#tiyaustin

[awrecksa]

Two steps forward, one step back

It’s still progress, I suppose.

Thunderstorms have been slamming themselves into our fair burg, and it seems to be an appropriate reflection of the inside of my head.

This Memorial Day, I’d rather be on a boat drinking beer and eating hot dogs and listening to bands play... I guess a leaky classroom with a bag of Cheetos is cool, too.

[tiyaustin]

We'll see you at ATX Sass!

This post was written by Sam Kapila, our Web Design Instructor at The Iron Yard in Austin. View her profile on our site or follow her on Twitter.

Last week at the Iron Yard Austin campus we kicked off classes in Front End Engineering and Ruby on Rails. And with Web Design starting at the end of January, we’ll have a full house of designers and developers learning and working together. Students in all three classes will learn about many industry-standard tools and processes including one of our favorites, Sass. Students in all three of our Austin courses and at other campuses are learning about Sass, a pre-processor for CSS that supercharges code,  saves designers and developers time, and allows those of us to value super clean code to feel things well organized and structured.

Something else we love? Austin’s booming meet-up scene. Lucky for us, we can have it all with Austin’s very own Sass meet-up, ATXSass. ATXSass is a great Sass- and CSS-specific meet-ups and one of Austin’s newest tech groups. Organizers Ian, Una, and Elyse have been organizing monthly events with speakers who use Sass in their project workflow since last summer. Since we’re huge fans of Sass at TIY, we sponsored the first meet-up along with other awesome sponsors! It was a great event and it was so cool to see seasoned Sassy folks and people interested in learning work through demos and code on screen and share pizza and enjoy a beer or two! We enjoyed it so much that we’re ecstatic to announce that we’re back for 2015 as annual sponsors!

The first meet-up of the new year is on January 22nd at Capital Factory with Paravel Inc’s very own Dave Rupert. Dave Rupert will be sharing his experience and tips with Responsive Web Design (RWD) page bloat and how to improve site speed and performance on responsive sites. Students and staff at the Iron Yard are excited to attend and learn more about how RWD has evolved into more than just aesthetics but consider the users of the sites and apps we make. You can register here and come find us. We’ll be the ones with a whole bunch of TIY stickers!

[tiyaustin]

An Introduction to Your Campus Director

By Katlyn Whittenburg, Campus Director

Hi Austin!

Let me introduce myself. I’m Katlyn, the Campus Director at The Iron Yard in Austin. I’m new in town. Moved here about a month ago from Chattanooga, TN with my two daughters to start this new adventure with The Iron Yard. It’s been an insane few months since I found out I would be working for TIY in Austin. I didn’t even have a chance to visit before the big move, so I was quite worried that I would get here and hate it. I decided to risk it, though, because in the wise words of someone wise, “You gotta risk it to get the biscuit.” Apparently, biscuits are very valuable. So, I moved here, and thus far, I feel like Austin has not disappointed in the biscuit department. Or in the taco department. Or in the coffee department. Or in the BBQ department. Basically, I’m saying Austin has amazing food. So many calories have happened since I arrived in town. It doesn’t just have amazing food, though. It has amazing people. I expected that “big city” attitude. I expected people to be too busy and too important and too hip to be friendly. That is just not true, though. People are busy and important and hip, AND they are friendly. Austin is anomaly among cities. So thank you, Austin, for showing me such a warm welcome!

Before Austin and this job, I was actually a student of The Iron Yard Front End Engineering program, myself, in Atlanta, GA so I have a pretty unique perspective on this whole Iron Yard thing. I know what it’s like to be a student trying something completely new, taking that risk of devoting 3 months of your life to learn an entirely new skill, and being scare sh**less that it won’t take, and it will have been all for naught. I also know what it’s like to build an app. Like… a real working app. That works. A whole app! (Okay… you probably get the point.) I went from thinking that the internet used actual magic to show me all those fancy websites and apps to being able wield the power of the internet, myself, and build something from scratch. I basically control the internet now. (Ok… not quite. But it feels like it sometimes.)

Gaining that skill did not come easily. No part of the process is actual magic. It’s really just a lot of really freakin’ hard work. The Iron Yard doesn’t call it an “intensive” program ironically. It gets intense. After that first day, I was terrified. I already felt terribly behind and overwhelmed. Now, I would say not everyone felt quite as behind as I did so immediately. Everyone in these courses comes from a different background. You’ll have students like me who know nothing about the interwebbernet except for how to Google things; You’ll have students who have been developing for years but maybe want to learn a new language, and you’ll have students of all sorts in between. It’s an odd and interesting mix, and after a week or so of class, I began realizing how beneficial this broad spectrum of skills and backgrounds and personalities is.

Your class is your team. They are your lifeline. They are your family. For those three months, you forget about your ego (if you’re smart) and you ask for help A LOT and you help others A LOT, and this bonds you, and this teaches you. The people of The Iron Yard are an essential part of the process of learning to code. And not just your fellow classmates. Your instructor and your Campus Director and the amazing guest lecturers you get to meet. This group of people gives a shiz. In fact, they give several shizzes. It’s this passion and empathy and collaboration that made me love The Iron Yard, and is what made me want to work for them. Lucky for me, the feeling was mutual, and here I am. Now I get to help shape The Iron Yard experience for new students, I feel very grateful for that. I want all the students to love The Iron Yard as much as I do. I want all the students find this experience to be life-changing. I this to let you know that I actually do care. So please, reach out to me if you’re a student or thinking of becoming a student. It’s my job and my pleasure to help.

Well, I wanted this post to be an introduction to me and my job and why I do what I do. So I hope you got a sense of that. Aside from my job at The Iron Yard, I love writing, reading plays, drinking sugary frozen coffee drinks, dancing awkwardly, but with purpose, to Britney Spears, and taking care of my two sweet girls. Wanna chat about The Iron Yard or plays or choreograph a number to a Britney Spears hit? Email me: [email protected] . Until next post!

-Katlyn

[tiynews]

Austin, Texas Welcomes The Iron Yard to Thriving Tech Community

The Iron Yard - Austin will launch its first cohort of classes in January. 

“I'm excited about attending The Iron Yard, because I know I'll be immersed in 12 weeks of intense learning,” says Charles Leuker, a student enrolled in the upcoming January Front End Engineering course. “They guide the process so that at the end we will have a kick-butt new skillset that provides a doorway into the innovation economy. I also look forward to learning with like-minded students who are eager to learn programming and put those skills to use.” Before applying for The Iron Yard, Charles was a hospital administrator in the military and ran a lifestyle clothing brand.

Students aren't the only Austin residents excited about the launch of the school. The Iron Yard has already begun to build an advisory board of companies and officials who are excited about hiring graduates and bolstering an already-robust tech economy by creating (and attracting) high-paying development jobs into the area.

Broadway World fills in the gaps--read more and find out how to apply today!