I volunteered my way into a meeting today with a pretty cool guy: Rider Rodriguez Jr of www.kentuckianaworks.org. We were discussing how to make Louisville a better city as far as Software Developers – there’s a shortage, actually nationwide, and the gap is likely to grown in the future. (I have no references, but I figure I’d trust him on that one).
It was a great meeting! We talked about what actually works, what doesn’t work. As people in the trenches who actually do the work – very often biggity-bigs who don’t do the work, have opinions of how people should learn and are looking for some way to leverage that for dollars. Not efficient. We just love doing it, and we know what it takes to do the work in our industry.
Then he presented to us the plan that he’s shooting for (applying for a grant, etc). I’m not going to try to detail it here, as I’ll doubtlessly get it wrong, but it does involve classroom availability, labs / peer sessions with people in the industry, building a portfolio in skills and abilities that companies actually want, and internships.
Much discussion later, and some white board drawing by yours truly, it seemed like we were all on the same page.
The Whiteboard. Someone noted that it looked like a person’s face. The face.. of the anonymous software developer.. dum dum dum!
I hope this works.. and yes, if anybody *wants* to learn *anything* that I know (including! how to make Instant Mashed Potatoes. I practiced that tonight. My wife thinks I did it wrong. She thinks that by adding liquid to powder, it would be lumpy. She might be right, it was rubbery), I’d love to help them learn it.. just to see the joy in their lives as they figure it out. I am the son of a teacher, after all. (10th from the top)
