Tiny Hearts’ product designer Humayun Khan
Programming has the power to change our entire lives and it has over the years. It was used to build an app that can translate 150 languages with the click of a button. Or an app that lets you share photos and videos for 10 seconds on New Year’s Eve with the WHOLE world. It sounds amazing but like everything good thing, it doesn’t come easy. Programming has it’s own language and in a city like Brampton, it’s hard to find others who speak it and it’s easy to lose motivation when you hit a rough patch.This is where Cipher comes in, Cipher is an organization that aims to create a community for programmers and creators to meet. This would help them develop their skills and provide support through encouragement or coding to help them follow through with their ideas. Cipher is also great for aspiring innovators or up-and-coming start up companies that are looking for a little help to move their ideas forward. Not to mention that they are a completely youth-led organization. Four high school students: Jevin Sidhu, Vaibhav, Udit and Brian Ngyuen pictured below with the Mayor, came together with the help of three amazing mentors: David Guida, Daniel Francavilla and Nathalie Atanda, to create a community for aspiring programmers to learn or further develop their coding skills and it’s all for free.Cipher launched on August 20th at Brampton city hall with a great turn out consisting of mostly high school students.
Speakers included fourth-year Western University student and president of Nspire, Annie Zhang, 500px designer Jeff Shin, Tiny Hearts’ product designer Humayun Khan, Mark Reale from Bnotions and Michael Hofweller from Ok Grow!. Each speaker drew from their own experience not only in the tech community but, also how they found their way to being who and where they are today.
500px designer Jeff Shin
Michael Hofweller from Ok Grow (right), & Mentor, David Guida (left) showing off his dance moves
Mark Reale from BNotions
As a first year University student myself, the Camp Fire Conference left me feeling encouraged to seek support from a community like Cipher with like minded individuals, innovators and creators using code to change the world. Learn more about Cipher in the video below and make sure you check out Cipher’s website to join their community ‘Circles’ http://projectcipher.io/