The Intersection of Tech and Art: Sterling’s Story

In the seven years that Sterling Powers has been a military spouse, she has moved three times, including a sojourn in Cambridge, England, and in North Carolina, where she completed a degree in sculpture.

Currently located in Albuquerque, Sterling saw a post in a local social media group sharing a flyer for an Internet of Things (IoT) bootcamp at Central New Mexico Community College (CNM). Intrigued, she quickly researched to learn more about the program and contacted the program coordinator, learning that as a military spouse, she qualified for funding to pay for the bootcamp and a stipend through NextFlex’s Military Spouse Technical Training for Employment Mobility (Mil-STTEM) program.

She felt strongly that she had to participate in this bootcamp, as the skills she would gain would be applicable to many aspects of her life, and she always looks for ways to expand her knowledge. “If there’s an opportunity to learn something, I’m going to do it. I’m going to future proof myself.”

Though Sterling has a background working primarily in the arts, she saw the IoT program as applicable to the type of art she wanted to create. She has attended Burning Man several times, as well as serving as an arts chair for the local burn in New Mexico SunBurn last year. Burning Man events feature large scale structures, intended to shift the perception of art from a commodified object to something that is interactive, participatory, and creates shared experiences of expression.

“There’s a big intersection of tech and art – there are a lot of just really cool structures. They’re beautiful and meaningful, but they also do interesting things.”

Sterling has just applied for a grant for a public art piece to be displayed at a local Burning Man that uses components from her bootcamp’s capstone project. After submitting her application, she had three people volunteer to join her team to help her build this piece the very next day.

“Knowing that this team of people is going to be coming over and helping to build this piece and putting it together made me realize that THIS is the thing that I want to keep doing – making big, cool art pieces that make people feel understood, playful, and joyful.”

Spending 40 hours a week taking a deep dive into everything covered in an IoT bootcamp for 10 weeks meant a lot of time together as a cohort and building a sense of community. After class, they’d often stay to work on their projects, chat, and help one another solve problems, developing close friendships and staying in touch long after the bootcamp was over.

After they graduated, they went together to Top Golf and observed the technology they had used in their IoT bootcamp being applied to the game in the facility. “It’s IoT, it’s all sensors and blinking lights.”

Besides the technical skills she gained participating in the bootcamp and the new connections, she also gained a new perspective on how to manage projects. While the basic concept of breaking down large tasks into smaller, more easily digestible tasks within project management was familiar to her, she developed a new way of problem solving that she hadn’t considered before.

“I think in the past I’ve always believed that you can’t really do that unless you already know everything about each step that you need to take, and with this that is not the case, especially not with tech. You can’t see the problem until you’re on the inside of that problem. You can’t learn from the outside and just do it. You have to dive in and figure it out. This course changed my life. I knew I would learn new things, I didn’t realize it would give me a whole new way of thinking.”

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