We hope the stories we were able to capture at TechUP from employers, organizers and attendees give a look into what’s already in progress in the Nashville tech community, and what more is to come.

Rachel Werner represented Girl Geek Dinner. She speaks about helping other women become software developers and about her latest project to study bringing an innovation district to Nashville.

Courtney Seiter, inclusivity catalyst at Buffer, spoke about the podcast she recently launched, Buffer Culture Lab. She discusses why Buffer launched the podcast as well as her goals and future plans for the series.

Jessica Mitsch and Joshua Cournoyer of The Iron Yard attended TechUP to recruit students to the code and design school and to talk about their diversity efforts in tech. Jessica shared what’s next for The Iron Yard nationally while Joshua discussed developments at the local Nashville campus, including leveraging diversity scholarships and modeling inclusivity in the workplace.

Ashley King, a consultant with Udacity, came to TechUP to discuss educational opportunities with the online course provider, including the dual-enrollment program funded by the Tennessee Lottery.

Rainu Ittycheriah, a local software developer representing Nashville Software School and Girl Geek Dinner  at TechUP, discusses her experience on the diversity panel and the kaleidoscope of perspectives presented.

Dom Brassey, VP of growth for TechUP and Lesbians Who Tech, and lead organizer of the day’s activities, discusses what drives their events and engagement with the tech community.

Feature Image Credit: Lisa French

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Just as the name might suggest, the Seed Accelerator Rankings Project ranks accelerators around the country using all sorts of sensitive data, such as fundraising and valuations, that its team of academics collected in confidence and distilled down for the benefit of entrepreneurs everywhere who are considering going through an accelerator.

This year’s rankings were unveiled last week at SXSW. Greenville, S.C.-based The Iron Yard and Memphis, Tennessee-based ZeroTo510 both ranked in the top 25 in the project’s “silver” level. Meanwhile, Healthbox and Techstars, which aren’t based in the South but have outposts here—in Orlando and Atlanta, respectively—scored at the higher “gold” and “platinum” levels.

Susan Cohen, co-director of the project and a management professor at the University of Richmond, gave TechCrunch some guidance on the various tiers, which is a different rankings system from last year when accelerators were ranked 1-20. “There’s a bigger difference between bronze and silver than there is between gold and silver. Achieving gold is something to be proud of. But these are all top, top and top programs, not top, middle and bottom programs.”

Both The Iron Yard and ZeroTo510 (and Techstars) appeared on last year’s list.

The Iron Yard, which is perhaps best known for its coding classes, runs a digital health accelerator out of its Spartanburg, S.C. campus. ZeroTo510 is a medical device accelerator that will be choosing its fifth cohort soon. Operated by the Memphis Bioworks Foundation and part of the EPIcenter community, ZeroTo510 has accelerated the creation of 20 new companies, $9.2 million in investments and more than 40 jobs. In addition, 60 percent of graduates have received post-accelerator funding, at an average of $675,000 per company, according to Jessica Taveau, director of marketing and communications for the Memphis Bioworks Foundation. Meanwhile, Healthbox is accepting applications, due March 18, for its Healthbox Studio in Orlando.

Cohen says the rankings are important because it helps make the process of choosing an accelerator more transparent. “With so many programs available, it’s hard for entrepreneurs to know which programs are best,” Cohen said in a press release. “The Seed Accelerator Rankings Project adds needed transparency to help entrepreneurs make a critically important decision for their startups.”

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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:

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‘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.

There is so much documentation out on the Internet regarding this. Most articles talk about how code is at the core of tech startups, especially SaaS (software as a service), which has become an increasingly popular area for bootstrappers and entrepreneurs to get into because of the promise of monthly recurring revenue. Who wouldn’t want to build such a business?

The problem with the idea that founders should learn to code is time. How realistic is it for hopeful founders to spend the time needed to learn to code, and I’m not talking about WordPress or simple HTML and CSS, but an actual application framework such as Ionic, Ruby or countless others that will yield a usable web or mobile application. Even if it’s just building a minimum viable product, it’s difficult to spend hours of your day, oftentimes after already working eight hours at a full-time job that pays the bills, to learn to code. There are a lucky few who have the time and money to attend schools like Nashville Software School or The Iron Yard for months on end, but that’s simply not realistic for most. For most, it’s spending time on sites like Codecademy or Code.org trying to pick up some knowledge, which could take months if not years to master enough to fully build what you need, if you were electing to build on your own.

At the end of the day founders should ask themselves why they should learn to code. If the answer is to build your MVP inexpensively and quickly, that’s likely not a correct assumption. The reason a founder should learn to code is actually something quite different. It’s really to know enough that you don’t get screwed by the freelancers or developers you hire to build your product. At Launchpeer at least half of our clients come to us with an existing, often horrible, code base, with the founder or team having worked with freelancers in the past, writing code in a silo with little checks on the work they were performing. Best-case scenario is the code actually works, but is buggy; worst-case scenario the team gets something that doesn’t work at all, all while they were billed some hourly rate that ended up being for nothing. The reasons for this are often the same: the founder or team didn’t know enough about code to provide meaningful assistance in terms of application requirements, didn’t know enough about code to know what items should be worked on first and for how many hours, and didn’t know the best framework for their situation to begin with. This leaves the founder at the whim of the freelancer, who doesn’t have near as much invested in the business venture as the founder.

The reason a founder should learn to code is actually something quite different. It’s really to know enough that you don’t get screwed by the freelancers or developers you hire to build your product.

In short, a founder should definitely learn how to code. Not necessarily enough to build a full application, but enough to know how long some features will take to build over others. Enough to know that their application should be a native app instead of a hybrid app because of the features being built. Enough that when their freelancer or development team is running into problems, the founder understands, at least at a high level, what the issue is and can provide assistance or prioritize certain items over others.

If you’re a founder trying to learn how to code, and you have the time to attend a code school, then definitely do it. Our agency has hired developers out of The Iron Yard and other schools, and the training they provide is definitely enough to build an MVP. But, if you’re like most entrepreneurs and you’re busy working a full-time gig, hustling part-time to build your startup, then elect for something like Udemy, Pluralsight or Codecademy if you’re OK with self-guided modules that can teach you the basics. If you’re looking for something a little more intense with the help of a mentor try the online programs at Bloc or Thinkful, both fairly costly but come with a mentor who you can meet with regularly.

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