Bootstrapping A Career Via Developer Camp

While there are hundreds of hackathons held world-wide, there’s only one Developer Camp.

Square, Getaround, Temple Run, OAuth, TestFlight, push.io, and Zūm — each of these have foundations at Developer Camp over the past twelve years. In fact, major compaines including Apple, Oracle, Google, Amazon, Disney, and Facebook have purchased companies from the winning teams at Developer Camp.

What makes Developer Camp so unique and special? Three words.

Inclusion, Diversity and Empowerment.

Developer Camp is a concept that fused from several distinct, previously-existing event models. The first was BarCamp, a participant-driven “unconference” in which the content of presentations is decided by the attendees, presented by them, and organized entirely on the spot. Our camp incorporates this aspect by including the opportunity for attendees to hold “side sessions” or working groups that educate and inform. Our camp incorporates this aspect by including the opportunity for attendees to hold “side sessions”or working groups that educate and inform. What ties all of these concepts together is the belief that sharing ideas and code is the best way forward as a technology community. Contribution to Open Source, and a “we-can-do-it” attitude are at the heart of our Developer Camp.

— Dom Sagolla Developer Camp

I recently chatted with Samerial Johns, a recent grad and Developer Camp Alumni. Samerial’s recent video post about her journey on LinkedIn skyrocketed to over 398,172 views!

Samerial embodies the spirit of a true entrepreneur and her award winning social travel app, Aaireal was realized at Developer Camp.

Developer Camp was an amazing experience for me. It was my very first hackathon so now I hold all future hackathons to a high standard! I learned so much about coding languages, various softwares, and individual’s unique backgrounds while fostering relationships with my hackathon peers. It was such a creative environment filled with positive energy and people who desire to create an impactful software.

My experience was unique where I had to pitch my idea and convince people to work on my team even though my idea had holes in it. I ended up working with a designer to bring my business idea to life which is a travel web app known as Aaireal! It was exciting to solve problems and work side by side with the designer to construct the app.

After 60+ hours of constructing the app we finally created a solution for the travel and tourism industry. We pitched the app mockups and won coolest mobile award. I felt empowered, motivated and grateful. This experience was a gateway to more hackathons and more development of the travel web app.

I am building upon what I started at Developer Camp to eventually launch the product to the public. Here is some advice for newcomers who are planning on joining Developer Camp — be confident, share your business idea to everyone, work in a team and build the product that you desire!

It’s that bootstrapping hackathon experience that has inspired Samerial and thousands of others to build truly amazing apps.

Developer Camp returns this weekend at Draper University’s Hero City, 55 East 3rd Street, San Mateo, CA

Limited number of tickets are still available. Get your ticket today.

To encourage diversity and inclusion for my readers, here’s a 50% off for women and girls use the discount code — 2019LADIES and 50% off for and students code — 2019STUDENT

About the Author

Dan Zeitman is a software developer and advocate. Dan has worked with Cloudinary, PubNub, Vinli and Stanford University, as well as co-organizing Developer Camp, Dan has three decades of real-world experience as an indy developer. Dan’s strong devotion to civil rights, social action, and human rights have inspired him to work and organize a number of projects, including two disaster relief applications, as well as the Developer Camp Counselor program.