Updates

SIM Cleveland’s 2021 Education Outreach Update

In 2021, SIM Cleveland continued our proud tradition of helping to build the next generation of IT professionals. Each year, proceeds raised by our fund-raising activities are funneled directly into our education budget. We then take that money and go to work supporting local STEM and tech education initiatives.

SIM Cleveland’s education outreach initiatives support STEM programs that bring technology awareness and education to students ranging from grade school through college. We were able to support three specific tech education initiatives that benefited grade school, high school, and college students.

This year, we contributed $14,000 to education outreach initiatives. SIM Cleveland proudly supported the following organizations and programs in 2021:

Great Lake Science Center (GLSC)

SIM Cleveland supported two separate STEM programs hosted by The Great Lakes Science center for CMSD students.

In November, we provided scholarships to 27 students to participate in their Winter Break Camp. These are students that, without the support of SIM Cleveland, may not have been able to participate in this excellent program that helps to foster an early interest in technology.

In June, we sponsored an Emerging Technology Workshop which provided an opportunity for grade school students to explore encryption, crack codes, and learn about basic principles around data, networks, and cybersecurity.

GCP RITE/TechCorps Coding Camps

SIM Cleveland has been a proud sponsor of the GCP RITE/TechCorps coding camps for several years. The high school coding camp is a full-day, week-long experience designed to engage high school students in hands-on, technology learning experiences.

These coding camps provide high school age students from schools throughout Northeast Ohio the opportunity to learn coding, developing a valuable skill that can lead them on a continued path of technology education and careers.

In response to COVID-19, the coding camp was completely virtualized, allowing students to participate and learn valuable coding skills, despite the pandemic.

Several SIM Cleveland chapter members participated in employer engagement activities with these camps, sharing our IT career experience, watching coding project demonstrations, and offering support and encouragement to camp participants.

Local University Scholarships

We continued our long-standing tradition of providing scholarships to deserving students with technology related majors from local universities. These students have chosen an IT related major and are truly the future of technology in Northeast Ohio.

SIM Cleveland was proud to provide a scholarship to students from the following local universities:

- Akron University
- Kent State University
- Cleveland State University

Thank you to all SIM Cleveland chapter members, and to our valuable sponsors. Your support helps to generate funds that are used to play a pivotal role in developing the technology professionals and leaders of tomorrow.

Upcoming Events

Prior Events

MARCH CHAPTER MEETING

Jeff Kanel presents "The Intelligent Enterprise", a framework that helps businesses listen to their data and tell its story.

Data is ubiquitous. It is a proverbial fingerprint left behind on every doorknob and glass in our lives. Data tells a story of our interests, priorities and physical location; and it persists, oblivious to whether we want our story told.

Corporations are universally awash in data. We don’t know what to do with it, and so we archive it for a speculative future need. We suspect that data can tell us something important - how to improve, where to change, what to do next – and yet rarely do we make the effort to listen.

The Intelligent Enterprise is a framework that helps the business listen to its data. Corporate data represents stories waiting to be told, The Intelligent Enterprise is their storyteller.

Jeff will present the core principals behind The Intelligent Enterprise and why every organization should aspire to become one. He will share anecdotes about why organizations have struggled with data in the past and how they have made a transition to become ‘intelligent’.

At the end of this session attendees will understand how to assess their organization for its current ‘intelligence’; how to identify opportunities to use data in a new way; and approaches to drive toward becoming The Intelligent Enterprise.

FEBRUARY CHAPTER MEETING

Human-Centered AI is the superpower your organization needs in 2021

Companies are rapidly moving from experimenting with AI to deploying practical solutions that engage customers at personal levels, increase internal efficiencies and reduce risk. But for all the excitement, half of AI projects fail to yield meaningful results and only 10% of machine learning models ever make it to production.

When you see troubling statistics such as these, the most cited causes are lack of skilled talent and poor data quality. But these are symptoms, not causes. For AI initiatives to truly be successful, they need to have humans squarely at their center.

Join us as Cal Al-Dhubaib, CEO of Pandata, gives an overview of human-centered AI and shares some practical examples from sales, marketing, and customer experience teams. Hear strategies and lessons learned that can help prepare your organization for success with AI.

JANUARY CHAPTER MEETING

Ring in the new year with a healthy dose of Cybersecurity!

Join us on January 11 as Michael Hudak leads a deep dive on some of the biggest challenges facing businesses in the 2021 information technology arena!

Michael will take us on a speculative analysis based on data and facts from studies done by multiple reputable sources such as Gartner, ZDnet, and Statista. The goal of his presentation is to equip technology-minded business leaders with crucial awareness and insights to best prepare for what 2021 has in store without selling any specific products or services.

NOVEMBER CHAPTER MEETING

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Join Us for the Engaging Presentation,
"Cybersecurity at the Federal Reserve"

Lana Zachlin, Vice President in the Information Technology Services Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, will lead us through this engaging and complex topic. She is responsible for the ongoing development and oversight of the Bank’s information security, business continuity, IT risk management, and data privacy programs.

You won't want to miss this event!

OCTOBER CHAPTER MEETING

Maximizing Workplace Experience

Nathan Coutinho leads CDW’s Collaboration, Mobility, Managed Print and Cisco Customer Experience teams, which makes up the Digital Workspace practice. He leads strategy and execution of the entire practice along with managing a tenured leadership team with several teams of solution and technical architects. He also serves on various advisory boards of our leading partners including Cisco, Microsoft, Poly etc.

Come hear from an expert on Digital Workspaces and be ready to leave with actionable ideas to maximize effectiveness!

SEPTEMBER CHAPTER MEETING

Working remote? Returning to Work? NEW for this meeting, we'll breakout in small groups to discuss experiences and ideas worth trying.

Working remote? Returning to Work? While it's easy to identify the business and personal challenges associated with these strategies, the solutions are less obvious. In the September meeting, you’ll have an opportunity to network and share your thoughts on these challenges with other SIM Cleveland members in small breakout problem-solving groups.

What works? What doesn’t work? What would be worth trying? Find out!

March 9th, Ari Terjanian, Senior Research Analyst at Cleveland Research Company, lead an engaging presentation and discussion on "Top IT Trends & Vendors: A View from a Local Wall Street Analyst".

February 10th, Ben Demko gave us "The Economic Outlook"!

What a great event! Our annual meeting covering the Economic Outlook was its usual packed house as Ben Demko, Senior Vice President, Portfolio Executive & Head of Research, Risk Management with KeyBank, led this engaging discussion.

January 13th, 2020, we discussed Executive Presence with Bill Frankel

Executive presence is often spoken about being a requirement for effective leadership and career advancement yet most aren’t clear about what it really means. Although executive presence is highly intuitive, it ultimately boils down to a number of essential elements: the ability to project mature self-confidence, a sense that one can take control of difficult, unpredictable situations while managing oneself; the willingness to make tough decisions and the ability to manage one’s self with other strong willed and talented individuals.

During our January program, Bill Frankel, Sr. Leadership Development Consultant with Ratliff & Taylor, shared the elements of Executive Presence and explored critical aspects to help us grow our Executive Presence.

SIM CLEVELAND WAS SPREADING HOLIDAY CHEER!

SIM Cleveland colleagues celebrated the holidays with a special evening of networking, celebration, dinner, and hand-picked craft brew pairings.

Our reliably memorable holiday "pairing" dinner spiced things up with a new venue, new libation, and new day of the week. We enjoyed a five-course menu specially crafted by the Great Lakes Brewing Company chefs and paired with seasonal and year-round GLBC craft beers carefully selected to complement each course. This event took place in the Tasting Room at Great Lakes Brewing Company's brewing facility in Ohio City on Tuesday, December 10.

November 11th, 2019: SIM Cleveland hosted a panel discussion on the impending California Consumer Privacy Act with Gabe Whalen and Elliot Golding

With the EU General Data Protection Regulation already in effect, and the California Consumer Privacy Act just two months from burdensome GDPR-like transparency and individual rights requirements, Gabe and Elliot discusses topics such as scope, applicability, and requirements and imparted knowledge, suggestions, and tips to manage risk and compliance.

Gabriel Whalen

Gabriel Whalen is a veteran of the intelligence community with 13 years of experience in a variety analytical and investigative roles. Currently Gabriel works with CDW customers of all types to determine effective and efficient approaches to information security assessments.

Elliot Golding

Elliot Golding is a partner in the Squire Patton Boggs Data Privacy & Cybersecurity Practice, who was recently selected as an honoree in Global Data Review’s inaugural 40 Under 40 list, which recognizes those who “represent the best and the brightest of the data law bar around the world.”

ALL ABOUT AGILE
Monday, Octover 14
6:00pm - 8:00pm
LeanDog
An evening of education and networking, SIM Cleveland gathered for an informative evening about Agile best practices led by Jon Stahl on the LeanDog boat by Burke Lakefront Airport.

Jon has been practicing and upholding the values of the Agile Manifesto and Lean for over 14 years. He teaches and coaches companies at all levels across IT and the business, and is known for his public speaking and coaching around topics such as Executive Agility, Kanban, PMO and Agile Explained. He is the leading author of the LeanDog Agile Discussion guide which instructs on over 60 of the best Agile practices. He shares his ever-evolving knowledge at conferences across the globe, passing on to others what he has learned.

AMA & SIM SUMMER SIZZLE HAPPY HOUR
Thursday, August 15
5:30pm - 7:30pm
Merwin's Wharf

We had a great Summer evening with SIM Cleveland members and AMA members as we mixed, mingled and shared stories over food and drinks.

SIM Cleveland / AMA Northeast Ohio Mixer

Wednesday, March 13 at Ohio City Galley
5:00pm - 8:00pm
Topic: Marketing & IT had a Baby and they Named it Actionable Data!
Sponsored by: BlueBridge Networks

We had a great gathering of our SIM Cleveland membership and the Cleveland AMA membership at our Ohio City Galley March mixer event with special guests Sanjay Sidhwani (Key Bank) and Tom Kramer (Essex Digital Platform). Over 80 people attended and enjoyed food, drinks and valuable enterprise business analytics knowledge & insight. Again...a special thank you goes out to our sponsor, BlueBridge Networks.

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SIM Cleveland Supports Northeast Ohio IT Education

One of the most rewarding aspects of being a member of the SIM Cleveland chapter is the support that we provide to the Northeast Ohio education community. Your membership dues and funds raised by our annual golf outing help to fund our education budget and outreach programs. This year SIM Cleveland contributed $16,400 to education outreach initiatives. Our contributions provided scholarships to students with STEM majors at Kent State University, Akron University, and Cleveland State University. We also contributed to tech initiatives in the Jefferson School District.

Most recently, SIM Cleveland supported RITE and TechCorps by sponsoring a High School Coding camp. The high school coding camp is a full-day, week-long experience designed to engage high school students in hands-on, technology learning experiences. SIM Cleveland’s sponsorship of this coding camp helps to expose high school students to technology and build the pipeline for future Northeast Ohio technology professionals.

SIM Cleveland members were present at the coding camp on the final day to see the projects they developed during the week. The students did an awesome job! They had great projects and you could see they really enjoyed their time at the camp and came away with some valuable coding skills. The parents of the students were there as well and they all expressed their gratitude for SIM Cleveland’s sponsorship of the camp. Below is a picture of the students who attended the camp that SIM Cleveland sponsored at the Tri-C Eastern campus. You are looking at our future Northeast Ohio technology and IT professionals. Our future is bright!

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Member Companies

Timken

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Sherwin Williams

Key Bank

Lubrizol

Wolters Kluwer

Medical Service Company

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Updates

Upcoming Events

Prior Events

Jeff Kanel presents "The Intelligent Enterprise", a framework that helps businesses listen to their data and tell its story.

Human-Centered AI is the superpower your organization needs in 2021

Ring in the new year with a healthy dose of Cybersecurity!

Join Us for the Engaging Presentation,"Cybersecurity at the Federal Reserve"

Maximizing Workplace Experience

SIM CLEVELAND WAS SPREADING HOLIDAY CHEER!

SIM Cleveland colleagues celebrated the holidays with a special evening of networking, celebration, dinner, and hand-picked craft brew pairings.

November 11th, 2019: SIM Cleveland hosted a panel discussion on the impending California Consumer Privacy Act with Gabe Whalen and Elliot Golding

Gabriel Whalen

Elliot Golding

Upcoming Events

Latest Discussions

Recent Shared Files

Member Companies

Join Us for the Engaging Presentation,
"Cybersecurity at the Federal Reserve"