Learning Challenge #1: BigQuery

[michael]

Congratulations, you’ve found the first ever Community Challenge!

In honor of the launch of the new Google Cloud Community and the Learning & Certification Hub, we’ve devised a fun little challenge to catapult your skills in BigQuery and give you a chance to win the First. Ever. Community. Learning. Challenge. 🎉 (Pause for effect)

Not only will participating in this challenge give you hands-on practice to boost key skills in BQ, but simply participating will earn you some sweet online badges. Plus, the winner of this challenge will be rewarded . . . handsomely.

*Important note: You must be a registered Community member to be included in the running as the winner.

How to participate:

Step 1: Register as a member of the Google Cloud Community

Step 2: Go to https://google.qwiklabs.com/games/1726, join with code 1q-gcc-623, and follow the prompts to start the Launch & Learn challenge!

Step 3: Complete every activity in the challenge to earn a Skill Badge, which you can share across your network with pride. Make sure to keep an eye on the Challenge Scoreboard to see who's in the #1 spot! If it's you, you're in for a nice prize. 

Step 4: Post a screenshot of your newly minted Skill Badge in this thread to earn a special Community Badge which you can then flaunt on your new Community profile!

The Community member at the top of the Scoreboard at the time the game is closed will be rewarded with secret Google swag.

Happy learning 😎

ps. This Community Challenge is hosted in Qwiklabs. New to Qwiklabs? Check out this post to get started.

[Former Community Member]

Thanks for the great Qwiklab challenge! Here is the screenshot to start collecting the badges!

Alfons' Qwiklab Public Profile 

[AndrewB]

Nice work @Former Community Member - first one! 

 

 

[dshah]

[mukeshkbj]

[michael]

@dshah   @mukeshkbj Way to go!! Look at those shiny Skill Badges!

Community Badges for this Challenge will start being rewarded soon! 

[clementbosc]

Hello @michael ,

Hello,
I've just completed the third lab of the game (Weather data in BigQuery) and i suspect a mistake in two queries.
The link of the lab is : https://google.qwiklabs.com/games/1726/labs/8958

The mistakes are is the two last queries, when querying for the
all_calls_count, it should be :
SELECT
DATE(created_date) AS date,
COUNT(*) AS all_calls_count
FROM
`bigquery-public-data.new_york.311_service_requests`
GROUP BY
date

(not nyc_weather)

Am i right ?

Best regards

[michael]

Hey @clementbosc - thank you for the feedback! I've put in a note with the appropriate team. 

So glad to have you participating!

[glen_yu]

[satishchhatpar]

BigQuery is exciting! Thank you qwiklabs.

https://google.qwiklabs.com/public_profiles/dd300500-f6e1-48fb-b343-327950f6f7a3/badges/1112197

[florian_holzer]

[michael]

@glen_yu , @satishchhatpar , @Florian way to go!! 

[kenmoore]

Fun challenge - appreciate the hands on learning

[gamblergarg]

is there any swags for 2nd Rank ??? Excited to know 

[michael]

@gamblergarg Great question -  swag only for 1st place this time. There's many more challenges on the way so more chances to win coming soon!

[luc_daheron]

Thanks for this Qwiklab challenge.

My badge : https://google.qwiklabs.com/public_profiles/f356421e-d085-47c3-bbe3-cbdff6a4392c

[aberger1]

Today is a fantastic day as I earned my first badge! Fun & great way to learn!

[michael]

Way to go @aberger1 and @luc_daheron! So glad you decided to participate. Many more challenges coming very soon. 

Your community badge will also be distributed soon 😎

[shanmukhkotharu]

Finally I was able to complete this amazing fun challenge. All the labs are very informative and enjoyed the challenge very much. Hoping to win some nice prize after hardwork to get #1

[michael]

Great work, @shanmukhkotharu! I see you at the number 1 spot 🚀

One day left for the challenge, we'll see if someone comes for the top spot! 🙂

[shanmukhkotharu]

Game over!! yaayyyyy, feeling lucky @michael 

may be now its the time to get swag

[gamblergarg]

Hey @shanmukhkotharu @michael excited to know about prizes you will be getting , Please relveal your prizes 

[krzysztof_baj]

Last 24 hours...

 

[michael]

@krzysztof_baj way to get it in! 

[michael]

Here's our final leaderboard:

 Awesome job everyone!

And shoutout to @shanmukhkotharu for getting first place!! Really impressive! 

@shanmukhkotharu we will contact you directly about receiving your well-deserved Google Cloud swag! 

[iyudhi]

Hi @michael - how is the top score calculated? I know we're given 5 attempts to finish as fast as possible. Do you pick the top score (fastest time) from one of the attempts, or do you add the scores from all attempts?

In any case, I feel this encourage people to finish labs without understanding the content. Most Qwiklabs have code snippets which you can easily copy and past with a single click, then run in on GCP console. You just need to skim the directions for a general sense of what to do, and it will pass the automatic checks. I wonder if we learn anything by doing this though?

I've participated in similar challenges in the past through CloudOnAir, and I always had to pick between 1) trying to get top scores or 2) actually learning the content.

Just a thought I've been having, but never able to give feedback to until the existence of this community.

[shanmukhkotharu]

@iyudhi the best score out of all attempts for each lab is added to compute the final score.

I agree that there are multiple people on youtube and github giving tutorials and code snipets for doing lab activities. But without knowing the logic and without understanding on how things work, people cant make a high score.

I respect your opinion, though the main intention was for learning few instances made it look like it is just race for swag. Thankfully, we havent seen any such instances in this game.

[iyudhi]

@shanmukhkotharu Just for your info, I was not calling out on you. Well done on taking first prize!

But I think transparency is good with regards on how to actually get high score. I've participated in challenges like this in the past, but never got high score since I always took my time to do the lab.

But in theory, I can always do 1 attempt to understand what's going on, going through the lab slowly, then make notes on a separate page on the exact steps I need to do, then on my next attempt, just try to run through the steps as fast as possible without thinking. I just didn't want to do that since it doesn't sound like it follows the spirit of the challenge.

[michael]

Hey @iyudhi , thanks so much for your feedback! We really appreciate you taking the time to share your perspective with us.  

Regarding how the leaderboard works, points are calculated based on two components:

1. Points for completing each section’s required steps 

2. Points for finishing the lab quickly

The ambiguity around this is a good callout! I agree that we can do a better job at clearly defining how one can earn more points. I’ll make sure to post a clear guideline for how our challenge leaderboards operate so everyone is on the same page with how to earn more points (should someone decide to do so).

Regarding swag for learning challenges: I agree that for some the race for swag or to ‘win’ can be stronger than the desire to really sink in and learn new content. This is definitely a consideration when pairing incentives with learning content.

That said, our hope with Learning Challenges is that by weaving together valuable and relevant learning labs, making all that content free, and then adding a some gamification to it, it will draw folks in to start engaging with the learning content, which will serve as a launch point to go even deeper in a given technology area. Also, the leaderboard portion can add another layer of friendly competition to it while providing some extra inertia to go through all the content - even more than once (which is usually how people truly remember new information).

Another important thing to mention is that Learning Challenges are just one way to learn! We have so much learning content across Cloud technologies available, most without a concept of a leaderboard. Capturing a wider range of our existing learning offerings on these forums is a top priority for us.  

We would genuinely appreciate it if you would continue to offer feedback as we roll out and refine Learning Challenges as well as other community activities / learning offerings! It takes feedback like this to ensure we’re moving in the right direction and this space is as valuable for all as possible,. 

Also, if you have any other concerns around this, let’s continue the dialogue! 

Kindly

[iyudhi]

@michael thanks so much for the elaborate reply! In all honesty, I do understand that the prizes/leaderboard is used to generate interest to use Qwiklabs. But first impression is very important, and if their first impression of Qwiklabs is just 'copy pasting code snippets into cloud console' then they might lose interest quickly.

But then again, I'm probably not the target for these kind of competitions. I have Qwiklabs subscription through my company, so I've been doing the labs for the past year or two, always taking my time every time I do them. The swags are also not my biggest priority (unless you're giving out GCP credits.. then yes, I'm definitely interested 😛 )

Whenever I get notification for these challenges, it always gets me excited, until I found out that the condition of winning is to finish as fast as possible. That's truly a dealbreaker because I would rather do five different labs at a reasonable pace, rather than repeating the same five labs trying to get a higher score. We only have 24 hours in day 🙂

One suggestion I can give out is probably just use the first attempt for the score in the challenge, then players can use the remaining four attempts to revisit if they need to, but it shouldn't be counted as part of the score.

This will not solve the overall issue, since most labs can still be completed by directly copy/pasting to console, but at least put players into more even ground.