The conclusion of the Coding Boot Camp cohort that I was a part of was followed by a 'Demo Day' event for showcasing full-stack web development projects created by students from the University of Toronto's and Carleton University's Coding Boot Camps. These events are a great opportunity for students to showcase their technical prowess in full-stack web development to prospective employers and/or to pitch a viable business opportunity that their web application is addressing.

The final project that I worked on alongside four of my classmates during my time in the Coding Boot Camp was an inventory management platform for vendors to sell discounted soon-to-be-expiring food inventory to local customers called ''Let's Eat a Deal". This platform was a MERN-stack application that was built in the span of four very stressful days (😂). My role on the team was primarily to complete the front-end of the application, as seen below:

Customer's Dashboard Webpage:

Vendor's Dashboard Webpage:

Unfortunately, we were not able to complete the connection between the front-end and back-end of the application in time before presenting at the Demo Day event and I was the only member of my team who was able to make it to the event to present our project. However, those setbacks did not dampen my spirit and I pushed forward with my presentation (😀)!

I was able to present my project three times to my colleagues and industry judges during the event. The presentations went great and I was able to gloss over the fact that our application was not fully functional (😂)! There were three categories of feedback that I received including project-specific feedback, general web application development feedback (addressed to all students), and job search-related feedback (again, addressed to all students).

First, I received the following project-related feedback:

• How do we ensure that vendors don't sell expired products or buy from a wholesaler to make a profit on the margins?
• We should outsource the customer help desk feature
• How do we use software to deal with inventory management and distribution?
• We have other use cases for the application beyond selling food inventory? (i.e. vendors can sell any other unwanted inventory at discounted prices to customers)

Majority of the project-related feedback centred around facilitating the supply chain of products that are posted to our platform and, specifically, dealing with inventory management and distribution. The supply chain issues would have to be dealt with by creating inventory management software that would interface with internet-connected devices in vendors' warehouses, stores, product distribution vehicles, etc. and provide automated product updates to our platform, which was beyond the scope of our project. Additionally, if this project is to be built upon, our platform has countably infinite use cases for vendors looking to liquidate their undesirable inventory.

Second, the participants collectively received the following general web application development feedback:

• Autogenerate results when receiving input data from a user rather than having the user click a button to generate results to a query
• Implement external website content within your website so that users don't need to leave the website; your goal is to keep users on your website as long as possible
• Use stories to showcase problems that your application solves
• Great projects start off with great research (regarding the business case for a web application)

Most of this feedback was not directly applicable to our platform; however, we did not perform our due diligence on the business applications of our platform due to the production time constraints that we were dealing with. The key takeaways here are to:

• Lead into your presentation with a user story that showcases a solution to a ubiquitous problem within a well-researched market, and
• Design the front-end of your application to be as effortless as possible and to keep users on your website as long as possible.

Lastly, the participants collectively received the following job search-related feedback:

• Developer jobs and, in particular, internships are easier to obtain in the fall and winter months than they are in the summer months since most students are enrolled in courses during the fall and winter months
• Ask for support from people who are more senior than you are to obtain their feedback on your professional work and career trajectory
• Always be preparing for interviews and developing your skillsets

The key takeaways here are:

• Always prepare for opportunities well in advance,
• Seek out reputable mentors, and
• Look for underutilized and/or undervalued opportunities to take advantage of.

To conclude, the Demo Day event was a great opportunity for me to practise my product demonstration skills and receive insightful feedback from senior industry professionals. I look forward to my next Demo Day event!

Feel free to check out jaspreetkhela.github.io/JaspreetKhela to find general information about me and links to my work-related social media profiles for more content!