Do you remember the first time a feature in an application surprised you? Have you ever thought, “Wow, that’s actually making my life easier?” I remember the first time I clicked on a phone number while browsing a website on a mobile phone and it opened the dialer. “All I...

Summary: Why should we bake accessibility into the digital products we build? It’s the right thing to do Provides a better user experience for EVERYBODY, disability or not Increases mobile usability Improves a site’s SEO ranking Protects our partners from litigation It’s the direction the world is headed Back in...

What is IMAUG? IMAUG is the Iowa Microsoft Azure User Group. As some of you may or may not have noticed if you follow me on LinkedIn or my blog, I have links to join IMAUG everywhere. You might have questions about what is it, what should I expect to...

From Warren Buffet to Kobe Bryant, it has been said the absolute best thing for you to do as a professional is to invest in yourself. For some, that is reading about or researching a specific topic to learn something new. The goal is to get the learning juices flowing...

Pro Tips for Onboarding a New Teammate Intro Last month’s blog post, Pro Tips for Joining a New Team, was from the perspective of the reader joining a team. But what if you’re a member of a team that is onboarding a new teammate? Look no further, we’ve got you...

The Community Taught Developer I do not have a formal education in Computer Science, nor did I attend a Coding Boot Camp. In fact, I took my first job as an application developer with the understanding that I had ZERO experience and we would be doing the “sink or swim”...

For 20 years, face-to-face collaboration and side-by-side pair programming have helped Source Allies teammates build a strong web of working relationships. These relationships grow between teammates, partners, Source Allies as a whole and the local developer community. Two months ago, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Source Allies teammates had to...

Recently, some of us at Source Allies had the opportunity to participate in the 8th annual dsmHack charity hackathon. We were struck by how much participating in the hack aligned with our core values. At Source Allies, we use our core values as guideposts while interacting with our partners and...

Every year the Women in Data Science initiative (WiDS) provides a datathon open to teams with an interest in data science regardless of experience. WiDS defines a datathon as a “data-focused hackathon — given a dataset and a limited amount of time, participants are challenged to use their creativity and...

AWS re:Invent is always an exciting time of year. For the past few years, Source Allies has sent a group of teammates for the annual event to come back and share all of the exciting things AWS is offering for the next year. We thought we would recap our experience...