teaching machines

CS 396: Meeting 14 – Applied Data Consultants

Dear students, Today we welcome Marc Harter of Applied Data Consultants as our guest. When I first moved to this town, one of my students told me about this guy named Marc that he worked with. This Marc apparently had an amazing knowledge of web technologies, and most of it was self-taught. A little later […]

CS 396: Meeting 13 – Innovative Computer Software

Dear students, Today we welcome John Huss of Integrated Computer Solutions as our guest. John brings us the perspective of working for a small company. You’ll have to excuse me for using this class as an opportunity to reunite with old friends. John is a friend I haven’t seen since 2003. He and I were […]

CS 396: Meeting 12 – Digital Ocean

Dear students, This week we welcome Brian Hogan from Digital Ocean. How did I meet Brian? Well, back in 2012, I was teaching CS 330: Programming Languages for the first time ever, and I was looking for someone to come in and share about a language that few of us knew. A few students recommended […]

CS 396: Meeting 11 – Solomon Partners

Dear students, This week we welcome Mike Citak from Solomon Partners. Mike has been in Wisconsin before—he got an English degree at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Then he found his way down to Iowa, where I had the honor of being his teacher in a class a bit like our CS 145. I shouldn’t […]

CS 396: Meeting 10 – Cisco

Dear students, Today we welcome Jonathan Gardner from Cisco as our guest. Jonathan and I were fellow graduate students down in Knoxville, Tennessee. Graduate school is a pretty sweet place, because everybody that’s there wants to be there. Not only did we have computer science interests binding us together, but we were also on the […]

CS 396: Meeting 9 – Cray

Dear students, Today we welcome Dan Ernst from Cray to our class. He’s going to lead us in a discussion about where our industry is headed in terms of hardware. You probably think Dan is a complete stranger, a separate human being whose life has run completely independently of yours. Like two processes on two […]

CS 396: Meeting 8 – General Mills

Dear students, Today we welcome Ashley Nelson from General Mills. She’s going to share with us about her task of keeping up a large-scale infrastructure. I had the honor of having her as a student in ComS 227. The class met in Carver Hall, and the room had tables—tall ones. She set in the middle […]

CS 396: Meeting 7 – Epic

Dear students, Today we welcome Zach Forster from Epic. Before that, Zach paid the bills by grading CS 163 homeworks. I pleaded and pleaded with Zach to attend graduate school. We went to the University of Minnesota once to attend a graduate school open house. I failed to enlist him. He said that he wanted […]

CS 396: Meeting 6 – Jamf

Dear students, Today we welcome a team of panelists from Jamf to discover the software engineering process. These folks have been welcome partners. During my first summer in Eau Claire, I was looking to gain some experience with iOS, so they hired me on as Dr. Intern. They’ve hired an overwhelming number of our students. […]

CS 396: Meeting 5 – Graduate School

Dear students, Today, Hannah Miller of the University of Minnesota will share with us about a different sort of future: graduate school, which may lead to academia, a research scientist position, or who knows what. Hannah and I collaborated on a research project several years ago. Our mission was to build a social network for […]

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