Professional Development Articles

We’re curious people by nature. And we love to teach others what we’ve learned. So explore our blog to gain fresh insights from our expertise in areas ranging from culture to AI.

SEP Wins TechPoint’s 2024 Innovation Service Partner of the Year Mira Award

SEP Recognized as Indiana’s Top Innovation Service Partner, Winning TechPoint’s Prestigious Mira Award Westfield, Indiana - SEP has been named the Innovation Service Partner of the Year by TechPoint at the 25th annual Mira Awards. The Mira Awards, Indiana’s largest…
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Why we invest so much in Professional Development

We are living in a technological renaissance.  It is a period of change only last seen between the fourteen and seventeenth centuries when Europe moved from the middle ages to modern times, leading into the industrial revolution.  The last twenty years  have led to unimaginable changes in the way we conduct our lives and our […]
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Challenge Your Favorites

I’ve written about the many benefits of personal projects before. One nice aspect is being able to try out tools & frameworks in a low-risk environment. In this post I’ll explain one such trial I’m doing and how the tool Comby made switching easy. Are My Go-To Tools Stale? As we gain experience on projects […]
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Why the Inside Man (KnowBe4 Training) Changed My Opinion of Security Training

The “Inside Man” is a 12-episode show produced by the training company, KnowBe4.  In a show where everyone is british except one shady, well-dressed, American villain, there is a hacker, hired to steal company secrets. The hacker ends up enjoying his very average job, and his very average co-workers. Hijinks ensue. Lessons are learned. I […]
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Sector Director – An Exploration into Classic Graphics Programming

This is the third post in my series on the value of personal projects. Check out the first and second posts for context. Sector Director Sector Director is an on-going (as of writing) project to create my own 3D renderer for the 1993 game Doom. There is nothing terribly novel about this – tons of […]
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Tiledriver – Making Wolfenstein 3D Levels with Machine Learning

This is the second post in my series on the value of personal projects. See the first one for more context. Marrying the Old with the New Tiledriver was an attempt to create levels for the classic 1992 game Wolfenstein 3D using machine learning. I thought this would be a fun challenge since I didn’t […]
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The Value of Personal Projects

Personal projects can be a great way to explore ideas, concepts, or frameworks before you use them on an actual work project. As somewhat of a staple of SEP’s Hackathons, I’d like to highlight some of my philosophies around personal projects and the value I’ve gotten out of them. I worked on all the projects […]
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5 Products Built During Our Hackathon That We Actually Used

When we run company hackathons we end up with quite a variety of ideas. The teams working on these projects always get something out of them regardless of whether the projects continue on past the weekend. We do have some projects that go further than fun over the weekend. These are the products that we […]
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How We Run Company Hackathons

We’ve been running hackathons at SEP since 2011. Over the years we’ve experimented with the setup. It’s ranged from actual product pitches to technology explorations (and everything in between). Recent hackathons have settled into a pattern that works well for us. That pattern includes: Pitches Q & A Form teams Build Demos Our hackathons run […]
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Reclaiming Lost Time with Podcasts

Podcasts are a sneaky, underrated way to learn things during time that you might be otherwise wasting. I drive 30 minutes to and from the office every day. That adds up to 5 hours a week of listening time for podcasts or audiobooks. My phone automatically downloads new episodes and I use an adapter to […]
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