MKE TECH News
Issue 15 - January 15, 2020     
SPOTLIGHT
Don't Miss the MKE Tech Hub Community Meetup on January 28!

If you haven’t already, register today to stay on top of what’s happening in MKE Tech and connect with other folks who are making our region a great place to live and work.

Where: Grand Hall, Northwestern Mutual
805 E. Mason St., Milwaukee, WI
When: 8:30-11 a.m. (doors open 8:00 a.m.)
Please RSVP by clicking on the appropriate button:
Yes, I’ll be there!
No, I can’t attend.
If you'd like to be part of the Open Mic at the end of the meeting (time permitting) plan for no more than 1-2 minutes. Open Mic is a "raise your hand" session open to all attendees to informally share info/ideas with the group. Please plan to mention why people should know about your topic and/or what you want them to do as well a contact for more information. 
JOIN THE FOR|M COMMUNITY
FOR|M Incubator Cohort 2020 is underway! We’d love if you'd consider joining us as a FOR|M Incubator Cohort 2020 Mentor. Close to 50 participants are being taken through 10 weeks of amazing programming to learn problem solving, solution identification, how to leverage tech tools and, ultimately, how to get a tech startup off the ground. One of the foundational elements of this Incubator is the local community. We are leveraging mentors from across the Milwaukee tech ecosystem to share insights, provide guidance and bring real life lessons learned along the way in their own journey. 

Mentors are needed across multiple disciplines - please let us know which one interests you most (or which ones!) and we can talk through the Mentor Guidelines;

Monday January 27 - Pitching + Storytelling
Monday February 3 - Product Development
Monday February 10 - Prototyping
Monday February 24 - Pitch Design
Monday March 2 - Business Models

FOR|M is an initiative of the MKE Tech Hub Coalition. Feel free to share this note with others in your network who you feel would be interested in being a mentor! For more information, please contact Archna Sahay .
CONNECT WITH COMPUTER SCIENCES STUDENTS
Connect with highly-skilled students in computer disciplines at the Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium (MICS) on April 3-4 in Milwaukee. This is a great chance to meet and interact with computer sciences’ students! The regional conference, focused on higher educational experiences, has opportunities for career fair participants and event sponsors. In addition to the career fair, activities include technical paper sessions, deep learning workshop, programming and robotics contests as well as a keynoter. For more information, please contact mics2020@micsymposium.org .
EDUCATION
The Commons seeks ambitious college students!  Referrals welcome: The Commons is looking for the most innovative college students from across the region for their Skills Accelerator program this spring. Students will kickstart their careers with hands-on experiential learning, creative problem-solving, and meaningful networking. Students of ANY major and ANY year in school can join! Learn more and refer students at the website .

Code the Hoan   will develop learning modules to teach 5th through 12th graders how to code  using the proposed lights on the Hoan Bridge as their teaching/learning tool. Working in conjunction with a crowdfunding effort to install interactive LED lights on the Hoan Bridge, Code the Hoan will teach Milwaukee-area kids the skills needed to program the lights to sync to music at Summerfest or react to a Brewers home run, for example.  Code the Hoan  is   a partnership with MSOE, Discovery World, Islands of Brilliance, Boys & Girls Clubs, SHARP Literacy and 88Nine Radio Milwaukee. If you or your company would like to support and/or participate in the program, please email Michael Hostad . 

Share your story: Learn Deep is working with UWM and area high schools to expose students to the breadth of tech careers within greater Milwaukee and the varied paths area professionals have taken to get there. If you are engaged by your work and can spare an hour to be interviewed by a small team of students, they would welcome the chance to meet you. For details on the effort and to register as an interview subject, check here .
TALENT
i.c.stars |* Milwaukee welcomes its fifth intern cohort on Monday, January 27, 2020. If your company is interested in sponsoring a workshop or event for a group of diverse, emerging professionals, contact Leia Ferrari , Talent Placement Manager at i.c.stars. Individual volunteer opportunities also are available.

Interested in jump-starting a new career in Information Technology?  TechHire’s 16-week training program to become an IT Service Center Technician starts Feb. 17. Check here to learn about our next information session. Looking for new talent with backgrounds in Web/Software Development, IT Support, Networking and a variety of others? Reach out to James Haley and he’ll connect you to all the recent graduates! Grant dollars allow us to pay for internships and to pay for a portion of wages for the first 3 months!  
STARTUPS
Provide your perspective... Regardless of your role in the ecosystem, Startup Milwaukee wants to hear your thoughts on the state of Milwaukee's tech ecosystem. What's working? What isn't? How do we continue to drive growth and change as we head into 2020? Please take 7 minutes to fill out this brief survey . Whether you're a software developer, startup founder, tech company employee, or venture capitalist, we want to hear your perspectives on the ecosystem and resources that exist here in Milwaukee to support your personal and professional growth. By completing the survey, you’ll receive access to the inaugural Milwaukee Tech Census report in February 2020 .  

Wrapping up year five of the WERCBench Labs Fall Program , Demo Day will highlight the startup companies that have successfully completed our accelerator course. Each team has undergone 16 weeks of intensive customer discovery and has gained insights into their business model and value proposition. Join us on March 3 to hear a pitch from this year’s graduates. Register here .
EVENTS
Hack a Pipeline: MKE's 2nd Annual Woman and Non-Binary Hackathon
Not your typical hackathon! We pitch ideas, we learn together, we eat food, we win prizes and we have fun! Don’t miss this two-day hackathon on February 22-23, (break for sleep @ 10:00 pm on Saturday), aimed at creating a high-energy inclusive environment where women and non-binary individuals from all backgrounds can come together and harness their skills to create innovative products. Have fun, connect with others, and get inspired in an energizing environment. You don’t have to have a team to join; register as an individual and teams will be formed at the event. We need ideators, designers, data specialist, programmers, testers, and user interface specialists. If you don't code that's okay, bring your ideas! Sign-up today! Participation fees are $40 for professionals and $25 for students with financial scholarships available. Registration includes food and drink all weekend, raffles, swag and so much more. 

MERC coming up!
Register now for the Milwaukee Engineering Research Conference hosted by UWM’s College of Engineering & Applied Science on February 27-28. Featured speakers include:
  • Brand Cheng, CEO, Foxconn Industrial Internet
  • Peter Faguy, Vehicle Technologies Office, U.S. Department of Energy
  • Y. Jeffrey Yang, Senior Scientist in EPA’s National Risk Management Research Laboratory
  • Keri McConnell, Executive Director, Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute

For more information and to register, check here !

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.

Microsoft, Foxconn, Northwestern Mutual and Direct Supply were just some of the big-name companies to make headlines in Milwaukee in 2019.

Forbes lists Milwaukee among the 25 best places to see in 2020 citing the city's many positives.

Milwaukee-area students were taught 10,300 hours of code as a part of Milwaukee’s “Hour of Code,” a  NEWaukee  and  Milwaukee Tech Hub Coalition  initiative that promotes tech skills among the youth. The Hour Code runs during Computer Science Week, which is Dec. 9 to Dec. 15. Over 28 local companies and organizations as well as 250 volunteers hosted 85 events during the week.

Each year, Wisconsin Inno hits the pause button on the daily startup news grind to look ahead at the companies poised to make headlines in the year to come. On our annual Startups to Watch list, we outline a handful of Wisconsin startup companies that we feel could make big moves in the next year, whether that's raising sizable funding rounds, making acquisitions, accomplishing fast growth or simply continuing work on challenging problems. From Madison to Milwaukee and beyond, there are plenty of early-stage Wisconsin startups on the rise.

Milwaukee is not a perfect city. Milwaukee is a city of extremes. There are brutal winters and sticky, sweltering summers. There are shiny new arenas and condos. There are racial wounds — some of which are healing, some of which are still fresh. There are revitalized neighborhoods bustling with fresh energy, and there are specters of shuttered factories looming over zip codes and generations. In other words, Milwaukee is a lot like every other city in America: complicated.

To stop the divergence of U.S. cities where technology thrives, a concerted effort needs to be made to turn promising cities like Madison and Milwaukee in the heartland into tech hubs, according to a new paper from the  Brookings Institute.

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 .

Special thanks to our readers for helping make MKE Tech News a success! Your ideas and support were key to providing relevant content to the tech community last year. We want to continue to spread the word in 2020, so please let us know it there’s anyone you think should be added to our newsletter distribution list. Simply drop an email with the name(s)/email address(es) to contact@mketech.org .

For more information about the newsletter, please email contact@mketech.org .