Bootcamp Intro: Why Are We Doing This and How Can You Help?
SoC founder Chris explains the reasons behind the School of Code Bootcamp starting September 2017 and how the tech community can get involved…
On September 4th, we are starting our very first School of Code Bootcamp! The aim is to take a group of people from beginner to programmer over 16 weeks, and then help them into technology jobs.
Bootcamps are a great way of immersing yourself in technology — but, they are usually expensive and usually based in London for the UK, and so this presents a financial or geographical barrier for many people. There are tonnes of opportunity, money, and jobs in technology, but lots of people are being left behind and not benefiting from the industry. With rising automation and a changing job landscape, technology skills are becoming more important then ever for more and more people. So, we are making our bootcamp free for people to join. Instead of the “bums on seats” model of traditional education where you get paid just to have people on the course, we reverse it so that we focus on getting positive outcomes for people.
To make the course sustainable, we have incredibly generous partners like Packt Publishing who provide sponsorship and also bring massive experience in teaching professional developers — they have over 4000 books teaching the latest and greatest technology skills, and have helped over 1 million developers! We have also partnered with Innovation Birmingham, who are supporting the course with space and community — with over 150 digital businesses with over 1,200 employees, it’s the perfect place to hold our bootcamp! We’ve also had support from Technical Team Solutions and UnLtd, who are both passionate about helping us bring this bootcamp idea to life in Birmingham.
To make the model sustainable so we can run more courses in the future, we also aim to help our recruits get great tech jobs, and when they secure one we ask for sponsorship from the employer. Instead of paying recruitment or advertising fees, this can help the employer find the right candidate after getting to know them over the entire course, and also means they can give back to the community by helping us teach another course in the future.
The process will take people through a team-based, project-driven, and industry-led course designed to help create collaborative, creative problem solvers that are ready to work in the tech industry. We teach full-stack JavaScript development with the latest technologies such as Facebook’s React for front-end development, and NodeJS for server-side development. We help to line up interviews with tech companies at the end of the course, but what happens if you don’t get a job? 16 weeks is a short amount of time, so we don’t just drop you off a cliff at the end of it. After the course, we aim to help bring in consultancy projects so that our coding recruits can earn money and complete real work, but still honing their skills with our support and guidance.
This is an experiment — we want to prove that more and different types of people can learn to code, and that it’s better to learn in a diverse, team-based, real-world environment because not only does that mean more and better ideas and experiences brought to the table, but also the ability to communicate and work with different types of people is a valuable, essential skill in the real-world! We want to produce collaborative, creative coders who have soft skills, team work, and a portfolio of projects demonstrating their technical ability. And this is what industry wants, not just curriculum zombies with certificates to prove they’ve attended a course.
So how can you help? We are looking for mentors, guest lecturers, and employer partners to give our course graduates opportunities in the industry. Mentoring consists of a 30 minute chat a week, and would be an incredibly valuable way for those already in the industry to give back and help new people come through. Since many of our bootcampers are from non-technical backgrounds, their mentors will most likely be the first person in the industry they know — it’s therefore a great way to help them network, as well as receiving support, motivation, and advice when needed. Email us at bootcamp@schoolofcode.co.uk if you are interested.
If you’d like to provide a guest lecture to share your expertise on a subject with our bootcamp, please get in touch!
Finally, any employers who want to support diversifying technology and getting the industry to benefit more people, get in contact. Everyone is welcome to attend our lunchtime launch event on the 26th September, where we will be introducing the tech community to our bootcamp recruits — please come along, learn more about the bootcamp, and show your support by signing up here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/school-of-code-bootcamp-launch-tickets-36865778536
