 Okay, so I'm going to get started. Okay, my name is Michael Westbrooks. I'm originally from Edison, New Jersey. Came down to Atlanta in pursuit of a career in marketing, so that's what my background is called. It's a very interesting topic that I'm speaking on because it's something I'm very passionate about. As a matter of fact, I was practicing all of my design, and I had this whole plan on what I was gonna say to you guys. You know what I was just kind of just being organized about it, because when you're passionate about something, it just really comes out, you know? So, about two years ago, I had this wonderful idea. A million dollar idea, it was going to make you rich. Everyone associated with it was going to make you rich. And I pitched it to my girlfriend, one of the girlfriends was in that, she was going to support me, and she was obligated to agree with me that this was going to bring her to Atlanta. So, that gave me the confidence to go and try and build a team. So, you know, I was very marketing-oriented. Creative was what I did. Branding was my passion. I loved it. So, I needed some more managerial skills, more operations. So, I reached out to my friend, a good friend of mine, and said, hey, let's start something. I went to his house one day, and that night, I left with a valuable business partner, and we just immediately got to work, you know, and we said, we're going to designate this much time to build this product, build this idea out, but it went on for a year and a half, and the idea just grew. It grew to the point that it just exceeded the realm of our knowledge and our resources, and that's what happens when the idea stays and the idea stays for too long. So, I gave these thoughts to myself, what can I do to make my time much more productive? So, I pursued a non-traditional tech degree. I taught myself how to code, and I'm still teaching myself. I'm nowhere near an expert, so I just put everything together and just said, let's learn how to code. So, what is a non-traditional technology degree? Well, I define it as something unique. It's something that really can't be taken from you because you take the time out to learn the necessary skills to build, create, manipulate technology in any way that you see fit in order to build your product out. And the best thing about it is that you did it on your own accord. How many times are we in school? We spent time in four years in an undergrad, and you just force-fed us everything. It was like, you have to learn this by this time frame. You have to pass this test. You have to graduate by this time. But when you teach yourself, it's really on your own standards. It's on your own accord. And it really makes that experience unique. You kind of get more respect for it, you know? It's like, this is mine. I have, whether or not I was a law degree, excuse me, a law student, and I have an idea for an app that can change this whole industry. How are you taking the time out to learn and learn the entire technical feasibility? How can you be done from a tech perspective? It makes it very, very valuable. And like I said, it can't be taken away from you. So I don't know what the background of some of you guys are. If you're interested in tech, if you are in tech, what I'm here to do is to motivate you to pursue that interest. Because just like myself, I ask the question, can I do this? And this is the program that I'll put together. There's millions, there's so much resources out there that's available to you all. You know, just go online and learn something. These are some of the resources that I use, like StackSocial, YouTube, Code Academy, Lenda.com, on my company's bill, that is, Skillshare, Udemy. There's so many resources out there. Some are free, some are paid, some will cost between 25 and, you know, however much it costs, because this is, again, this is people out there putting their knowledge and making it accessible to you. So how do I go to the next slide? It's a right arrow. Okay. Yeah. There you go. Awesome. So for those of you that I'm speaking to right now that are interested in pursuing learning how to build technology, remember before I go into this, how many of you guys have like this wonderful idea like I had that's going to make you a million dollars and this is a tech or an app software hardware, right? There's a few of you. So what's the best thing to do if you don't know how to, if you don't want to pay someone to build it for you, if you want to protect yourself from faulty code, because that can happen, you know, you might get the code and it might work in one scenario, but then when you switch it out for a completely different scenario, then bam, you have a whole bunch of dropouts. So when you learn it, it's like, hey, this is going to work because this is how you do it and this is what I've learned. So this is the strategy that I use. Now I learned the basics from what is an array, what is a variable. I started with iOS, Swift neighbors, that's what I do. And it's one of those things where you just learn the basics, like I said, what a variable is, what a constant is, you know, how to utilize the storyboards in Xcode. And once you get those basics down, then you can just build smart. The strategy that I use to build smart is instead of learning how to build all of it at one time, I broke my idea down into manageable components. Okay, cool, I want a menu, I want a slide out menu. How do you do that? Since I know the basics and I understand interaction, you know, and I know what it looks like, this is, I go into YouTube and I learn how to build a slide out menu. So when I start piecing it all together, an interesting thing that I learned about code that a lot of you might share the same sentiments as me, it's very much like LEGOs, you know, you can take pieces, swap them out, continue to build this wonderful house out of you. It's beautiful LEGO, you know. And just learn, so going back to what I was saying, build smart, learn different aspects and know what you want your app to look like. Yeah, I did, whether it's the app or not, but learn each component and then just piece it together. You don't need to be some expert developer right now because what you want to do is see your idea into fruition. So build your minimal viable product. And then tinker with it. I was reading an article this morning and there's a lot of startup companies that are looking for developers that just like to tinker, you know, just play with code. You might learn how to do something that great. Someone else had questions about it, and oh my God, you went from a novice to an expert in their eyes, you know. So start tinkering with all your ideas, everything that you're passionate about, tinker with it, build it and make it your own. And then before you know it, right, before you know it, you have your MVP. You have your minimal viable product. You know, it's six months ago, you was like, man, how am I going to build this thing, man? How am I going to make me a million dollars, you know? How am I going to do it? I can't pay someone $10,000 to build it, you know? Before you know it, you have it, you know? So this is what I'm here to do right now. I'm here to motivate any one of you that are looking or is looking to go into technology and you might not know where to start, how to start. What I went through was pretty much how I did it, you know? And I'm still learning and I would love to make myself available to anyone that wants to learn because that's how you build an ecosystem, you know? An ecosystem of like-minded individuals that are looking to achieve a common goal. And I do hope I last my 15 minutes.