A free chance to try coding- by teens and for teens in Palo Alto
Coding camps and classes abound near Palo Alto, but many are expensive and time consuming. To give local teens a chance to try computer coding, two Palo Alto High School students- Kelsey Wang and Alice Zhang– came up with the idea of Teens Exploring Code (TEC), a one day free workshop where kids could explore code for free. TEC will take
Alice Zhang, Paly student and co-leader of TEC. Photo courtesy of Felicia Wang and Yan Ma
place on Sunday, August 2nd at Mitchell Park Community Center and is open to all teenagers ages 13-19 years. TEC runs from 1-5pm.
CS majors from leading colleges teaching workshops and insights from local startup entrepreneurs
Kelsey Wang, Paly student and co-leader of TEC. Photos courtesy of Felicia Wang and Yan Ma.
“As a no-hassle, no-commitment, completely free event, we hope to have a lot of participation from teens across the city and allow people of all backgrounds to learn about coding and its uses,” said Kelsey Wang. “We will have workshops led by computer science majors from top universities such as Harvard, Princeton and Stanford who will teach basic programming syntax and ideas.” TEC also features a speaker series featuring local startup founders and software engineers.
Online signups encouraged- space is filling up fast!
At the time of press, the three workshops appeared to be full, but space was still open for the speaker series. Teens are highly encouraged to sign up 
online ahead of time to attend a speaker session. Workshops are open to teens only, but parents may attend speaker sessions if space is available.
Scheduled speakers represent Palantir, Amazon, and more
Tentative speaker schedule:
1:10 – 1:40–Spencer Rivette/Aakriti Agarwal–Product Quality Engineer and Embedded Analyst–Palantir
1:50 – 2:20–Elena Silenok–Founder/CEO–Clothia/Sputnik Mobile
2:30 – 3:00–Peter Cockerell–Contractor–Past: Motorola, Amazon
3:10 – 3:40–Deyan Vitanov–Co-Founder–Chobolabs
3:50 – 4:20–Tentative: Aaron Gutierrez–Engineer–wikiHow
4:30 – 5:00–Anthony Luckett–Engineer–Piazza
Come to Mitchell Park August 2 from 1-5pm for a cool day of coding and exploration
No prior experience is necessary to attend TEC, which will run from 1-5 pm. Signups and additional information are on the TEC website, teensexploringcode.wordpress.com, or contact teensexploringcode@gmail.com. More information can also be found here. TEC is sponsored by the City of Palo Alto.
