Starting 7pm Jan 17th - Intro to Web Development for Entrepreneurs & Open Community Dev Night

We are thrilled to announce the launch of a free web development class at Cortona taught by local web developers and geared toward High School students who are reasonably "good with computers" with little to no programming experience (It is, of course, open to anyone with a desire to learn). Our purpose in offering this class is to not only teach the basics of programming and how to build full-featured websites, but to spark a real interest in becoming an Internet entrepreneur - thinking how to build a useful site/service, increase web traffic, monetize it, create jobs, and be mindful of funding & exit strategies.

The format of the class will be as follows:

• It will begin at 7pm on the 1st and 3rd Mondays of the month at Cortona Cafe, starting Jan 17th and ending Dec 19th, 2011.
• ~7 days before the start of a class, homework/tutorials will be posted by the teacher (URL location TBA).
• The class itself will start with a short, 5-slide talk related to the homework.
• Right after the talk, "open community development night" starts where experienced developers can come work on their own projects along side beginners, helping them finish their homework (if it wasn't completed beforehand) and/or encourage them to blaze new trails with the concepts/tools introduced.
• With this format, students can jump into the class at any time during the year. They can work to get caught up, or just go the pace they are comfortable with while receiving one-on-one instruction.

The class will cover an introduction to the following:

• HTML (including new HTML5 features)
• CSS (including new CSS3 features)
• Javascript
• jQuery
• Ruby & Ruby on Rails (Object-Oriented Programing, Model-View-Controller paradigm, REST architecture, etc...)
• SQL (MySQL & SQLite Databases)
• Git (for version control)
• Test-Driven Development
• DNS, SSH, Unix Command Line, and Production Server Deployment
• Apache & Passenger
• Page Caching & Speed
• Scaling & Cloud Hosting Options
• Cron Tasks & Custom App Scripts
• Using APIs (Facebook, Twitter, & Google Maps)
• Business plans, funding sources, and exit strategies.
• and more....

From the very first class, students will have a working web application that will be expanded throughout the rest of the year. Space is limited to 15 per class and first priority is given to High School students - although anyone can follow the tutorials online. For questions, or if you are interested in helping teach some classes, email info@cortonacafe.com.

UPDATE - the homework tutorial for the first class can be found here.