codebar Helsinki: first year recap
codebar Helsinki is now over a year old; the idea having been born at a TEDx event here in Helsinki. There was a talk about volunteering which reminded James about how he used to coach at codebar Cambridge. We contacted codebar and that’s how it began!
The past year
Our first workshop was hosted by MOW back in June 2018, the co-working space in which James’s employer, Verifa, was located. Since then, we’ve met lots of other companies and to date we were sponsored by such well-known companies as Futurice, Fraktio, Gofore and Wolt to name a few. We’re grateful to all the companies who have hosted & sponsored us. If you know a company who might be interested in hosting a workshop, drop us a line.
The statistics
- We have organised 11 events
- We’ve had a total of 156 attendees, over 100 students and over 40 coaches
- Our largest events had 36–37 attendees, smallest event had 22 attendees
- We average 29 participants at every workshop
- Over 10 companies have sponsored us
- 5 people became coaches after attending as students
The special events
We like special events, although the main focus is on the normal workshops. We had a special game development event where attendees, together with experienced game developers, built their own game from scratch. In preparation, we found a few tutorials for various languages (Python, Unity JS, Unity C#) and games (Flappy Bird clone, Tetris, and others). Following those, with the help of our great coaches, many students finished their projects in 2–3 hours! We even recorded a podcast at our host, Games Factory, to talk about games & codebar: http://videogamesauna.libsyn.com/
Recently, together with Reaktor we’ve prepared an event “Pride in Tech”. There, James and Anastasia gave a talk about codebar’s past year and what anyone can do to encourage more people to join the industry (P.S. one of the big points is “share your story” — write to codelog, too!)
The plans
We have a few things cooking now, too. Our next special event will be hosted by Verifa & Futurice and it will be a hackathon! We invite all our students to join even if they have never attended a similar event before. The main idea is to put programming into context of tech industry. Attendees, in small groups, will be able to work on a project on a given theme (announced on the day of the event).
Additionally, we have a few big plans. Firstly, we aim to double the amount of events in the next few months as a trial. While we will still have monthly workshops with different tech companies hosting us, we want to have smaller interim workshops hosted by Helsinki Think Company.
Helsinki Think Company provides free co-working spaces that will provide us with space to meet up in the same context of codebar workshops. The only difference is: there might not be food every time, but you are welcome to bring something for yourself and others! We will be experimenting more with the format of these interim events, e.g. pair programming, peer review, and many other options!
We aim to double the amount of events in the next few months
Secondly, we are working on a codebar mentorship program. The program would aim to prepare codebar attendees who wish to switch careers for a job in the tech industry. While we do not guarantee a job for any participants, we want to do our best to answer all questions a person may have. We will first start with a small pilot to help us refine the concept. We are currently working on the program and will announce more details in a separate post. If you have any suggestions or recommendations or simply would like to know more, shoot us a message.
While we do not guarantee a job for any participants [of the mentorship program], we want to do our best to answer all questions a person may have.
x
James & Anastasia
More information about new events and projects will follow by email, make sure you are subscribed to codebar.io/helsinki.
Keep in touch with us:
Slack: https://slack.codebar.io/ (make sure to join #helsinki-chapter)
Twitter: https://twitter.com/codebarhelsinki
