On Friday, Steve and Sean-Paul from I-SITE’s development team traveled to New Foundations Charter School in northeast Philadelphia to speak to the 9th grade class as part of the Career Panel Assembly for Technology. Along with representatives from the IT company Pathfinders and Apple Inc., Sean and Steve spoke about a “typical” day at I-SITE (hint: there are no typical days at I-SITE!) as well as what steps they each took along their career paths.

Steve spoke about his introduction to the Internet and HTML code in high school, and his first job at the age of 15 redesigning and developing his high school’s website. Having built his first personal site using Notepad on his parent’s computer, Steve stressed the importance of researching tutorials online and the low barrier to entry in the field of web development. “People think you need expensive and complicated software to create websites, but really all you need is a glorified text editor to get started,” he told the class.

Sean further emphasized the key role that online tutorials play in building one’s programming skills. He stressed that “once you learn the core concepts of programming, it’s just like any language. You just need to know the syntax. If you know the language computers understand, it’s all just logic from that point.” Sean also brought up the most important factor to success in this (or any) industry. “Just do what you love. If it’s something you’re interested in, it’s not hard to motivate yourself to put in the time it takes to learn.”

The students asked the panel questions they had prepared, ranging from, “How important is my GPA to get into this industry?” to “How do websites make money?” All of the panelists had a great time giving the students a window into their careers and encouraging them to look into the diverse opportunities in the technology field. The panelists agreed that the most important factors in this field were teamwork and collaboration, problem-solving, and the ability to “produce” something. Because no matter how many tests you take in school, when you get out into the job market it’s what you’ve produced that will demonstrate your true level of ability and may be the deciding factor in landing your dream job.

Based on the curiosity and attentiveness demonstrated by the students, the next generation of IT professionals is already off to a good start!