Starting a new Dojo in DC

[Alex Schoof]

Hello,

My name is Alex Schoof, and I'm a programmer living in Northern Virginia, just outside Washington, DC. I started hacking at a young age, 11 or 12 I think, and that grew into a CS degree, some papers, and a variety of jobs hacking at start-ups and big companies alike. I also spent a few months teaching kids math when I was 18, so when I found your organization, my first reaction was "This is so great! This makes perfect sense!" I saw that GitHub is helping get a San Francisco dojo spun up, and I was disappointed that there are no dojos on the east coast, so I decided I should try to start one!

I read through the "Getting started" page, and so far I've started a google group (cc'd), and a non-list contact email (also cc'd). I also snagged https://twitter.com/#!/CoderDojoDC

Thats as far as I've gotten. I think the next step is to find space. I was going to start talking to some local businesses and seeing what I can find, after that, maybe recruit some volunteers? 

Any help or guidance you could provide would be awesome! I'm not going to make any more movement until tomorrow or tuesday, I just wanted to reach out and get this ball rolling!

Thanks!

Alex

--


Alex Schoof

[Thierry]

This is a an awesome idea and I would love to help get this thing on
its feet. I'm a developer in Lanham, Maryland just outside DC. I
dabbed in a little programming sometime in high school, ventured to
engineering for most of my college career taking part of the CS core
required for engineers.

But here I am a couple years later working as a developer. I have a
lot to teach as well as a lot to learn. I am very interested in
bringing education to young, younger, and little people around this
area. The west-coast gets a lot of sweet deals for being so close to
Silicon Valley, I'm thinking of Khan Academy and now this...and I've
been looking to bring the same over here. Computers already have the
cool factor and good teaching/guidance/mentoring will not only retain
and increase it but will harness it to bring about the most learning
+usage of acquired knowledge.

Good companies usually love supporting these sort of things. I'm not
an event coordinator, but we can definitely organize ourselves to talk
to local companies and organizations to find space and sponsoring, and
on marketing to get people involved. I'm good with keeping my priority
inbox empty, except for those emails sent to me from myself, so shoot
me one. I'm also on tweeter and following CoderDojoDC as @thierrymu.

Cheers!

Thierry

On Feb 12, 9:05 pm, Alex Schoof <alex.sch...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> My name is Alex Schoof, and I'm a programmer living in Northern Virginia,
> just outside Washington, DC. I started hacking at a young age, 11 or 12 I
> think, and that grew into a CS degree, some papers, and a variety of jobs
> hacking at start-ups and big companies alike. I also spent a few months
> teaching kids math when I was 18, so when I found your organization, my
> first reaction was "This is so great! This makes perfect sense!" I saw that
> GitHub is helping get a San Francisco dojo spun up, and I was disappointed
> that there are no dojos on the east coast, so I decided I should try to
> start one!
>
> I read through the "Getting started" page, and so far I've started a google

> group (cc'd), and a non-list contact email (also cc'd). I also snaggedhttps://twitter.com/#!/CoderDojoDC

[Alex Schoof]

Hey Thierry,

We'd love to have you! I completely agree with you about computers already being kind of cool, and I think the recent rise if more casual computing (ie smart phones) has only helped that (tell someone you write apps and they think you're a rock star because they understand that; vs telling then 10 years ago that you're a systems programmer)

Right now we're still trying to get a few more people on board, so if you know anyone that would be interested, we'd like to hear from them too. I have some feelers out on space,  but we don't have a for sure place yet.

I'd like to organize a meeting for all of us to do some planning/qa before our first session, so ill shoot out a message on the list and twitter when we have a date.

Thanks again and welcome!

Alex

[KC]

Hi Alex,

Sounds great! Thanks for getting things off the ground!

Kennedy

On Feb 12, 9:05 pm, Alex Schoof <alex.sch...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> My name is Alex Schoof, and I'm a programmer living in Northern Virginia,
> just outside Washington, DC. I started hacking at a young age, 11 or 12 I
> think, and that grew into a CS degree, some papers, and a variety of jobs
> hacking at start-ups and big companies alike. I also spent a few months
> teaching kids math when I was 18, so when I found your organization, my
> first reaction was "This is so great! This makes perfect sense!" I saw that
> GitHub is helping get a San Francisco dojo spun up, and I was disappointed
> that there are no dojos on the east coast, so I decided I should try to
> start one!
>
> I read through the "Getting started" page, and so far I've started a google

> group (cc'd), and a non-list contact email (also cc'd). I also snaggedhttps://twitter.com/#!/CoderDojoDC

[Stimpy5050]

I'd love to get involved in this project. I've been toying with
computers since the early 80's on logo, all the way up through a CS
degree, 15 years on Java and 4+ on Objective-C. I think this is a
great idea for kids who show an interest in computers early. Let me
know how I can help out.

dave

[Noah Cooper]

Alex,

I just relocated to DC (well, Maryland actually) from Texas and had actually planned to look into starting a dojo in the area, so glad to see someone else is already on it! I'm a front-end web developer at Convio (http://convio.com), where I've worked for 5 years. At my day job I generally am writing a lot of AJAX and other front-end markup, and in my spare time I write more AJAX along with some PHP for kicks. Definitely sign me up to help out in any way I can! I'm going to ping the powers-that-be here at Convio to see if it would be possible to use our office in Dupont Circle if you still haven't found a place.

-Noah

[Adam Solove]

Hi guys,

Just wanted to say hi and see if I could help. I'm in Silver Spring
and work doing front-end. I actually just saw the talk that
CoderDojo's founder gave at jsconf. I'm interested in helping and can
help teach html, css, js, ruby, python, etc. I also have a few high
school age students who I occasionally mentor who might join up if we
get a regular CoderDojo session going.

-Adam

> > snaggedhttps://twitter.com/#!/CoderDojoDC

[Joshua Seagroves]

Awesome idea. I was thinking of setting up a Dojo in Columbia MD or Arlington VA. I have office space and could probably have my company buy a bunch of chromebooks in case kids didn't have. Oh, I am a Developer, BS in CS and all that fun stuff....Mostly big data work with Hadoop/Solr/MR and so forth. I would be happy to help or volunteer.

[Chris Tallia]

Let's make this happen fellas... seems like Josh just took care of the hard part... now all we need is a date and some younglings that want to learn about this stuff.

--
Christopher Tallia

Founder 

Ch...@THRDRAIL.com

202.697.1756

[Jason Blum]

Hey guys,

I apologize for the confusion, but I had already started up another Google Group at coder...@googlegroups.com before I knew this one existed, so now we've got two groups going.  Just wanted folks to know that the other group is associated with @CoderDojoDC and http://CoderDojoDC.com, and that we are making pretty good progress towards holding a first Dojo in early January.

That said, many Dojo's in other large cities have generated enough interest to warrant hosting events in multiple locations, so, while we may be starting out as "CoderDojoDC," it would make perfect sense to start hosting events in other big hubs like Columbia or Arlington, especially if you've got those kinds of resources!

Anyway just wanted to make sure we were coordinating our efforts, cause i agree the most important thing is to make this happen.

Maybe we should close this group.  I thought about directly adding everyone, but didn't want to risk annoying anyone.  I apologize again for creating this confusion in the first place.

-Jason

[Chris Tallia]

awesome... thanks for the heads up

[Ria Galanos]

I'm a computer science teacher and I work at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.  I'd love to help out in any way I can.  I live in Arlington and would be happy to join any groups in Northern Virginia or DC (sorry, Maryland folks!)

~Ria

On Sunday, February 12, 2012 9:05:23 PM UTC-5, Alex wrote:

[Hugo Estrada]

Hi,

At the coder dojo meeting today in Silver Spring we just talked about a possible Coder Dojo in Virginia. There are two other people from Virginia that are involved, me being one of them.  This group is more or less dead, but there is more activity at coder...@googlegroups.com (yeah, a hyphen makes all the difference, doesn't it? ) 

Right now the group that meets at Silver Spring is comprised mainly of kids between 9 and 12-years-olds. Being able to have older kids 

would be great for the group.

In any case, even though I believe that the trip is worth it, it doesn't seem that other parents feel that that is the case. So having a meeting in Northern

Virginia may be worth it.  What do you think? 

Hugo

 

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[Rob J]

Hi Alex,

      I'm Rob, and I'm a Computer Engineering/Computer Science Major at Maryland. Have you found a space yet? If not, I'm sure that we could find a space, maybe even a computer lab, at UMD.  Please let me know what I can do to help. My email address is rjen...@me.com

Thanks,

Rob Jenkens

On Sunday, February 12, 2012 9:05:23 PM UTC-5, Alex wrote:

[eric.troo...@gmail.com]

Hello Ria,

Any luck getting connected in VA?

Just joined today and am interested in Virginia as well.

My two boys like MIT's Scratch and are excited to learn more with CoderDojo.

Eric

[Tim Touchette]

I'm a non-tech parent in DC (Dupont Circle) who wants to get my son and daughter (ages 8 and 10) involved with coding and programming. They are interested in this as well.  I would like to have some direct human instruction for them (and possibly their friends) prior to having them work on sites like MIT's scratch.  I can provide some types of assistance such as providing a location or covering various expenses.

     

[kali]

I echo Tim's post, right down to the offer to provide space or other needed resources. I have a 9-year old and we live in the U Street corridor (about a mile from Dupont Circle).  

Tim, if we can find an instructor, do you want to try to organize something in DC together?