New Year’s Resolution: Teach programming in your organization
As we are approaching New Year it is time to think of new resolutions that we’ll work on in 2017. I’m sure you already have by now a lot of ideas on your list.
I’m challenging you to accept a new resolution… that may sound a little bit extreme at first sight: if you have software development skills, teach programming lessons for non-programmers in your organization!
I guarantee you that you’ll create a lot of interest and a lot of people will join your class. Make the invitation open to everybody: to people in testing, to people in QA, to office assistance, etc.
The success of this project is to keep it simple: no books, no powerpoints. Just a conference room with a whiteboard and a projector. Ask everyone to bring their laptops and spend 1 hour quality time writing code and scribbling on the whiteboard.
One more condition: do it in a way that doesn’t impact your daily business activities. Perhaps in the lunch room or after hours. And do it for the entire 2017!
What will happen next will be impressive: you’ll see how people are happily skipping lunch and take time out of their busy schedule just to challenge themselves with intellectual activities in your class. You’ll see how a new creative and engaging environment starts to build in your organization…
Steve Job said “Everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think”.
Introduce the program gently to your people. Encourage them to grow themselves into this new area. Not all of them will become coders … but having coding knowledge will surely help them better with their personal goals and organization goals.
Remember them that even president Obama took the challenge to code.
Start now! … and if you managed to create new programmers in your organization drop me a line! I’m always happy to hear success stories!