By: Edward Jiang - CEO of StudentRND
In my last post, I talked about improvements we made to CodeDay’s structure and format as we start to expand to new cities. However, I didn’t quite mention just how much we’re preparing to scale.
In this blog post, I wanted to talk about just how much we’re looking to scale, and how you can help us make this happen.
By: Edward Jiang - CEO of StudentRND
In the last six months, we’ve been hard at work to accelerate our mission of creating the next generation of technologists at StudentRND. Primarily, that means expanding the number of cities that currently hosts CodeDay.
Today, a total of five cities participate in CodeDay, and I couldn’t be happier with the results. Every day, I hear feedback from students on how CodeDay transformed their lives by launching them into the field of technology.
Through this process, we’ve learned quite a bit about how to organize a CodeDay, and what makes a new CodeDay successful. I’d like to share some of this and go through some of the changes we’re implementing for future CodeDays.
by: Michelle Kang
Meet Mohammad Adib.
He’s a 17-year-old junior at Newport High School who’s been to five CodeDays. Most recently, he won first place with SideBar, an app that brings easy task switching to Android. In the month following, SideBar Lite amassed over 100,000 downloads, and Android Authority calls SideBar, “The best discovery you will make.”
What could have caused these monumental results for a high schooler who just celebrated his 17th birthday with a game of cannon-powered ping pong at 700mph?
Here, we dig into his thought process and learn how he started coding, his inspiration for SideBar, and his plans for the future.
by: Michelle Kang
Note: This Kickstarter will be funded on Friday, April 19, 8:38 PM PST.
In my last post, I talked about the importance of passionately promoting one’s product on Kickstarter.
One great example is the APOC: Mini Radiation Detector, by ExcelPhysics.
StudentRND friends Matt Chapman and David Stoyanov are the brains behind this endeavor - in this case, a cool product that has been 996% funded with a whopping $49,844 from 618 backers (as of 4/17/13, 3:27 AM).
This success will definitely place it among the Most Funded of Technology when its campaign closes on Friday, April 19, at 11:38pm EDT. The group of illustrious products includes a million-dollar lightbulb, a predecessor of Google Glass, and a bevy of 3D printers and pens.
So, what do all these products have in common?
By: Michelle Kang
I backed my first Kickstarter project today.
I’ve been browsing through projects lately, with a greater intention of backing, and today, I was intrigued enough to actually back one.
The first thing that caught my eye on the homepage was Click & Grow. I saw this product in-person at the Cool Product Expo yesterday! Incredibly, it’s funded at 410% of its original amount.
But wait -
By: Randall Ma
On February 17th, I made my way alone from Berkeley, California, to Splunk HQ in San Francisco’s SoMA district to attend the first StudentRND CodeDay in California. I had managed to pick up one of the last remaining tickets the day before. A little over 24 hours later, I won the Best Application award.
CodeDay wasn’t my first experience with development. I started coding 2 years ago with the help of a book by Zed Shaw called Learn Python the Hard Way. A year later, I converted my computing setups completely to Linux environments and met Jonathan Nelson, the founder of the Hackers & Founders incubator and community leader. He introduced me to web development and all the elements that come with it through Django.
Just recently, I have been teaching myself Android development. I’m about to release my first app, What’s the Homework. There’ll be a Play Store link dropped on the GitHub page when it launches.
Here are the top three pieces of knowledge I wish I had fully internalized before participating:
By: Michelle Kang
Tumblr went down last night.
Initially, I was confused because this was the first time that I’d used Tumblr in over a year.
I took to Twitter to check out what was happening. I searched, “tumblr,” and oh… it was definitely trending.
But remember, this is the Tumblr community that’s flocking to Twitter.
Let the GIFs commence.
By: Michelle Kang
Meet Ash Bhat and Siddhant Dange. They are students at Santa Teresa High and Cupertino High School, respectively, and one of them started coding to convince his parents to buy his first laptop.
These student entrepreneurs also happen to have built Ignyte, a mobile app that took first place at SF CodeDay. This app even landed them a dinner with the executive team of Leap Motion – arranged via Twitter, of course.
I had the chance to interview them over Skype last week, and I left with a great respect for their diligence and humility.
Read on to learn more about the self-starter attitude that gave these modest, brilliant students a dinner with the CEO of Leap Motion and, more importantly, a fantastic start to their careers in tech.
Did I mention that they’re still in high school?
By: Edward Jiang
Image credits to Stianbl
The other day, I stumbled upon a gif about how a lock works on Hacker News. I already knew how a lock worked — or at least I thought I did. However, after seeing that picture, I couldn’t help but stare in awe for the next few minutes.
This is incredible.
20 years ago, communicating in this method wasn’t really possible. In fact, 20 years ago, NCSA just released the first version of Mosiac had just been released, a web browser that allowed users to view images in a webpage! Imagine that!
Instead, you would have to go to a library, open an encyclopedia, and spend more time to get an understanding half as clear as viewing that gif. Or watch through a 30-minute documentary just to see an animation like this for several seconds.
Now you can learn about a lock with just several seconds of your time.
I’m amazed. It’s the small things like this that really change the world.
What are some wow moments that you’ve had?
By: Issac Rosenberg
Last month, I decided to join Google Code-in, a contest for open source work for high school students. At Google Code-in, you chose a task from a list, and you work on it, getting oversight from that task mentor. You also get a time limit, usually a few days or so. Fedora and KDE are some of the organizations participating. I had never worked on an open source project before, so I thought this would be a fun thing to do (and get a t-shirt along the way).
