IT fair

I recently attended an IT fair for Milwaukee area highschool students. It was hosted at Harley Davidson which was a very neat location, if you have never been there I highly recommend checking it out. I didn't know what to expect going into this event, but it was very cool for a tech geek like me. The first thing I saw when walking into the convention hall was people demoing an Oculus Rift this was very exciting to me, I love trying out new technology so I gladly waited in the short line.

I was impressed with the rift, I had only been there for fifteen minutes and it was easily already worth the trip. Next the superintendent of MPS (Milwaukee Public Schools) gave a small speech talking about all the great jobs in the IT field and how the country desperately needs more IT professionals. The crowd of high-school students seemed genuinely interested which I found refreshing compared to how MPS students get portrayed in local media. After she was done with her spiel I made my rounds to the different schools and businesses that had tables set up. All in all it was a fairly impressive plethora of educators and IT professionals. I made a point to chat with the MATC table being a current student enrolled in their IT program. I got some cool swag from a few tables, the basic things you would expect if you have ever been to a similar event. I have to say out of everything there the robotics table was the biggest draw for me. Not only was it an impressive setup with real functioning robots and labtops set up showing videos from the schools most recent robot competition

But the student manning the table had a real passion for robotics. It was nice to see his eyes light up when talking about the robotics club. I failed to catch his name but I have no doubt he will be very successful in a future IT career. After checking out the robotics table there wasn't much left for me, I stoped by the UWM table but honestly they didn't have much more then some paperwork to show. All in all it was a very cool and unique experience I'm glad I was able to attend.

That is pretty much it for my coverage of this event. Check back soon to see what the inspector has up his sleeves for the next blog post. Untill then stay curious, life is truly fasinating and I dont need an Oculus Rift to see that.

Cyber Scouts and Raspberry PI

I have been involved in a small cyber scout troop for the past year. The aim of this blog post is to explain just what exactly cyber scouts is, and to show a few of the projects we have been working on. Cyber Scouts is a grass roots organization riding the makers popularity wave. Its basically a computer club for kids to teach them about technology today. I am involved with a small troop based out of Franklin. Its a mainly family group consisting of my father, a couple cousins, my nephew a few of their friends and myself.

The inaugural meeting started with everyone receiving a Raspberry PI which if your not familiar is "The Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit-card sized computer that plugs into a computer monitor or TV, and uses a standard keyboard and mouse. It is a capable little device that enables people of all ages to explore computing, and to learn how to program in languages like Scratch and Python. It’s capable of doing everything you’d expect a desktop computer to do, from browsing the internet and playing high-definition video, to making spreadsheets, word-processing, and playing games." ~www.raspberrypi.org.

Over the past year we have done alot with the PI teaching the kids and sometimes myself different aspects of computing. Not all meetings were incredibly tech heavy however, one of my favorite meetings was when we busted out the leggos and had some of our scouts make cases for their PI's

Another project we brought to fruition was creating a minecraft server for the kids to play with each other on. For this we used Digital Ocean which I highly recommend to anyone looking to build a low cost cloud server. Another project we worked on was creating tech fashion, in this case wiring up a hat with programmable  LED lights with literally thousands of different color and pulse choices.

I hope now that you have seen a little of what we've done in the last year you might be inspired to create your own chapter, or event just buy a PI they are only $35 and the possibilities are endless with these wonderful little machines. As we continue to do more projects in the future I plan to blog about them, untill then I'm the Inspector and I'm signing off.

Career Minded Immersion. "It’s easier to live it then learn it"

Welcome back techies thanks for stopping by. Today I'll give you my thoughts on the best way to get and stay ahead in this industry. Everyone knows that that technology advances and changes very quickly these days. That means that the IT field has continuously changing needs and practices. Unlike many careers which tend to have a learning cap where once you reach a certain understanding or accreditation you will be able to perform your job till retirement rarely needing to learn new things or master new skills. Now I know it may sound daunting at first to choose a career where you have to continuously learn and experiment with new tech to stay a relevant and needed part of your professional ecosystem. Don't panic though I’ll let you in a little secret I’ve found makes that makes things a lot easier. "It’s easier to live it then learn it".

What I mean by this is that its far easier to learn about everything going on by constantly reading tech blogs, listing to tech podcasts, and staying up on what is trending tech news on social media then it is to wait till you are forced to use a new technology you know nothing about. That’s my tip, try and stay informed on all emerging technologies by immersing yourself into the tech community. That way no matter what way or trend the industry goes you will just naturally grow with it simultaneously. I feel this is much more natural and practical then waiting to see what your changes your company implements as they grow, and then playing catch up as you try to learn everything all at once about a technology that you could have been hearing about months before it was released. There’s so many things I know about only because its background noise in my day to day life. As I sit writing this right now event though I'm focused on this post I'm half listing to the guys on a technology podcast discuss rumors about the apple car. I have never been an apple user and most likely never will be. I'm far more interested in googles attempt at a self-driving car (and everything else for that matter), but that doesn't matter. The point I’m getting at is I now know enough about apples car to hold a conservation with another informed person on the subject. If someday my company decided to use a fleet of apple cars and they wanted me to train everyone on how to use them. I would already know all sorts of things about this technology I'm not event very interested in, all because I stay immersed in technology news and media. This gives me a clear advantage over someone else who needs to learn everything from the ground up on this new technology.

Once you decide to dedicate your free time to following technology news and trends it really starts to build on itself. If you’re thinking this sounds like a smart approach but you’re apprehensive because there’s so much out there it’s overwhelming or confusing I’ll make some suggestions. Stop listing to the radio and turn on some podcasts as your background noise. There are so many quality podcasts out there ranging every topic related to info technology, I highly recommend giving some of the twit (this week in tech) podcasts a listen. Twit has many different casts and are all very informative.  Ditch Facebook guilty pleasures for interesting tech news. We all do it, waste small parts of downtime looking at the same recycled posts on Facebook day after day. Why not use that same time to better yourself by keeping up on trending technology news on social media. That way in this quickly changing world you will always be up on the next big thing. Lastly talk to people about what you hear and read. The more you talk to different people about the things you’re learning from all your new exposure to the tech world the more you will learn. At first it may be hard to find people with shared interests but technology is everywhere it affects every aspect of our lives and is becoming a more popular and mainstream subject every day. I’ve found once you do find people who share a passion for technology it becomes the favorite and go to subject every time you meet.  Even though I am still on the road to my career in the IT field I have already recognized and began to implement this idea of career minded information technology Immersion.

Why I am at MATC

Hello, welcome to my technology blog. This is my first blog post so I'll give you a little background on myself. My name is Jon I'm a 27 year old technology enthusiast. I have been intrigued and fascinated by computer technology ever since I can remember. I attribute my interest and fluency for technology in a large part to my father, he was an early adapter of the early 90's technology boom and had both me and my brother playing with primitive computers since we could walk.  For most of my life computers were mainly a source of information, form of recreation, and conduit for media.

After high school I became a commercial telecom technician, it played in well with my love of technology, while at the same time taught me other disciplines. I really enjoyed creating infrastructure, installing and maintaining data communications technology. The more I worked in the industry the more IT professionals I met and worked side by side with. It was in these experiences that I started to realize I wanted to be on the other side of the IT workforce. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy getting my hands dirty and using power tools (I did) and it wasn't that I wasn't good at my job (I was very good) but more that the soft side of IT seemed more interesting and challenging to me. After I having this epiphany my mind was made up, the only question remaining was how exactly to best go about getting the career I want.

It's common knowledge one of the best ways to break into the career you desire is to go to school get proper training, and a certification or diploma. I knew this was the logical and most practical method so I decided to go to school to get some IT credentials. Picking MATC was an easy and obvious choice for me. MATC is very affordable compared to every other IT program I looked into in the area, which combined with the fact I live less than a mile from west campus and have heard nothing but positive feedback from former students decided it. With that decided I signed up for their IT support specialist program and haven't looked back. This is my first blog post, but the first of many. I hope you enjoyed it and will maybe follow this blog and watch my progress as I continue my education to achieve my professional goals.