (paying for somebody to do creative work is not fun)

No? Why would you ask such a question.