Episode 29: May 2018 Bootcamp News

We read a lot of news about coding bootcamps in May 2018, so we chose the most interesting pieces, and we’re rounding it all up for you in this blog post and podcast! We look at yet another coding bootcamp acquisition, share many wonderful success stories about coding bootcamp graduates, touch on some partnerships between bootcamps and companies, and discuss the role of coding bootcamps in the future of education and talent pipelines. We also chat about diversity in tech at coding bootcamps, and roundup all the new schools, courses, and campuses! Read the roundup below, or listen to the podcast!

Acquisitions + Fundraises

• WeWork acquired MissionU, a one-year coding bootcamp that teaches data analytics.
• i.c. stars, a bootcamp in Columbus, Ohio, received $100,000 in funding from the KeyBank Business Boost & Build program, powered by JumpStart.
   

Coding Bootcamp Graduate Success Stories

• Forbes profiled the Dev Bootcamp grad Alyssa Ravasio who founded HipCamp, a camping app which allows users to book public and private land for camping.
  RELATED: Alumni Spotlight with Alyssa Ravasio
• Hypepotamus profiled two DigitalCrafts grads, Ashley Parker and Robby Ackerley, about their career journeys.
• Rad Awakenings’ Khemaridh Hy interviewed a former San Quentin prison inmate named Chris Shumacher who went through The Last Mile coding course while in prison, and built and launched a successful fitness app.
• Cleveland.com profiled Tech Elevator grad Rosemarie Krizmanich who started a new career at age 61 and now works as a developer at Progressive. WCPO profiles Mary-Rachael Brown, who studied psychology at college, but realized she didn’t want to do that for her career so she enrolled at Tech Elevator. Trib Live looks at how Tech Elevator’s new Pittsburgh campus is capitalizing on the huge demand for software developers in the region.
  RELATED: Campus Spotlight: Tech Elevator Pittsburgh
• Vator did an interview with Drew Magliozzi, a Hack Reactor graduate, who is now the CEO and co-founder at AdmitHub.
• Savannah Now profiled two recent grads Josh and Jennifer about their experience in the 24-week part-time Georgia Tech-Savannah Coding Bootcamp and their final project apps to solve problems from their previous careers.
• DCInno profiled a New York Code and Design Academy (NYCDA) grad, Matt Wojtkun, who went from Public relations to coding, and landed a job at Hatch Apps as a front-end developer.
• Times Free Press profiled Bela Gaytan, who won a Google scholarship to do a Udacity nanodegree, right after being diagnosed with MS. 
   

Why These Founders Started a Coding Bootcamp

• WRAL Tech Wire’s Tech on Tap podcast interviewed Jessica Mitsch, the co-founder of Momentum Learning coding bootcamp in North Carolina. Jessica recently won best female newcomer at Startup Grind Triangle.
• Norwalk Daily Voice profiled Michael McClure, founder and managing director of Crashcode, a Stamford-based nonprofit coding bootcamp looking to up the digital literacy quotient of Fairfield County.
• OZY did a great profile of Audrey Cheng the founder of Moringa School in Kenya, three years since the school launched and announced the new campus in Uganda.
• VPR News and VermontBiz both gave updates on Burlington Code Academy, and profiled its founders Benny Boas, Alex Horner, and Alex Chaffee.
   

Companies Hiring From and/or Upskilling at Coding Bootcamp

• Facebook recently announced the Community Boost initiative to give full scholarships to certain coding bootcamps. According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, the newest Facebook partnership is in Albuquerque where they are giving away 32 full scholarships for the Deep Dive Coding Bootcamp and working with Central New Mexico Community College to develop a digital marketing certificate program.
• Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner announced that the City of Houston has partnered with Microsoft to create the nation's first "Internet of Things" alliance. Flatiron School is opening in downtown Houston and offering scholarships in cooperation with Facebook and the Houston Urban League.
• BP is sending engineers to 12-week coding bootcamps as part of a move to automate more aspects of the oil industry. Field engineers are retraining to gain the skills to program those automated processes to be even more efficient.
• Irish Tech News announced that Engineers Ireland and Code Institute have teamed up to make Code Institute’s Diploma in Tech Fundamentals available from the Engineers Ireland web portal, with prices reduced by €100.
• European coding bootcamp provider Le Wagon is teaming up with naked Hub co-working spaces, following in the footsteps of WeWork who has now bought two coding bootcamps.
   

The Role of Bootcamps in the Future of Education

• Xconomy published an opinion piece by Matt Glotzbach looking at why short courses like bootcamps are the way of the future.
• Bloomberg Bureau of National Affairs looks at how organizations are struggling to find tech talent, and why learning approaches like coding bootcamps are needed for “new collar” jobs like coding.
• Forbes contributor Tom Vander Ark looks at how tech companies are looking for applicants to demonstrate their skills, rather than show GPAs and test scores. He explores what “show what you know” education would look like.
• Stefan Palios of Betakit looked at the Canadian coding bootcamp scene and how employers require good developers who know how to code AND have good people skills.
• A guest post in EdSurge looked at the rise in focus on “developing talent” when it comes to postsecondary education, and how the acquisition of General Assembly by a human resources firm shows the role training will play as part of recruitment.
• The EdTech Times podcast talked to General Assembly’s VP of external affairs Liz Simon, about how the bootcamp prepares adults for the next step in their careers, and whether or not a program like GA needs to be accredited.
• The Next Web hosted an AMA on “Should Everyone Learn to Code” with Jeff from Turing, Adam and Avi from Flatiron, Paul Fain from Inside Higher Ed. and Sara Chipps from Girl Develop IT.
• A guest post in Entrepreneur by Redwood Software president Dennis Walsh looked at the rise of robotics in business operations, and how organizations like coding bootcamps can help prepare workers for this looming shift. The Daily Camera talked to Galvanize coding bootcamp students in Boulder who are experimenting with programming personal robots and teaching them to speak in different languages.
   

Diversity and Accessibility to Tech Education

• Jaxenter interviewed General Assembly grad, Charlie Gerard, who is a software developer at ThoughtWorks in Australia, about why she got into tech and why gender diversity is still an issue in tech.
• Princeton Alumni Weekly looks at sexism in Silicon Valley, talks to female professors about why there is a lack of women wanting to study computer science, and a female Princeton grad who didn’t major in CS, because she assumed she wouldn’t like computers, but later enrolled at Hackbright Academy and got a job at Eventbrite.
• Document Journal interviewed two innovative women in tech, Fereshteh Forough, founder of Code to Inspire – the first coding school for girls in Afghanistan – and Barbara Liskov, one of the first women in the United States to earn a PhD in computer science.
• Fox Detroit reported that the Michigan Council of Women in Technology is offering 10 women scholarships at Grand Circus coding bootcamp, called Develop(Her) Scholarships.
• Women in Technology Hollywood is donating 100% of proceeds from their Leadership awards summit to code education organizations like The Coding Bootcamp at UCLA Extension, DIY Girls, St. Joseph Center Code Talk, STEAM: Coders and STEM Advantage.
• Businesswire announced that coding bootcamps Re:Coded and Refugees{code} have been selected for the Miller Center Social Entrepreneurship at the Margins (SEM) course, a mentorship program focused on scaling social enterprises serving migrants, refugees, and human trafficking survivors.
• Entrepreneur profiles three military veterans who went to coding bootcamp, and mentions programs like Operation Code and The Honor Foundation, which helps vets land key positions in tech and business. The article also gives great advice for veterans.
• Dev League coding bootcamp in Hawaii has been approved to accept GI Bill educational benefits.
• To make coding education more accessible, Miami-based coding bootcamp Wyncode is offering deferred financing for their 10-week web development program.
   

New Technology Bootcamps/Bootcamp Updates

• Carolina Code School launched a 12-week coding course in Greenville, North Carolina on May 14th. The full stack curriculum was developed with help from employers in the area.
• Lighthouse Labs is launching a 12-week Blockchain bootcamp, and Wyncode talked about the huge demand for Blockchain developers.
• The Seattle Times reports that the University of Washington Continuum College is launching a 24-week part-time coding bootcamp in partnership with Trilogy Education.
• Inside Higher Ed and Education Dive profiled Trilogy Education, looking at how students felt “blindsided” when they realized the program instruction was outsourced, rather than being run by the host university, and mentioned that Trilogy bootcamps do not release their outcomes data, unlike many other bootcamps.
• Mexico private education Institute Tecnologico de Monterrey has launched an online coding bootcamp taught in English.
• Mined Mines, the bootcamp for coal miners transitioning into tech, appears to be back – Williamson Daily News looks at how the free bootcamp is offering courses in Logan County, West Virginia, beginning in summer 2018.
• Straight.com looks at how BrainStation coding bootcamp is launching a full-time data science program covering Python and some R at their Toronto, Vancouver, and online campuses to meet the demand for data scientists in North America.
• London Fintech startup Revolut is launching free 6-8 week coding classes for interested women at its new head office in Canary Wharf to improve diversity in the tech industry.
• According to iNews, Apple’s free one-year developer academy in Naples is accepting applications for its next cohort. The academy has trained around 1,000 students since opening in October 2016. Apple is also opening a developer academy in Indonesia.
• USA Today reports that Apple is making it’s Swift Playgrounds App curriculum accessible to people who are deaf or visually impaired.
   

New Technology Bootcamps on Course Report in May 2018

• UW Coding Boot Camp, Seattle, Washington
• Hacker Paradise Code Remote, Bali, Indonesia
• Codebase, Savannah, Georgia
• IE Data Science Bootcamp, Madrid, Spain
• Promotable, Chicago, Illinois, Washington, DC, San Francisco, California, and Singapore, Malaysia
• Techno Bootcamp, Montreal, Canada
• {Pro}Coders, West Yorkshire, England, and online
• MissionU, San Francisco
   

Favorite Articles on the Blog

Lauren Stewart

• Lauren loved chatting with DevMountain alum Sterling Chin about his transition from a facilities and vendor manager to a developer. Sterling told us how he wanted to provide for his wife and two young children, and how he overcame feelings of anxiety, depression, and imposter syndrome to land a job at a startup for three months after graduation, and then as a Front End Developer at Overstock.com the biggest tech company in Utah.

Imogen Crispe

• I really enjoyed interviewing Manisha Patel, a Hackbright grad who now works at Reddit! Her background was in fine arts, and she worked in project management at Apple, but was always fascinated by her coworkers who were engineers. She loved her experience at Hackbright, and now she’s working alongside other Hackbright grads at Reddit, a company which she says is committed to diversity and inclusion, and is actually partnering with Hackbright to offer a scholarship.

Liz Eggleston

• Liz put together a great Guide to Swift, in collaboration with Andrew Madsen a Swift expert who is an instructor at Lambda School. The article covers the history of Swift, the debate between Swift vs Objective-C, what Swift is used for, and how to get started learning it.

FURTHER READING/LISTENING

• April 2018 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup and Podcast
• March 2018 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup and Podcast
• February 2018 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup and Podcast
• Podcast: All Women's Coding Bootcamps

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About The Author

Imogen is a writer and content producer who loves writing about technology and education. Her background is in journalism, writing for newspapers and news websites. She grew up in England, Dubai and New Zealand, and now lives in Brooklyn, NY.