Londoners keen to pick up digital skills at Evening Standard and Google Digital Garage coding event

Londoners headed to Victoria today to take part in an all-day coding workshop as part of Future London’s Digital Skills Project, in partnership with Google Digital Garage.

Evening Standard Future London journalist Sian Bayley joined the audience for the first hour to get a taste for digital upskilling.

She joined students, career changers, recent retirees and other keen upskillers to learn what coding is, how it works and how coding skills can open up new careers, as well as gain some first-hand experience working with code.

Sian said: “It was so refreshing to meet many people who are keen to learn and upskill, aware of all the opportunities that digital can bring. Some spoke of having no experience with coding, or worrying their knowledge was a bit rusty from early courses at school and wanting to fill the gaps in their knowledge. Everyone I met were keen to get started and for most this was the very first step in their journey.

“I sat in for the first hour and felt I had learned so much about the basics of coding, I enjoyed chatting to several audience members about their experience.”

Alongside the coding session held at Google’s Academy London trainers led workshops on social media strategy, digital marketing and data analytics. These one-hour sessions are running throughout the day with a chance for guests to benefit from some one-to-one coaching.

This is what Sian learned today from her taste of the first session:

Coding Basics

• Coding is a way for computers to talk to each other, but you need to know different coding languages depending on what you want to do. While HTML, CSS and JavaScript are best for designing websites, Python is better for machine learning and data analysis. This also explains the difference between technologies – Apple iOS runs on Swift, while Android uses Java. So apps need to be coded in both to work on both devices. As Google trainer Joanne Nworgu says: “The key difference is between front-end languages and back-end languages. Some are better at doing certain things. Front-end languages are more visual to make things look nicer, while back-end languages focus on how things work in the background.”

• Coding is everywhere. Your phone, your laptop and even the Oyster reader on the Tube uses code to function!

• The ‘Internet of Things’ is growing. IOT means different devices can talk to each other using the internet. So your fridge can tell your phone that the milk has gone off, or a city can reroute power to where it is most needed. Trainer Nikki Rae explained that Barcelona had saved €32 million through smart lighting systems in the city and created more than 40,000 jobs.

• The Cloud is not ‘in the sky’. Cloud computing just means storing and accessing your data over the internet instead of on your computer’s hard drive – this is why computers now tend to be thinner, unlike the chunky PCs of the early noughties, complete with their own fan systems. Data is stored in data centres around the world – not in the ‘cloud’ or the ‘sky’. The cloud is just a metaphor for the internet, taken from the days of flowcharts.

The Evening Standard and Google Digital Garage hope to run more training sessions in London in September, so keep an eye on our Skills channel for more information.