I’ve been here from Toronto since Sunday and this joint absolutely rocks and it’s cool to be Common in Chicago (Had to toss that in for big C). In 5 days Code Academy has taught me how to be an expert in all things Ruby and Rails (notice I [...]]]>

I’ve been here from Toronto since Sunday and this joint absolutely rocks and it’s cool to be Common in Chicago (Had to toss that in for big C). In 5 days Code Academy has taught me how to be an expert in all things Ruby and Rails (notice I didn’t say Ruby “on”)… Well, ok, the geek noids out there are probably saying whatever and ready to go ape shit on the keyboard, locking themselves into their code monkey cage and preparing to blast me out into the hack universe of “You don’t know jack shitville”. Although, I’d prefer they chill out, relax, work on getting laid for the first time, and hopefully know I am just yanking their nerd chains – they’d be right.  I know squat after a week and I won’t be an expert when I am done.  I am cool with that. It has been one week, and I am definitely not an expert – hell I am not even a beginner, but I have to say the Code Academy crew is awesome and the learning insofar has been fun.

I am fortunate and crazy enough to be doing both the Development and the Design class at Code Academy.  Jeff Cohen teaches development and he is well –  awesome, and the dude loves hockey (more on hockey in a minute).  He is a very patient teacher who knows his stuff and he is able to break things down very easily and explain them in a fun manner and there is no dumb question in his world.  Carolyn Chandler is a smart cookie who leads our design class and she is a design heavyweight who is well respected in that community.

In her class, we get to sketch, think lean methodology, and learn to think about design while listening to some awesome music from time to time on Pandora (Arivn (Pron: Irvin) Dang tees up some trippy beats).  For example… that damn door in our class!  I wanted to pull it the first few times and I found out I wasn’t alone, only to find out the design is messed.  And the bathroom  – well what gives with the paper towel being hidden (almost) under the mirror?  One of my sketches portrays this irritant I have…  anyhoo (yes, anyhoo you coding urban mutants) I need to take a break but here are some pics to chew on.  I am going to chew on some pie (Pizza. ended up being a sub which was good) with my design mentor Jake Downs. Thanks Jake! Oh speaking of mentors – a big shout out to Don Bora of Eight Bit Studios . Don is my development mentor who took me to Burger Bar for lunch this afternoon. Thanks Don!  If you like burgers you should run to this place.  It is a hungry man’s dream right here in Chicago.

The Dyson Hand Dry under the Public Washroom long water and soap dispense.  My drawing… really sucks…. but!

We all need a dispenser sensor man in our life!

My Design brain is kicking in… Maybe Don Norman would be proud! Or not…

Then wildly and unexpectedly I got invited to watch the Blackhawks last night and even more crazy was the fact I landed in the dressing room, out on the bench area (although the bench was removed in preparation for the upcoming basketball game. They move fast at the Madhouse) and I walked out on the ice. Let’s just say we all get to be lucky once and a while, and  I have that good fortune here.  The blackhawks have amazing and very loud fans with an amazing scoring jingle.  Here are a couple pics.

This Dude walks by me with a hat on and lo and behold it was Kaner stopping to sign a jersey and he was off. The man looked busy so I had little desire to bother him.

It’s been a fun week in Chi town alright! My blogging will have to taper off as Code Academy ramps up!

Peace out,

Jaret

These are my notes from Code Academy class.  Keep in mind they are notes and I care little if there are errors.

SMSassist sponsored the space in the JHC (show pic you took on iPhone).

Bought Jeff Cohen’s rails for .net devs book for a [...]]]>

These are my notes from Code Academy class.  Keep in mind they are notes and I care little if there are errors.

SMSassist sponsored the space in the JHC (show pic you took on iPhone).

Bought Jeff Cohen’s rails for .net devs book for a friend at my last job and now he is teaching me. Crazy. I didn’t know who Jeff was when I bought the book. Small world!

Learn as if you own the code
Blog lots about what you are doing at CA
Trust instincts and what you discover
What you go back & read will have a significant impact.

Vince Cabansag:
First thing he built was a blog. Blog is a great first app project. Student in inaugural class.

* I may miss a couple here as I didn’t know the logo’s.
Pathfinder
SPARK
Code Mountain
OCA ventures
Hydepark angels
accelerate labs
sand box industries
startup weekend (SUW is amazing.  I worked on a SUW project called Stokfridge in Toronto).
new world ventures

chicago land
built in chicago
illinois tech association
techweek
tech.li
technori

devmynd
gtrot by Code Academy Alumni Br_ttany
enovafinancial
doejo
tribeca
8th ligth
lightbank
obtiva a Groupon Company

geekfest (tuesday at noon’s at Groupon). Free food. Can’t attend because I am in design class
refresh chicago
chicago ruby
chicago heroku user group
code and coffee (Franklin & Chicago Starbucks).
code retreat
gathersus
chicago js
windycityrails

Dave Hoover‘s Apprenticeship Patterns book : Emptying your cup (Dump your learning now. Programming wise. Don’t be afraid to ask questions).
Mentors are excited.

It is on you to contact you your mentor.. Find them and get them, reach, schedule. It is as important as the class.

37 Signals suite.
Backpack (organize & collect) & campfire (chat). Use Use & Use.

Idea: Everybody blogging should put the others students on their “Blog rolls” or blog a list of other blogs. It will help drive traffic.

Mondays: 6-8pm html5&css (this week Wednesday by Shay Howe). Wednesday: 1pm Entrepreneur session.

Learn to Program (awesome book) & Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial. Jeff Cohen says it is awesome.

It’s ok to be out of your comfort zone. Jeff makes reference to the moon landing and what they went through. The Run way pic.May feel like a slow start but soon there will be takeoff.

Web Development:
-Computer Science (a little bit)
-Software eng
-Agile Methods

Computer Programming:
Input (instructions + data) > Processor > Output

Hard to explain how we are going to program, we are just going to dive in (~Jeff).

Tom Cullen> Used to be HF trader. Knew nothing. Built out a lot of website he developed. Redo exactly what we did in class but add it to your app/idea/project.
Advice: no substitution for hard work (Thomas Alva Edison Quote). Nobody has passion about your idea. Don’t worry about the NDA (I find this funny. NDA? Seriously?). Fight to pair with Ragu. Cut your illusions of getting a job right away (if that is your goal).

Mike Ebert: Zero programming. Little Html. Race Bikes in Europe. Looking at apprenticeships. Looking to be full time dev. Read 1st 2 chapters of Apprenticeship patterns immediately (free online). Get with people who are better then you (Shouldn’t be tough :) . The 4 hours with Jeff in class will be your best. He is the best at breaking things down in plain english. Throw away your code. Be goal oriented. Have your runway after Code Academy, map & search for your low to no pay job for a bit. Get together on the weekends.

Luis Vega: From Philippines. Knew about it 1 month prior and came. Was supposed to go home and looking for opportunities. He met everybody and anybody in the tech scene. He would go to Hash Rocket. Blog & share that you are constantly learning, and why it is totally worth it. Github is great but they won’t see your thought process so blog about it. Bug Neal and Mike to do a startup weekend (I did one in Toronto & it was an amazing learning experience).

Kevin (RudyonRails) I don’t know how to spell his last name. Programming bat boy. Audited classes he could get into. Worked in IT support, networks but got tired of it.
Try to tee up your mentors ASAP. Don’t put too much pressure to put on yourself. Exercise. @DHH said that when he came in and said don’t work over 40 hours & exercise.

Vince: Bit of C#, CSS, HTML. Real estate broker for 6.5 years. Left job to do Code Academy. Advice: Use your mentors.
In Class: Pair with different person everyday. Don’t let people do things for you. Learn how to build things. Share your ideas. Code into a program into a breakable toy (something that doesn’t matter).

Michael Verdi: Didn’t know what the terminal was. Completely foreign. Looking to continue practising and building. The Pair Programming King (Voted the person who was best to code with. His response: Non-threatening. The fact he is Vegan it makes sense (Non meat eaters are less aggressive supposedly according to a former teacher. Come up with an idea. Redo your daily classes from scratch and apply it into your practise app and your bigger app. John McCaffrey is the man. Funny dude.

Arvin (Pronounced Ervin or Irvin not Arvin): Partnered with someone in the Tues/Thurs class. Ditched ideas half way through and started something else. Him & Josh, paired and he learned a lot through him. Have confidence in yourself & don’t be afraid to stop your partner. There is no bad situation in pairing. Usually the person with less experience will be driving (typing).

Tom Brown (Not here): Had a vision of an app & he built it, and saw it through.

Jean (French) Not sure last name. Funny guy who will be doing the entrepreneurial seminars. 12 years of online marketing. Small Running app from Startup Weekend (You tell me when) Running registration app.

My thoughts: Damn am I ever glad to be living next door to the John Hancock Center for this class.
Some students are being paid by their employers. That would be cool!

Bernhard Kappe CEO of Pathfinder Software (Lean Startup MVP) will be speaking tomorrow at noon.

HTML Programming is a language despite what you may hear.

cd dev  (This is just me copying Jeff’s terminal typing. To the geeks out that ready to ransack me saying this is not HTML, I suggest Chilling out).
cd mwf
~/dev/mwf

If you feel lost:
Open (command) so open . (it essentially brings up the Finder in Mac).

Neal recommends Unix for the beginning mage (freely available but this guy deserves beers!!!)

mate (means open textmate if you use it).
mate hello.html (that will open text mate and create the hello.html file so you can start marking it up with html).

Classroom étiquette: Respect the instructor.

Ragu:
Was sitting where we were 12 weeks ago. He didn’t know spotlight (didn’t know spotlight). No such thing as a dumb question. He knows where the class is coming from. Really bad with names but wants to improve.

Evening:
Have my meeting (Friday) booked with my mentor at Eight Simple Bits. Emailed my design mentor Jake Downs  Started yoga at Core Power and hit the gym in the morning.  Need to be fresh to handle both these courses and the various events.  Pumped. Hitting the wrapper (Bed)!

@JaretManuel

This is a fascinating video for all Designers, Engineers, Artists, and startup enthusiasts.

Simply one of the best talks I have watched in some time.

Enjoy! @JaretManuel

Blogging or life streaming made easy with Posterous or  Tumblr.

Digg and contribute worthy information.

Everybody wants the Gist : contact aggregation.

So you say you have no mentors, nobody that you can lean on for sound “been there, done that” startup advice or tech information?  Humbug I say, so quit your non-sense talk, tune into twitter, and you’ll be surprised who will help you if you only reach out.  The [...]]]>

So you say you have no mentors, nobody that you can lean on for sound “been there, done that” startup advice or tech information?  Humbug I say, so quit your non-sense talk, tune into twitter, and you’ll be surprised who will help you if you only reach out.  The following are people I listen to, engage with, sometimes ask for advice, debate with, and ball bust for fun.

Either way, there is an abundance of experience & knowledge at your finger tips, and I am only happy to share with you some of the people I follow & look up to on Twitter.  Almost all of the following are fairly to very active in the Twitterverse, making their TweetGreed very low which is awesome. I have a domain set aside called TwitHead.com.  TwitGreed may be a good idea to measure.  Bi-Directional tweets in proportion of followers/following, etc.  Just a random thought.

@albertsupdates Made first cool million at 16, sold a couple companies since, and now a Garbage collector @Kontagent in San Francisco. Had the pleasure of meeting here in Toronto. Awesome & very humble guy, hence his garbage title.

@wbrettwilson Very successful businessman turned investor, and a part of the infamous Dragon’s Den on CBC here in Canada. Very humble & often responsive in the twitter community.

@dharmesh Awesome & humble presenter, and super smart. Founder at Hubspot.com (I think this is his 9th company he has been a part of) and creator of OnStartups.com, and author of Inbound Marketing. Great guy and constantly giving back.

@ericries lean startup movement. Very informative tweets. There is more I should be saying so feel free to chime in.

@danmartell Hails from New Brunswick, transplanted to San Francisco after selling a successful startup, and now founder of ever popular Flowtown.com. Always seen mixing it up in TwitVille.

@davemcclure Founder of StartupVisa.com Movement, Geeks on a Plane founder (I think), large & in charge in the valley, ball buster, swears like a sailor, and just managed to get in front of Hillory Clinton for the Startupvisa movement.  Love his no holds barred, say it how it is style.

@zappos Tony Hsieh “Shay”: CEO of online shoe retailer Zappos. $1 Billion anybody? Sure, my name is Amazon and I want to buy you. Sold. Screw gambling, book a trip to Vegas to get a tour of Zappos.  They are all about it. Very impressive story.  Wait a minute, Tony sold another company to Microsoft for in excess of $200 cool ones, yeah you got it, pimp daddy millions. But you would never know it from Tony.

@FredWilson A “Reputable” VC Holding down NYC, like Jay Z being Breeze E on 5th Avenue. I could easily go on and free style you some what you know about my writes? (De La Soul if you got lost during my flow). Fred is very respected in a not so always the case Venture Capital community.

@JasonFried 37Signals Founder, Author of Getting Real and latest book ReWork. Hater of poor design and over complicating things.

@dhh David Heinemeier (@37signals co-founder) & founded Ruby on Rails.

@AustinHill Akoha.org, Investor in Bumptop & StandoutJobs.com. Straight out of Montreal & often in destinations unknown.

@Pkedrosky Always has an interesting perspective on the economy, the valley, startups, VC, and he is Anti-Facebook (to the best of my knowledge).

@pegobry 10 Things you Should know around 6AM on Silicon Alley Insider. Informative.

@balsamiq Founder Awesome Web Mockup Tool Balsamiq.com. Great Guy from what I hear.

@HnShah Founder of Kiss Metrics.

@bsaren Citysquares.com Founder. Funny Guy.

@Zeldman Web Design Guru, Author, Founder at Happy Cog, and publisher of  A List Apart.

@MattMireles SpeakerText.com CEO. Interesting information. A straight shooter from what I have seen so far.

@MattCutts He quit Facebook, so by default I am impressed, and he is a Google dude, so no doubt he is super smart.

@MarkRuddock multiple successful startups under his belt. Viigo.com was the latest to be gobbled up (by RIM).

@DrewHouston Founder of amazing service that I tell all my friends/family DropBox.com.  Offers solid advice for startups also.

@kn0thing Alexis Ohanian Co-Founder of Reddit (successful Y Combinator Grad), Breadpig.  Great speaker, funny, and an awesome contributor to this world. AlexisOhanian.com

@yegg Gabriel Weinberg is Founder of @DuckDuckGo, the alternate to Google Search, and he has a very informative blog. In fact, I see a February Video up of Alexis (just above) there right now.  How ironic.

@EnglishPaulM Huge fan, never met. PaulEnglish.com, huge success.  Btw..  He is not a heavy user on Twitter but dig up what you can.  Seems like an amazing guy.

@CDixon Chris Dixon absolutely Rocks. I paired down my toolbar and I absolutely had to add ChrisDixon.org back in.  Amazing resource & informative content.

Who am I missing? Who is on your list?

I am sure you could add to this list of people you look up to, respect, and reach out to for mentoring, startup advice, guidance, and tech information, etc.  By all means, the floor is yours.

@JaretManuel