[Cs_announce] Senior Seminar Talk by Kevin Mershon of Mershon Enterprises - Friday 3/3/2017

[Alberto Cruz]

Dear faculty, students and alumni,

You are cordially invited to attend a seminar presented by

Kevin Mershon
of Mershon Enterprises - A Bakersfield Software Company

Date: Friday, March 3
Location: SCI III Room 311
Time: 4:00PM

Abstract

Kevin Mershon, President and founder of local software development firm Mershon Enterprises, will speak on successfully breaking into a career in the software industry in the job market of tomorrow. Without post-graduation training and the tenacity to build a career on ever-shifting sands, today's computer science graduates are generally ill-prepared and unable to compete with outsourced labor, domestic bootcamp graduates, and what billionaire investor Mark Cuban refers to as the coming "automation of automation." Learn about what technologies to avoid, how to prevent a "career cul-de-sac," and how software projects go from terrible "Startup Weekend" idea to maintainable, shippable products. Learn what to know for an interview, what you can forget the day after graduation, and how to find your "in" into a career that excites and motivates you day-to-day. Learn about the pitfalls of starting your own software company, the local landscape of software and technology businesses, and Kevin's twisted thoughts on where the market may be heading.

About Kevin Mershon

I started as a web developer here in Bakersfield while on summer break during my first year of college at SJSU, in 2003. I worked for a tiny oilfield engineering firm, then took that job remote when I moved back to San Jose for the fall. Within a year I picked up a full-time gig working for what was then called TrueShip, now ReadyCloud CRM. Myself and another senior developer built a lot of the infrastructure that still runs the company today and I learned a tremendous amount about real-world software development. In 2008 I moved back to Bakersfield to be closer to family during my wife's health crisis. I took a cushy SCADA developer job over the next 7 years at a mid-size oilfield engineering firm. During that time I started a new software division, learned Agile project methodology, managed a team of 8, and together we built and maintained a distributed wireless mesh data collection system spread across 3 countries, 7 clients, and over 10,000 unique data points per minute collected 24/7.
In 2014 I left that company and started my own corporation with partners, only to buy them out 14 months later and become Mershon Enterprises as we are today. During that time, I've helped MESH Cowork open their doors, have led and spoken at numerous local dev and business-related monthly and weekly meetups, helped launch Kern Innovation & Technology community, acted as a judge in numerous of KIT's events, and am the treasurer on the board. I also have good working relationships with the owners of most other tech firms locally such as Avadine, Grapevine MSP, ARRC, Tyrion Integration, Tris, IDI-Tech, The Marcom Group, and Creatively Blind. I also have connections to city council members and have a monthly standing meeting with Mayor Karen Goh and a private group of business leaders on tech issues facing the community, and I have connections working at Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Sony, Nike, Virgin Galactic, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, 23AndMe, FitBit, and a handful of other companies that aren't such household names. I am here to help guide you toward a successful career, and my inbox and door are always open.

Thanks,

Albert C. Cruz, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
California State University, Bakersfield
http://cs.csubak.edu/~acruz/