Professional Development Articles
We’re curious people by nature. And we love to teach others what we’ve learned. So explore our blog to gain fresh insights from our expertise in areas ranging from culture to AI.
SEP Selected as a Nominee for TechPoint’s Innovation Mira Award
TechPoint has announced the nominees for its 25th annual Mira Awards, highlighting the most innovative companies, universities, and organizations in Indiana’s tech sector. The awards celebrate achievements across various categories, including the Innovation Partner of the Year. Nominees in this…
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This is the third post in my series on the value of personal projects. Check out the first and second posts for context. Sector Director Sector Director is an on-going (as of writing) project to create my own 3D renderer for the 1993 game Doom. There is nothing terribly novel about this – tons of […]
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Tiledriver – Making Wolfenstein 3D Levels with Machine Learning
This is the second post in my series on the value of personal projects. See the first one for more context. Marrying the Old with the New Tiledriver was an attempt to create levels for the classic 1992 game Wolfenstein 3D using machine learning. I thought this would be a fun challenge since I didn’t […]
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The Value of Personal Projects
Personal projects can be a great way to explore ideas, concepts, or frameworks before you use them on an actual work project. As somewhat of a staple of SEP’s Hackathons, I’d like to highlight some of my philosophies around personal projects and the value I’ve gotten out of them. I worked on all the projects […]
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5 Products Built During Our Hackathon That We Actually Used
When we run company hackathons we end up with quite a variety of ideas. The teams working on these projects always get something out of them regardless of whether the projects continue on past the weekend. We do have some projects that go further than fun over the weekend. These are the products that we […]
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How We Run Company Hackathons
We’ve been running hackathons at SEP since 2011. Over the years we’ve experimented with the setup. It’s ranged from actual product pitches to technology explorations (and everything in between). Recent hackathons have settled into a pattern that works well for us. That pattern includes: Pitches Q & A Form teams Build Demos Our hackathons run […]
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Reclaiming Lost Time with Podcasts
Podcasts are a sneaky, underrated way to learn things during time that you might be otherwise wasting. I drive 30 minutes to and from the office every day. That adds up to 5 hours a week of listening time for podcasts or audiobooks. My phone automatically downloads new episodes and I use an adapter to […]
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So a UX Architect and a Software Engineer Had a Baby
On St. Patrick’s day this year, life forever changed for me and my husband, Aaron. A baby arrived in the world after months of planning. But nothing could have prepared me for the joy my heart would feel for our Little Man. Oh, we got this. We’re gonna nail this parenting thing. I’m an Experience […]
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Study Groups – Learning Together is Better
As I’ve mentioned before, professional development is a big deal at SEP. I love learning with other people. We’ve recently kicked off a new way (for us) to learn with other people: Study Groups. What are Study Groups The idea is to go through an online course, class, book series, or other structured or self-directed […]
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Professional Development at SEP
You’re always behind the curve. You can never catch up. There is no leading, you’re always chasing. That is what it feels like as a software engineer these days. Technology is moving at breakneck speed. Five new React competitors came out this morning. Rails is old; Elm is new. Elm!? Back in my day that […]
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