More than 16,000 students were expected to have graduated from approximately 70 coding bootcamps in the United States last year, according to Course Report’s 2015 Coding Bootcamp Survey. With the current and projected need to fill open tech positions around the South, the trend of building more coding bootcamps doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon.

We have mapped out the adult coding bootcamps that are currently operating in our southern states. The information for each location is currently basic, but we will continue to add more information in future versions.

*Click on the slider tab to the left to view the map by state.

Please help us keep this map updated! If you know of other coding bootcamps, please let us know by filling out the form below:

The post Where Are the Coding Bootcamps in the South? [map] appeared first on Startup Southerner.

#DigitalPPG is a recurring column by Charisse Lambert, a writer specializing in the convergence of sports, tech, and urban brand campaigns.

Like many businesses, the National Football League is experimenting with big data to help players, fans, and teams alike.

The 2016 NFL Scouting Combine is at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Ind. this week from Feb. 23-29. NFL scouts will evaluate top college prospects in tests such as the 40-yard dash, vertical leap, shuttle drills, and more, and these players have spent months training in these combine events to improve their stock among NFL teams. TV networks have turned the weeklong gathering into an offseason programming bonanza that includes live television and social media coverage.

Despite the advancement in technology since the combine began—and all of the focus the annual event now receives—many of assessment tools used in this process have remained relatively unchanged and test only physical attributes. And in recent years, many NFL coaches have begun to speak out against the traditional combine process and its methods as a whole. Now more than ever, they are turning to technology to study prospective players. The days of scouts keeping time on stopwatches as prospects run in the so-called  “Underwear Olympics” are rather played out.

On Feb. 24, the league will hold its first Football Performance and Technology Symposium, featuring speakers including Dr. Marcus Elliott, founder and director of P3, which has evaluated NBA draft participants the past two years in a 3D motion analysis lab. The idea for the symposium was first sparked at last year’s Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, where Dr. Robby Sikka, Lead Clinical Research Scientist at TRIA Orthopaedic Center, met with Matt Birk, former Minnesota Vikings offensive lineman and current NFL Director of Football Development. Their discussion included the increasing trend of teams hiring sports science directors and analytics departments. The idea then became to develop a best-practices program for the NFL so the increasing number of teams interested in data, analytics, and sports science could hear from the best in the world how they are handling the vast amounts of data permeating the sports world.

Together Sikka and the NFL Football Operations team developed the symposium, where attendees will have the opportunity to hear from sports science directors; management from top college football programs; analytics executives from NBA and MLB teams, including last season’s World Series and NBA champions, as well as English Premier League teams. Experts from TRIA Orthopaedic Center, Harvard, the U.S. Air Force and other institutions will also be present to discuss the future of technology and data in football.

The post 2016 NFL Combine’s New Feature? The Inaugural Football Performance and Technology Symposium appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Last month, the White House announced a new multi-billion-dollar Computer Science for All initiative, with a mission to provide every student a chance to learn CS in school. The commitment at the national level comes at a time when the dialogue, advocacy and regional mandates for more STEM education are at an all-time high. One of the key factors in creating such initiatives is that these skills, including coding, are necessary in order to participate in the current economic landscape.

I learned coding in school, too—at a coding bootcamp, at age 35. And one of my main reasons for deciding to quit a steady job to take a six-month deep dive into uncharted waters was to become armed with a skill set that would help guide me to broader career options in tech. This decision and subsequent completion of the program at Nashville Software School have already paid off. My current part-time positions are in software development, with hopes to eventually move toward UX strategy.

And, well, I started a business. What I didn’t expect that I would learn from learning to code were developing habits that have allowed me to galvanize skills and perspectives that I already had and then propel them into something useful, something better. Even if studying coding doesn’t lead everyone to pursue a career in software development, there are several lessons that can carry into life in general.

1. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. In going through a coding bootcamp, new concepts are thrown at you day after day, practically every day for the duration of the program.  One concept may build on the previous one, but it was often frustrating when a new lesson was introduced before I had a chance to figure out the one I was previously working on.  

The reality is that this is often how life is. If we keep looking for that perfect moment to take control, you may never find it. That sense of discomfort is most often a clear sign that you’re learning something new. And that’s a good thing.

2. You don’t really know it until you do it. There’s really no other way to get better at coding than to write the code yourself. No matter how many tutorials you watch or Stack Overflow posts you discover with the so-called best solution, the supposed academic understanding of a concept really doesn’t count as understanding anything at all. By having to actually take action, it also means learning this next lesson.

3. Make Mistakes. In choosing to learn code, you’re also choosing to make mistakes. And for many of us who have lived a lifetime trying to avoid those dreaded pitfalls of life, the idea of making mistakes to become better seems like a really bad idea. But those mistakes you make in code are not permanent by any means, and they’re also the only way to make progress toward the solution.

4. Versioning means there’s room to keep getting better. Because the turnaround time on projects comes quick in a coding bootcamp, you learn to set priorities on what’s enough for the MVP (minimum viable product) of version 1.0, with expectations that the other features would be built in subsequent versions. For me, I’ve applied this sort of iterative method to working on my personal well-being. It’s OK to not be your desired self now. What really matters is that you are making incremental progress toward a bigger goal.

The post 4 Startup Lessons I Learned at Coding Bootcamp appeared first on Startup Southerner.

The immersive sense of reality that virtual reality (VR) gives a user under the headware seems so real. And according to Dr. Jeremy Bailenson, founder of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, the human brain’s inability to differentiate the real from the VR experience is something to take advantage of. But let’s forget about gaming for a minute. Bailenson spoke to the members of Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) Nashville last week about VR applications that may not be widely known now, but that could be useful for society soon.

Bailenson is co-founder of STriVR Labs, the immersive athletic training company that won Sports Illustrated’s 2015 Innovation of the Year and that Charisse Lambert talked about in her first #DigitalPPG column for Startup Southerner. While Balienson told the crowd that he certainly loves working with that product, which has made its way into both Division I football teams’ and NFL practice routines, much of his research projects have a different client in mind—society.

In a “mistake-free” VR experience, Bailenson explained that training for certain scenarios could be done repeatedly without facing any real dangers. There are now training simulations for natural disaster situations like earthquakes. The likelihood that someone would remember the procedure from reading a manual is low, while having gone through all the motions and emotions of being in one via VR is unforgettable—without requiring an actual earthquake to have the experience.

Likewise, Bailenson, a trained psychologist, broadened the scope of such workplace training to include one that addressed diversity. With the basis of the training grounded in empathy, a major tenet of contact hypothesis, he created a VR simulation for Cisco that allowed the user to see himself as someone of a different skin color, or in a different physical condition. The user would then experience this “world” as that person he saw in the VR mirror. The results from the initial study and actual implementation of the program in a work setting showed much higher understanding of the training by those who experienced it.

Bailenson also has developed similar modules that help reduce ageism via empathy that is hard to have when one can’t quite experience a different age in real life.

Bailenson’s mission to changing behavior by utilizing VR to bridge the gap also has led him to products that help the user understand what deforestation is like, without actually having to cut down trees to prove a point. Their testing showed that users who experienced the VR deforestation were more likely to purchase toilet paper made of recycled material. His studies that tested VR users’ ability to build self-efficacy, often in health-related cases, were equally intriguing.  

This idea of a mistake-free environment is intriguing, but what will happen once the human brain begins to be able to distinguish the real from the virtual? For now, VR’s capabilities are here to help solve the current issues in the world that require an urgent solution. 

The post Can VR Be the Agent of Social Change? appeared first on Startup Southerner.

At Atlanta-based SalesLoft, company culture drives every decision made and interaction that takes place. It wasn’t always that way. Or, it was, depending on how you look at it. Originally started in 2011 by Kyle Porter, the sales development platform was all but shut down less than two years later due to poorly managed yet rapid growth. Porter regrouped at the beginning of 2013 with a new team and a new set of core values that come before anything else.

“We put culture at the forefront of everything,” says Brian Culler, director of engineering at SalesLoft. “In the course of running the business, if something could put the people and culture in jeopardy, we won’t do it.”

In addition to operating a results-only work environment, celebrating wins with a gong, and doing weekly check-ins with all 80-plus employees, SalesLoft boasts six core company values, which include always looking for the positive outcome, as well as being self-starting, empathetic and supportive of other team members. These core values come up early and often, with new hires hearing about them at their very first interview.

Culler says it’s a mistake for startups to not think about culture before hiring their first employees. “If you don’t start with it, then with every person you add it gets more and more impossible to put that culture in place,” he says.

But culture at SalesLoft is more than just a recruiting tool. It helps drive innovation and growth. The weekly check-ins are powered by 15five, a productivity tool that quickly helps managers identify what team members have accomplished, what they’re struggling with and how they’re feeling about it—all by answering five questions.

Culler’s team answers their questions by Thursday; he reviews and responds by Friday. Questions, concerns or praises he couldn’t address on his own he then “sends up” to Porter or Rob Forman, COO and co-founder. They take the weekend and respond on Sunday.

“You can tag people, which makes it have almost a social network feel,” Culler says. “It’s a really nice way to bring up issues that wouldn’t normally come up, It’s also a really great platform for shout-outs.”

In addition to using 15five, SalesLoft employees also meet one-on-one with their managers every week. It’s a big time commitment, adhering to this company culture, but Culler believes it’s also the key to SalesLoft success.

“There are always problems to solve in a startup,” he says. “Our culture allows us to overcome those problems as fast as we do.”

The post Why SalesLoft Cares About Company Culture and You Should, Too appeared first on Startup Southerner.

“How Soon Is Now?” is a column dedicated to tech startup culture and community from the perspective of a software developer in Nashville, Tennessee. His opinions are his own.

The year is certainly off to an interesting start. Silicon Valley looks to be in a downward spiral with several layoffs, and the media is pumping out article after article calling for “blood in the water” and a “unicorn reckoning.”

Hyperbole sells, but the insane valuations everyone has been calling out for years are beginning to correct themselves—and fast. It’s nothing to celebrate or make light of, as these down rounds in a system built to protect the investors are hurting employees most.

With the correction going on in Silicon Valley, I’m sure there are plenty of folks feeling somewhat vindicated about our situation here in Nashville. Local investors will get the luxury of spinning their capital investments, or lack thereof, as a stroke of genius. Though I’m sure we’ll be sweeping a couple things under the rug, like a company that raised $1.77 million, garnered local awards, scored one of those super-cool oversized checks from Steve Case and still, somehow, managed to criticize a lack of capital on their way out. Or another local media favorite that wouldn’t be out of place on an episode of “The Walking Dead.” It’s not hard to see why investors would turn a cold shoulder to technology.

Tennesseeans are still processing the $200 million taxpayer disaster that is TNInvestco, which managed to make $83 million disappear before a single dollar was invested. A much more reasonable tax credit is in the works for the next phase, but the real problem to solve isn’t about capital at all.

We need a cultural shift, and that shift should be built around our makers and doers instead of the “business elite.”

I spoke with a developer visiting from Boston recently and she asked me what co-working spot to check out so she could connect with local technologists and get a vibe for the scene. I struggled for an answer and bought time describing the great technology community here: frequent meetups on a huge range of topics, companies like Emma that are supporting our scene. None of these really answered her question, and in the end all I could suggest were a couple of coffee shops. Nashville has no shortage of co-working locations, but none of them are heavy on tech-based companies or come to mind as standing out for supporting our technology community.

That conversation helped me realize how physically segmented our startups and technologists are during our workdays. We’re scattered all over town in various office spaces, working from home or out of coffee shops. Slack keeps us connected, and the meetups are great, but developers do have a tendency to segment off by language and framework with little discussion around the business impact our technical solutions provide. Our technology community needs to find an entrepreneurial spirit that brings us all together to support everyone’s endeavors, to celebrate successes, commiserate in failures and, ultimately, work together to build our community that makes us stronger on the whole.

I doubt this dichotomy between technology and business is anything exclusive to Nashville, and it could all stem from our colleges and institutions having entrepreneur programs catered to MBA students. With this schism engrained, a “wait for them to come to me” attitude persists and carries over into our careers and seems clearly on display at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center. The halls and meetups at the EC are filled with salespeople, marketers and service providers mingling and passing business cards around. It makes sense that eager entrepreneurs would seek out the EC, but with a lack of technologists around, things go from being about solving problems to being about generating a sales funnel. It’s a big reason why agencies thrive in this town and it keeps our business and technology communities living inside their own respective echo chambers.

In his book, “Startup Communities,” Brad Feld does an excellent job calling out similar situations for startup communities around the country that aren’t working. Feld explains the difference between Feeders (investors, mentors, government, universities and service providers) and Leaders (makers and entrepreneurs). While Feeders are vital to the ecosystem and provide a much-needed service, a startup community must be driven by the Leaders. Unfortunately, we’re short on Leaders in Nashville, leaving the Feeders to run the show. And while I’m sure the cocktail parties and award shows are great, they’re not bringing us any closer to being a community driven by Leaders.

Technologists are going through a time of incredible opportunity right now. Never before has a trade where a degree is moot had labor costs this high and so much potential to disrupt. Never before has the grip of the business elite been this threatened, but it’s feeling like we’re losing that hold. With the funnel tightening on Silicon Valley investments, you can expect the next round to be funded by the powers that be. We’re seeing a similar situation in Nashville, with our accelerator programs sponsored by massive music, publishing and soon, healthcare corporations. The goal no longer being to find new ideas that disrupt, but to maintain control and grow an already massive ecosystem through the fresh ideas of others.

While we’re continually sold on the idea of a STEM shortage, even with no evidence to support it, technology wages have stagnated. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics makes headlines with its 10-year growth outlook for web and software developers, but you’re not likely to find a mention of their predicted decline in computer programmers. And while it makes sense that software development jobs will continue to grow, it will be interesting to see what the correction in the valley does when morale causes a dispersal of talent that could bottleneck a pipeline around the country already picky enough that the average interview process takes 35 days. Meanwhile, we’re still churning out developers with the promise of six-figure salaries and great stock options, conveniently leaving out the bits about executives conspiring to keep wages lower.

I’m all for teaching people to code, as it brings fresh voices, improves diversity and roots out the nonsense. But let’s at least be conscious that the goal of the learn-to-code movement isn’t to bring six-figure salaries to more people, but to increase supply and cheapen labor overall.

The growth that software development has seen in the last decade is incredible. We’ve seen cycles like this before, but with the excitement around technology and sheer number of developers coming into the fold, we need to acknowledge that it’s not enough to learn to code or even be a “10x developer.” We must evolve our attitude toward business and our business sense to stay relevant, especially in Tennessee, where we find ourselves ranked 41st in innovation. We can do better and we will do better, but it starts with acknowledging our failings so we can work towards the solution.

As a software developer with a passion for leveraging technology to find solutions, I don’t think I’m alone in feeling ostracized by the EC. Whether it’s a problem with leadership lacking a technical background, a reliance on investors who don’t understand technology or the lack of desire from technologists to get involved, what’s actually boring is a deadlock that keeps one side complaining about a lack of capital and the other side complaining about a lack of “spectacular deals.”

If it’s not there for us and it’s something we want, then we need to work to find it, foster it or create it ourselves. Let’s work to build the community we want to exist. Let’s focus on solving problems we want to solve, while educating ourselves and our peers. Once we’re successful, everyone else will be knocking down our door to get in.

The post The Cyclomatic Complexity of Nashville appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Did you know Louisiana has some of the nation’s most competitive tax incentives for startups? Its Digital Interactive Media and Software Development Incentive, which rewards the creation of digital interactive media products or platforms in Louisiana, provides a refundable tax credit on qualified expenses, such as labor and production equipment related to the creation of said digital media or software. It’s a refundable tax credit, meaning it goes above and beyond what a company would have paid in taxes in the first place. In other words, free money for Louisiana startups!

Gary Perilloux, communications director for Louisiana Economic Development (LED), says over the past 10 years the state has paid out about $60 million to 300 different companies through this program.

But changes to the program, made during last year’s legislative session in response to a massive budget shortfall, have caused some confusion, leading some in the startup community to wonder if this is still even an option at all. The tax credit is by no means gone; it’s just not as good as it once was. Here’s what you need to know.

The changes are temporary. Incentive rates were reduced from 25.2 percent for qualified in-state expenditures and 10 percent for qualified in-state payroll expenditures to 18 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively. This applies to all applications submitted after July 1, 2015, through the next three fiscal years. As of now, the rates are set to return to the higher thresholds on July 1, 2018.

There’s a new administrative fee. As part of last year’s changes, startups seeking this tax credit now pay an application fee of $500 or 0.05 percent of the expected credit of the project, whichever is greater, but no more than $7,500. Perilloux says this nonrefundable application fee is really an advance deposit for mandatory accounting services provided by LED to verify the expenditures. This was always a required portion of the program, but previously startups could retain their own CPAs to fulfill the reporting requirements.

Perilloux says despite the LED’s efforts to inform the startup community about programs like this one, his office still sees a general lack of interest in this program. “The most common mistake that businesses make is typically waiting too long to contact our office, because they feel it is too complicated a process to access the incentives,” he says. “We have made this as simple as possible, and will continue to do so.”

The post Changes to Louisiana’s Digital Media Tax Credit: What You Need to Know appeared first on Startup Southerner.

#DigitalPPG is a recurring column by Charisse Lambert, a writer specializing in the convergence of sports, tech, and urban brand campaigns.

How we watch sports is about to change in a major way. And at the heart of that transformation is a familiar gaming technology—virtual reality. What was once seen as fantasy, VR technology has quickly entered the sports world, and is changing the way coaches conduct practice and train players. It is also enhancing the fan experience by allowing an all-access approach to fans’ favorite sports teams, enabling the masses to experience what only a limited number might otherwise enjoy.

STriVR Labs, which stands for Sports Training in Virtual Reality, is a leader in the sports VR space. The company’s client list includes at least six NFL teams and even more college teams, including Arkansas, Auburn, Vanderbilt and Clemson. Video is shot on a 360-degree camera cluster atop a lightweight tripod, which is placed alongside selected players in practice. The video is uploaded to a VR database, where it can be viewed through an Oculus Rift headset.

The benefits of using VR technology is not lost on many who play contact sports like football, where injuries are an inevitable part of the game and head trauma has become a part of the public conversation. Programs are venturing into virtual reality as a perfect step forward in the world of athletic training. Because the mind has no way of distinguishing between a real situation and one generated by the technology, it is the ideal means of supplementing work on the field, on the court, on the ice, to further a player’s skill development and knowledge of the game. What virtual reality brings to the table is the ability to let athletes practice without stepping on the field, increasing reps while minimizing injuries.

At present, virtual reality is a high-end product that comes at significant expense. But that will likely change—as soon as this year. In the same ways that the earliest high definition tech wasn’t yet completely streamlined when networks began to switch to HD, we are still in the infancy of VR and the headsets on the market have yet to be perfected. But as companies like Samsung develop smaller, more comfortable VR wearables, many predict that the technology will see a boom similar to that of HD in the early 2000s.

And as the price point drops, look for the interest from teams and leagues in monetizing virtual reality to continue to skyrocket. The NBA made history on opening night this season when it became the first major sports league to offer a live-streamed version of a game in virtual reality. NASCAR and the NFL both have been in experimental stages with using the technology to stream events. Recently, FOX Sports began collaborating with company NextVR to bring live VR coverage of the Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) matches. And there was even the recent announcement from CNET founder Halsey Minor of a virtual reality network launching in the second quarter of this year that will focus on sports and music events.

It’s still early, but I am calling it: Viewing live sports via virtual reality will be the next big breakthrough on the sports broadcasting landscape. Mark it.

The post Virtual Reality to Revolutionize Sports Viewing Experience appeared first on Startup Southerner.

‘Founder’s Tech – Tech trends, tips and advice for founders, entrepreneurs and bootstrappers’ is a recurring column by Jake Hare, founder of Nashville-based Launchpeer, a web & mobile application development agency focused on startups, entrepreneurs and bootstrappers.

Usually when our agency hears an entrepreneur say, “I’m looking for a tech co-founder,” what they’re actually saying is, “I’m looking for a developer to write code for little to no cash in exchange for equity in a non-existent business.” It’s everywhere: message boards, chat rooms, Reddit, Quora, your local co-working space. Non-technical founders everywhere seem to be having trouble finding these incredible tech workers interested in working for free.

You would think that offering a good bit of equity would help woo one of these potential technical co-founders to work with you, but that’s usually not the case. Why? For one, these techies probably have well-paying, full-time jobs that take most of their time. Or it could be that your idea hasn’t been proven to the point that the risk they would take to jump on board is mitigated by the relatively high chance of startup success.

So what can you do to get a technical co-founder? Prove your worth. Prove that you’re a competent, trustworthy and understanding employer and product manager who the future tech co-founder can trust. Be able to show that you’ve already gone through the process of validating your idea to the point that people are begging to buy it right now, or, even better, that they’ve already given you money for it.

Every startup our agency works with has to first go through validation, a packaged phase designed to get the company early traction with prospective customers. Sometimes the startup has already gone through the validation stage. This is awesome because it saves a lot of time and heartache down the road when months have gone by and thousands of dollars have been spent on a product that ultimately isn’t wanted or needed enough for prospective users to pay for it or download it.

Obviously this advice pertains mostly to early-stage, pre-funded and pre-product startups and founders. I know of some startups that are looking for a tech co-founder for high pay and equity, which they definitely deserve if they’re being leaned on as the go-to tech person at a tech company. After all, ideas are everywhere. The hard part is implementation, which means your tech co-founder should be looked to as a prime component of your business, not simply someone willing to work for free.

The post Why It’s Hard to Find a Tech Co-Founder for Your Startup appeared first on Startup Southerner.