Code Academy: Week 6

We're half way through the very first Code Academy program. It's surprising how quickly the weeks are passing and even more surprising how far we've all come along since that first week. Our progress has never been clearer than last night at 5pm when we presented the result of our work during the Startup Weekend we had just completed.

There are startup weekend events throughout the country and they all function pretty much the same. You start on Friday at 6pm. Those who are interested, pitch various ideas for businesses or web applications and after all the pitches, the attendees vote on their favorites. Through either one or two rounds of voting and questions, the list of ideas is whittled down to the winners and then teams are formed around each idea. At that point, once the teams are created, you have until Sunday at 5pm to work on the idea and try to get it launched over the course of the weekend. Our Code Academy startup weekend worked in this fashion, and since we're all at least novice developers at this point, our projects were very much functioning web applications by Sunday.

A Code Academy startup weekend in week one of the program would have looked something like this - 

• Powerpoint presentations with slides on the market potential, a SWAT analysis on the idea, and a summary of competition.
• Wireframes of the web application

There's certainly nothing wrong with this work and, in fact, it'd be smart to do that for any idea, but a Code Academy startup weekend after week six looks a lot different. It looks real. We can build shit. Real, functioning applications. To see the ideas that were decided upon on Friday come to life through the weekend and result in fully featured websites by Sunday was really special. Very motivating for the next half of the program and a very good reminder of how far we've come in the first half.  See for yourself at two of the sites that were built in just 46 hours:

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