#coder day

Coders in Dallas gathered last weekend to enjoy a day of coding for social good, giving back to the open source community, and connecting with each other at the University of Texas Dallas.

After an introduction to the day from CodeMontage CEO Vanessa Hurst, who discussed the nature of effective progress, participants got a peek into the wisdom of MaryAnne Faschan, the Vice President of Americas Applications Services at HP. She shared her most difficult career challenges and her greatest successes, sharing a number of important pieces of wisdom she has gained along the way. MaryAnne mapped out the crucial aspects to a leadership path in technology, including honing the skills of your craft, using lateral career moves to broaden your knowledge, and accepting stretch challenges in order to grow.

“Every time I asked to be put in over my head - and I hope you do the same - my senior team gave me the scuba gear I needed and let me go.” -- MaryAnne Faschan

Inspired by MaryAnne, developers from local universities and businesses jumped into the work of learning and coding. Supporting causes from middle-school education to disaster relief to tech accessibility, participants took the time to set up their computers and begin fixing technical problems and proposing changes.

A particularly large group of Coder Day attendees were driven to propose UX adjustments, helping improve the user experience and making apps that were easier for their audience to understand and use effectively. Many other developers created new features or fixed existing bugs, connecting directly with project maintainers using the CodeMontage community. Throughout the afternoon, participants were focused on their goals, working through the challenges to make change happen.

At the end of the day, the coders gathered to share their learning, acknowledge their accomplishments, and thank others who had helped them throughout the event. With a break to deliberate, HP awarded generous prizes to developers based on their contributions and their demonstrations of persistence and collaboration throughout the day.

Mr. Tippens was an inspiring start to the day, and he even granted some attendees a quick selfie before encouraging us all to continue the conversation online.

But right at that moment there was less talking, more coding! Developers worked to configure their computers for the open source project of their choosing. Seated around the assigned table for their project, groups were working together with professionals and project leads to debug errors and share their learning through code contributions. Excitement was high, and the energy attendees were putting in was palpable.

While participants worked through lunch to push each codebase forward, ad-hoc lessons on new technologies and methods were emerging all around the room.

At the end of the day, coders stood together to share big wins and small ones. Some notable achievments included:

Submitting a first pull request

Learning how to use git and GitHub for the first time

Supporting other coders towards their own breakthroughs

Adjusting broken documentation details for a project

Using the syntax for a new programming language

Working as a team to debug errors

Discovering ways to contribute even with limited programming experience

...Not to mention the 25+ contributions to the projects themselves!

The day ended with ten developers receiving prizes and recognition for their work. Congratulations to all our winners, and thank you to everyone who attended. We can’t wait to see you next time!

CodeMontage had an absolute blast at the HP Coder Day of Service Fort Collins! On January 31st, over sixty coders gathered to have an impact on a wide range of social good, open source projects.

To kick things off, CodeMontage Founder Vanessa Hurst reminded attendees that even small steps and accomplishments move us toward a vision of a better world. HP R&D Section Manager Carol Lang gave an inspiring keynote about the prominent place of women in computer science past - and hopefully future.

Then attendees went at it! Coders forked projects like Ushahidi, Girl Develop It, OpenTreeMap, and the Open Science Framework. They spent hours battling install errors, coding away at the projects they found most interesting, and forming ad hoc groups of both students and professionals to learn together and create an impact.

And what an impact! Over the course of 8 hours, participants created 32 new issues to help projects identify bugs they weren’t aware of and make suggestions for the design and new features. Coders also submitted 34 pull requests to nine different projects. They documented installation details, fixed bugs, added enhancements, and kicked off new features.

During the closing round-up, we celebrated accomplishments big and small. Participants shared their biggest challenge, something they learned, and a person in the crowd who helped them during the day. Some people had fought to nail down the git workflow, while others worked to understand new programming languages or discovered ways to make projects easier to understand for the devs who came behind them. In the end, 8 coders were recognized by HP for their persistence, problem-solving abilities, and collaborative focus.

CodeMontage had an absolute blast at the HP Coder Day of Service Fort Collins! On January 31st, over 60 coders gathered at Colorado State University to have an impact on a wide range of social good, open source projects.

To kick things off, CodeMontage Founder Vanessa Hurst reminded attendees that even small steps and accomplishments move us toward a vision of a better world. HP R&D Section Manager Carol Lang gave an inspiring keynote about the prominent place of women in computer science past - and hopefully future.

Then attendees got down to business! Coders worked on projects like Ushahidi, Girl Develop It, OpenTreeMap, and the Open Science Framework. They spent hours battling install errors, coding away at the projects they found most interesting, and forming ad hoc groups of both students and professionals to learn together and create an impact.

And what an impact! Over the course of eight hours, participants created 32 new issues to help projects identify bugs they weren't aware of and make suggestions for the design and new features. Coders also submitted 34 pull requests to nine different projects. They documented installation details, fixed bugs, added enhancements, and kicked off new features.

During the closing round-up, we celebrated accomplishments big and small. Participants shared their biggest challenge, something they learned, and a person in the crowd who helped them during the day. Some people had fought to nail down the git workflow, while others worked to understand new programming languages or discovered ways to make projects easier to understand for the devs who came behind them. In the end, eight coders were recognized by HP for their persistence, problem-solving abilities, and collaborative focus.