Tag Archives: GitHub

Building Products to Service the Underserved

23 May,2013 by Poornima in Education, Product Development, StartupsFast Company, Forbes, GitHub, Homelessness, New product development, San Francisco 0 Comments

Technology serves large enterprises making them efficient, and able to turn over a high profit. It also connects people together seamlessly to socialize. But there are still a number of people who have yet to benefit from technology, one such group are the precariously housed, who make make up the majority of large cities like San Francisco.

Rose Theresa, our second winner of the GitHub scholarship for Femgineer’s Lean Product Development course, sought to change that!

Working in the Mid-Market Tenderlion neighborhoods, she heard many frustrations and time lost whenever the homeless had to line up every morning to have their names entered in the city reservation system for a bed. To add to the frustration, she saw the amount of paperwork and phone calls required by social service organizations to find availability and to make a reservation.

Rose discovered that a huge amount of time was being wasted on checking availability and making reservations on certain shelter services, like beds. She knew that some kind of information portal between the two would help save time and reduce needed paperwork.

With this knowledge, Rose and her team set off to put together a product at the Creative Currency Hackathon, an event that brings together developers,designers, and social finance experts to hack a product that helps social service organizations.

After many hours, they were able to put together a prototype called BRIDGE, that would allow shelter-seekers to make and check reservations themselves, and also check availability of other needed services like food and financial management at other local shelters as well via kiosk.

BRIDGE became a finalist in each of the demo days that is was presented, and was mentioned in the SF chronicle, The New York Times, Forbes, and Fast Company.

Although some time has passed since their initial launch at Creative Currency Hackathon, Rose is determined to complete a similar product called, MY CONNECT that would be a step up from BRIDGE that would also help the precariously housed as well as the social service organizations.

Rose is excited that Femgineer Lean Product Development course will guide her along that journey to get MY CONNECT launched and made ready to use by those less fortunate.

Alyssa Ravasio: GitHub Scholarship Winner

19 April,2013 by Poornima in Femgineer Spotlight, StartupsAlyssa, Alyssa Ravasio, Andrew Molera State Park, Dev Bootcamp, GitHub 3 Comments

After sorting through many outstanding applications and interviewing some amazing candidates, we struggled with the choice of picking a candidate. Our choice came down to Alyssa Ravasio, who will be one of two winners of the Github scholarship for Femgineer’s Ship It course this summer.

Alyssa Ravasio was chosen for a project that she is building called Hipcamp, a search engine for campsites in California.

Hipcamp will solve the problems of “Where can I camp next weekend?” or more specifically, “Where can I camp next weekend by a beach and within a 3 hour drive from SF?”

The project came out of her experience just this year, when she went camping with her family and had to go through the frustrating process of making a campground reservation.

Alyssa went to sites such as parks.ca.gov and reserveamerica.com, but they offered no additional data or pictures. This forced Alyssa to go to additional sites like Yelp for campground reviews, as well as doing a Google image search for pictures.

After much work she was finally able to make her reservation at Andrew Molera State Park. But when she arrived, she discovered that it was home to the sweetest left breaking waves, a relevant piece of information that was missed from her research.

Driving back home to get her wetsuit, Alyssa was determined to build something better that would take the pain out of finding and reserving a campsite.

In addition to time-based search, Alyssa is planning to develop maps, photographs, and video into Hipcamp.

Alyssa’s project has been an example of Github and Femgineer’s efforts to get more women into tech and build a more female-friendly engineering culture.

Github recently held their Passion Project series that highlights prominent, smart, and interesting women in the technology/startup/developer world.

Their sponsorship of this scholarship is an extension of their efforts to promote women who are doing outstanding work in software engineering and following their passions to build products.

Right now Alyssa is at the ideation stage. But with the Femgineer Ship It course, Alyssa is hoping to take it to the next level under the guidance of Poornima.

Alyssa Ravasio recently graduated student from Dev Bootcamp, the nine week intensive web development course. She also graduated from UCLA where she created the individual major Digital Democracy, which focuses on how the internet is changing the world. She worked in Internet policy at the US Department of State, sales/marketing for the iPad startup Revel, and operations at the outdoor adventure startup Xola.

Besides the Internet, Alyssa is also passionate about journalism, film, art, and the ocean. She believes that the Internet’s potential to change the way our world works lies on a magnitude that can only be compared to language itself!

Stay tuned to see Alyssa’s progress by following her @alyraz and checking out Hipcamp!

So you want that dream software engineering job? Here’s what to do.

05 April,2013 by Frances Advincula in Frances FridaysAccenture, Automata Theory, GitHub, Joel Spolsky, LinkedIn, Résumé 0 Comments

by Frances Advincula

I was anorexic in high school, and to start over in my efforts of recovery, I ran away to the other side of the world. I ended up turning down a scholarship to a private university and enrolled in a small, new college in Manila for undergrad. My parents rightfully worried I was throwing my future away. I worried about it too, but I think things turned out just fine. I love all the cutting edge things I get to code for Accenture Software now, and I’ve been asked to be interviewed by well-known companies — Google, Microsoft, Amazon, LinkedIn, Netflix, Fog Creek Software, and hot startups — AirBnb, The Levo League.

Why the sob story? I want to help everyone realize that, no matter what your state is in life, you can still do something proactive to better yourself, to achieve your goals. Yes, you have a shot at the big companies and rising startups even if you didn’t go to Stanford or live in Silicon Valley (although that most certainly helps!). I did it from the other side of the world, from school in a developing country. You can too.

To help you get started, I thought I’d share what I did, in hopes that you too, can find your dream femgineering job. You wan’t to be ready when luck comes knocking, don’t you?

Perfect your cover letter and resume.
If you are still in school or in an entry-level position, keep your resume to one page. I’ve heard that HR will throw it straight to the trash pile if it’s any longer than that. But anyway, just common sense — practice good grammar, proofread, ask your friends to proofread, etc. And read this article by Joel Spolsky: “Getting Your Resume Read.” It is the best, actionable advice on the topic that I have ever read. Ever.

Build your portfolio of coding projects.
CS theory is great (Automata Theory was one of my absolutest, favoritest subjects), but if you want a software engineer job, you have to show that you can write code. If you don’t have a lot of experience, software school projects are a good thing to list on your resume. But listen, I didn’t even have a GitHub back then, but I had my portfolio –and it served me well. So just imagine how far having GitHub can take you! Oh the places you’ll go!

Get an engineering internship, no matter what.
This is included in Joel Spolsky’s advice to CS students (which you are at a serious disadvantage if you don’t read it). Nothing will teach you how the industry works than a solid internship. You’re gonna be walking the talk by the time it’s over. I actually did mine fulltime for 6 months at Accenture, and I wasn’t the same person afterwards. If you really can’t find a good internship, consider remote ones like Gnome’s Outreach Program for Women.

Have a blog or write for other publications.
Why? Because blogging shows that you are curious and passionate. Blogging shows that you are willing to spend time outside of work/school for the things you care about. Blogging exposes you to new ideas and people who care about those ideas. Blogging forces you to be an expert in something (really, how are you going to write about it if you know squat?). Find organizations you want to write about and shoot the editor a well crafted email, volunteering. The worst case is that they’ll say no. This is how I got to write for a few startups, and even a fashion magazine!

Be Googable.
You are a young person. Social media is expected of us (plus, lots of startups communicate via social media). It’s also a great way to show you care without investing too much time blogging. A couple of ideas that go beyond Twitter/Facebook/Google+ include:

Pinterest – Make boards about topics you are interested in: UX, Women-in-Tech, Startup Lessons, etc.
Good Reads – Show that you are well-read with software and startup books! Poornima has a great reading list, and check out the Fog Creek Software MBA Program’s reading list.

Sharpen your interview skills.
Tech interviews are hard. You get asked the normal questions and you get grilled in coding problems and alogrithms too. You have to be prepared!

Her Campus’s, 20 Interview Questions and How to Answer Them
Coding Horror’s, Getting the Interview Phone Screen Right
Poornima’s slideshow, Interview Skills & Secrets
Palantir’s 3 Part Series: How to Rock an Algorithms Interview, The Coding Interview, The UI Design Interview
Gayle Laakmann McDowell’s book, Cracking the Coding Interview: 150 Programming Questions and Solutions is a really good, and thorough review of CS and programming fundamentals.

To calm your nerves, remember that an interview is two-sided. You are interviewing them too! You are also trying to find out if that company will invest in your learning and if you will fit into its culture (Read “My Interview Questions for Potential Employers“).

One last piece of advice.
Take time to enjoy your last semester too. People told me this, I ignored them, and I very much regret it. This is your last chance to savor your campus, your college friends, and the privilege of not yet fully being in the real world, with bills and rent and performance reviews to worry about. (Oh and it’s also probably not a good idea to take the GRE the same week as your finals, just sayin’.)

Frances Advincula writes the series Frances Fridays. Frances recently graduated with a degree in Computer Science and is currently pursuing a masters at Johns Hopkins. She now works as a Software Developer for Accenture Software. A proud geek girl, she’s sure she is the only one who can’t play video games. Tweet her at @FranAdvincula.