I know an awesome Node developer here in Baltimore with no prior experience, who had gone to a bootcamp for six months, and who was offered an intermediate-level position. Talking with her I felt like she was more of a colleague than a brand-new dev.
Do her initials happen to be AK, from Nashville? If so, I know exactly who you are talking about. She used to come to a meetup that I organize for teaching beginners Ruby on Rails before she moved to Baltimore. She's fantastic.
Also, if we are talking about the same person, I will say that the quality of people coming out of the program that she attended is really high. One of my co-organizers is also a graduate, has a little over one year of real experience now, and he is way more knowledgeable than I would expect of someone of similar experience. I had another graduate working for me for a few months, and he was able to hit the ground running.
Nashville Software School instructor here. AK was definitely green coming in, but was one of the hardest working people I have seen come through the program. She networked, asked questions, extended herself with every project, and ultimately took ownership and made the most of every opportunity she had during her time here.
Takeaway: Bootcamps can only do so much. What you do while your there is what makes the difference.
I had the same thought about somehow using AI to make this completely automatic and increase the quality of the story. Turk does have the ability to allow workers to upload files so producing binary data like images or videos is definitely possible.
As for the cost, I was following ProPublica's advice. Apparently workers assume that less expensive jobs can be done more quickly, and if you make them too expensive the process can actually take longer:
who's trying to rationalize it? There's not much I can do about it; it's still an awesome place to live. Good luck buying a house in a nice part of Boston or NYC as a working-class or middle-class person. Meanwhile I'm hacking code, running a startup, and I live in a super nice house in a walkable neighborhood that's very different than the one narrow slice you saw in that show.
I am criticizing as only a family member can (or should.) I grew-up outside Baltimore and lived in the city for 10 years in Federal Hill, Canton, and Homeland.
My wife and I decided we wanted to raise our family in Boston and when we were looking for a place in 2004 I was shocked to find out there were only 39 murders in Boston in 2003.
The status quo in Baltimore is not acceptable and is not what is tolerated in other cities.
However, I will be applying and I would love to spend 3 months back in Baltimore.
We haven't locked down the space yet but are hoping for a spot in Fells Point. I actually also live in Charles Village, let's meet up for coffee sometime! (mike@subelsky.com)
you should definitely apply as a team. We would love to back a company targeting Russia! It's a global economy, right? Also there's a large Russian population in Baltimore FWIW
just a splash page for now, designed by Mark Armbruster. The site is http://thestartupcity.com (the guy who owns startupcity.com wants a lot of $$$ for it)
glad to hear it! But this is just one small facet of the tech scene in Baltimore...Please check out my response to kovar for a list of other resources you should check out.
What is the difference between this and something like ETC on Boston St? They have The Hive which is a cheap place for startups to go (do they lack funding?).
The ETC is great but does not provide funding, and you have to pay rent for the office space (though the leases are on startup-friendly terms, graduated rates, etc). The ETC will actually be providing their services (consulting, introductions, etc) to our portfolio
I actually don't mind The Wire reputation, because I loved that show so much. Lest anyone think I don't have a sense of humor about it, here's a tour I wrote up for seeing all the sites from the show, for people coming to RailsConf:
I don't want us to be a city that tries to be something it's not. We shouldn't even try to replicate what you have out there, but, I think it's a very creative place where it is possible to do great things with technology, especially if you want to avoid any possible "echo chamber" effects, and especially if you want to bootstrap or do things your own way.
