On October 11, 2025, BDPA Memphis hosted a tech gathering that exploded with creativity, curiosity, and community pride. From digital art to data pipelines, the room buzzed with Memphis-made brilliance. Here are a few highlights from a space that Naim Hakeem and Judy Lane built to celebrate Memphis-made innovation.
🎨 Creative Expression Through Tech
We kicked things off with a visual treat:
Naim’s Halloween digital art brought motion and camera work into play, adding eerie depth and storytelling to the design.
Dustin Peek’s Yu-Gi-Oh-inspired card app turned heads with its polished interface and playful nostalgia. He broke down the tech stack, creative spark, and what he learned along the way.
🧠 Learning by Doing
Memphis learners showed up and showed out:
Bryson, a CS major, walked us through a Power BI demo using public data sets. He covered data retrieval, cleaning, and visualization with clarity and confidence.
Tremaine Mckiney introduced “vibe-coding”. A non-linear, intuitive approach to learning software development that resonated with many in the room.
🧑🏾🏫 Learning by Sharing
These demos sparked deeper conversations led by senior engineers (shoutout to Sean Alphonse for anchoring the room with insight):
How AI can scaffold software architecture through prompt engineering
The real-world pros and cons of Python
Hands-on breakdowns of AWS Lambda, Docker, and Apache Spark
🌱 Uplift, Mentorship & Momentum
No BDPA Memphis event is complete without a focus on youth empowerment and career pathways:
Naim shared updates on youth coding prep for the 2026 National BDPA competition.
Judaea Lane led a roundtable on networking, volunteering, and finding opportunities through platforms like Meetup, Eventbrite, and the Memphis Tech Scene newsletter.
Kathryn Hicks, fresh off her Deltech pitch competition win, closed the day with pitching tips and a heartfelt reminder: “When someone dreams big.”
Every voice, every demo, every shared moment at an event such as this builds something bigger in Memphis: pride, visibility, and connection. Let’s keep showing up for each other.