MKE TECH News
Issue 17 - March 06, 2020     
SPOTLIGHT
Next MKE Tech Hub Community Meetup on April 16!

Be sure to register here f or the next tech hub community meetup to find out what’s happening with the local tech scene. You’ll also have a chance to catch up with colleagues on the latest tech news. 
 
Where: Northwestern Mutual, 805 E. Mason St., Milwaukee, WI
When:   8:30-11 a.m. Doors open 8:00 a.m.

Take advantage of these opportunities to get involved:


  • During the meeting, we hope to highlight some existing programs focused on upskilling adults on tech. If you have a program you'd like to present, please email a brief description of it along with any results and how you plan to scale to contact@mketech.org by noon, March 25. Slots/slides are limited to five each (five minutes/five slides) or less and will be awarded on a first-come, first-serve basis, so don’t delay!

  • If you’d like to share information on a tech-related initiative or something you’re working on that’s tech-related, you can highlight it during the Open Mic segment at the end of the meeting, time permitting. It’s a raise-your-hand format open to all attendees, no slides and generally no more than 2-3 minutes per person/topic. Be sure to cover why people should know about your topic and/or what you want them to do as well a contact for more information.
And the Winners Are.....

Early results are in for Milwaukee's second annual all-women and non-binary individual hackathon, Hack-a-Pipeline. This innovative, inclusive, diverse and inspiring event garnered an overwhelmingly positive response from participants who continue to ask for additional events. Over 125 individuals from Baltimore, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin attended throughout the weekend where 16 ideas were pitched. Winners included:
  • 1st Place: Four-Ever-Yung (same day beauty solution app) 
  • 2nd Place: Oppo (wellness tracking for foster children 5-10 years old)
  • 3rd Place: Vote MKE (voting information matrix and stances on candidates all in one location)
WHAT'S NEW?
Business + Technology Academy Opening Soon .

New Horizons of Wisconsin is launching the Business + Technology Academy with the sole mission of making tech jobs accessible to everyone, regardless of their economic situation or education. The program provides professional, certified technology training to underserved populations, including individuals in the Food Share program, with a goal of readying them for fast and successful entry into today’s hottest job market. Participants will learn in-demand IT skills from companies such as Microsoft, CompTIA and others to prepare them for tech-focused careers. Each curriculum is designed around a specific person’s goals and experience levels and directly tied to real jobs. Live, instructor-led classes run weekly, so students can quickly engage in their chosen career path. The only admission requirements are a desire to learn and a willingness to work towards completing certification. 

“This is opening up a whole new source of talent to fill the thousands of technology jobs that remain unfilled due to the lack of skilled labor,” said Pat Riley, New Horizons President. “New Horizons is proud to have developed these 25 different innovative and accessible training programs, focused on practical IT skills that will help get our underserved communities working in the hottest job markets within weeks, not semesters, of starting. They can earn industry-recognized 3 rd party certifications along with gaining soft skills that will help them both get the job and excel at it once they are there. We are here to change lives.”

Check out an example program or contact Pat Riley directly for more information. 
GET INVOLVED
Tech company recruiting research opportunity . The MKE Tech Hub Coalition team working on how to best recruit tech companies to the region would like to research how other cities created tech/innovation centers in conjunction with local universities. The goal is to identify success factors and compare them to the Milwaukee ecosystem to determine potential focus areas for moving forward. If anyone is interested in volunteering to help with this, please email contact@mketech.org .
The TEALS (Technology Education and Literacy in Schools) Program is a partnership funded by Microsoft Philanthropies that pairs industry professionals with classroom teachers to help students learn the fundamental concepts of computer science.  
Please join us for the TEALS & Technology Careers Roundtable on March 26 at the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) to learn how TEALS has been doing this successfully across the United States and British Columbia, and how you can support TEALS and other technology career initiatives.  Registration is free.
NCWIT Wisconsin Aspirations in Computing Awards call for sponsors! On May 3, the Wisconsin affiliate for the National Center for Women in Information Technology (NCWIT) will honor two outstanding K-12 educators for demonstrating a passion for diversity, equity and inclusion in computer science education and 98 aspiring female high school technologists. Thank you to everyone in the MKE Tech Hub community who volunteered this year to support our collective efforts across the state to increase the number of women in computing and related disciplines. Don’t miss this chance to secure a sponsorship for the event - deadline for ad copy is March 31. For more information, contact Laura Schmidt .

Here’ s a quick preview of the event:
  • Keynote: Janet Schalk, EVP and CIO of Direct Supply
  • Panel: Focused on prior winners and their work with Aspire IT K12 workshops (peer mentoring)
  • Academic Alliance Fair: Featuring 14 higher education partners from across the state (including the Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute)
  • Attendance: Projected at 400, by invite only
  • Venue: MSOE Kern Center, Milwaukee
  • Networking: Occurs before and after the ceremony with light refreshments. Includes industry mentors at every table to talk with girls and their influencers.
Women’s Entrepreneurship Week is returning the week of May 11-16! The goal of the event is to spark business and economic growth by showcasing, educating and connecting women entrepreneurs and professionals. It’s the perfect setting for attendees to grow their networks, learn something new and be part of a community for change.

Show your support for women entrepreneurs and drive collaboration across Milwaukee by sponsoring the week. As a sponsor, you’ll gain valuable exposure to female decision-makers across southeastern Wisconsin and help us keep the event FREE for attendees, so more local women can participate. There are a variety of sponsorship levels and customizable options available. Interested in hosting an event?   Apply here today to beat the deadline. Interested in sponsorship? Contact us at  info@wewmke.com   or 262-227-7684.
Coalition Membership Drive - March madness is here! T he Coalition is launching a Community Member drive this month! As a Community Member, you’ll have the opportunity to run or elect another Community Member to fill a seat on the Coalition Board. Plus, you’ll be able to lead tech advancement for the region through participation on advisory teams. Additional Community Member benefits, including a members-only portal, are slated to roll out later in the year.

You can join at the Community level for a minimum commitment of only $500 per year for 2 years. Be on the lookout for more details or contact@mketech.org for more information.
TALENT
Employ Milwaukee just graduated our 8 th TechHire cohort of students through our IT Service Center Technician program! Half have landed in a position and the other half are still looking for opportunities. If you are looking to hire entry level talent, reach out to James Haley today - no cost to you to match candidates to your open IT positions! 
STARTUPS
The P5 PowHer Pitch Competition is one-of-a-kind opportunity for female founders to pitch your start-up live to a celebrity judge panel in front of over 1,000 female business and community leaders at the P5 Women’s Summit . Submit your business for this unique pitch competition and a chance to win:
- Over $10,000 in cash and prizes
- Discounted P5 Women’s Summit tickets
- Exclusive VIP opportunities at the Summit

Visit the website for more information and to sign up – application deadline is April 17. To learn more about the P5 Summit, watch this short video .
EDUCATION
Beyond STEM MKE’s 2020 application for its Spring Saturday Series is now available. Starting on April 4, the series will explore four different engineering disciplines through hands-on projects and competitions for middle schoolers.
Register today - applications close March 22.
 
The  Code for Milwaukee Student Internship Program runs the first week of March through May 7. A civic technology non-profit, Code for Milwaukee builds out projects that serve the greater Milwaukee community and beyond with a mission of enhancing the delivery of public services to improve the lives of Milwaukeeans. The internship is designed to introduce students to civic tech and empower young people to feel like tech is accessible to them. More details can be found here .
EVENTS
Global Maxima Series
The greater Milwaukee area tech community is invited to explore how deep neural networks can be trained to “see” and solve a variety of problems in computer vision. Join us at MSOE for the presentation on March 11. Networking reception to follow.

Wisconsin Tech Summit
The annual event brings together major companies and emerging firms in a setting designed to meet and explore likely business relationships around technology needs and innovation. You’ll find more details about the March 16 session on the website .

Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium
Connect with highly-skilled students in computer disciplines at MICS on April 3-4 in Milwaukee. This is a great chance to meet and interact with associate, undergraduate and graduate computer sciences’ students from across the Midwest! Join as an attendee, engage in the career fair, or raise your impact as a conference sponsor. In addition to the career fair, activities include technical paper sessions, deep learning workshop, programming and robotics contests and keynote speaker Jonathan Betz of NVIDIA . For more information, please contact mics2020@micsymposium.org.

Annual First Look Forum
Don’t miss the annual Quick Pitch Event on April 8 where six university innovators showcase their technologies. Come find out what technologies are brewing in Milwaukee! 

Wisconsin IT Symposium
Register today to participate in the region’s single-day event on April 15 designed for the IT executive community. The symposium provides an opportunity to gather for a day of networking, collaboration and knowledge-transfer through peer-led keynotes, breakouts, panels and networking sessions. 

5 LAKES Front 
You're in luck! The front end developer conference in the Great Lakes region is coming to Milwaukee on May 15. The day will feature over 22 technical talks on topics such as Javascript Frameworks, Web Accessibility, UX/UI design, Web Styling and more! For more details, check out the website.

TECH NEWS
Be sure to share these stories and successes in your social networks, including #MKEtech, and please email contact@mketech.org with any ideas for feature stories you’d like to see highlighted in the future.

The platform populates founders on one side, and investors on the other, creating an introduction for parties that otherwise may not have connected.
New York-based Genesis10 is launching its Dev10 software developer training program in Milwaukee and will collaborate with the MKE Tech Hub Coalition on producing more developers in the metro area. One of the main purposes of the Tech Hub Coalition is to double the number of tech workers in the metropolitan area from roughly 76,000 today to 150,000 by 2025.

During his sixth annual Presidential Address, Marquette University President Michael R. Lovell announced that the university will build a new home for the College of Business Administration and innovation leadership programs at the corner of 16th Street and Wisconsin Avenue, the former site of McCormick Hall, which was demolished last fall.

If you post about this year's elections on a blog or on social media like Facebook, you may wind up being a tiny part of a new Milwaukee-based study. Researchers at UWM and Marquette University hope to use data science to learn more about voter priorities.

Organizers of the Summerfest music festival are adding new programming to its annual technology showcase, which preludes the weeks-long concert series.

CONNECTING THE TECH COMMUNITY
If you have opportunities to get involved in tech, tech resources, news articles or story ideas you’d like to share with the tech community on MKEtech.org , please reach out to: contact@mketech.org .
Be sure to let us know if there’s anyone we should add to our newsletter distribution list . Simply drop an email with name(s)/email address(es) to contact@mketech.org .  
Remember to stay connected with the MKE tech community through MKEtech.org or #MKEtech.