I'm a big believe of giving back. Sometimes I forget how good it feels to inspire someone else, and it's nice to occasionally be reminded (even if I need to be poked and prodded).
Yesterday was pretty busy. Brunch in the morning near Davis Square at Sound Bites, then a Skype chat with someone founding an educational startup, followed by some Rails/Twitter hacking, Ultimate Frisbee with other Boston Startup School people, and a Skillshare between all the different Boston Startup School tracks.
At the end of it, I was ready to just chill out and play guitar.
Fortunately, though, Chris and Alex convinced me to join them in talking to a lot of high school students attending MITES (I was on the fence) about startups and entrepreneurship, and how to think with an entrepreneurial mindset.
There was a lot of advice shared, and it was really interesting to see where these kids' heads were at regarding their passion. Some had an idea of how they were going to change the world, others knew what they enjoyed, and still others were still 'figuring it out.' The best we could do was offer to inspire and give a little guidance as to how to have the 'entrepreneurial mindset,' something I think engineering has a lot in common with.
It's all about being able to look at a problem from as many imaginative angles as possible, and understanding how to go about solving a problem. In fact, it's why I believe an engineering education is the most versatile education out there; the ability to solve a problem can be applied to any discipline, especially when trying to solve a problem to make the world a better place.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Snakes in a Building or:How I got back in to Python
Last night was awesome. On the recommendation of a contact in the recruiting area, I checked out a networking calendar from Venture Fizz (www.venturefizz.com) and saw there was a Python meet up scheduled for yesterday evening at Microsoft NERD (New England Research & Development) in Cambridge. Naturally, I was interested in going!
I wrapped up the minor amount of Ruby on Rails I was working on in the Wilmington Panera (my favorite place to code--just enough people and coffee to not feel totally isolated) and headed on down. Getting there was interesting; while parking at the NERD parking garage was okay ($10 for the evening), there were a few other garages within a few blocks (but on the other side of Broadway) that were $8. Small difference, but I'm sure it will add up over the months. The building NERD is located in is amazing, with a great view across the Charles of Boston--next time I'll have to take pictures with a camera (at the risk of looking like a complete noob).
The actual meet up was awesome. Matchbox (http://matchbox.net/), a company making an iPad app to make processing college applications easier, sponsored and provided free pizza (wooh!) and I ended up sitting next to one of their software engineers. Also at our table were a handful of current students (none of whom were CS majors, but hey, neither was I!), and one of the founders of Career Village (http://careervillage.org). The conversations about what everyone was working on were great; I hope that by the next meet up I will have improved my django and refreshed my Python enough to contribute a little more to questions about AJAX and scripting and all that, but for now I'm content that I (felt like I) blasted through the first two parts of the django tutorial.
Also there were the founders (I think?) of US Green Energy, which was super convenient because I had been emailing back and forth with them a bit courtesy of our mutual friend Matt (whom I went to school with), so we chatted for a while about what they were working for and both agreed I probably wasn't good enough for the full-time position, but that an internship might be a possibility. Wooh! But before that could be talked about I need to dig up some code samples from back in the Mod Four/Y Combinator days and definitely brush up on my Python for an interview.
I'm so glad I went! And the pizza was good too (not just cheese, but veggie lovers and pepperoni (though I abstained))!
I wrapped up the minor amount of Ruby on Rails I was working on in the Wilmington Panera (my favorite place to code--just enough people and coffee to not feel totally isolated) and headed on down. Getting there was interesting; while parking at the NERD parking garage was okay ($10 for the evening), there were a few other garages within a few blocks (but on the other side of Broadway) that were $8. Small difference, but I'm sure it will add up over the months. The building NERD is located in is amazing, with a great view across the Charles of Boston--next time I'll have to take pictures with a camera (at the risk of looking like a complete noob).
The actual meet up was awesome. Matchbox (http://matchbox.net/), a company making an iPad app to make processing college applications easier, sponsored and provided free pizza (wooh!) and I ended up sitting next to one of their software engineers. Also at our table were a handful of current students (none of whom were CS majors, but hey, neither was I!), and one of the founders of Career Village (http://careervillage.org). The conversations about what everyone was working on were great; I hope that by the next meet up I will have improved my django and refreshed my Python enough to contribute a little more to questions about AJAX and scripting and all that, but for now I'm content that I (felt like I) blasted through the first two parts of the django tutorial.
Also there were the founders (I think?) of US Green Energy, which was super convenient because I had been emailing back and forth with them a bit courtesy of our mutual friend Matt (whom I went to school with), so we chatted for a while about what they were working for and both agreed I probably wasn't good enough for the full-time position, but that an internship might be a possibility. Wooh! But before that could be talked about I need to dig up some code samples from back in the Mod Four/Y Combinator days and definitely brush up on my Python for an interview.
I'm so glad I went! And the pizza was good too (not just cheese, but veggie lovers and pepperoni (though I abstained))!
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