BDPA iRadio Show - September 13, 2011

BDPA Education and Technology Foundation (BETF) produces a bi-weekly Internet radio show known as the BDPA iRadio Show. Our hostess for the show is BDPA Philadelphia member Franne McNeal. We use the show to try to spread the gospel of BDPA to IT professionals of African descent all over the diaspora.

We struck the mother-lode with our show on September 13, 2011.  Our guests were:

1. Patrick Nelson, Chairperson, BDPA Cincinnati Corporate Advisory Council   
2. Khalif Oliver, HSCC Alumni / Senior Consultant, BDPA Richmond / The North Highland   
3. Mario Armstrong, Emmy Award-winning Host, Daily Talk Show on SiriusXM Radio   
4. Curtis Jenkins, Vice President, Strategy & Planning, National BDPA [VIDEO]

Each of these four gentleman shared insights about leadership, technology and strategy that are worthy of discussion.  Please take a moment to listen to this archived version of the September 13th episode of the BDPA iRadio Show! 

Listen to internet radio with BDPA on Blog Talk Radio

What was your greatest 'learning' from listening to this episode of the BDPA iRadio Show?

Earl Pace Discusses Evolution of BDPA (Video)

Earl Pace is founder of National BDPA. He is also Chairman of the Board of Directors for the BDPA Education & Technology Foundation (BETF). He shares his thoughts on the evolution of BDPA since his initial vision in 1975.





What are your thoughts about your thoughts on BDPA's evolution?

Zack Lemelle Shares Overview of ITSMF (Video)

Information Technology Senior Management Forum (ITSMF) is a national organization dedicated exclusively to fostering upper-level executive talent among African American IT professionals. Their goal is to prepare African American IT professionals for senior-level responsibility by offering executive career development, mentoring, and networking opportunities for advancing your career.

Zack Lemelle is the ITSMF chair. He takes some time in the following video to share insights about the relationship between BDPA and ITSMF. He also provides some great advice for young people considering a career in the IT industry. Enjoy the video:





BETF hopes to announce a joint fundraiser with ITSMF in the near-term. For now, we would be interested in your thoughts, comments or questions about ITSMF. What say u?

Brian Smith, National BDPA Chief Information Officer (Video)

Brian Smith served as National BDPA CIO in 2008. In this video he gives an overview of the responsibilities of his office.



The interview is conducted by Mario Armstrong. The video is produced by Kevin Jones (Visual Propaganda)

Dr. Jesse Bemley, Founder of BDPA's High School Computer Competition (Video)

Mario Armstrong interviews national HSCC founder Dr. Jesse Bemley. Dr. Bemley is in the BDPA Hall of Fame. He founded both the national high school computer competition and the IT Showcase. He is an inspiration to African American IT professionals from the 'classroom to the boardroom'.





Do you have any thoughts or memories from either the HSCC or IT Showcase that you care to share with us?

HSCC Testimonial: Frantzy Jean Philippe (New York)

Many of you have supported our fundraising efforts to support the youth education programs taking place in 50 cities around the country. However, we still need more funding if we are to continue bridge the 'digital divide'. We thought you would appreciate hearing directly from one of the students impacted by your generousity.

Frantzy Jean Philippe was a member of the high school computer competition team trained this year by BDPA New York chapter. Here is what he had to say about the experience.

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"It has been an amazing experience being part of the BDPA HSCC team. When I first started pursuing a spot in being part of the HSCC team, I never realized how much BDPA would have changed my life. I had great experiences from the trip to the Museum of Modern Arts to the 2008 BDPA National Conference held in Atlanta GA. BDPA accomplished its mission in exposing students like me to Information Technology. Through the many trips that we took part in, I have developed a deep interest in Information Technology and have decided to pursue it in college.

Training for the competition has been both hard and fun. At first, it was intense seeing how we were still learning and there was a lot of competitiveness between us. However, as the competition nears, we each realized that we were strong in one major area of programming. We were closer than any other teams. Unlike most of the other teams, we were from the same school. Additionally, our trainer was also our teacher as well as our friend. It is best to train and learn when you know the people whom you train with well. We appreciate our trainer because we would have never come this far if it was not for him. He sacrificed many of his time in order to prepare us for the competition. For example, he sacrificed his birthday just to be with us during our second regional competition in Maryland. The regional competitions had a big influence on our performance in the national competition. It was a great way to get us accustomed to the way of the competition and at the same time, we had a lot of fun.

The conference itself was the best experience that I have ever had in my entire life. I liked the fact that we were able to experience the cultural wonders of Atlanta in many ways. In addition, we not only applied all that we have learned during the year, we learned new things as well. During the first day of the Youth Technology Camp, I learned effective communication, something that will surely help me later on in life. BDPA has exceeded its original mission and made sure that students like me do not just have a good future in information technology, but have good skills in whichever path they follow in life. One of the greatest events that I enjoyed during the conference was the opening ceremony. The keynote speaker, Ephren Taylor, inspired us all. His success story inspired us to pursue whatever we want in life.
From the master of ceremony, Mario Armstrong we learned not to let “dream killers” gets in our way. This became a motif as we learned throughout the entire conference. One of the greatest moments in the opening ceremony came when Mr. Armstrong gave an HSCC student the opportunity to pursue his dream of Game Designing by providing the student with software that were perhaps valued at one thousand dollars. I was amazed to see how great people like him make sure that people like us succeed in accomplishing their dreams.

The High School Computer Competition was one of the best parts of the conference. It was intense and enjoyable at the same time. On the first day of the competition, we were calmer than we were in the regional competitions and we did excellent. This made us even more confident on the second day where the real competition began in building our web application. We responded rather calmly to the long time of seven hours to eight hours that we had to build the application seeing that we were used to programming for this amount of time during our training. We did very well and we finished all of the functionalities given to us. We were very proud of ourselves seeing that we worked as a team to finish the application. We each did our individual jobs perfectly and our application was very strong.

After a hard week, we were all looking forward to going home. However, our flight cancelled due to overwhelming circumstances. We had the chance to stay in Atlanta an extra night. Even though we were all anxious to go home, we were rather calm in handling the situation. We were lucky enough that the BDPA National president, Ms. Denise Holland provided us her presidential suite for us to spend the night in. We took this with great appreciation for Ms. Holland and BDPA for taking good care of its members. We had an amazing night in the presidential suite. The most surprising moment of the entire trip later became one of the greatest moment of the trip."

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Well, BDPAers ... what say u?

Black Family Technology Awareness Week (Baltimore)

Soulclap to Mario Armstrong for sharing update on a great event in Baltimore, MD. Bro. Armstrong is a syndicated technology talk show host (XM radio ch. 169 M-F 9p-10p EST / Sat. 3p-5p EST), tech media entrepreneur and public speaker.

Mario wrote,

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"Wayne, great to hear from you! Wanted to make sure you and the BDPA folks are aware of this Saturdays major Black Family Technology Awareness event, entitled 'Dream, Create, GO!' - a technology event and inspirational tech show for youth.

It's Free, open to the public and a great way to inspire, educate and entertain middle & hi-school aged students as to why they should pursue academics and careers in science, technology, engineering and math. This is not a boring lecture but an interactive event with a dj, light show and hands-on demonstrations. This Saturday we are changing kids lives and giving them the excitement and the roadmap to be a success in tech fields."

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It's all happening this Sat. Feb. 16th at the Baltimore Convention Center from 10:45a-1pm. Download or view the event flyer or visit the website for more details.

Let us know in the COMMENTS area if you are participating in BFTAW events in Baltimore or anywhere else in the nation this month.