The Vine City Code Crew
Session #0100
When I was in high school at Satellite Beach, about 300 yards from the Atlantic Ocean on the central east coast of Florida, I was in a physics class with Jay Silver. Our physics teacher, Mr. Rogers (and yeah, he often wore the same kind of sweater jackets that went along with the name), was a pretty straight-laced guy. Suffice it to say, not a lot of jokes in our class. But Jay, the joker as much as the genius, would raise his hand and ask questions like: “Mr. Rogers, within the universe if the law of the conservation of energy says that energy is neither created nor destroyed—only transferred — then what happens when Jesus ascends on a cloud up into Heaven?” Let’s just say Rogers was not amused… But I thought it was right up there as one of the best physics questions I’d ever heard.
Jay once wore an eye patch, literally looking like a pirate in a tuxedo, complete with his mane of long black hair and chin beard for his senior portrait in 1998. I was next in line after him for my mugshot and watched the following exchange unfold. The photographer, as unamused as if he were Mr. Rogers himself, told Jay, “Ha. Ha. Really funny kid. Now lose the eyepatch.” Jay began to weep and plead with the photographer, “But I lost my eye in an accident! How could you ask me not to wear this patch!?” (Don’t worry, his eye was fine). In complete shock and feeling absolutely horrific, the man began to beg for Jay’s forgiveness and quickly hurried along to take Jay’s portrait. Only thing was, when the photographer would look down at the camera after each shot, Jay would quickly switch the eye patch from one eye to the other. The photographer never once noticed.
(And right after Jay’s legendary eye patch scheme, here’s a little taste of how awesome yours truly looked rockin’ his 1950's flat-top in 1998…)
Jay went to one school dance in a suit he made of bubble wrap. He went to another in a suit made of…macaroni. Why? Because—well, that was just Jay. He was truly a “maker” before “maker” came to be popular in our hipster parlance a decade and a half later.
Shortly after that fateful eye-patched portrait day, I never saw Jay again. He went off to Georgia Tech. And then to England to attend Cambridge. After that, he earned his Masters and PhD at MIT. And I—well let’s just say I didn’t go to any of those schools… So 15 years after the last time I saw him at our high school graduation ceremony, imagine my surprise when I’m watching TED Talks and who should appear in my upcoming talks feed but the man Jay Silver himself. He he was giving a TEDx presentation on how to hack a banana to make a keyboard. “Yep. That’s Jay alright,” I thought.
Watching his talk, I learned of the MakeyMakey device he built. So when the Code Crew came about, I knew it was an idea that I wanted to introduce to our young aspiring coders and future electrical engineers. That night of Session #0100, we watched a video of what Jay teaches to kids around the country — that the world is yours to experiment. Anything (and I mean literally, almost anything) can be a keyboard to your computer. Ever thought about making an instrument with water smeared across paper? Jay’s work opens eyes to what is possible. And eyes have been on Jay. He was even invited to the White House to receive an award from one of my childhood heroes, Bill Nye “The Science Guy”!
The coders in The Crew were so jazzed about the idea of the MakeyMakey that they specifically asked that we incorporate it somehow in whatever follow up class we end up doing. It seems it left as much of an impression on them as it did me. In Jay’s words, the MakeyMakey is like “electronic duct tape.” It allows kids, 90 year olds, and anyone in between, to invent and be creative with technology using objects around us in the real world. Jay exemplifies the idea of a creative, inventive maker movement and inspires kids to experiment, learn and love in a way that encourages me to want to do the same. Thank you Jay.
After being amazed at the power of the MakeyMakey to turn ordinary slices of pizza into keyboard arrows to control your computer, we dove into our Python coding lesson for the night — IF, THEN, ELSE statements! One of things I love about coding in general is that it’s often times an extension of or representation of how we otherwise already think and speak. Like:
“IF this certain thing occurs, THEN I’ll do this. ELSE I’ll do that.”
So, as an example from my own life, maybe something like:
“IF it rains today, THEN I’ll stay inside and eat a whole bag of Cheetos on the couch, in my underwear. ELSE if it’s sunny outside, I’ll eat a whole bag of Cheetos on the lawn. But just still in my underwear.”
Ok, so I didn’t say they were necessarily good ideas…
After going through our Prezi below to introduce the concepts a little bit more, we got into our Python code labs. If you’d like to try the labs yourself, check out exercises 10 and 11 on our Codecademy.com site.
As the Code Crewers began to pick up on the the concept of the if-then-else and how it worked, they quickly began to deviate off the original outlined path. They began writing their own if-then-else statements and giving new answers to interact with entirely different kinds of programs!
The evening’s special quests were definitely that — special. Pete Tamisin and Andy Rocha of Rittman Mead (a highly respected and recognized technology consulting company) came to speak to the coders. Pete didn’t even know me personally and had definitely never met any of our coders before. But he asked if he could be involved anyway. Needless to say, we’ve since become fast friends. I’ve been so humbled and amazed at the willingness and excitement of essentially strangers to join in and be part of this Crew with these coders. Pete (as well as Andy) both live so far up GA 400 that it might almost make your nose bleed; or at the very least basically qualify for a Tennessee mailing address… Alright, maybe not that far up but I’m sure it took them nearly 1.5 hours in rush hour traffic to get from Forsyth County all the way down into Vine City. And then, less than 12 hours later, they each did it all over again the next morning to be chaperones at our MailChimp field trip! Amazing.
Our other expert tech guest was Pete’s friend and colleague, Andy Rocha. It’s hard for me to put into words what Andy, and his whole family, mean to me. Andy is truly one of my best friends in the world. He’s actually the reason that I have the job that I do and am in the career that I am today. I’ve stood on a mountain top with Andy halfway around the world on vacation together. I’ve visited him and his wife in the hospital after the birth of their children to meet their new little joy. We’ve jumped up and down like maniacs cheering on the Crimson Tide to victory with 100,000 others in Tuscaloosa on a brisk fall game day. He was the last person to see me off when I moved my family to the Republic of Texas. And he was the first person to hug me when I moved my family back again to Atlanta one year later…
Both Andy and Pete shared from the heart, encouraging us all to dedicate ourselves to our craft, learn all we could about technology and leverage that into an amazing career experience, just like the two of them have today. At the end of the interview we asked both of them what their dream job careers might have been. For Pete, his was a comic book artist. And for my Brazilian buddy Andy of course, it was to be a professional footballer (and just so you’re not confused, that’s “soccer” for all us southern hand-egg fans, in case you didn’t know).
For our next Code Crew entry that occurred the very next morning, we’ll go on a trip to the magical tech fun-land that is MailChimp in Atlanta, GA. Stay tuned; it’s sure to be pretty rad…
