On Thursday, March 14, the AIM Brain Exchange participated in a tech-themed lunch & learn for students at Abraham Lincoln High School in Council Bluffs. AIM’s Brain Exchange team brought pizza, soda, colored markers, easel paper and Ozobots—tiny, bubble-shaped robots made to teach kids about programming in a fun way.
“I call it coding visually,” said Lana Yager, an instructor in Technology Experiences for the AIM Brain Exchange.
Students drew trails on paper using a thick black marker. A sensor inside the Ozobot would read the trail and instruct the robot to follow.
To make things more interesting, students could add sequences of color-coded patterns along the way. Those patterns represented instructions that tell the Ozobot how to move.
For instance, “Red-Green-Blue” would direct the robot to go at a snail’s pace. If a student were to draw that sequence on the trail somewhere, the sensor inside the Ozobot would read the sequence and force the robot to slow down until it rolled across another sequence instructing it to do something else.
A sequence of “Blue-Green-Red,” on the other hand, would tell the robot to go super fast.
Thus, the principles of coding were illustrated IRL.
Yager was heartened by the positive reaction at yesterday’s tech lunch.
“You never how kids are going to react, especially high school kids,” she said. One student who previously hadn’t seemed very engaged with school showed up. “I didn’t think he was going to like it at all, but he really liked it. He said several times, ‘This is fun, thank you.’ And he brought a girlfriend with him, and she really liked it too. So that’s cool.”
AIM’s Brain Exchange program participates in tech lunch & learns twice a month at Abraham Lincoln. The events are a hit with students.
“Last time, we did virtual reality,” Yager said. “That was fun.”
So fun, in fact, that during yesterday’s Ozobot-themed lunch, one of the students asked if they would get to do VR again next time.
Perhaps, Yager said. VR is a growing field with applications ranging from gaming to medicine. And the more exposure to technology students receive, the better.
The Brain Exchange, a program of the AIM Institute, is committed to providing tech education to youth who might not otherwise have access to such vital experiences, to dispelling the myth that technology is “too hard,” and to igniting curiosity and interest in tech.
Thursday’s lunch & learn was funded through the Upward Bound program, which provides fundamental support to students in their preparation for college entrance.
Growing up, Kaitlyn Hova thought programming sounded extremely dull, thanks to her father, who worked as a software engineer for various credit card companies.
“He worked in an office, and it was just the most boring life I could ever imagine,” Hova says. “I was never going to be a software engineer, ever. I just had no idea that you could do so much with it.”
Now, the Omaha native is senior UX developer at Women Who Code, a global 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers. She and her husband also operate their own business, Hova Labs, whose work runs the gamut from web design to 3D printing. (Recently, Developer Week, a developer & engineering technology conference, gave Hova Labs a “Best in 3D Printing” award for their Hovalin, a playable, 3D-printed violin that can be made with about $70 worth of raw material.)
Kaitlyn Hova is also a neuroscientist and a Berklee-trained violinist who has performed with Rod Stewart, Josh Groban, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Mannheim Steamroller, and multiple rock and indie bands.
In other words she’s pretty much a superhero.
Originally, Hova pursued a career in music. She started performing at thirteen with various big-name artists that came to Omaha, then quickly discovered she could make better money playing weddings. But she faced a major age-related hurdle.
“I found out no one was actually going to hire a violinist who’s thirteen years old to play their special day unless you have a website. A website makes you legitimate. So I started coding around then.”
The gigs started rolling in.
She didn’t realize you could do programming for a living. Coding had always been a means to an end: a website for her music, a customized Myspace page, a database for a college project.
Eventually, after a stint at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, she came to the University of Nebraska at Omaha to study neuroscience.
Hova was born with a neurological condition called synesthesia. Synesthesia involves the crossing of senses. A person with synesthesia might see sounds, taste colors, or hear smells. Like most people with the condition, she didn’t realize she was any different. She thought everyone saw colors when they heard music.
When she found out synesthesia was relatively rare, she wanted to know everything about it. After graduating with her degree in neuroscience, she decided she wanted to research synesthesia more extensively. Unfortunately, many graduate programs in neuroscience did not offer the option to study the condition. It’s hard to find funding for synesthesia research, because many people do not even know they have it. And there was no aggregate database of synesthetes, which made it hard to recruit study participants.
So she built The Synesthesia Network, an educational social network for people with synesthesia, universities that want to study synesthesia, and curious minds who want to learn more about synesthesia. Since then, she has given TED Talks on synesthesia, and developed a synesthesia violin that pairs notes with different colored lights to approximate the type of synesthesia that she experiences.
Developing the Synesthesia Network required learning an unfamiliar coding language.
“I already had all the front-end experience,” Hova says. “I could build it, design it, no problem. But I didn’t know how to work with databases.”
So she took a coding bootcamp to learn Ruby on Rails and build the back-end database behind the Synesthesia Network. This experience helped her realize she preferred to build software and dynamic web apps rather than static websites. She switched careers, moved to San Francisco, and now spends her days coding, dreaming up new ideas, inventing fun projects, being a new mom, and advocating for women in technology.
Hova knows what it feels like to feel excluded from tech. From a young age, she thought of software engineering as a boring dad enterprise, not as a powerful tool to unlock her creativity.
“Girls, myself included, are usually pretty creative,” she says. “You want to solve creative problems. So don’t think of software as ones and zeroes. Think of it as: each coding language and platform you use is like a different tool in your toolbelt to build whatever you want. You can still have that creativity. But coding gives you the tools to build the thing that you want to build. Like, literally anything.”
It might be difficult at first. “But you’ll learn patterns along the way, and it gets easier.”
“It’s kind of like puzzle-solving all day. You’ll get a problem, and you’ll go, okay, how do I solve that? And that’s all you do. It’s fun!”
AIM Institute is building an inclusive tech talent community. From offering tech educational experiences to youth through our Brain Exchange, to helping career changers and tech professionals upgrade their skills via the Interface School, we believe there is a path for everyone in technology.
Growing up, Kaitlyn Hova thought programming sounded extremely dull, thanks to her father, who worked as a software engineer for various credit card companies.
“He worked in an office, and it was just the most boring life I could ever imagine,” Hova says. “I was never going to be a software engineer, ever. I just had no idea that you could do so much with it.”
Now, the Omaha native is senior UX developer at Women Who Code, a global 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers. She and her husband also operate their own business, Hova Labs, whose work runs the gamut from web design to 3D printing. (Recently, Developer Week, a developer & engineering technology conference, gave Hova Labs a “Best in 3D Printing” award for their Hovalin, a playable, 3D-printed violin that can be made with about $70 worth of raw material.)
Kaitlyn Hova is also a neuroscientist and a Berklee-trained violinist who has performed with Rod Stewart, Josh Groban, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Mannheim Steamroller, and multiple rock and indie bands.
In other words she’s pretty much a superhero.
Originally, Hova pursued a career in music. She started performing at thirteen with various big-name artists that came to Omaha, then quickly discovered she could make better money playing weddings. But she faced a major age-related hurdle.
“I found out no one was actually going to hire a violinist who’s thirteen years old to play their special day unless you have a website. A website makes you legitimate. So I started coding around then.”
The gigs started rolling in.
She didn’t realize you could do programming for a living. Coding had always been a means to an end: a website for her music, a customized Myspace page, a database for a college project.
Eventually, after a stint at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, she came to the University of Nebraska at Omaha to study neuroscience.
Hova was born with a neurological condition called synesthesia. Synesthesia involves the crossing of senses. A person with synesthesia might see sounds, taste colors, or hear smells. Like most people with the condition, she didn’t realize she was any different. She thought everyone saw colors when they heard music.
When she found out synesthesia was relatively rare, she wanted to know everything about it. After graduating with her degree in neuroscience, she decided she wanted to research synesthesia more extensively. Unfortunately, many graduate programs in neuroscience did not offer the option to study the condition. It’s hard to find funding for synesthesia research, because many people do not even know they have it. And there was no aggregate database of synesthetes, which made it hard to recruit study participants.
So she built The Synesthesia Network, an educational social network for people with synaesthesia, universities that want to study synesthesia, and curious minds who want to learn more about synesthesia. Since then, she has given TED Talks on synesthesia, and developed a synesthesia violin that pairs notes with different colored lights to approximate the type of synesthesia that she experiences.
Developing the Synesthesia Network required learning an unfamiliar coding language.
“I already had all the front-end experience,” Hova says. “I could build it, design it, no problem. But I didn’t know how to work with databases.”
So she took a coding bootcamp to learn Ruby on Rails and build the back-end database behind the Synesthesia Network. This experience helped her realize she preferred to build software and dynamic web apps rather than static websites. She switched careers, moved to San Francisco, and now spends her days coding, dreaming up new ideas, inventing fun projects, being a new mom, and advocating for women in technology.
Hova knows what it feels like to feel excluded from tech. From a young age, she thought of software engineering as a boring dad enterprise, not as a powerful tool to unlock her creativity.
“Girls, myself included, are usually pretty creative,” she says. “You want to solve creative problems. So don’t think of software as ones and zeroes. Think of it as: each coding language and platform you use is like a different tool in your toolbelt to build whatever you want. You can still have that creativity. But coding gives you the tools to build the thing that you want to build. Like, literally anything.”
It might be difficult at first. “But you’ll learn patterns along the way, and it gets easier.”
“It’s kind of like puzzle-solving all day. You’ll get a problem, and you’ll go, okay, how do I solve that? And that’s all you do. It’s fun!”
AIM Institute is building an inclusive tech talent community. From offering tech educational experiences to youth through our Brain Exchange, to helping career changers and tech professionals upgrade their skills via the Interface School, we believe there is a path for everyone in technology.
From the earliest flutes carved out of bird bone and mammoth tusks 43,000 years ago to the AI composers of today, music has always exploited the latest technology. Keith Rodger thinks about it constantly. As recording engineer at Omaha’s Make Believe Studios—as well as music producer, musician, songwriter, part owner of the Make Believe Recordings label division, and DJ by the name of Kethro—Rodger has mastered multiple forms of technology in his quest to make and record music.
“I’ve always been a huge advocate for technology in music, ever since I was a kid and discovered the synthesizer,” he tells AIM Institute. “I was always like, ‘This is what music is going to be. This is how people are going to think about music and think about making music.’ I just had a feeling these devices are going to be the ones that really motivate people.” He gestures around at hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of beat machines, grooveboxes, synthesizers, compressors, keyboards, consoles, and computers. A tireless love for technology and music have carried him a long way.
“I’m not gonna lie, I grew up extremely poor. My mom could never afford to buy me a $500 synthesizer. Like, it’s just never gonna happen.”
Instead, he underwent a kind of self-education through experimentation via whatever technology he could get his hands on. In junior high, he learned how to program beats and make music on a pirated copy of Fruity Loops software on his family’s PC.
“Our computer was not fast enough to even run it,” Rodger says. “So I could only get like eight tracks of music recorded before the computer would start to glitch out.” He laughs. “But I learned how to sequence, and I learned how to make stuff and print parts (musical notation).”
In high school, his friend would come over when she was done with her homework and let him use her Macbook so he could experiment with Garageband, a popular Digital Audio Workstation, or DAW, for beginners. (A DAW is a complete music production and recording environment. It’s like a digital version of those giant mixing consoles you see in recording studios. DAWs also have built-in synthesizers, samplers, and sequencers for writing and programming music).
Rodger also took a bunch of art classes at Millard North, even though he felt he was bad at art, because the art rooms had Macbooks loaded with Garageband software.
“Real talk: I’d be in art class and literally just pulling up Garageband, and you’d hear tsch-tsch-tsch-tsch.” He simulates the sound of a techno beat and laughs. “The teacher would yell, ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ ‘I’m just trying to make a song!’”
For kids who are inspired to make music, Rodger recommends not waiting to start.
“Just go for it. There’s tons of programs out there. Get whatever is accessible. Don’t wait six months to go get the big thing. Get the cheap little software on the device that you have and master it.”
Garageband is free, for instance. Fruity Loops is available for $13.99 in the App Store. Don’t have an iPhone or iPad, or can’t afford to spend any money? Check out Audacity, a free, open-source DAW that works on Windows, Mac, and Unix-like operating systems, and has been used to record albums by artists such as Tune-Yards.
Now, Rodger works in a multimillion dollar studio every day, recording other artists and making his own music.
“I’m in the process of editing a record right now, so I’ve just been putting on Netflix and Twitch in the background, and I just go to town. I’m pretty far. This song should be done in a few hours.”
He’s also creating his own sample pack of different sounds for artists to patch into their own digital recordings. He enjoys the idea of creating things for people to use. His custom samples are yet another contribution he’ll make to the musical conversation he joined in his youth.
In recent years, he’s also transferred his musical knowledge to the realm of film. He formed his own video production company, Kismet, with some business partners, for instance. And in 2017, he scored “Camp Life,” a documentary on world-famous Omaha native boxer Terence “Bud” Crawford.
“The future of music is going to be heavily influenced by artificial intelligence,” Rodger says. “They’re already making AI programs that can make songs. There’s a college in the UK that was able to make a computer that could improvise jazz music with a live jazz band. You give an AI program ten years of learning music, and then you pit it against an orchestra, it could probably play something more complicated than humans could ever comprehend.”
Rodger believes humans will use AI programs to create new types of jobs. He envisions a world where AI programs write pop and commercial music, and collaborate with humans on shaping new sounds. AI may even play the role of a recording engineer by helping humans record, mix, and master music: some of the main roles Rodger is paid for. “Right now, working in the studio industry, it’s quite scary. Jump on board now or be lost at sea forever.”
Rather than burying their head in the sand, though, Rodger and Make Believe Studios want to join the AI revolution. “We embrace it all, full-steam ahead. To have a virtual Make Believe would be tight.”
Over time, Keith says, as more people hear the Make Believe sound on artists’ songs, Make Believe could sell an AI version of itself to musicians and producers who want that sound. “You could come here and make your record, or you could have virtual Rick Carson (Make Believe founder) make your record.”
Rodger offers a possible scenario where AI would benefit his creative process. “If I’m sitting at the piano trying to record something, and I got Keith number 2 in here, I can be like, ‘Hey, let’s patch this in and add a little bit of EQ (audio equalization); I want it to kind of shimmer.’ And the AI just does it to my liking because it understands my moves.”
AI will also prove instrumental to music education, he adds.
“It’s going to help people understand music in a whole different way. Like children learning how to make music for the first time. Nowadays, if you can’t afford a teacher, you can go on Youtube. But in the future, it’s gonna be so personal to where you feel like someone’s there with you.”
Editor’s note: an earlier version of this article mistakenly listed Keith Rodger as co-owner of Make Believe Studios. He is, in fact, a part owner of the Make Believe Recordings label division.
From early flutes carved of bird bone and mammoth tusks 43,000 years ago to the AI composers of today, music has always exploited the latest technology. Keith Rodger thinks about it constantly. As recording engineer at Omaha’s Make Believe Studios—as well as music producer, musician, songwriter, part owner of the Make Believe Recordings label division and DJ by the name of Kethro—Rodger has mastered a variety of tech in his quest to capture music.
“I’ve always been a huge advocate for technology in music, ever since I was a kid and discovered the synthesizer,” he says. “I was always like, ‘This is what music is going to be. This is how people are going to think about music and think about making music.’ I just had a feeling these devices are going to be the ones that really motivate people.” He gestures around at hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of beat machines, grooveboxes, synthesizers, compressors, keyboards, consoles, and computers. A tireless love for technology and music have carried him a long way.
“I’m not gonna lie, I grew up extremely poor. My mom could never afford to buy me a $500 synthesizer. Like, it’s just never gonna happen,” Rodger recalls.
Instead, he underwent a kind of self-education through experimentation via whatever technology he could get his hands on. In junior high, he learned how to program beats and make music on a pirated copy of Fruity Loops software on his family’s PC.
“Our computer was not fast enough to even run it,” Rodger says. “So I could only get like eight tracks of music recorded before the computer would start to glitch out.” He laughs. “But I learned how to sequence, and I learned how to make stuff and print parts (musical notation).”
In high school, his friend would come over when she was done with her homework and let him use her Macbook so he could experiment with Garageband, a popular Digital Audio Workstation, or DAW, for beginners. (A DAW is a complete music production and recording environment. It’s like a digital version of those giant mixing consoles you see in recording studios. DAWs also have built-in synthesizers, samplers, and sequencers for writing and programming music).
Rodger also took a bunch of art classes at Millard North, even though he felt he was bad at art, because the art rooms had Macbooks loaded with Garageband software.
“Real talk: I’d be in art class and literally just pulling up Garageband, and you’d hear tsch-tsch-tsch-tsch.” He simulates the sound of a techno beat and laughs. “The teacher would yell, ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ ‘I’m just trying to make a song!’”
For kids who are inspired to make music, Rodger recommends not waiting to start.
“Just go for it. There’s tons of programs out there. Get whatever is accessible. Don’t wait six months to go get the big thing. Get the cheap little software on the device that you have and master it.”
Garageband is free, for instance. Fruity Loops is available for $13.99 in the App Store. Don’t have an iPhone or iPad, or can’t afford to spend any money? Check out Audacity, a free, open-source DAW that works on Windows, Mac, and Unix-like operating systems, and has been used to record albums by artists such as Tune-Yards.
Now, Rodger works in a multimillion dollar studio every day, recording other artists and making his own music.
“I’m in the process of editing a record right now, so I’ve just been putting on Netflix and Twitch in the background, and I just go to town. I’m pretty far. This song should be done in a few hours.”
He’s also creating his own sample pack of different sounds for artists to patch into their own digital recordings. He enjoys the idea of creating things for people to use. His custom samples are yet another contribution he’ll make to the musical conversation he joined in his youth.
In recent years, he’s also transferred his musical knowledge to the realm of film. He formed his own video production company, Kismet, with some business partners, for instance. And in 2017, he scored “Camp Life,” a documentary on world-famous Omaha native boxer Terence “Bud” Crawford.
“The future of music is going to be heavily influenced by artificial intelligence,” Rodger says. “They’re already making AI programs that can make songs. There’s a college in the UK that was able to make a computer that could improvise jazz music with a live jazz band. You give an AI program ten years of learning music, and then you pit it against an orchestra, it could probably play something more complicated than humans could ever comprehend.”
Rodger believes humans will use AI programs to create new types of jobs. He envisions a world where AI programs write pop and commercial music, and collaborate with humans on shaping new sounds. AI may even play the role of a recording engineer by helping humans record, mix, and master music: some of the main roles Rodger is paid for. “Right now, working in the studio industry, it’s quite scary. Jump on board now or be lost at sea forever.”
Rather than burying their head in the sand, though, Rodger and Make Believe Studios want to join the AI revolution. “We embrace it all, full-steam ahead. To have a virtual Make Believe would be tight.”
Over time, Keith says, as more people hear the Make Believe sound on artists’ songs, Make Believe could sell an AI version of itself to musicians and producers who want that sound. “You could come here and make your record, or you could have virtual Rick Carson (Make Believe founder) make your record.”
Rodger offers a possible scenario where AI would benefit his creative process. “If I’m sitting at the piano trying to record something, and I got Keith number 2 in here, I can be like, ‘Hey, let’s patch this in and add a little bit of EQ (audio equalization); I want it to kind of shimmer.’ And the AI just does it to my liking because it understands my moves.”
AI will also prove instrumental to music education, he adds.
“It’s going to help people understand music in a whole different way. Like children learning how to make music for the first time. Nowadays, if you can’t afford a teacher, you can go on Youtube. But in the future, it’s gonna be so personal to where you feel like someone’s there with you.”
Editor’s note: an earlier version of this article mistakenly listed Keith Rodger as co-owner of Make Believe Studios. He is, in fact, a part owner of the Make Believe Recordings label division.
