TEC Talks Podcast: Gabe Noga

You're listening to Tech Talks, a podcast by the Technology Education Collaborative.

Tech is an Arizona nonprofit that empowers people with useful information about the technology

they use each and every day.

Today we're sitting down with Gabe Noga.

Gabe, thanks for being here.

Hey, no problem.

It's a great intro, by the way.

You have a good, good intro voice.

So the way this works is we always ask everybody the same five questions.

There may be a few sub questions, so be prepared for that.

And we just give people an idea of what it's like to do what you do.

Sound good?

Cool.

All right.

So the first question's easy.

What is your title and position?

My title is Regional Hub Coordinator, and I am a Regional Hub Coordinator for a grant

from the National Science Foundation and ASU's Center for Broadening Participation

in STEM.

Grant is really focused on getting more students involved in STEM.

I manage six institutions in the southwest region.

So basically I coordinate meetings, coordinate events, plan events, do internships, externships,

and I give the faculty members everything that they need that is crucial for the mentality

that this grant is focused on, which is trying to bring more kids into STEM.

I say kids, they're students, they're adults, colleges.

So age range is anywhere from 17 to 40s, 50s, whoever the students are that are going into

those classes, but mostly community colleges.

And I do have ASU as one of my institutions.

So what does your day-to-day job look like then?

It sounds like it could be fun.

Yeah.

Well, it's interesting.

So I attend a lot of meetings that I plan.

I also plan events like we are doing this event with, it's a workshop with the company

Microchip on Friday, September 6th.

We have about 50 students that are going to roll into a classroom and start building these

LED lamps.

There's some coding that goes into it, so they're going to get some practice on that

and they're going to get to mingle with the CEO and other C-suite level officials from

Microchip.

What's your favorite thing about your job?

I think the impact that it has on students.

I know we'll get into this later, but one of my biggest things going, or that I learned

about myself recently was that I like to help people succeed.

And that's not, I guess it's not recently that I discovered that subconsciously I've

been doing it, you know, since I've been in the workforce, but whenever students are able

to attend these events and they can see the light bulbs turn on, that's like, yeah, got

it.

Selfishly, I like it, but like, you know, it's helping them.

I like to help people who want to help themselves.

So what is your least favorite thing about your job?

I guess it would be relying on other people to do things that are necessary for things

that I'm planning.

And maybe that's just part of my being kind of a control freak whenever I'm like planning

an event or doing something, you know, and I have to wait for this person to get approval

or for this person to do something logistically that is, should have been done when I asked

them to do it.

I mean, that's probably a common problem across the board, but that's, that's my pet peeve.

And then bonus sub question.

So you're not in this role, at least you're not working directly as a technologist, but

you obviously have an instrumental role to play within the technology ecosystem.

Absolutely.

So what are your thoughts about that?

I enjoy doing it, but it's also led me to exploring a lot of my own interests in tech.

So there are some things, I mean, normally I'm pretty tech savvy, like, you know, I know

my way around a computer.

I've built computers before, different programming languages and stuff like that.

I'm not like an expert or anything, but I think the proximity to some of the things

that I've been involved with have sparked interests that have led me down a path that

I wasn't even thinking about before.

And what path is that?

Cybersecurity.

Anything specific in cybersecurity?

Security analysts also, but I mean, you know, pen testing sounds really fun too.

I know that with my lack of experience and knowledge in certain technical aspects of

cybersecurity, I've laid out a path for myself to learn the basics before I start getting

into the fun stuff or what I consider fun stuff.

But I'm having a blast learning all that stuff along the way.

So very cool.

All right.

So what is something practical that somebody who might be interested in a position like

yours or similar to yours should do?

So really my role is, I like to say it's akin to project management.

Organization is key and organization kind of transcends any industry.

You know, if you want to be good at anything, you have to be organized, I would say.

You know, you have to know how to lay out a plan, what to do first, be able to pull

from, you know, a well organized structure if you're asked anything.

Say for example, if my boss asks me for anything, I can give it to her like that because I know

exactly where it is.

She doesn't have to wait.

I'm not like, oh, you know, searching around or anything like that.

But organization is probably one of the best things that anyone can learn just in general.

It's going to help you out a lot.

All right.

And then do you have any passion projects, side projects, anything you're working on

that that really excites you that you want to share with anybody?

So over the summer, we did a intern externship.

So we had two cohorts of students.

One was working on an app development and the other one was building a network.

So I spent some time with both, but I got really, really into watching the students

build the network and that sparked a cyber security, you know, my interest in cyber security.

So I started doing a lot of my own research and I thought about some of the things that

I really enjoy doing.

Like I said before, helping people, you know, helping people advance in what it is they

want to do.

So right now I am building a talent matching website or cyber security only for cyber security.

As it develops, I will I will definitely come back and tell you a little bit more.

But I look to see what my, you know, competition would be.

And I was surprised to find that there's not a lot out there.

Most of the cyber security jobs are you have to know someone or if there are indeed nobody's

getting responses back or anything like that.

And there's a couple of really great resources.

Cyber seek is is something akin to what I would like to do, but they're more of just

like a resource website.

So it's not really what it is that I want to do because I want to bring companies in

and match them with talent that is looking for jobs.

And there's a lot of cyber security jobs that need to be filled.

It's a huge thing for me now, especially because kind of because of how it relates to our position

in the world and the things that are happening right now from a geopolitical standpoint.

You know, we're very vulnerable and we need I don't know, we need people to fill those

roles.

We need people to be excited about it.

We hope to be someone that sparks an interest in the future generations for that.

The Pentagon Cyber Command definitely is on a recruiting offensive for sure.

Well, thank you so much for being here, Gabe.

Yeah.

This episode was recorded at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab at Gateway Community College.

The ACSL is a tech hub that is open to the general public where you can do pretty much

anything.

You can use a 3D printer, you can play around with some servers, you can practice advanced

tech skills.

And we welcome anybody and everybody to come on in and check it out.

If none of that made sense to you and you don't know what any of those things are, that's

OK.

You should come in anyways because someone here will be more than happy to show you.

And also, just like we did, you can also record a podcast for free.