Well, let's say that there's a few different factors in how I arrive where I am. I'm the co founder of a software developer boot camp, and we make computer programmers. You can walk in the door not knowing anything about computers and a few months later, walk out the doors and entry level working computer programmer in a variety of technical disciplines. And here's how I got here. I mean, the short version is that I learned computer programming in early age because my dad was really, really smart. He brought one of the first personal computers home in the early eighties and didn't just show me how to use it. But he unplug it, unscrewed the back and showed me all the parts and how they worked. So from an early age, I understood the physical hardware of a computer. What the CPU is, what all the connections are inside, how it interacts with, you know, input output devices, peripherals of all sorts. And so there was never any real strong mystery about what a computer was just in terms of the machine. Then, later on in the Navy, I got a much stronger education in computer architecture electron, ICS and engineering and and learn to program. So those were the seeds of it in terms of how I ended up, like working in the computer boot camp space. Because technology boot camps are relatively new, they only started up around 2012 right as a viable method for breaking into the computer programming industry. In terms of how I got started with that, I had already been sort of tutoring people on the side because I would pull inside work as a developer. I'm working software developer, So I pull inside jobs, and I want to be able to farm out some of the work to junior developers. And I found it was really, really hard to find junior developers. And so I started just tutoring people. So my friends were really bright. And about that time I heard for the first time for my son actually about boot camps. This is early 2013. Boot camps had just started in the San Francisco Bay Area the summer before, and I heard about him and it just all came together. I went, Wow, I love computers. I know how to explain them in simple ways to people. Um, I like teaching, and I have personal reality on how hard it is to break into the industry and to find quality entry level talent. So I said, I guess I'll start a boot camp and I found a good co founder to start it with me. He was an expert at the business development End of things, and we just rolled with it. And that's become the tech Academy, which has been around since. Like I say, 2013 is one of the best boot camps in the world. So that's a bit of background on where I came from and what motivates me. I really want to break down the barriers between the average person and technology. I don't think this should be such a huge barrier to entry for someone to one. Be a knowledgeable user of technology and, more importantly, to to be ableto control technology, to understand programming, to be able to understand what's underneath the hood so that they can use technology from a position of power instead of being a slave to it and using it unknowingly, if you know what I mean

Well, at this point, the Tech Academy has 11 different boot camps covering subjects such as just plain old Web development C sharp python. Um, you know, security. Um, you know, front and JavaScript developer data science, like there's a lot of different boot camps. Right? So we have I said 11 different boot camps in terms of the balance between in person online. Well, this is being recorded in November of 2020. So we're in the age of coronavirus. So right now, all of our training is being done online when we're not in the age of coronavirus and people can actually come into our campuses. We found that most you know, about 60% of our students really value and impersonal experience, and they'll do some or all of their training in one of our campuses. We have campuses in Portland, Oregon, and in in Denver, Colorado. Eso that works out just great for about 60%. Ah, full 40% of our students are 100% remote, and again right now, they're all remote because of what we have going on. But in our you know, historically, 40% of the people just want a remote or fully online experience, which means we have students all over the world in terms of how many weeks do students typically take when we have a rather unique model in that we are self paced, we don't have everyone start on the exact same day and move in lockstep through their training. Instead, you can move, you know, you move it your own page so you can move rather quickly through the, you know, subjects that you happen to know pretty well or they're going well for you. But the flip side of that is really great because if you run into something that you're kind of hung up on and you can't quite understand and you need a little bit more help, you might take a little bit longer than that. But on average, change your question on average for, say, a full stack boot camp like our C sharp boot camp or are Python boot camp. It could take between four and seven months to complete that you can do it part time, in which case it might take you the full six or seven months. You could do it full time, in which case you probably finish it in about four months, and every once in a while we have someone that just really takes advantage of the fact that it's self paced and does a super intensive schedule 50 60 70 hours a week and then finish in three months, three or four months. At the end of that You are full stack working developer, you know you can. You can be part of a dev team. We have an excellent job placement. You know, of course, that helps people, you know, look for jobs. But to answer your question between three and seven months, depending upon which program and how quickly you get through it, which depends on how much time you put into it.

Well, let's look at that first question process for creating and updating courses will look at that separately in terms of creating courses that really has to do with having our finger on the pulse of the market and buy the market. I don't just mean on the student acquisition end of it. We do in fact, pay attention to what students are wanting, but it's equally important to us to know what the enterprise wants. You know what the what the hiring managers want and one central aspect of how we've worked over the years, um has some bearing on the answer to all of these questions you just asked, which is that I, as the senior technologist, that the company have been a working software developer through the entire time period that the Tech Academy has been around? And so what that does for me and for the school is it makes it so that I know what's actually being used out in the marketplace. I don't have to make any guesswork. I know you know what's happening with front end Java script development and which frameworks are getting popular and which ones are waning in popularity and which ones might be worth putting into a curriculum because they seem like that's, um, sticking power and which one seems like It's just it's just too early to tell. And so we've been able to be very bright and successful about what courses we create and specifically what technologies technologies. We teach on those courses because because I work in the industry and I watch what happens on a daily and weekly and monthly and yearly basis. So when it comes to creating new courses, we look at what's being asked for by hiring managers, which is part of the reason why we have, you know, a computer security course, because security is massively important and we need many, many more professionals in that area. It's another reason why we have a front end JavaScript developer courses. Because JavaScript has become a first class language, it's no longer just for customizing the behavior of Web pages There are. There's a whole ecosystem there and you have to learn how to operate in that ecosystem. So that's how we you know, I think you know, we work out what courses to create in terms of updating courses is kind of the same question. There's a two part thing, though. There's obviously the fact that I'm working in the industry and I pay a lot of attention to it. But even more importantly, we have a a strongly grooved in line directly from our in students through to the curriculum design team. It runs through instructors, which means that any kind of recommendation or question or, you know, good idea, or what if that anyone has, whether it's a student or instructor about the curriculum gets tow us within hours. And so the curriculum development Team, which I'm a big part of we'll know right away whether you know students are having, you know, difficulty with one particular section of particular course, and we'll be able to step in quickly and change that. Or if there's some new subject that a a large number of students are asking about, we'll be able to see that right away. So our line from our students to the quickly design team is very quick and very easy. It's very easy to tell us what's going on and that also kind of I think, answer is, how do you ensure the relevance of the topics of material covered? It's all wrapped up in what I just described