Who Am I

My name is Truman Stephenson, I originally went to school to learn about forestry management so I can work in the natural resource industry and help maintain steady, healthy, canopy growths and continue preventing current over harvesting methods. Through my studies, I learned that many species are slowly dying off. And I am passionate about being outdoors and spending a lot of my free time either camping, hiking, or even hunting and fishing. I want the future generations to enjoy the same places I have seen.

However, through the onset of the global pandemic, I decided to focus my energy to studying and practicing software development. I had been working on computers from an early age. Learning how applications communicate with one another, how they communicate with the operating system, or how the computer can communicate with other devices on the internet. This interested me deeply but I never saw a career out of it. With the onset of the pandemic, I had to adapt so while I working as a contractor for an IT company. I figured I could harness my technical abilities to be able assist communities with specific needs.

At first, I took some Udemy courses on C# game development, to make interactive video games that taught values and provided cultural wisdom to the next generation. But through this, I wanted to continue advancing my knowledge. So I took on a Bootcamp in front-end web development with U.C. Davis. This camp taught me the foundations to HTML, CSS, and JS as well as what restful API's are. This was crucial as from then on, I never stopped. I practiced with basic websites with CSS, and JS. Through that time, I was trying to get a foot in the door in the industry, but at the time employers weren't looking for self-taught personnel. So it felt increasingly difficult. I didn’t lose hope, eventually I found another bootcamp that guaranteed an internship at the end as long as I completed the coursework on time and above grade. So I applied and was accepted.

This was Codefy, a program geared towards Indigenous youth of North America. Their main reason, there isn't the same amount of Indigenous employed in the tech industry and this program was to try and offset that. I was interested, as for myself I am urban native youth. I was disconnected from the tribe before I was even born due to economical adversary, my parents left Alaska to find more opportunities in the lower 48. That's how I ended up here. So by taking this second bootcamp with Codey, I felt that was my best foot forward in the industry. And I would be correct.

Codefy taught us the Java programming language, as well as, how to create, modify SQL databases with MySQL. And through this we tested and confirmed our ability to learn and understand the Java programming language. We learned class inheritance, the various methods, database connectors, and object oriented programming among other things. This was crucial to the next part of my career. I was able to intern with Resource Data in Anchorage Alaska. I got real world experience and was able to apply my knowledge to the field.

They were primarily using the .NET framework and C# programming language. And I quickly learned that Java and C# share very similar classes and methods including functionality. Although C# was more fledged out and I found that it provided a better option for production repositories. Through my time here, I learned about database connectors in real time, how to modify SQL databases real-time and balance time management to resolving incidents for clients issues. I worked on multiple projects for clients; including a demo utilizing A.I. to assist a local law enforcement agency with their daily reporting work. This involved the python programming language, and Azure A.I. for speech recognition and transcribing.

Progressing from this, I worked with a local non-profit client on two different projects. One was a database migration from a low code server, they had previously setup to an onsite database. And the other project was to create a more user friendly interface for their customer service department to handle phone calls more efficiently and locate real time information. This project included Angular JS, and Kendo UI for the front end, and C# for the database connectors and PostgreSQL for a dummy server before going live.

I am grateful for the time spent here and will continue gaining experience in the industry. I have plans for projects to restore cultural knowledge for my tribe and many others. As well as continue working on interactive games. I won't focus on a single language as I see that limiting my potential to understanding the industry. But I don't plan on using all of the available products either. Yet I still learn daily through related news in the field and spending ~30min to stay up-to-date.