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Personal Projects and Portfolio Building

Slides: tinyurl.com/acmportfolioworkshop

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Agenda

  • What are personal projects and their importance?
  • Ideation process for creating projects
  • Big Picture and Scope of Relevance
  • What is a personal portfolio and how do we build one?
  • What does a good personal portfolio look like?
  • Utilize GitHub for a Website Portfolio!

Slides: tinyurl.com/acmportfolioworkshop

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Personal Projects

  • Projects done in your own free time!
    • I.e. NOT classwork projects
  • Showcase of skills in a unique and creative way
  • Can be referenced from existing projects or built from scratch

Slides: tinyurl.com/acmportfolioworkshop

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Importance

  • Push your level of understanding
    • Burden is entirely on you to level up your skills
  • Demonstrate valuable skills such as problem-solving, utilization of tools, and showcase of overall coding proficiency
  • Can also be used to help your community if your project is oriented as such

Slides: tinyurl.com/acmportfolioworkshop

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Ideation and Getting Started

  • Pick something that you are passionate in learning about!
    • If you’re really stuck, some good starters include a full-stack website, a simple mobile app, data visualization using matplotlib, etc.
  • Online Projects can be used as starting points
  • Attend hackathons for added motivation!

Slides: tinyurl.com/acmportfolioworkshop

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Within Project Development

  • Learn the tools
    • Google Search, ChatGPT and YouTube to explain
  • Define clear goals for your project
    • Measure your progress against milestones and your desired finish point
  • Error handling
    • Use stackoverflow and other resources debug
  • Get constructive feedback from friends and family

Slides: tinyurl.com/acmportfolioworkshop

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Publish Your Projects

  • Publish your projects to your GitHub
  • Give credits and list out the resources used
  • Continue to develop your projects
    • Don’t just be one and done
  • Develop 3 solid projects to list on your resume/portfolio
    • Know them like the back of your hand

Slides: tinyurl.com/acmportfolioworkshop

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Project Example

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Big Picture

  • First and Second Years
    • Most likely haven’t had a chance to get industry experience (internship)
  • Companies won’t expect previous working experience with entry-level internships
  • Main Objective: Show interest and drive within your field of interest
  • Can all be encapsulated in a Portfolio

Slides: tinyurl.com/acmportfolioworkshop

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Creating a Portfolio

  • Organized Collection of projects and work experience
    • Usually documented on a website
  • Will contain
    • Personal Projects
    • Research/Internship Experience
    • Extracurriculars
    • Contact Points

Slides: tinyurl.com/acmportfolioworkshop

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What do Good Portfolio’s look like?

  • Clean Design that catches the viewer's’ attention
  • Simple Navigation
  • Individualized theme that embodies your vision
  • Use reliable web hosting
  • Add testimonials (if any)

Slides: tinyurl.com/acmportfolioworkshop

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Let’s view some portfolios!

Slides: tinyurl.com/acmportfolioworkshop

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GitHub Pages

Let’s create our own website!

Slides: tinyurl.com/acmportfolioworkshop

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Demo Agenda

  • Create Github Account
  • Install Git
  • Set up SSH Keys
  • Fork a repository
  • Clone the repo
  • Small modification (just change the name)
  • Add, commit, push
  • Repeat

Slides: tinyurl.com/acmportfolioworkshop

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Challenge!

Let’s add your own flair to your website…

Ideas:

  • Add in your background/pitch
  • Add a contact form
  • Add a header element for a Projects section
  • Change the color and images

Slides: tinyurl.com/acmportfolioworkshop