A Quick Look into Spring 2022 with Codebase
By: Ryan Zhao, Spring 2022 President
Hello everyone, and welcome to Spring 2022! As we all (hopefully) return to campus for another great semester, I am sure many students are looking for new ways to explore their interests and engage with the Berkeley community.
College is a unique time to build meaningful connections and friendships–ones that will last a lifetime. But as a school of over 30,000 undergraduates, Berkeley is sometimes intimidating. It is hard to find your own place within such a large campus.
The size of Berkeley, however, also brings opportunities for community rarely found elsewhere. With so many passionate and motivated students, from all interests and backgrounds, Berkeley is filled with a uniquely vibrant club scene. Whether it is a cultural group or a dance community, a professional consulting club or a charitable volunteer organization, I encourage everyone to check out what Berkeley has to offer. I believe that clubs are a great way to make a small space within such a large campus, and I sincerely hope you will consider joining one of our many organizations.
In particular, I wanted to introduce Codebase, one of the many tech-focused student organizations on campus, and explain who we are, what we do, and why we exist. I also want to talk about our plans for this upcoming semester, as well as how you can get involved as a client or mentored developer on our teams.
What is Codebase?
Codebase was founded in 2016 by a small group of undergraduate computer science students with the mission to:
“Build a community of developers that empowers students to break into the software industry.”
The tech industry was, and still is, an extremely competitive field to break into. The founders envisioned creating opportunities for passionate and curious students to join a community of developers with diverse interests, learn from and mentor each other through industry projects, and work with professional software engineers.
This vision has stayed true with us to this day. Today, our organization has grown to over 45 active members, and our efforts have branched into multiple initiatives:
- Developing hands-on technical projects for industry clients
- Bringing industry resources to the wider Berkeley community
- Building a close-knit student community
Let’s dive deeper into each of these!
Our Projects
The largest component of being a Codebase member is working on our projects. Every semester, Codebase works with four high-growth tech companies and one non-profit organization and builds a technical product for them. Each project team, consisting of two project managers (PMs) and six developers, collaborates closely with their client company’s software engineers through 13 weeks of agile development, complete with sprints, standups, and code reviews. Throughout this process, our members are able to build their foundations in software engineering, learn the best industry practices, and work on a product with immediate feedback and users.
Because our developers are still full-time students, we always work remotely from our client, delivering two in-person presentations throughout the semester to present our progress.
We have two different types of projects: a mentored project for those new to software engineering, as well as client projects for those with more experience.
We’ll be announcing our client projects very soon so keep an eye out for updates on the specific companies and projects we’ll be working on this semester! https://codebase.berkeley.edu/projects
Our External Initiatives
Outside of our projects, one of our main initiatives is also to provide the wider Berkeley computer science student body with professional development and mentorship resources. This semester, we’re planning a wide variety of events, from company tech talks to industry panels. We are also hoping to organize seminars and discussions focused on highlighting pressing issues within the tech world, including ethical practices and supporting diversity. For those who prefer to learn on their own terms, we have also published our mentored project curriculum for full-stack web development.
Building Our Community
Beyond our project work, Codebase is first and foremost a community, and this will never change. Every semester, it is my highest priority to make sure that Codebase is a fun and engaging experience for all of our members, and that we all get to form close friendships throughout college. Following campus guidelines, we plan to continue operating as an in-person club, including in-person events such as retreats, banquets, project meetings, team dinners, and casual meetups on the Glade. We will of course be keeping a close eye on public health and safety guidelines and our campus situation. It’s important to me that we remain flexible if conditions change. This pandemic is unfortunately far from over, so being cautious, safe and considerate of our communities and fellow students will always be top of mind for us.
On a brighter note, I can say without a doubt that I’ve met some of my closest friends in Codebase, and I hope that you will feel the same after joining our organization.
Joining Our Team
Interested in joining our team? We’re currently recruiting for both client project and mentored project developers this Spring! We’ve released our applications on our website here (codebase.berkeley.edu). Our application deadline is Wednesday January 26th at 11:59pm (with a grace period until Thursday January 27th at 2:59am).
Throughout the first few weeks of the semester, we’ll be hosting a wide variety of recruitment events for you to get to know our members and learn more:
- Codebase Spring 2022 Infosession 1
Friday January 21st, 8–10 PM PT
Event: fb.me/e/5pMhD2N7H
Registration Link: bit.ly/cb-sp22-infosession1 - Women in Codebase Panel Spring 2022
Tuesday January 25th, 7–8 PM PT
Event: fb.me/e/5pMhD2N7H
Registration Link: bit.ly/cb-sp22-women-in-cb - Codebase Spring 2022 Infosession 2
Tuesday January 25th, 8–10PM PT
Event: fb.me/e/5pMhD2N7H
Registration Link: bit.ly/cb-sp22-infosession2 - Discord Application OH
Saturday January 22nd, 6–8 PM PT
Wednesday January 26th, 6–8 PM PT
Discord Link: bit.ly/cb-sp22-discord - APPLICATIONS DUE
Submit applications on our website at: https://codebase.berkeley.edu/apply
Thursday January 27th at 2:59am
Finally, if you would like to receive updates or ask us any questions asynchronously, here are a few ways to connect with us:
- Fill out our interest form for email updates: bit.ly/cb-sp22-interest
- Join our “virtual table” Discord for questions: bit.ly/cb-sp22-discord
- Visit our website to learn more: codebase.berkeley.edu/
- Follow us on Instagram and Facebook
Closing Thoughts
I hope this post gave you a better picture of what Codebase is and what it would look like to join our community. We are always looking for new friends that we can learn and grow together with, so we’d love for you to apply! That being said, if you don’t think Codebase is right for you, there are tons of other clubs and communities that I’d highly encourage you to check out! Like I said earlier, finding a community on campus can be so important and I truly do hope that everyone has that opportunity, whether that community happens to be Codebase or some other amazing group of people. You can view the full list of Berkeley clubs on Callink, or other lists of clubs (like sproul.club) actively looking for new members.
I hope you have a great semester!! ❤
