So epic. Godspeed.
Every year I set out searching for a graduate degree suited to my career in the Internet industry. I am looking for a combination of computer science classes in web development, design courses that focus on UI, and business courses that teach Internet entrepreneurship.
Disappointed by what universities are offering, I created my own course catalog. It is aimed at entrepreneurial, non-developer, technology professionals that work in the Internet field. There is a strong core of development courses, but they are designed for someone to understand web development as opposed to training students to be developers. I hope to see something like this offered soon.
Please comment if you think a course is missing or disagree with my choices.
Semester 1
Introduction to Programming
An overview of programming that touches on PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, and Objective-C.Internet Activity Theory and Psychology
What causes users to do the things they do? This will be an in depth look at the psychology of an Internet user.Ideation for Web Startups
Students will learn the process of brainstorming and picking apart business ideas. They will learn to spot indicators that an idea will work or not, and how to go about testing a thesis before heavy development begins.Equity Financing
An in-depth course on equity financing where students and will learn about step of the fund raising process with mock simulations at each stage.Semester 2
Pick 1
Development in PHP
Learn the CakePHP framework and in depth development in PHP.Development in Python
Learn the Django framework and in depth development in Python.Development in Ruby
Learn the Rails framework and in depth development in Ruby.Development in Objective-C
Learn the iPhone SDK and in depth development in Objective-C.Development in Java
Learn the Android SDK and in depth development in Java.Frontend Development in Html5/CSS/Javascript
Students will learn to create frontend interfaces and clickable prototypes.User Experience and User Interface Design
Students will learn the fundamentals of usability, and how to design interaction and user interfaces.Business Modeling and Current Events
A case-study driven course will break down successful web companies and their business models. Emerging models will be discussed and students will brainstorm their own. Current events in the tech world will be closely monitored and discussed. STUDENTS WILL NOT BE ASKED TO WRITE A TRADITONAL BUSINESS PLAN.Semester 3
Launch an App Part 1
Students will work with pairs to develop their own app. In Part 1 users will finish the semester with high-fidelity wireframes, a clickable prototype, and detailed tasks broken down for development. In Part 2 students will begin heavy development.Scalability
This course will focus on choosing the right set of tools. It will cover languages, hosting environments (Cloud vs Dedicated Hosting), and databases (SQL vs NoSql)Product Management
In this course students will learn to create a product roadmap. They will learn skills to conduct thorough requirements gathering and user testing. Finally they will learn to break down features into tasks for developers.Agile Project Management
Students will learn the agile project management methodology and will take part in multiple simulations.Semester 4
Launch an App Part II
Students will continue their work from Part I and begin development of their application. Professors will be available throughout the process for programming help. Students will end the semester with the launch of their application.Analytics and Performance Tracking
Students will become experts at setting up, managing, and gaining insight into analytics.Startup Operations
Co-founders, hiring, compensation plans, benefits, management skills, company culture, and office space are all issues that entrepreneurs need to deal with. While these are common to most businesses, startup operations requires a unique touch to create fast moving and innovative environments for your employees.Internet Marketing and PR
Students will learn to conduct marketing and PR for their startup. SEO, SEM, ad-buys, blog PR, and traditional media PR will be covered. Marketing through your website, building a brand, community management and customer service will also be part of this course.
Also, sorry for the double reblog, but I think there needs to be a strong emphasis on always making shit. Always back up what is taught and learned with hands-on, tangible stuff. Always. Let’s breed a generation of doers vs. talking-about-doing-stuff’ers.
So epic. Godspeed.
Every year I set out searching for a graduate degree suited to my career in the Internet industry. I am looking for a combination of computer science classes in web development, design courses that focus on UI, and business courses that teach Internet entrepreneurship.
Disappointed by what universities are offering, I created my own course catalog. It is aimed at entrepreneurial, non-developer, technology professionals that work in the Internet field. There is a strong core of development courses, but they are designed for someone to understand web development as opposed to training students to be developers. I hope to see something like this offered soon.
Please comment if you think a course is missing or disagree with my choices.
Semester 1
Introduction to Programming
An overview of programming that touches on PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, and Objective-C.Internet Activity Theory and Psychology
What causes users to do the things they do? This will be an in depth look at the psychology of an Internet user.Ideation for Web Startups
Students will learn the process of brainstorming and picking apart business ideas. They will learn to spot indicators that an idea will work or not, and how to go about testing a thesis before heavy development begins.Equity Financing
An in-depth course on equity financing where students and will learn about step of the fund raising process with mock simulations at each stage.Semester 2
Pick 1
Development in PHP
Learn the CakePHP framework and in depth development in PHP.Development in Python
Learn the Django framework and in depth development in Python.Development in Ruby
Learn the Rails framework and in depth development in Ruby.Development in Objective-C
Learn the iPhone SDK and in depth development in Objective-C.Development in Java
Learn the Android SDK and in depth development in Java.Frontend Development in Html5/CSS/Javascript
Students will learn to create frontend interfaces and clickable prototypes.User Experience and User Interface Design
Students will learn the fundamentals of usability, and how to design interaction and user interfaces.Business Modeling and Current Events
A case-study driven course will break down successful web companies and their business models. Emerging models will be discussed and students will brainstorm their own. Current events in the tech world will be closely monitored and discussed. STUDENTS WILL NOT BE ASKED TO WRITE A TRADITONAL BUSINESS PLAN.Semester 3
Launch an App Part 1
Students will work with pairs to develop their own app. In Part 1 users will finish the semester with high-fidelity wireframes, a clickable prototype, and detailed tasks broken down for development. In Part 2 students will begin heavy development.Scalability
This course will focus on choosing the right set of tools. It will cover languages, hosting environments (Cloud vs Dedicated Hosting), and databases (SQL vs NoSql)Product Management
In this course students will learn to create a product roadmap. They will learn skills to conduct thorough requirements gathering and user testing. Finally they will learn to break down features into tasks for developers.Agile Project Management
Students will learn the agile project management methodology and will take part in multiple simulations.Semester 4
Launch an App Part II
Students will continue their work from Part I and begin development of their application. Professors will be available throughout the process for programming help. Students will end the semester with the launch of their application.Analytics and Performance Tracking
Students will become experts at setting up, managing, and gaining insight into analytics.Startup Operations
Co-founders, hiring, compensation plans, benefits, management skills, company culture, and office space are all issues that entrepreneurs need to deal with. While these are common to most businesses, startup operations requires a unique touch to create fast moving and innovative environments for your employees.Internet Marketing and PR
Students will learn to conduct marketing and PR for their startup. SEO, SEM, ad-buys, blog PR, and traditional media PR will be covered. Marketing through your website, building a brand, community management and customer service will also be part of this course.
It should also require each class to be taught by someone with extensive, hands-on experience and a proven track record in that field.
I just published my second email newsletter - the "Starving" startup -
This one is about the “Starving Startup” and how, with all the talk of “Lean” vs. “Fat” startups, too many entrepreneurs are taking too little money. Click the link above to sign up for future posts.
Christian Ross has a confession: he codes in tables.
First off, let’s get this out of the way, clients don’t care. If it shows up well on their screen and is close in all of the major browsers, they’re happy. It doesn’t matter to them if their site can pass the W3C Validator.Of course, not always. Only if the circumstances dictate that this is the best approach for his clients.
And yet, he’s worried that including this work in his portfolio has potentially lost him some work. One only has to look at the excellent design of his personal site to know that he has talent. If that is the case, I’d say he’s better off not having got the jobs — an employer that is not willing to dig a little probably would not be all that enjoyable to work for.
Reblogged, because it is quite an interesting and well-written article. I don’t know that I can bring myself to fully agree, but bills have to be paid. If clients approve and the site looks okay in most or all browsers, maybe there’s a particular subset of clients for which you can develop table-based websites.
Very interesting. While I tend to stay away from tables unless I’m dealing in tabular data, it was funny that more than a few people took issue with Forrst’s homepage using a table for the application form. It’s okay to not stick to the rules 100% of the time. I promise.
Into The Forrst: On Forrst's architecture -
I’ve been getting a few requests for a write-up like this from curious Forrst’ers, so here goes nothing.
Hardware:
We’re on three MediaTemple (ve) boxes: one database, one staging, and one web frontend. They’ve each got 2GB RAM, 10,000 RPM RAID-10 disks, and all of that good stuff. I recommend…
We launched “Spliced” today, a new film blog I hope you all love.
Aaron's Life: AnyClip One Year Later -
A year ago, I flew to Israel to make some sweeping changes at AnyClip.
For starters, gone was the two year old company name PopTok along with 4 executives and a bunch of others who had been a part of the very family-oriented culture here. I’ll never forget that morning. Tough way to start…
There’s not much that can be said to adequately convey my respect for this company.
The week of June 7th in New York City is Internet Week. I’m not really sure what’s Internet about it. With events like “The future of location based marketing”, “Intelligent Social Media Marketing”, and “The Hollywood Reporter’s Digital Power 50 Cocktail Reception”, Internet Week sounds a bit more like “douchebag” week, no offense to douchebags.
It’s clear from the itinerary that Internet Week really isn’t about making things for the internet, it’s about marketing them. And networking with other people who are interested in marketing things.
As someone who works in the Internet technology landscape, Internet Week does not sound appealing to me at all, and aren’t I the kind of person that this should appeal to?
Smart people using technology to make smart things, that’s the Internet Week I want to attend.
I don’t attend many (any) conferences, and I’ve poked around some NY meetups from time to time, but if I were some kind of conference organizer, I’d really be interested in making a… I believe it’s called an unconference. During Internet Week, why not have a separate track of events geared towards technologists, about technology. NoSQL, Geo, HTML5, all of that awesome stuff that is not represented on the official schedule for Internet Week.
Kyle Bragger, Ted Roden, Matt Langer, I am looking in your direction. Ted, I’m putting you on the spot as an organizer of arguably New York’s only tech-focused meetup (that I promise to attend next month). What do you guys think?
Would anybody in New York be interested in attending these events?
Sad that there doesn’t seem to be a single purely technology-oriented panel in the entire schedule. (Did I miss it?) I’d be game to help organize an alternate event geared towards making things vs. talking about making things. Who else is in?
Welcome to Warp Zone!
Warp Zone is an internal tool I’ve developed for our Front End team here at Scripps Networks Digital. I had a bit of fun designing and building it.
Here’s what it does:
Our development process has gotten more and more painful as our team grows and as development initiatives increase. A small team of us have taken on improving our workflow surrounding release cycles. We reached a bottleneck when we went to deploy to the main Development environment (big-D development as opposed to a local environment). Simultaneous development projects were going on that touched many different teams and, as a result, each developer was competing to view their work in the main Development environment. This resulted in lots of overwritten code, shaky expectations, etc. We decided that we needed some sort of switchboard that managed what branch of development the environment was pointing to.
While brainstorming that concept, I mentioned something about numerous “pipes and levers” that controlled where Development was pointing to. I took the metaphor a bit to far. The result is Warp Zone, our internal switchboard for managing development branches.
Here’s how it works:
Up at the top (the “score”), you have the current configuration. You can see who last changed the environment, what branch the environment is pointing to, what environment is being controlled, and how long the environment has been set to point to this branch.
The pipes represent the different branches of development. Hovering over them reveals some info about the last revision, and clicking on that takes you to the internal instance of ViewVC to get more information about that revision. Clicking the pipe opens up a modal to enter in your employee id, which you need to enter to throw the switch.
Once you submit, the symlink that the environment is looking at is switched to point to the new branch. You are literally (not literally) warping to a new branch of development.
Warp Zone is a simple way to manage a development environment with multiple, ongoing branches. It’s totally customized for what we’re doing on the Front End team, but maybe if it proves interesting to others I’ll work on abstracting it as a general purpose tool.
It’s still in development and experimental, but I think it’s a good first step to improving our process.
Also, it’s Mario Bros. themed. You can’t go wrong with that.
Caterpillar Cowboy: Postling, v3.0 -
Two weeks ago, we launched a new design for Postling (and many thanks to Jess and Kevin for their amazing design talent). Three weeks prior, I had written a blog post about how I raised $200k in 6 days at SXSW (including from Dave McClure in the time it took him to smoke a cigarette). I…
