When I am out and about, I often hear from my family and friends, "Man, I wish I would have taken up computers in college and could work with you, but it's just too late now."  or "I have an idea for a website that would rock... but I don't have the capital to get started."  While I think these are great sentiments, I've always wanted to give those people more than, "Well, pick up a book and give me a call" or "We'd love to help you, but start-ups can cost a lot of money and time and we can't build every idea that's pitched to us for free, sorry." 

Our team has created a way that people can start a career in programming or launch their own startup without spending 4 years in college and $50,000 or more.

For Campers

Our 9 weeks of intense programming training in Microsoft ASP.Net MVC framework will accelerate our campers' careers by giving them the opportunity to learn programming foundations on real life projects. We will give them all of the support that they need and they will live and breath code for 9 weeks.  It will be very intense and probably the hardest thing some have ever done to advance their careers, but in the end, they will be very surprised at how much they have learned and how easy these complex technologies have become.

People learn best in fun environments so one of our main goals is to make the atmosphere in our camp grounds as fun as possible.  Troops (teams of campers) will have a lot of work to do while at camp, but that doesn't mean that they won't be able to play games and have exciting discussions that advance our learning while they are being taught.

In addition to offering a world class work environment and attentive counselors, we will be providing campers with their day to day amenities as well.  We want our campers to think only about code and not worry about the day to day necessities.

For Partner Companies

Every troop, we will also have an Troop Coordinator assigned to them.  The Troop Coordinator will act as a liaison between the campers and our Partner Companies that want to hire them.  This will make the process of scheduling interviews and follow-ups as smooth as possible while campers finish their training.

Partner Connections

The Partner Companies' numbers are vast in our area.  We have already found a lot of interest in our program across the entire US as well.  In the short time that we have made our intentions public, we have had numerous potential Partner Companies approach us for special status within our company.  In this light, we have added a reward that will allow this to happen.

Branding

We have a good start on our website and registered the domain, which is very easy to remember, www.codercamps.com.  Various logo designs are underway and we have a prototype to use for initial marketing purposes.  We will be working with the graphics team to get a social branding package together to have cohesion on that front as well.

Syllabus and Prerequisite Guide

A high level Camper Syllabus and the prerequisite guide that will be given to campers 30 days before camp starts are well underway. Research is progressing nicely on designing the different projects and activities that will get the campers programming as quickly as possible.

Facility Planning

We have worked with numerous people to design our facility to best fit our program.  The 3D renderings are coming along nicely and the feedback from the community has been exciting.  We still have quite a bit of interior design work to do and these don't reflect any of the custom branding that will be throughout the facility.

The number one way we are different is through our philosophy on educating adults about technology.  We are going to tell them what they are going to learn, support them through real life solutions, and then review the details of what they learned so that it sticks.  

We will introduce a real life problem that needs to be solved on day one.  We aren't expecting this to get accomplished without a lot of assistance, but the value of having a real problem to solve instead of learning how to rewrite meaningless "prime number algorithms" will be priceless.  Employers can see the work that was done and progress made by each "Elite Newbie" that graduates in a real way.

Most technical programs focus only on the code: copy this / paste that.  That's not how people learn most effectively.  We introduce complex concepts in solution based terms so that they understand the problem and why we are fixing it the way we are, then the coding is merely a technical hurdle to overcome that quickly becomes second nature.

Other training centers don't provide the necessities for campers like a place to stay, offsite internet access, and food.  We don't want our campers to lack for anything that's going to make them successful, so we are going to teach them proper nutrition by bringing in nutritional explain the importance of proper nutrition, feed them healthy breakfast and dinner, and set them up in a fully furnished place to stay while they are with us (if they are from out of town). 

So, our campers will be going through this process as a team - eating, living, and working together!

To do this, we are going to need a world class facility, an aggressive and practical curriculum, and amazing camp counselors. We won't have time to waste once camps start, so we need a facility that can host a large number of campers and staff, in an open environment that is fun and conducive to learning quickly.

We envision campers going through three intense stages while at camp:

1. tech training using videos, group discussions, and counseling,
2. hands-on labs,
3. and real life project work. 

The campgrounds have to be state of the art.  This means that they need touch screen laptops, interactive displays and whiteboards, an assembly area for short overviews, a self service cafe for getting hydrated and caffeinated, and a relaxation area so campers can unwind with their troop.

We need to bring on our camp counselors as early as possible so that they can play an integral part of the startup process.