Category: Leadership

“We learn from failure, not from success!” – Abraham Van Helsing, Dracula Last week, I gave a presentation called “Leave Nothing to Chance” at the Nebraska.Code() conference. The essence of the talk was the value of locking down all the little decisions to better ensure success in your software projects. I started the talk with…

Angular has an interesting history. Angular started in 2010, and it grew into a very popular web framework. But at some point, it was decided that the current Angular structure needed a significant change. So in 2016, a new version of Angular was launched. This broke Angular into two major versions. The v2+ lineage is…

We are all Michael Scott. That was what I explained in a blog post from a few years back, and I stand by the statement. Michael Scott is the main character on The Office for most of the seasons. He didn’t see himself as an evil boss, intentionally making his employees miserable. He wasn’t trying…

Businesses across the country have adjusted to the realities of our current environment. Don’t Panic Labs is no exception. While our professional services business made adjustments to remote work rather quickly, continuing our Software Design and Development Clinics required some additional thought and effort. These classes were designed around in-person settings, so their structure needed…

If you keep up with the happenings of Don’t Panic Labs, you’re likely aware of the Nebraska Dev Lab Pipeline Program. It is an educational partnership between us and Doane University. Our goal is to help address the shortage of software development talent in Nebraska by turning a small cohort into quality, entry-level software developers….

While waiting for online meetings to start, we often find ourselves passing that time in various ways. Unfortunately, this can distract us and possibly lead to us not being as engaged as we should be. There are things you absolutely should avoid doing while waiting for others to join an online meeting. As a person…

The countless tragic deaths, most recently of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, and the recent violence we have seen play out have reinforced the need for our society to participate in some difficult conversations about who we are and who we want to be. As we witness powerful expressions of grief and anger…

I have always enjoyed teaching people how to write software. And teaching people how to write software that runs in the cloud hits two passions of mine. This semester I am a guest lecturer at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, teaching a 400-level course on distributed cloud systems. I have taught courses at UNL…