You may have heard, a lot has been going on for Operation Spark! From now through May 08, 2015, Operation Spark is running a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to help us raise the funds we need to begin to scale-up production in our software studio, Prototype.

In Prototype, our bootcamp graduates work alongside professional developers building software prototypes for startups, MBA candidates, and education entrepreneurs, and they’re paid while doing so. Our students come in with skills acquired in our bootcamps, and rapidly gain the production workflow and inter-personal skills required to enter the workforce as junior software developers.

Our aim is to move into a larger studio with enough space for 4 to 6 teams to be in production at once, with the overall objective of placing 25 Prototype graduates in local software firms per year!

To show our gratitude, I’d like to write a little series of celebrations…

A Series of Celebrations

To celebrate the accomplishments and contributions of all our Operation Spark Operatives, over the next 40 days, the length of our crowdfunding campaign, I want to tell you about these Agents of Awesomeness™, our students who brave the new (not hard) world of software development, and the amazing software engineers, who are sharing their love of programming and applying their powerful minds to solve problems in education. We'll also shine the spotlight on our volunteer committee, our board, and our fantastic supporters - I'm looking at you, Educate Now!

Episode 1: Rikia

I want to tell you about Rikia: Rikia came into Operation Spark in the summer of 2014 and has been rockin' it out ever since!

Our star student, Rikia completed two of our bootcamps, she participated in Spark Club over the fall of 2014, Prototype Weekend, and our unforgettable Code & Conquer event at NOLA Tech Week, where she and her fellow Operation Spark Operatives taught adults how to code.

Rain or shine, Rikia is here to learn to code. She's even come out to our teacher training sessions, running circles around everyone! She's even a regular fixture now at Hack Night, holding her own in conversations concerning code, and she was a finalist in the Trust Your Crazy Idea competition!

Once I asked Rikia what she liked about Operation Spark, and she replied, "Y'all just get me; I feel like I belong here!".

Mission accomplished!

So when the rest of you see Rikia coming 'round, make sure you tell her to keep at it - because she knows, nothing is hard, only new!

Rikia, I'm a big fan! You're crushing it like a true bug squasher, debugging your way into a ranks of the best hackers.

Thanks for making Operation Spark the best place to work in the world!