You can absolutely combine Kernel with full time work. It is meant to complement the many exciting and engaging projects already happening all over the world. We have designed the course such that it will take as little or as much of your time as you are willing to give.

Each week only contains two Crafted Readings, which will take you no longer than 10 minutes to read in total. This is the only requirement for participation. Each Thursday, we host a Fireside talk with an industry expert, which generally takes another 1h30 of your time and each track has a weekly call with their own focus, which is also around 1hr or 1h30 long. In total, this comes to around 3h30 per week.

Then, there are three or four Curated Materials, which are summaries of talks, podcasts, or longer essays from various parts of the interwebz. Reading these briefs should take around an hour in total (could be more or less depending on how you read and whether English is your first language). This is the next level of possible engagement, which will lead you to ask better questions in Slack and on the weekly track-specific and Fireside calls.

If you watch the embedded videos, listen to the podcasts, and read the full essays, this can take up to 3-6 hours, depending on the module. This is not expected, but it will help you gain a full perspective. It will help you host your own juntos (conversations for mutual improvement which anyone in Kernel can host at any time on any topic they like) and lead discussions in Slack.

Essentially, we have tried to make sure that those who have full time jobs need not spend more than a few hours a week in order to participate in and benefit from the course, while those with more time can use Kernel as if it were a full time job. It's up to you and the context you're currently in to decide where you fit best.

Yes! Absolutely. The split between Crafted Readings and Curated Materials is not just to cater for the variety of time commitments different people in Kernel have made, but also to make sure that those who have no experience in Web 3 can find interesting and novel ways to understand this new way of relating and transacting on the web, while those with more experience can find perspectives and insights they may not have come across elsewhere in their own work.

The Learn Track is not technical, in the sense of requiring software development skills. It is intended to teach you how to better think about systems in general and decentralised networks specifically. Crafted Readings are intended to be accessible to anyone, at any level. Curated Materials are too, but the greater detail they provide may be more useful to those with some experience or pre-existing technical skill.

The overall intention of the course is to build together better patterns for understanding, navigating, and creating tools which give more people access to, and the ability to generate value from, ownerless and borderless global networks. As such, we actually require a diversity of skills, perspectives, and backgrounds. If you're not technical or a developer, please still apply as we need you to help balance our approach. We need your input and way of being in the world and seeing things if we are to create better tools.

We also provide a range of specifically-curated resources we use ourselves, which are designed with various levels of skill and experience in mind.

It is free to apply, and $400 (~$1200 for teams) to join the Fellowship for those accepted to Kernel.

Feel free to reach out anytime at hello@kernel.community