Daniel Ryan: My name's Daniel Ryan. I'm a Web Developer and consultant. 

I think the thing that excites me most about Center Centre is getting a chance for students to be really self-directed and learning in a practical environment. I'm a Liberal Arts major, I love my Liberal Arts degree that I never use in my career, right? But I didn't learn anything in the classes there that I did take around web design that I actually use in my career because none of it was focused on the real world and Center Centre is so focused on getting you in the real world from day one. I think that's the education people need.

I think it's been really clear in the last decade that project based learning is the future of where education is going. Center Centre is right at the center of that. Implementing something that's an actual product and not a pie-in-the-sky scenario teaches you all these things that you can only learn by doing. Some of that's just interpersonal skills. Some of it's that when you're outside of the lab, things aren't perfect. And you have to cut corners, or make compromises and learning those skills of compromise in design is a huge advantage I think the students here have. 

One of my favorite stories of going to high school when I was growing up was my algebra class, we had a first year teacher and she wasn't very good. Somehow we stumbled into this we were all teaching each other thing. We never did better than that class where it was all of us teaching each other. It's one of the things I loved about the model Center Centre put out was they were going to do that same thing on purpose. Not because the professors weren't good but because being able to recite back and actually show and demonstrate your knowledge to somebody else, it's just such a great way to get it across. And to prove to everyone that you know what you're talking about and to help the people who haven't got it yet get it across because a multitude of voices makes that work.

I'm a self taught developer. Taught myself long before I went to college. I'm an odd duck who went to college later in life. I regret not having learned from people that actually knew where to guide me. The first fifteen years of my career was just mistake after mistake trying to figure out what I was good at and wasn't good at, how this worked. Sort of stumbling into a career that actually turned out ok. If I could've gone somewhere like Center Centre to get a grounding up front of "this is how we do what we do". These are the right choices and the wrong choices and how to look at your career, I would've been a decade ahead.