In autumn 2018 we Android Academy: Fundamentals free course launched.
It consisted of 12 meetings and a final 22-hour hackathon.

Android Academy is a global community founded Jonathan Levin. It appeared in Israel, in Tel Aviv, and spread to St. Petersburg, Minsk and Moscow. When we launched the first course, we sincerely believed that in this way we could build a community of guys who would enjoy getting together and learning new things. We wanted to open a new door for everyone who wants and is ready to take a step into the profession.

Now, after a few months, it seems that it worked out: the guys learned the basics, united in a professional community, and someone even managed to get their first job offer as an android developer.

We report on how the Android Academy in Moscow went, share video lectures and tell how the careers of those who completed the course have changed.

Home

First of all, we assembled a team of mentors. It consists of 18 practicing android developers. Each of us led our own group of students, 5-8 people each.

When we began to think about a venue where we could hold our academy, our friends from Avito and Superjob offered us the hand of a partner. About these two companies, in general, you can write a separate whole article. In short: where else can you find the same crazy like-minded people who easily respond to ideas and answer: “Come on, let's do it!”? And yet they are awesome engineering companies?

We planned that no more than 120-150 people would come to the first meeting.
But something went wrong:

The course

The classes were attended by children of absolutely different levels. Someone came to learn from scratch, someone with little experience. There were also confident Middle-level developers who came in order to consolidate the initial knowledge. Many students were able to get their first job offer as an android developer.

Thanks a lot for the course! You have done a great and great job! Not all paid courses check homework, but here you can also hear a lot of useful tips 🙂

By the middle of the course, when our students learned more about working with Activity, views, Threads и Networking, we smoothly moved to SuperJob.

Ahead of us were waiting for a lot of burgers and six more lectures - about Fragments, Persistence, Brand and everything that did not fit into individual lectures.

A very good course, difficult material is clearly explained, I learned a lot of new things, even taking into account the development experience, the lecturers understand the topic they are teaching, it is not boring.

Hackathon

In mid-December, we approached the main event - the final hackathon, which was held in Avito with the support of Google, HeadHunter and Kaspersky Lab.

We planned to make an application with the following characteristics:

• at least two screens;
• availability of work with a network connection;
• correct handling of device rotations and requests for permissions.
  This was necessary in order to use all the skills acquired during the training.

I was simply shocked by the level of projects that the guys did. They were very technical!

And the hackathon began: a welcoming speech, instructions from mentors, let's go!

22 teams

22 hours to develop an MVP application,

22 hours to apply the acquired knowledge in practice.

Around 7 o'clock in the morning, the entrance to Avito's office looked like this:

How many people sleep in this photo?

At dawn, after a hearty breakfast, the guys began to recover, correct critical bugs and prepare presentations.

The atmosphere of the hackathon is perfectly conveyed by the video edited by the guys from Avito.

But the most important thing is what our guys could learn at the hackathon.

How has Android Academy affected your career?

Three months after graduating from the academy, we asked our students the question: "How has Android Academy influenced your career?".
30% percent of our audience have successfully changed their specialty to android developer.
6% received an android competency in addition to their core competency.
4% are still looking for work.
25% have already worked as android developers and noted an improvement in their skills. Most of these trainees got promoted or changed jobs.
60% The guys continued to improve their knowledge at professional conferences on Android!

Lectures

1. Intro (Jonathan Levin, ColGene).
2. Bonjour Monde (Sergey Ryabov, independent developer).
3. views (Alexander Blinov, HeadHunter).
4. List and Adapters (Sergey Ryabov, independent developer).
5. Threads (Alena Manyukhina, Yandex).
6. Networking (Alexey Bykov, Kaspersky Lab).
7. Persistence (Alexander Blinov, HeadHunter).
8. Fragments (Evgeny Matsyuk, Kaspersky Lab).
9. background (Evgeny Matsyuk, Kaspersky Lab).
10. Brand (Alexey Bykov, Kaspersky Lab).
11. Missing Parts (Pavel Strelchenko, HeadHunter).
12. Preparing to Hackathon (Alena Manyukhina, Yandex).

Cast

Mentors and lecturers
Alexey Bykov, Alexander Blinov, Jonathan Levin, Sergey Ryabov, Alyona Manyukhina, Evgeny Matsyuk, Pavel Strelchenko, Nikita Kulikov, Valentin Telegin, Dmitry Gryazin, Anton Miroshnichenko, Tamara Sineva, Dmitry Movchan, Ruslan Troshkov, Sergey Garbar, Eduard Anisonyan, Anatoly Sukholyukov , Vladimir Demyshev.

Logistics and organizational issues
Katya Budnikova, Mikhail Klyuev, Yulia Andrianova, Zviad Kardava.

This article was written
Alexander Blinov, Alexey Bykov, Jonathan Levin.

What's next?

The first course of basics is over. All errors are documented, a retrospective is held. The next step is to launch new courses. They will be designed for both beginners and experienced developers.

Stay tuned for announcements in Slack chats.

Moscow - Planned to launch an Advanced course.
Peter — Fundamentals course started.
Minsk - Advanced course ends.
Tel Aviv - the Fundamentals course ends, we are waiting for Chet Haase to visit.

Rђ RІRѕS, here there will be news from the Android Academy community.

Source: habr.com