Video Of The Week: SEP Spring Showcase

The SEP (Software Engineering Pilot) Spring Showcase is today from 10am to 2pm at BRIC in Brooklyn. I’m still in Paris so will miss it but I encourage anyone in NYC to attend. Here’s a video from last year’s showcase so you can see what goes on at the SEP showcase.

SEP Showcase from SEPNYC on Vimeo.

Conveniently today’s SEP Spring Showcase is just a short walk from CrossFit South Brooklyn, where “Get Fit or Be Hacking” is happening at today at 2pm. As I blogged about several weeks ago, “Get Fit or Be Hacking” is the coding+fitness competition my friend Rob Underwood organized to raise money for CSNYC. The event is open to the public if you’d like to cheer on the teams. There is also an after-party at Three’s Brewing at 5pm that you’re welcome to stop by — Sean Stern, one of the star CS teachers from the Academy for Software Engineering, will be at Three’s among other friends and advocates for computer science.

If you’d like to support CSNYC and programs like SEP, think about supporting one of the teams competing at Get Fit or Be Hacking by making a donation on the “Get Fit or Be Hacking” fundraising page on Crowdrise. And if you enjoy watching amazing kids do amazing things with code, check out today’s SEP Spring Showcase.

#hacking education

Comments (Archived):

  1. Tom Labus

    Stunningly beautiful day here in NYC. Enjoy your day

    1. awaldstein

      YupJust got back from my first ride of the year up to GW Bridge.

  2. Mike Zamansky

    To add to the student CS showcase – last Thursday were the second “Dream it. Code it. Win it” contest awards. It was nice to see an expanded field of high schools there.It was also nice to see that all of the student videos are posted on line. If you want to check out there work, here it is: https://dreamitcodeitwinit….

  3. William Mougayar

    I think Brooklyn and NYC (Manhattan) are really humming together. Same as Boulder-Denver, Seattle-Redmond/Bellevue, Toronto-Waterloo.A strong ecosystem is more than a single city. It’s a couple or more, closely knitted together. No wonder SV is what it is, with several cities along the San Jose-SF corridor.

    1. awaldstein

      Part of New York’s uniqueness is that Brooklyn and Manhattan are part of one city, not separate. Unique but under one political structure and tax code and incentives.You can’t talk about any hard goods in NYC without thinking about LIC or more and more, into the Bronx.No relationship to what happens to Boulder/Denver. These are distinct with highways in between. Here it is parts of a stronger whole.

      1. William Mougayar

        agreed, from a legal/political perspective, but i’m not sure that it matters so much in terms of what ends-up happening on the ground level pertaining to entrepreneurship, investments, etc…if you’re in Boulder and want to invest/expand into Denver, it’s not any harder than doing it from Manhattan to Brooklyn. same with Waterloo + Toronto, we go in and out, hire from there, cross-pollinate, etc.what distinct advantages are there to be part of one city? a bridge or a highway is the same if it takes you 20-30 mins to get from point A to B.

        1. awaldstein

          You are thinking like an investor not like an operational entrepreneur in this case William.Operationally and infrastructure wise, proximity is key. The density within proximity is what makes the vertical nature of NY so powerful.It is what makes the West Side of LA unified and Silver Lake very much not part of it.To say that is is the same for a startup to bridge Denver to Boulder in the same way it bridges Madison Park to Williamsburg for employees, meetings, street frontage is simply not the experience on the ground.Come visit. Dinner on me!

          1. William Mougayar

            May 26 🙂

          2. awaldstein

            cool.if in and out enjoy. If in and play, i’m in.

          3. LE

            Not to mention that density in proximity to well developed public transportation. Transportation fit for a celebrity (or a VC).Otho, I am only 20 minutes from cc philly let’s say. By bridge. But there is no easy way public transportation wise for employees to get to here from there. [1] Back when I was in the center city Philly, a block from “the el”, (subway and elevated is called “the el” in Philly) it was trivial to draw from a workforce far and wide. People converged on the city from other areas because they could get to it. And of course some also lived there (more so now but what’s interesting is that the price of housing has risen to the point where the blue collar people that I employed probably can’t live there anymore..)[1] There is a high speed line PATCO that is somewhat close by to CC Philly so that’s good to get here to there but not vice versa. Reason is an employee getting into the station has no way to get from the station to an office without a long bus ride.

      2. LE

        While that may be true, the strength of NYC comes from the fact that it’s NYC and the land of opportunity and the brand. Not that that regional thing isn’t important or of benefit or wouldn’t help elsewhere but being NYC is an elephant and more or less completely overshadows other advances that could in theory be duplicated in other locations. For example Philly could do the same (if it wanted) with all of the suburbs and with NJ (Camden) and in a way does something similar [1] but it’s still Philly metro when the dust settles.[1] http://www.dvrpc.org/about/

  4. fredwilson

    I think its a better approach to teach high performing and successful teachers how to teach CS and related material than it is to convert software engineers to teachers

  5. Mike Zamansky

    Yes – that’s been my experience, although you can find engineers with the teaching bug and potential to have the chop.My fear is that the teacher training will be limited to “how to teach this curriculum” with a minimum in terms of teaching the teachers CS. This will lead us to having CS in lots of schools but not particularly good CS. If anyone’s interested, I wrote a bit about it here: http://bit.ly/1I52CVa

  6. LE

    I agree. Especially if they are currently teaching a subject that would typically be considered “less important”. [1][1] I have a full list of those subjects ready to be judgemental, insult, and create a riot here on AVC..

  7. Matt Zagaja

    Insightful comment. Teaching is very much it’s own skill set. Nobody complains that their gym classes are not taught by Knicks players.

  8. awaldstein

    population density and transportation is really key.it is what makes the cultural footprint broader while retaining the uniqueness of the parts.

  9. William Mougayar

    I knew i’d get in trouble by publishing a date 🙂 i’ll ping you Willy.