Alliance News:

As of May 27^th, 2022, NEW Digital Alliance is under the direction of new leadership with the resignation of Director, Kim Iversen. Iversen would like to thank you for your trust, patronage, and support in the NEW Digital Alliance’s efforts to solve the digital and IT talent gap in Northeast Wisconsin over the last five years. Her position as Director has not yet been filled. If you have comments or questions, please email NEW Digital Alliance at info@newdigitalalliance.org. Thank you!

A Farewell Note

Over the past 5 years I have had the pleasure of working with business and community leaders, as well as educators from colleges and K12 districts, both here in Northeast Wisconsin and across the state. I want to take a moment to thank each and every one of you for your support and collaboration as we have worked to promote the tech health of the region.

Here are just a few of the highlights from the past 5 years:

• Connected 2500 high school students with local colleges and businesses through our NEW Connect IT event, and educated them about IT pathways and careers
• Connected over 500 college students with local businesses through our TechTalks and networking nights
• Collaborated with CSTEY to launch a cohort program helping 14 teachers across the state prepare for their CS licensure exam. We had 12 of the 14 teachers complete the program. Of the six teachers from Northeast Wisconsin, three have taken and passed their Praxis exam and are now fully licensed to teach computer science (the other three have not yet taken the exam).
• Collaborated with DPI and others to develop
  • Digital (IT) Career Pathways for the state
  • Regionalized Digital (IT) Career Pathways
  • Statewide computer science plan
• Connected UW Oshkosh and WICTRA, resulting in the launch of a regional Cybersecurity Center of Excellence
• Launched a Cybersecurity Roundtable in October of 2021 for our investors to increase collaboration and build a local network cyber leaders can leverage for support; and to share best practices across organizations. We have over 29 cyber leaders representing 23 of our investor organizations participating.

The NEW Digital Alliance Executive Committee is working to define the future direction of the organization which will include a narrowed focus as they work to find a coordinator for the New Digital Alliance. The focus areas for this year will include:

• Open access to CIOs/IT leaders
• Cybersecurity Roundtable
• IT leadership Roundtables
• Mentoring programs
• Resume Sharing

Thank you to your and your teams for helping make Northeast Wisconsin a better place to live and work.

Until we meet again,

Kim Iversen

June 7th: National VCR Day

Did you know that June 7th is National VCR Day? For those that are too young to know what a VCR is, VCR stands for videocassette recorder, and they were made for videotape recording. VCRs are playback machines that house reels of tape in a removable package. Even though today VCRs are out of date, they revolutionized the movie and television industry by allowing people to watch TV shows and movies on their own schedules. Since a VCR can record a TV broadcast to be played back, the technology made it very convenient for a working person from the mid 1970’s until the late 1990’s to watch shows a different day. Eventually, VHS, short for video home system, ultimately won consumers over with its longer recording time and lower price tag. Then, the DVD and DVD players came along; VHS tapes stopped being produced in 2008, and Panasonic stopping selling VCRs sometime in 2012.

The VCR is probably one of the most nostalgic pieces of technology, so why not take the time to remember it? Here are some ideas on how to celebrate National VCR Day:

• Watch any VCR tapes you have either by yourself or with friends
• Take all of your old VCR tapes of family members and have them digitized to a more modern format
• Use the hashtag #NationalVCRDay on social media to let everyone know how you’re celebrating