The wheels are in motion…

Thursday, October 10th

Startup crawl was WAY better than I expected! It’s like a giant party filled with people you want to talk to. A bunch of techy startups in the downtown Austin area open their doors, host open bars and welcome in professionals in the industry. And there’s swag!

So anyway, the whole story would make a ridiculously long post. The highlights are below, along with the morning announcements just because I like to see those later sometimes.

Startup Crawl Highlights:

A group of four of us crawled to Capital Factory, Ordoro and I want to say Buckeye? That doesn’t sound right… I didn’t have one drink so don’t even blame the alcohol for that one – my phone died at this point and if I can’t checkin / tweet / instagram how can I be expected to remember where I was? That doesn’t sound right either…

Capital Factory was big and pretty and a bit claustrophobic. Dropbox gave me a tshirt and 5GB of storage so that was sweet.

Ordoro’s vibes were seriously “startup” – drawings on the wall, drawings on the fridge, everyone was chill, and they had the best snacks. Plus they had a photo booth – how fun!

Buckeye was swanky! Dim lighting with a green glow, black tables and bar and filled with 20-30 year olds gathered around a back room bar and ping pong tables. I met a really awesome woman here, the first person to ask for my card, so that was exciting.

We headed back to MakerSquare after the swanky place. Once I was back here the conversations were non-stop! Wearing the MKS shirt definitely got attention – people asked for advice in applying, wanted to know what it was really like, wanted to know what I was learning, wanted to know if I was really learning to program and so much more.

It was really fun to help out future students and also get to know what my challenges and strengths might be when I start to look for a job (in four weeks!).

It seemed everyone I met on the perspective-employer / good contact side of things was super impressed. Impressed with the curriculum and skills MakerSquare is teaching us, specifically Backbone and Git Hub, and also impressed with my background in fields that had nothing to do with coding. Score being well-rounded!

I always dress up for professional and networking events – it’s who I am, it’s helped set me apart in the past, and it’s no different even in a jeans and t-shirt environment. One programmer told me he wished his field was more professional – that it would feel more like having a grown up job. Other people also noted that business casual is becoming a growing trend at tech companies so that was kind of interesting.

Now that I’m in bootcamp mode and grasping concepts much quicker I’m super stoked for these last four weeks!

Morning Announcements:

-hackathon next weekend
-start forming ideas and groups now
-choose peeps you work well with; will be working with this group for next 3 weeks
-email Shaan if interested in freqshow project –> good for building portfolio, own the code, could get hired by company
-startup crawl is officially 5-10pm tonight