Tag: #mketech

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STEAM & DREAM

STEAM & DREAM Week 1: Learning to Code

After School Coding for Kids | Year Round Classes & Camps- iCode

This week we will be learning about the fundamentals of computer programming. In this lesson you’ll understand how computers understand you! An algorithm is a detailed, step-by-step process followed in order to accomplish a specific task or to solve a specific problem. Computer algorithms can appear complex, but the underlying concept is approachable for both adults and kids. In this weeks lesson you’ll also learn about for loops. Loops allow programmers to easily repeat code; in particular, for loops let programmers repeat code a specific number of times. Click the button “Start Week 1” to start the lesson.

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“Once you see it, you believe that you can do it too”

El-Amins are living their passion by helping others succeed

Milwaukee natives, Que and Khalif El-Amin are the founders of Young Enterprising Society (YES) and The Blueprint. The brothers have been inspired by their father who’s an entrepreneur, their mother, and their entire family full of dynamic talent and knowledge. 

“A lot of my inspiration was my father, he’s been an entrepreneur for over 30 years now. Seeing him and how he was able to give other people opportunity, and not just for himself, has always been inspiration.”

—Que El-Amin

After attending college and living in various cities across the U.S., the brothers returned to Milwaukee. The El-Amins started YES after realizing they could use their wide network and resources to help the city. A lot of their business was built around connecting. In the beginning they hosted a large party at a local venue and got people together from all areas of Milwaukee, of all races and backgrounds. The brothers were able to show a unified front by bringing together a diverse group of people.

The mission of YES is to be an international epicenter for financially, politically, and socially progressive individuals. Serving as a hub, YES mobilizes people, information, resources and capital for the greater good of its members and society at large.

YES presents Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Math programming to students in an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach that shows children young working examples of people that generate income from these fields. The goal of the Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Math, program is produce students who are trained in entrepreneurial skills based in STEAM that allow them to be successful in industry or college upon completion.

“Big businesses aren’t going to bring back the jobs that we saw in the past, so we have to create our own opportunities.”

—Que El-Amin

YES started the business accelerator known as “The Blueprint” after noticing the lack of African Americans and people of color at a local tech event. The Blueprint helps to develop a rich entrepreneurial ecosystem in the areas of technology, eCommerce, and advanced manufacturing. The Blueprint program provides entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to start and scale in Wisconsin with tools for sustainable business models that will help them be successful. The focus of YES is to continue to grow businesses, and grow entrepreneurs in the city of Milwaukee, and wherever they grow and continue to grow.

“When you have different types of people, they have more insights, more thoughts, and the more diverse thoughts you have, the better a product is going to be. From a business perspective, you need diverse thought, because they produce better products.” 

—Que El-Amin

YES is contributing to The Milky Way Tech Hub Initiative by building an inclusive ecosystem in Milwaukee. They’re giving businesses opportunity, providing them with resources to be successful, and motivating them—seeing somebody else be successful inspires others to believe they can be too. They also believe that collaboration is the key to making Milwaukee be the home of tech diversity across the country—by breaking down silos, working together, and using our strengths and weaknesses to have a direct effort, we can help ensure we’re not recreating the wheel or making the same mistakes. 

“We don’t want to have 1,000 tech organizations and still not be a tech hub. We need to make sure we’re working with each other, not against each other.” 

—Que El-Amin

Get involved

YES believes in developing strong alliances that strengthen communities. You can get involved by visiting the YES website at followtheyes.com/

YES also has many free resources—courses on STEAM, resources for free software, digital libraries, and scholarships. Visit YoungEsociety.com to learn more.

Additionally, you can join YES on Sunday, June 30, as they welcome Sheena Allen as their special guest for Demo Day.  They will have 12 businesses pitching their newly formed ideas as part of The Blueprint Cultivator.

“Give back as much as you can. Bring other people up with you”

—Que El-Amin
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A Month of Panels in The Milky Way!

Panels, Panels, and more Panels!

This month I had the opportunity to moderate and speak on several panels. I picked up some amazing gems along the way that I had to share!

Toward the beginning of the month I had the pleasure of being on a panel hosted by Northwestern Mutual’s African American Employee Resource Group!  It was such an honor to sit along side amazing women to discuss  navigating tech careers and sharing the importance of representation in tech! I was super thrilled to be sitting next to Keisha Howard founder of Sugar gamers. She’s a true gem ! 

Key takeaways from this panel: 

  • Communities that want to help address the racial and gender disparities in STEM fields should commit to giving time, money and resources.
  • When exploring career paths— educate yourself as much as possible on the industry and all it has to offer.
  • Technology is democratizing entrepreneurship.— Create what you want!

This month I also moderated a panel for Northwestern Mutuals Girls in Tech day!  This panel was geared toward young girls in middle school! We talked about the power of standing out! Knowing that these brilliant young women are interested in a career in STEM gives me hope for the future! 

Key takeaways: 

  • Leverage what makes you unique.
  • Ask questions early and often.
  • YouTube University is a great way to pick up a new skill!
  • It’s possible to be artsy/creative and have a passion for STEM at the same time!

Lastly, yesterday I sat on a panel hosted by Panther Hacks. Again, it was an incredible honor to sit alongside amazing leaders in Milwaukee. We had a candid conversation about Milwaukee’s entrepreneurial capabilities and the need to address Milwaukee’s segregation issues in order to ensure Milwaukee reaches its full potential. 

Key take aways:

  • Take risks!
  • It’s better to fail big than to fail small because of the level of learning along the way.
  • Don’t allow people to project their limitations on you! 
  • Never underestimate your ability to make change!
  • Keep a solid support system.. but believe in yourself enough to fly solo if you have to. 

I ‘m grateful for the community leaders in the city that made all of these amazing events possible. I especially am grateful for the amazing folks at Northwestern Mutual that continue pour their time and resources into the community to empower Milwaukee’s tech hub!

Good stuff!

Check out my new podcast – https://anchor.fm/downtomarsmke

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DeepVariant: Genomics Meet Deep Learning

Collage of DNA images and people

Yesterday I attended a talk on deep learning and genomics by Pi-Chauan Chang, a software engineer at Google.  Pi-Chauan gave a high level overview of deep learning and how her team formulates a problem in genomics to successfully apply deep learning techniques. She also discussed DeepVariant – a software built by Google to enable community efforts to progress genomic sequencing.

What is deep learning?:

Deep Learning is a subfield of machine learning concerned with algorithms inspired by the structure and function of the brain called artificial neural networks.

Deep learning is playing a huge role in advancements in genomic research such as high processing of sequencing techniques.  This information era where we continue to be presented with an outpouring of data has truly began to challenge conventional methods used in genomics. While deep learning has succeeded in a variety of fields such as vision, speech, and text processing it is now presented with the unique challenge of helping us to explore beyond our current knowledge to interpret the genome.

Pi-Chauan Chang shared that genome sequencing is a core technology in biology.. It allows us to ask how can we personalize medicine  based on genome?

What is a Genome?:

A genome is an organism’s complete set of genetic instructions. Each genome contains all of the information needed to build that organism and allow it to grow and develop.

There are 23 chromosome we inherent from our parents.

Most of our DNA is similar.. 99.9% of our DNA are the same– this makes us human..

Its the .1 pecent that makes us unique. 

The Human Genome Project was a milestone of genome sequencing . This was the massive international collaboration to map the complete human genome. This project outputted a  genome dictionary ~ 3.2 million characters.

A decade ago it was expensive to sequence people..now it cost ~$1000 to sequence an individual. This creates much opportunity for precision medicine.

There is, however, a trade off.

The new sequencing technology has errors! From blood draw computational biologists get raw data(characters of ACTG) which are really short snippets of  the whole genome.. much like puzzle pieces. They try to map the puzzle pieces but are faced having to find the variants.

Variant calling:

Variant calling is the process by which we identify variants from sequence data.

Typically variant calling consist of a three step process:

  1. Carry out whole genome or whole exome sequencing to create FASTQ files.
  2. Align the sequences to a reference genome, creating BAM or CRAM files.
  3. Identify where the aligned reads differ from the reference genome and write to a VCF file.
A CRAM file aligned to a reference genomic region as visualised in Ensembl. Differences are highlighted in red in the reads, and will be called as variants.

The audience was informed that it is pretty common that computational biologists regularly inspect genomic data..

The question at hand is can we teach machines to perform the same task? Can we teach a machine to detect the variants?

This is where deep learning steps in.

DeepVariant

DeepVariant is a deep learning technology to reconstruct the true genome sequence from HTS(high-throughput sequencing)  sequencer data with significantly greater accuracy than previous classical methods. DeepVariant transforms the task of variant calling, as this reconstruction problem is known in genomics, into an image classification problem well-suited to Google’s existing technology and expertise.

DeepVariant is now an open source software to encourage collaboration and to accelerate the use of this technology to solve real world problems!

https://github.com/google/deepvariant

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Grace Hopper PitcHer Contest -2018

IMG_2935

Yesterday I attended Grace Hopper’s inaugural PitcHer contest.  The goal of this pitch competition is to support, encourage, and provide new funding opportunities to women entrepreneurs. The top ten finalist competed for a grand total of $65,000.  I was elated to find that the first place prize went to my personal favorite, Shakeia Kegler.  Her business idea accompanied by her amazing stage presence sealed the deal! After chatting with her at the end of the event it was clear that she is a brilliant and down to earth woman with much to offer to the startup community. I was lucky enough to get a selfie with her at the end of the event! I’d love to invite her to Startup Milwaukee Week this year or next! Below are bios/business summaries of the winners.

 Shakeia Kegler – First Place!

Shakeia Kegler

Shakeia Kegler is from Saint Petersburg, Florida, and is the eldest of five girls. After graduating from high school in 2011, she joined the U.S. Navy. While enlisted, she gained experience in purchasing, compliance, and quality assurance while earning a bachelor’s degree in business management and her Lean Six Sigma Certifications.

After her honorable discharge, Shakeia worked as a compliance and contract specialist in the government, contracting department of a pharmaceutical company. Her experience in both the Navy and government led her to found GovLia in 2017. GovLia is a cloud-based platform that simplifies state and local government procurement processes to help increase small business participation in order to foster economic opportunity and growth for diverse companies and communities.

Hannah Meyer – Second Place

Hannah Meyer

As COO of Pie for Providers, Hannah builds tools that aim to measurably and significantly strengthen small childcare businesses and empower the entrepreneurs that operate them. She is committed to not only building a profitable and scalable business, but doing so in a way that leads to better outcomes for women business owners, parents, children, and their communities.

Hannah holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and was awarded the Tarrson Fellowship for social entrepreneurs by the University of Chicago. She was also a Summer Associate at Ashoka in the Social Financial Services Department. Prior to coming to the University of Chicago, Hannah earned an MPPA from Northwestern University.

Charu Sharma – Third Place

Charu Sharma

Charu Sharma is the Founder & CEO of NextPlay.ai. While working at LinkedIn, Charu started a mentorship program for women at the company as a passion project. This eventually inspired her to start NextPlay and to create meaningful mentorship relationships, especially for women and underrepresented minorities. NextPlay’s investors and advisors include 500 Startups, LinkedIn’s SVP Engineering, Techcrunch’s former CEO, and Microsoft’s former Chief Design Officer.

Companies like Square, Lyft, Asurion, and Splunk use the NextPlay mobile app to build sticky and measurable mentorship programs. After six months of using NextPlay’s app, mentees felt that their preparedness to achieve their goals at their companies had doubled, and mentors reported that they significantly developed their critical leadership and coaching skills. Collectively, the number of employees who strongly recommended working for their companies increased by 25%.

Charu previously built two startups. She has educated one million women on how to start their own businesses through her nonprofit, books, and documentary film “Go Against the Flow.”

Samantha J. Letscher – Audience Favorite

Sam Letcher

Sam Letscher is the Co-founder and CEO of Bossy, a platform that connects feminist consumers with women-owned businesses to drive revenue to women entrepreneurs. She launched Bossy in Chicago in the spring of 2017 while pursuing her bachelor’ degree in Integrated Engineering Studies at Northwestern University.

Sam is inspired by products, services, experiences, brands, and workplaces built by women, for women, and from which women profit. She is now a recent college graduate with a bachelor’s degree in human-centered design and entrepreneurship.

Sam lives in Chicago where she is building and bootstrapping Bossy while working part-time in local politics. She strives to always stay curious and optimistic.

https://ghc.anitab.org/2018-pitcher/2018-finalists/

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Don't Just Consume Technology.. Produce it.

Its important to not only be consumers of technology but producers as well.

“A new study released Friday sheds light on this issue. The State of Black America 2018, a report published annually by the National Urban League, compares how black and white people fare in a number of areas, including housing, economics, education, social justice, and civic engagement.

This year’s report pays particular attention to black Americans’ access to jobs in the tech industry and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. The study reveals that while black people are one of the racial groups most likely to use smartphones and have created thriving communities on platforms like Twitter, those high rates of usage haven’t translated into employment.”

https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/5/4/17318522/state-of-black-america-2018-national-urban-league-silicon-valley-race