When students drop by my office to discuss their entrepreneurship interests, career goals and technical projects I often point out that they’re sitting in “The Lucky Chairs.” In the over quarter century that I’ve been teaching, I’ve had the good fortune to have been sought out by many undergraduate students who would go on to build substantive businesses. These office chairs are unremarkable, but they’ve at some point held some of our most remarkable students.

Nick Rellas, Justin Robinson, and Spencer Frazier sat in my office pitching an app that I was initially skeptical of — after all, what undergrads haven’t thought of pressing a button and having beer delivered. So much for my skepticism — the business they built, Drizly, would later be bought by Uber for over $1 billion. They weren’t the only former students who would garner unicorn valuations. Former student Andrew Boni founded tech marketing standout Iterable, former student Andrew Chang would help build crypto firm Paxos as COO, and Brooke Brown was one of the first five employees at Rent the Runway and would serve as the firm’s Chief Product Officer. There was also Bill Clerico, with classmate Rich Aberman, who sat in the chairs when they shared the idea for WePay, a Y-Combinator alum, and a firm JPMorgan Chase decided to buy for a reported $400 million.

Many founders also served as Teaching Assistants for my courses. One of the first TAs in my Swift app building class was Branick Weix — an alum of three of my classes and who I’d been chatting with since before he enrolled. Branick sold his real estate photography platform, Aryeo, to Zillow earlier this summer. Swift TA Linda Shad Chen just finished a stint in A16Z’s game accelerator where she and her cofounder grew the audience for their mental health game, Voidpet. TA Matt Giovanniello has built a thriving firm, Frenelytics, focused on supporting people with cognitive impairments, and Jimmy McDermott continued to build his platform for service learning, Transeo, even while serving as a TA for the apps class.

Some former students were also coached by our TA entrepreneurs — Swift student Kelsey Bishop went on to found Candor, and Swifter Lurein Perera founded two firms including donation startup, GiveCard. If you’ve browsed an online menu, you might have used a site created by Ameet Kallarackal’s Fisherman. Many of our entrepreneurs provided their own supportive cohort, like the three separate firms adjacent in TechStars Boston: Tom Coburn, Chase McAlesse, and Jonathan LaCoste who founded tech marketing firm, Jebbit; Miguel Galvez and Deck Sorensen who founded materials firm NBD Nano; and Brett Beaulieu-Jones and Alex LoVerde, who turned SyncOnSet into a tool so important to the motion picture industry that they won a Technical Emmy Award. Some who’ve sat in “The Chairs” have gone on to distinguish themselves as investors. Meagan Loyst was a standout at Lerer Hippeau and founded GenZ VCs, and Josh Coyne who’s a Partner at Kleiner Perkins, come immediately to mind. And there are many others who have gone on to distinguish themselves as engineers and managers in leading tech firms: Apple, Amazon, Google, and Meta, among them; or who went on to grad school at the most elite level, including Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Oxford.

One of the most rewarding things about working with so many talented students is that they often come back as alumni, meeting with and inspiring my current students. I’m a bit squeamish that I might sound like Harry Potter’s Prof. Slughorn, listing the achievements of former students, but I do hope the list inspires the current and future generations of students, especially those who try their hand at entrepreneurship.

Oftentimes when students hear about “The Chairs”, they stop by to ask me for introductions. This is actually a terrible tactic in early meetings and one that’s often a quick turnoff. Most founders and investors are profoundly busy, so if you’re going to approach them, you ought to have something solid to show. Related to this, one thing that often distinguishes success is the work that a student has put into their idea. I can often tell a student will struggle as an entrepreneur if the first thing they want to show me is a “pitch deck.” The students who are most successful tend to show me the products that they are building. That’s advice you’ll hear from the best tech leaders, as well. For example, in one of my courses, I used to bring students to Silicon Valley to meet with CEOs, founders, investors, and other tech industry managers. In this course students met with the late Bill Campbell, a legend in tech circles, known as “The Secret Coach” and “The Trillion Dollar Coach.” Campbell has advised scores of luminaries, including Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, and Marc Andreessen. In every meeting we’d have with Bill, he’d lean in to my students and with his gravelly voice he’d say “Marketing forgot its first name — it’s ‘Product’” (at Apple, where Bill previously worked and was Chair of the Board, the firm’s head marketer held the title SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing. For years this was Boston College alumnus Phil Schiller — another brilliant and kind exec who regularly spoke with my students). So if I have advice for students, it’s to use your collegiate startup time focusing relentlessly on building product. Do note that very few students have the perfect product-market fit out of the gate. Most entrepreneurs have to pivot their idea — often multiple times. But without a product, very few will take you seriously — not potential co-founders or hires, not customers, not investors. And once you have a product with traction, you don’t need me for an intro — you’ve got something tangible to show that you can get real feedback on.

Those chairs are lucky, but they’re lucky to have been sat in by students with that secret set of attributes essential for success — talent and tenacity. The path an entrepreneur travels is full of struggle, pain, and disappointment, but for some, also the incredible reward of having built something that provides jobs and that others find useful. If you’re around Fulton 460c, you’re welcome to drop by and sit in “The Lucky Chairs,” but that won’t be your ticket to success. The real goal is to build something great. Keep Hacking!

Prof. John Gallaugher teaches technology and business in the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. Prof. Gallaugher is an Apple Distinguished Educator. His award winning textbook on technology and business has been used in courses at over 450 universities. His course lectures on building apps in SwiftUI and in building hardware projects in CircuitPython are available free to all via YouTube. You’ll also find additional educational material, including course slides and exercises, at gallaugher.com. If you use his material, let him know! But please don’t write him asking to debug your code.

Jiri Praus’s sculptures are beautiful and inspiring. For Mother’s Day I wanted to make my wife an LED heart that pulses to the holder’s heart beat. Unfortunately, I lack two things that Jiri has — skill and talent. Undaunted, I cobbled together a rough facsimile that required less complex electronics, more suited to my limited skill. And while my work wasn’t as pretty as Jiri’s work, I was able to build it. I made a few mistakes along the way, but here’s what I learned.

My biggest change was using an Adafruit Feather M0 instead of the Arduino Nano that Jiri used (I used the Bluefruit LE model of the Feather, although I haven’t yet incorporated Bluetooth into the build). The Feather M0 board is small enough for the build, but has pass-through charging, and an on-off switch can be easily wired directly to the frame, eliminating the need for two components — the LiPo Battery charger and the Micro USB breakout board (I also could skip the desoldering, something I’ve never been good at). If you have skill — follow Jiri’s beautiful design or use one of the variants he suggests in his Instructable. But if you’re clumsy like me, or want fewer components in the build, consider using the simplified design with fewer components.

First — you can follow Jiri’s original build at his Instructables page for this project. Also consider supporting Jiri Praus on Patreon. He does truly amazing and inspiring work, and I’ve learned a lot following his builds.

I printed the 3D template for the heart sculpture as per Jiri’s design (I used a service since I don’t have my own 3D printer. Many libraries also offer 3D printing for a low cost).

I used this brass wire bought from Amazon. I snipped it off in about 1.5 ft. lengths, then straightened it by grabbing separate ends of each wire with a pair of pliers and pulling hard, twisting slightly while pulling. This provided enough tension to straighten out the wire. I then cut smaller pieces from the straight wire, as needed.

Next, when soldering I found that the double-sided tape technique that Jiri used didn’t work for me. The brass wires kept separating from the tape — likely because I’m not as fast and nimble at soldering. I kept melting the adhesive and the wires would slip off. Instead, I used blue fun tak wall tacking to temporarily attach brass wire segments to the 3D template. A sticky glue like Sugru is too sticky, but fun tak is really easy to position, holds well through soldering, and cleans up easily with alcohol wipes.

You’ll solder up one side of the sculpture frame at a time. Pay attention to where you finish one side so you don’t overextend your sculpture to the other half, or have a side that is incomplete. If you solder beyond the half-way point you won’t be able to remove the sculpture from the 3D printed template.

Also, definitely use solder flux & the kind of 3mm solder tip Jiri recommends (you can see it in action in his YouTube videos linked from his Instructable). I used Jiri’s technique of touching the tip to the solder, then touching the tip with liquid solder to the flux. The solder should flow over the flux and create a solid bond. Start with the bottom half of the heart sculpture so your technique can improve through practice and you’ll be better when completing the top half, later on. Even after practice, my soldering technique made my heart look like it was covered in thorns. I told my wife it symbolizes a love that was tough enough to endure life’s struggles. Pro tip: waxing poetic can make flaws seem romantic :)

Next, wire up the 9 LEDs to the heart frame that will go inside the sculpture. Jiri provides a printable paper template on his Instructables page, but I couldn’t get this to print in the correct dimensions. This is probably my profound inexperience, or maybe it was because I used American-sized 8.5" x 11" paper instead of Euro standards. I wasn’t sure what the 25 meant on Jiri’s drawing, and when I tried to set this to 25 mm, the sizing was still off. Instead I calibrated things myself and resized the image. You can find a .pdf of the template I resized in this Google Drive, but use Jiri’s if you know more than me and know how to properly print in the expected size. Also free free to use the comments in this post to correct my inability to print Jiri’s doc on my US printer, if you could get his template to properly print.

The little LEDs that you solder should be oriented with the diagonal notch in the upper left corner of the first LED when the LEDs are facing up (remember, you face them down when soldering). Look closely at Jiri’s images and you can make out the diagonal notch. I didnt even notice this at first and was confused how to position each LED. You can test that your orientation is correct and that your soldered connections are sound by testing the LEDs after each solder. Just connect the wiring to alligator clips, and clip the other end to jumper wires that you poke into the holes of your board. If you run your code at this point, the lights will light up red for a few seconds, then flash off since no sensor is attached.

Before soldering the LED frame, I found it useful to bend the wire into the shape that followed the printed paper template. I then covered the paper with clear double sided tape and pressed the bent brass wire onto double-sided tape so that it matched the shape on the printout. Then I placed something heavy on top of the wire so it didn’t pop off the tape, and I let it rest on the wire overnight. This helped the wire conform to the shape on the paper template, flattened it out, and helped to keep it’s shape when soldering. If you have precise skill in bending wire you may not need to do this, but again, I am not skilled.

Also, tin each of the pads on the LED with a bit of solder & do the same with the brass wire at the point where you’ll solder on the pads. Then you can add a bit of flux and should be able to more easily solder the wire and pads together. Take your time and take breaks if you need to. Make sure none of the solder touches other pads. The outer wire will be your ground, the inner wire will be your power, and the straight wire segments in between will carry the data signal. Double-sided tape seemed to hold the LEDs and heart shaped inner and outer wires well, but I used the blue fun-tak to hold the middle signal segments in place while soldering. These smaller brass signal segments run between LEDs wont rest on the page because they are to be soldered to the back of the LEDs, wo double aided tape on the page won’t belp.

This is delicate. After I soldered the heart frame to the bottom half of the sculpture, one of my data wires broke free of its solder and two lights went out. I tested it before final assembly, so I was able to carefully resolder the loose wire before sealing in the two halves of the sculpture.

I also didn’t wire the outer frame directly along the LED heart. My measurement wasn’t that precise. Instead I wired four brass legs coming out of the outer ground (and only the ground — don’t let the legs touch your inner power wire or the signal wire). This made it much easier to position the LED frame inside the sculpture frame, and I just had to solder these legs to the bottom half of the frame. I trimmed off any excess from these legs after soldering in the LED heart.

As mentioned, I used an Adafruit Feather M0 board because it was small enough for the sculpture, but still had pass-through charging. This means you can plug the battery into the board, but plug the board into a USB cable and charge it without having to add any additional electronics. This board also allows you to easily add an on-off switch by wiring a standard switch like this — one leg (either outer leg) to the En pin, the middle to ground, and the other pin on the three pin switch isnt attached to anything. I initially left the pins exposed and my build was shorting out when the metal pins touched the frame. I fixed this by covering the metal pins in MG Chemicals liquid connector coating, which holds better than electrical tape. I attached the on/off switch to the frame using super-glue after finding a segment that held the switch most snugly. The wiring diagram near the start of this document shows the wiring I used in my build.

If you choose a board other than the one Jiri or I used, be sure the board you choose will work with the libraries used in Jiri’s code. I mistakenly assumed the NeoPixelBus library used in this project would work with the first board I chose — an Adafruit Feather nrf52840, but that library wasn’t compatible (Adafruit didn’t write this library. It was written by the brilliant “Makuna” on GitHub — also consider supporting his work via the donate button on his GitHub page). You can find compatibility information under Supported Platforms on the NeoPixelBus page.

Be careful when wiring the sensor. They’re quite delicate. I’d suggest threading the wires up from the bottom instead of soldering them looping down from the top like I did. But if you use this technique, be careful not to touch any of the other board components while soldering or you can ruin the sensor board (I did this — fortunately I bought the boards in a two-pack on Amazon so I had a spare). Jiri’s build uses brass wire to hold the electronics to the sculpture and also to provide all of the electronics wiring in an elegant holding cage. I don’t have the skill to bend wire with such precision and was really worried that if I used this approach, my wires would touch and short out my project. Instead, I used standard wire. I used mostly black and red colored wire, since these matched the heart theme. If you use multiple wires of the same color, be absolutely sure to track that you are soldering the correct wire to the proper board pin or component or your sculpture won’t work.

Test everything along the way and especially before soldering the two halves of the sculpture together. Make sure you download the Adafruit board settings (see the Adafruit site, or other instructions for your specific board if you’ve never done this before). Then load up Jiri’s Arduino heartRate.ino sketch (linked in his Instructable). Also load any related libraries used in his sketch. Make sure components aren’t touching in ways that could short things out (e.g. nothing linking power & ground directly in the LED frame). Hopefully everything will work for you. If the sketch doesn’t load, make sure (simple things) your board is plugged in, your on/off switch is set to “on”, the Arduino IDE has proper board and port settings for your components, and that you’re using a board that’s compatible with Jiri’s code.

I attached the Feather to the frame of the sculpture by threading brass wires to the front and back mounting holes in the board. Using a wire that goes along and under the longest side of the board will provide a cage to hold the battery underneath (similar to Jiri’s design). I soldered the front mounts first, making sure the USB port was positioned so it could be accessed at the top of the heart. Be sure to keep the wires out of the way — you don’t want to burn any wires while soldering.

You don’t want to solder with a battery nearby. LiPo batteries are so flammable they can burn under water. You are on your own to learn and take all safety measures. I’m not responsible if your build causes an accident, damage, or injury. Make sure you’ve got enough room to slide the battery in when you’re done soldering and things have cooled. The brass wires that span the bottom of the board can be pushed by hand to keep the battery in place after you slide it in. Just leave yourself enough room to fit the battery in. Be sure to test the fit before soldering, as space is tight.

Finally (and carefully, since you’ve got your battery and electronics in the sculpture now), you can seal the connections of the two halves of the heart sculpture. Always push that battary as far away as it’ll go from anything hot. DO NOT SOLDER NEAR THE BATTARY. Charge up your battery and if your sketch is loaded, your heart should work great.

I’ll likely create newer versions of this heart as my skill improves and if I do, I’ll be sure to add a build video to my YouTube channel. My wife really liked the heart’s light and asked for it to have an always-on mode so it could be used like a mood light, sort of like a candle. For a future build I’ll likely create a stand that charges the heart and holds it while in the to-be-added night light mode, and I’ll modify the code to support Adafruit’s Bluefruit app (making sure I use a Feather Bluefruit). The app has a color wheel for selecting colors and it should be possible to write code to allow user-selectable colors for thr LEDs. The keypad buttons on the app can be adapted for specificly programmed options like always on, pulse animation, etc. I used this app in a similar way when I created my CircuitPython Bluetooth-controlled Necktie. If you’re looking for a simpler project, or a school project to use with younger makers, the necktie is a good place for newbies to start. The build can be easily adapted to be embedded in a scarf or other garment, too.

Once again, thanks to Jiri Praus for such great inspiration and for sharing his designs, templates, and code (follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube and consider supporting him via Patreon).

If you found this useful, let me know, and if you have more tips, feel free to share (or correct my clumsy work).

Cheers!

Prof. John Gallaugher teaches Technology and Business at Boston College. All lectures for his Beginner to Full Stack Swift/iOS development course are available free on YouTube (it’s taught as a flipped class, with lectures online). Even though his soldering is clumsy and he lacks skill, he also teaches Physical Computing (think wearables, robots, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi). You’ll find videos for fun, step-by-step projects on his YouTube channel. He also writes one of the leading Information Systems Textbooks used in business schools worldwide. You can reach him on Twitter via: @gallaugher.

Showcase Diverse STEM Stars: Use your classroom or office wall space to highlight framed covers and articles with STEM stars that look like your students. Robotics star Jorvon Moss aka Odd_Jayy was recently on the cover of Make and is framed on my wall. So is an article on MIT grad Joy Buolamwini who researches fairness and ethical machine learning. I’m constantly learning iOS skills from @thedevme and @ishabazz (who gives a very inspiring talk on Programming with Purpose worthy of student sharing). Dave Cancel and Elias Torres are building one of Boston’s star firms that has recruited many of my students and have often shared thoughts and inspiration as LatinX founders. There are MANY others (do an Internet search, ask friends). The Wired magazine covers of female engineers Limor Fried and Simone Giertz also take up space on my office that would otherwise hold my degrees (students know I have a Ph.D. — I don’t need this on my walls).

Use Social Media to Link Former and Current Students: Successful students who have overcome obstacles love to pay it forward. Encourage all of your students to connect via LinkedIn, follow on Twitter, and stay in touch via other social media that you feel comfortable with. You can use these “alumni” of your classes for ideas such as “keep me informed of scholarships, programs, conferences and recruiting events for diverse STEM students.” And if a student comes to you with a struggle, you can connect them with an alum willing to mentor someone new to white collar job searches, navigating the job market as a non-native speaker, or other challenge not in your wheelhouse. You may have talented colleagues who are admins or faculty from diverse groups who are also willing to help, but be considerate to ask their willingness and limits, as many PoC and women STEM staff are overtaxed by having to do all the extra “diverse STEM stuff” in addition to their own job, with no additional boost to promotion or pay (if you get promoted, change this). Also — encourage students to form a club to help their prospects. A few years back I took a bunch of tech-focused female student leaders to lunch, suggested they formed a club, offered my contacts list, and shut up and got out of the way unless I was asked to help. The result was the Boston College Women Innovator’s Network — one of the most active and consistently supportive professional groups on campus. You won’t have all of the answers, but you can be a super-connector to link your students with helpful resources.

Structure Courses for Success, Not Intimidation and Failure: To be very clear — many of your students from underrepresented groups will be dynamite out of the gate, but if you teach courses where some students of color & women (and really anyone) haven’t already had tech exposure and thus have their starting blocks set further back from Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hrs expertise goal, then discouragement is common. It’s easy for a student who hasn’t had prior STEM experience to get discouraged in classes where students who have already had STEM exposure are visibly dominant. Feelings of “I’m behind & will never catch up” lead to abandoning study. Structure your course to lower early discouragement & boost opportunities for students to hit milestones. Celebrate these.

Flipped courses help: In these classes, follow-along, learn-by-doing lessons are done outside of class during ‘homework time’ and that learning is reinforced via in-class exercises. Students who might not ‘get it’ the first time a topic is presented can rewatch lessons as needed. Students seeking help then come to office hours with specific questions, not “I’m totally lost.” In-class, camaraderie builds as students who “get it” help those who are new to topics and you create a culture of asking for and giving help. Everyone feels better when in-class exercises replace getting steamrolled by too-fast lecturing. Yes, creating flipped class videos is a LOT of work, but high-quality work can help you reach more students. You might even be able to partner with other educators who share your goals and teaching topic. See if there is already content you can leverage (my apps course is in a playlist & there’s lots more content on my channel). If you have a committed administrator — see if you can get financial support to build flipped class content, or seek an external grant — especially if your work is focused on STEM diversity.

Grading systems should encourage improvement, not the “weed em out” engineering school crutch: Much of coding is about pattern recognition and new students often haven’t seen and used new patterns enough to reinforce logical thinking and to prompt reuse. Lower the stakes of early tests and give students an opportunity to learn from early mistakes and demonstrate they’ve acquired skills in areas that may have initially tripped them up. One way is to allow retakes with limited penalties that encourage students to stick with a topic, rather than getting discouraged by early struggles. You want your students who stumble but then state “now I see it,” to then be able to demonstrate their new knowledge and stay committed to learning. This is NOT lowering standards or providing easy As. It provides an opportunity for those who’ve not already had STEM exposure to keep at it until they catch up.

Be careful of the trap of “grade inflation” concerns: Yes — it’s very bad if we allow students to coast through classes, earning As without challenging them, and admins need to step in to address this with faculty that aren’t offering strong educational experiences. But admins also need to be aware that a numeric range is not a reflection of what’s going on inside a classroom and they need to set better faculty assessment than sloppy-simple target ranges. Our role as faculty is not to fit students into a bell curve of performance — it is: 1) to set a high bar for expectations, 2) expose that bar, and 3) help as many students as possible get over that bar. If, at the end of your course, students say “it was hard, but it was worth it”, then you’re doing your job. If you’re spending time fretting over fitting students inside of administrator-set ranges, then the administrator that sets policies needs to rethink and improve faculty course assessment.

Project focus: Nothing empowers quite like the feeling of pride students get through “I built this.” Design courses that have students build something useful. In my University intro coding class, students are pushed to go from no coding knowledge to full-stack iOS app development (accessing a database, multi-user support) in a single semester. During the course of the semester students learn to code while learning to build apps. Many students say this is the first class where they “showed off their homework.” They build fun apps, games, productivity utilities, a weather app that can show personal photos (a great gift for Mother’s or Father’s Day) and finish with a social app for restaurant reviews & photo sharing. I’ve demanded more of students in this class than any other I’ve taught but have never had a student complain about the workload, because students feel a clear sense of accomplishment throughout the course. Are there other clever tricks you can use to make coding more fun? Python is often taught with text-driven coding that seems worlds apart from the graphical and app-driven computing most use. Can you combine python with physical computing hardware so their code flashes, senses, and does fun and useful things? Can you teach coding while building web sites and apps? You don’t need to master the fundamentals before getting code to get graphical, “appy”, or drive a speaker or LED strip.

Showcase student achievement: If you have projects — have students show these in a public forum. Bring in pizza or snacks and let them invite friends. Encourage faculty and potential employers to show up. Make a video of project presentations to share with new students in the next class. Be sure to lead the video with diverse students and capture impactful quotes such as: “I’d never done this before” and “this was my first (app, electronics project, etc).” Here are some examples of my students presenting their apps projects (scroll down for videos), and presenting their physical computing projects.

Apologies if this seems white-splainy or man-splainy. If you have ideas, share them in comments, although mean, snarky, trolly comments will be deleted. Nobody trying to make a difference needs to see that.

Prof. John Gallaugher teaches Technology and Business at Boston College. All lectures for his Beginner to Full Stack Swift/iOS development course are available free on YouTube (it’s taught as a flipped class, with lectures online). He also teaches Physical Computing (think wearables, robots, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi), and he writes one of the leading Information Systems Textbooks used in business schools worldwide. You can reach him on Twitter via: @gallaugher.

SHOW UP:

Do be sure to show up at campus career events. Even if you don’t think you’re qualified for jobs, definitely check out what’s on offer and consider attending an event, at a minimum, as prep for future years. This’ll give you a chance to tell a future interviewer “I’ve been interested in your firm since I saw you at the Career Fair when I was a Freshman.” And it never hurts to reach out to see if there’s an opportunity for you now. Remember what Wayne Gretsky, the greatest hockey player of all time, once said: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”.

UNDERCLASSMEN — THINK STARTUPS:

Startups are really great firms for underclassmen to target because they often have so much to do, but simply don’t have enough people power to get all things done. Startups often rarely have a formal campus recruiting effort, so reaching out to a startup will often be what’s needed. Reaching out shows initiative and that’s what employers want! Startups usually have trouble recruiting upperclassmen because the talent is wooed by big name firms with lavish recruiting teams that fast-track promising interns to future hiring slots. And a smart startup that gives a freshman or sophomore a shot and gives them a good experience knows the firm might be able to convince talent to come back for another year or to consider the firm when looking for a full-time job.

HOW TO FIND STARTUPS:

My university has a Tech & Startup Career Fair each Spring. Sometimes the city you’re in may have additional career fairs outside of your university.

Every city has a publication (or several) that track the startup scene. In Boston it’s BostInno at:
https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/inno

They’ve also got a weekly newsletter you can sign up for at:
https://promo.bizjournals.com/bostinno/signup/

TechStars also compiles a page with links to Regional Startup Digest Info: https://www.startupdigest.com/digests

The Boston Globe’s Innovation Beat newsletter is also a great way to find out about startups & recent funding rounds (again, startups with new cash are always looking to hire).

Also check the “Rocketship Startup List”. These firms are in that Goldilocks space where their future prospects are looking very good and they have hired enough experienced folks to provide good mentorship, but they’re also small enough that a scrappy young hire can make an impact and build a career. If I were graduating today & looking for a job, I’d apply to many of the firms on this list. Just scroll to find the Airtable inside:
https://bussgang.medium.com/the-rocket-ship-startup-list-2021-edition-80f4e404dc0b

Know when the hunting is good: Firms that raise a round of funding (in startups it goes angel/seed for first funding, then rounds are lettered: series A, B, C, etc.) have just brought in some new capital, so they’re going to be expanding, likely hiring, and they can be good targets when looking for work. Have you read an article about a cool firm doing interesting stuff? Follow the firm and manager on Twitter, or reach out to them on LinkedIn. Also look to see if the firm has additional accounts — a careers or recruiting Twitter account, a technical blog, etc. — and be sure to follow those. Often the CEO gets all the press, but a lower-level manager who gets an inbound email or other outreach from a student is likely quite flattered that someone is interested in their work. Reaching out is a great way to send a signal that you’re interested in a firm / industry / career.

ONLINE IS THE NEW RESUME:

You’ll be searched for online. Do you have a Twitter account? You should. And your tweets and followers list should reflect your interests in an industry and career. If you’re a developer, you should be following the leading YouTube tech educators in your field, as well as any impressive CEOs, role models, startups, tool providers, etc. Purge stuff that would be embarrassing and upgrade your presence to professional level. Make sure you’ve got a LinkedIn page + read tips on making your LinkedIn page employer-attractive. If you’re in tech, make sure you’ve got your GitHub page and Stack Overflow account linked. Most employers expect early work on these sites will be ‘starter/beginner’ level, but work here also conveys your seriousness and interest in building a career as a technologist. It’s even better if you’ve contributed to an open source effort, posted full projects, and showed you can be helpful on StackOverflow. And if you’ve been mean on StackOverflow or impolite in YouTube or other comments, clean that up and fix your attitude. No one wants to hire a relentlessly negative snark monster, ego-maniac, or perpetual cynic. Everyone wants to work with someone friendly, helpful, and who shows clear motivation. Anyone who wants to hurt other people online or off should seek counseling before seeking a job.

YOU HAVE SKILLS:

Underclassmen often think they can’t get a job because they haven’t taken advanced courses. If you can learn fast, and can learn on your own and don’t need much direction to get something done, then this is a BIG plus. Think of how you can sell this. You can research, evaluate, report, present — all useful skills. And you can acquire and apply new skills — even better if you come with examples of how you’ve done this (did you learn a skill for a campus job, club, or course that went beyond what was required?).

COME WITH IDEAS OF WHAT YOU CAN DO:

With a startup you can investigate the state of their social media strategy. If it’s lacking (and most are), you can suggest that you learn WordPress in a weekend and put together ideas for a blog, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat presence, and other engagement (remember, firms like HubSpot have all sorts of ideas on good “inbound marketing” techniques). Can the startup use more analysis of competitors? Best practice analysis of aspirant firms that aren’t direct competitors? Chances are in this stage of your career you’re really good at putting together reports / PowerPoint presentations, so offer up those skills! Also — QA (Quality & Assurance) Testing is essentially trying to “break” the software or provide usability feedback on what should be fixed / changed. You can learn QA testing techniques online. Every developer can benefit from having someone try to “break” their app/website/software or uncover flaws before end-users do. And startups often don’t have a QA team.

DEMONSTRATE YOUR SKILLS:

Have you learned things quickly on your own? Are you taking aggressive courses (like BCSwift) and learning quickly? Share that! Also — if there are skills you want, remember there are LOTS of places online to learn. Google has a ton of free courses in data science & AI. Udemy is one of the ways I learned Swift originally. And while many of the Udemy courses look expensive, if you sign up, chances are in a week or two there’ll be $10 and $15 course sales. You can usually trust course quality based on the Udemy reviews. And there are all sorts of other great tutorials on YouTube, via blogs, Medium, etc. Sometimes it helps to think of ways to nudge someone from trying to hire for short-term skills and instead think of the type of person they really want (learns quickly, good team member, self-starter). If you have stories or examples that demonstrate you have quickly acquired useful skills, all the better!

BE PREPARED

One of the best ways to show your interest in a firm is do some upfront research. The opposite is also true — the kiss of death is showing up for an interview & never having visited the company’s website, Twitter feed, blogs, recruiting pages, etc. Check out their website press room (if they have one), read their blog, search for the firm in Google news, follow them on Twitter (if your High School buddy dis’ed Twitter as something ‘uncool’, they’re a pinhead. Twitter is where the tech industry goes to learn from one another — don’t listen to that person). If the firm you’re looking into is a startup, info on their funding and advisors is likely in Crunchbase. The most common negative criticism I hear from employers re: interviewees is that a person wasn’t prepared — hadn’t even bothered to visit resources online, read up, do some initial investigation. The most common praise I hear is “wow, that student was prepared”. Be the latter, not the former.

USE THE CAREER CENTER

Talking about yourself is a very unnatural skill. We run away from people at parties that always talk about themselves. So practice can help you figure out how to put your best foot forward. The career center can help with mock interview sessions, resume workshops, and more. You need to get over any initial fear you’ve got, or apprehension because of how weird mock interviews feel, and definitely practice these skills.

USE CLUBS & UPPERCLASSMEN FOR ADVICE

Know someone who has gotten great internships or a cool job? Ask her for advice! It could be an RA, a Teaching Assistant, or other student advisor. Don’t be afraid to reach out — again imagine how this feels. If a bright-eyed underclassman says “you’ve done something really cool — can you share with me how you went about achieving your goal?” someone is likely to think highly of you and take your outreach as a compliment.

Clubs often also have similar interview and resume development skill sessions. And many alumni return to work with clubs to offer tips on technical interviewing, etc. BE SURE you’re in key clubs. At Boston College for students in tech, this would be the Computer Science Society, Women in Computer Science, the Women Innovators Network, MakeBC, and the Information Systems Academy, plus events the Shea Center runs, among others (note to dudes — the women-focused clubs often open events up to those who have “y-chromosomes”, too, and they’re some of the most active clubs running some of the best events on campus).

CONSIDER THE INTERVIEWER’S PERSPECTIVE

When interviewing, try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. They’re looking for someone they can work with every day. They’ll likely be spending more time with co-workers than they do with their spouses and children. They may be relying on you to help grow the firm so that their own ownership stake in the firm grows and is worth more, their stock options gain value, so that they can perform and get promoted, and so that the company does well and all can earn bonuses. Think about how you can add to this and try to communicate this to the person sitting opposite you. Smile, show enthusiasm, lean forward, and give good body language feedback. In group interviews, pay attention to how the best interviewees come across and emulate tactics that work well for your personality.

USE LINKEDIN — BUT USE IT EFFECTIVELY

Most folks in industry advise my students to keep outreach email short and direct. Four lines might work: compliment, compliment, ask, thank you. Also — a cold ask for ‘a job’ is often a turn off. They don’t know you. Instead identifying an alum who is in your goal career and writing — “you’re exactly where I hope to be — I’d love to meet you for coffee for 15 mins to get advice on how you got there” is much better. You’re giving a compliment and not making them feel obliged to help you with more than advice. And if you shine, you are on their radar and just might walk away with leads.

Do follow up with thank yous. An email thank you is fine. Hand-written is even better. No thank you is absolutely terrible. It not only harms you, it’s embarrassing to your institution and your advocates.

Think before you reach out: Is the person I’m trying to reach spectacularly busy (e.g. a CEO, venture partner, or very well known alumnus or person in industry that everyone knows and admires?) Perhaps that’s not the best first-contact or broad advice contact. If you’re not razor sharp when reaching out to someone at the very top of the game, you may look bad. Also — always think about what you might be able to offer. “I’d be happy to connect you with our students / clubs if there are job opportunities”. “If you’d ever be interested in inspiring others on campus, I’d be happy to schedule a Zoom with our club”, etc.

Alumni can also be extremely useful if you’re a student who has an extra hurdle to overcome. If you’re an international student and need to deal with green card issues, have concern on accent or language bias, someone who’s gone through similar challenges can usually offer very helpful advice, and most who have been challenged really love to pay it forward. Faculty and administrators from similar backgrounds may also be able to help.

FIRMS REALLY DO WANT TO BE MORE DIVERSE

It’s not just lip-service, diverse teams come up with better, more robust ideas and help prevent ham-handed gaffes that might be inadvertently inconsiderate or alienating to potential customers. In tech, in particular, there’s simply not enough talent to go around, and EVERYONE wants to see a bigger and more diverse pipeline.

Because of this, many large firms have aggressive initiatives to develop and pursue tech talent from underrepresented groups early and to develop this talent over four years. This applies to women and non-binary people in tech, as well as technologists of color. If you’re part of an underrepresented group, see if firms you’re interested in have special programs that cultivate talent that you can apply for. Also — many large firms have internal groups focused on supporting underrepresented groups. Poke around online to find out who runs these efforts and reach out to leaders directly. This can be a great way to distinguish yourself ahead of a simple resume submission and it shows you’re being scrappy. Consider groups like the Grace Hopper Conference, CODE2040 for black and latino techies, and similar (there are MANY and upperclassmen, career services, and campus offices that serve underrepresented groups can be very helpful in discovering opportunities). Also — by volunteering to mentor groups of K-12 students, you’ll learn vital skills that will help you communicate as a senior team member yourself, so if you have time, also start paying it forward by sharing what you know and helping those who want to be where you are right now.

Have additional ideas? Share in comments below or share via a tweet.

Happy Job and Internship Hunting!

Prof. G.

Prof. John Gallaugher teaches Technology and Business at Boston College. All lectures for his Beginner to Full Stack Swift/iOS development course are available on YouTube (it’s taught as a flipped class, with lectures online). He also teaches Physical Computing (think wearables, robots, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi), and he writes one of the leading Information Systems Textbooks used in business schools worldwide. You can reach him on Twitter via: @gallaugher.

Last Edited — Jan. 2023

I’m a University Professor, and I teach an intro course in SwiftUI for iOS Development. You can find hundreds of free, professional videos on my own YouTube channel, including all those used in my full Zero to Full Stack SwiftUI course, free on YouTube and my older course on UIKit. Students often ask me after our course is done, “How Can I Keep Learning?” Thanks to resources like YouTube, Udemy, Medium, and more, it’s easy to keep your skills current. Also note, many of the folks highlighted in one area, also have additional content (e.g. Sean Allen runs a podcast, offers a newsletter, and has paid course offerings) so do explore. If I overlooked some, so sorry. Feel free to share in the comments. Here are some thoughts on resources that I’ve found most helpful:

Use Mastodon (and Twitter)!

Many are surprised when I state social media is my most important educational resource, but by following experts, you’ll see continued info on new offerings, hot topics and content, conferences, and other things you might miss. Combine with a tool like Pocket so you can archive interesting posts to read later. I’ve updated this at a time when many folks are moving away from Twitter toward Mastodon. If you were a heavy Twitter user, you can easily find everyone you followed on Twitter & follow them on Mastodon by using MoveToDon.org. And you can regularly re-run this to catch any new migrants. Follow them all. Mastodon is growing quickly & there are lots of good clients out there. The IceCubes app is getting lots of praise & one I’m currently using.

YouTube

Swift/iOS developers that I follow include:

• Sean Allen @seanallen_dev
  - https://www.youtube.com/@seanallen
• Mohammad Azam @azamsharp
  - https://www.youtube.com/@azamsharp
• Mikaela Caron @@mikaelacaron
  - https://www.youtube.com/@MikaelaCaron/about
• Chris Ching @CodeWithChris
  — https://codewithchris.com/
• Craig Clayton DesignToSwift @thedevme
  - https://www.youtube.com/@DesigntoSwiftUI
• DesignCode @designcodeio
  - https://www.youtube.com/@DesignCodeTeam
• FlowWritesCode @FloWritesCode
  - https://www.youtube.com/@FloWritesCode
• Prof. John Gallaugher (@gallaugher)
  - https://youtube.com/profgallaugher
  Note there are channels for:
  - SwiftUI — https://bit.ly/prof-g-swiftui
  - CircuitPython — https://bit.ly/circuit-python-tutorials
  - and my older UIKit course — https://bit.ly/prof-g-swift
• Paul Hudson @twostraws
  — https://www.youtube.com/@twostraws
• iOS Academy @iosacademy_dev
  - https://www.youtube.com/@iOSAcademy
• Mark Moeykens @BigMtnStudio — https://www.youtube.com/c/MarkMoeykens
• Ale Patron @ale_patron
  - https://www.youtube.com/@AlePatron
• Karin Prater @swiftyplace
  - https://www.youtube.com/@PhysicsNerdDev
• Alex (Rebeloper) Nagy @Rebeloper — http://youtube.com/rebeloper
• Scott Smith @scottsmithdev — https://www.youtube.com/scottsmithdev
• Stewart Lynch @StewartLynch
  - https://www.youtube.com/c/StewartLynch
• SwiftfulThinking
  - https://www.youtube.com/c/SwiftfulThinking
• Tundsdev @tundsdev
  - https://www.youtube.com/@tundsdev/about
• Brian (Let’s Build That App) Voong @buildthatapp — https://www.letsbuildthatapp.com/

Newsletters

Many of the developers above have places where you can sign-up for newsletters and new release info. There are also some very good newsletters aggregating iOS happenings across sources. These include:

• iOS Dev Weekly — https://iosdevweekly.com/
• NotOnlySwift — https://not-only-swift.peterfriese.dev/
  By @peterfriese, a firebase team member
• SwiftLee — https://www.avanderlee.com/
• SwiftUI Weekly — https://weekly.swiftwithmajid.com/
  By @mecid

There are many, authored by the folks mentioned, but a must-have is Erica Sandun’s @ericasadun Swift Style: An Opinionated Guide to an Opinionated Language https://pragprog.com/book/esswift2/swift-style-second-edition. While I have a <$10 book that accompanied my old UIKit course, I do plan to create a new SwiftUI book later this year. Stay tuned!

Sites (often have YouTube Content + Paid Content, as well)

• LearnAppMaking — Reinder de Vries @reinder42 has very high-quality topic-focused posts https://learnappmaking.com/
• Swift by Sundell @johnsundell — https://www.swiftbysundell.com/

Paid Resources

• Kodeco (formerly Ray Wenderlich) @rwenderlich offers a lot of free content, plus wonderful books and a very high-quality set of online tutorials. Perhaps the best collection of paid resources available anywhere. https://www.kodeco.com/
• Hacking with Swift Paul Hudson @twostraws is perhaps the most singularly prolific iOS educator. In addition to his widely available, free, online content, he continues to publish and update a library of books: https://www.hackingwithswift.com/
• Try! Swift World Natasha (Natasha the Robot) Murashev @NatashaTheRobot runs the high-quality Try Swift conferences around the globe, and in the pandemic, she’s assembled some of the most highly-respected iOS trainers to offer online classes. I’ve already attended the Machine Learning course and really enjoyed it. https://www.tryswift.co/world/
• Design+Code Meng To @designcodeio takes a design-focused approach to iOS and offers many paid courses. https://designcode.io/

Apple Developer Resources

There’s so much there, including tutorials, videos, code samples, forums and more https://developer.apple.com/discover/. While sometimes dense, referring to source material from Apple (or the open-source Swift language https://docs.swift.org/swift-book/) is always recommended.

Apple Videos:

Apple has archived WWDC resources:
http://apple.com/wwdc

Apple has also begun posting some great TechTalks videos:
https://developer.apple.com/videos/

And for my students looking for inspiration — look for former student, Matt Ricketson @ricketson_, presenting! https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/216/

Fans of prior Apple launch events will note Boston College alumnus Phil Schiller was a constant presence on stage from the Jobs & Cook years. @pschiller: https://www.apple.com/apple-events/ Phil has kindly hosted my classes at Apple’s HQ in Cupertino, and even had us in VIP seats during the launch of the original iPhone.

Medium: Signup for Medium https://medium.com/ and specify an Interest in Swift/iOS. You’ll get regular, high-quality, curated posts sent to your inbox.

Consider Reddit’s SwiftUI groups. Like many, I’ve found StackOverflow full of comments that are often unhelpful posturing or posts referring to overly-technical & unhelpful content. Reddit’s SwiftUI groups have often been more newbie friend. Do try them both & search Stack Overflow, first, but if you get frustrated by a lack of intelligible StackOverflow response, Reddit’s Swift communities can also be a big help.

And for Bostonians post-pandemic:

• SwiftFest is an in-person conference held in various locations. I’ve attended the last two in Boston and found this a great opportunity to both learn and network. Speakers are not only brilliant, but also broadly representative of our community https://swiftfest.io/

—

Are You A Member of an Under-Represented Group? There’s a LOT of Help!

Most tech firms realize that a lack of diversity hurts their prospects. If you’re a woman in tech, a member of an underrepresented group, or a current or former member of the military, there are lots of wonderful resources out there to help. Many firms offer special programs to recruit interns to cultivate more representation, so search online early. Freshman year is not too early to begin! And if you’ve had the good fortune to succeed. Please mentor others. Your shining example can light the way for others of all backgrounds. Peace!

• Grace Hopper Celebration https://ghc.anitab.org/ of Women in Computing. Regular student scholarships. Every year some of my students are chosen to attend. Definitely apply & sign up for mailings!
• Women who Code: https://www.womenwhocode.com/
• Girls who Code: https://girlswhocode.com/
• Code2020 (underrepresented groups in tech): http://www.code2040.org/
• Black Girls Code: https://www.blackgirlscode.com/
• The Disability Network: https://www.disnetwork.org/
• LGBTTech — https://www.lgbttech.org/
• BuildBoston focuses on youth entrepreneurship in under-resourced communities https://www.buildinboston.org/
• CodeNation https://codenation.org/ brings tech training and internships to underrepresented youth (and bonus, was started by Boston College alumna Maurya Couvares @MauryaCouvares)

Many more resources than I can post and curate are available. One starting place: https://www.diversifytech.co/

—

A Note on Kindness:

This world needs more good. Many of you know some organizations have had especially troublesome workplace cultures. This is not at all unique to tech. Many firms on Wall Street and beyond have suffered from vile internal cultures for years, and throughout my career, even I have encountered those who are dishonest, belittling, and abusive. You should consider it part of your personal and professional mission to be someone who works to create a positive culture for all colleagues. Everyone starts from a place of learning, and swaggering, sneering, mean-spiritedness has no place in any organization. Positive, encouraging, helpful feedback is always welcome. There are simply NOT ENOUGH tech workers to fill available jobs, and someone who contributes to a toxic environment is working against the goals of the organization. Such actions put the firm at legal risk, reputation harm, and will likely lead to harmful career outcomes. Commit today to continually be a positive force in tech and business culture, and to be brave enough to call out abuse when you see it. The world needs you to use your powers for good!

—

About the Author:

Prof. John Gallaugher @gallaugher teaches a zero-to-full-stack iOS development course, as well as a physical computing course and managerial coures at Boston College. Hundreds high-quality, learn-at-your-own-pace videos (his entire flipped-class course) are available on his YouTube channel at: https://YouTube.com/profgallaugher. If you’re an educator + want more content, you’ll find slides and other content at https://gallaugher.com. Prof. Gallaugher founded the worldwide Boston College TechTrek experiences, has received multiple teaching awards, and has been named a “Guru to Grads” by Entrepreneur Magazine. Despite all this, he’s regularly embarrassed by how little he knows and welcomes any corrections and ideas. Reach out if you’ve found his material helpful. For more info on content, courses, books, bio, see https://gallaugher.com/about-john/ Also — he has a fun office to visit. If you’re on campus, stop by!

We want our students to get excited about coding, but too often first coding experiences involve uninspiring concepts like fibonacci sequences or find-the-prime numbers. This semester we tried something different — introducing coding through the Circuit Playground Express, a microcontroller packed with colorful LED lights, touch sensors, an accelerometer, light sensor, sound sensor, and more. Block-style MakeCode was used to introduce concepts like flow control, conditional logic, and loops, then transitioned to Python programming using CircuitPython. After a series of “flipped-class” tutorial videos and just two classroom programming sessions, students were on their own to come up with a creative “show and tell” final project.

The projects were incredibly diverse and included:

A robotic candy dispenser, a talking crystal ball, a light up dog collar, an intrusion detector, a personal training board, tech to quiet a snoring roommate, an alarm to cure cell phone addiction, a game of biz-tech jeopardy, a light saber, a talking Danny Devito, a sound board for a dog to make requests like “feed me” or “let me out”!

We also had a surprising number of musicians inspired by the produce aisle.

And of course, we did this at a Catholic University in December and we got a lot of Christmas projects: a christmas bow, python-powered ugly sweaters, high-tech antlers, achristmas story book, a buddy the elf snowglobe with soundclips, wreaths, lots of trees, and the programmable Santas got progressively larger as the week went on.

This wasn’t just fun, simple coding — students managed projects, consulted online documentation, referenced public domain tutorials and code samples, worked with different programing languages, converted files, dealt with hardware constraints, and were even able to relate this work to topics as varied as conditionals in Excel to business concepts like Standards, Network Effects, and Platform Competition. Many are now interested in channeling tech creativity into entrepreneurship, and many who hadn’t intended to code have already signed up for our zero-to-full-stack iOS app class next semester.

You’ll find video playlists for learning MakeCode and CircuitPython at on the YouTube channel at this link, and more info in these posts.

Have you found this helpful? Have additional ideas? Let me know and good luck!

Some important thank yous! Thanks to the Boston College Center for Teaching Excellence, that provided a grant so that I could buy supplies, including 100 LED light strips with alligator clips for reuse in future classes, as well as a bunch of supplies including capacitive touch paint and copper tape. And of course, HUGE to my fabulous TA team — none of whom had experience in this before our course started, and all of whom were extremely tolerant of my unreasonable deadlines, crazy ideas, early AM e-mails, and over-the-top enthusiasm. Employers, let the bidding begin for: Nicole Brito, Alex (Yu) Chang, Tiffany Daniggelis, Jenna Steichen, Sam Temple, Larissa Valdes, and Ivana Rizo Patron.

Curious about additional content? The material above is free to all and I’ll be sure to add to this over time. The award-winning text “Information Systems: A Manager’s Guide to Harnessing Technology” is updated each year, is used by over 300 programs, and is only $29.95 for an online version. “Learn to Program Using Swift for iOS Development” is a video-centric course ideal for flipped-class or online learning. Over 100 videos take students with no assumed programming experience through a “full stack” experience that ends with a “Yelp-like” restaurant review app that uses Google log-in, shared data via Google Cloud Firestore and Firebase Storage, photos, maps, and more. The entire product is just $25 online.

Project Description:
I’m a professor as well as proud alumnus at Boston College, so in preparation for the School’s appearance on ESPN College Gameday, I thought I’d create a “faux neon” team logo sign using electro-luminescent wire. EL wire looks great in the dark, but don’t expect to see the sign in bright light.

Skill Level:
Easy — no soldering or programming needed

Time:
About 2.5 hrs. depending on sign size and design complexity.

Parts List:
Most parts are available from Adafruit, Amazon, or if you’re near Boston College — YouDoIt Electronics in Needham, MA (fun fact for motivating STEMinists — both Adafruit and YouDoIt are run by women).

• Electroluminescent wire
  You can find 9ft. for less than $7, including a battery-powered inverter, which can be set to continuous, slow flash, or fast flash light.
• A splitter compatible with EL wire plugs
  This is useful for connecting multiple wires to a single power source.
  You can find a four-pack of 3- or 4-to-one connection splitters for less than $9.
• For wall-outlet power, you’ll need a plug-in power supply.
  I used a 12v power supply made for EL wire. It includes a 3 switch setting (continuous, slow flash, fast flash), available for less than $23 on Amazon, but you can likely find cheaper options.
• For portable operation, you’ll need a battery-powered inverter unless your EL wire comes with an inverter/battery case. Be sure to use an “inverter” battery case designed for EL. EL wire needs AC current (like the kind that comes out of a wall outlet), and an inverter takes the DC (direct current) power produced by the batteries and turns it into AC.
• Black foam-core board
• Painter’s tape
• Fishing line, clear hanging wire, or clear thread to help anchor your EL wire to the foam core board so that it can follow your design outline.
• Electrical tape or hot glue for safely enclosing the end of EL wire after trimming.
• An awl, small screwdriver, or rigid pen for poking wiring holes through the foam-core board.
• Wire cutters or solid scissors for trimming excess EL wire.

Steps:
Find and print a design or logo you’d like to use, or draw one on paper. You’ll use this as a guide for your wiring logo, but you’ll be able to remove the guide once you’re done.

Tape the paper containing your wiring design to the black foam core board using painter’s tape (this is low-stick tape that won’t remove the paper on your foam board when removed)

Poke a starting hole through the foam-core board to begin wiring. Choose a spot near the center of your design since it’s easier to add wires by working outward than it is to wire inside of existing wires. Also plan holes in spots that minimize wiring passed through the back of the foam core board.

Thread the end of the wire (that’s the end without the plug) through the first hole, starting at the back of the foam-core board, poking the wire through to the front. Leave enough slack between the first wire hole and the plug end of the EL wire so that you can connect the EL wires to the splitter, or further adjust the EL wire along your logo, if needed.

Poke holes where the wire will go out through the back of the foam board and continue to weave from behind to front, following your design. EL wire is flexible, but you don’t want to bend it too much, and definitely do not bend EL wire at a sharp angle or else the wire could become damaged. Anything after a wire break won’t light up. If you have a sharp corner in your design, use a hole in the foam core to slide the wire to the back, then create a softer loop on the back and poke the wire out to the front in a way that creates the illusion of a hard corner (see image below).

Poke anchoring holes along your design at points where your wire needs to be anchored to follow your logo. Next, thread your clear tie wire, fishing line, or thread from the back of the foam board, through the hole, around the EL wire, and back down the hole, tying/twisting the tie wire at the back of the foam-core board so that the loop you’ve created holds the EL wire in place.

When you’ve finished with an EL wire color, you can trim any excess EL wire from the end. Just be sure to put electrical tape or hot glue over the exposed end of the cut EL wire to prevent anyone from getting an unintended shock.

When done wiring all of your design’s colors, plug the EL wire into the splitter, then plug the single end coming out of the splitter into your battery inverter or AC power supply.

Add batteries or plug your power supply into a wall outlet and enjoy your new creation!

I teach managers and app developers at Boston College. I’m on Twitter at @gallaugher. Want to learn to build iOS apps? My online offering assumes no prior programming experience, but brings students through eight apps, ending in a “Yelp-style” rating app that use Google SignIn and Google Cloud Firestore. Over 100 videos are perfect for use in a “flipped class” setting, but any student can follow along. The product is only $25, and the first three chapters (two apps) are free. Find the latest version at http://gallaugher.com/swift I also write a managerial textbook in use at over 300 universities. It’s also inexpensive (only $29 for the online version) and can be found at http://gallaugher.com/book

So how does it work? It’s a real, carved pumpkin, but the pumpkin has a Adafruit Circuit Playground Express (CPX) inside of it. The CPX has seven capacitive touch sensors. These sensors detect electricity, including the electricity inside any member of “the living” brave enough to disturb the spirit rumored to live within. A wire with alligator clips on each end is clipped to one capacitive touch sensor (pad A1 in the code linked below) while the other end is stuck deep inside the pumpkiny-goodness of the lid. Since pumpkins (and just about any other fruit) conduct electricity, the electrical presence of your mortal soul travels from your currently-not-a-corpse, then through the pumpkin, through the alligator clipped wire, to the CPX.

The CPX has an on-board speaker, which plays a .wav file. The device is Arduino-compatible, but it also supports easier-to-code CircuitPython. It took a while to calibrate the best touch_threshold (200 works, for now — we’ll see what happens when the pumpkin dries out, err, when the spirit within grows in strength).

The same principles are used to power the Baby Groot in my office. Code for the Haunted Pumpkin can be found at: https://github.com/gallaugher/HauntedPythonPoweredPumpkin

Happy Halloween,

Prof. Ghoullaugher (mwah, ha, ha) — Twitter: @gallaugher

My (mostly) freshmen business school students have been learning to code by working with the CPX. For more info, see: http://bit.ly/CPXatBC

Want to learn to build iOS apps in Swift? “Learn to Program using Swift for iOS Development” is a video-centric approach ideal for flipped classrooms, online courses, or solo learners. Over 100 videos introduces coding & iOS concepts while building a series of apps. The final project is a “full-stack” restaurant review app powered by Google Cloud Firestore with social login, and review & image sharing. The product is entirely online and is only $25. Find out more at http://gallaugher.com/swift

Are you teaching technology and business? Do you or your students want to lead in tech? The award-winning “Information Systems: A Managers Guide to Harnessing Technology” is a student favorite in use by hundreds of programs. Updated annually and covering some of the hottest firms and technologies, alongside durable business and strategy concepts, the $29.95 fights the trend of overpriced, underperforming textbooks. Find out more at: http://gallaugher.com/book

Our “Digital Technologies: Strategy & Use” core course for (mostly) freshmen business students combines the study of how technology influences competition with some hands-on skill (usually model building in Excel). This year I wanted to give students an experience that combined coding with some basic engineering. The low-cost Circuit Playground Express from Adafruit Industries is ideal. The firm’s founder and lead engineer, Limor “Lady Ada” Fried, is also a great role model for students interested in entrepreneurship (feel free to share this YouTube “Be Inspired” playlist if you find it useful).

There were several goals in integrating the CPX into the course: 1) provide a lab where concepts of fast/cheap computing and its relation to new product and market creation could be more deeply appreciated and explored, 2) provide an introduction to coding and hardware in a way that was approachable and inspiring, 3) introduce more students (especially women & students of color) to possibilities in tech, and 4) provide a “gateway drug” for students hooked on this experience to follow up with additional courses in python, Swift/iOS app development, and more.

Students followed a “flipped class” experience, watching three videos, introducing the CPX, offering an intro to programming using Microsoft’s block-based MakeCode (which also generates JavaScript), and a video completing an “alert necklace” project that can flash a fashion animation, or a “friends, come save me from this bad conversation” light. Students completed work on the device on their own after watching all three intro videos.

I’ve prepared a Google Drive for faculty interested in adapting the exercises for their own courses. In class we had three hands-on experiences planned: In the first — “The Goblet of Glory” students used the accelerometer, animation, and sound capabilities of the CPX to detect when a “goblet” (plastic drinkware taped base-to-base, with a lid taped to the bottom to hold a CPX & battery) was raised in toast. Three songs were prepared (Game of Thrones theme, Harry Potter theme, and the Boston College fight song “For Boston”), which enabled students to quickly focus on coding the sensor work that integrated the provided music. When students completed the task, they came to the front of the room to receive “The Nectar of Knowledge” — sparkling cider (non-alcoholic, of course), in a toast to their newly acquired skills.

The second exercise — “Snack Signal”, used the infrared capabilities of the CPX. Students worked in pairs, sending a signal indicating which snack they’d like a classmate to get for them from the stash at the front of the room. Red meant “get me Skittles”, while blue meant “get me M&Ms”. IR is a line-of-sight technology, so issues of signal/sensor positioning were discovered and dealt with.

We didn’t have enough time for the third exercise planned: “Citrus School Spirit”. In this exercise, students would be given an alligator clip and a lime, along with the notes for the school fight song. Teams of 6 (there are six notes in the first part of the fight song) would work together to each use their lime to send a signal to play one of the needed notes when touched.

Students did all receive a loaner strip of 30 full-color LED Neopixel lights, and additional demonstrations were provided to show students how they could use lights for animation, sound/music response, and more.

We’ll have additional videos introducing CircuitPython, and another hands-on exercise course once python skills are acquired. The final week of class will include project demonstrations, with each student discussing their original work. Students have been pointed to online resources, I’ve created a few fun examples: a “Baby Groot” with live plant that will “talk” when the leaves are patted, a “super-tie” that animates a regular necktie with a light strip embedded in it, and a snow globe with 3D printed University symbol (eagle), that plays the fight song when shaken. Some of my teaching assistants are also working on additional projects, including music-responsive lights, and an instrument-playing robot. Be sure to check out “Tech with Estevan”, by the brilliant Estevan Feliz (a two-time Hackathon winner as a Freshman, and also one of my top-notch TAs). I’m new to CPX, and appreciate your feedback! I’m active on Twitter @gallaugher, and my website (which could use an update) is http://gallaugher.com.

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Capacitive Touch on the Circuit Playground Express allows an alligator clip attached to Baby Groot’s Leaves to receive a “touch” signal when the leaves are touched.

Difficulty Level : Easy

Materials:

Circuit Playground Express (CPX): I suggest buying the $29.95 Base Kit, as it comes with a USB Mini to Standard USB cable that you’ll need to program your Circuit Playground Express, plus it also comes with a battery pack & batteries: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3517

A single test-lead alligator clip (it’s a wire with an alligator clip at each end). You can get a bunch of them inexpensively online — Adafruit sells a dozen for $3.95: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1008

Baby Groot Flower Pot (I got mine for $5.95 on Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0796BGY8M/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_U-SLBbR9N9BJ3

A living plant: Mine is called “syngonium”. I bought it at a Star Market Supermarket in Chestnut Hill, MA for less than $10. I’m sure you could use some other conductive material, as well, but hey, Groot — you need a real plant.

Installing CircuitPython on your Circuit Playground Express (CPX)

Important things to note:

Even if you don’t want to write code in python for your CPX, you will have set up the CPX to run Circuit Python. This is described in more detail at:

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-circuit-playground-express/circuitpython-quickstart

and involves these steps:

• download the latest CPX CircuitPython uf2 file from the link/button you’ll find at the URL above.
• connect your CPX to your USB cable, and your USB cable to your computer.
• press the “Reset” button on the CPX so that your CPX lights turn green, this indicates that your CPX is able to accept files.
• drag the .uf2 file that you downloaded above into the CPLAYBOOT drive that shows up on your computer. CPLAYBOOT should appear the same way a USB drive shows up when you plug a USB stick into your computer’s USB port.
• After dragging over the .uf2 file, CPLAYBOOT’s name will change to CIRCUITPY. That’s it — you’re ready to upload python code!

Also: Once you’ve set a CPX to run CircuitPython, it will not be able to run MakeCode until you’ve updated the bootloader for MakeCode. More details are provided by Adafruit at: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-circuit-playground-express/adafruit2-uf2-bootloader-details#updating-the-bootloader

Downloading the Files

You can download the files (the code.py python file, and the four “I_am_groot_#.wav” files from GitHub, here: https://github.com/gallaugher/baby-groot

If you’ve never done this before:

• Visit the URL above
• Click the “Clone or Download” green button to the right.
• Select “Download Zip” to save a .zip file to your computer. You computer should now have a file named: baby-groot-master.zip
• Double click this .zip file to extract its contents.

This should create a folder named “baby-groot-master”. You now have the files you’ll need!

Putting These Files on your CPX

Now prepare your Circuit Playground Express to receive these files:

• connect your CPX to your USB cable, and your USB cable to your computer.
• press the “Reset” button on the CPX so that your CPX lights turn green, this indicates that your CPX is able to accept files.

And copy all four files to the CPX:

• Open the folder “baby-groot-master” and drag over all five files: code.py (which is the python code that controls your CPX), and four I_am_groot_#.wav files, numbered 1–4.

You should hear your CPX say “I am groot” in Baby Groot’s Voice. This indicates that your code is running!

Hooking Things Up

The code assumes that you have an alligator clip attached to the circular pad on your CPX that is labeled A1, so:

• Attach one end of your alligator clip to the CPX
• Attach the other end to some stems in Baby Groot’s leaves.

My plant is nicely dense, so touching one leaf will carry a signal to any touching leaves, and eventually get to the cable, then get back to the CPX via the alligator clips & sensor ring A1.

Now when you touch Baby Groot, he should say “I am Groot” when you move your hand off of his leaves.

The Code

If you want to modify the code, you’ll need an editor. Adafruit recommends that you use the Mu editor, which works great with CircuitPython: To install Circuit Python and the Mu editor on your computer, see the instructions at: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-circuit-playground-express/what-is-circuitpython

I originally tried this in MakeCode (makecode.adafruit.com), which offers block programming as well as JavaScript, but when I hooked an alligator clip to one of the copper touchpads on the CPX, it constantly registered a “touch”, even when nothing seemed to be touching the other clip. I tried readjusting the connection and still had a constant touch registering (those surrounding my office were very tolerant as hundreds of “I am Groot” sounds came from my tinkering). I’m *very* new at this, and there is likely a way to adjust sensitivity in MakeCode / JavaScript, but I went straight for CircuitPython. Do feel free to make suggestions or enlighten me to things I should have considered.

The python code is pretty simple. I teach Swift/iOS development, but don’t really know python. Looking at some sample code helped me put this together. You can find the code on GitHub and you can link directly to the python code via: https://github.com/gallaugher/baby-groot/blob/master/code.py

The comments at the top explain how I created the .wav files, and you should be able to use these tips if you wanted to create a similar project with different sounds.

I teach managers and app developers at Boston College. I’m on Twitter at @gallaugher. Want to learn to build iOS apps? My online offering assumes no prior programming experience, but brings students through eight apps, ending in a “Yelp-style” rating app that use Google SignIn and Google Cloud Firestore. Over 100 videos are perfect for use in a “flipped class” setting, but any student can follow along. The product is only $25, and the first three chapters (two apps) are free. Find the latest version at http://gallaugher.com/swift I also write a managerial textbook in use at over 300 universities. It’s also inexpensive (only $29 for the online version) and can be found at http://gallaugher.com/book