SWARM is excited to be sponsoring season 3 of the podcast Cut Your Learning Curve, a podcast about learning and the intersection of work and technology. In this season Nate Cooper, managing partner at SWARM is joined by Eve MacKnight, Director of Learning to discuss topics pertinent to life and work in our digital age.

In this season of the Cut Your Learning podcast, Nate and Eve have been deep diving into how the practices of software development have influenced the organization of both tech startups and the wider business world. A focal point for us has been “hackathons:” popular events where software coders and other team members get together for a short period of time to collaborate and build a digital product.

Click here to view the Facebook Live Recording of our interview with Jon Gottfried

Last week, Nate and Eve recorded SWARM’s first podcast on Facebook Live! They interviewed Jon Gottfried, the co-founder of Major League Hacking (MLH). The term “hacking” can be associated, for many, with cybercrime. But there’s another side to this world: hacking also describes creatively solving problems in technical projects. MLH is one of the world’s largest organizations for student hackathons: weekend long sessions where student teams form to create new products: anything from a website to a robot to a homemade self-driving car. 

From their interview, we were impressed on multiple fronts. MLH participants have the support of both a dedicated physical space (MLH’s student hackathons often take place on college campuses) and direct access to mentors from the tech community.  MLH also offers a fellowship program (similar to an internship) with different degrees of participation by companies; it is designed to help developers gain experience and better navigate joining the workforce. As Jon pointed out, getting that first job in tech can be so challenging, despite high demand for skilled developers industry-wide. We find that same trend holds true for project management. The MLH fellowship program seems like a great way to directly help young developers on their journeys. 

Finally, coming together to imagine, develop new skills and build relationships is a very cool way of solving problems.  For the full interview by Nate and Eve with Jon, check out this link.

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