Ines Jakubovski, Campus Director at Holberton School Uruguay, participated in a webinar organized by ACDE (Christian Association of Business Directors) to present Holberton School along with #Holbies and Hiring partner!
ACDE Uruguay – a non-profit Association of Business Leaders, invited our local Campus Director to present Holberton School, along with Martin M. Saavedra, Architect and #Holbie, Guillermo Jacobi CTO from Zonamerica and Alvaro Vázquez Cerfoglio from Switch Software Solutions and Free Pass.
In this webinar, they discussed the new roles and skills needed in the local tech industry. The lack of tech talent in the country. Indeed the country graduates 800 software engineers per year when companies are looking for 2,500 of them. Therefore companies have to train internally or hire abroad. The tech sector is adding $1.7B to the economy every year.
While the need for Tech Talent is constantly growing in Uruguay, Holberton School, promoted by Fundacion Zonamerica, develops innovative training programs and cultural activities that allow people to learn new skills to enable them to work for the most prestigious and internationalized companies in Uruguay.
Located in the heart of Montevideo, Holberton School Uruguay trains best-in-class software developers with programs in Full-Stack Web Development, Machine Learning, Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality, and Low Level & Algorithms.
Only one year after its inauguration, 95% of the student from Montevideo Campus’ first cohort found jobs in the IT world.
Now, with two cohorts in the learning process, we’re looking forward to welcoming the next one, starting next week!
We are thrilled to announce the opening of Holberton School Albania. This new campus will open in January 2022 in the capital city, Tirana, and will be the first Holberton School campus in the Balkan region. Albania will be the 20th country to welcome a Holberton School campus.
With the opening of a new Campus in Albania, we will help with the pent-up demand for qualified tech talent and education in the Balkan area and pursue our mission to help fill the IT talent gap in Europe, which is estimated at around 750,000 jobs by the European Commission. The location was chosen based on strong partners able to tap into the momentum created by the local government seeking to turn Albania into an innovation center. Tech training is front and center in this visionary government’s plans.
“Holberton School’s cutting-edge tools and broad scalability will play a key role in our efforts to ‘leapfrog’ forward and put the Albanian technology ecosystem on the map, and through it, catalyze the local economy,” said Arbi Mazniku, Tirana’s forward-looking Deputy Mayor.
In addition, Tirana is one of the most vibrant cities in Albania. It was selected as the European Youth Capital for 2022 due to the incredible combination of arts, culture, and entertainment. Add to this livability a low cost of living, and it is not a surprise to see an increase in ‘digital nomads’ choosing to live in Tirana. Holberton School Albania expects such internationals to join the Holberton School program alongside Albanians at its Tirana campus.
“The demand in the Albanian market for software engineers has doubled in the last year. Add to this the gigantic need for additional tech workers from nearshore markets. Holberton School provides the perfect platform for scaling up such coders’ training and producing talent to enter at a higher level than either bootcamps or traditional university programs. A true game-changer for Albania, and then the region!” says Grant Van Cleve, international angel investor and the Chairman of Holberton School Albania.
Holberton School Albania plans to enroll 100 students next year and 3,500 students in the next 5 years. It will provide best-in-class Full-stack Web Development, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR), Linux Programming, Advanced Algorithms, and Blockchain curriculums.
Admissions are already open for January 2022! Start your application today! www.holbertonschool.com
Choosing one’s path, choosing a career, choosing a school, or a Bootcamp can be difficult. Our students made that choice and joined Holberton School.
Since that moment, what do they think about their choice? In March 2021, we started to create a series of videos that featured students from all around the world. They have been asked quick questions. Here is a “Best of” series of their answers!
How would you describe Holberton School in one word?
“Challenging,” “Life-Changing,” “a great Opportunity”… That’s a tough question, with thousands of possibilities. Think about a word, and check our student’s responses!
The checker is the tool that auto-grades our students’ code. There are no surprises here; some of our students LOVE it, and some have mixed feelings about it. Check it out!
What would you say to a beginner?
A classic but essential question to ask our Holbies! Some of them said, “Give it a try!” “be committed and have fun!”, “just do it!”, check out their answers!
What have you learned about yourself?
Some experiences can be life-changing. What do our Holbies think about this one? What have they learned about themself while learning how to program? Check it out!
Last September, more than 400 students from Cohort 13 started their journey to become Software Engineers, all over the world! To conclude the Foundations program, they built a Portfolio project. Here is a snippet of some of our students’ (great) projects.
Ahmed Belhaj, Amine Bondi, and Mohamed Chedli from Holberton School Tunis worked on a project called Quick Report. This is a cross-platform application to replace the standard paper process when filing an accident in Tunisia it helps the auto insurance Company manage their Client, and users to fill a report easier and faster from their mobile phone. Read more.
Joshua Carreras and Jaime Martínez, from Holberton School Puerto Rico, worked on a project called Go to College. It is a platform that helps students identify career paths based on their strengths and interests, and then matches them with the post-secondary education options that better fit their individual preferences and needs.
Go to College
Nicolás Portela, Sebastián Olmos, Roberto Ribeiro and Luciana Sarachu, from Holberton School Uruguay, worked on a project called readIT. It is a platform for sharing paper books, it aims to facilitate cultural access through the implementation of a network of second-hand books, contributing to sustainable consumption, and spreading the values of the community, with the book as an invaluable cultural piece and factor of union between people.
readIT
Cecilia Giudice, Julián Arbini, and Soledad Frechou, from Holberton School Uruguay, worked on a project called PlayerTrack. It is a daily use app for the different members of a team sport, in order to centralize all relevant player and team data with the ultimate objective to produce better results through a predictive model of injuries, post-injury analysis, and performance indicators.
PlayerTrack
David Alzate Alzate, Mauricio Sierra Cifuentes, and Victor Manuel Plaza, from Holberton School Cali, worked on a project called edu inspector. Automate Code-inspector.com, Escalate your business processes, Automate, Control, and Report easily Code-inspector.com data with Edu-inspector Dashboard, Manage your team Metrics, Make business decisions based on data, Get all your team Violations, Duplicates, Long functions, and Complex functions in one place.
Tomás Gómez, Andrés Aristizabal, and Carlos Úsuga, from Holberton School Medellin, worked on a project called Smart Rev. It is a state of the art application that allows creators and their teams to trace the revenue produced by a creation while getting paid automatically through the Ethereum Blockchain. Check it out
Andrés López and Diego López, from Holberton School Bogota, worked on a project called SKEXIE. It is a REST API developed for Torre using a custom trained NLP (Natural Language Processing) Machine Learning model to analyze, process, and extract relevant skills and experience required from job post offers in order to automate manual extraction into Torre’s format. Read more.
SKEXIE
Leonardo Valencia, Andrés Sotelo Durán, Juan Carlos Hernández, and Rolando Quiroz, from Holberton School Bogota, worked on a project called The Escape Room. A Text-based escape room game, powered by machine learning. The main objective is to explore the capabilities of Machine Learning combined with the tools of a text messaging platform such as WhatsApp, and demonstrate the scope of these technologies within the chatbot agent automation business model. Check it out and give it a try.
Kellie Mogg, Jasmine Choi, Lauren Dobratz, and Allen Nicholson, from Holberton School Tulsa, worked on a project called Tulsa Maps project, a web application, a web mapping platform featuring locally owned businesses in the Tulsa area. This project was based on the sole fact that localizing the Oklahoma economy would be beneficial to everyone. We feel passionate about giving our community an easily accessible map with a plethora of places to find. As a group, students want to bring awareness to local businesses as they are often overlooked by bigger franchises. Read more: tulsamaps.herokuapp.com
Paul Manot, Huy Nguyen, and Thibaut Bernard, from Holberton School France, worked on a project called Back-to-the-picture. The idea popped into their heads when they were surfing. They could see photographers on the beach and they knew they could be taking great pictures that they would never see. And thought that a platform on which you could search pictures by location and date would solve that need. That’s how BTTP, an aspiring social network for events was born. Read more
Congratulations C#13 on finishing Foundations! We’re super proud of you and wish you all the best for Specializations! Let’s do it!
We are proud to announce we have been named to The GSV EdTech 150, which recognizes the world’s leading, most transformational education technology companies.
We were chosen from among 2,000 venture capital and private equity-backed private companies across several evaluation factors: revenue scale, revenue growth, active learner reach, international reach, and margin profile. GSV estimates that these 150 companies together reach approximately 3 billion people — close to half of the global population — and generate approximately $20 billion in revenue.
GSV launched its inaugural list of leaders in education technology in 2020 with the EdTech 50, and with rapid growth in the sector, increased this year’s list to 150.
“The Holberton School network has been providing a first-rate, software engineering education to many students around the world, with an education focusing on learning how to learn, in order to train them for the 4th industrial revolution. The Holberton team is delighted with this recognition, but I want to dedicate this award to our Holberton partners and Holberton Schools’ staff around the world, who are dedicated their lives to help their students,” said Julien Barbier, CEO, and founder of Holberton. “The world faces an increasing tech talent gap, which we are helping close one school at a time.”
“Congratulations toHolberton School for being selected for the GSV EdTech 150,” said Deborah Quazzo, managing partner of GSV. “When we launched the EdTech 50 last year, none of us knew the impact that a global pandemic would bring to education. COVID-19 brought 1.6 billion learners online overnight, ushering in the dawn of digital learning, and those we recognize today certainly met the moment.Holberton School has responded to unprecedented demand and growth with what GSV calls Weapons of Mass Instruction — and we look forward to seeing what you do next.”
To arrive at its listing, GSV evaluated more than 2,000 venture capital and private equity-backed private companies across several factors:
VC or PE-backed private companies in Digital Learning, excluding companies that are public or have filed to be public
Companies that are post-Series A in their development with the exception of bootstrapped companies that have achieved meaningful scale with $10+ million in revenue
Organic top line growth at over 30%
The selection is determined by GSV’s internally developed scoring system that applies scores across several KPIs including revenue scale, revenue growth, active learner reach, international reach, and margin profile.
The GSV EdTech 150 list is evenly distributed between three major groups: Life-Long Learning, Higher Ed, and K-12. K-12 leads with 33% of the top 150 companies, with another 13% in blended K12/Higher Education companies. Workforce Learning and Adult Consumer learning together account for 37%, with Higher Education at 14% and Early Childhood at 3%.
The GSV EdTech 150 list is evenly distributed between three major groups: Life-Long Learning, Higher Education, and K-12. K-12 leads with 33% of the top 150 companies, with another 13% in blended K-12/Higher Education companies. Workforce Learning and Adult Consumer learning together account for 37%, with Higher Education at 14% and Early Childhood at 3%.
North America — specifically the United States — is the leading geography within the EdTech 150. North America accounts for nearly half of the list, with China and India at 18% and 10%, respectively. These markets combined represent over 73% of those included. Europe, the Middle East, and Africa are represented by 15% of the listing, with several high-quality, fast-growing companies such as Photomath, OpenClassrooms, Brainly, and GoStudent. Latin America — and specifically Brazil — is showing strong early trends, with Hotmart, Descomplica, and UOL EdTech all experiencing impressive growth.
Friday, May 7, 2021, Cohort 10 ended Specialization. To conclude their journey at Holberton School, students had to build a Portfolio project. Here is a snippet of some of our students’ (great) projects.
AR/VR Specialization
Inès Chokri from Holberton School Tunisia worked on a project called “The Witch’s Trial” which is a VR game (arcade/adventure) in which the player is a witch and will have to pass a trial to prove their worth as one. The player will go through multiple levels (only one level has been made for now). Each level is timed and is different from the other as it tests every time the ability of the witch. The first level is the Flying test. The witch has to fly with a broom through circles and collect diamonds before time runs out. Pink rings add additional time, red rings subtract time and asteroids take a diamond from the witch.
Project: The Witch’s Trial
Justin Majetich from Holberton School New Haven worked on a project called “VR Wheelchair“. It is a manual wheelchair locomotion system for virtual reality applications. The system will be packaged as a complete player controller rig which can be easily imported into an existing Unity project. VR Wheelchair is motivated by a general interest in representation within gaming. It also addresses a key strength and weakness in the medium of VR — immersion and locomotion, respectively. Read more about the project.
Project: VR Wheelchair
Machine Learning Specialization
John Cook from Holberton School Tulsa worked on a project called “Quantum Machine Learning vs Classical Machine Learning“. This project covers a comparison between the two and describes where quantum machine learning is useful right now. Read more about this project.
Project: Quantum Machine Learning vs Classical Machine Learning
Diego Felipe Quijano Zuñiga, Oscar Rodriguez, and Samir Millan Orozco from Holberton School Colombia (Cali) worked on a project callled “COVID-19 radiography detection“. This project attempts to detect through the use of data and image analysis tools in the field of Machine Learning, such as convolutional neural networks or deep neural networks, the detection of COVID-19 SARS COV2 in chest X-ray images.
Khalil Sdiri and Rakia Somai from Holberton School Tunisia worked on a project called “Postme“.A MERN social media application with users, posts, likes, and comments – developed using React, a GraphQL server that uses Node and Express to communicate to a MongoDB Database and fetch and persist data to the app back-end.
Project: PostMe
Congratulations C#10 on finishing Specializations! We’re super proud of you and wish you the best of luck in your future career in Computer Science! Let’s do it!
The assumption of 19th century education was that building a student’s knowledge base is everything. But, today, with the biggest library that has ever existed at everyone’s fingertips (the internet), skills are what matter. Content is not the problem. Learning how to learn is the future of education.
It’s time for Open Educational Resources. The education system needs to evolve at the same rapid pace as the technology sector, which is the fastest-growing, changing, and evolving industry in history.
Making Education accessible to the many is the core mission of Holberton School. We empower motivated and talented people to succeed in their dream careers. Also, we aim at helping communities to upskill, attract and retain tech talent.
Tulsa’s fun and vibrant culture and entrepreneurial spirit have built a city that embraces inclusion and champions big ideas. In the middle of a technological renaissance, Tulsa’s emerging technology sector is on its way to making the city a new American tech hub.
Tulsa’s leaders have made significant commitments to diversify the city’s economy and grow its tech jobs infrastructure. Countless private and public sector partners have developed innovative programs to attract tech companies and investments to the Tulsa area and supply them with highly-trained employees.
With organizations like Tulsa Remote bringing Tulsa onto the national stage for remote working, and groups like Tulsa Innovation Labs and 36 Degrees North making Tulsa a place for startups and innovative technologies to bloom, there has never been a better time to think about joining the technology sector in Tulsa!
Along with plenty of job opportunities in Tulsa, there are lots of reasons to learn to code in this stimulating and promising environment. For example:
Holberton School Tulsa offers up to $1500 monthly need-based assistance for eligible students;
Holberton School Tulsa’s flexible financing options include a reduced Income Share Agreement for students who live in Tulsa after graduation, students can see their ISA repayment rate reduced to 10% of their income for 3.5 years after graduation.
Tulsa boasts a 61% lower cost of living than big cities like New York and a 43% lower median house price than the national average.
Since its opening in January 2020, Holberton’s Tulsa school quickly outgrew its original premise and will soon offer a new 12-month program and will double in size by April 2022!
“Anyone can learn to code! Computing can be found everywhere in today’s world and, to build solutions to real-world problems, we need software engineers with diversity of thought and experiences. Holberton not only also recognizes that diversity and collaboration are important, but actively removes barriers to foster diverse coders and uses peer-learning as a critical component of developing both our technical and soft skills.” — Kelsie, Cohort 11 Holberton School Tulsa.
Whether you are a recent high school graduate, have recently become unemployed, or are looking to go back to school to change careers, there’s a place for you at Holberton School Tulsa! Come learn Full-Stack Software Engineering, Web Development, AR/VR, Low Level & Algorithms, or Machine Learning! Apply now.
The 4th industrial revolution, which we are living through now, is the convergence of many disruptive technologies. But these new technologies have brought with them challenges of diversity and inclusion. Our students acquire knowledge in Computer Science and strong skills in Software Development to shape the future of society.
As we believe diversity and inclusion are paramount to innovation. More viewpoints, life experiences, cultures, and voices mean more community-driven ideation and problem-solving; We want a cultural grounding to be part of that education.
Being part of that effort, Holberton School Tunis joined forces with the University of Paris Dauphine I Tunis, IHEC Carthage, and IPEST in a public-private partnership to promote a culture of open-mindedness and sharing in its student environments. “Culture Campus” was born, an innovative concept aiming to bring young students from different backgrounds together.
The launch of this new concept was announced at IHEC in Carthage on February 25th, 2021, with the participation of Amine Ben Amor (Holberton School Tunis), Amina Bouzguenda (University of Paris Dauphine I Tunis) Hassen Mzali (IHEC Carthage) and Manef Abderrabba (IPEST).
Amine Ben Amor emphasized the importance of culture in student life, starting with his own experience with the students of Holberton School Tunis:
“At the beginning of 2020, we received a delegation from Santander Bank with major financiers and bank managers from Madrid who had the curiosity to visit this small school, having no teachers, no diplomas, even no prepayment and which encourages talent. These guests had exchanged with the students and asked them some questions such as: ‘What is the last film that you watched?’. The answer was: ‘An Andalusian Dog’ by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali. Our hosts were impressed.
This is to say that what makes the difference between a good engineer and another good engineer is culture, it is what he can relate and exchange with his colleagues. This is proof that at Holberton School we have succeeded in giving our students a taste for beautiful things. Students need culture, to know the global code of the arts. Making culture a pillar of training can only be beneficial to students, it differentiates them in the job market, giving them the key to success”.
The “Campus Culture” concept revolves around two axes of action:
Integrating cultural activities into the training programs provided by these establishments;
Creating a network of clubs located within the four establishments. These clubs will enrich student life through an agenda of events designed and developed by the students themselves with a view to mixing populations among campuses.
We constantly challenge ourselves to look into the future of our society as well as the future of the job market to train the best leaders and learners of tomorrow. Promoting and teaching universal values through culture to students will help them to be better prepared to face the challenges of tomorrow.
Holberton School is continuing to expand its operations in France!
We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve signed a new partnership with Actual group to open more schools in France. The first one will open in June in Laval, followed by a second in Toulouse in September 2021.
With more than 30 years of experience, 300 agencies, 1,450 employees, and 650 million euros in revenue, the Actual group is one of the most successful French staffing and recruiting agencies. We’re very excited to join forces with an important player in the field of employment.
The Actual group will help to place students on the labor market, while Holberton School will ensure technical excellence amongst the students.
The Actual group has joined forces with Holberton School to set up an innovative 12-to-18-month training course on digital and web technologies.
More and more companies are starting their transformation and accelerating their digitization. To meet this exponential need, it’s become vital to train more people for digital professions, which have become popular and rare on the French job market.
“Actual group aims to provide employment opportunities for those in research so that they can provide highly valued skills to companies,” said Samuel Tual, Chairman of the Actual group. “Quite naturally, it seemed logical to us to explore the digital sector. Today, these professions are struggling due to a lack of skills.”
The Actual group already has schools and training offers that specialize in three-way employee-actual-employer relations, covering time-sharing, portage, and temping. This partnership will complete their offer, allowing them to focus on digital, tech, and web and to train the highly-skilled digital talent that the French economy needs.
[French] Interview of Samuel Tual, Chairman of the Actual group
“I’m very pleased with this initiative,” said Samuel Tual, Chairman of the Actual group. “By enabling people to train for tomorrow’s skills, we’ll help companies of all sizes to meet the enormous challenge of digital transformation. Beyond training and educational content, it’s about access to employment.”
With the Actual group, Holberton School’s students will be well-trained and well-supported so that they can quickly find a job after their studies.
The school will begin welcoming its first cohort of students in June 2021 in Laval.
Sylvain Kalache at UNESCO annual International Youth Conference in Jamaica
Our co-founder, Sylvain Kalache, was invited to speak with the audience during the UNESCO annual International Youth Conference in Jamaica, joining an audience from the US, Germany, Russia, Jamaica, and Mexico. Other great speakers included Saadia Sánchez, UNESCO Cluster Office for the Caribbean; Hon Alando Terrylonge, Jamaica Minister of State, Ministry of Culture Gender Entertainment and Sport; Everton Hannam, Secretary-General, Jamaica National Commission for UNESCO.
During this conference, he shared tips on becoming an efficient learner in the 4th industrial revolution.
“The 4th industrial revolution is different from the past industrial revolutions because the pace of change is happening at an exponential rate. And while our world drastically evolved, our education system has not. A key element for all of us is to become lifelong learners, and most of the knowledge you need is available at your fingertips.” – Sylvain Kalache, co-founder of Holberton School.
Sylvain argues that access to knowledge is no longer an issue for many learners. Students have access to peers, instructors, libraries, and obviously the largest source of information that ever existed: the Internet. An ocean of knowledge is now accessible at our fingertips, which completely flips our world and education! Memorizing information shall no longer be the focus. With the right guidance, students can be teaching themselves; but this is not an easy task. It is a challenge to come up with the proper search engine request, and then filter the results to understand what is right, wrong, or incomplete. Fake news is an excellent illustration of the challenge.
The world of today and tomorrow requires a different set of skills to be professionally successful. Sylvain reviewed the skills that learners shall focus on:
Problem-solving;
Critical thinking;
Creativity;
Professional communication;
People skills.
These skills can be developed with progressive education-based programs where students learn by integrated multi-level projects, action-oriented tasks, collaborating, and working on projects in groups.
The audience loved the presentation, which was summarized with a proverb that our co-founder thought translated very well to education: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”
The same applies to education: become a Lifelong Learner!
