General Assembly

In class we will create a set of documents that together comprise the deliverables expected of an Information Architect. We will examine the relationship between designers, coders, and Information Architects to better understand the concepts behind User Experience and Usability at large. We will work hands on with Omnigraffle’s vector editing tools to create and edit the blueprints for a digital product and evaluate our work at the prototype level. Expect to walk away from class with the ability to recognize and critique features, user flows, and accompanying wire frame sets.

Less Doing is a framework for becoming more effective at everything. By analyzing problems using a three part process of optimizing, automating, and outsourcing, you can free up your time, and more importantly your brain power. Through Achievement Architecture, you will learn the power of distraction and self care in helping you reach seemingly impossible goals.

This class will provide an overview to advertising exchange buying, otherwise known as programmatic buying, audience-based buying, or Real-Time-Bidding (RTB). We'll review the digital media industry as it relates to this newer form of buying, who the players and offerings are, and how to develop new skills in becoming a future digital media trader.

Are you a creative or entrepreneur that wishes you could speak tech with your web development team? Maybe you wish you could code a bit yourself? Programming for Non-Programmers is a two-part workshop series at General Assembly designed to help non-programmers communicate more efficiently with developers. Because leading a development team (without being a developer yourself) can sometimes feels like “talking about dancing”, we’ve created an interactive and friendly environment in which to learn the basics.

Delivering software is more than just writing code--otherwise there wouldn't be such people as project managers, business analysts, software testers, or systems administrators. Any significant project requires identifying what work is to be done, organizing the work so that people can work productively without stepping on each others' toes, figuring out some way to establish that the product works as it should, and taking all the steps required to launch and maintain the product in a live environment.

We are entering the year with a very marked 'Talent War' in NYC. It's difficult to hire A-list developers, and even harder to retain them. Don’t settle and don’t panic. This workshop will give you tips and tools to hire the best developers in town and tell you how to retain them. This workshop is for hiring managers, technical directors, anyone who runs a technical team and can benefit from tips on hiring and retaining a technical team without blowing the bank on internal or external recruiters.

Web advertising has been around for over a decade, but mobile and tablet advertising is a new and quickly growing segment of online ads that promises to be the future of digital advertising. Between mobile and tablet web ads, in-app ads, and content-based advertising, there is a lot to learn about this emerging market. This class will give an overview of the various types of mobile and tablet advertising solutions and explore the ways in which you can implement ads into your mobile and tablet strategy.

Marketing can be an expensive proposition for a start-up, especially one prioritizing its spending around the launch of a product or the acquisition of users. Fortunately, there are a number of strategies for "earning" media attention -- that is, leveraging independent media channels to build awareness or buzz without paying for ads, or targeting the discrete spending of marketing dollars in ways that can generate disproportionate results.

Do you have an idea but you are not sure if you can make a business out of it, or have an idea but need to refine it? Or need help in creating, reviewing or evaluating an idea? This class will focus over four sessions on the idea generation process and generating creative new ideas and turning entrepreneurial ideas into businesses. It will also review tools for evaluating business ideas. This process has also been called “Ideation.” Often people think they need just one great business idea and this idea will cover them in a “flash of genius.” While this can be true, often good business ideas get developed, molded, and improved over time. We will discuss both products and services ideas and focus on how to transform an idea or invention into an economically viable innovation and business.

The goal of this class is to shed light on the S.M.A.R.T. ways to create an ebook for an individual, company, business, organization, concept or brand:

Learn Visual Design fundamentals as you harness the power of the Adobe Creative Suite Applications: Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign to create rich attractive print and publication designs. Learn the fundamentals of photo re-touching/manipulation, creating vector illustrations, page layout, and professional design workflows. Session 3

Traditional PR doesn’t work in the app world. It’s not enough to get your name in the paper; you need to get social media addicted and talking. This session will include a bulletproof checklist on marketing essentials, the Do’s and Dont’s of App marketing including social media marketing, focus groups, advertising, goal-setting and media relations.

So your startup doesn't have any money for a fancy ad campaign or a seasoned sales exec. You can barely keep the lights on as it is. But you know that your product is amazing, and if only your clients knew about you, you would be raking in the dollars. For a struggling start up like yours, there is only one way to make that happen. Pick up the phone.

You gobble up Business Insider and VentureBeat for breakfast; you're hitting refresh on TechMeme and Mashable until lunch; AllThingsD and TechCrunch are required bedside reading...And yet you have no idea how to get these media outlets to feature your startup. This class will show you what life is like on the other side by taking you deep inside the world of a twenty-something reporter. Through real-world examples and anecdotes, you'll gain insight into what works (and doesn't work) in telling your story.

The main focus of this workshop is to get you on your feet and identify what is getting in the way of you being your best – live – in the moment. The ability to connect with others in an authentic way is the key to being a great speaker – and it carries over into the success of your business and personal life.

Michael Geer will share key lessons learned from founding Badoo, from idea-stage through its current status as a booming network with 100M+ users and $100M in revenue. This session will cover elements behind successful product design, viral marketing, and rapid global growth (Badoo is especially strong in Europe and South America).

Objectives: In this course we’re diving head first into HTML & CSS. In my work, I’ve discovered that I could be a better programmer by focusing on the good parts of a language, and avoiding the bad parts. After all, can you really build something with bad parts? In this class we’re taking a project-based learning approach to HTML & CSS that focuses on learning a subset of the good parts so that we can make something (quick and) awesome. In only 3 weeks we’ll tackle the barebones of how to quickly develop a web site, and get it live on the Web.

In this workshop, infographic designer Shane Snow (who's done data visualization for Gizmodo, Mint, Samsung, MTV, and more) teaches the principles behind good infographics, breaks down the process of gathering data and building infographics, and discusses how to spread infographics and kickstart a viral loop of sharing, through case study, in-class exercises, and Q&A.

You've got a great product. You are expanding to include more users, more features, and more data. Do you have the necessary organizational and technical robustness to handle fast paced growth? This class will prepare you for maintaining your business as it scales in size.

Learn Visual Design fundamentals as you harness the power of the Adobe Creative Suite Applications: Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign to create rich attractive print and publication designs. Learn the fundamentals of photo re-touching/manipulation, creating vector illustrations, page layout, and professional design workflows. Session 4

From the bar to the boardroom, a well-told tale makes the best impression. The Story Studio's storytelling workshop, taught by Kevin Allison, provides students with the tools to discover a story’s core message in a friendly, social environment in which they can come to rehearse and receive feedback. Kevin focuses on techniques that build concrete ideas, improve story structure, elicit emotion, and ultimately keep an audience’s attention so that they will remember the ideas conveyed in your story long after you have gone. This workshop is an overview of some of the tools and principles taught by Kevin Allison in his 9-week storytelling class at The Story Studio in New York City.

In this class we'll discover how to take your data and craft an interesting storyline that can drive coverage about whatever trends you find. You'll leave having learned to take an empirical approach to PR that will grow your presence by leaps and bounds.

Let’s face it, self-promotion has a high ick-factor, but that doesn’t stop many of us from pushing the needle in the direction of gross and obnoxious, or defaulting to passive avoidance. If you’re ready to get out of your own way and shine a light on yourself, this queasy-free workshop will help you unpack some basic tools for creating content that’s immediate and vivid. It will propel you several steps closer to nailing your core message in a few properly pitched lines.

This 2-part course is for the start-up founder and business dev roles who are looking to 10x their ventures. Most teachers approach these types of courses with basic sales tactics rebranded under the biz dev title. And while sales tactics are very useful, the 10x solution is still not solved. How do you grow your venture to be far bigger than just you?

Curious how to protect intellectual property and develop a strategy or how to make your startup more valuable with IP? This class will focus on IP introduction for startups. This is a strategy and development class (not a legal one). Learn the steps necessary to file a patent for protect your startup's IP in plain English. You will learn how to write proper invention disclosure and be provided with a template.

Finding and landing the right talent is one of the most important drivers of any business.

More smartphones shipped than computers in 2011 and in turn mobile UX has risen to a level of importance on par with the desktop. Unlike web experiences, mobile UX is finicky--it's brief, but demands high performance, it's error prone and unapologetic. Good touch interaction patterns are still emerging and only recently being adopted by users. Meanwhile back-end and front-end development is equally in flux. To understand the complexities of these systems, content and service providers require UX architects to document the creation process in way that is readable and useful. Regardless of who these duties belong to, at the end of the day the same methods and practices must be employed.

You’ve spent months polishing the details on your product and now it’s time to let investors know why they should invest in you. This 2-part workshop series will teach you to put your best foot forward. As with any great presentation, you must know your audience first. Not every VC firm is the same and they don’t all agree on who’s is the best looking in the room. We’ll start with what VCs look for. How do you differentiate? How do you gain traction? The group will jump into building an impactful pitch deck. And your homework between sessions will be to (re)construct your pitch deck for the next session.

Many successful book projects come from the Internet and the world of technological entrepreneurship. These titles range from Tony Hsieh's Delivering Happiness to Twitter-based Sh*t My Dad Says, from the blog Awkward Family Photos to F U Penguin to 50 Shades of Gray. If your company is content based or data driven, there might be a book project worth pursuing, one that can raise your company's profile, generate income, and lead to other opportunities. Among the topics discussed in this class are: how to approach publishers in an appropriate way and a quick overview of the acquisition process at a major publishing company (review publishing p&l); the role of literary agents; how to create a winning book proposal (sample proposals); and some of the things to think about such as copyright and fair use if you use content provided by a community.

This is an introductory class on how your company can use the crowdfunding provisions in the JOBS Act to easily and efficiently raise capital by offering equity. Crowdfunding allows you to raise up to $1M a year, and there are no requirements that your investors be accredited. Though this class describes the benefits of crowdfunding for companies, those investors interested in crowdfunding are encouraged to attend so they understand the process as well. The class will begin by discussing the funding challenges many startups and small companies face, followed by a description of how crowdfunding addresses many of these issues. The class will then discuss how crowdfunding is commenced, how deals can be structured, and how companies can utilize crowdfunding as a growth tool. The class will use PowerPoint and handouts. Because this is a new area of law, there will be no case studies, but rather, high level discussion with plenty of opportunity for question and answer.

Some of the biggest challenges and opportunities in SEO are hidden in massive amounts of data. In order to unearth them, you need to move past the fundamentals, sharpen your intuition and often times develop your own tools and processes. In this course the student will learn how to move past your competitors in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) using cutting edge analysis and experimentation. The strategies and tactics we will explore have been used very effectively to increase organic sales significantly for top Internet retailers.

This course examines the art and science of source code control for technology-based startups. Arguably source code is the most valuable asset our ventures develop- arm yourself with a good introductory understanding of how source control works, why it is important, how teams develop and release code with source control systems, and best practices for low cost, high-security source management.

Learn Visual Design fundamentals as you harness the power of the Adobe Creative Suite Applications: Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign to create rich attractive print and publication designs. Learn the fundamentals of photo re-touching/manipulation, creating vector illustrations, page layout, and professional design workflows. Session 5

Learn what Scala is all about. This is an introductory class: though students should be familiar with the basics of programming and have some experience with another language such as Java or Ruby, they need not be experts. This class will emphasize practical skills more than theory.

Urban myth says that the most successful startups go viral – but any experienced entrepreneur knows there’s method to the myth, and that the company on the fast track to acquiring users is the surer bet. Your product might be just what the world wants, but without customers there’s no guarantee of success. This course will cover marketing for startups with a focus on smart budgeting and measuring ROI.

Creating a brand centric business strategy is an often overlooked yet critical for the success of any start-up venture. This course will teach you how to determine a business strategy while keeping a consistent brand identity. We’ll review the ten tenets of this approach. Students can expect to come away with a rough draft of their strategy from this class.

If you have an idea but no technical co-founder, this class is for you. Demand for freelance developers has skyrocketed to unprecedented levels, but you can teach yourself to code prototypes quickly in a few weeks. We'll cover the best ways to teach yourself (how to actually make it fun) and what key resources you need to know about.

To understand a user's experience one must first understand the architecture of the information within which the user is interacting. With this new found understanding and clarity, an information architecture can be tuned to better enable your goals as a business. Results we see from practicing effective information architecture are: happier designers and developers, an overall sense of efficiency, oh yea and increased conversion. Sound too good to be true? Well it's not. It is just about understanding information architecture. And we know how to teach you that.

The social web has forced a fundamental shift in the way products are built and marketed on the internet. This day-long session will introduce the social web to attendees and teach the foundations necessary to successful utilize social platforms like Facebook and Twitter to leverage sales for your corporation or startup.

When you are trying to decide on the best design for your pricing page, or come up with the best promotion to run for your customers, you’ll want to use A/B testing. However many people who try A/B testing become frustrated with the results: They run a test once, and then run it again and get opposite results. It can be difficult to figure out which ideas to test, and to figure out conclusively which idea is the best. This class will cover how to set up an experiment, determine the appropriate sample size and how to analyze the results. We will also discuss more advanced experimental techniques such as going beyond A/B testing and testing multiple ideas, and determining the optimial stopping point for an experiment while in progress.

APIs are changing the way business is done on the internet. This day-long session will give students a practical introduction to APIs, including examples of successful APIs in the wild, examples of applications built on top of APIs and mashups. We'll explore several case studies and examine the advantages and disadvantages of building an API for your business.

This class will look at some successful examples of user on boarding in the mobile, web, and social gaming space. We'll cover some of the latest techniques in designing a great user onboarding experience. Additionally, we'll provide a check list of 10 tips to think about when designing your own on boarding experience. Lastly, if you've just launched your product, we'll spend some time reviewing some areas to improve your onboarding.

New business models have been impacted by developments in data, technology, and the social web. Their disruption have allowed companies to build large audiences and create new revenue streams. This session will discuss B2B and B2C business models, the art of bootstrapping, and innovations in mobile, and how to evaluate user acquisition models.

User experience is at the heart of building a successful company. In this day-long workshop, experts in experience principles and design will provide students with a meaningful introduction to the art and science of building great user experiences, including the current trends and practices of user experience professionals in startups as well as large organizations.

So you can't figure out where you or your business is going. You can't come up with a plan of what to do first, when do it and how. You have a hundred ideas but you're not sure where to start. This class will help you focus on the simple things that can change the goal setting life for you or your company. You'll learn how things like the fear of success, the circles you keep, perfectionism, busy work, over thinking and lack of social accountability are large hurdles holding you back.

The emergence of web technologies has fundamentally changed how entrepreneurs and innovators are building iterative, scalable businesses. This workshop will provide a primer on current issues in technology, including the growth of the cloud, NoSQL, rapid development, and agile development. The day will end with a presentation on the state of the startup industry.

This full day course covers the basics of Drupal, helps to give you the information you need to decide if Drupal is right for you, and teaches you all the steps to installing and getting up to speed on the basics you need to know. If you are looking to develop a small or large, simple or complex web site, or if you are seeking a tech career with limitless opportunity, this course is for you.

This class will introduce Quantitative Analysts to the Python environment for rapidly prototyping financial models. The objective is to demonstrate the research environment and introduce essential libraries. Attendees should be familiar with basic concepts of quantitative finance and data analysis, but experience using Python is optional (material will be accessible to beginners, but language basics will not be taught).

This introductory class will cover the basic principles behind design for 3D printing, the free tools available to get started and the materials and processes of 3D printing. The course will also step through some simple 3D modeling techniques to get you started designing for 3D printing so bring your Mac or PC laptop, charger, and an external mouse so you can follow along.

In this class we will help you understand brand beyond the traditional definition of logo and identity and uncover how brand is the role your business plays in the world--both who you are and who you are for. The workshop will highlight lessons for startups using real world case studies and give you the tools to start developing your own brand strategy. Students will leave with the tools necessary to guide their startup to the next level.

Over the course of this 90-minute hands-on class, we'll teach you how to build your own simple computer game. Your game will work in both a computer browser and on iPhones/Android phones and other mobile devices. You'll learn how to use HTML5 and the Coffeescript programming language to handle assets, dynamic events and animate page elements. This class is for kids who love creating and building things and who want to get a taste of programming. Suitable for ages 10-14. No experience necessary, other than basic typing ability. Students must bring their own laptops.

In the battle for mobile and tablet dominance, there is one fact that remains uncontested by friends and foes alike: Apple has the best design. Yet most of the 600,000+ iOS apps were not designed by Apple itself. Some third-party apps fall short of Apple's legacy, while some actually surpass Apple by pushing the limits of great interface design and creating new standards of their own. This begs the question, what makes a great iOS app great? What makes something look "Apple-y?" This class will discover the secrets of iOS design by examining the Apple iOS Human Interface Guidelines and critiquing the best (and worst) designed apps out there today.

New customer acquisition is one of the biggest challenges facing businesses today. With so many channels available - both online and offline - it’s difficult to know what will work best for your business. Google AdWords is notorious for being expensive, confusing, and difficult to manage. This series is designed to help you understand whether or not AdWords is right for your business and how to run a cost-effective, ROI-positive campaign.

On April 5, 2012, President Obama signed into law the JOBS Act setting the stage for legalized equity crowdfunding. Once effective, companies will be able to raise up to $1,000,000 per year in exchange for equity or debt in hundreds or thousands of small investments from the masses (i.e. "Kickstarter" style). The act creates new opportunities for entrepreneurs seeking to raise capital and across a variety of verticals serving this new industry (crowdfunding portals, payment solutions, escrow services, due diligence services, advisory services... the list goes on and on). While the act opens up many possibilities, it comes laden with regulation, disclosure requirements, and increased liability exposure. Anyone seeking to take advantage of these opportunities must have a good understanding of the legal, regulatory, and market framework that is developing right before our eyes.

Join us to learn how to go from a “Product Delivery” organization to a “Product Discovery” organization. In this class, we will review how SecondMarket shifted their product team to discover the best products/features to pursue. Many products fail these days because there is little to no feedback from real customers before launch. Having a product discovery process is a powerful way to bake a customer-centric approach into the DNA of your company.

Kelly Hadous of Win The Room™ is teaching a seriously fun and interactive workshop, Improv For Success. Because “being in the moment” is never scripted. In business, we need to generate ideas, shift gears and find harmony among a sea of viewpoints. In this highly intensive workshop, Kelly will teach some valuable techniques based in the principles of improv, which can enhance business relationships, embrace the unexpected, inspire creativity, team building, successful negotiating, and improve your overall presentation. Learn to: sharpen your listening skills, your reactions, and be thinking on your feet!