Jim Medlock
Founder
Started Chingu in 2016 to bridge the gap between tutorial completion and team-based work. Still active in cohort design and community strategy.
Who runs Chingu
Alumni who came back. Industry pros who show up.
Almost every Voyage Guide, workshop leader, and operations volunteer was once a Chingu member. The community runs itself — that’s how it’s free, and why it works.
Members become leaders, and the cycle funds the community.
A typical path: someone joins as a Voyage member, ships a product, finishes the cohort, and comes back a few months later as a Voyage Guide. Some stay on as workshop leaders. A few take on operational roles — cohort coordination, Discord moderation, new program design. Every role is volunteer, and almost every volunteer is former membership.
The core team.
Operations
Volunteer operators
A rotating group of alumni handles cohort matching, onboarding, and community support. Names and bios listed inside the Discord.
Program leads
Volunteer leads
Each program (Standard Voyage, Voyage XP, Pair Programming, Book Club) has a volunteer lead who sets cadence, onboards new Guides, and runs retrospectives.
Contact information for all program leads lives in the community Discord.
The mentors who run cohorts.
Voyage Guides are volunteers — usually alumni, sometimes industry professionals — who support teams through the seven-week arc. They don’t dictate the product or the stack. They help unblock, facilitate retrospectives, coach Scrum Masters, and make sure every cohort has the safety net the team didn’t know they needed.
Cohort Guide
Volunteer alum
Supports 2–4 teams across a Voyage. Runs a weekly sync, reviews retrospectives, helps teams navigate conflict.
Technical Guide
Volunteer industry pro
Deep reviews on tricky PRs, architecture questions, deployment headaches — for teams that ask.
Agile Guide
Volunteer alum
Coaches Scrum Masters and Product Owners on facilitation and backlog management. Especially useful early in a Voyage.
Want to come back as a Guide?
If you’ve completed a Voyage, you’re eligible.
Most Guides started the same way. If you’d like to mentor a future cohort, run a workshop, or help with operations, there’s a Discord channel for that — and a program lead who’ll walk you through it.
Volunteer onboarding in Discord →Ready to apply?
Every Voyage is run by people who did a Voyage first. It’s how Chingu stays free.
Join the next Voyage →