by Laura Upcott | May 23, 2012 | Toronto Tech Ninjas
Heather Payne was photographed by Jon Lim at a Ladies Learning Code workshop
It’s about time we featured a woman TOtechninja! Which reminds me. Why do so few women apply to our tech jobs? Heather Payne might ask the same question. She founded a wildly successful non-profit initiative right here in Toronto called Ladies Learning Code.
Heather Payne is making real progress towards getting Toronto women involved with technology by offering extremely affordable tech training that provides women with a friendly place to learn the most in-demand tech skills like CSS, WordPress, HTML5, Ruby and Python.
How Ladies Learning Code Got Started
Payne tells the story on her LinkedIn profile:
Back in May, I was in Los Angeles on business when I came across an event listing for an Introduction to Python workshop – intended for women. I signed up, attended the full-day session and had an incredible time. So much so that I thought to myself, “If this is what computer science class had been like for me when I was in high school or university, maybe I wouldn’t have been so turned off.” Upon my return to Toronto, I wanted to continue learning, and loved the idea of doing so with other women. After searching for an organization offering workshops geared towards women – and finding nothing – I wrote a blog post and sent out a tweet. It was a call-to-action for Toronto’s women. I received a dozen emails from people interested in joining a group, so I put together an event: a brainstorming session to help us determine what this group would look like. When 85 women (and men!) signed up, I knew we were onto something.
My Ladies Learning Code Experience
This is me at the Ruby workshop in March
I spent a wonderful Saturday learning Ruby with Ladies Learning Code instructor Dessy Daskalvov (@dess_e). About 40 of Toronto’s finest coders voluteered to help us ladies (and a few lucky men) learn the basics of Ruby coding. The instructor-teacher ratio was about 4-1. I had so much fun learning Rudy at the workshop that I spent the next day playing with it online at http://railsforzombies.com/.
I’m really looking forward to attending my third LLC workshop on June 16 to learn how to make our website mobile-friendly with HTML5. That is if I can land a ticket. The workshops are so popular that they often sellout in minutes.
Donate a Laptop
Want to help out? Girls Learning Code Needs Eight Laptops
This summer Ladies Learning Code is running a two week Girls Learning Code Summer Camp and they are looking for some laptops.
More About Heather Payne and Ladies Learning Code
by Laura Upcott | May 15, 2012 | Toronto Tech Ninjas
Edward Yao, Teambuy Co-founder
I discovered Edward Yao when I saw him pitching Teambuy on the Dragons Den. Here is another example of how age is no barrier to success in the Toronto tech community. He co-founded Teambuy.ca in 2009. Then in 2011, at age 24, he was honoured as one of Canada’s Top Young Entrepreneurs by the Fuel Awards.
Success came quickly for Edward Yao and Teambuy, but this is no overnight success story. Their success seems to be a combination of a viral business concept, hard work, and not accepting the first offer that was tossed to them on the Dragons Den.
Rapid Rise to Success
- Teambuy was launched in Oct. 2009 by Edward Yao and Andrew Hutchings
- Featured on Dragon’s Den in 2010 where they turned down an offer from Kevin O’Leary for $150,000 for 51%, then accepted 35% at $150,000 from Jim Treliving.
- Raised 7 Million in July 2011 and 5 Million in Feb. 2012
- According to a post on Techvibes, TeamBuy.ca is the third most popular daily deal site behind Groupon and WagJag.com
The Genius Solution
Take Away
How did TeamBuy go from startup to household name in only 2 years? Here it is in Edward Yao’s own words:
It takes a lot of hustling. You need to be putting in more work and more time than anyone else. The nice thing about our business model, and it doesn’t come across very often, is that it’s inherently viral. It’s 50 to 90% off on things that you use and consume like products, travel, spas and restaurants. So it’s not as hard for me to convince you to come and use TeamBuy as it would be if I were to start a juice company and say ‘hey try our juice, its comparatively priced but you should try it’. So we grew really quickly and a benefit of that is we secured funding and we used that capital to grow even faster. Source: QA with President and Co-founder of Teambuy Edward Yao
by Laura Upcott | May 14, 2012 | Toronto Tech Ninjas
View the video at UnderstoodIt.com
I just discovered a Toronto techie (aka TOtechninja) that created an app that definitely falls in the “Why didn’t I think of that” category. Maybe that’s how you know your app idea is a good one. It just seems so obvious after it gets built. Like it should have always existed.
That’s how it is with the UnderstoodIt.com app released this month by Liam Kaufman.
We’ve all experienced it. Sitting in a classroom as a teacher explains a critical concept and you completely miss the point. You look around at other students to see if they’re getting it, maybe roll your eyes or shrug your shoulders. But the teacher doesn’t notice.
Liam Kaufman developed a brilliant app to address that problem. With Understoodit.com, students can anonymously click a “Confused” button to let the prof or teacher know that they need more explanation. Then when they get it, they click “Understood”. The prof tracks the understanding level of the class in real-time and adjusts the content of the lecture accordingly.
The Inspiration
Toronto-based software developer Liam Kaufman came up with the idea for Understoodit.com in December 2011 while studying computer science at the University of Toronto. “I didn’t want to look like an idiot by saying I was confused in front of two hundred classmates,” he said. He created a prototype on his own time and showed a professor, who eagerly agreed to test it in his first-year computer class. Source: http://blog.understoodit.com/
Takeaway
Every cloud has a silver lining. And by silver lining I mean an opportunity to create a cool app.
If you’re struggling with something, chances are that lots of other people are too. A TOtechninja looks for a way to harness smartphone communication power to slay the problem with a killer app. Ayyy-YA!
Let’s think of an example. Hmmm… Say I’m shopping at Loblaws and I need to find some French’s Onion Rings to make my grandma’s green beans casserole recipe. Why don’t they have an app to hook me up with the nearest store clerk that knows the answer? Someone should build that.
Find Out More
