Guest Speaker, Jay Blanchard, Senior Principal Software Engineer, Newfold Digital

We recently had Jay Blanchard, Senior Principal Software Engineer for Newfold Digital speak to our West Virginia Coding Club students.

Jay's first exposure to Coding was after he won the Louisiana State Science Fair in Mathematics and was going to the International Science & Engineering Fair. Thanks to professors at Nicholls State University, Jay was able to use a University Computer with Fortran using Punch Cards to enhance his project. This was Jay's first exposure to coding.

Once in college, Jay actually majored in and earned a degree in Animal Science. During college, with friends, they built an Altair 8880, with no graphical interface, and used University computers during college.

After college, Jay joined the Air Force. Jay and his friends continued in computer programming, Point of Sale (POS) systems with Jay's first job at Datapoint Corporation. During that time they would read Byte magazine - which had various programs written in it and on the weekends he and his friends spent typing in and debugging the programs.

In 1990, Jay worked on a mobile touch screen device to develop a maintenance program for a military marine application.

Around that time the World Wide Web (WWW) was starting. Jay learned scripting languages Cold Fusion and PERL.

Jay also worked with Fugro (a worldwide provider of geo-data) - teaming up with others on OARS (Office Assisted Remote Services). They have the largest database of seafloor assets in several locations around the world. Survey info of the assets overlays on a map from satellite data. IoT (Internet of Things) devices on boats transfer the info to a satellite allowing a surveyor working remotely to accurately place a vessel within inches of location on the sea floor. One surveyor could guide multiple ships that have the IoT devices using tools available in a command center on land. Reduced cost and improved accuracy! 

Jay now works with Newfold Digital as Senior Principle Engineer and leads a multi-team project, whose focus DEVOPS (Developers and Operations), to move critical billing applications from an on-premises data center to a cloud-based (AWS) environment, taking advantage of the services offered to enhance scalability and availability. Jay has conducted training of all engineers across all teams on subjects such as Docker, DEVOPS, and other technologies.

Jay has authored books on “Applied jQuery” and “jQuery & jQueryUI Visual QuickStart Guide”

http://www.appliedjquery.com

Jay shared about when looking for employees they look for:

1. Aptitude, can a person solve a problem. 

2. Attitude -  excited to do what they do. Small focus on languages. 

3. People who have programmed in multiple languages are more likely to have the aptitude and have solved the same problem in multiple ways.

4. Whiteboarding / Problem Solving versus programming tests.

5. Self Starter, able to work from home.

6. Agile Environment - did yesterday, plan to do today, any blockers (barrier or something waiting on) Two-week sprints, items on a list to complete for the two weeks. 
   95% of companies are using the Agile process versus Waterfall for working on projects.

Jay has been working from home since March 13, 2020, due to Covid, but now as a new business model. Remote work is more productive at home allowing for flexible schedules, minimizing juggling life with work, and making things less stressful.

Advice:

Richard Feynman - from What Do You Care What Other People Think, "Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all."

If you’re in High School and of age, there are some companies that will take on 16 & 17-year-olds as interns, more available with remote work options. Big Companies are going to have more room for interns, Microsoft, Dell, Constant Contact, etc. Look at Linkedin, Indeed, and similar sources for intern and work opportunities. Some companies will pay tuition. Start a  resume.

"Jay's insights into how to prepare for coding career opportunities and his diverse experience as coding has developed over the years was a great benefit to our West Virginia Coding Club students. Thank you Jay for your time and valuable information!", shared Dan McElroy, President of the WV Coding Club.

Keep Coding!

Guest Speaker: Nolan Love, Tech Lead - Instagram (Meta)

The West Virginia Coding Club was honored to have Nolan Love, Tech Lead for Avatars project for Instagram (Meta) as a recent Guest Speaker.

Nolan grew up, as one of seven children, on a farm in New Hampshire experiencing the life of a farm and the outdoors.  Eventually, as he was growing up he was the recipient of a Commodore 64 computer.

His family was of modest means to buy games so he had to find other avenues to play games on his Commodore 64. Nolan was able to get Run magazine, which had computer programs listed and he was able to type them in and learn about coding. The first game he and his bothers then coded on their own was "Death Corvette" that had a car and helicopter in which you could shoot a lightning bolt from the car to try to hit the helicopter. Through that and other programs he learned about sprites, graphics and controls, as well as how to manipulate them.

As Nolan learned he realized that he wanted to make his programming useful. His Dad asked Nolan if he could use the computer to help keep a customer list to mail Christmas cards. Nolan said yes and coded a database for his Dad.

Nolan took one computer class, learning Pascal in High School. Nolan's focus was to go to college for Medicine (Biomedical Engineering) at Johns Hopkins University, so his focus wasn't coding. 

Nolan is familiar with West Virginia, as he was one of the select few students from around the country in 1991 to attend the National Youth Science Camp.

In college, Nolan took one computer class and learned Unix. He had a work study job and one of the opportunities through that job was to help the Center for Social Organization of Schools organize attendees for a conference. What normally took many people all night to organize attendees into seminars by their preferences using index cards the night before the conference, could now be handled by a computer program (algorithm) that Nolan wrote. Once Nolan wrote the program and had the data from the conference, he could have all attendees sorted into seminars by their preference in less than three minutes, instead of many hours. Nolan shared that over 60 people registered late on the first day of the conference and needed to be added to the group of those that pre-registered. Once he had the additional data for new attendees, he could rerun the program and in less than three minutes had all attendees sorted into seminars by their preference. Through his coding work, he created value and something useful and was able to leverage that to be compensated significantly better.

After college Nolan joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in Guinea, West Africa - No computers during his time there, but when completed he wanted to travel Europe like many of his compatriots, but needed funds. He found an opportunity to build a database program for the Peace Corps office to help organize the volunteer health records and was able to finance his European travels.

Upon returning to the United States, Nolan moved to San Francisco, CA and decided to get into his engineering/creative side while the Dot Coms were starting. Nolan didn’t have a lot of formal training with coding and learned after his first failed interview he needed to learn more about coding.

He was more prepared for his next interview and found that they recognized his other skills, even though he didn't yet have the programming experience in the language they were using. Once he started, Nolan was surrounded by programmers from top schools as he developed his skills at Art Technology Group, which built many of the first online stores. Nolan became a Full-Stack developer. 

From there as the Dot Com Bubble was bursting, he with a few others, went out on their own and formed Big Bang Consulting, their own company. Their focus was to charge a little less and do the same quality work (e-commerce solutions) for major companies.

Even though remote working and telework have become a normal experience in today's society, Nolan started working from home in 2002, a full 20 years ago.

Once Facebook started - there were apps you could build on it. Nolan made a program one weekend that would take your profile photo and explode it into a pixelated image with brightness and then replace the pixels with photos of your friends based on the brightness to change your profile photo into a mosaic made from your friends' photos. It was called Mesaic. After a short while Energizer corporation reached out to Nolan to let him know he had made the best Mosaic maker of about a dozen that existed. They asked to see if he would develop it further for them so they could have on their Facebook page. Nolan's challenge was to try to figure out what to ask them for to be compensated for his work. One friend he spoke with suggested $1,000 and another friend suggested $100,000. He decided to go big and asked for $100,000. They said it was too much, but offered him $50,000. Afterwards, he doubled down on this opportunity and built on his ability to create these types of things.

Nolan explained about how a brain thinks in relation to how a Democracy works.- (Brain is democracy, receives inputs and makes a decision and communicates that to friends/others and is weighted based on the relationship they have. Model that is like using a computer. Great way for Democracies to be the brain and neurons to be the weighted relationship with friends. This concept is what is now known as Liquid Democracy. From that idea, Nolan created PollVault - which allowed voters to start connecting via a social network. Groups like Rock the Vote and the League of Women Voters became interested in this opportunity to help voters connect on issues. In approaching the platform for building this, Nolan realized that using Java would be very work intensive, even with his FullStack experience of over 15 years. He discovered a better language - Python, that he could learn and it would get him there faster. So, Nolan abandoned his comfort zone. He also deployed PollVault in the Cloud versus his own servers. 

Even with significant efforts, his start up failed. It was just too controversial to make money from voting information platforms at that time. After, Facebook recruited him to work for them. Nolan spent six solid weeks studying for the interview. He asked them what he should study to prepare and they suggested the book "Cracking the Coding Interview" and the website LeetCode to learn how they wanted him to program. 

Nolan prepared and was offered the opportunity to join Facebook, now Meta. There was an opportunity for him to work with Facebook, Instagram, Oculus or Whatsapp. Nolan chose Instagram and began working with their Stories product. He is now a Tech Lead on the Avatars Team. They launched in January 2022! This is part of their work on building out the Metaverse. In the near future we will be able to embody ourselves in the metaverse, that digital dimension, now using VR (Virtual Reality) headsets, soon glasses and maybe someday even contact lenses, he thinks. Nolan is excited to be a part of this new technology and working with the sharp minds that are on the team. Nolan is humbled that his work goes out to over one billion mobile devices when they send out their product.

Nolan's Advice:

Follow your passion! Be useful with your skill set by making yourself useful to other people. Don’t prejudge - smart capable people come in all shapes and sizes. Be humble enough to not need to be the smartest person in the room, and be equally kind. Be smart and be nice. Surround yourself with smart people who support you and encourage you. Go big! Let go of the things you are good at and learn the new. Believe in yourself. Judge your value from the point of view of the value you are providing to others. Technology changes so rapidly!!! Some of you may be working with Quantum computing in the future. Information is not the most important part, it is how you find and organize the information, as the information will change. Don’t get entrenched in only one language or computer system. Stay agile. Be kind.

It is great to have novel ideas, but it is foolish to believe that your idea is the only instance out there. Originality is less important than the ability to technically execute with excellence. It's critical to collaborate and get your message out to everyone, in order to win or to be a successful entrepreneur. The ability to evangelize your idea many times can make the difference in being successful.

Dan McElroy, President of the WV Coding Club, commented, "Nolan has and is doing groundbreaking work thanks to his coding skills and his approach to work and life. We are humbled to have him share his story with our Coding Club students! Thank you Nolan for your time and inspiring words."

Keep Coding!

Ripley, WV Teen completes Amazing Achievement!

Left to Right: Sue Matheny, Dan McElroy, William Matheny, John Matheny and John Giroir

Lightning strikes again in Ripley, West Virginia. William Matheny, a 15 year old sophomore student at Ripley High School is the second student from that school this year to have completed an Advanced Tech Degree, a certification that he earned through his efforts with the West Virginia Coding Club. On Tuesday, May 17, William and his family attended the Ripley City Council meeting to be presented with his Advanced Tech Degree by the Mayor of Ripley.

Dan McElroy, President of the WV Coding Club, said, “William is our third student since the WV Coding Club’s start just a few years ago, who has completed the Advanced Tech Degree. This certification is recognized nationwide and worldwide by Tech companies and is a true key to unlocking the door to a career in coding.”

All three WV Coding Club students who have completed the Advanced Tech Degree were 15 years old at the time. It is important to note that over 99% of those that complete this program are adults, so it is an extremely rare event for students this young to complete this program.

William credits his participation in the WV Coding Club in preparing him for this significant achievement (and of course, support from his parents). The WV Coding Club not only helps to teach students how to code, but also how to solve problems, which is a needed skill in most any career and in life.

The WV Coding Club also incorporates a regular program of speakers who share not only what they currently do, but the path they took to get there, sharing advice and helping the students learn about a broad range of careers. The WV Coding Club blog contains posts of past speakers, that range from working at global companies, like Google and Amazon to smaller firms, some in West Virginia. All the speakers have contributed greatly to the benefit and development of our WV Coding Club students.

The WV Coding Club also has a coding team that has won the Congressional App Challenge three years in a row! This is considered to be the most prestigious student computer prize in our nation. The team is currently working towards their forth submission this year and continue to find ways to hone their coding skills.

Congratulations, William on this very special achievement and we look forward to a bright future for you!

Keep Coding!

Mayor Carolyn Rader, City of Ripley, congratulating William Matheny before presenting him with the Advanced Tech degree, as his parents Sue and John Matheny and WV Coding Club President Dan McElroy look on.

Guest Speaker, Jordan Castelloe, Program Director, NewForce, Generation WV

The West Virginia Coding Club recently had Ms. Jordan Castelloe, Program Director, NewForce, a program of Generation West Virginia as our guest speaker.

NewForce is a six-month, full-time, tuition-free coding school based out of Huntington, WV. In light of COVID-19, NewForce is currently remote.

Find more information at: http://www.newforce.co

Dan McElroy, President of WV Coding Club, explained, "The NewForce program is a great opportunity for West Virginians and resource for companies needing Coders. We support the work that Jordan and the NewForce staff are doing to help prepare West Virginia residents for Coding careers."

NewForce trains people with no prior coding experience, prepares them for their first tech job, and connects them with open, entry-level software development jobs in the Mountain State (West Virginia). NewForce is a full-time program and classes run from 9am-4pm Monday through Friday over Zoom teleconference. Technical Resume writing and Interview preparation is part of the program.

Software developers solve real-world problems with code. They build tools that make everyday people’s lives easier. This is an incredibly rewarding career field if you love solving problems, working on teams, and learning new things. NewForce trains people from all different backgrounds-- teachers, fast food workers, house painters, and accountants, just to name a few. Their graduates make a median salary of $44,000 right out of the program, with salaries ranging up to $90,000 for more senior developers in West Virginia.

NewForce believes that the tech industry will shape the future. They want West Virginians to have a place in that future. Through our immersive curriculum, NewForce students build applications for a mock company, collaborate on teams, and graduate with in-demand software development skills and direct connections to open jobs.

Applications are open to West Virginia residents only. 

First half the program, students learn Front End development with languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and React, then the second half they learn Back End development with languages like C# and SQL. The program runs five days a week for six months. with 30 students per year and 15 per six month cohort.

There is no typical student, with ages ranging from 20s to mid 50s. Two of the instructors are both graduates of the program. Also, a technical advisor to help provide industry insights. Jordan has been working remotely from North Carolina. for this West Virginia program.

Overall, 85% of graduates find work as junior developers within six months. Primarily graduates find Junior Developer jobs. Through this program there are 30 employers in WVthat provide opportunities for graduates. The average starting salaries are $45,000 - $50,000, but should increase over time as program graduates progress in their job or find future career opportunities.

Thank you Jordan for your work and efforts for our fellow West Virginians!

Keep Coding!

Guest Speaker - Bob Taft, Lead Scientist, Naval Surface Warfare Center

Guest Speaker - Bob Taft, Lead Scientist, Naval Surface Warfare Center

(Caveat, this talk is in no way an official statement from Mr. Taft’s workplace or his employer.)

Olivetti-Underwood Programma 101

Bob Taft, Lead Scientist, at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Divison (NSWCDD), was the Guest Speaker for the West Virginia Coding Club April 9th, 2022. Bob was born and raised in Morgantown, WV. He attended Morgantown High School (MHS) and was into math, scouting, intramural sports, and theater.  Bob earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Science degrees from West Virginia University (WVU) there in his home town.   Bob said he was so old that there were no coding classes at Morgantown High School (MHS) and no Computer Science degree at WVU.

However, Bob was fortunate to love math and said he was going to be a nuisance in his senior high school pre-calculus class due to the knowledge and skills he had already acquired. That pre-calc was the highest math offered at MHS in 1972. It was a review of algebra and trig which Bob had already clepped out of. His wise teacher, Mrs. Butcher, said “instead of disrupting my class, you and Tom just go down the hall to that semi-circular room. You’ll find some kind of programmable calculator in there. Play with that.” So Tom Koch and Bob spent a semester teaching themselves to program the Olivetti-Underwood Programma 101. This programmable calculator was one of the first “personal computers”. It predates the Apple 1 by four years and even the Altair 8800 by three years.

Bob’s mother encouraged him to include computers in his interests.  Mrs. Taft worked in a local bank and saw the transition from paper accounting to computer records (shipped to a mainframe in Pittsburgh overnight). While studying math at West Virginia University Bob listened (sometimes) to his mother and took several computer classes covering FORTRAN, PLI, APL, and, IBM 360/370 Assembler.

His first professional jobs were teaching Mathematics as an instructor at WVU and eventually as an Associate Professor at West Virginia Institute of Technology (WVIT), then located in Montgomery, WV.   While at WVIT Bob continued to study computing at WVIT and at the West Virginia College of Graduate Studies (WVCOGS) in Institute, WV.  He eventually helped design and teach classes in Computer Science at WVIT.  He also was blessed to work on the “staph” (an infectious lot) of the West Virginia National Youth Science Camp during the summers.

When WVIT planned to tear down his campus housing and send Bob looking for a new place, he looked farther afield, seeking a place to apply the book knowledge he held in math and computer science. Specifically looking for a place like NASA where engineers, scientists, mathematicians and computer scientists would work in teams to solve exciting problems. Bob found the US Navy Research and Development laboratory, NSWCDD, in Dahlgren, Virginia and has worked there ever since. NSWCDD has been that place with collaborative work, blending math and computer science along with writing and presentation skills to analyze, specify, design, implement, test, and maintain complex systems in support of US Navy needs. He also has been able to continue his involvement in STEM outreach, in teaching, and in lifelong learning.

The Navy has a deep interest in the continuing education of its workforce.  Bob has taken full advantage of that support.  He has taken multiple short courses or college courses in “C”, C++, Ada, Matlab, LISP, Java, Artificial Intelligence, OPS5, Python and other computing skills.  He has completed more than 50 hours of graduate work beyond his master’s degree.  He has also taught courses for VPI, George Mason, and the University of Mary Washington. And like this day, Bob has given volunteer hours to STEM fun events, many using the Lego EV3 robots.  Bob also works with the Fredericksburg Maker Space. In addition to volunteering, NSWCDD has funded Bob for several STEM outreach events.  The Navy has sent Bob for standard work to more than a dozen states, plus Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, and shipboard.  Mr. Taft is an inventor on ten US Navy Patents.  Bob is currently working, strangely enough, with old FORTRAN code, old 8086 Assembler code, and with the latest Python, SciPy, NumPy code on the same effort.

Bob’s advice: Find projects that excite and challenge you.  Take the hard courses.  Bob took as much honors math and the honors English as he could.  Take on a senior project or an internship.  Maybe jump onto GitHub and join an Open Software project.  The most successful people Bob works with had a special opportunity (like the Olivetti-Underwood Programma 101) and built on that opportunity.  Most of them did internships or joined special teams that we call SlyFox missions.  Most of them pay back with STEM outreach or mentoring.  Work on a team to build a solar car or an autonomous surface vehicle.  Build relationships with your favorite teacher, your school counselor, and especially the department admin.  Read and write code. Coding, like any skill, gets better as you practice it more. You will hit hard times.  They don’t last.  Let your friendships help you through those times.  If it was easy, they wouldn’t pay you so much.  Be kind.

"We are humbled and deeply appreciate having Bob Taft speak with our students and share his beginnings in West Virginia and journey in working to solve some of the most complex rocket science challenges on the planet. Here is another West Virginian who has used coding as a vehicle to do great things.", said Dan McElroy, President of the West Virginia Coding Club.

Thank you Bob!!!

Keep Coding!

Speaker & Special Guest - Jason Gilmore, CEO of Treehouse

Speaker - Jason Gilmore, CEO of Treehouse

A few months ago, Jason joined the Treehouse team as CEO and says this opportunity is a "dream come true”.

Treehouse's name precedes itself; their Mission is to diversify the tech industry through accessible education, unlocking the door to opportunity and empowering people to achieve their dreams. It is an online technology school that offers beginner to advanced courses in web design, web development, mobile development and game development. Its courses are aimed to help its students develop coding skills for a career in the tech industry. The Treehouse learning program includes videos combined with interactive quizzes and code challenges.

Jason is the author of nine books, including the bestselling “Beginning PHP and MySQL” and “Easy Laravel 5". Jason's writings on web technologies have appeared hundreds of times within popular industry publications.  He is also the co-founder of the CodeMash conference, an annual event held at the Kalahari Waterpark and Convention Center in Sandusky, Ohio (www.codemash.org) He is also a Principal at Xenon which is how he connected with Treehouse. Prior to joining Treehouse, Jason spent four years as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of DreamFactory Software. Jason’s work experience includes many years as a lead developer, consultant, and trainer with other companies.

Jason introduced SaaS (Software as a Service) to the WV Coding Club students (See presentation below). 

Jason’s advice:

1. Have a positive attitude!

2. Be willing to learn and work hard!

3. Very Important - Don’t be afraid to network!!! Meet and connect with others!!! Talk Tech. LinkedIn!!! Jason shared that all of his contract work and job positions came because of the good connections he made.

Dan McElroy, President of the WV Coding Club, shared, “We are honored to have Jason, the CEO of Treehouse, take time to share his insights and advice with our WV Coding Club students."

Thank you Jason for taking time to share with the WV Coding Club Students!

Keep Coding!

Speaker: Joel Bennett, Owner of Aronfield Agency

The WV Coding Club recently had Joel Bennett, Creative Director / Owner of the Aronfield Agency as its speaker for the students.

Aronfield Agency (https://aronfield.com) works with businesses and organizations with branding & identity, web development & SEO, mobile app development, graphic design & Illustration, video production & animation, marketing / public relations / social media. 

Joel Bennett shared he was from Beckley, West Virginia, though he has been in the Charleston, WV area for about the last 10 years. 

Until age 15, Joel didn’t have a computer, so he walked after school a couple miles to go to the library to use a computer. He looked at the source code of html pages to try to reverse engineer and learn. At that time there was barely any information out there (like YouTube videos today, etc.), so he had to do more hands-on trial and error. 

When he was able to get his first computer, Joel could really experiment with coding. He also learned to upgrade his computer, installing parts himself. Joel also had a small group of friends helping each other learn by challenging each other. These friends have all gone into careers in the Tech world.

When he was 16 he started building computers, learning about the technology and functions. This helped him prepare for many job opportunities that he explored. He was hired for a temporary position at Dell computer, traveling around Kentucky, then was hired on full-time. He also  worked in Minnesota, moving around to different opportunities. 

Joel has worked in different places, but found a way to come back to WV and make a career here. Soon he connected with Staples and worked into the Computer Sales / Tech Repair section, helping the store grow its business significantly. After realizing there was no more opportunity there and creating side work for himself in his free time, he realized he could do better on his own.

In June 2010, Joel started his business. His middle name is Aron and he wanted his business to incorporate a variety of services and thought the word "Field" helped to encompass that. In working on a TV commercial with a Cable company, he learned they would only work with "Agencies". So, from that, Aronfield Agency was born. 

Joel explained that they have interns working at his business. He gets them involved in the various aspects to see what area(s) they might be interested in and more passionate about. Some are college students, but others are not, they are just interested in this type of work. Everyone has a different way of learning and this process helps connect them with areas they can potentially succeed.

Joel shared that they use Slack to communicate with their team on different projects. In developing ideas and working on projects, Joel still uses post-its and traditional planner book, to look at what to do next. He has been thinking about satellite offices and moving home base to have more of a storefront for customers.

Joel shared a poster he made on Nov 13, 2009, charting out various ideas he wanted to do and potential business opportunities to develop. He has kept and still refers to that poster as there is more he wants to accomplish to grow his business. This is a great example of planning your work and then working your plan.

Advice from Joel - Don’t let things stop you from working towards your goals!

Dan McElroy, President of the West Virginia Coding Club emphasized, “Joel is a wonderful example of what it means to be an entrepreneur and it was a great lesson for our students to hear.”

Thank you Joel Bennett for speaking with our WV Coding Club students! Keep Coding!

WV Coding Club Student Honored at Ripley City Council for Amazing Achievement

Mayor Carolyn Rader presenting certificate of recognition to Trey Greer at Ripley, WV City Council Meeting.

At this week’s City of Ripley, West Virginia Council Meeting, Trey Greer was honored with a certificate of recognition by Mayor Carolyn Rader and the City Council. Trey’s honor was due to his recent completion of the Advanced Tech Degree: Front-End Web Development. This achievement took months of work and Trey is the second student in the West Virginia Coding Club to earn this distinction. These Advanced Tech degrees are normally completed by adults seeking employment with companies needing Coders.

Dan McElroy, President of the West Virginia Coding Club, shared, “We are very proud of Trey’s accomplishment and recognize his hard work and focused dedication in addition to all his other academic and athletic pursuits.”

Congratulations Trey! You have a bright future!

Keep Coding!

Speaker: Kim Harbour, Information Systems Manager, WV Department of Environmental Protection

Our speaker, Kim Harbour is the Information Systems Manager at WV Department of Environmental Protection, State of West Virginia

Kim moved to West Virginia (Wayne County) at age 12. She was a good student and enjoyed and focused on art. She attended Marshall University and got her undergraduate in journalism. She's never had a formal coding class in college. Kim went on to earn a Masters in Art in New York.

She moved from New York to Los Angeles to work for Jim Henson's company when Microsoft was starting and Kim used her project management skills to take the Muppets online. At the time, Flash animation was the primary tool used to implement this project.

From there, Kim worked with the IdeaLab new business incubator in Pasadena, CA. Then, she went on to work for LA interactive marketing firms, managing consumer large web applications for General Motors, Honda and Acura.

Then she moved back to West Virginia and worked with the Charles Ryan Agency mainly focused on Search Engine Optimization (SAO). She then worked for WV Tourism and after that the State Central Information Technology office. Kim is currently the Information Systems Manager, managing technology projects at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WV DEP). Many of her projects in her various positions have required managing creative and technical staff. Over her years of experience, Kim can code in HTML and do a lot of testing and debugging.

With her work at WV DEP - Kim shared it is all about the data. Over time, Kim has hired many programmers. She has seen that with the people she hires, they do not necessarily need a four year degree. She talked about the opportunities in the WV Community College system.

Upon being asked, Kim shared some of her views of WV, since she has lived and worked in many parts of the United States. She highlighted a few points.

1. Generation WV - train our Workforce (NewForce) - retrain people - 18 month program via Community College system - Full Stack Development (Microsoft.net)

2. WV Solar Hollar - Training West Virginians to install Solar.

3. Broadband Improvement Needed

With the Pandemic there was a need for remote work. Many tools have been developed. Today, more people can stay in WV and work for a company outside of WV. Learning about technology and what is marketable while being able to stay in WV is a great asset for the State.

Kim's advice to our WV Coding Club Students:

Get involved in Robotics, Lego Robotics League, learn to code the robots.

Mechatronics / Automation

Find what you like, develop your skills

Learn to work with Teams

Develop Communication Skills (talk to different kinds of people)

Dan McElroy, President of the WV Coding Club, explained, "Kim helps to show the importance of project management and being able to work with creative and technology skilled people. Kim sharing her experiences and knowledge is greatly appreciated!"

Thank you Kim for speaking with our WV Coding Club students!

Keep Coding!

WORLDWIDE TECH ED COMPANY (U.S. BASED) RECOGNIZES WV CODING CLUB & STUDENTS!

WORLDWIDE TECH ED COMPANY (U.S. BASED) RECOGNIZES WV CODING CLUB & STUDENTS!

TREEHOUSE BLOG ARTICLE - CLICK HERE!*

Treehouse, a United States based worldwide Technology Education company, recognizes the West Virginia Coding Club, a (501(c)(3) non-profit focused on developing West Virginia youth, for its students’ significant accomplishments in just a few short years! The highlights include three consecutive years as Congressional App Challenge Champions in West Virginia, and the graduation of several students through the Advanced Tech Degree Program, a Tech Industry recognized certification for employment. See their Blog Article below for the details.

*Disclosure: WV Coding Club helps students develop through direct and peer to peer mentoring, listening to speakers from the Tech industry, as well as utilizing Team Treehouse for the base of the coding learning content.