TL;DR: Nod Coding Bootcamp turns motivated individuals into autonomous coders and data analytics specialists in ten intensive weeks. Its co-founder used to build every admission letter and every course certificate by hand in a PDF template. Slowly, and with errors he then had to correct. Issuing now runs through TRUE, and the gain he names first is not his own time. It is that a student ends up holding something that feels like it was worth earning.
Nod is a coding bootcamp in Stockholm. Ten intensive weeks, and a student comes out an autonomous coder and a specialist in data analytics. Gustav Svensson co-founded it, runs admissions and sales, and teaches the two subjects he likes most, statistics and machine learning.
For a long time he also made every document the school issued.
A PDF template and a lot of evenings. Two documents carry weight at a bootcamp: the letter telling somebody they got in, and the certificate saying they finished. Svensson produced both by hand, one student at a time, for every intake.
“Before TRUE I was classically stuck in the PDF swamp, and I have spent so many hours manually creating both admission letters for our bootcamp and certificates for a completed course.”
Because the hours are only the first cost. The second is the one most schools leave out of the story, and Svensson puts it on the record without being asked. He was producing documents that carried other people’s names, at the end of long days, in a tool that gave him nothing to check against.
“The PDF setup was time consuming, fiddly, and the result was half decent at best. On top of that human manual errors were made, by me, now and then, which were a nuisance to correct.”
Gustav Svensson, Instructor and Co-Founder, Nod Coding Bootcamp
A misspelled name is not small. It is the graduate’s own name, on the document that says what they can do. Every correction cost the school a second round of work and cost the graduate an awkward exchange at the exact moment they wanted to celebrate.
One overview instead of a folder of templates. Svensson calls the issuer interface harmonious, with a simple overview. That is the bar a tool has to clear when the person using it also runs admissions and teaches machine learning. Nobody at a school this size has an afternoon to give back to document production.
The document started feeling like it was worth something. Svensson puts the gain there rather than on his own recovered hours. A bootcamp sells ten intensive weeks. The certificate is the only object a graduate carries out of them.
“The best part is that the students get the feeling of a credential that is as real as it can be for something digital. It feels secure, and when they are generated it really feels like you have been given something of value.”
Gustav Svensson, Instructor and Co-Founder, Nod Coding Bootcamp
A document assembled in a hurry quietly argues against the ten weeks behind it. One anybody can check argues for them, because the claim stops depending on trust in the file and starts depending on a record. That is what makes it a verifiable credential, proof a third party can confirm without contacting the school at all.
More room to design. Svensson wants a better overview of the design choices available. A diploma can carry moving image and graphics, and he is curious how far that goes. It is the request of somebody who now has time to think about how the document looks, which was not a question he could afford when he made them one at a time.
Nod publishes its bootcamps on its own site: Nod Coding Bootcamp. It also runs a workshop series in Python and data analytics with the Stockholm School of Economics once a semester, and is launching a bootcamp in fullstack development. On the issuing side, see how certificate automation workflows fit together, or read the rest of the TRUE case studies. Another school that spent years on PDFs before automating: Berghs School of Communication.
A data analytics coding bootcamp in Stockholm that turns motivated individuals into autonomous coders and data analytics specialists in ten intensive weeks.
By hand, in a PDF template. Its co-founder built both the admission letters and the course certificates himself, which he describes as being stuck in the PDF swamp.
It was time consuming and fiddly, the result was half decent at best, and manual errors crept in that then had to be corrected.
A credential that feels as real as something digital can be. Its co-founder says it feels secure, and that a student ends up feeling they have been given something of value.
A better overview of the design choices available, and more of the moving image and graphics a diploma can carry.
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