This summer, 62 teens from across Denver took a dive into web development with the help of local developers and the library at a DevCamp. What they made was pretty amazing.
DevCamp is a free web development boot camp for teens ages 12-19, offered by Denver Public Library's ideaLAB with generous support from a lot of community partners (more on that in a second). Over the course of a week, teens have the opportunity to learn the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript while working side-by-side with professionals in the field. The goal isn't necessarily to create front-end developers in a week - though they learn core coding skills and build some amazing sites - but to give them enough of a taste of what it's like to work as a web development professional (collaboration, quick iteration and problem-solving) to spark an interest that will grow into a career. And it looks like that's what happened: after DevCamp, 88% of the participants said they could see themselves working as a web developer in the future, 92% wanted to learn more about web development, and 100% agreed with the statement "coding is fun."
Besides that, the teens also learned some solid technical skills, which you can see in their websites. Working in teams of 3-5, each team paired with a professional mentor, the teens were asked to identify a problem facing their community and to create a website that would help solve that problem. From dropout prevention to encouraging teens to volunteer to a platform to improve communication between students and teachers at schools, each group came up with a unique solution and site - especially when you consider they had about 10 hours to take it from plan to implementation! All of the sites are viewable from our wrapup page, so please check them out. I think you'll find them pretty inspiring. The same page also has photos and a full thank you list.
This year we held three full camps and one mini camp at Central, Hadley, and Montbello branches, and none of them would have been possible without our amazing mentors. Thank you so much for the generous donation of their time and skills. If you see one of these people on the street, give them a gigantic high five:
- Mackenzie Clarkson, Freelance Designer/Developer
- Michaella Dirkes, Freelance Designer/Developer (twitter)
- Jake Gibbons, Placeable
- Liz Henderson, Cirro
- Sadie Honey, Agile Coach/Web Developer
- Louis Kaufman, Freelance Designer/Developer
- Michael Lockwitz, Influence Technologies
- Tyler Merry, Universal Mind
- Rufus Miller, Denver Public Schools
- Vui Nguyen, infoGuide Apps
- Spencer Williams
Other people volunteered their time to talk to the teens about the tech industry or served as a judge during our showcases. They also deserve a high five:
- Trish Ellis, Executive Recruiter, Talent Lattice
- Brian Gryth, Product Manager, Accela, Inc.
- Liz Henderson, Cirro
- Vui Nguyen, infoGuide Apps
- Eric Starling and Tyler Merry, Universal Mind
- Frank Daidone, CTO, City and County of Denver
- Trish Ellis, Talent Lattice
- Chris Holder, Freelance Designer/Developer
- Laurie Kubitz-Maness, Human Experience Designer and Evangelist, Denver Public Library
- Angela Sigg, Content Developer, Denver Public Library
- Reuben Unruh, Web Developer, Denver Public Library
We were also extremely lucky to have some organizational partners that helped recruit mentors and students or donated resources:
- Dell, for donating prizes.
- Denver Public Schools, for recruiting DevCamp participants from their Career and Technology Pathways program.
- Galvanize, for hosting a fantastic tour and reaching out for mentors.
- Marczyk's Fine Foods, for donating snacks for our final party.
- Talent Lattice, AIGA Colorado, and SeedPaths, for reaching out to their networks and helping find volunteer mentors.
We're planning on holding DevCamps again next year - if you'd like to find out about them as soon as we schedule them, be sure to subscribe to the ideaLAB newsletter, sent out monthly. If you're a local business or developer, and you'd like to find out how to get involved in DevCamp, email us at ctc@denverlibrary.org. We're hoping to add more locations and a higher-level camp - are there other tech-related camps you'd like to see us offer? Should we do a DevCamp for adults?