First Demo Day at The Iron Yard Las Vegas

On September 18, 2015, The Iron Yard in Las Vegas hosted their first cohort’s Demo Day Presentations and Celebration.
Graduates of The Iron Yard, the world’s largest and fastest-growing code school, sprint for 12 weeks, putting everything they have into learning the craft of programming and design. Their time in The Iron Yard’s courses culminates in a comprehensive display of their knowledge and skill in impressive, fully-functional applications and interfaces.
At Demo Day, the local tech community can see the students present their work and have a chance to meet them face-to-face.
“Demo Day for us is when our students who are graduating present their final project,” explained Tisha Looker, Campus Director in Las Vegas. “They spend the last few weeks of their time with us really buckling down and working a huge capstone project. We invite hiring partners, our Advisory Board members and members of the community to come in and see what they’ve done. We also serve some food to make it festive.”
Although it isn’t easy to present to an audience, especially knowing that the majority of attendees are in your field and have more experience, Looker says she thinks Demo Day helps students realize that what they’ve accomplished is impressive.

“They spend so much time in the moment that all they can think is “Oh, I’ve only been doing this for 12 weeks so clearly I don’t know anything” when in reality they are doing things that leaders in our Tech community are looking at and getting inspired by,” she said. “All of our students, or all of our developers, came out of the Demo Day with plans to speak with different people about local jobs.”
The first developer to present at Demo Day was Eric Turner and his project was called Around the Fire.
“It utilized some really cool technologies to help you plan camping trips with your friends,” said Looker. “Eric use to work as an electrician and came to us because he really wanted a career that he could invest in and be proud of.”
Next up to present at the event was Aaron Pentz.
“He created a house buying application that laid the foundation for some really interesting machine learning that has the potential to help revolutionize the home buying experience,” said Looker. “Aaron use to be a Geek at The Geek Squad.”
Finally, Traci Armstrong presented an application that would tell users where to go when traveling.
“Basically, you say how far away you are willing to travel and what interests you and it gives you destinations,” explained Looker. “So it isn’t like a travel site where you just go and tell it where you want to go it actually helps you find new places to visit to fulfill that wonder lust some of us have. Traci is a former business owner and currently has several interviews scheduled.”
The Iron Yard in Las Vegas teaches immersive, 12-week courses that mentor you into a professional junior-level programmer. Participants study Front End Engineering, Mobile Engineering, Python Engineering, and Rails Engineering and launch a new career. More information on the campus can be found here.