A rewarding experience

At the Creative HQ graduation, I was presented with Creative HQ Community award by my friend and fellow entrepreneur Rod Drury. The award was in recognition of my contribution of Wellington entrepreneurial community and development of the Summer of Code programme.

I want to say thanks for the award on behalf of myself and rest of the team how helped make Summer of Code. We had a lot of people help with Summer of Code, my thanks especially goes to …

Peter Torr Smith, who stepped in and got things done things done when I had to do real work. Sarah Wattie – Summer of Code organiser extraordinaire, who ran everything smoothly. The team at Creative HQ and PWB, who on hearing about the Summer of Code, got behind the programme and said yes to our crazy ideas. And finally, Joseph Stuart and his team at FRST. Without Joseph and the support of FRST, Summer of Code never would have happened. Thanks Joseph, for all your support and help to make Summer of Code a reality.

Honestly, the Summer of Code was a blast. It was a lot fun and its been great to have so many people involved. Summer of Code in essense is about people ie How we get smart students into smart companies!


For those of you that don’t know what happened on last years Summer of Code, here’s a run down.

Summer of Code Key numbers:

· 44 students applied (36 from Victoria University, 8 from Massey University)

· 32 students were tested across software development fundamentals, web development and database skills

· 19 students were interviewed

· 14 students hired by 6 companies

· 2 students exited the programme to take full time jobs

· 3 students are now working full time for their companies, 6 students are now working part time for their companies.

 

We ran seminars to increase our students knowledge from some of the best mind’s in the world.

  • Rod Drury of Xero on “Software Development in NZ” and Nat Torkington of O’Reilly on “Start-up culture”
  • Microsoft presentation of Xpressions platform
  • Hayden Vink of Hansel on “Interaction design” and Sam Ng on “Usability”
  • Paul Gold of Trade Me on “Running High volume databases”
  • Milton Ngan of Weta Digital on “Distributed systems”
  • Stephen Cheng of Innaworks on “Mobile phone Development”
  • Rowan Simpson of Trade Me on “What I learnt from Trade Me”
  • Tomek Piatek of ProjectX on “Code Management”
  • Michael Koziarski, Rails guru on “Ruby on Rails”
  • Mark Robotham from Creative HQ on “Incubators”
  • John Clegg of ProjectX on “Writing better resumes”
  • Chris Di Bona of Google on “Open Source and Google”

Here’s some quotes from CEO’s of the companies involved.

Summer of Code’s been a huge success, look forward to more of the same next year, this is set to become a key recruitment channel for us, and I’m certain that this is raising the bar on young IT talent in NZ and providing clear incentives for that talent to stay in Wellington and New Zealand and make it happen.” Tim Norton, CEO of PlanHQ

“We had two awesome students working with us over the summer break, and I’m proud to say I think we gave them a good dunking in the deep-end of the life of a web 2.0 start-up (the rough and the green!). They formed a core part of our team over for 3 months and brought a lot of energy, enthusiasm, insight, and innovation with them.”

Peter Torr Smith, CEO of Hirethings.com

 

“Absolutely fantastic effort all round. I honestly think it was one of the most impressive efforts toward massive productivity I have ever had the personal pleasure to witness being coordinated.”

Andrew Mayfield, CEO of Spikefin

 

“When you put smart students and smart companies together, amazing things happen. It’s been a fantastic experience to see the students develop and the companies prosper during the Summer of Code. All of the companies involved have benefited tremendously by the input of their students.”

– John Clegg, CEO of ProjectX

“The Creative HQ Summer of Code was a fantastic success for SilverStripe. We found two excellent students, Andrew O’Neil and Jeremy Shipman, who fitted naturally into our working environment. Their skilled contributions (programming, testing and documentation ) have noticeably improved our CMS product and adoption by our open source community. They are now working with us through their University year, and based on this success, we look forward to supporting Summer of
Code next year.” — Sigurd Magnusson, SilverStripe.

 

Thanks everyone, and one last plug for Summer of Code 2.0 from Rowan Simpson

If you’re a smart Comp. Sci. student you should be all over Summer of Code 2.0!”

More info on www.summerofcode.co.nz

 

2 Responses to “A rewarding experience”

  1. SUMMER OF CODE 2.0 » Blog Archive » Summer of Code gains recognition Says:

    […] Last night, John Clegg (father of the Summer of Code) won the Creative HQ community for his contribution to Wellington for Summer of Code. John speaks about the award and Summer of Code on the ProjectX blog. […]

  2. nik Says:

    Congrats John.

Leave a Reply


http://www.canakkaleruhu.org http://www.vergimevzuati.org http://www.finansaldenetci.com http://www.securityweb.org http://www.siyamiozkan.org http://www.fatmaozkan.com http://www.sgk.biz.tr http://www.denetci.gen.tr http://www.bagimsizdenetim.biz.tr http://www.mevzuat.biz.tr http://www.security.biz.tr http://www.sorgulatr.com http://www.kanunlar.biz http://www.prsorgu.net http://www.sirabul.com http://www.emekliol.org http://www.coklupagerank.com http://www.coklupagerank.net http://www.coklupagerank.org http://www.prsorgu.org http://www.scriptencode.com http://www.sirabul.net http://www.sirabul.org http://www.sitenizanaliz.com http://www.seoisko.com http://www.seomavi.com http://www.scriptencode.net http://www.scriptencode.org