Omniversity of Manchester

Learning a new skill is great, and we are always trying to find courses that people are interested in. Equally important is the application of those skills. We caught up with some of the attendees of the very first Ruby and Rails Bootcamp to see what they thought after some time away and how they were using their new found skills.
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Little bit late in posting this (busy busy), but: a couple of weekends ago I was lucky enough to grab a spot on an amazing projection mapping course at Madlab, run by Elliot Woods. I’ve been hankering after doing more large-scale work, especially after the Tate projection I did a while ago, so when I saw this course come up I jumped at the chance.

The software that handles everything is called vvvv, and it basically looks like this (yep, no interface):

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This autumn Omniversity is running a series of courses on Web Design Foundations starting from the basics of how the web works and ending with the more advanced subjects in HTML and CSS. The first of four step course took place on the 12. of September and brought together a small group of beginners in web design who under the guidance of an evangelist Chris Mills got a general idea of accessibility and usability of websites and test some basic HTML and CSS writing. Doing an apprenticeship in MadLab, I decided impromptu to use the opportunity to take part of the course and get an insight into a field that is completely new to me.

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We love to hear about how attendee’s of Omniversity courses fare afterwards. Here’s Nick Pyett of HGA Creative, an award winning Manchester based communications agency’s take on the Ruby and Rails BootCamp
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Last week, our fantastically talented Web Developer, Nick Pyett embarked upon the ultimate, intensive three day development course; the “Ruby & Rails Bootcamp”. A fast paced, three-day course, it teaches web developers how to build websites in the Ruby on Rails web application framework, the same framework used by Twitter and Groupon.

The Web Development Course

The course was held by the Omniversity of Manchester and hosted by MadLab, a not for profit organisation providing a workspace in the heart of Manchester for local creatives. Courses are delivered by industry experts with hands on experience, knowledge of developing projects and start-ups – so they really know what they’re talking about. Read the rest of this entry →

I blogged a little while ago about the reasons behind running my course – read Build your own place on the web for more. In short, I want to give everyone and anyone the chance to learn the skills they need to put together a usable, accessible, modern web site that will stand the test of time, and improve the quality of web sites overall. Course such as the Omniversity web design foundations courses are really only the tip of the iceberg, and I will be work on spreading such good web teachings far and wide across the globe in the near future, when the W3C Web Education Community Group takes off.

My first event is running on September 12, and they will run regularly up until the end of November. So please, if you want to master the basics of web design, sign up! If you are already a competent web designer and know someone else who could benefit — such as a friend or less-technical team mate — sign them up!

Web design foundations 1: Introduction to the Web, and web design

My first course is for complete beginners, who know nothing beyond basic computer literacy. Here I explain what the Web is and how it works, important underlying concepts such as accessibility, FTP, search engine optimization and information architecture, and have a basic play with some HTML and CSS at the end.

Web design foundations 2: HTML Basics

The second part teaches all the HTML you’ll need to make your way into web design and development with confidence! From text to tables, and links to images, this course has it all.

Web design foundations 3: CSS Basics

My third course looks at CSS, and shows you everything, from the real basic fundamentals such as selectors, text styling and the box model, to some fairly advanced techniques like web fonts, styling links and forms and multiple column layouts with floats.

Web design foundations 4: Advanced CSS and HTML topics

This course brushes past the basics, looking at HTML5 syntax, forms and video, CSS3 bling such as linear gradients, opacity and drop shadows, and adaptive layouts using Media Queries and viewport.

Written by Chris Mills, Course tutor.

Yet another movie blockbuster from the Omniversity vaults! This time we’ve rallied DJ Adams‘s hefty knowledge of SAP, for his new course running at the Omniversity, Web Programming with SAP Internet Communication Framework. DJ has been involved in SAP technologies for 24 years, and is an SAP mentor as well as a O’Reilly author, and has been considered a leader in his field since the mid 1990’s.

This 2 day course will lead participants through the intricate framework, allowing you to understand and create your own resource orientated web service magnum opus.

• You will gain a detailed understanding of SAP’s underlying mechanisms for HTTP communications.
• You’ll have the knowledge and confidence to build, debug and deploy HTTP orientated interfaces into and out of SAP enterprise systems.
• You’ll see how to build you own mobile app.
• You’ll also have some exposure to tips, tricks and tools outside of SAP to help in debugging and testing.

Intrigued? You should be! Find out more here, and see what DJ has to say about the course himself on his blog.

Tekin Suleyman and Ric Roberts will be delivering a 3-day, affordable Ruby on Rails bootcamp on 17th-19th of August.

The course is aimed at developers who already know a bit about web development and object oriented programming, but have limited or no experience with Ruby or Rails. The course will provide the skills, knowledge and experience necessary to build and deploy your very own Rails applications from scratch.

Why Learn Rails?

Ruby on Rails is a powerful, open-source framework that enables you to quickly build sophisticated web applications. Rails is mature enough now to provide all the benefits of enterprise-level frameworks like .Net or Java, but it’s designed for developer happiness. By taking an “opinionated” approach, many common software design decisions are made for you (although there are always ways to change the defaults), allowing you to get on with the important task of actually implementing your business functionality. There’s also a massive community of friendly developers and thousands of open source libraries (gems) which you can use in your applications, preventing you from having to “re-invent the wheel”.

As well as 3 days of intensive learning, the £360 course fee also includes hot lunch. You can find out more and sign up .

Web Design Foundations for everyone

I’m Chris Mills, and I work for web browser company and general geek haven, Opera Software! I have been taking part in little projects at Madlab for over a year now, and have always found them to be welcoming, innovative, creative and very much in agreement with my philosophy of open source information sharing to help everyone improve their skills and get ahead!

I therefore decided to help them out by running a course as part of their Omniversity programme. The course is about web design/development, but before you go running for your nerd shields, please just consider what I have to say.

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