No matter where your niche is within the startup world, I guarantee you have a use for the Raspberry Pi—that fancy little $35 computer board everybody and their robot dog is talking about these days. Your application may be as simple as turning an old TV into an arcade machine for the break room or as complicated as tracking the energy use of every electronic device at your office. Maybe that application is a marketable product you want to develop. Maybe it’s just automating some time-consuming task that otherwise zaps your productivity. Whatever the case, I’m determined to show you that you need the Raspberry Pi in your life.

If you ever feel that fear or anxiety begin to rise, never forget there is an army of nerds like myself who want you to succeed and provide the tools and assistance in an open manner. Grab a Raspberry Pi kit and get started.

Among all the cool stuff we could do with the Raspberry Pi, I’ve decided to start with a project that is centered on you. Technically, it’s centered on me, but plenty of this should translate to your own work life. Your work environment most certainly affects your ability to operate, so let’s create a “Connected Office” to give us some critical information about our work environment and add some “smart” functionality to make our lives easier. That is to say, let’s make a Raspberry Pi-based system that measures some key environmental properties in our office, displays those values in a platform-independent manner, and reacts to our needs without a whole lot of effort. That’s a very highfalutin’ way of saying we want occupancy and environmental sensors but we don’t want to pay a lot of money for it.

The Connected Office

Below is a diagram of my objective for this connected office build that has a Raspberry Pi Zero (any Raspberry Pi will work, but this one is adorable), a door sensor, environmental sensors, Bluetooth and plenty of room to grow. Early on, this type of diagram likely has little meaning to you (aside from some inevitable anxiety) but I’d like to show how we can go from a basic problem statement to this complex electronic device. Hold on tight, y’all.

That’s quite a lot to throw at you, I know, but I want to start with the end-goal in mind and show you all how we can dissect this into manageable chunks. We begin with the simplest portion of the connected office system—the door sensor. This is a simple switch of sorts mounted to a door frame that controls the flow of electricity through the circuit based on the presence of a magnet that’s mounted to the door itself. In short, I want a little bit of current flowing through the switch whenever the door is closed and none when the door is open.

This device that’s either OFF or ON (i.e., digital) is the simplest of Inputs/Outputs we can deal with for the Raspberry Pi. We simply need to connect one end of the switch to one of our General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) pins on the Pi. I’ve chosen GPIO #17, but you can choose any of the available digital GPIO pins.

To help sort through this rat’s nest of wires in the connected office prototype, let’s look at the door sensor in isolation. Here’s a schematic that shows the available electrical connections on the Raspberry Pi and how the door switch is connected. I want the Raspberry Pi’s 3.3 V to flow to GPIO #17 when the switch is closed and I want GPIO #17 to be grounded when the switch is open.  I’ve added a resistor between GPIO #17 and ground for that purpose. (Note the resistor needs to be more resistive than the switch or else it’s the path of least resistance.) Without grounding that pin, that is said to be “floating” and can return nonsensical data as it’ll flip between 1s and 0s.

Now that I’ve wired just this one part of the connected office system together, we’re ready to interface with the device. I’ll leave the task of setting up the Raspian operating system and prerequisite packages on the Raspberry Pi for you; there are numerous tutorials available through the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Adafruit that can guide you through the setup. I’ll be skipping a lot of the basic software installation portions here and focus on the end results.

Presuming you have a fresh installation of Raspian (or preferred operating system) and this basic circuit constructed, you’re ready to connect that sensor to the world. But now you’ve hit the dreaded Omnivore’s Dilemma… You have seemingly innumerable ways of communicating with that sensor, so which should you choose? Well…whatever works for you. Don’t let me tell you how to do it the best way for you. Chances are if you’re into startups, you’re probably inclined towards JavaScript and Ruby on Rails given the rapid prototyping afforded by those languages, but you could certainly use Python, C/C++, etc. to reach the same basic objective.

I want to show you a few different ways of connecting this door sensor to the Internet of Things, so let’s walk through it the hard way and some much easier ways.

The Hard Way: Linux Command Line Interface

Like it or not, you’ll need to get comfortable with the command line interface (CLI) in Linux if you’re interested in the Raspberry Pi. With the coming era of Windows on the Raspberry Pi, I see a general shift towards graphical interface, but never forget the practicality of the command line. Nowadays, we need this simple user interface to at least install the fancy applications and functionality we desire from the RasPi. Don’t think of it like going back to 1990s-era DOS; think of it as an exceptionally practical means of computer interfacing that just happens to look like 1990s-era DOS…

Presuming you have the Pi booted up and this circuit constructed, let’s read the state of that sensor via the command line interface. You’ll likely not use this much (if ever) but it’s useful to see it at least once; it helps put things into perspective at least.

Navigate to /sys/class/gpio

cd /sys/class/gpio

List the folder contents with:

ls

You may or may not see entries of the form gpio##. You will see them if they are active in this device tree. To do so, try:

 echo 17 > export

 Another ls and you should now see gpio17. Change the directory to gpio17 with:

cd gpio17

One more ls and we now see the properties of gpio17. We now want to issue the following command:

echo in > direction

This sets the direction to input. We can read the state of gpio17 by simply reading value with the cat command:

cat value

Try opening the door switch and re-run cat value. (Note it helps to simply press the up key to load the prior command. Another way is to issue the “bang bang” command: !! ) Your screen should look something like the following but will most likely be pi@raspberrypi as I named my Pi Zero nihil:

There you have it.  A door sensor reader that’s not terribly useful at all unless you’re stuck in 1995. We could create a simple script that repeats the process of reading gpio17 and logging that value to the console at a set interval. Better than the manual mode, but I want to be able to see a plot of this over time on any device I choose.

I think we can all agree that it’s time to look at some easier ways of interfacing with this door sensor.

With modern-day webapps, you’ll find seemingly innumerable ways to code for the same basic objective. I have a C/C++ background but am interested in mastering JavaScript. I’ve seen a lot of neat JavaScript apps these days and want to use this project as an exercise in JS. If you feel more comfortable using another language, then by all means, go for it. The core of this Internet of Things application here is making HTTP POST and GET commands, so one can do any number of nifty tricks to accomplish that. My end goal is a full stackwebapp connected to a number of microcontrollers, microprocessors, desktops and my cellphone; all roads then lead to NodeJS.

The Easy Way: Adafruit.IO

Next we need to choose an Internet of Things platform. You’ll find many out there, each with their own usefulness, but I’ll pick adafruit.io for this application. We can jump ship later if we so choose, but for now let’s get acquitted with connecting the Raspberry Pi to adafruit.io via JavaScript. Thankfully Adafruit.com was so nice as to create a tutorial for a simpleNodeJS adafruit.io app. This makes the barrier for entry incredibly low. It’s well documented with easy to understand commentary.

Here’s an example of an Adafruit.io Dashboard that contains both gauges and timeplots of sensor data. I show a day in the life of my office told from the temperature & humidity sensor we will be exploring in a later part of the connected office project. Without a whole lot of effort, I walked through the basic adafruit.io tutorials and had myself this fancy dashboard ready within an afternoon.

This is all great for data logging, but the Internet of Things is ideally more than just data logging; there should be an element of reactivity or context-dependent action. Practically, I don’t care what the specific temperature is down to the hundredth decimal place. I do however care if that temperature goes outside of a certain range of temperatures. With this adafruit.io tool plus If This Then That, we’ll get just what we need to suit this IOT application to our everyday lives.

If you’re working along with this tutorial, now’s the time to try out the adafruit.io tutorials for Raspberry Pi: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-io-basics-digital-input/overview. For part 1 of this Connected Office build, I’ll simply adapt the canonical digital input application for a magnetic door sensor but I’d like some reactivity; if the door is opened or closed, I want a push notification on my phone. We already have our switch circuit wired and by now should note that’s essentially the same as the button circuit in the adafruit.io tutorial. The application we’ll be using on our Pi is as follows.

If you’ve worked though the digital_in.js example from adafruit, then you’ll see my code here is barely different. I don’t really need new functionality at the moment, so I’ve changed the feed name to ‘door’ and added a snarky message to the console log. The original program connected a toggle button to a power strip, but the same underlying functionality is identical. We can add more sensors simply by adding more GpioStream.readable() commands and piping that data to additional adafruit.io feeds.

The whole JavaScript program here is fairly understandable even without much expertise in the language. Libraries such as those we see in the require(…) commands are useful tools that we can implement easily and let them do all the heavy lifting. (Want to try doing this from the command line interface? My thoughts exactly.)

We begin by using the gpio-stream package that does all the heavy lifting for reading GPIO #17 and the adafruit-io package that takes care of communicating with adafruit.io. (Make sure you put your own Adafruit IO key and username in the program.) The core functionality we want is the state of the door sensor to be written to the ‘door’ feed on adafruit.io every time the state of GPIO #17 changes.  All of this is handled by the door.pipe(aio.feeds(‘door’)) function. This starts the “pipe” that looks for changes on door (note we set that to GPIO #17 in the first command); if a change occurs, this will immediately update the ‘door’ feed with that new value.

Give this a test while the program is running and you’ll see that value updated on your adafruit.io feed every time the door is open. If you set up a dashboard with a gauge and time-plot of the door sensor feed, you should see something like the following:

Adafruit.io has a few basic type of triggers: reactive and scheduled. With reactive triggers, you can send an email, issue a webhook, or modify the value of another adafruit.io feed. Not a whole lot going on in the responsiveness realm however they are integrated with ifttt.com—perhaps one of the coolest IOT apps I’ve encountered so far. If This Then Thatconnects a vast array of devices and webapps to each other. Want to get a text message every time a human goes into space? ifttt.com can do it. Want to set your thermostat to 68 degrees every time someone mentions you on Twitter? ifttt.com can do it.

Here I’ll use ifttt.com to connect this door sensor value on adafruit.io to the IF Notification channel so I can receive notifications on my cellphone. Although we can set this up to send notifications by SMS, I would rather avoid a heap of text messages so I’ll set up a push notification from the IF app for when the ‘door’ feed changes.

The ifttt.com process is an absolute breeze. Following the seven step process:

Create a new ifttt recipe and choose what “this” is.

We have an incredible number of channels we can connect to with ifttt.com, but here we’ll stick to the Adafruit channel.

Now we can see the types of interactions allowed by Adafruit. We want a trigger every time new data is posted to a feed, so choose “Any new data”.

Select the appropriate feed from the drop-down menu.

That completes the “this” part, so now we choose our “that” (the reaction to the trigger.)

Again, we find an incredible number of possibilities.  Let’s pick “IF Notification”

Not a whole lot of available actions with this channel, but all we need is a push notification.

Now we get to set the details of our notification. Sticking with the default will give us a notification that looks like “door is currently 1.” Or “door is currently 0.” That doesn’t exactly tell us opened or closed, but we’ll leave that complication for later.

And we’re done. Now that you’ve got that recipe running you just need to run our JavaScript application from earlier to pipe the sensor values to adafruit.io.

There you have it. If you’ve followed along, you’ve gotten a nice exposure to the wide range of capabilities the Raspberry Pi possesses and see how we can leverage additional resources to make a “useful” Internet of Things application.

This method, however, is lacking a critical element of convenience. I’ll get a notification every time my office door is opened or closed. I only really care about logging the data in the background and getting a notice if the door is left open while I’m not around.  For that, we’ll need to start down a new path. Next time, I’ll introduce you to a neat IOT platform that makes use of a convenient graphical programming language and is suited for a wide variety of applications.

Wrap-up

This has covered quite a lot in a short span so I’ll leave this part of the connected office build there. Hopefully I didn’t scare you away from the Raspberry Pi; it’s OK, we’ll get through this together. In Part 2, we’ll add some extra intelligence to this office IOT project with Structure and use the knowledge gained in this exercise to connect more sophisticated sensors such as temperature/humidity modules and light meters. Maybe a door sensor is something you want, but I’m sure you can find some use for even this simplest of Internet of Things applications in your professional and personal life.

Tweet your project pictures, questions and comments to @RossMakes. If you’re an experienced Raspberry Pi user, how do you use this in your professional life?

The post Pi Day Geek Out: Ross Makes the Connected Office 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.

Trying to kickstart your tech startup can be difficult, especially when your budget is close to zero. Staying lean is easier to do now than ever before, but maintaining a smooth-running startup can be difficult with tons of tools are out there that run from $15 to $30 or more per month, with that cost adding up quickly. Because my company has been working with startups for so long we’ve been able to find and utilize some incredible tools, not only for our agency but also for our clients whose budgets are trying to go toward their product or payroll and not toward software costs. Below are some incredible tools, all free, that can help any startup run.

Uber Conference: Ever tried to use Skype or GoToMeeting for conference calls or screen shares? For us, it was less than reliable. Then we heard about Uber Conference, a free online tool that gives you a dedicated URL for your startup along with a dedicated conference line that you can use anytime. With the free tool you can collaborate with up to 10 people, sharing screens and talking on your conference line, and it also has an in-app chat so you can share files and notes with those on the call.

Trello: Whether you’re managing complicated workflows or just need a place to collaborate on product requirements, Trello is lightweight enough to do it all. With the Kanban-style boards it’ll be easy for you and your team members to use without being stuck in the monotony of detail that some other tools have. What’s more, Trello allows you to collaborate with not only your team members but also outsiders who you can give read-only access to.

Slack: If you don’t know Slack by now you’re wrong. The company is growing at a self-reported rate of $1 million a week in revenue, and there’s a good reason why. Slack is an incredible tool for team communications, allowing you to add in as many team members as you like, create private and public channels to communicate with different team members on various topics, and also upload and comment on files when needed. The company is even looking to add screen sharing and conference calls to its list of features, which should scare a lot of competitors. If you want a taste of Slack, go check out Nashville’s own NashDev Slack Channel, a community of people in Nashville interested in the tech community. Nashville’s not the only city to have such a channel; Charleston, Atlanta and Huntsville along with many others are using the tools to connect startups, entrepreneurs and business people in their city in a way that’s never been done before.

Wave Accounting: When our company was looking for an accounting solution, we figured we’d have to shell out $30 to $50 per month or more to find a tool or service to do bookkeeping. Then we found Wave. Wave is a free, lightweight accounting tool that connects to your bank account and does the heavy lifting for you. All you have to do is login and assign items to categories like travel expenses, sales, payroll and more while Wave keeps detailed reports for you. The premium plans even allow you to manage payroll at a really reasonable rate. Definitely recommended, and your accountant will love you for it.

Zapier: Ever wish you could automate some parts of your business? Zapier will let you do it. Zapier has worked for years connecting different software tools for you. For example, we’ve used it to send automated emails to clients when an item in Trello gets marked as complete. We’ve also automated our sales process, so when a client signs a proposal they’re automatically sent an invoice. Zapier can save you hours a week if not more, time you could be spending building your startup.

Invision: Creating good wireframes and mockups is incredibly important for most tech startups. Without them your developers are left hoping the front end reflects your wishes. Invision is a great tool you can use to create clickable mockups that mimic your product. It lets you add actions to various elements of the mockup, such as ‘On Click’ send the mockup to a new screen. You are also able to collaborate with team members and outside people within the tool with a unique share link, at which the collaborators can comment on various elements of the mockup.  

Canva: Creating social media images, blog graphics and infographics used to be a pain for us. We were using an Adobe Illustrator license that’s not cheap. Then we found Canva and it’s like our whole world changed! Canva is a free tool that lets you create any sort of graphic you can think of. It has a ton of predefined templates for you to use that are all incredible, and you can even upload your own images to use. The templates are also cut at predefined sizes so no more worrying about ensuring the images you create are appropriates sizes for your needs.  This tool also saves us hours a week in design work that we’d rather be spending on our clients.

Calendly: Appointment scheduling has never been easier than with Calendly. Whenever we need to schedule a call with a new prospect, partner or client we send them a link to our business’s Calendly page where they can choose a time that works well for them. The best part is that it syncs up with your calendar so people can only schedule appointments at times you’re available. The only downside to it is that you have to have a Gmail or Outlook account to connect your calendar.

Typeform: Google Forms are great but they’re also pretty ugly most of the time. Typeform is a beautiful form-building tool. It has a ton of predefined fields such as checkboxes, dropdowns and numbers so users enter only the information you’re trying to capture. It also can send an automated email to the people who fill out the form which you can customize to fit your needs. It’s a great way to capture whatever information you need. If you want an example of one go check out our old Project Calculator.

Hubstaff: OK, this one’s not free, but it’s worth it. Paying team members, especially hourly staff, is not easy.  We used to do this manually, having members track time in our project management tool, then manually adding numbers up and paying them with a check. That sucked.  Hubstaff lets you add team members, set their hourly rate and then pay them through the tool. The best thing about it is that it lets you add projects to which team members can track their time against. Your team can just click a ‘Play’ button and it’ll track the hours they’re working. If you want to get really fancy it also has a feature that lets you record the screens of your team members while they’re tracking time, a good way to ensure your team is working the hours they say if that’s your cup of tea.

The post Awesome (and Free) Tools for Startups appeared first on Startup Southerner.

The 2016 CED Life Sciences Venture Conference took place this week in Raleigh. Here’s what happened, according to Jim Roberts, one of the most dedicated supporters of North Carolina’s entrepreneurial ecosystem we know.

After 15 years of going to the CED Life Sciences Venture Conference, these events begin to feel like a class reunion. While other people may despise networking, it is comforting to me. It’s hard for me to take 10 steps at this big event without running into people who kid me about my hair loss or recent weight gain. Wait, did I say this was comforting?

More than refreshing your professional network of industry contacts, this annual conference is also a bit of a March Madness for the startups that are selected to give an investor pitch in front of 1,000 attendees. Catching the attention of the right contact could just lead to the finding and hiring of the right CEO.

I had a certain amount of pride this year in a medical devices startup called Surgilum from Wilmington, North Carolina, that I have been mentoring for a few years now. Since I do not have a direct equity or board relationship with these startups, this is kind of like watching your nephew mature from Tee Ball to getting a major league tryout.

See, the rest of North Carolina thinks of Wilmington on Friday, Saturday and Sunday as a coastal weekend tourism destination. Even people from Wilmington who just automatically signed up for this annual conference did not know Surgilum was presenting. There was also a second startup in the demo room with a cofounder from Wilmington that I have been mentoring. Imagine if these people took the time to give these startups some mentoring and coaching assistance BEFORE the event. Surgilum did a great job during their quick six minutes in the spotlight and met some great new contacts to potentially help grow their business.

There are legends of the biotech/pharma/medical device industries who are just walking around, smiling and shaking hands at this event. One of those was Monica Doss, whom I refer to as the queen of the startup ecosystem in North Carolina. She was not the founder of CED, but she did serve as executive director for more than 20 years and is responsible for growing the CED from an idea with wobbly legs to the largest entrepreneur support organization in the world. She mentors us all who are crazy enough to work with cash poor startups. She calls me one of her favorite “firebrands.” I am not an English major so I had to look up what that meant.

Another person I saw shaking hands and shook my hand was the godfather of the life sciences industry, the great Charles Hamner, who was the first executive director of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. One of the nicest men in the history of the universe. Mr. Hamner has received the award that I hope to achieve one day, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine.

The highlights of the second day of the conference were pretty monumental.

1. I got to meet Cindy Whitehead, the founder of Sprout Pharmaceuticals, often mislabeled as the Female Viagra. Of course, this is not the same thing as Viagra. The pill is meant to increase desire to have sex and not sexual performance. Sprout is an incredible story. Sprout is a young company and had 36 employees but was acquired for $1 billion quickly after they received FDA approval. Many of us have seen the story on CBS This Morning. She has now started the Pink Ceiling Foundation to help women advance in the Life Sciences industry.
2. Wilmington got another moment in the spotlight as the great Fred Eshelman was given the Life Science Leadership Award. Eshelman is the founder of PPD, a massive clinical research organization with headquarters in Wilmington. Eshelman was also involved in a company called Furiex, which had a HUGE $1 billion plus exit in a short period of time. And he is also the founder of Eshelman Ventures, a life sciences venture fund. He has also given $135 million to the UNC Chapel Hill Pharmacy School.
3. And then there was a VERY interesting ending to the conference when Dr. Robert Lefkowitz discussed his journey to winning the Nobel Prize in his speech, “A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Nobel Prize.” He gave a real step-by-step process in slideshow fashion about the light-hearted needling of his mother to always do better. While the presentation made the audience laugh, Dr. Lefkowitz actually had a graph of the correlation of the amount of chocolate eaten in each country to the number of Nobel prizes awarded to each of those countries. And that is how he justified to his wife at the age of 67 that he should be eating much more dark chocolate.

The post Musings From the South’s Largest Biotech Cocktail Party appeared first on Startup Southerner.

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.

For Nicole Ahima, dance has always been a passion. And as artistic director of Music City Dance Alliance, she’s been developing the vision and associated programs that help grow a new generation of dancers.

Now, she is ready to do another sort of development—software. In January, Ahima was among the twelve graduates of Nashville Software School’s inaugural evening cohort.  

“It’s definitely been rewarding. It was scary. It was hard,” Ahima told Nashville podcaster Clark Buckner at the demo day on Jan. 13. “At the end of the day, I’m really excited for what the future holds after a year here.”

The capstone project she presented at the demo day incorporated both her passions. Built on HTML/CSS with a C# and .NET backend framework, her sign-in application for Dance World of Nashville allows the office to cut out its reliance on paper-based forms.

A 2010 graduate of Middle Tennessee State University with a major in psychology, she thought the hardest part of going through the year-long coding program was in relearning how to learn. “After not having to learn and study in so long and then coming in here and learning something completely from scratch, it’s definitely been an adjustment,” says Ahima, who realized her love for the “clean, simple, visual” work of front-end development.

And a career as a front-end developer is what she hopes to land soon. As she searches for opportunities in Nashville, she is already broadening her skill sets by enrolling in the NSS professional development course on UX and UI for digital product design.

Catch all interviews by Clark Buckner with all the newest graduates of Nashville Software School here.  

The post From Dancer to Coder: Meet Nicole Ahima 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.

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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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. 

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“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.

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