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Early years 1978-1984

By Alyssa Siegel
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  As a kid, I loved puzzle books, Lego-building and challenges that required deep thinking.  I always felt a bit different in this regard, as I never fit in with the other girls on my elementary school playground playing with dolls and other stereotypical girl toys .   Teletype Device Then, in 1979 when I was in the 8 th grade, I was intrigued by a new class offered in my Junior High school, “Computer Math”.  I couldn’t wait to see what this was about and enthusiastically signed on.  I was the only girl in the class.  While that felt a bit daunting, the class content immediately pulled me in . We were using an early version of the Basic programming language .  There were no electronic displays , just a teletype device .  I started writing Basic programs and was hooked.   I became so attached to this class that I would come into the classroom early before school started and experiment.  I remember typing a command that listed games ava...
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Future Directions

By Alyssa Siegel
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This is the most recent topic in a chronological story.    To read this blog from beginning to end please  START AT THIS LINK   Now that I have found my dream team and such an effective way of working, my biggest wish now would be to have a job description and official org anizational structure that aligns. For software to be optimally effective, it should be designed from the ground up – in the “trenches” where the developers, users , administrators and leaders   can work together and effectively communicate needs with the experience and nimbleness Sunita, Sharda and I have established. While this work is incredibly rewarding and we are thrilled at what we have produced , w e are all still working outside out of our job descriptions and not in an “officially sanctioned” way. My vision is to have the value of our way of working recognized at the root of organizations so that we can set an example of what is possible and inspire others. With Sharda and Suni...
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Microsoft Power Platform

By Alyssa Siegel
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I continued to develop my predominant projects at CINJ, Qualtrac and Onelook, using   Microsoft Access 365 and the techniques I had developed through the years. Now that we could run these applications in a Microsoft Azure virtual environment (VDI), I no longer had the overhead of managing individual installations on individual machines. This greatly simplified what was needed to manage our multi-user implementations. One day I got curious about the Rutgers-sanctioned apps that were available to me on my work cellphone. In particular , there was an app from Microsoft called “Flow” that piqued my curiosity.   I downloaded th is Flow app ( which was later renamed to Power Automate) and additionally started exploring the Web-based version of t he application. I was intrigued. This was a tool that enabled a way to create sophisticated, automated wor kflows using graphical action “blocks” as opposed to writing computer code. Using Power Automate, we could now connect th...
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