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OnSIP Lead Software Engineer Talks With Coney Island Prep's Future Developers

by Kevin Malcolm

OnSIP was proud to attend Coney Island Prep High School's first annual Career Fair.

Published: January 26, 2016

Lead Software Engineer James Criscuolo and I had the pleasure of attending Coney Island Prep High School's inaugural Career Fair earlier this month. Professionals of many different industries were stationed throughout the auditorium and it didn't take long for a buzz to develop once the 11th graders came pouring in.

Prepared with questions and notepads, the young men and women of Coney Island Prep scanned the tables for descriptions that aligned with their interests. While they may not have had their eyes peeled for "Business VoIP", there were some that said our SIP.js code snippet caught their attention.

OnSIP at the Coney Island Prep Career Fair

"It was great to see more than a few students with experience or serious interest in programming," said James. "They were often more interested in the development process and how we architected OnSIP than the general description of what the service does — which is exactly how aspiring developers should be thinking."

I have to agree. As the Marketing representative, I had a few great conversations, but was admittedly less popular among our visitors. I frequently redirected students over to James' side of the table, which at times had a small audience of guys and girls taking notes and asking questions.

His advice for getting started often revolved around getting involved in open source projects, taking advantage of free online courses, and just generally "diving into" the code as much as possible. Some recommended sites are Code Academy and Github. If you know anyone interested in pursuing programming, pass it along!

Students Get a Sneak Peek of a Future Release

If it wasn't the code snippet on the banner that caught the students' attention, it was usually the video feed displayed on James' laptop. Upon closer inspection, they found we were actually engaged in a video call with our Manhattan office.

We showed them around a preview of our new-and-improved OnSIP app and while most of them were familiar with Skype or other video chat applications, many were interested to learn more about WebRTC and how it works without any downloads or plug-ins.

Of course, we forced them all to sign highly restrictive non-disclosure agreements, so you'll have to stay tuned for more updates from us as the app nears completion.