Happy 1st Quarter of 2021!
In the past few months we have hosted a very successful series of Tech Talks, virtual talks and Q&A sessions with ICT industry professionals about their roles, experience, and personal career path.
Our speakers represent the full range of ICT careers and levels of responsibility in their organizations and come from a variety of disciplines with diverse backgrounds. They are truly excited about sharing their stories with Bay Area community college students seeking advice in the pursuit of careers in ICT.
Winter Conference Reflections
The WASTC Winter Conference went virtual this year with great success! There were 60 speakers & 260 attendees who logged a phenomenal 4,487 hours attending presentations, exploring the vendor booths and chatting in the Tiki lounge. There was even a point-award system with fun hidden easter eggs to help foster friendly competition and opportunity to win prizes.
“This was a wildly interactive group of attendees. It was pretty amazing. I was overwhelmed. I was reminded of my son 20 years ago in middle school on AOL’s instant messenger,” said Richard Grotegut, ICT-DM Regional Director, Bay Area. “The conversations would just scroll off the screen – I couldn’t keep up with it all!”
The conference’s keynote speakers and topics were:
- Laura Chappell, CEO and Founder of Chappell University, on the SolarWinds hack
- Vanessa Russell, Founder and Executive Director of Love Never Fails, on untapped urban leaders
- Renee Cummings, Data Activist in Residence at the University of Virginia, on the conscience of a data scientist
- Peter Coffee, Vice President for Strategic Research at Salesforce, on preparing for opportunity: 2025 starts now
Short Duration Programs
Demands are shifting faster than ever and this is forcing many people to shift roles or pivot their careers quickly. We are excited that there are so many programs have been designed to focus on quickly upskilling.
Short Duration Program Requirements:
- Available Throughout the Region Interested people from throughout the greater SF Bay Area can now gain in-demand technical skills in a much shorter time.
- Complete in Less Than 6 Months Most programs lead to an industry certification in less than 6 months–a certification that leads to high-paying jobs.
- Attend Without Leaving Home Every program is designed to be 100% online, including enrollment and registration, classroom work, and exams.
- All Materials Provided These programs include everything you need to be successful, including textbooks, videos, and financial and other supports as required.
Student Success
One of the most exciting outcomes of our Tech Talk series was the participation and engagement that we had with local employers. CCSF Student Dante Alabastro recently secured an exciting position as an information security analyst.
“My favorite technical courses have to be Advanced Ethical Hacking (CNIT 124) and Exploit Development (CNIT 127). Those courses introduced me to the ethical hacking team at CCSF and really jumpstarted my career.“
State & Community Collaboration
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As the BayICT, one of our top priorities is bridging the gap between individual community stakeholders (like students, teacher, industry) and the ICT programs taught in Bay Area community colleges.
We are excited to have begun collaboration among CalJobs, local workforce development groups and community colleges in an effort to determine potential barriers, educate one another how to best work together and to seek to develop policies together.
Psssst….Did you know, there is a place where we can all connect?
Community of Practice
Student Spotlight – Veronica Plante
Veronica Plante Agora Studio Animator, Cañada College Student
Veronica grew up and was homeschooled in the South Bay. V had an early interest in the fine arts, but they knew then that the liberal arts career path was limited. The arts, media, and entertainment pathway sparked V’s creative curiosity and they began taking dual-enrollment animation classes at Cañada College at 15. That was the beginning of their journey to becoming, at 21 years of age, maybe one of the youngest animators at Agora Studio, a global network of professional artists providing services to animation studios around the world.
Industry Partner Spotlight: Alteryx
Analytics skills are no longer reserved for a few data-focused job roles. They are now in high demand and relevant for every discipline. For this reason, data analytics career education is a priority in the BACCC’s ICT-DM sector strategy. Alteryx Designer is a leading analytics process automation platform used to easily perform data preparation, blending, reporting, modeling, and more in a no-code/low-code, drag-and-drop interface. Alteryx offers its SparkED program at no cost to educational institutions and is now a BayICT industry partner. The SparkED program empowers learners of all skill levels — across every field of study — to develop the analytics skills they need to question, understand, and solve with data.
Our partnership with Alteryx provides educators with customizable resources, free licenses, and access to a community of peers. Faculty may expand existing curriculum or establish a new program, selecting from a menu of learning modules. Students also receive free licenses, giving them the opportunity to learn from the same materials used by business professionals to develop their analytics skills, and earn the same Alteryx certifications: Core, Advanced and Expert.
You can find more information about Alteryx and SparkED on the BayICT faculty resources page. When you’re ready to take advantage of the program and get involved in the community right away, contact Wendy Porter at wendy@baccc.net.
Upcoming BayICT Partnership Events
Tech Talks
- March 8th – Fernando Borrego
- March 24 – Women in Tech
- April 14 – AI Career Education Pathways
- May 19 – Tech Careers: Taking a Deeper Look
Quarterly Meeting
March 10, 9:30 – 11:00 “How to Use the BayICT Partnership”
Bitwise Information Session Mar 14, 2022
Bitwise Industries creates a bridge between humans from marginalized communities and stories of systemic poverty to skills and resources necessary to access opportunities in the tech industry.
Cyber Security Summer Camps Jun 13, 2022 – Jul 29, 2022
CyberCampers will learn about cyber hygiene, ethics, systems administration, security audits, cryptography, digital and network forensics, and web application exploitation. The ideal CyberCamp candidates are incoming (2022/23) 8th to 12th graders or community college students with little to no cybersecurity experience.
https://bayict.org/events/2022-cybercamp
Faculty Dev Weeks
Coming this June: The WASTC 2022 Summer virtual Faculty Development Weeks (vFDW). The event venue is “Medieval Times” and our theme will be the “Quest for Knowledge“