GitHub CodeConf 2016, 5 Jun 2017

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From YouTube: What happens when military veterans learn to code - CodeConf 2016

Description

Presented by David Molina

Learning to code is complicated. Between Googling your way and figuring it out on your own, military veterans now have a resource at the ready. Is it an open source project? Is it a community of military veterans learning to code? Is it a community of software developers that want to give back? A coding nonprofit? It's all of the above.

About CodeConf
CodeConf improves the software community by providing a forum for thought-provoking talks and forging social connections. The fourth installment of the CodeConf series took place in Hollywood in 2016. This year's event focused on systems engineering projects, practices, and programs in the open source community.

For more information on this year's CodeConf, go to:
https://codeconf.com/

A

Thank you chris, for the welcome. I want to thank brittany as well haley the code conf github team, um michelle of course backstage helping all the speakers uh get ready for this. um Thank you all. It's such an honor to be here before each and every one of you and I don't know how I could sort of speak. um You know, more importantly, to subjects than those that have already spoken before me all very, very important topics as.

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Ex-Army captain served from 2000 2013 I enlisted to serve my country a couple of reasons.

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Obviously, to get out of mount vernon I wanted to see the world I wanted to help out our country duty and of course, one reason, of course, is it's also a good way of life right: universal healthcare, a stable job, professional development and those are all things that ran true to me and in 2013 right before I got out, I could not use my gi bill to go to code school either flatiron, either starter league or in seattle code fellows, and so that led me sort of on a journey and a path that I want to share with you this afternoon.

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I want to share with you so the highlight of a problem that this will exemplify. What the problem is, how we and then, where we're going.

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Deployed to operation iraqi freedom and enduring freedom. A year later, I was already digging holes in the trenches.

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Transitioning out was really really difficult for me. I found it very difficult to socialize back into society.

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I turned to the va and I didn't even get accepted for any of my claims that I opened up and I had over 20 claims. I got none of them. There was no programs out there. That would help me transition there.

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Scholarship right now, for me, would mean everything that would allow me to go to school and pursue my dreams.

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Just take a lot of stress off of me and just make me focus more on on school.

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I'm looking forward to that first career because I know I have so much potential and you know I'm very smart, and I know that I just need that second chance.

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This is something that I really want, and I know I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna stop until I get it.

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Victor joined us in last year, he ended up going to a code school paying out of pocket which led us to create one of our programs in advocacy.

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We take our drive our mission from the va motto and really which drives it from president abraham lincoln, which in 1865 said before a country that was in the middle of a civil war, with malice toward none with charity.

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For all with firmness in the right, as god gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. This unifying task during the second inaugural led to reconciliation and reconstruction at the height of the civil war. We drive ours from that and we take our mission very seriously.

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Our mission is veteran founded and led. Operation code is on a mission to get active military citizen soldiers veterans and their families coding and building software to change the world. Just like victor, you ask how big is operation code, we're globally dispersed.

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We are missing the north, we're missing latin american africa, I'm certain over the next year, two years, we'll have a presence there as well.

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How is operation code in portland oregon I'll get to that so decentralized and a presence everywhere if they're, headquartered in portland oregon, we use open source. What are the numbers? We are 902 strong. These are veterans, who've joined operation code, like victor who said I'd like to use my new gi bill to go to code school, the short term three six month, programs uh to learn software development and accelerated manner.

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So I'm gonna be the highlight of this during this. During this talk, we represent all branches army navy air force. The marines the coast guard are not too far behind, as you saw in the numbers we have. The national guard and reserve represented as well.

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How many here real quick, have a grandfather, a family member or someone who served in the military or you have clothes, raise your hand, the majority, if no one has thanked you or your family for your service to country. Let me be the first on behalf operation code to thank you, the 1944 law, the gi bill, trained americans who returned just like your grandparents when they returned to the united states to train for that economy of that time.

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In 1944, many of them attended the henry ford plants and training institutes which got them a job at his plans that created them an opportunity for them not only to go to college, get a job but also buy a home. This was the gi bill of 1944 which, for all intents purposes, has not been updated to the current times of which we have been trained and educated and military veterans are being left behind. Currently 250 000 men and women annually due to sequestration, the majority don't have that opportunity exiting the services.

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This is a huge force. Huge neighbors family members are not given that opportunity.

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I want to share with you.

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Sort of our mission statement, video, which could probably explain it better than I could in just a few.

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Minutes hi, I'm david molina, former us army captain and founder and executive director of operation code in my last year of active duty. I applied to code school excited because I got in but then disappointed that I couldn't use my gi bill benefits to pay for tuition, room and board.

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A few months later, during my exit off active duty, I was frustrated to learn. There were no readily accessible software development, education, mentorship and job placement opportunities for those of us who had worn the uniform and wanted to transition a software careers.

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That's when I connected the dots and launched operation code.

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I was on a submarine the uss alabama. I was a machinist mate.

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Airborne cryptologic linguist that specialized in korean.

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I was stationed in germany at the american forces network as a broadcaster.

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Did counter drug ops in the caribbean and a couple deployments out to the persian gulf.

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Computer network cryptographic and switching systems technician activated.

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And deployed to operation iraqi freedom and enduring freedom.

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Now I'm pursuing a career in software development.

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Code schools are essentially forming around this need to create more talent in the software development industry.

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Students who are relatively inexperienced with programming would come in learn how to code for somewhere in the two to six month range and then get help finding jobs as software developers afterwards.

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Accreditation is incredibly helpful for protecting students and creating some oversight into what a curriculum is on the downside, anytime. You want to change something you have to go and ask permission to do it.

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The va, in particular has to keep up with the way the economy is working and helping veterans get into job roles and technical programs. That matter right now,.

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Inherently, there are bureaucratic organizations that don't have the agility, nor the focus to connect with people.

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The government moves slowly and I think that eventually they will come around to seeing that you know it's not just coding, but a lot of people's career training now is outside of you know, four-year universities and things like that.

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The army does a good job of preparing you in some ways, but they certainly didn't say here: here's a path you can take. You know, what's your interest getting out nobody's.

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Guiding you telling you okay, this is what you're gonna do next, it's up to you a lot of.

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People don't have a lot of money saved up. I know I didn't I I had my sea bag and I had another bag and that's all I had when I got out of the military. You can't maintain.

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A full-time job and go to a full-time code school. It is.

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Your full-time focus, since I already had a degree I didn't- want to go back and spend, however many years getting another degree in computer science. I wanted. I wanted something that would be more targeted.

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We're on a mission to create new career path, opportunities for military veterans in software development and coding.

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I think having a mentor is crucial to navigating your way through a career change. The.

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Students who have had their own mentors on the side have always done better than students without mentors having somebody that can advocate for you to these different companies to say, oh by the way he's a military vet and oh by the way he also knows coding, is, is.

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Huge there's no faster way really, in my opinion, to get into software.

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I definitely support operation code. I support operation code.

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So that people like myself veterans, can go to coney school.

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It's a great resource for returning vets who really need that extra leg up.

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Because it helps not only the individuals that it might provide scholarships for or mentorship, but it helps those people continue to give back to the community.

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Because it has the potential to help thousands of veterans transition and change their lives, we need your help.

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Operation code is an open source community. It's maintained by over a dozen contributors globally.

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The code is available online on github.

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I did something sorry there. It is good to go importantly with with what we use. How we use github is to create new repositories that I'll demonstrate as well we're on github.com forward slash operation code, and this is important, which leads to our first program. Software mentorship. We use slack, raise your hand if you view slack everybody good to go. We use slack as well and we have a couple different channels.

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I don't know if you guys can see that uh android angular, you guys see that nope the latest one, the veteran that just joined a few hours ago, hello, everyone, my name- is emmanuel. I served in the army from 2004 2010. I was a 92 golf, those guys in all white you may have seen every morning I currently live in both flint and ann arbor, michigan, I'm interested in both job and javascript. I have very little experience.

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I built websites for people as a wide as a side income in the army from 2005 2009 using html, our javascript channel uh maluvia said. Does anyone want to give me advice on my site domain? I have some jquery in the project boxes. That's not working properly have mercy on a newbie. No then jumps in. He says I need you to move your mouse over and mouse out event handlers and he lists out the code.

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So instead do this.

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We have a ruby channel as well. Where we talk about a raise, jason and nell are volunteers.

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At operation code we get mentors from across the globe from a wide range of tech industries, both fortune 500 startups. We go on a range of skill, sets android c sharp, go html ruby on rails. Python.

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Mentoring is quite easy. You can email us your interests at contact operationcode.org, at which point our director of the software mentorship program, will reach out to you inquire more about your background. You'll be invited to our slack, which is private and you'll, introduce yourself to folks just like emmanuel who want to learn java and javascript.

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As we shared earlier, the scholarships piece is a major component now as a 501c3 nonprofit, to raise funds to support not just tuition room and board, because the gi bill is not accessible case. An example randy uh was unemployed, went to epicotus graduated pakotis in portland, he's currently a software developer at g5. He attended ruby on ailes and bend oregon, which posed it increased his networking capacity, which is really what this is about.

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Your peers, the networking, the connections and learning at signal conference last year, nick mike josh, myself, josh, is actually on our board of directors. We all attended signal to twilio support. We depend on that type of support, including githubs, which is why four veterans are here from operation code. Our employer services is to attack this from another angle as a full-fledged program to support during job placement programs for short term with software companies deploy as a web apprenticeship.

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As we found early last last year, late last fall is our veterans were graduating code school couldn't get jobs, so we needed to shorten the junior time gap and we do that to deploy that pilot. That example led to creating deploy, and now we take on real world clients that first pilot was with an air force, massive sergeant, who had no software coding experience that we built an e-commerce application from so this is not just about hiring deploy, but we then employ military veterans.

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They will build the application, they shorten the jury, time gap and then profits a drive right back into the nonprofit and now, of course, advocacy as we can see. The va is slow to move. So we have on a two-prong approach.

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One is on the ground supporting code, school accreditation at the state level and at the federal level, the va, as well as as well as doing advocacy at the federal level uh in new york and dc, to update that 1944 law, because part of advocacy is also ensuring that the law is enabled veterans today, just like they did in 1944 for our grandparents and our family members to be able to enjoy what we're doing today, how you can help you can join as a software mentor.

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You can spread the word to more military veterans about what we do yesterday. At the talk of the workshop, it was discussed that we're building relationship apps and things that may not they matter somehow to venture capitalist and money. Here we are with a homeless population problem, an unemployment problem and real things that matter to society and that equalize, the playing field for everyone help us find scholarship sponsors volunteer to help teach beginners just like emmanuel, and you can also contribute on github.

A

I want to thank you very much for the opportunity before you. You can reach me there and we're there at operationcode.org. Thank you very much.