Matthew Bates is one of the educators here at Launchpad. His story is interesting and exciting, and we really felt the need to share it with you.
Launchpad is a family of passionate individuals who are all trying to make a difference in the tech industry. This passion ensures every one of our students gets the best education.
We asked Matt to tell us about himself, and are excited to share it with you.
I enrolled full-time in the Computer Science program at the University of Calgary in 2014 after returning from a 2 year mission in Argentina. I met my wife and we married in 2015. In 2016 I built a simple maze game called Laberinto for java console which I ported to C# as a Windows UWP to be played on my Windows Phone at the time. After publishing Laberinto to the Windows Store, I sent my resume to every app development company in Calgary. Vog was the only company to call me and in 2016 I was hired on as a contractor to develop Android and iOS apps, both of which I had no experience with. I learned quickly though and even did some backend and Raspberry Pi work. In 2017, I stopped attending University with the program unfinished and was hired on as a full-time employee. I have since had 3 children and focused more on Android development. I am the Android team lead at Vog and the Android Instructor through the Launchpad program. Back in 2014, I honestly didn’t think that this is where I’d be 7 years later. When choosing my classes I had an interest in robotics and Human-Computer interfaces and had even purchased some experimental hardware that would read either your hand gestures or brainwaves and a computer would map those thoughts and gestures to keystrokes or commands. Android app development was far from my mind at the time because I was all in with Windows and Windows Phone. That mentality has melted away since then with extra help from Microsoft who has stopped supporting their phones.
What excites me about Launchpad is that it provides the training necessary to jump right into the industry. Not only does it teach industry best practices for software design and development but especially teaches the soft skills learned by being immersed in an actual project. Participants get to interact with a Project Manager, Track their tasks and time with Jira, and work with other participants as a team. I sincerely wish this resource was available to me as a Junior developer.
Outside of work I love to garden and build Lego with my kids. Lately, since the arrival of our latest child, we have had little time for computer games but when there is time we all love playing Minecraft together.
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