DJ and producer Ron Wilson, who is also the owner of production label 777 Recordings, has added web development to his portfolio of skills. Uncertain times, and being a single parent made the decision to study the 12-week course at Spiced Academy, easy.
This article is produced in collaboration with Spiced Academy.
”My father is a music journalist who later became a web developer”, Ron says.
His dad is British and moved to Berlin in the ’80s and started to work at Fritz Radio.
”He was always very involved with music and the punk scene. I grew up with music, and since he worked as a host there, he had easy access to music, so he brought me to concerts, and always came home with plenty of records. When his contract ended, he started learning web development to help build the radios website.”
”They say ’like father like son’, but I didn’t learn it through him. Although I could see that it was a great job with flexible working hours, as well as pretty creative and fun too.”
Ron has always enjoyed good music but didn’t listen to techno until he was 17 and then started working as a runner at old Tresor, a club he is a resident DJ at today.
Ron Wilson performing at HÖR.
”Before that I thought techno was not so interesting, but when I heard it on a good sound system, I started to understand it better. I also worked with the Love Parade in 2002, and I guess I needed to start dancing to it to get into the repetitive groove to understand it better. This evolved as I turned 18 and started clubbing.”
Ron met an old friend from school who showed him how to mix with records and they started to create parties together.
”All went kind of well and we started making a name for ourselves.”
After several years Ron could at this point live on his music career and started his label 777 Recordings.
” In 2014 my son was born and suddenly my life changed. I couldn’t stay out in the evenings like before, and since being a DJ is a lot about making connections as well, I didn’t get as many gigs as I used to.”
”Just like many artistic works, it’s very fragile. I have many successful friends, but many DJ careers can also end after a couple of years. And it’s quite exhausting with the traveling and all.”
When the pandemic hit, Ron felt it was a good time to do something new.
”I wanted to learn something new, and also to be able to provide for me and my kid. But I also wanted to do something that made sense. That solution was web development. I talked to my dad and it made so much sense to try it out and enroll into Spice Academy.”
”Everything is being digitalized and if there’s another pandemic, I’ll always have a job that is very interesting. It’s something that always fascinated me. My friend who taught me how to dj 15 years ago is also a programmer today and he showed me a couple of things helping me out understanding the complexity of programming.”
Ron found Spiced Academy who offered a 12 week long course to become a Full Stack Web Developer. Something that can be payed for through Arbeitsamt.
”It was the perfect opportunity for me. A lot of courses take two years and that makes it difficult when you’re also providing for a kid. Of course, these 12 weeks are super intense with its 8 hours a day plus homework. But it’s easy to see the end of the tunnel, and the teachers are amazing. Very helpful and understanding.”
Today Ron knows how to build a website and is using his knowledge to build an e-commerce web shop from scratch for his label.
”It’s also a great way for me to get a portfolio that I can show to companies when applying for jobs, which I will probably do this summer, although some people in my class probably applied for jobs right after finishing the course and started to work. I have only good things to say about Spiced Academy.”
Visit: Spiced-Academy.com