I couldn’t sleep after thinking about our productive month we have had in May. Anecdotally, I knew we had our best month ever, but I just didn’t know just how much we crushed it. I’ll preface it by saying BLUE1647 has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and it took a considerable amount of uphill work before we could finally play offense. And we did. Because our success is deeply linked with our ability to help our communities have unprecedented access and opportunity to a culture of technology development, every once in a while, we can put ourselves on the back. So here it goes:
This excludes daily full-time classes, workshops, and events in Chicago, St. Louis, and Compton, CA.
Compton Adult photos
St. Louis Youth photos Location 1
St. Louis Youth photos Location 2
St. Louis Youth photos Location 3
St. Louis Adult photos Location 1
Full-Time Chicago Public Schools Cohort
BLUE1647 Flickr Channel
We had two official visits to the White House in the month of May!
May 1st: Team BLUE1647 were invited to the White House for a summit
May 1st: Community Lead, Rashad Sallee was on the Tech Scene Chicago podcast
May 1st: BLUE members getting ready for an upcoming performance
May 1st: BLUE announced our summer classes for youth
May 1st: BLUE held a CoderDojo youth coding bootcamp
May 1st: NSBE Chicago meeting at BLUE
May 1st: BLUE1647’s Code Chicago program held Android development course
May 2nd: Code Abode health-focused web development training
May 3rd: BLUE member Brian Rodriguez held an All Things Web Tech meetup
May 3rd: The root featured BLUE1647 in their Afrofuturism series
May 3rd: BLUE1647’s 1919 [women in tech] program held our Tech Tea Party. Over 200 in attendance. Here’s the livestream, photos, recap video, selfies, writeup, another writeup
May 5th: BLUE1647 Roseland Codes program, in Roseland
May 5th: BLUE1647’s Clinton Peabody location pics
May 5th: White House CTO stops by BLUE1647
May 6th: Published San Diego BLUE1647 Code BLUE USA hackathon video, which was seen by Bill Gates
May 7th: BLUE CTO, Kenneth Watkins ran a minecrarft coding camp in Virginia
May 7th: BLUE1647’s Latina Girls Code program held a Mother’s Day event with 25 families. More pics.
May 7th: BLUE1647 member showed us some of her code she was working on at BLUE
May 8th: BLUE held a Chicago Community Trust On The Table roundtable discussion
May 9th: BLUE647 Clinton Peabody published their newsletter
May 9th: Impact Engine held a all-day retreat at BLUE
May 10th: Prentice Butler hosted On the Table roundtable discussion
May 10th: BLUE student starts full-time job in Engineering at UPS
May 11th: BLUE appeared on the Nerdette, WBEZ live podcast
May 11th: BLUE|1647 listed as a Top Illinois Startup Community & Coworking Space.
May 14th: BLUE member organization, The Chicago Inventors Organization held a patent and trademark workshop with over 100 attendees. Here’s the livestream
May 14th: BLUE1647 was the keynote address at the Patrick Spann Foundation gala
May 14th: BLUE1647 is working on a new product launch with Depaul MBA students
May15th: Python workshop for Black Data Processors Association (full house)
May 16th: BLUE hosted Illinois State Treasurer Frerichs for a Fireside Chat
May 17th: BLUE hosted Coffee and Conversations meetup
May 18th: BLUE published grades of summer youth applications
May 18th: BLUE member Edward Yu was on Tech Scene Chicago podcast
May 19th: Chicago Ruby Hello World for Hardware meetup. BLUE kits progress
May 19th: BLUE1647 partners with Cambien Networks, SoCore, and Leave No Veteran Behind for South Shore center
May 20th: BLUE announces new 1919 photography cohort
May 22nd: BLUE hosted an Intro to Minecraft coding workshop
May 22nd: BLUE hosted an Intermediate Minecraft coding workshop
May 20th: Roseland Codes Demo Day
May 23rd: Clinton Peabody website sneak peek.
May 24th: BLUE Wear umbrella sneak peek
May 24th: BLUE Wear previews BLUE backpack
May 24th: BLUE student receives full scholarship in Mechanical Engineering
May 25th: BLUE 10-year old student, graduates from associate degree program
May 26th: Chicago Public Library Training (50 attendees)
May 27th: Blue kits preview
May 27th: Former US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan visits BLUE1647
May 29th: Code and Cocktails meetup
May 29th: BLUE student receives and accepts equity to a search-engine startup
May 21-22nd: BLUE hosted a hackathon with CodeDay Chicago, a 24 hour youth hackathon, with over 85 attendees.
May 27th: BLUE Artist in Residence, Roho Garcia held his Red Tour, pop-up art show
May 27th: BLUE member, Ray Hightower on WGN Radio show
May 27th: Greater Food Depository meeting at BLUE
May 29th: BLUE member launches Tech Month Chicago
May 31st: BLUE represented at the White House for the Nation of Makers roundtable
May 31st: (Workforce.org post) Engaging global thought leaders at ASU GSV Summit.
May 31st: Chicago Inventor organization Internet of Things Law meetup. Here’s the livestream
May 31st: BLUE1647 affiliate, Chicago Social Change, passed a criminal justice law
These two cents by Emile Cambry Jr 