I know, it’s been a really long time since I’ve actually written anything on this blog. About a year ago I left Leapfrog Online and moved to Centro. I’m still doing similar stuff, mostly Ruby and a lot of Javascript, but recently I’ve found myself helping out with some recruiting efforts.

This Friday, November 19th, Centro is sponsoring the ITA Fall 2010 Challenge. This is the first year the Illinois Technology Association is putting on the contest and I think it’s a great idea. The ITA’s goal is to show local college students that there are plenty of tech jobs in the area, they don’t have to move to the coasts just to nerd it up professionally. Centro is a key sponsor, and as always, we’re looking to make a splash. We’ve decided to pass out some slightly unusual conference swag.

The TI LaunchPad is an extremely affordable entry into hardware development at only $4.30 a piece. The LaunchPad is very similar to the Arduino I’ve blogged about before. Unlike most Arduinos the MSP430 dev board doesn’t come completely assembled leaving the customer to solder on the pin headers. It’s a great way to save cost and make the units more customizable, but it’s definitely a barrier to entry for those new to hardware. Since we don’t know the students are that are getting these boards we decided we needed to do some assembly and, because electronics bought in bulk are so cheap we threw in some LEDs, resistors, wires and a breadboard.

What kind of fun would it be to just hand these students a box of parts and a random microcontroller development board? Sure they could find a diagram explaining how to wire up an LED with a breadboard, but then what? They could jump into some of the cool projects people have been sharing like this LED POV message writer, but in the spirit of the ITA Fall Challenge we wanted to give these kids both a starting point and a bit of an incentive. We’ve preprogrammed every board with our own little contest and have great prizes for the winners.

I can’t divulge much about our contest yet, we haven’t even passed out the boards. But as the contest progresses expect updates here, and eventually I’ll release all the code after the prizes are awarded. This is all for fun, and will hopefully be a nice, simple hardware introduction for people who might not have had the opportunity.

Seeing as this all came about in an effort to help us recruit more developers it would be foolish of me to not include a link to the Centro Job Board. If you have any questions or find yourself interested in one of the positions listed please email me: andrew [dot] bloom [at] centro [dot] net. I also owe a huge thank you to my teammates who helped me solder and pack all 100 of these boxes, especially Amy for picking up the beer!