We’re back for part two of the blog series about Chicago coding bootcamp Anyone Can Learn to Code! (If you’re just joining us, part one is here for you to catch up on.) ACLTC founder, Jay Wengrow, and his small class of aspiring coders are about halfway through the 12-week program, so I thought I’d trot back to 1871 where the bootcamp is held and check in on their progress. Just like my first experience with ACLTC, I was not disappointed.
At around the halfway point in the program, Wengrow’s students are neck-deep in programming and APIs and just in the couple of hours I spent in the classroom, I watch them build a virtual zoo, facing down a screen of intimidating code and adding a series of visual objects, audio files, and text to create a collection of animals complete with sound effects and species information. What had been a blank screen only minutes before transforms into a website with different layers of functionality.
Throughout the exercise, Wengrow walks around the room, offering advice here and answering questions there. The atmosphere is one of relaxed nerdiness: despite the complex tasks the class is being asked to perform, jokes are common and the students often lean over to look at one another’s screens, working together to apply the knowledge Wengrow has filled their heads with.
The students have varied stories of what brought them to Anyone Can Learn to Code, which is perhaps the most fascinating part of the program. As mentioned in part one of this blog series, one of the most unique aspects of ACLTC is the fact that the class meets on evenings and weekends, facilitating working professionals to attend the workshop and gain a new skillset without requiring them to quit their jobs. I wanted to learn more about the kind of students the program is attracting so I sat down with two of Wengrow’s participants and talked to them about their experience so far.
Oscar Cisneros, Jr. is a native Chicagoan who grew up on the North Side and was driving for Sidecar when Chicago’s tech community appeared on his radar. Before, he’d been working as a revenue analyst for a travel agency and had reached a stage in his career where he was wondering what was next. Interestingly enough, it was by working with Sidecar a technology company! that Cisneros was first inspired to begin looking within the tech community for his next career. He happened to be driving a recruiter for a technology company, who opened Cisneros’s eyes to the possibilities that lay in coding. Cisneros kept his eye out on sites like Built in Chicago for training opportunities, where he came across Anyone Can Learn to Code.
I’ve found that there’s power in coding, Cisneros says of what has made ACLTC such a worthwhile opportunity. You can create things that may eventually change the world or how people experience the world.
And that may eventually change Chicago, he adds, explaining that he’s always loved Chicago and that he hoped in order to find a career in technology and hopefully start his own business he wouldn’t be forced to move to a an area more well-known for its tech community.
Chicago is like the Silicon City, Cisneros says confidently. There are so many opportunities like Anyone Can Learn to Code that are making the city so exciting, and elevating it in new ways.
He points to 1871 as an example of the tech community rising to meet what could be an even more exciting business landscape. The space, he says, reflects what people like Wengrow are trying to accomplish: it’s open, thriving, and collaborative; all the things that the growing tech community needs to be taken to the next level, and Cisneros says he feels privileged to be among the first to join ACLTC as he moves toward his goal of becoming a tech entrepreneur.
Mary Liz Lehman, another student in the bootcamp, has a different story. She’s been an entrepreneur for the last seven years, running multiple retail boutiques as well as a styling firm called Barlow Lehman. As Lehman looked toward the future, she toyed with the idea of building a B2B tech startup that could solve real business problems for other business owners. After talking to different developers she became more and more convinced that in order to truly understand how it all worked, she needed to have some knowledge of her own.
We use technology every day but we don’t understand how it works, Lehman says, citing her desire to learn valuable new skills in a changing world as a reason for joining ACLTC. After having been CEO of a company, I knew firsthand how frustrating it is for the technology available to me to be painful to use. I thought, It doesn’t have to be this painful. These tools can be better at solving problems.’ It’s amazing to think that when I finish this bootcamp, Barlow Lehman will have a better website. And I will have built it.
It’s that ability to take technology into their own hands that has attracted Cisneros, Lehman, and the other bootcamp attendees.
Chicago is becoming a hotbed for technology, Lehman says, and we’re right in the midst of it. Before, people who wanted to build their own tech startups needed to move, and I was even told to move to Silicon Valley to do what I want to do. But the more of these bootcamps that we have and the more exposure people get to this kind of knowledge, the more it becomes possible that we can build our own powerful community right here in Chicago.
Lehman goes on to insist that the kind of experience she and her classmates are getting at ACLTC should be made part of the core curriculum in schools.
I have a five-year old daughter, and I want her to be able to use and understand this stuff. Learning coding and programming is going to become even more important and it would be great if I could use this knowledge to help her. I want to show her why it’s worth learning.
She won’t get any argument from Wengrow, who is passionate about starting now to create a pipeline of brains to fill what is known to be a disheartening talent gap in technology. Businesses in all cities struggle to recruit people with the necessary knowledge to fill open roles, which perhaps is a result of what could be considered a fast progression of technology as a whole. Technology has evolved very quickly, where attitudes toward careers in technology have moved more slowly. The result is a shortage of qualified (and interested) candidates, and a field lacking in a continuous flow of talent. However, Wengrow believes that with the right kind of exposure and the right attitude toward teaching tech newcomers, we can add to an already thriving community and create the coders of the future. With students like Cisneros and Lehman in the fold hell-bent on becoming masters of their own technology destinies he is certainly headed in the right direction.
We’ll be back with part 3 soon! In the meantime, if you want to learn more about Anyone Can Learn to Code, visit the website here.