Growing up I always had computers around the house. I built my first website at 12, and it featured myself surrounded by simple Star Wars animations – back then I used Adobe Flash to build it. From that point on, I knew I would be hooked on tech.
With two engineering school degrees from France and the US, I found myself traveling quite a lot, constantly discovering new things in tech. Looking back at it now, it really helped me thrive in different environments, whether it was a printed circuits manufacturer in Kyoto or a fast-growing VR startup in Vancouver.
Running a bootcamp for the first time and watching students without any tech knowledge learn how to code made me realize how important it is to challenge yourself. Taking risks helps us grow and makes us happy. It also taught me that without local community support, a business just can’t thrive. I’m really grateful to Community Lab N5.5, FabCafe Kyoto, Hacker News Kansai, Kyoto Makers Garage and many others for helping us establish and grow Le Wagon network in Japan.
After running the Kyoto chapter, I moved to our Tokyo campus to take on the role of front-end lead teacher for full-time students, and part-time bootcamp manager. I am also really looking forward to being a teaching assistant for the upcoming Data Science bootcamp in Tokyo in October.
Teaching how to create something new from scratch is the main driver for what I do. If you approach programming as a mode of expression, you can amplify your idea and clearly communicate it to the audience. I particularly enjoy sharing my passion about human-robot interactions and AR/VR experiences through workshops. These are some fields we do not touch during our web dev bootcamp, and I feel it opens up our students’ minds about the possibilities they have after learning with us.
I love Le Wagon’s idea that everyone can learn how to code. We are not requiring any tech background or previous coding experience for people to join. My task is to reassure students that nothing can stop them from upskilling themselves or changing careers.
Watching the transformation from “newbies” in a classroom to full-fledged developers is really rewarding. We start from giving simple projects, and students make visible progress on them in a short amount of time. In the end, it is fascinating to see how much they evolve during and after the bootcamp.
I love the community-centered approach of Le Wagon. Whether it’s to educate, network, build or grow, we out a lot of focus on nurturing our community. Some of our students actually became my friends – but we also care a lot about our workshop attendees, partners, followers… I feel they all help us grow and become better.
I think I knew I was good at teaching even before making the jump into Le Wagon. When you enjoy what you’re teaching, and you manage to connect with your students, there is really no better reward. It definitely feels good that, at the end of the day, I know I used my passion to encourage others.
We’ve all had that boring teacher who speaks in a monotone voice and makes students sleepy. And I refuse to be that teacher. Making jokes and telling funny stories is one way to keep people focused, and it also shows that building stuff with programming is easy and fun.
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