As our world continues to become more data-focused, more and more datasets are at our disposal to analyze. This provides a lot of opportunities to explore and build up data science skills. Below you’ll find a sampling of fun datasets to get you started. Kaggle A great starting place is...

On any given team, lots of time, effort, and thought goes into determining the team culture. This includes Agile practices and ceremonies, the discovery process, collaboration strategies, and communication with stakeholders. A high-priority project with a tight deadline can disrupt these routines. Some practices will need to be shelved until...

AWS ECS Anywhere First Impressions It isn’t often that we read the mass marketing emails that we all get everyday. AWS sends out an email each week (usually on Tuesday) with a list of recent updates and new services. I actually get a lot of value out of reading it...

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...

One day this spring, I walked the dog and forgot my headphones. It was early April; muddy and cool. We generally go about three miles on trails by the creek near our home. The path was quiet, all I could hear was birdsong and water. As I began to daydream,...

So you’ve discovered the wonderful world of Docker and are running containers left and right. You can effortlessly spin up any application under the sun and browse it locally. What more could a techie want in their home server hosting environment? That HTTPS Padlock showing you’re a secure web site...

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...

DEFINING THE PROBLEM One of our partners who manufactures agriculture equipment began to experience growing pains with a high-volume API platform. The platform had grown into a monolith that was making it increasingly difficult to tune performance and add new features. Source Allies was asked to provide guidance and technical...

“Decide as late as possible” On the surface this principle of Lean Software Development would seem to suggest that we, as engineers, should put off as many decisions as possible till the last moment. This seems counterintuitive, as creating a working piece of software requires a great deal of planning...

Vim in Ten Keys If you’re reading this, you’re curious about Vim. Maybe you’re a curious person. Maybe there’s some really annoying person on your team who will just not shut up about it, and you’re trying to placate them. Maybe you opened it by accident, can’t get out, and...