For six months, students from all backgrounds come together to broaden their knowledge on software development. The class submerges students into learning HTML markup and programming languages such as JavaScript and Ruby on Rails.

The program starts by training the students on front-end development and concludes with web application development. The students pay a tuition of $1000 up-front for the three month front-end development course. If students show aptitude, they may be invited to continue for another three months learning back-end web application development. In this latter half of the program, students are offered a need-based stipend to help offset the cost of continuing their studies. The school works closely with local tech companies to pair students with those that are hiring, which is where Centresource found one of its own, Adam Scott.

After graduation, Adam was hired as a developer for Centresource. “In a move that illustrates how NSS has been embraced by local tech companies, Centresource lent Scott back to NSS to teach for several hours a week during this session.”

We think it’s great what the NSS is doing and we’re excited to see those with a passion for technology grow.

One of the conversations I’m having regularly is with idea stage startups. They talk about big applications with multiple features, large market segments and a large rollout plan. I love the enthusiasm and passion that each entrepreneur has as well as the wishful thinking. But the advice I always give is to start with an MVP and test it, test it, test it. In the startup world, an MVP refers to a Minimally Viable Product. In our fast-paced society, ideas must make it to market quickly and economically. An MVP stresses the value of early market testing, rather than spending time building up a product when you don’t even know if that product will be accepted by the market.

The advantages of getting a product to the marketplace early will allow you to test how your product translates from an idea into an actual product. Famous last words – “I think this will work”. Simply put, you do not know what you have until you can test it. At times, a product isn’t fully known what it is until it is tested in the marketplace; let potential customers play with your product since they will be the ones using it.

Time, money, and effort can make or break you. Testing your product earlier with fewer borders and more areas for improvement is critical. You discover how your product is used, who is using it, why they are using it, and where you can improve it. This valuable new data and information will be able to help guide the development and future direction for your product. By getting up-to-date, real-time data about how your product fits the needs and wants of the market, you are able to supply a helpful product more quickly and cost efficiently. Aside from saving time and resources, you’ve realized and learned valuable information that allows you to add features and continue to test. Or, it helps you learn how not to do it and pivot to what your customers want. I couldn’t say it any better than Drew Houston, CEO of Dropbox: “Not launching is painful, but not learning is fatal.” Get your product out in its minimal form now so you can learn about your market, gather data, and make adjustments later.

Welcome to the world of Centresource. We’re a team of consultants, creatives, developers and marketers. We’re all friendly here; come on in.

When you first enter, you will find four options: who we are, what we do, who we work with, and contact. Where would you like to start?

Who we are — Here you will find a collection of photos (linked from our instagram account) from Centresource over the years. You’ll see everything from pics of our interactive mixers to pics of a very hairy chested Tom Selleck (or is it?). Along with the photos, you will find facts about us and what our team has accomplished. It’s a nice little spot. Get to know us.

What we do — What do we do? That’s a great question. Here you will find a complete list of all the services Centresource offers. From web and mobile to video and marketing, we explain what we can do for you and your brand. Just keep scrolling :)

Who we work with — At Centresource, we have had the pleasure of working with many different customers in a variety of industries. We’ve worked with start-ups, healthcare, non-profits and many others. Here you will find some projects that represent the industries we’ve spent the most time in. Have a look–we think you’ll like what you see.

Contact – Is your mind blown yet? Are you biting your knuckles, craving for more? OK, perhaps that’s a wee bit melodramatic,but whether something has sparked your interest or you just want to say “hey”, you’ve come to the right place. Now that you know a little bit about us, it’s our turn to get to know you. Let’s talk.

Well, that completes our tour for today. I hope you enjoyed your time visiting Centresource. Don’t forget to check out our Social Networks on your way out! Come back anytime! We love having you here.

A few weeks ago, Nick was featured as a guest blogger in VentureBeat, a news site covering tech trends for forward-thinking executives. His article, “Why Hiring Unicorns Will Kill Your Startup Faster Than ‘B Players’” suggests entrepreneurs not overlook ‘B players’, but rather hire them and mold them into ‘A players’. His post was a rebuttal to “Why Hiring B Employees Will Kill Your Startup”.

“It’s a mistake and a cliche for entrepreneurs to only seek ‘A players’ and it can end up hurting their business if they do not take some personal responsibility when things don’t work out.” He recommends that entrepreneurs, “always seek the best employees you can get, but be mindful that you have limitations to balance as well.”

Following this article, Nick also participated in Southern Alpha’s Spark Nashville event,where he shared his dumbest decisions as an entrepreneur.

Here, Nick centers his story around his days at Centresource. He talks about the time he wanted to do something creative, while making money, so he had his developers re-do any Nashville website they wanted. What he hoped would rake in some money,ended up backfiring. Read about it at http://nibletz.com/2013/02/22/nashville-entrepreneurs-share-dumbest-decisions/

There exist some amazing tools to reach for when these uber-long emails come our way, and they’re actually built right into the Mac OS. Friends, we’re going to talk a little bit about OS X Services. These services are built-in and third party tools that allow you to automate tasks, make boring things more efficient, and generally plow through tasks on your computer. We’re going to look at two that drastically improve your intake of long pieces of content: Summarize and Add to iTunes.

To get started, you’ll want to enable all these geeky services from System Preferences >> Keyboard, as such:

Summarize

This is my favorite oddity of Mac OS X. Nestled away in the Services menu exists the ability to boil down a long piece of text into the most important paragraphs and sentences. A guy at Apple wrote an algorithm that analyzes frequently used phrases, similar words and emphasis points in an article to establish patterns. You can use Summarize to narrow the list down to the most important patterns and get the gist of an article without. actually. reading. it. Check it out:

Select some text (in this case, I found an extremely long Wikipedia entry about Wyandanch, New York), and access the Services menu in the menu bar:

Now, a magic dialog box appears:

From here, you can use the Summarize UI to select how many sentences or paragraphs you’d like to see. In most cases, this is shockingly accurate. Here, you can see a few key sentences about Wyandanch and glean that this is an article about a storied and historic town. Pretty neat, right?

Send to iTunes

For my next trick, I’m going to take that same lengthly article and convert it into a spoken word track. No, I’m not calling William Shatner, I’m using Services. Similar to Summarize, you’ll want to select some text and find the Services menu:

Save the file, and select your favorite robot voice (I like the standard Alex, myself).

The file will export, and you’ll have an AIFF file waiting for you. You can listen right away or even pop this onto your iPod and listen on your evening commute (if that’s your thing):

With these tools, and some healthy email etiquette, you’ll spend less time reading and more time acting. That’s the whole point, right?