The Iowa Heartland Chapter held its annual Cable Games on March 28th at Stoney Creek Hotel in Johnston. We want to thank all 20 participants in the games for taking a few hours to demonstrate their skills and engage in a bit of friendly competition!

All of the participants this year were Mediacom employees. The overall winner was Shawn Stogdill, who also won the Iowa games in a previous year. Trenton Johnson was second overall and Luke Brown came in third.

The winners of the individual games were:
Cable Splicing - Mathew Watros
Fiber Splicing - Mathrew Watros
Meter Reading - Tanner Koeff
MTDR - Luke Brown
Drop Connection - Trenton Johnson
OTDR - Shawn Stogdill
Cable Jeopardy - Brian Winkler

CLICK HERE for a PDF of top three in each category.

Over 80 attendees, vendor representatives, and board members participated in our annual Vendor Day on March 28th, the morning before the Cable Games. It was a great turnout! The Chapter wants to give a huge THANK YOU to the companies who displayed their products and services at this year's event!

For the past several years, the Iowa Heartland SCTE Chapter has had an exhibit at the Iowa Communications Allliance (ICA) Annual Meeting and Expo. The goal is outreach to Iowa's over 100 independent broadband providers to educate them about the opportunities for training and networking at our chapter.

This year, Iowa Board members Curtis Dean and Carl Norton manned the booth, distributing SCTE literature and educating attendees about our upcoming trainings. 

The Iowa SCTE Board has gotten off to an early start scheduling great in-person trainings for our members this year! Visit our landing page to see the complete list.

So far we've been able to nail down details on the following trainings:

• March 6-7: Cable 101 and Cable Math 1
• March 28: Vendor Day and Cable-Tec Games
• May 7: Iowa Heartland Safety Day

Registration is available for the March events and will be coming soon for the Safety Day

The Board has also put together a schedule of other trainings for later in the year, including XGS-PON Deep Dive, Distributed Access, and Fiber Test and Inspection. We're also looking at other topics for virtual trainings and informational sessions.

Our first ever chapter Member Appreciation Day is being planned for September 10, 2024 at Pinseekers in Tiffin. We'll spend a couple of hours testing our golfing skills (or in my case, lack thereof) beginning at 3pm followed by dinner and multi-sports simulators. Mark your calendars, and watch your inbox for more information on this fun new event!

There are two standards being used in fiber deployments to provide 10 gigabit upload and download speeds on a shared fiber network. But what are the differences between 10G-EPON and XGS-PON? Kevin Noll with CableLabs breaks it down in this great article on the CableLabs website. It's a quick read and very enlightening.

Here's a friendly reminder to our chapter SCTE members that if you haven't already, please take a moment to renew your SCTE membership. All memberships are on a calendar year basis so unless you renew it may have ended on 12/31/23. SCTE membership opens a world of learning, networking, and training opportunities. 

Reminder to Mediacom employees: Mediacom is a member of the CableLabs All Access Benefits Program, which means that you can join SCTE for FREE. What a bargain! Just reach out to your supervisor and ask for an application.

SCTE is currently taking reservations for our prestigious Leadership Institute Programs. 

• The SCTE– Georgia Tech Management Development Program (March 4 – 7, 2024)  is designed to enhance the business and leadership skills of Senior Managers and above, who are currently or will in the near future be required to manage teams, personnel, vendors, and relationships, while also delivering effective business solutions to both internal and external clients. 
• The SCTE– Tuck Executive Leadership Program (April 28 – May 3, 2024) was designed for directors, senior directors, VPs, SVPs and C-Level professionals, as well as those from teams they work with in the areas of operations, communications, human resources and others, strengthening their business skills to enable them to better convert business needs into appropriate technology.
• The SCTE- Cornell Agile Leadership Program (October 13-17, 2024) Agile leadership is a methodology to accelerate projects and manage for outcomes instead of output.   Provides the mindset and tools you need to empower teams for rapid innovation, iteration, and learning as your organization strives for continuous improvement. Highly interactive sessions incorporate experiential learning, case studies, industry speakers, and lively debate in an environment of skeptical inquiry. 

Seats are limited, so don’t delay!  

SCTE has secured approval as an NCTC supplier for the year 2024! Throughout the year, SCTE will participate in various NCTC events, and NCTC will have a presence at the annual SCTE Tec Expo taking place from September 24-26 in Atlanta, Georgia.
 
In partnership with NCTC, SCTE will conduct hands-on fiber optic training at the 2024 NCTC Winter Educational Conference (WEC) at the Red Rock Casino, Resort & Spa on Wednesday, February 28. To reserve your spot in the training, register for WEC and choose the SCTE add-on. Additional details about the fiber training program are available here.  
 
Throughout 2024, NCTC members can fully leverage SCTE offerings, with a 25% discount on SCTE memberships, SCTE online training courses, and SCTEprofessional certifications.
 
For further information regarding this collaboration and NCTC member discounts visit the NCTC supplier page. For additional questions please contact Steve Harris, Vice President of Global Market Development, at sharris@scte.org.

Due to the impending winter storm, the Iowa Heartland Board's annual planning meeting will be held online using Microsoft Teams and wil not be held at the Coralville Public Library.

The Iowa Heartland Board will hold their annual planning meeting on January 11, 2024 at 10am in Meeting Room B at the Coralville Public Library.

This is an important meeting where the Board elects officers for the year and also discusses a training schedule for the year. Any SCTE member is welcome to attend and participate in the planning process! If you are not on the Board but want to attend, please RSVP to Curtis Dean, [email protected], by January 10th. Thanks!