iD Blog Author: Pete

Dear iD Nation,

I want to personally welcome you to the iD Family.  To our returning families, I know you’ve been looking forward to our 2010 launch.  Yesterday we started taking registrations at 8 AM, and the phones were ringing busily all day.  That’s a good sign!  We had  a banner year in 2009, so we think 2010 will be even better.

An obvious question many families are asking is “What’s New?”.  I am going to cut and paste some content from our “What’s New” page on our website:

• Digital Catalog – Our summer camp catalog is now available.
• Registration is now live! – Register with our latest promotion and save $100 by 12-15-09.  And when you refer-a-friend, you now save $50 and your friend does too!
• New Locations – New prestigious university locations including the campuses of Harvard, Princeton, Adelphi, Bentley, the expansion of our Teen Academies nationally, and our expansion into Canada.
• New Courses at iD Tech Camps – Awesome new courses include iPhone® App Development, Digital Photography & Photoshop®, RPG Game Design & Graphic Arts Hybrid, Game Modding with titles including Warcraft® III, Starcraft®, Half-Life® 2 and more.  Go to courses and programs.
• Expansion of our Teen Academies – The  iD Programming Academy has expanded to MIT.  The intensive game development program, the iD Gaming Academy has expanded to Chicago and Seattle.  We’ve also launched the new iD Visual Arts Academy. The Teen Academies are for ages 13-18.
• iD 365 – Endless Summer – Upon registration at iD, you now get access to our monthly FREE online workshops, taught year round by live instructors.  More.
• Receive Continuing Education Units from Villanova University or Stanford Continuing Studies.  Details.
• The iD Guarantee – We average 6 students per instructor at iD Tech Camps.  If we exceed an  8:1 ratio, you get to return for a free week of camp at equal value.  It’s that simple!  It’s iD quality.  And it’s only at iD!  Note:  Not valid for Teen Academies. Get details.
• New Games – Hot new commercial gaming titles used in our gaming courses, gaming tournaments and Ultimate Gaming Weekends.
• Learn Valuable “Life Skills” – We’re building new life skills content for this year.  The curriculum will round out the summer experience. See the benefits of iD. We’ve also got fun new camp activities for students.
• Technology Isn’t Just for Boys – We’ve created more courses and modules that are be appealing to girls including Web Design & Flash® Animation, Graphic Design, Video Editing & Special Effects, Digital Photography & Photoshop and the new teen-only  iD Visual Arts Academy.
• Go Green – We continue our iD Greening initiative by promoting carpooling, reducing travel and energy consumption and establishing new outreach partnerships in the communities we serve.
• The Basement.  For Students Only! – Find out what the buzz is about.   Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.  Blogs.  Student Project Uploads.  Camp Photos.  iD 365.  And more.  Head down to the The Basement!

OK, I’m back.  As you can see, we’ve been a bit busy preparing for this launch.  You might expect that we kick back and take a few months off in the Fall, but nothing could be further from the truth.  We’ve got the hardest working crew in the summer camp industry.  We’ve had teams working around the clock to pull all the pieces together…working with new locations (including the expansion of our Teen Academies and a push into Canada), developing curriculum, developing back-end applications, signing contracts, overhauling our website, developing content, designing our camp brochure, working with new corporate partners, creating new courses, and so much more.

The launch is a big, big team effort, and it is a sign of our company’s organization and dedication to providing the very best.

On behalf of all our employees, we want to welcome you to the new camp season.  We hope you’ll take a few minutes to look around our website.  And, as always, we’re just a phone call away.

Best,

Pete Ingram-Cauchi

CEO, iD Tech Camps

A parent recently posed this question to me:

Dear Pete, I am looking for a comic design camp for my son this summer, 2009. Can you please direct us to somthing in the Pittsburgh or the Philadelphia area of PA. Thank you for your attention to our inquiry. My son attending ID-Tech camp in summer 2007 and loved this course but it does not appear to be offered as of late. Mom in distress…

We do not specifically offer a comic design camp, but we have introduced a couple new courses that might fit the bill this year.  Please check out our Create Your Own Adventures Course as well as our Graphic Arts Course–both are offered at most locations throughout the country, as well as at Carnegie Mellon University and Villanova University which are close to you.

Both courses offer some awesome content using some very relevant and fun platforms.

Hopefully this information helps.  We hope to see you out at our summer camp.

Best,

Pete

iD Nation,

We’re rounding the corner to Summer 2009.  Our camps are thriving right now, and interest is at an all-time high for our summer computer camps.  But what makes a camp unique?  What makes iD Tech Camps unique?  SImply put:  It’s people.  Check out a few of the cool photos from a few of the very cool and creative people that are responsible for bringing iD Tech Camps to you.

A company that celebrates its employees is a company that thrives.

From our team of Regional Managers, Client Services Representatives, Admin folks, Field Services, IT and Marketing…the best team in the camp business is counting down the days until summer.  We are ready for an amazing summer.  Climb aboard!

-Pete

Developing apps and widgets for the iPhone, Facebook, etc. is hot right now.  There is keen interest in developing the skill set to enable the development of these apps.

Our client services department recently received an email from a client looking to register for the iD Programming Academy.  The client wanted to know if the skills learned at our summer camp will be transferable to a MAC working with X-code for the iPhone (specifically developing iApps).

Here is the answer, unedited, from our curriculum developer

Skills learned at iDPA are definitely transferable to X-Code.
The iD Programming Academy curriculum starts off with a brush up of programming basics and
then we jump right into programming of graphical user interfaces using
the Swing framework for Java and/or .NET for C#. Both frameworks are
extremely similar to Apple’s iPhone SDK (software development kit) used
to write iPhone applications on the Mac platform using X-Code. Students
will also learn how to create 3D graphics and animations using OpenGL, a
technology that is also integrated into Apple’s iPhone SDK. In summary,
the iD Programming Academy is the best fit for this student.

The iD Programming Academy is offered at Stanford University, and is almost sold out.
iD Tech Camps also offers programming camps in both C++ and Java at locations across the country.  The goal here is to create the next generation of computer science students.  Have fun.  Get interested.  Learn to program!

Check out all iD Tech Summer Camp Courses by clicking here.

It is always fun to keep tabs on former iD Tech Camps employees. Bryan used to work in accounting, but several of our people still keep in contact with him. It is also a good idea to keep tabs on MC Hammer. It looks like he is doing well.

This is pretty much a random post–although it should be mentioned that the “Can’t Touch This” video blazed the trail with superior cinematography–the kind of music video kids can get a taste for creating in our Digital Video camp course at iD Tech Camps. (The plug had to happen!)

Can’t touch this! Oh oh, oh oh, oh oh…

Bryan hanging with MC Hammer