Today is Day 3 of the OpenCode: Tech Hire Program. My classmates and I went to a Meetup for Techies. Luckily for us, we found a meetup group that worked with all our schedules and gave us a sneak peak about what we would be learning in the upcoming weeks.
The location of the event was near Canal Street. Luckily for me, it wasn’t far from the train station and the inside of the building was trendy. The company hosting the event was called CodeSmith. I got their approximately five minutes before the meetup started. I was pleasantly surprised to see the turn out. I counted about twenty five people or so. What I didn’t expect to see everyone so dressed down. I get that the tech community has its own style but I was thinking that people would be dressed business casual as it was hosted by an origination. I decided that I would sit with my fellow classmates, which landed me in the corner of the room as the seats were filling up quickly. Which overall was okay, as I was not trying to attract to much attention to myself.
At approximately 6:40 the introductions started. The gentleman had us introduce ourselves and what we were interested in learning. He briefly spoke about the program they offered through their organization but I didn’t quite catch everything. According to my fellow peers, he was speaking about a JavaScript program that they offer that consists of 12 weeks for approximately 17,000 dollars. Which overall didn’t seem horrible for the length of time, but I honestly don’t know how I would be able to retain so much knowledge in such a short amount of time. He then proceeded to show us some of the previous graduates from the program and how successful they are. A few slides later and we were looking at a JavaScript problems that needed some solving. The man went over the basics and then some. Funny enough in class today, we briefly spoke about arrays, variables, and Boolean conditions. In the problem on the screen we used all of these techniques to find out whether or not the array was true. We also learned about the terms if, for, nor and math calculations such as add, subtract, divide, etc.
After about an hour, all the information became a little bit much. Between the eight hour day of in class training and the meetup I was exhausted. If circumstances had been different I would have stayed longer but unfortunately, it was just not physically possible. I did feel more confident about my work after meeting other aspiring developers. I also felt like the meetup group reinforced some of things we had just started learning. I felt like I understood the material better and was happy that people asked questions and we were able to back track if you were confused.
I would do another meetup given the opportunity. The next time I will try to find one that fits into my schedule so that I can stay for the full duration and make a few new contacts. Overall a great opportunity and I learned a lot.
Gabriella's Technology Showcase 