Summer 2013 Plans

Well it’s summer again. As of the official beginning of summer, June 21st, I have started work on my summer plans/projects. It’s a lot. Those plans are as follows.

Mind and Body #

• Coursera Startup Engineering Course - In the fall of last year, I started reading a reddit-like news aggregator called Hacker News. Through this, I was able to find out about an online course offered by Coursera called Startup Engineering. It started on the day I graduated, June 17th. By taking the course, I expect to learn a lot more about startups and what software engineering practices are used to build them. Of course, a startup also has a business side, so that should be interesting to learn as well.
• Blogging - As mentioned in my last post, I hope to do some more writing on this blog in the future, such as updating my progress on all these endeavors.
• Swimming - Since I can’t stay on the computer forever, I need to do some exercise as well. I plan on doing a bit of swimming every day after work.

Employment and Networking #

• Oracle-CPS Internship - During the school year, I took a Database Design class at my high school. This summer, I’ll be able to use that knowledge (hopefully) by interning at Chicago Public Schools’ Enterprise Applications department, which is affiliated with Oracle Corp. It’s a paid internship, so I’m planning on using the money I earn from it for either college or web hosting.
• Tendian.io - Last spring, I founded ExT Web Solutions, which was going to be my web development firm. However, that never got off the ground as we had no clients and all of the employees were involved in their own pursuits. This time around, I’m going to do things a bit differently. Right now I’m in the process of setting up my own freelance development agency, and making the website for it. Next will come marketing my services to individuals and businesses, which I have made businesscards for. Eventually I want this to become a full-time job, which will pay off college and rent.
• Meetups - While it’s important to code as much as possible, it’s also important to get a variety of opinions and expertise from others in the industry. So far, I’ve attended three tech events in Chicago, and I have another scheduled for this Wednesday. Time to do some real-life networking for a change.

Hobbies & Fun #

• YSFHQ: Project Kaizen - This project is huge. You can read more about what this is by clicking this link.
• Open Source - Much of what I code is built off of open-source software, and so I feel it is important to give back to the open source community. This tumblr theme is open-source, and can be found on Github. Once I get a steady schedule on my other projects, I’ll be able to do some more commits to my repositories. Follow me on Github and I’ll keep you updated.

I hope I’m able to finish all of these. Time to put my project management skills to use.

My workspace at home this summer.

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