Finding Meaning in Mentorship at Scale

By on in Culture, Mentorship

Last month, Carbon Five New York participated in Tech: NYC’s Summer Bridge 2020 program in coordination with local nonprofit, El Barrio’s Operation Fightback.

Summer Bridge is the nation’s largest youth employment program, giving some 35,000 disadvantaged NYC teens and young adults paid experience along with an opportunity to build important life skills and get exposure to new disciplines. The program centers around a workplace challenge bringing underprivileged young adults across NYC together to solve real business problems.

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Greenfield Projects: Seven Ways to Set Yourself Up for Success

By on in Development, Process

A developer’s perspective on building teams that build from scratch

There’s a story I once heard about a traveler and his party who peer out across an abandoned minefield to a site of buried treasure. There is no detour that will take them around it — they can cross together or separately, and they can go straight or around in circles. While they can deliberate over a plan, the sun is setting and they need to make a decision soon. What do they do?

That grassy field could represent opportunity — the path to success, riches, or adventure. Or it could be the opposite. A series of pitfalls disguised as freedom. Does this sound familiar? Does the term greenfield project ring any bells?

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The Future of Digital Healthcare: Interview with Nick Altebrando from AbleTo

By on in Product Management, Startups

The health and wellness industry is being forced to quickly adapt to new norms faster than ever before. Telemedicine and telehealth services are now on the rise. Contactless patient care and remote check-ups are becoming routine. Customer needs and behaviors are changing almost daily.

So what does this mean for the future of health and wellness products and services?

We sat down with Nick Altebrando, VP of Product Strategy at AbleTo, the leading provider of virtual behavioral healthcare services, to learn how the pandemic has impacted business, presented challenges and created new opportunities for companies in the health and wellness industry.

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New to Mobile App Design? Six Things to Know for Your Next Mobile Project

By on in Design

At the start of any project, one of the first things to consider is what technology solution the product should be built for. A website? A mobile app? Should it be for iPhone or Android…or both?

As mobile apps lead the charge in user acquisition, the ability for a designer to solve problems for the mobile app experience is becoming more of an essential skill.

If you search “how to design mobile apps” on the web, you’ll find many blog posts cover very high-level concepts…a little too high level.

In this post, I’d like to share the most important things to know and consider when starting your mobile project.

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Story Nanoslicing

By on in Development

It’s the start of a new project for our team, and we’re all excited to get development rolling. The Product Owner’s grand vision sounds great, but how do we get from that vision to the day-to-day detailed stories we’ll need to work on? We’re not about to go off into a cave to build in isolation for months, since we know our understanding of the problem will evolve over time. We want to get a Minimally Viable Product live, see what makes customers happy, and adjust the parts that aren’t satisfying or profitable.

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Creating Successful Online Banking Products – Agile Growth Workshop Recap

By on in Development, Events

Banking and financial institutions are rapidly working on digitizing products to stay relevant and better serve customers, but, the truth is, modernizing banking experiences is incredibly difficult. A digital project in the banking world is nothing short of an order of magnitude. The requirements behind developing successful banking products are staggering compared to the average consumer product, but the high ROI of launching a successful banking app makes it all worth the effort.

Carbon Five hosted a panel discussion on Expert Insights for Creating Successful Online Banking Products. During the conversation, panelists shared first-hand experiences working with some of the most well-known banking and FinTech brands, including Capital One, Citi Ventures Studios, Chime, Commerce Bank, FNBO, Plastiq, Square, Wells Fargo and more.

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A Tale of Two GitHubs: A Practical Guide

By on in Development

Let’s say you have two GitHub accounts: one is a work account that you use for professional projects, and the other is for your top secret hacker projects. This can cause problems like trying to push to a repository with an account that doesn’t have access or having the wrong GitHub author in your commits. For people with 2FA enabled, juggling ssh configs can also be hugely annoying. Here’s how I clone, pull, and push to GitHub repos using multiple GitHub accounts on one computer.

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