This year, I completed Le Wagon’s coding bootcamp in Brussels. During the bootcamp, I co-founded kidzeum.co, a fun and educative web app for kids in museums, which I coded from scratch with two fellow “campers”. Insights in the journey of a lawyer turned entrepreneur.
Before attending Le Wagon, I worked as a lawyer and as many of my “learned friends”, I didn’t know a thing about programming. A word like “Ruby” evoked an original alternative to diamonds, “Python” was reminiscent of high school geometry classes — or was it Greek mythology? — and as far as I knew, “Java” was an island. Yet, I was eager to put an end to my ignorance. I wanted to launch my own business and all my ideas required some form of web development.
I could have enrolled in a computer sciences program at university, but that wasn’t really an option. I had no desire to spend more years behind thick university walls learning machine language. Alternatively, I could have hired a web developer, but then, how was I to assess the quality of the work and the price?
What I needed, was a way to rapidly and painlessly acquire basic practical knowledge of web development. Le Wagon’s two and a half months coding bootcamp seemed the perfect solution. And so it was…
Except for the fact that the two first weeks were far from painless. Days were long and coding logic was slimy — when you think you’ve got it, nothing works! Our days started with two hours of lecture given at the speed of light by our uber-motivated coach, Martin Van Aken. A little dazed, we would then team up in pairs to tackle the coding challenges of the day. At around 5pm, Martin would interrupt our sufferings, only to revert to a better form of torment: live code. That is, he would come up with an additional challenge which one of the trainees would have to solve under the tight scrutiny of the rest of the group.
So why did I stay?
First, we had incredibly supportive and knowledgeable coaches. Martin and Anne Collet were there on a daily basis, while guest coaches regularly popped in. They all spent countless hours clarifying whatever we didn’t understand, debugging our code (you’d never think a semi-colon can make such a difference) and encouraging us. Fellow campers were also of great help. We quickly became one big family, largely thanks to Anne who did an amazing job at fostering a sense of community.
As I progressed, I realized that a lot of thought had been put into the bootcamp’s curriculum and that the challenges had huge pedagogical value. They built on previously assimilated notions and were — to the extent possible — based on real-life situations. Gradually, it all started to make sense, and the next thing I knew, we were coding Airbnb-like web apps in teams.
Finally, my experience would not have been the same without the two last weeks of the bootcamp. Those two weeks were dedicated to coding our very own projects. I had Kidzeum in mind and was very fortunate to have two fellow campers, Maria and Laure, join the project. After two weeks of intense coding and lots of laughs, we presented to a packed house the beta version of our app, a mobile game for kids in museums. We got great feedback which encouraged us to pursue the project beyond the bootcamp. Great challenges lie ahead of us, but we know we can always count on Le Wagon’s unwavering support. Already, they have put us in contact with journalists, funders and potential partners.
Bottom line: to all entrepreneurs — confirmed or in the making: just do it! Learn to code your future start-up! In my case, doing so got me one step closer to accomplishing my dream. And if you have any question about Le Wagon, feel free to ask!
2018 UPDATE: Kidzeum was a great adventure which made me realize I preferred being in museums over working with museums. I am now extremely happy and proud to be a teacher at… Le Wagon :) Also, I have co-founded a non-profit organization called Techies Lab based in Brussels, Belgium. We host tech workshops for kids and teens. Check us out!
