Digital Success is Canadian Success in 2017

BrainStation has grown rapidly to become the nation’s largest technology community with over 75,000 Canadians since our idea became a reality in 2012. It has been an extremely rewarding experience to be at the epicenter of technology and innovation in Canada over the past five years; we are equipping the next wave of digital talent with the necessary skills to achieve digital success, make a life-changing career switch, or earn that much-deserved promotion.

Being at the heart of innovation has allowed us to see the dramatically shifting economic landscape up close. Our sibling company, Techvibes, provides us with amazing connectivity to the job market as we interact with Hiring Managers from the top innovators like Freshbooks, Shopify, and Wattpad, that utilize the Techvibes job board for their talent needs. BrainStation’s understanding of what top companies are seeking is more important than ever as growth for digital jobs is growing at a pace that is 4x greater than the rest of the economy. The domestic supply of tech graduates through traditional educational institutions will be insufficient to meet this demand, and over 218,000 jobs will go unfilled by 2020. There is no longer “tech” and “non tech”;  every company is a technology company, and our graduates are the exact individuals that are equipped to help businesses of all shapes and sizes realize their potential through digital. 

Since inception, BrainStation’s full-time programs have graduated hundreds of full-stack Software Developers, User Experience and User Interface Designers who are now contributing to Canada’s thriving digital economy as working professionals, Freelancers, and Entrepreneurs. Our full-time students commit 40 hours per week for 10 weeks in order to make a more substantial career switch into technology. To set our potential students up for success, our Student Success team works with them individually throughout our admissions process and prep course. Once accepted into the program, our Educators mentor and coach our students through rigorous training modules and comprehensive projects. 

The classroom environment is established to mimic real-world digital teams – you are eating, sleeping, and breathing digital. 

Connecting our students to their surrounding tech community is a core tenet of our vocational programs. Beyond the 400 hours of class time, full-time students are introduced to weekly guest speakers from diverse backgrounds, tour top technology offices, interact with their tech community through external events, participate in job fairs like Techfest, and have the opportunity to present their final projects to our Industry Partners at our Demo Day.

Techvibes’ Techfest

In 2016, we took another giant step forward to enhance our student experience. Our Toronto campus was registered as a Private Career College in Ontario, and our Vancouver campus as a Private Training Institution in British Columbia. The regulations associated with each province are designed to ensure the highest level of consumer protection and our registration recognizes the quality of education that modern educational institutions provide. It also provides new student financing opportunities to make our full-time programs more accessible than ever. It has been fantastic to work with the respective parties and to align around our common objective to supply the exact talent that our country needs to thrive in 2017 and onwards as we position ourselves as global leaders in digital education.

A look inside a full-time Web Development class

Our BrainStation Education team focuses on growing and evolving our content to be cutting-edge. Our Educators represent top digital brands such as Google, Slack, Hootsuite, 500px, Loblaw Digital, and Microsoft, ensuring that content is relevant and applicable to the real world.

BrainStation is a part of a family of businesses that includes 200+ world-class Software Developers, Designers, and Digital Thinkers at Konrad Group, one of North America’s leading digital consultancies.

This has empowered us to create cutting-edge digital platforms for our students, including our Learning Management System. The BrainStation Learning Portal gives us the ability to optimize the student experience in and outside of the classroom around our hands-on, project-based learning strategies, and to better track students’ successes and areas of opportunity.

A student presenting their final project in full-time UX Design

The BrainStation Learning Portal is used by our students across all learning opportunities, including events, conferences, certificate courses, bootcamps, and enterprise training engagements.

Last year alone we empowered over 25,000 Canadians with digital skills in topics such as User Interface Design, iOS Development, Product Management, User Experience Design, Web Development, Digital Marketing, Data Analytics, and Search Engine Optimization.

We were also the trusted technology school of forward-thinking corporations including Uber, LCBO, Scotiabank, AOL, and Telus, helping them achieve their digital training goals. The sheer volume of students that we’ve been able to impact through our campuses in Toronto and Vancouver, as well as through external events, allows our team to constantly fine-tune and adjust our content and methods in order to generate the best results for our students. Needless to say, the BrainStation team is relentless (sometimes obsessive) in our mission to empower individuals and organizations with the skills needed to succeed digitally.

Campus reception

There has never been a better time to equip yourself with digital skills; there is so much opportunity for those that make the investment in themselves in preparation for the future. If you’ve been a part of the BrainStation community since 2012, we thank you for being a part of this journey with us. If you are just joining now, it’s so great to welcome you. It is the desire to learn, and thirst for knowledge, that motivates us to pursue our passion for empowering the next generation of digital Creators and establish Canada as a global leader in technology.