My Neumont Educational History

By Paul Rohde on March 10, 2009

Before I get really into this, keep in mind the program has changed a bit since I started, but I’ll try to annotate that as I go along, this particular topic comes from both questions I’ve been asked in the past and from some more recent questions from potential future Neumont students and parents.

My History

My interest in computer science really started before I was even in high school, both my parents were electronic engineers and met and graduated from the same college. One of the best things they ever did for me was to encourage me in my interests and help me as best they could. When I was about 11 or so my parents gave me a Lego Mindstorms robotics system. Its essentially a programmable brick with attachable motors and sensors that came with a rather basic programming system that gave me an introduction to programming. That became my programming staple for many years until I began to play with a language called DarkBasic. DarkBasic itself is a spin off language based off of the Basic programming language, its unique in that it is setup with a host of 2D and 3D direct commands built directly into the language to make it easy to play with. Instead of learning a complicated language like C or C++, it was more fun to tinker with and get immediate results (if any of you have tried to initialize directX directly in C# or C++ as a 14 year old, you know what I’m talking about). That grew into a several year obsession of building and making games, and learning a great deal about programming concepts via the age old ‘fall down and pick yourself up’

My first real classes in computer science began when I entered high school and began taking online classes in addition to my regular ones. My very first introduction one was taught in pascal, which was new to me but my prior experience allowed me to move quickly and fairly easily through. The second level class was taught in java and had a much bigger focus on Java and Object Oriented Programming but was not that difficult. After my sophomore year of high school I took my ACT test over the summer and got a good enough score on it to be able to enter a program through the state of Minnesota called PSEO(Post Secondary Education Option) which allows high scoring high school students to begin taking classes as a ‘pre-freshmen’ at the local college and have all your class expenses and books paid for by the state. More than that your classes could also count for both high school and College credit. So for the next two years I was taking a full college class load at Winona State University and graduated from high school with a home school diploma two years ago. My stint at WSU also landed me my first job as a student software developer in the WSU programming department where I was first introduced to ASP and C#. Over my time there I had completed two or three small projects that I look back at now and wonder how it took me a month to do, and in the educational meantime I had taken ~3 different programming classes to the 250-300 level by the time I left.

Neumont Decision Process

Pending my high school graduation I had a box of college promotional mail about a foot an a half deep where I continually tossed most of the college mail that I got. So how did I personally decide? I got lots of mail from Neumont, about 3-4 pieces before I even began seriously looking at them. Finally went and looked through their website, filled out a form and talked to one of the recruiters on the phone. That itself wasn’t what made my decision for me, it was when Neumont brought me and my parents down to visit the school that finally did it for me. At the time it was called Geek weekend, where they would bring in a bunch of new prospective students, give them a tour of the school, and give a chance for the student and parents to meet with people actually in the program, see the facility, and meet some of the faculty. After listening to the current students describe some of there current classes, the things they were currently being taught and getting a chance to see the current scope and size of the projects they worked on I was pretty much sold.

At that point my decision was between Neumont University and Winona State near where I lived, for me, I could have gotten enough scholarships to pay for most of my tuition there and since I was seriously considering staying with my parents for that time I would have graduated from there with little or no debt in under 4 years, plus I would have graduated with ~3 years of part time development experience from my job in the WSU tech department. On the other hand, Neumont was in Utah, farther away (With no-one I knew), more expensive, shorter, more intense, but I knew Neumont had MUCH more educational value than WSU after comparing the classes I would be taking at WSU vs the ones I would take at Neumont. I chose Neumont, for the following reasons: It’s a full bachelors in two years, it gets me out into the real world on my own, its a challenge, and if I’m careful I should be able to pay off my loans within ~3 years. As you can see, I decided to go with Neumont, and I’ve never doubted that it was the right decision.

My Neumont Experience

I began at Neumont in July of 2007, the summer quarter to be exact, in Cohort 15 (class #15 since the school started). After coming in, getting introduced and shown around, figuring out which apartment I was assigned to, meeting my roommates, moving in and finally figuring out what to do with myself in the interim weekend before school started my experience was pretty standard as far as standard college first days go. That first quarter for me was easy, I probably could have passed out of some of my introduction classes if I had chosen to, but I wanted the review and really wanted to get a good handle on the foundational concepts before I plunged in head first. That first quarter covered most (not all) but most of everything I knew conceptually prior to Neumont including html, css, javascript, basic C# etc… (I believe that the program now begins with java as the introduction language) plus a few general education classes. Even though it was fairly easy for me it moved fast, covering the fundamentals thoroughly from the ground up.

Quarter 2 began with a shift away from C# to Java, and also began to introduce the projects classes. A fundamental principle that Neumont has adopted is the concept of team based project classes, starting at your second quarter you have Development projects in the afternoon that are usually tied to an associated CS class, for me in quarter two our Development projects was tied to Java 1. After a quick review of the concepts we had learned in the C# introduction class we quickly progressed through a large number of topics in Java, introducing interface design, connecting to databases (MySQL for the java class), events, event handlers, MVC design and so on. The associated project class tied to Java 1 followed the java class closely where the class is broken in to teams of 4-5 for the duration of the class, each team is assigned the same project that they are required to design, build, test, and present over the duration of the quarter. During this time your first class in databases is taught in addition to a class knows as Information Modeling which teaches the basics of how to take business requirements, break them into there constituent elements and then to clarify, design, and build systems based on that.

Up through Quarter 6 everything is pretty standard, you will end up taking a variety of core classes including Databases 1 & 2, Information Modeling 1&2, Java 1 – Forms, Java 2 – Java web, Java 3 – Service Oriented Architecture, .NET 1 – Win Forms, .NET 2 – ASP.NET & web, .NET 3 – Windows Communication Foundation, Algorithms. For anyone starting now the last 4 Quarters are reserved for ‘concentrations’ which allow you to specialize you degree toward a particular field, Web technologies, Open Source, .NET, Java, Mobile Development, Mid range platform development… etc… Talk to Neumont if you want to know what the exact concentrations are.

The biggest and best draw to Neumont University however is the enterprise projects, your last several quarters you sign up for a class that’s similar to every other project class, except these projects are not run by teachers and instructors, but are run by actual companies with actual projects. Some are local and you’ll work at the company offices, and some are remote and you have a project room and conference calls on a regular basis. Its a sort of real life, pseudo internship with a company. Many MANY times these companies will hire students off of these projects but even if they don’t, by the time you graduate you will have a list of 2-3 companies that you have worked with on actual projects. You really learn what you want to do, what you don’t want to do and the direction you will want to take your career, more often than not it opens up a wide variety of options, especially if you impress your employer. To put it in perspective, I only really began my job search process at the beginning of this quarter, and as of this writing I’ve interviews with over 10 companies, received 3 VERY good offers, finally choosing to accept an offer with Interknowlogy, the company I’m currently doing my enterprise project with.

Neumont is fast paced, difficult, but well worth the struggle. Like any education you WILL get out of it what you put into it, there’s a lot to learn in this industry and it changes even faster. From what I’ve seen and can compare to both in the industry today and the educational world Neumont is already one of the top universities in the US for computer science and is rapidly gaining recognition.

A rather long winded explanation, but it gives a rough description of where I’ve come educationally over my life, hope it helps explain Neumont and myself a bit better.

Oh, and for anyone that’s still wondering how it’s possible to fit a ’4 year education’ into 2 years… try this:

5 Years at a normal college taking the normal 2 Semesters per year is 10 Semesters total.

At Neumont, you go year round and cram 4 in a year instead of 2. So 2 1/2 years at 4 quarters per year = 10 Quarters total.

Get it?

No summer break.

*Lights go on*

- Paul Rohde

Modular Homes, who would have thought?

By Paul Rohde on March 1, 2009

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As I’m nearing the end of my college stint here in Utah (Though there may be a good possibility that I may stay in the area after getting a job) the thought of where am I going to live inevitably comes up. There are a lot of possible options, including renting out an apartment or part of an apartment, buying a house, buying a house and then renting, living in a tent, etc… etc… One of the more interesting options that my roommate brought up today was living in a shipping container.

Shipping containers?

Yes. Shipping containers. First of all, they are already built exactly the same size, they are already water and rustproof, are 8′ wide by 8′ tall, and come in the 20′ and 40′ long varieties, have a built in floor, are insulated, and can be bought and shipped used for < $2000 apiece. Add in water, electricity, walls with some additional insulation, a door and you have a self contained unit that you can set down anywhere, hook up, and go at it. Now the real fun comes in when you start designing a permanent home with several containers together, stack four together, weld, and gut the interior and you have 16' foot ceilings and a big open 16' x 40' living area, or just put in a staircase and you you have two 40' x 16' living areas with only 8' ceilings. Not surprisingly there's several projects right now that have built whole living complexes out of these things.

Don’t believe me? See for yourself: (And the original article that sparked my interest is here: http://joeynovak.com/blog/life/container-housing-for-10-30-sq-ft/)

An entertaining look at a container house in Minnesota

Container City in London

CNN News Report on shipping container homes

Regardless of if I actually try to do something like this, its a really cool way of building and is a unique way of reusing a lot of unused metal. College housing anyone?

- Paul Rohde

Service Integration and Mashups

By Paul Rohde on February 15, 2009

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As we move forward in our world of technological inspiration and development I’ve seen the explosion of not only social networks, but of internet services, open source software, and powerful content sharing and distribution mechanisms. Services like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Smug Mug and the Suite of Free Google Services and so on are growing at a mind boggling rate. I still remember sitting in a cubicle about two years ago in the Winona State University tech department at my first job trying to design websites to be fast and optimizing each image and layout to be as small as possible so that they would download quickly on a modem. I remember how small my view of the vast amount information and the petty prejudices I would have against various ones, not seeing ahead to the measures that would be taken to distribute and organize that information. I believe the information age is no more and that the information itself has become expected and transparent but the networking and organization of that information has and will continue to surpass it as the primary commodity in the world today. As I’ve moved out of my little world, gone to college Utah, and am now five weeks away from graduation I’ve seen Google go from a small beta company to the biggest and most well known company on the planet, I’ve seen Facebook go from a little personal networking site to one of THE leading social network today in the US (Not sure how the foreign market for social networks is going).

What does it all mean?

I spent most of today re-evaluating MANY of my online priorities and ways of doing things. These last two months has seen me extensively pick up my networking and social skills and apply them in ways I never have before. I’ve spent more time updating, writing, and networking than I ever have in the past, the simple fact that you’ve been seeing blog posts here that are over 200 words on a regular basis is something that I’ve never done before. I’ve moved into the world of Twitter, a micro-blogging and status service and took the leap of getting a pro account at Flickr so that I could integrate large versions of the photos here on this site.

But why?

As you look at the conglomeration of things I’ve mashed together, there are several things that I’ve begun to be able to do. The problem is that I have hundreds of people spread over an entire spectrum of networks, locations, and mediums. I have a friends on Flickr, different friends that watch my blog feed, personal friends on Facebook, random followers on Twitter. The trend that I have begun to noticed is the integration of one service with another. With a twitter update I also update my status on Facebook and my blog, with a new post on my blog a new note gets automatically written on Facebook and anyone who watches my feed also gets updated. A new image on Flickr now shows up in my Facebook story feed and is now accessible for me to use on my blog with a link to the Flickr photo for comments and discussion. Not only do I now have all these services at my finger tips, but common users have created links between these applications with whole markets sprouting up around these links because of the efforts of the developers to create easy to use interfaces allowing others to link the services.

I’ve spent the last few days experimenting and working out the kinks in many of these network linkages. About a month ago my twitter account became linked to my Facebook status, about that same time the RSS importer for Facebook allowed me to import my blog posts as notes in Facebook, even pulling thumbnails of the images that are in the posts in. About two weeks ago when I went live with a new design to this site I added my twitter status to the top of my blog. Today I went through, tested out and have begun using even more service links, I redirected all my RSS feeds to FeedBurner for tracking and analytics, I added an application to Facebook to show any new photos in Flickr on my Facebook story feed, I even added a plugin for WordPress (The blogging engine this site runs on) that allows me to now insert photos directly from Flickr into my blog, because the photos are displayed full size by default on my blog they now will link directly to the Flickr photo page allowing for much more commenting and discussion on the images outside of the scope of this blog. Something else I may do is add a Flickr album importer into Facebook so that I will no longer have to upload photos to both Flickr and Facebook simultaneously.

The point is, this environment is changing at a rapidly and exponentially increasing rate, as I’ve grown in my networking savvy I have no longer been turning to the network with the most people or services, but I rather look to see what best allows me to integrate these services with each other and access them simultaneously. I don’t have time to go and browse each location, or to update every place separately. This mix and mash of services is allowing to do one thing once, across multiple platforms simultaneously and update everyone quickly and without hassle. Personally, it’s cool when you realize the sheer scale of things, almost to the point of being scary as to how efficient I can mash up an entire system of services together in a way that suits exactly what I need to do and that allows me to reach hundreds of people, each in their own preferred medium.

With that being said, good luck to you all in your social-network-service-mashup-mix-and-match endeavors and I look forward to hearing the thoughts of others on this.

– Paul Rohde

Its your turn

By Paul Rohde on February 10, 2009

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As I’ve spent a lot of time learning and practicing my photography there have always been people along the way to give advice, provide mentorship and vision for me to reach for. Some never even know how much they’ve helped me along this little personal journey of mine; so today I’m going to be taking the time to recognize some of the people who have both served as mentors and peers to me and to those who have provided encouragement.

However, As I step into the ‘real world’ out of college I also want to take time to give back to the community as best I can. Without that, without many of the resources that people have put together, I really do not think I would be anywhere near the photographer I am today. One of the things I’m going to start doing is taking the time to answer photography related questions here on my blog and to begin writing down much of what I know in the form of tutorial posts. Its YOUR TURN to let me know what you want.

I personally wanted to thank each and every one of the following people (you can click on the pictures to enlarge them):

My Mom & Dad

Meet my parents, they got me my first camera body and lens and have always supported and encouraged me to become better, that camera still rarely leaves my side :) They’ve always been a blessing in so many ways and supported me in the many interests and hobbies I’ve had throughout my life. Thanks you both!

Jordan Ogren

Jordan is one of my best friends and also got me my first interview and job at WSU (Winona State University). As fellow photographer he and I were always competing and critiquing each others work as we both started out at around the same time. He also appears likes the taste of plastic V8 Splash bottles ^_^

Rich Legg

Another fellow photographer that I met through my Church here in Utah he started getting back into photography, stock photography in specific, helps run the Photowalking Utah group and is an amazing photographer and networker, in addition to being a good friend. He’s one of those people you look up to and try to model your work after, many thanks Rich for all the critique and encouragement!

(Rich is the photographer on the left)

Dani Jae

Dani is one of those people that you first meet and wonder if they ever get tired, sleep, stop going… or stop talking. I still haven’t figured it out :) Over the time I’ve known her she’s introduced and recommended me to more people than anyone else I know, and is an amazing friend to boot. If your reading this Dani, many MANY thanks for the friendship, the shoots, and the crazy conversations over pie :)

David Figge

Though not a photographer this guy has helped and encouraged me in my photography and been a great resource to me as I’m working to start my own Photography business. Many thanks for the time and input you’ve put into me Dave!

Peter Boysen

Another photographer that’s both a friend of mine and Jordan’s; he has a good set of work and I’ve often wished I had the skill he does. Thanks for all the inspiration, direction and criticism Peter!

Jared Anderson

A former Disney performer come to life Jared is another photographer whom I met at Neumont and have since kept up and done occasional shoots together. Many thanks for the time, critique, and the Nikon vs Canon rivalry!

Nathan Sweet

A photographer that I met through Ute-Nighted up at the University of Utah we’ve been collaborating (him borrowing my lights) *ahem* and occasionally critiquing each others work, bouncing ideas back and fourth, and so on.

Many thanks to each and every one of you, and I hope to be hearing from those of you who have something they would like to hear me write about here on my blog!

- Paul Rohde

Career Week Kickoff Part 2 : Website Revamp Process

By Paul Rohde on February 8, 2009

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Again in the spirit of “find a job week” here at Neumont I went back and instead of doing photography I revamped my entire website over this weekend and spent about 20-30 hours designing, creating and implementing a completely new look, feel and theme for my site. For those of you who have a vested interest in Graphic / Web design I am going to delve a bit into the design and thought process behind how this entire image has been evolving and try to cover the different aspects that played a part in this particular design.

But first, a trip down memory lane of how this sites theme has evolved:

This is the first WordPress theme I used from March of 2007 until some point in 2008. It was a highly modified version freshy theme including a revamped sidebar and posts area, and I believe a revamped comments section as well (not pictured)

A concept page, created as a design in late 2007 but never used or turned into a template.

This particular theme was created in June of 2008 to the point that I had an entire working template, all that would have been required was to insert all the PHP that was needed to turn it into a fully working WordPress theme and it would have gone into production on this site. At some point I realized it didn’t really reflect the media centric nature of who I was and the direction I was headed; it defiantly portrayed my technical software side and even the graphic/web site but it didn’t fit with all the photography and work I’ve put into developing my photography into a potential business. Eventually I stopped work on it and focused on other things (University classes among other things).

After finally getting really tired of the Freshy theme I went template hunting on http://www.wordpress.org/extend/themes and found a red and black theme that piqued my interest. After playing with it, removing some vines and flowers and replacing them with something a bit more ‘techy’, switching to a fluid width instead of fixed width site, I activated this theme:

An interesting thing to note at this point was that this theme has been setting not only the color and tone, but also began reflecting the entire ‘brand’ I want to portray. After this theme I began transitioning away from the logo I had created when I first began at Neumont and moved towards using just my name as my identity instead of associating a particular set of shapes or a particular symbol to my name as well. Around the end of November 2008 I began to develop this whole concept of image and identity, about who I was, what I wanted to be, what direction I wanted to take myself and where I want to be in the next 3-5 years. That was around the time I began brainstorming identity, font’s, layouts, colors and so on. I wanted to start with the core, the basics of how I was going to display myself and the most simple level and then build out a web and print identity from there. So, I started with my name. I scrapped the logo I had been using for most of my time at Neumont and created about two photoshop scratch sheets full of ideas. The first sheet here is the original starting sheet, the second is taking the favorites and beginning to refine it down more.

(click to expand)

The problem I inevitably run up against is the balance between technology, which is a rigorous logical and mathematical discipline, and art, which is creative, random at times and completely unique depending on the individual creating the art. I needed something that would appeal to both, especially as I knew I was beginning my job search soon. I ended up with a requirements spec in my mind that looked something like this: I needs to be clean, simple, not confusing, it needs to include at least my first and last name, and it to have enough flair to appeal to someone in an art position, models, photographers, other designers, etc… I finally ended with the logo that’s at the top of my site today, black or white text with a red J initial that gets slightly darker as you reach the bottom.

The first step in the design process was creating a watermark, I use it all the time, all over the place and on everything digital. Its also one of the hardest parts to get right and will let you know if the logo and colors you chose can be used effectively on a variety of different backgrounds and situations. It did require some minor tweaking and adjusting to get right, and I suppose the perfectionist in me will never stop changing it, but for now I have a fairly stable brand so to speak.

Finally, the current site. I built it off of the K2 engine I had used on a previous site for Arrowhead Bible Camp, and began with that template as the starting point. I’m a BIG fan of reusing things, modifying them to get what you need. Now, that being said, there are times when you should be creating things all the way from scratch, and I have in the past (the gray and orange template up above and all the logo’s I’ve designed to date for instance) so don’t get me wrong here. Anyways, that aside, I started by creating the backdrop for the site, working through various layout ideas, building a glassy menu bar to add some tech in there and adding feed for twitter right below the menu bar. If you look right now I only have one header image, but one thing that was important was that I could easily change the visual appearance of the site, and k2 allows me to use a folder of images and rotate through them on each page reload, thus my next step is to take a good chunk of my photography and build out several good looking header images with some color in them (I KNOW I don’t want to see myself in the header every time I visit my site).

I hope you enjoyed my technical reminiscing and will look forward to hearing your comments,

Till next time,

Paul Rohde