Bootcamp: Day 1
A summary of the first day of the first School of Code Bootcamp!
Monday 4th September — day 1 of 80 for the first cohort of SoC Bootcamp. Today we embark on taking a group of people from different ages and backgrounds, with little to no coding experience, and turning them into software developers in just 16-weeks…
Before heading up to Bootcamp HQ — our home for the next 16 weeks — we met in the foyer of iCentrum for a whistle-stop tour of the building and some reluctant group photos. Then the new recruits took their seats in what will be their teams for the week, and got to know one another through a quick icebreaker!
Dave Maclean, the CEO and founder of our headline sponsor Packt Publishing then arrived to greet and congratulate the new students! Dave introduced himself and the work that Packt do, and set off to inspire everyone for their journeys into software development. Telling the class that “every company is either a software company or will eventually become a software company”, he emphasised that they were all on the right side of change by taking the opportunity to learn to code. Along with a ‘Band of Brothers’ reference, Dave also highlighted the importance of teamwork and collaboration, which we’re going to be focusing the Bootcamp around. Thanks to Dave for all his support and a great speech to kick off the Bootcamp!
Cliff Dennett from Innovation Birmingham then came to welcome the class to the campus and make them feel at home. Thanks again to Innovation for the Bootcamp space!
Lessons kick started at 11am! We got our brand new Dell Inspiron laptops out and introduced the recruits to programmes such as Slack and Github. Chris began with the fundamentals of the web, covering HTML and CSS. With a variety of experience among the team, it was great to see everyone working together and helping one another solve problems. During the morning, myself and videographer Richard were stealing people away one by one to do some informal interviews. We’re hoping to document everyone’s progress throughout their journeys on the Bootcamp, and so made sure to film their thoughts, ambitions and expectations on day 1!
After an hour for lunch where a few people made good use of MarioKart on the Nintendo Wii, we got back to desks and moved on to advanced CSS, learning the code behind the appearance of web pages. We concluded the day with a wrap-up, where we shared our thoughts on the structure and teaching of the day. By having this collaborative, open feedback time we hope to adjust and improve the Bootcamp every day!
Day 1 was a huge success, and we couldn’t be more excited to have finally kicked off the first School of Code Bootcamp. Please keep up with all Bootcamp news on here and our social media streams!
Why not come and meet these budding programmers for yourself at our Bootcamp Launch Event on Tuesday 26th September?
Register for a free ticket here.
