It’s a perennial problem in cyberspace: how to keep up with the warp-speed pace of change? It helps if someone’s got your back. Even better if that person shares your IT DNA.
Stan and Matt Hoffman, father-and-son IT specialists, believe in networking. Stan, who manages software for Pittsburgh’s Babcock Lumber, began his computer career in the 1970s. He and son Matt, the 32 year-old director of the software development group at Concurrent Technologies Corporation in Johnstown, head their respective local chapters of the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP). Both groups concentrate on boosting their members’ professional savvy and encourage students interested in the field. But their approaches differ, as might be expected from two different generations. Stan’s Pittsburgh chapter emphasizes community service, while Matt’s younger crew uses social media and zany celebrations–like a recent Windows 7 launch party–to attract new participants.
Soft-spoken Stanford Hoffman joined Babcock, a lumber supplier with 13 East Coast locations, to set up the company’s electronic data interchange (EDI) software systems, which help staffers work efficiently with clients like Home Depot. He’s been a stalwart of the Pittsburgh AITP chapter for 18 years, and has spent the past four as president. “I always tell computer students, if you don’t learn something new everyday in technology there is something wrong,” he says. The Pittsburgh group meets on the third Monday of each month for briefings on issues like Microsoft server disaster recovery or an intro to IBM System i’s newest bells and whistles.
Stan notes that the group’s board comprises 180 years of experience in the field, which they’re happy to share with three dozen members and students from Robert Morris University, Kaplan Institute, and other local schools. The group also joins forces for a charity golf outing each August. The event is Stan’s brainchild, raising over $1,500 per year for scholarships for IT students, and helped the Pittsburgh group win the national AITP Association’s outstanding chapter for 2008. When Stan returned with the trophy from this year’s association meeting, his group immediately dubbed it the “Stanford” Cup.
Meanwhile, the national group also recognized Matt’s new Johnstown AITP chapter as an up-and-comer–props for both father and son. The Johnstown chapter now counts 26 members, nearly as many as the more long-lived Pittsburgh group. Matt gives his father credit for the example of positive, casual communications among peers. “You can learn and share a lot,” he says.
In his current post at CTC, Matt handles software testing and independent validation and verification (IV&V) practices.
“You want to release tools that are easy for everyone to use, even by themselves at two o’clock in the morning,” he says. For firms like CTC, a non-profit outfit that evaluates technical products, understanding federal standards like 508 compliance is equally important. Matt has led the firm’s work on testing invoicing applications and logistics web development projects. He has adapted the casual AITP networking format within CTC, urging his staff to invite co-workers throughout the company to brown bag lunches to discuss new products and procedures. He’s an advocate of what he calls “personal marketing,” urging his staff to share their expertise with co-workers.
Matt may be the only person who is surprised that he followed his dad’s professional footsteps. As an undergraduate at Robert Morris University, he’d chosen corporate communications, rather than computer science, as a major. But he’d spent hours as a youngster with his father, playing on sports teams coached by the older Hoffman and observing him on professional projects, and enjoyed noodling with first-generation PCs at the family home in suburban West Mifflin.
“I had an Atari 800,” he recalls, “with PacMan and Space Invaders. I remember taking the BASIC cartridge and drawing snakes (onscreen) with it.”
After joining CTC in 2000, Matt completed a master’s degree at Capella University online the same month that his first child, Chloe, was born. The effort was inspired in part by his dad, who’d worked full-time while earning his undergrad degree from Point Park University.
“I believe experience gets you in, but a degree gets you further,” says Stan. That’s why he wants to encourage students, including local scholarship winners, to become active in AITP.
Matt agrees. “Students need a boost to get past the professional nerves,” he says. “We need to get them motivated, to take a shot, to not be afraid.”
In that sense, Matt is applying lessons instilled by years of patient coaching by his dad. “He always found a way to be involved,” he says admiringly. After trying sports from karate to wrestling to baseball, Matt adopted hockey as a lifetime sport, playing recreationally in Johnstown leagues. Now grandfather and father take equal enjoyment in cheering the next generation of family athletes, five-year old Chloe and brother Brett, age 2. (That’s them, smiling from the screen of their grandfather’s laptop.)
As for Stan, his career goals are still family-oriented. He knows who he’d like to work for next: Matt.
“I’d like for him to have a business–and work with him,” he laughs.
Christine H. O’Toole is Keystone Edge’s Innovation and Job News Editor for
Western Pennsylvania.
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Photos:
Stan Hoffman with his son Matt
Matt Hoffman
Stan Hoffman
All photographs by Renee Rosensteel
