How many of you have set a New Year’s Resolution and failed to keep it because you didn’t have enough help to get you over the hump, or maybe you didn’t keep it because there wasn’t anyone else pushing you or keeping you motivated? Maybe you didn’t keep it because when the task is out of sight, it’s out of mind. Well…lucky for all you coders and potential coders, Code Year is hoping to solve all of those problems for you this year–at least when it comes to learning to code.

Code Year, a project from Codecademy, promises to help the hundreds of thousands participants to learn enough code to build their own app or website by the end of 2012. Code Year bring lessons in the form of a game to participants each week through email. Participants started the year learning Javascript. The program awards badges to help keep the participants motivated.

So what connection does this have to SproutBox? Besides the fact that we think this is a totally awesome idea, we are going to host the first of many Code Year Meetups in Bloomington. Anyone who has signed up for Code Year (and yes, you can still sign up and start to learn how to code) will get together on February 7th, at 7pm at SproutBox and chat with other coders. We’ll have some developers here to help you solve that problem you just haven’t been able to figure out or give you insight and tips. We’ll give coders a chance to meet up with other coders and help each other out or show off what you’ve already learned. It’s always great to connect with someone trying to reach the same goal you are to help push you and keep you on the right track.

We are really excited to host this event. It allows our team to network and share the passion of development with participants and engage them in the Bloomington tech scene and even meet some of our Sprouts, like Squad. Code Year is a great opportunity for anyone wanting to learn how to code or even just to better your skills, so join us at the meetup and we’ll help you stick with your resolution!

Interested in joining Code Year? Make sure you sign up so you don’t get behind!

Make sure to RSVP and come join us!

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Brad shares what SproutBox is all about and his role within the company.

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Most people want to start the year off with a bang, well, we like to do things big around here, so we’re going to end 2011 with a bang! SproutBox is very excited to share with everyone our three newest employees, Josh Herring, Maggie O’Connor, and Diane Cessna. We are very happy to welcome them into our loving SproutBox family.

Josh has been working with SproutBox, primarily on ScheduleThing, since September. Word of mouth helped direct Josh to Chris White. Chris then helped get the ball rolling bringing Josh closer to where he had hoped to see himself within three years, starting his own software company.

Josh went to school to study human linguistics and ended up in a program that was equal parts linguistics and computer science. He found himself more interested in the programming side of things than the academic side. He’s pretty new to being a software engineer and would love any advice from the pros out there. Josh looks forward to hopefully work on an education industry sprout, or a really math heavy application. If you’re ever looking for Josh you can most likely find him playing with his cats if he isn’t hard at work keeping ScheduleThing competitive and implementing new features.

Maggie describes the way she became involved with SproutBox as serendipitous. She was looking for work in Bloomington and stumbled upon our website. She sent in her resume and it just so happened we were just as lucky as she was. She has only been with us for about a month but her enthusiasm to learn and improve her skills are a perfect fit for SproutBox. Her ambition has already lead her to learning more front-end development.

Maggie began her career when her natural love for art married her addiction to the internet. She advises any graphic designer to never stop looking for new things to learn, because you’ll be a much stronger designer for it.

When Maggie isn’t designing you can find her baking, cooking (which we have yet to experience, wink wink), or kicking butt in Words with Friends.

SproutBox’s most recent member of the family is Diane She actually knows our founders from back in the days of 2008. Once she returned to the great state of Indiana, she realized she had to get back in touch with them knowing SproutBox would offer the best working environment for area developers.

Diane first found her love for computers in elementary school when she participated in an after school computer program but didn’t start programming until college when an employer encouraged her to take a computer science class. She loves a good challenge creating and building things that real people will use. This is one of many reasons why Diane fits well with SproutBox, she is definitely able to directly contribute to the success of some really awesome products that people use.

Diane is currently splitting her time between Proposable and new Sprouts. She has really enjoyed working on our newest Sprout, because she’s had the opportunity to start working on it in the early stages of development.  She says she has already learned new things in the couple of weeks she has been here. With that being said, she advises any fellow developers to not be intimidated by things you don’t know. She believes it is impossible to know everything because things are constantly changing. So you don’t get in a rut, make sure to always be actively learning new things and growing as a developer.

If Diane isn’t hanging out with the fun and awesome people she works with, then she is probably with her English Mastiff and Boxer or doing something equally as awesome outdoors (by the way she also likes to overuse words like awesome and cool.)

It’s great that all three of them all are very excited about what SproutBox can offer them: a fun environment where they are able to learn while working on new awesome products. The projects are always changing allowing for our employees to not get tired of the same thing over and over again.

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