About Timlynn Babitsky

Last year I began a life-changing, and thankfully successful so far, battle with cancer. Jim and I are now fully engaged on two inter-related #Play2Learn projects; FactMiners and The Softalk Apple Project.. As soon as we have a chance, we'll update these bio pages accordingly.

She has designed, developed and delivered medical training materials for use in Saudi Arabia; statistics and statistical computing courseware at the University of California, Irvine; extensive and varied ESL learning materials for corporate and medical professionals in Kyoto Japan; Okinawa culture curriculum for DOD Overseas Dependents schools; and Wind Power workshops for Community Organizers, Activists and Project Managers in the US.

Ms. Babitsky has contributed to advancement of the Object Technology (OT) industry through her work in OT education and mentoring and her involvement in OT publications, conferences and consulting.

As a Senior Consultant in IBM's North American Object Technology Practice Ms. Babitsky designed, developed and managed the NAOTP Object Technology Mentoring Program to service software developers across IBM and its worldwide corporate client base. She oversaw development of IBM's Object Technology Competency Development and Skills Assessment process/test/interview protocols and IBM Education's School 1 and School 2 Object Technology courses. She designed and developed the entrance test for the NAOTP Object Technology Mentoring Program. This test passed all IBM requirements for validation and was used for a number of years in IBM Education.

Ms. Babitsky was the Director of Education Services at Knowledge Systems Corporation. At KSC Timlynn developed certification procedures for Object Technology instructors, master instructors, course developers, and courseware. She instituted look and feel standards and rigorous quality control processes for all KSC educational materials and educational events. The ES offerings of KSC became and were considered the industry standard for a number of years in the object technology marketplace.

Ms. Babitsky is the founding Co-Editor of The International OOP Directory: A Guide to Object-Oriented Products and Services, published by SIGS publications, producing both the 1990 and 1992 editions. She served on the Executive Committee for the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) sponsored OOPSLA (Object Oriented Programming Systems Languages and Applications) Conference, the technical conference of record for the object technology industry, in 1988, '89, '91, '92; the OOPSLA Steering Committee '92-'93; and was OOPSLA Conference Co-Chair in 1993.

Prior to joining KSC, Ms. Babitsky was Vice President of JFS Consulting, a computer based, desktop publishing firm that designed, developed and produced tutorial/reference manuals in emerging object-oriented technology.

In 1998, Jim Salmons and Timlynn Babitsky founded Sohodojo, an applied R&D lab to support solo and family based small business entrepreneurs in rural and distressed urban communities.

Based on Sohodojo's research and growing reputation for innovative business models, in 2002 Ms. Babitsky was recruited by Montana State University - Northern, as the founding director of the North American Rural Futures Institute (NARFI) under a two-year contract. As Executive Director, Ms. Babitsky designed and developed a five year plan for NARFI focused on a combination of NARFI-led projects and strategic collaborations.

NARFI focused on three key paths to develop rural future thinking: 1)"Rise of the Creative Class in the Small" research extending Richard Florida's work in urban settings in The Rise of The Creative Class; to rural communities in geographically isolated settings; 2) extensive participation in the Northcentral Montana Community Ventures Coalition developing a "Ten Year Poverty Reduction Grant Proposal" for Northcentral Montana solicited by the North West Area Foundation (successfully funded); and 3) the development of "wind power fever" in Northcentral Montana as a sustainable economic strategy for the region in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Lab and the Montana Wind Working Group.

Ms. Babitsky's Montana Miracle case study documenting the use of Sohodojo's process-for-a-WIN-WIN-outcome was requested by Allan Cohen and David Bradford, and included with the second edition of their management classic Influence Without Authority. The case study documents Sohodojo's extension of Influence Without Authority from its focus on intra organization dynamics to grass roots organizing among diverse organizations and stakeholders.

In 2005, Ms. Babitsky was invited to join the National Renewable Energy Lab's Distributed Wind Technology Strategy Team in recognition of her work in Northcentral Montana. She developed a Wind Advocacy Handbook for NREL based on the work she and Jim have been doing at Sohodojo, applied as an advocacy process to move agendas forward when working with diverse, sometimes contentious, stakeholders.

In 2008 Timlynn published Wind Project Community Organizing: A Handbook for Community Organizers, Activists, and Project Managers and developed workshops for project organizers to develop critical skills in interpersonal communication and to help them become more successful in their wind project activities. Her Wind Project Community Organizing blog focuses on issues raised by wind power detractors and strategies and tactics that can be employed to help win them over to become project supporters.

In 2008, Sohodojo's advocacy process for finding Win-Win collaborations among diverse networks was further detailed in the UN-funded book,Empowering Marginal Communities with Information Networks. The Babitsky and Salmons chapter, "Affecting Change from the Grassroots - Making a Difference Without Power, Prestige, or Money", was widely distributed in Third World countries.

Ms. Babitsky is an engaging conference and workshop presenter. As an invited speaker she has presented at a number of conferences in both the U.S. and Japan.

Ms. Babitsky received her BA in Education at Newark State College (now Kean University of NJ), her Masters in Mathematical Social Science at the University of California, Irvine and was Advanced to Candidacy and had successfully defended her dissertation research for the Ph.D. degree at the School of Social Science, U of California, Irvine before leaving to pursue entrepreneurial activities in the emerging computer industry.

Ms. Babitsky was elected into Kappa Delta Pi, National Honor Society in Education; was named a Summer Study Fellow at UCLA; the Outstanding Teaching Assistant of the Year at U of California, Irvine (Social Science); and received the George Krambles Transit Foundation National Scholarship for High Academic Achievement in the Field of Transportation; Best Paper Award, Public Sector Division of the Academy of Management Annual Meeting; University of California Regents' Patent Fund Grant for Doctoral Research. She has traveled extensively and spent six years living and working in Okinawa and Kyoto Japan.