It begins! You may have already heard some big, exciting news for the St. Petersburg and Tampa Bay startup community: St. Pete is now home to a new location of the coding academy known as The Ironyard, and their first class started yesterday. In just 12 weeks (crazy, right?) we’ll have a fresh crop of coding talent to help push the local tech and entrepreneurial communities forward.

The Ironyard launched in Greenville, South Carolina just two years ago, and has rapidly expanded across the Southeast, to places like Austin, Asheville, and Houston. We’re honored that the founders chose St. Pete as their next target for expansion – and we’re even more excited that they’ve located themselves directly across the street from the SavvyCard offices, in the beautiful Station House building (where we also hear we’re going to get a great new café).

The Ironyard’s St. Pete location will start by offering two courses of study – Ruby on Rails, for people interested in building the functional guts of applications, and Front End Engineering, for web and app design and user experience development. They’re both crucial parts of the coding puzzle, and as SavvyCard continues expanding, we’re sure to benefit from the new workforce they’ll be polishing.

So, keep your noses to the grindstone, newbies – we hear the Ironyard program is a tough, 12-hours-a-day, boot-camp style experience. But when all’s said and done, you’re not just going to be doing yourselves a huge favor career-wise: You’re going to form a great new addition to St. Pete and Tampa Bay’s startup and tech communities.