Volunteer at SSF!

SSF Staff, former and current students

So, as you probably know, we are a non profit, tuition-free immersive course and we try to make a difference in San Diego Millennials lives by introducing them to the opportunities of the tech industry. But, to keep helping our community, we also need help from the community! That is why we are always looking for people interested in supporting our goals! On this current cohort we have been having the amazing help from Robert Schmalz, our Teacher Assistant.

Robert Schmalz

Robert has 22 years of programming experience and after he retired from working with a big multinational, he decided to give back to his community, but in a way that he would still be in touch with what he loves to do, use his talent and also keeping himself up to date with the latest languages used in software development. He looked up coding bootcamps in the southern California area and was surprised to find that most of them were for-profit, “There are several "for-profit" code camps but I did not want to be part of a business enterprise with pressure for profits etc”. When he found out about SoftStack Factory, he knew it would be a perfect fit!

Robert got in contact with us and now he is a part of the SoftStack Factory daily life! He helps us as our Teacher Assistant, looking out for our students and our main Teacher, John, “our classroom is a collaborative team atmosphere which keeps it fun. I have filled in as the class leader/monitor a few times”, said Robert.

We are very happy to have Robert as a part of our team and extremely thankful for all his help! People like him and our amazing sponsors are helping us to keep SoftStack Factory up and running and creating amazing opportunities for San Diego Millennials.

We asked Robert to leave a message for those who think about volunteering or being a part of SSF:

“I highly encourage it.  There is something very freeing about being engaged in an effort that is not solely directed at generating income.  Also, it is very gratifying to help the next generation advance in their careers, just as people helped me when I was at the beginning of my career. You will find that SSF already has a proven track record of success. Just recently we held a reunion of sorts at a San Diego Padres baseball game.  As a newcomer I was impressed to see all the students who have passed through SSF and are now employed programmers return to say hello. So yes, it’s a great group.  Please join us! You will not regret doing so.

Do you want to be more involved in your community and help make a difference? We are always looking for motivated volunteers to help us run a cohort! If you are a retired software engineer, manager, leader, developer or just love the SSF idea, we can use your assistance!

http://www.softstackfactory.com/become-a-sponsor/

San Diego local technologist discuss hiring and working with our SoftStack Factory graduates!

The opportunities in the technology field are ever increasing and endless, everything we do or use nowadays is somehow connected to programming, for that reason the need for skilled software developers keeps growing. We believe that there are a lot of capable individuals that do not know of their potential and might not be optimizing their potential and instead are flipping burgers.  That is why our motto is “Flip Code, not Burgers!” and our mission is to introduce those young individuals to all the possibilities of being a developer!

At SoftStack Factory(SSF) we do much more than just teach how to write lines of code, SoftStack Factory focuses on many of the skills a student will need to jump in this new world! Learning how to build hybrid mobile applications from beginning to end, client and backend server side, they will be better prepared to face challenges that are presented to them by future employers.

On the last Friday in May our CEO Harold Gottschalk was joined by Erik Birkfeld, Development Manager at MindTouch and Etienne de Bruin, CEO/Founder of 7CTOs, Inc. two local San Diego companies on the Community Spotlight Radio show to discuss what it is like to work with our graduates.

Harold explained about how our 12 weeks immersive camp works, what the students can expect to learn and also, what companies that hire our graduates can expect of them. To explain that last aspect better, Erik and Etienne, who have hired a few of our SoftStack Factory graduates articulated about their experience with them.

Our students go to their new opportunites determined to win, since we are a non-profit and classes are fee free, we are selective with our candidates looking for individuals that are willing to learn, hungry for world experience and passionate about everything that they do. Once they graduate and enter a company they have learned enough to hit the ground running.

The nice thing regarding hearing from companies that have hired our graduates is to learn how they adapt to the students knowledge and how the students adapt to the company routine.  MindTouch and 7CTOs have 2 very different approaches and they both approaches work great, because when you are willing to improve your knowledge and be a part of the team, you can accomplish anything!

Erik started a 20 week training program. “During the training program SSF graduates work on different projects and in different parts of the company, so after completing the training program they will have a larger knowledge regarding how the company works and also of what is expected from them here. At the moment some of the graduated students from SSF are finishing the 20 weeks and enjoying every moment! “

Etienne has a different approach which is more efficient for his company and his objectives, he is testing how well they hit the ground running and independent they can be. His needs were different and is using the initial enthusiasm of what the graduates already know to create hybrid mobile application they need. During the process gaining the knowledge that they still do not know so they can fill in the blanks. “They are sponges, they want to know more, as much as possible” - Said Etienne.

Etienne gives StartUps the suggestion to at least hire in pairs - “because they are so good at pair programming and working together. Hire 2 at a time and let them run with what they know (...) and bring in the concepts that you need from them as opposed to taking them from the school and teach them something completely different”.

As you can see, SoftStack Factory is not only a way to change millennials lives but also creating the workforce that companies need. We are a non-profit that is helping the local deficit in software talent and we need the local community to help us and there are a lot of ways to help!

We need sponsors that can help providing a space for us to run our school, give us a paid project to do and individuals and companies that just believe in our project and are willing  donate operational funds. You can find out more about how to help on: http://www.softstackfactory.com/become-a-sponsor/

If you are a student and is interested in our program you can find out more and register interest in our next cohort going on our website: http://www.softstackfactory.com/

You can also hear the whole interview here: 

Be a part of SoftStack Factory story! Help us change the future of technology!

We had our second 2 Day Qualifier Event, Check it out!

On the weekend of 5/14-5/15 2016 we had our second official 2 Day Qualifier to qualify for our June Camp!  We received a total of 25 applicants for this qualifying event.

SSF is a new development bootcamp and we are continuously improving our selection methods and curriculum. For this up and coming  cohort we added a few more steps to our selection process, we added online pre-work that must be completed prior to being invited to the qualifier.  Our June summer camp is a bit longer instead of 12 weeks it will be  14 weeks, we  extended our midterm project by 1 week and we have one week off for summer vacations.

8 out of  25 students completed all the steps to be invited qualifier event to attend our fee free immersion program.  The qualifier event happened at our donated office suite that Satellite Phone Stores donated to us for 9 months,  the sub lease is expired and we are  moving to a new temporary location close to Petco Park home of the Padres.

On the first day our applicants were introduced to SoftStack Factory its story, mission and what to expect during the course.  The students met each other and our team. The first  activity  was to fill out some paperwork, take a problem solving, pattern recognition, algebra quiz and then a temperament questionnaire.  Then we started with an HTML and CSS course that spanned into the second day.   

The second day we continued with our applicants working on HTML and CSS course which was completed around 1PM.  We took a lunch break and upon return the students were given a Javascript project to do based on the pre-qualifier work that they had completed prior to attend the event.  We discussed a bit more about what the full 14 weeks would be like at SoftStack Factory once  again and asked about their interests to continue!   We were clear that only 6 would be able to attend since our cohorts are small due to space and level of attention we provide to our students. The week following we identified the 6 students that would be part of our next cohort and notified them.

We really appreciate all the effort to make this weekend happen and want to thank all of our Sponsors and the SoftStack Factory team for their support. We look forward to our new cohort and how the process will become a life changing for all of them!

If you missed our June Camp application opportunity you can still register your interest for our next cohort! Just use the following link and we will get in touch with you as soon as application process re-opens! http://www.softstackfactory.com/for-applicants/

Help SSF grow! Do you have a mobile development project? Send us request and become a SoftStack Factory Sponsor! Contact us for more information: http://www.softstackfactory.com/become-a-sponsor/

Ionic: What it is, and why we use it!

As a software developer, and one that works with mobile applications (or someone interested in learning how to), you may have heard about Ionic. Today we are going to discuss Ionic framework, tell you why we teach it and love it here at our SoftStack Factory Code Camp and why you may want to use it!

Ionic is one of the frameworks that is a part of our curriculum here at Softstack Factory, we are actually proud to be one of the only coding bootcamps that focuses on this awesome tool. Ionic is an HTML5 mobile applications development framework, it is free, open source and relatively new, the DriftyCo crew has been working on it for 2 years. It uses the existing HTML5 and CSS3 capabilities to deliver fast experiences and is focused mainly on the look and feel, and UI interaction of the app. One of the things that makes it so good is that it is not just another UI framework, Ionic is targeted at building hybrid mobile apps, which has many benefits over pure native apps, specifically in terms of platform support, speed of development, and access to 3rd party code.

Ionic is built on top of AngularJS framework from Google and utilizes it to provide the application structure, while Ionic itself is focused on the user interface. Ionic provides the connection between the power of Angular and the beauty of Ionic UI components and offers simpler building blocks that can be combined to deliver rich user interfaces.It also comes with handy variables and mixins to extend the customized appearance and it’s packaged with its own open source icon library featuring over 440 icons to chose from.

All the functionalities that can be found in native mobile development SDKs are provided by Ionic. The apps can be built and customize for Android or iOS, and deploy through Cordova to allow it to run on your device. As we said before, Ionic is not just another just another UI framework it is a complete ecosystem that helps you develop and build great Software.

SSF is one of the only Code Camps that teach Ionic to its students, and we do so because we believe that this tool and the complementary technologies provide a comprehensive set of knowledge needed to enhance their future as a software developer. “One of the biggest reasons we choose to use Ionic was that mobile is big and our students get to learn web technologies that are in great demand. This provides them two in high demand skillsets.” Says Harold Gottschalk, SoftStack Factory CEO.

Ionic is not focused on the development of desktop applications, it has some limitations but can be used to deliver the application within the browser.  Ionic and it’s platform is focused on delivering hybrid mobile apps that run natively on (Android, iOS, Windows phone, Chrome and even Apple Watch) using Cordova. Ionic platform in itself is amazing and we talk about it in another post.

Check out some beautiful apps built with Ionic!