Guest speaker ideas + What else would you like to learn about?

Hi team! We had our first guest speakers this week, with Barbara and Zach coming to talk to us about neuroscience and how to become a better developer. Video here.

On September 1st we’re going to be joined by Bruce Lawson to learn about the philosophy behind the web, then on September 8th by Miguel Useche to learn about how devtools work. These guest sessions are all optional and can be found in the events page on the portal.

What other kinds of topics would you like to hear about? Are there any guests you would love to hear from?

I can’t promise we can arrange all of your suggestions, but I would love to see what else you want to learn about!

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Hi Jess!

Thanks for starting this type of feedback thread. The first guest speaker event was really great. I would personally love and benefit from seeing discussions in possible topics (completely just throwing these thoughts out there):

  • Web Design Best Practices (Possible Case Studies or Personal Company Stories – what they learned/experienced)

  • Future thinking the challenges of web coding/the market - any emerging trends to be aware of or policy/web laws or legislature/what are companies or ways professional coders or experts are discussing possible solutions?

  • Practical coding for diverse careers (is there a “language” for certain niches - special projects/interested if there’s anything kind of out-of-the-box i.e. does someone use coding even though they work in medical, or unrelated fields to web design/development directly, if someone wants to just fix a website at their company is it worth hiring out or resources for learning practical coding for fixes and maintenance, etc.)

I’m very big generally on education - the course content and the webinar have been great so far. Love the hands-on coding practicals.

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This is so helpful! We’ll have a speaker confirming this week who fits one of these categories! More folks talking about unusual tech jobs is definitely something that would be great to include!

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Hey, Jess! I believe that career transitioning might also be a cool topic, I’ve notice many people (like myself) asking Barb and Zack about this, and in other forums it also seems to pop up a lot. Maybe this topic could be coupled w something about landing your first job, or sth along those lines.

I have started learning a few months back, and another thing that seems hot is pair programming. I had no idea it existed, and the few things I’ve seen/heard this far lead me to believe it’s sorta industry-specific and I’m trying to learn more about it =]

Just a few ideas, I loved the first event and I’m sure you folks are way ahead of us! haha
Cheers!

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I know much of this bootcamp is targeted to beginners and my impression is that most of learning materials online is aimed towards beginners. Personally I’m looking to go beyond and have trouble finding resources and/people to help me with those steps.

What’s expected from developers for other than entry level positions? It’s a broad topic obviously but one I struggle with. Especially since I haven’t been lucky enough to have dev colleagues to really learn from in the dev jobs I’ve had so far. And I’m sure lots of smaller companies/orgs hire one or two devs. So if that’s your first job how do you know if your workflow and methods are good?

You can learn from books and there are resources for more advanced features in the different languages. But using advanced features doesn’t have to be at all related to being a good, experienced developer. Writing code that does the job and that your future self or someone else can read and understand is more important.

But anyway, the path from beginner to more well rounded dev is something I hope to find more resources on. Perhaps a guest session.

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This might be a good fit for a panel (or a few!) panel discussions, thank you so much.

At this rate we’re going to run out of Wednesdays before we run out of cool guest ideas!

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I think social skills is a big and important skill which many coders lack, including myself. Many feels as though we are saying something wrong / standing out too much / too deferent / off topic / awkward and get too excited / afraid to say anything.

A guest session about social skills and how to overcome social anxiety maybe a great idea for those like me.

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I’d love to hear from a panel of self taught developers. Not people who did expensive bootcamps or went to school, but people who did it online themselves as we currently are.

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Oh wow, this is just an incredible idea!

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Communication skills might be really helpful!

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Agree. In particular people who came from a completely different background and had no previous experience in computer science whatsoever.

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Hi Jess! I am really enjoying the course and all the live streams. In fact, for the guest sessions I would really like someone from the UI/UX field who also works with HTML. So ideally, a person who knows both the ins and outs of a webpage or app. This would be helpful for not designers and engineers (like me, haha) but also for fellow young coders to see what works well visually and interactively. Really looking forward if such a guest session can be made possible !! I believe it would also be good since this week we are learning applied visual design.
Cheers! Tanya

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