Mr. Holland is a recent Nebraska transplant, having moved to the area from Texas this summer. Prior to joining the AIM Upward Bound team, he served eight years as a Scouting Professional with the Boy Scouts of America in both the Houston and Austin metro areas. He also previously worked as the Director of Operations for THE BEACON, Houston’s largest homeless drop-in center.
Mr. Holland holds a master’s degree in Nonprofit Management from the University of Houston and has a certificate in Volunteer Management from Rice University.
Mr. Holland is married to his wife of seven years; they have two dogs, Sam and Piper. In his free time, Mr. Holland enjoys outdoor activities like hiking and canoeing as well as working on woodworking projects and playing guitar.
Mr. Holland hopes to continue the success of the PLV Upward Bound program stating, “Upward Bound is such a great program for our students, it’s our job to make it even better.”
As Grant Manager, Mr. Holland is tasked with making sure the program is planned and runs according to the Department of Education guidelines.
Ms. Griffin is a Nebraska native, graduating from both Omaha North High School and the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. She has bachelor’s degrees in Science in Mathematics and English, as well as a Masters degree in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine from the University of Oklahoma.
Ms. Griffin is engaged to her fiance Mitch and will be married in October. Outside of her love for math, Ms. Griffin loves running and reading. She also is an avid volunteer with the Radio Talking Book in Omaha.
As College and Career Coordinator, Ms. Griffin will closely with the PLV Upward Bound Students and lead the weekly Upward Bound services. Also, due to prior experience and expertise, Ms. Griffin will also lead all of the Upward Bound ACT prep classes this year.
Previously, the PLV Upward Bound program was overseen by former Grant Manager Kimberlyn Oliver, and former College and Career Coordinator Dex Conwell. Both exited the program earlier this year.
Crane’s talk is titled “Engineers and Designers, in Harmony” and will focus on the complex relationship between the two disciplines.
“In the old days, the relationship wasn’t great, and it didn’t get better with the advent of Agile,” said Crane, who has more than 20 years of experience of software product design in and around Silicon Valley. “I think developers stereotypically thought of designers as kind of unrealistic artists who didn’t understand software and were making unreasonable demands on them. And on the other hand, designers have felt at times like developers didn’t value their work or weren’t willing to think outside the box. But we’ve moved beyond that.”
Crane says she will talk about ways designers and developers can work together more successfully.
She says she has seen many examples of great software that lacks well-designed user interfaces. She says that a stronger focus good design can lead to a healthier bottom line.
“It’s not held up as something that someone besides an engineer should do. There’s an expertise that someone should have when they do it. It can be a differentiator that really moves the needle for a business. It can have a connection to the bottom line,” Crane said.
Crane will also take part in a breakout session Friday afternoon. In A Digital Transformation Case Study with TEAM Software, Crane and Michelle Shanholtz, vice president of product management at TEAM Software, will talk about how the company reworked its approach to software development.
“It’s really a digital transformation story in the way that they reconsidered what their software offering was and frankly, how they created that software, so they could be agile and learn from users through primary research and make change over time based on what they learned,” said Crane.
For more information about Crane and other HDC speakers, visit AIM’s Heartland Developers Conference website.
AIM Institute is excited to announce a major evolution to our Careerlink platform.
The all-new member portal is here with redesigned features to make it easier than ever for employers to find and hire the right candidates.
Here are some of the enhanced features on the new system:
“You can easily switch between the current and new interface at any time,” explained Scott Rowe, AIM’s Vice President of Digital Innovation. “All of your data will appear in both interfaces, and your company’s Careerlink users can even use the different versions at the same time while still collaborating on your hiring efforts.”
To check out the new portal, just login to your Careerlink account and click to switch over to the new interface:
AIM HDC is a 3-day software development event for the Heartland’s tech professionals to reboot, relaunch and reignite their passion right in their own backyard.
The event consists of keynotes and speakers, breakout sessions, networking events and hands-on workshops.
Check out our list of available HDC workshops and discover why one veteran attendee called HDC “the best place to learn what the smartest companies are doing to solve their biggest problems.”
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Computer Vision and Machine Learning in the Browser
with Kevin Hoyt, IBM
The browser, on both the desktop and mobile, is capable of much more than we often give them credit. In this workshop, we will push the CPU to 100% as we audit several image processing libraries used for computer vision and machine learning.
Learn computer vision with real-time facial detection, optical character recognition, color distance calculations, object tracking, and even reading barcodes and augmented reality markers. From there we will turn our focus to machine learning where you will learn about developing models for neural networks.
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Test Automation for Web Applications using Selenium
with Jerry Sayre, Mutual of Omaha
This workshop will focus on using the Selenium API (Application Programming Interface) and creating automated tests that instantiate a browser, mimic user actions on a web page, and verify results. The session will include hands-on exercises as well as discussions and sample code (IntelliJ, Selenium, and Java are the base technologies being used).
The session will include:
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The Decentralized Stack
with Kyle Tut, BlockEra
Blockchain is the foundational technology of Web 3.0. Let’s learn how blockchain, distributed storage, and tokens work together to build the internet of value.
This session goes beyond just cryptocurrencies and is geared towards people interested in learning the fundamentals and technical side of blockchains, distributed ledgers, and consensus mechanisms.
Matt Ober, BlockEra’s CTO, will be teaching developers how these technologies work under the hood and go through interactive programming exercises. Kyle Tut, BlockEra’s CEO will be there to help those who don’t work in the code every day, but still have a technical side to them.
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Develop an ASP.NET Core 2.1 and EF Core 2.1 App in a Day (full-day workshop)
Philip Japikse, PFJ Enterprises
Interested in ASP.NET Core 2.x and Entity Framework Core 2.x, but not sure where to start? Start here with an all-day, hands-on lab where you will build a complete solution using the latest development technology from Microsoft. Using Visual Studio 2017 (15.7 or greater) and .NET Core 2.1, you will build a data access library using Entity Framework Core, complete with repos and migrations. Next, you will build an ASP.NET Core web application, leveraging all of the latest that ASP.NET Core has to offer, including Tag Helpers, View Components, Dependency Injection, and more!
You will learn:
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Azure Workshop for HDC
Nathan Wilkinson, Don’t Panic Labs
Jumping into the cloud can be scary. Not only are you moving your systems to a different hosting model, but you also have to make a ton of choices.
This workshop provides an overview of building for the cloud, mainly Microsoft Azure. You will learn how to build an Azure App service, deploy an App service from Visual Studio Online, and monitor the application using Azure Application Insights.
This is going to be a fast-paced course, but you will get a pretty good introduction to Azure.
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Introduction to Geospatial Analysis in R
Thomas Roh, Data Scientist, HDR
Geospatial analysis has become an increasingly valuable skill given the massive datasets now being acquired through satellite images, GPS units in a variety of consumer electronics, and crowdsourced contributions (e.g., OpenStreetMap). In addition to greater access to data, geospatial analysis is essential to solving business problems in almost every industry. The programming language R has powerful data structures and processing ability to perform a variety of these geospatial applications.
During the workshop, participants will become familiar with loading geojson, shapefiles, WKT, and other GIS formats into R; manipulating and performing geospatial calculations with the SF package; mapping data attributed with points, lines, and shapes both statically and interactively with the leaflet package; and spatial interpolation and creating rasters for spatial visualization.
To register for a workshop or view the complete HDC schedule, visit careerlink.com/hdc.
U.S. Representative Don Bacon, R-Neb., visited the AIM Brain Exchange Friday to kick off the Congressional App Challenge.
He was joined by a round-table panel of business, education and community leaders to talk about efforts to support tech education and expand diversity in tech-related fields.
The Congressional App Challenge is an annual competition aimed at encouraging kids to learn to code.
Students in congressional districts that host the challenge have the chance to build and submit an app. If they win, the app is displayed in the Capitol building in Washington D.C.
Rep. Bacon kicked off the round-table discussion by noting how crucial technology and tech education is to national security.
He cited an example of special forces that use robotic applications to help keep soldiers out of harm’s way, and he noted how exponentially tech is evolving.
“Moore’s Law is in effect. What is it going to look like 50 years from now? That’s why we have to invest in [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education] or we are going to fall behind as a country,” he said.
The panel discussed local efforts to attract kids to tech education, and efforts to expand diversity in the tech realm.
At one point, they took questions from students from Monroe Middle School. Angel, an 8th grader, asked what the educators were doing to put themselves in the mindsets of teenagers.
One panelist offered the example of using virtual reality headsets to show how building construction happens, from the blueprints to the finished building.
Diversity in tech was a central part of the conversation. Panelists said it was crucial to foster a diverse workforce in tech-related fields so young people see adults who look like them working in those jobs.
“Everywhere I go, I hear…there’s a shortage of technical training in our schools. That’s where the needs are at in our country,” said Bacon.
Bacon said the deadline to register for the Congressional App Challenge is September 10, and the deadline to submit the app is October 15. For more information, click here.
