In the fall of 2018, we started a free course Android Academy: Fundamentals .
It consisted of 12 meetings and the final 22-hour hackathon.

Android Academy is a global community founded by Jonathan Levin . It appeared in Israel, in Tel Aviv, and spread to St. Petersburg, Minsk and Moscow. When we started the first course, we sincerely believed that in this way we would be able to build a community of young people who would be in a thrill to get together and learn new things. They wanted to open a new door for anyone who wants and is ready to take a step in the profession.

Now, after a few months, it seems that it happened: the guys learned the basics, united in the professional community, and someone even managed to get the first job offer for the android developer.

We report on how Android Academy passed in Moscow, share video lectures and tell how the career has changed for those who graduated from the course.

Start

First of all we gathered a team of mentors. It includes 18 practicing android developers. Each of us led our own group of students, 5-8 people each.

When we began to think about the site where we can conduct our academy, our friends from Avito and Superjob extended a partner hand to us. About these two companies in general, you can write a separate whole article. In short: where else can you find the same crazy like-minded people who easily respond to ideas and respond: "Come on, let's do it!"? And while they are awesome engineering companies?

We planned that no more than 120-150 people would come to the first meeting.
But something went wrong:

Course

The classes were attended by guys of absolutely different levels. Someone came to learn from scratch, someone with little experience. There were also confident Middle level developers who came to consolidate the basic knowledge. Many students were able to get their first job offer android developer.

Many thanks for the course! You have done a very big and great job! Not at all paid courses homework is checked, and here you can also hear a lot of useful tips :)

By the middle of the course, when our students learned more about working with Activity , Views , Threads, and Networking , we smoothly moved to SuperJob.

Ahead of us there were many burgers and six more lectures - about Fragments , Persistency , Architecture and everything that did not fit into separate lectures.

A very good course, intelligibly explaining the difficult material, learned a lot of new things, even taking into account the development experience, the lecturers understand the topic they are leading are not boring.

Hackathon

In the middle of December we approached the main event - the final hackathon, which was held in Avito with the support of Google, HeadHunter and Kaspersky Lab.

We planned to make an application with such characteristics:

• at least two screens;
• availability of work with a network connection;
• Correct handling of device turns and permission requests.
  It was necessary to use all the skills acquired during training.

I was just shocked by the level of the projects that the guys did. They were very technically challenging!

And the hackathon began: a greeting word, instructions from mentors, drove off!

22 teams

22 hours to develop an MVP application

22 hours to put this knowledge into practice.

At about 7 am, Avito’s office entrance looked like this:

How many people sleep in this photo?

With the dawn, after a hearty breakfast, the guys began to recover, correct critical bugs and prepare presentations.

The atmosphere of the hackathon perfectly conveys the video, mounted by the guys from Avito.

But the most important thing is what our guys could learn on the hackathon.

How has Android Academy influenced a career?

Three months after graduating from the academy, we asked our students the question: “How did Android Academy affect your career?”.
30% percent of our audience successfully changed their specialty to android-developer.
6% gained android competency in addition to its core.
4% are still looking for work.
25% have already worked android-developers and noted an improvement in their skills. Most of these students have been promoted or have changed jobs.
60% of the guys continued to replenish knowledge already at professional conferences on Android!

Lectures

1. Intro + Slides (Jonatan Levin, ColGene).
2. Hello World + Slides (Sergey Ryabov, freelance developer).
3. Views + Slides (Alexander Blinov, HeadHunter).
4. List and Adapters + Slides (Sergey Ryabov, independent developer).
5. Threads + Slides (Alena Manyukhina, Yandex).
6. Networking + Slides (Alexey Bykov, Kaspersky Lab).
7. Persistency + Slides (Alexander Blinov, HeadHunter).
8. Fragments + Slides (Evgeny Matsyuk, Kaspersky Lab).
9. Background + Slides (Evgeny Matsyuk, Kaspersky Lab).
10. Architecture + Slides (Alexey Bykov, Kaspersky Lab).
11. Missing Parts + Slides (Pavel Strelchenko, HeadHunter).
12. Preparing to Hackathon + Slides (Alyona Manyukhina, Yandex).

Cast

Mentors and lecturers
Alexey Bykov, Alexander Blinov, Yonatan Levin, Sergey Ryabov, Alyona Manyukhina, Yevgeny Matsyuk, Pavel Strelchenko, Nikita Kulikov, Valentin Telegin, Dmitry Gryazin, Anton Miroshnichenko, Tamara Sineva, Dmitry Movchan, Ruslan Troshkov, Sergey Garbar, Edward Anisonann, as well asyntryr , Vladimir Demyshev.

Logistics and organizational issues
Katya Budnikova, Mikhail Klyuev, Yulia Andrianova, Zviad Kardava.

This article was written
Alexander Blinov, Alexey Bykov, Yonatan Levin.

What's next?

The first course of the basics is over. All errors are documented, retrospective conducted. Next up are the launches of new courses. They will be designed for both beginners and experienced developers.

And here will be the news of the Android community community.