Guest Speaker - Lindsay Kelly, Associate Engineer with Walter P Moore

Our speaker at our most recent WV Coding Club meeting was Lindsay Kelly, Associate Engineer with Walter P Moore. Lindsay is from Charleston, West Virginia, now living in Florida.

Growing up, she attended schools in the Charleston, WV area before going to WVU (West Virginia University) to earn her Bachelors of Science in Civil Engineering and then her Masters of Science in Structural Engineering. During her education she learned basic to intermediate level coding and has made use of that learning in her professional career.

Through her hard work and efforts, she was able to earn a Disney internship, where she was a Structural Engineering Intern at Disney World in Orlando, Florida for one year. Through the internship and her professional career Lindsay has worked on a variety of projects at Disney World. They include rapelling the Tower of Terror for inspections, Water Park projects, and rehab projects throughout all four (4) Disney World Parks. Her work has included inspecting the various structures and providing designs for updates. Other projects she has worked with have included the Floating Mountains from Avatar and Disney’s Galaxy’s Edge - Star Wars at Walt Disney World. A lot of her work, especially on inspections, are done "behind the scenes" working when guests weren’t there overnight and very early in the morning to help keep that Disney "Magic". 

Lindsay shared she has and does work with other theme parks, and other non-theme park projects inside and outside the state of Florida. She has also worked on hotels and airports. She took time to share photos of past projects in various stages of development to give the students an idea of what it takes to make the "Magic" that they see as a finished product.

In Lindsay's work, she uses software for designing structures and features. By using her coding experience she is able to leverage the design software to save time and be more efficient.

Outside of Engineering and Coding, Lindsay's advice to the students is to network with other people. Building relationships with others professionally is very important. Adults/Professionals do want to help young people, so take the time to ask for help/advice.  Lindsay shared that LinkedIn.com is a good resource to help you network. 

Lindsay's parting advice is don’t be afraid to try an internship. That experience can have a great impact on your future career. And be persistent, you won’t reach you career goals overnight.

Dan McElroy, President of the West Virginia Coding Club, explained, "Lindsay helps to show there are many careers that benefit from knowledge and experience in coding. She is another West Virginian doing amazing and magical things. Thank you Lindsay for taking time to share your experiences and insights with our WV Coding Club students."

Thank you Lindsay!

Keep Coding!

Guest Speaker - Dr. Matthew Gonzalez - Cyber Program Director, University of Charleston

Dr. Matthew Gonzalez, CEH, CHFI, PMP, Cyber Program Director, University of Charleston, was our guest speaker at a recent West Virginia Coding Club meeting. He is working remotely in San Antonio, Texas and has been with the University of Charleston for five years, since the Cyber program's inception. 

After high school, he went on to college and completed his Bachelors degree in Information Systems, then earned his Masters degrees in Information Systems / Project Management and Business Administration. He then completed his Ph.D. Dr. Gonzalez worked for various organizations in the private and public sectors, developing his  Information Technology and Cyber Security skills.

The program he leads at the University of Charleston has three programs (two program paths that lead to a third program). At University of Charleston, students can earn an Associates Degree in CyberSecurity, as well as a Bachelors Degree. If you want to pursue further education in this area, there is a Masters Degree program in CyberSecurity (more management/leadership focused). All programs are 100% online. They currently have about 50 students in the Bachelors degree and 40 in the Masters degree programs. The Associates degree launches this Fall.

Dr. Gonzalez shared a video about hacking in an effort of activism - “Hacktivism”. The video provided information about a group called Anonymous. He discussed some of their activities and how they are generally organized.

Also, he shared a video concerning the Colonial Pipeline Malware Hack that recently disrupted the supply of gas from the Gulf Coast to the East Coast of the United States. This was not a DDOS attack (Distributed Denial of Service) for all industry wide service, just a targeted attack on this one company. Dr. Gonzalez spoke about the Malware that was used in the attack as being Ransomeware, which requires money to “unlock” the malware. The group Darkside, (more a like a criminal business and apolitical) was identified as the group who hacked the Pipeline group.

Ransomware, once accessed attempts to encrypt as many files as possible and then allows for a way to pay to receive a key that will decrypt the files. Usually, there is only a certain timeframe to pay or the price will increase, possibly double to motivate people to pay. He also discussed Nation State Actors, entities that act on behalf of a Government; and White Hat, Black Hat and Gray Hat hackers.

There are many careers in Cyber and a high demand for these types of jobs with the demand increasing. Examples of Cyber Security jobs: Cyber Security Expert, Graphic Designer, Social Engineering, Network Security Administrator, Social Media Consultant and Ethical Hacker. Not all careers require coding experience.

Advice from Dr. Gonzalez: Many online training opportunities, but beware of the many scams out there, so make sure they are reputable.

Find a mentor.

Join a Camp (Coding/Tech Boot Camp).

Participate in Competitions.

Thank you, Dr. Matthew Gonzalez, for taking time to share more about Cybersecurity with our West Virginia Coding Club students. 

Keep Coding!

Guest Speaker - Amber Bostic - Lead Software Developer - Advantage Technology

Amber Bostic, Lead Software Developer with Advantage Technology took time to speak with our WV Coding Club students at a recent meeting.

Amber decided after high school to attend DeVry University in Ohio and earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science. At the time, about 180 students started in the program, and there were very few females studying Computer Science. Amber stated that this was before the internet as we know it today and before cell phones.

Amber shared that she believes in learning about a broad range of languages. Her niche is working with backend software. Once you have a lot of the fundamental concepts you mainly have to get the syntax correct. Learning the concepts is the key to having the right tools to solve problems.

If you come across a barrier that you can't seem to overcome after some effort, take time to talk through it with another programmer, which usually results in finding the issue/solution. Today, you can find a lot of information on the internet, but it is important to filter out the “noise”.

Amber shared some key advice to the students. There are lots of resources on the internet. Pick one or two areas you are really interested in and focus on that. If stuck, ask for help, don’t let pride or fear get in the way of learning and solving problems. 

Working with teams and customers (external and internal) is critical and being able to communicate with each other is necessary to complete projects. Amber played sports growing up so she developed those skills of being a part of a team and also leading a team. Amber shared that at Advantage Technology, they have various teams that provide different types of technology services. In those teams, each staff person has different strengths, skills and experience to work together to best help their customers. Advantage Technology is unique in the fact that they have a development department in addition to all their other aspects of services.

Amber has been working remotely due to COVID and mentioned that there are many remote jobs that allow you to live and work in West Virginia. She encouraged the students to seek out those opportunities, especially if they want to stay in West Virginia.

Developers can do anything! A developer's mindset is focused on solving problems and a "can do" attitude.

Dan McElroy, President of the WV Coding Club, said, "Learning to solve problems in coding helps to give students the tools to approach other challenges they face in school and in life. Amber is a great example for not only young women who are interested in coding related careers, but for all students who are interested in a host of technology career paths."

Thank you Amber for taking the time to speak with our West Virginia Coding Club students and share your experience and advice with them!

Keep Coding!

WVCC Deeply Saddened!!

The West Virginia Coding Club family is deeply saddened to hear of the recent death of one of it’s founders, Cathryn Carena. We extend our collective condolences to her family in this time of sorrow. Cathryn was the first person I contacted with a concept paper about the need to form a coding club in our State. Her enthusiastic support and encouragement led to it being established in August, 2016. Rest in peace, dear one!

Guest Speaker - Amber Massey - Senior Product Designer - PowerSchool

Amber Massey, Senior Product Designer, at PowerSchool (formerly Schoology.)

Originally from Dallas, TX, Amber had an interest in Fine Arts. She attended college in Chicago, IL and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Finding it challenging to secure a career with a museum or similar institution, she explored coding and discovered how design overlaps with coding.

She continued her education with a coding BootCamp to help broaden her career opportunities. That knowledge was useful for Amber to understand how things get made from a coding/development perspective. With that added knowledge, Amber was actually getting involved in the field of UX (User Experience) Design. Amber started to provide designs to developers and now is a team leader.

At PowerSchool, Amber has a team of 20 developers. In the work Amber does as a designer, there is a lot of prototyping and concepting, which is very beneficial to the business. The design thinking process saves time and cost, as it is time consuming and expensive to hard code everything and then see what direction to go. Once a clearer direction is determined from prototyping and concepting efforts and feedback, then specs are created for the developers to code.

The process that is utilized for UX is design thinking which is a beneficial way to develop Ideas, identify and organize similar ideas and then develop concepts and direction. Part of this work is about the user and how things should work, as well as, potential problems users may run into. Feedback, from users and leaders, is beneficial to the process. Being able to parse and understand the feedback, then tactically move forward to ultimately develop the product for best use is the ultimate goal. Finding that right alchemy between what the business/organization needs and what the user experiences is the challenge for each project at PowerSchool.

The company PowerSchool is the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America. PowerSchool supports over 45 million students and 12,000+ districts, schools, and other education institutions in over 90 countries.

Amber talked about the type of key skills that helps candidates in the hiring process. She discussed T Shaped Skills - think of a “T” - the top line across goes wide and has broad general knowledge, but isn't deep. The line going down is the deep knowledge in a specific "narrow" area, like your specialty or super power.

In order to develop projects, they also utilize metrics. Surveys help capture responses into a tool to assess various aspects of their project. Many questions on the surveys use a Likert Scale - (ex. Likely vs Unlikely) scoring range to help provide information they need. Data and research are powerful for their successful completion of projects.

Amber is still working remotely due to Covid. They have some tools that help with their virtual process, like Miro, a sophisticated and virtual substitute for sticky notes in a room. These types of tools have allowed Amber to continue to do her job and help their customers.

Amber referenced a book called Atomic Design, by Brad Frost, that helps to provide a nomenclature and structure (methodology) for the thoughtful creation of design systems.

Dan McElroy, President of the WV Coding Club, shared, "Amber's talent and skills have directly helped the WV Coding Club. She designed our Web Site and has been a part of our efforts since the beginning. Thank you, Amber, for your support and for helping our students see another aspect of how they can move forward in a tech career."

Amber shared final thoughts with the WV Coding Club students, “Not everyone is a developer, but it is immensely powerful to know how to code. Don’t box yourself in. You can be code adjacent. See what roles are out there. There are so many needed roles in the tech world. It is an ecosystem with multiple avenues in design and development. Keep an open mind, explore and use your super powers for good.”

Thank you Amber Massey for sharing your time, experience and providing valuable insights for our WV Coding Club students!

Keep Coding!!!!

Guest Speaker - James Koval - Aurora Solar & West Virginia Remote Worker

The WV Coding Club had the privilege of interacting with a West Virginian and West Virginia Remote Worker, James Koval. The journey he has taken with his coding experience and skills has taken him out of West Virginia to some well known companies and then back to West Virginia where he works remotely for a company based in California. 

James was interested in coding at an early age and describes himself as a mostly self-taught programmer. With friends, they gave themselves challenges / projects to code. That helped to make them learn about different coding constructs and how to make things work.

James went to college in St. Louis, MO and earned a BS in Computer Science. While in college he had an intership with the State of WV Office of Technology focused on CyberSecurity using Google Maps API as part of the projects.

From there he worked with the Human Genome Project. After some experience there he went on to Twitter and explained it was a long process of 10 interviews to be hired. At Twitter, in San Francisco, CA, he worked on the International Team working on Twitter's translate function and working with users around the world on Twitter's UI (User Interface). For James, the perks of working for Twitter were great, but San Francisco was a very crowded place. At one point, Twitter had a major layoff and James saw good coworkers losing their jobs and he decided it was time to move on.

James found an opportunity with Amazon with their Amazon Photos project - a lot like Google and Facebook photos - at the time this was a new product being developed and he was a part of it when it was first released. After some time in Seattle, WA, James wanted to be closer to family in West Virginia and came back to Charleston, where he worked with Housing and Urban Development, as a Government Contractor.

After some time, he started looking for Remote Work using various websites for Remote Workers. James found a company that was Green Energy - a Solar Startup - Aurora Solar. He works with Front End (JavaScript) and Back End (Ruby on Rails). A company that utilizes Aurora Solar’s work and data is Solar Holler in WV. Part of Aurora Solar's work is to utilize Lidar Data - to get detailed images of people’s roofs to model in 3-D. Companies can pay for Roof Image and Roof Modeling to determine the viability of and how to install solar.

Internships may be a possibility. Aurora Solar's employees has at least doubled since James joined, now at about 200 staff. He was able to get another WV friend to be hired there and work remotely.

Advice from James - don’t worry as much about which program language you learn. It is easy to translate skills to another programming language. Collaborate with a friend or someone for a side project to develop programming and debugging skills.

Languages James has programmed in (not a complete list): Visual Basic, Java, Linux, Bash, Perl, Ruby on Rails (at Twitter), Java Script (at Twitter), Angular, React, WordPress PHP, AWS (at Amazon), Active Directory, TypeScript, Python, Scala, DotNET, ObjC

Dan McElroy, President of the WV Coding Club, said, "James is a West Virginian who has shown that remote work from West Virginia is not only possible, but a realistic way to have a good job and stay in West Virginia. We thank James for being a great example to our Coding Club students."

To learn more about the West Virginia Coding Club go to www.WVCoding.org

Guest Speaker - Richard Wilbur, President & CEO of Advantage Technology

The West Virginia Coding Club was privileged to have Richard Wilbur, Founder, President & CEO of Advantage Technology, speak at one of our recent meetings.

Richard attended West Virginia University in 1993-1997; however, didn’t study in computers. This was a time when the main operating system was in DOS, not Windows. After a while working in a different profession, Richard decided to research other job opportunities that were growing and had better salaries and found IT (Information Technology). Richard worked to get a certification in MCSE - Microsoft Engineer (Certification working on Servers)

Richard then joined a small local IT company and ended up dealing with the Love Bug virus. This was not a normal 9-5 job, and when a customer’s computer storage equipment went down, he had to drive the equipment up on Sept 10, 2001, to the Data Recovery Center, in the Washington, D.C. area. . . then Sept 11 happened, and he got stuck there to wait and pick up storage system. 

That time was difficult for the small business and his employer decided to not continue the business. So, Richard decided to start his own business with the small group of customers he inherited. He started out of a spare bedroom, and over time his business grew and grew and grew to the point now with 80 - 85 employees. When naming the company, phone books were still a thing and he wanted to list his business first, alphabetically. He named the company Advantage Technology (and this area of West Virginia is called Advantage Valley, so it made the connection to this area).

They now have offices in Charleston, Bridgeport and Williamsport, MD. Advantage Technology is the largest Information Technology service company in WV with customers throughout the United States. Richard has high level specialists; developers/coders, servers, networking, computers, cabling, and salespeople for software / hardware. They are able to do special projects, even for companies that have full IT departments. They provide service through the State of West Virginia to 750+ schools, to support wifi, switches, routers, cabling and related technology.

Richard shared that time to work these types of jobs are the (normal 8-5), but also evening and weekends, because businesses need support 24/7. It can be stressful and frustrating, but also very rewarding to help solve problems and support their customers. Richard, himself, still works on server projects and is involved in the service of their customers.

Richard’s advice to the students: To excel and do well, find a speciality! You can find better salary and benefits and you can focus on one area.

Certifications are also important to businesses looking to hire staff. It shows the employer that you have some base knowledge in an area and helps businesses as it has more certified employees. Examples of some key certifications today are CISCO, Azure (MS Web Hosting), .NET.

Dan McElroy, President of the West Virginia Coding Club stated, ”I appreciate the reality of Richard's talk and telling it like it really is in this environment. This is the kind of information that will help our students as they work towards careers in the Technology industry."

Richard shared that Advantage Technology has both women and men involved in the organization. He highlighted Amber Bostic, who runs their software development department.  “She has a great story to tell and is a leader with her knowledge of backend database programming.”

Richard emphasized that Advantage Technology also has internships available each year, starting at age 16. He also discussed areas that he felt were in high demand in the coming years, including cyber security.

We thank Richard for his time and insights into the Technology industry and appreciate him sharing that knowledge with our West Virginia Coding Club students!

For more information about the West Virginia Coding Club, go towww.wvcoding.org

Guest Speaker - Christopher Fowler - SpaceX

Chris Fowler, SpaceX (www.SpaceX.com) Lead Engineer for Dragon exterior structures, spoke to our West Virginia Coding Club participants at our April 3 meeting. Chris shared about his path to and experience with SpaceX. As Lead Engineer, he is basically responsible for everything that you find on the exterior of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. It is unique in that is has been designed to be reusable, thus lowering the cost barrier to space travel.

Chris arrived at this current career from his interests when he was young. He had an interest in engineering at an early age, sharing he loved legos. Chris was on his high school Solar Car team, which built a Solar Car that drove from Dallas, Texas to California. Gaining this experience and learning from trial and error helped start his engineering career. He took many science and engineering related classes in high school. In college, Chris focused on Formula SAE, working with a small race car to compete with other colleges.

When in college Chris attended a talk from Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX and had the opportunity to speak to her. SpaceX is his first job out of college and has allowed him opportunities to advance and excel being directly involved with the SpaceX Dragon.

The SpaceX Dragon, which can carry supplies or humans, launches on top of a Falcon 9 launch vehicle. One of the key external structures of the Dragon is the docking port that connects with the International Space Station. Another vital aspect is the thermal shield. When returning to Earth the external Dragon capsule can be exposed to temperatures over 4,000 degrees fahrenheit, so the thermal shield is vital to being able to have the Dragon return to Earth through its atmosphere.

Answering questions, Chris talked about the work culture at SpaceX. Chris explained at SpaceX it is a very positive and super collaborative culture. They take their work seriously, but still have a fun and creative atmosphere. Chris also talked about Starlink and the ability for it to provide access to internet all over the world in the near future.

Dan McElroy, President of the West Virginia Coding Club, explained, “The engineering, technology and coding required for space travel is on the cutting edge of innovation. We appreciate Chris taking time to speak with our students about what they can do to prepare for their future careers and these types of opportunities.”

Thank you Chris Fowler and all you are doing at SpaceX to further Space exploration!!

For more information about the West Virignia Coding Club and its activities, go to www.wvcoding.org.

Guest Speaker - Jesse White - NASA

The West Virginia Coding Club recently had a great speaker at its March 6 meeting, Mr. Jesse White with the NASA  Katherine Johnson IV & V Facility, in Fairmont, West Virginia. "IV & V" stands for Independent Verification & Validation.

Jesse spoke about some of the opportunities for high school and college students to connect with NASA through Internships. These internships are to help improve software safety for mission critical software for NASA Missions and help protect NASA missions from threats. They use a variety of coding languages and methodologies and tools to test software. 

NASA hires many young people each summer. The 17 centers around the country have different skills they are looking for. Who should apply for NASA internships?  Students who have a love/interest in coding. No specific code experience needed, but the ability to problem solve and think through processes will be a valuable skill. Computer Science and Engineering disciplines are needed to support NASA's unique and important work. At the Katherine Johnson Facility, they look for students for internships who know how to code and also have some knowledge in cyber. This opportunity is also a gift to gain this valuable experience and learn more about NASA as an organization that could be a career in the future.

NASA will hire 4,000 to 5,000 students each year to help support their efforts. Virtual connections are allowing students to potentially connect with any of the 17 facilities. A student can apply for up to 15 jobs, especially with the virtual opportunities nationwide. Jobs are normally posted in December.

Each year they select about 5-15 High School students, 20-30 College students at the Katherine Johnson Facility in Fairmont, WV. There are also year-round opportunities for college students. They are able to work in teams with other students. Eventually, there is a NASA pathways program that helps to connect students with potential careers at NASA.

Interested?

Eligibility requirements include:

• U.S. citizenship

• Student enrolled full-time in high school, undergraduate or graduate programs at an accredited college or university. (Applicants transitioning between high school and college or undergraduate and graduate pursuits are eligible if they have graduated within 6 months and can demonstrate enrollment in the next-level academic pursuit.)

• Cumulative 3.0 GPA on a 4.0 scale.

• Minimum of 16 years of age and at least a sophomore when the internship begins.

Some additional items that will be needed:

Letter of Recommendation

School Transcript

List your extracurriculars, and detail of things like your role in team competitions (Coding, Robotics, etc.)

Jesse stressed that any student can accomplish what is needed and to not discount their ability and skills. He told the students they are good enough and they need to believe in themselves!

Dan McElroy, President of the West Virginia Coding Club, shared, "At NASA, these are the kind of opportunities and careers that West Virginia students can earn when they develop their coding and problem solving skills." 

For more information on NASA internships go to:

www.intern.nasa.gov 

Additional questions about the program, please reach out to: 

Jesse.E.White@nasa.gov

Guest Speaker - Todd Cope - CEO of CentralApp

At the February 20 meeting of the WV Coding Club, we had a wonderful guest speaker! He is the CEO of CentralApp (www.centralapp.us) and his name is Todd Cope, a West Virginian and Winfrield High School graduate.

Todd introduced the students to CentralApp. CentralApp (www.centralapp.us) is a West Virginia-based firm (founded by West Virginians) connecting companies with certified, affordable tech workers in Appalachia. Central App’s Talent Exchange mobilizes tech talent and cultivates opportunities in high-tech fields within rural communities. CentralApp was born out of the belief that talent, ingenuity and work ethic are equally distributed - and economic opportunity should be, too.

Todd was asked if he was back in high school / middle school now, what insights he would have. Todd shared that there is no limit to what students can do! He went from a West Virginia school to within 10 years leading a technology group in Malaysia. He emphasized to the students that they should not self-limit themselves. Todd told them, "Figure out how to dent the Universe!"

An amazingly positive statistic is that 50% of the CentralApp talent pool are women (versus the Industry standard which in closer to 10%), with many opportunities that have flexibility of work schedules, to accommodate family life.

Todd recently visited Tulsa Remote - a program that provides Tech Workers $10,000 to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma, with free co-working space for a year. Approximately 350-500 people are selected each year, with about 93% of them staying. Thousands apply each year. Events are held to build up this community. The initiative is supported by a private Institution, similar to the Benedum Foundation. Seems to be a program worth initiating in West Virginia. In the meantime, Todd’s work through CentralApp helps to provide high-tech work opportunities to people in Appalachia.

Certifications were discussed and Todd shared that Salesforce has a free online training with path progress tracking. Todd emphasized that gaining certifications and experience are valuable in the Tech world. A college education is good, but many students are getting very good jobs just out of high school with the right certifications and experience.

When asked about areas that the students could focus on to prepare themselves, Todd emphasized Mobile App development is in high demand. He also shared that Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning would be valuable to gain at least a conceptual understanding.

Dan McElroy, one of the Founders of the West Virginia Coding Club, expressed that having speakers like Todd provide West Virginia students with key insights and create awareness of opportunities they would not get anywhere else. The West Virginia Coding Club thanks Todd Cope, CEO of CentralApp for taking time and sharing his experience! We look forward to some of our students joining CentralApp’s Talent Exchange in the future to help them find well-paying remote high-tech work opportunities that allow them to remain in West Virginia!