About Pete Holm
Reason for Participating in Fab Academy
- After each success and promotion, my job become more about providing leadership and direction and less about actually doing the technical work. As a get-your-hands-dirty kind of a person, I missed the making. In retirement, I want to get back to the fun that led me to engineering.
- I think that it is critically important that we train the next generation of engineers to take our place in the work force. Another primary objective for attending the FabAcademy is to obtain skills which can be transfered to high school kids that enable them to improve rapid prototyping and building a FIRST Robot in the 6 week build season
- I am a huge fan of Seymour Papert. I try to apply constructionist ideas to kids that I mentor and use them to help me learn.
- I am also a proponent and implementor of Design Thinking. I have found that the best ideas come from cross disciplinary team. Think that Fab Academy’s broad scope integrating different elements of design and fabrication teaches techniques that are very complementary with the objectives of Design Thinking. Many times in teams each individual brings unique skills to the table. Fab Academy differs in that it attempts to create a well rounded person that has elements of many skills. Specifically, Fab Academy adds to the richness of the brainstorming and prototyping process.
Work History
Retired last April from IBM as an Executive I/T Architect, also worked for many years at Boeing
Last job: North American leader of the Technical Design Assessment (TDA) process for IBM Global Services (Technical leadership of the teams that review IBM Global Services - North America technical proposals)
Majority of prior experience: Chief System Architect on customer facing development projects:
- Designed architectures of many enterprise web sites / web applications
- Specific focus on back end systems, delegated UX and implemention to UX guys - this is my first web site
Examples of several earlier projects
- Chief Architect of Boeing BEDS (Boeing’s system of systems that manages the lifecycle of all the loadable software for the 787 and legacy airplanes - Ex: flight controls, navigation databases, inflight entertainment systems, etc)
- Chief Architect of the web redesign of Boeing REDARS (Boeing’s internal and external legacy engineering document management system)
- An original Architect of MyBoeingFleet.com (Boeing’s customer facing airplane maintenance site)
Mentor Experience
- Mentor since 2011 for the Linbergh High School FIRST Robotics Team 3588
- Weekly progress videos of the team's 2019 FRC Build Season
Example Maker Experience
- Built and "raced" a Donkey Car
- Built a low power Grbl based Laser Cutter/Engraver
- Built a small Grbl based CNC Router
- Used SMT to make an Arduino clone
Other Interests
- Python Language and Jupyter Notebooks
- Machine Learning, (Keras and TensorFlow)
- Computer Vision (OpenCV)
- Arduino type devices and Raspberry Pis