(Photo: Rosharra Owens at Iowa Western Community College, May 9, 2018.)
COUNCIL BLUFFS – For Rosharra Owens, learning to build websites was part of rebuilding her life after a series of unfortunate events left her living in a homeless shelter, and feeling stuck.
“It was crazy. I don’t know how I’ve been able to do it, but I’ve been able to do it,” she says.
Rosharra was living at Omaha’s Open Door Mission when she saw fliers for the Interface Web School/Highlander Seventy Five North Code Camp.
“I didn’t think I was ever going to get in school. I didn’t think there was any hope,” she said.
But she started making phone calls, and ended up at Heartland Workforce Solutions, where they helped her apply for the course and arrange financial aid.
“They were excellent at helping get the paperwork pushed though,” she recalls.
Once the class got underway, Rosharra found a small class size, and a lot of individual attention from the instructor.
“She went through things that I didn’t understand, but I could ask her, and we could go over it, especially since it was the three of us,” she recalls.
(Rosharra Owens in class with instructor Lana Yager.)
Rosharra says she loved learning to build the look and feel of a website.
“I love the whole idea of designing, I was really thrilled about that, and since it was a small class, it was a lot of fun,” she says.
Rosharra says the class could definitely be challenging at times.
“Anything you don’t really know can be a challenge, especially in IT. There’s a lot of coding, a lot of things to remember, you definitely need to practice, to look over the stuff,” she says. “It takes time and you make mistakes, but slowly I was getting it, getting the hang of it.”
Rosharra says the great thing about the course was that it involved real-world examples of web-building exercises.
“That’s the main thing I loved about the class, it was all majority hands-on. We did maybe a half-hour lecture, but the rest of the class, we worked on building a website, buttons, containers, it was nice,” she says.
‘It’s really how I got my start.’
As Rosharra was nearing the completion of the 10-week course, she realized she wanted to continue her education. She applied to and enrolled in Iowa Western Community College, where she just completed 12 credit hours.
One of her courses was Introduction to Web Design, and she says her experience at Interface/Highlander was a big help.
She now hopes to earn an Associates Degree in Media Production, and eventually pursue a career in filmmaking.
Rosharra credits the Interface/Highlander course with jump starting her education, and giving her the confidence to succeed.
“It was a great opportunity. Starting there is what got me here. I wanna do so much more. It’s really how I got my start,” she says.
For anyone who is thinking about going to back to school or changing careers, Rosharra says to stay focused, and have faith.
“Don’t look at what everyone else is doing because that can be very frustrating, when you see everyone else picking the pace up, it can really bring down your self esteem. You just sort of have to tune out what everyone else is doing and just keep your focus on what’s in front of you,” she says.
For more information on the Interface/75 North Highlander program, click here.
(Photo: Seventy-Five North students at the AIM Brain Exchange, July 26,2017.)
OMAHA — Organizations around the country and here in the Midwest struggle with complicated questions around how to reach and serve disconnected youth with pathways into the workforce.
But there are numerous efforts underway right here in Omaha to connect youth with educational and employment opportunities. Making those connections was the focus of a recent podcast where speakers outlined their approaches — among them, Shonna Dorsey, AIM’s Vice President of Business Development and Tech Talent.
Dorsey was one of three speakers on the “Youth Worker Power Training” podcast presented by Workforce 180. She told listeners from around the country about community-wide youth-in-tech initiatives here Omaha, and the opportunities being created here for young people outside traditional paths.
“There are high paying jobs you can get in tech that don’t require a college degree,” said Dorsey. “I never dissuade people from pursuing advanced degrees, but when you have kids like disconnected youth who are really anxious to be doing something interesting, and something that is high-paying and valuable to them, a career in tech is a space where they can get started.”
Dorsey told listeners about community-wide efforts to bridge the gap between the tech workforce and underserved communities, especially young people.
“We definitely need to make sure youth feel connected to opportunities in this community,” she said.
One organization working toward those goals is the Heartland Workforce Solutions Youth Council, which coordinates efforts among youth-centered agencies, area training providers, employers and other agencies that provide supportive services.
“We all come together to discuss ways in which we can provide a more connected and easy-to-navigate process for people who come into our system,” Dorsey explained.
Dorsey also told listeners about AIM Brain Exchange North, an accelerated web development training program based in areas of Omaha with the lowest average household incomes, where unemployment rates soar above the city average.
For example, in Omaha’s 68110 zipcode, the unemployment rate is 17.6 percent; in 68111, the rate is 12.7 percent, according to the Nebraska Department of Labor. The average unemployment rate for the Omaha metropolitan area is 3.1 percent.
Brain Exchange North typically accepts 10 to 15 students and takes them through a seven-week program that meets daily.
“During that seven weeks, they are meeting people from the community, employers who are interested in diversity and inclusion and who want to let these kids know that there are opportunities for them,” said Dorsey.
At the end of the program, Dorsey says there are opportunities for participants to be interviewed for internships.
“They are able to develop skills at a foundational level over the summer, and then be connected to an employer who has an open internship so that they can continue to build on their skillset,” said Dorsey.
One of the goals is to make tech training opportunities more readily accessible.
“We know for sure that having those supportive services and making it easy for people to access them is critical,” said Dorsey. “We’re looking at our process and saying, is it easy for someone to come into this and know what to do next and navigate it, and get the development plans together that they need to be successful? That’s what we’re working on right now. It is an evolving process.”
The hope is to build a thriving, growing community by connecting young people with opportunities they may not have otherwise had.
“We have a talent retention issue, so we are thinking that the younger we start, the more likely it is that we can keep them here,” said Dorsey, “We want them to feel supported in this community, no matter which zipcode they live in.”
For more information about Brain Exchange North, contact Shonna Dorsey at sdorsey@nullaimsite1.wpenginepowered.com.
FNTS honored as part of the 2018 Dell EMC Global Partner Summit for Technical Excellence Partner of the Year Award
First National Technology Solutions (FNTS) recently announced that they have received the 2018 Dell EMC Technical Excellence Partner of the Year Award from Dell EMC for achieving extraordinary results and demonstrating commitment to Dell EMC.
The Technical Excellence Partner of the Year Award recognizes FNTS for its ongoing success in integrating and deploying Dell EMC’s enterprise-class technology solutions.
Headquartered in Omaha, FNTS has over 20 years in the managed IT services industry and is a provider of flexible, customized hosted and remote managed services.
This is the first year FNTS has received this exclusive recognition.
“It’s an honor to be recognized for our continued work with Dell EMC,” said FNTS President, Kim Whittaker. “This further validates our position as a company that strives to build strong relationships with some of the most innovative technology partners in the industry.
The Dell EMC Annual Partner recognition program is intended to recognize partners for their extraordinary performance, support and ongoing commitment to Dell EMC. Partners are recognized across various award categories based on partner type/track, including growth, services, storage, server and client solutions.
“By partnering with companies like Dell EMC, we are able to provide the technology and scalability customers need to successfully store and manage large amounts of data as they continue their digital transformation,” said Whittaker.
Midwest Bankware Solutions is a fintech offshoot of Midwest Cloud Computing and was created to address banking process problems. Their Anycore platform is an answer to the problem surrounding banks and their ability to access their own data.
Banks have what are called “core banking solutions” that is provided to them by any one of a couple dozen core vendors. The functionality of core banking solutions is proprietary, so it’s difficult for banks to write new applications that integrate with the systems and allow them to extract data.
“They don’t want you to do that. They want the money,” said Raymond Garren, founder of Midwest Bankware Solutions and Managing Partner of Midwest Cloud Computing. “If you were to tell them that you wanted your data, [the provider of the core banking solution] is not necessarily going to give you your data for free. You’re going to have to figure out how to get it yourself.”
That’s the function of Anycore.
“We’re able to get a bank’s data out of their core so they’re able to use it for other things, such as business intelligence or feeding other systems,” said Garren. “We work with some very large companies on behalf of banks to get banking data for them.”
Garren said that with over 70 years of combined banking experience, the Midwest Bankware Solutions team has a vast understanding of the core banking solutions on the market.
In the two years since launching Midwest Bankware Solutions, the company has onboarded banks across the country, including a few large financial organizations on the west coast.
“Working with our banks directly, we harvest their data, get it out of their system and show them from a business intelligence perspective how to use their data better,” said Garren. “We provide [more accurate data] in a real-time fashion to their software providers, making the software applications the bank has licensed better.”
It’s no surprise that security is a major concern when managing the transfer of banking data. Midwest Bankware Solutions focuses on two main areas of security: network security and application security.
“We’re very tight-knit with our customers from a network security perspective,” said Garren. “We go through our own due-diligence process with every bank, making sure they don’t have any glaring holes from a network security perspective on their side. Then, we work with them to show them our security protocols from a security perspective.”
Garren said that from an application perspective, the data being collected by Anycore is encrypted, making it impossible for anyone on the Midwest Bankware Solutions side to see it.
“The data keys are not known by us, they’re kept secret even from us,” said Garren. “When we send the data to the bank, there’s no opportunity for anyone outside their organization to do anything with it because the encryption keys are only known by the source organization.”
Garren’s ability to find solutions to problems facing a variety of industries keeps him in a startup mindset. He said there are a lot of opportunities for startups to create fintech solutions for the banking industry, which is still relatively traditional and looking for innovations.
“Startup companies are very nimble, they have great ideas and are very quick to deploy,” said Garren. “That’s very attractive in today’s banking space because the large banking software providers move at two speeds, slow and slower.”
Garren said the other problem with large banking product providers is that they provide their vision of functionality and banks have to adapt to it, not the other way around.
“Whenever you’re changing your business to adapt to software, you’re making a very big mistake,” said Garren. “Fintech startups are very responsive to their customers from a functionality perspective, and that’s what we try to do. A customer can come to us with a great idea and we’re [not only] going to make that available to them, but make it available to all the customers.”
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Christine McGuigan is the Managing Editor of Silicon Prairie News.
This article originally appeared on Silicon Prairie News.
“We saw a 37 percent growth in online sales for March,” said Ryan Downs, President and CEO of Proxibid. “There is a no more indicative measure of how well this business is doing than that growth number.”
Numbers provided in a press release also detail:
The company also saw a dramatic increases in online-only, timed auction participation in Proxibid’s B2B categories, which helped to fuel growth in the first quarter.
Downs said for the 17-year-old company to continue down such a high-growth path, they have to maintain their flexibility and range of offerings.
“We’re in a digital space and we have to be very flexible, very agile and we have to adjust all the time,” said Downs. “The health of our business is really determined by one thing, and that’s the health of online sales.”
Downs said Proxibid is all about taking historically non-digital markets where trends used to occur offline, and bringing them online. Their ability to bring efficiency and a larger audience to new industries is what leads to the company’s growth.
“We’ve added a lot of clients into the marketplace [in the last 18 to 24 months],” said Downs. “There are some really high-quality clients in that mix, and they’re hitting their stride and growing their businesses, especially with the online portions of their businesses.”
Proxibid has seen high-growth with their international sellers (particularly those in the UK), industrial categories, collector cars and online-only auctions.
“Robust results in B2B categories like heavy equipment, industrial machinery, and farm machinery, as well as the sale of collector cars and other high-end goods, were central to Proxibid’s success in the first quarter,” said Downs. “Proxibid’s online-only, timed auction solution continues to attract new buyers and sellers to the platform, which has pushed online sales and GMV to new heights for the company.”
Downs said tailored marketing strategies and additions to the marketing department are helping to push growth in those areas.
“We hired a new Chief Marketing Officer about a year ago, and he took the good work that was already happening and brought some great industry experience and great processes and approaches to the marketing group,” said Downs. “They’re doing a tremendous job of driving these very targeted demands.”
Downs said Proxibid’s marketing department is doing a great job of bringing in buyers, but the sales department is also successful at attracting sellers.
“We’re much more targeted with who we’re going after, and we’re bringing in really high-quality performing clients on the sales side,” said Downs. “Both of those functions are working extremely well for us and have been now for a while. We’re seeing that pay off in the growth.”
The success of those two departments goes back to Proxibid’s focus on flexibility. Downs said everyone is a continual learner and stays on top of trends, whether it be new algorithms or affiliate marketing programs, and when something doesn’t yield a desired result, they adjust.
“That’s a discipline that we’ve [built] over the years,” said Downs. They’re adjusting all the time, to literally intraday adjustments sometimes. That’s exciting to see.”
Downs said he’s excited about what the business is doing and is confident that they’ll continue seeing growth moving forward.
“We have no intention of going anywhere else other than Omaha,” said Downs. “We love it here, we’re finding great people here, and we hope to continue to impact this community for a long time.”
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Christine McGuigan is the Managing Editor of Silicon Prairie News.
