SCTE Instructors

Dr. Alexander Adams was born in Wittmund, Germany in June 1971. He studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, where he received his Bachelor and Master of Science degrees. He worked for the Boeing Company and the United States Department of Defense during his Master studies in Control Systems Engineering in the development of electric hybrid vehicles and aircraft control systems. He received his PhD from the Technical University Darmstadt in geoinformation systems.

Since 2001 Alex has been active in the cable industry as a project engineer and managing director of the companies Adams Consult and Adams Network Engineering in the design, upgrade and service of HFC-networks. He is auditor of dibkom – German Institute for Broadband Communications, a member of the US Cable Lab’s research group “Proactive Network Maintenance” and a geoinformation specialist for the SCTE as well as her official representative in Europe. Alex couples communication systems engineering with geoinformation systems in his daily work, focusing on increased operational efficiency in cable networks by correlation of informational attributes with geo-locations with respect to cable.

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Eng. Rolando Barja was born in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia in March 1972. Since 1999 Rolando has been active in the cable industry initially as a field technician, signal operator technician, headend operations, HFC operations and maintenance and today transferred to a Coaxial Network Director. He has general knowledge from the reception, processing, and transmission of analog and digital signals, their distribution in the optical backbone network and the coaxial network, involving the CPE of the users.

He has been an SCTE member from 2001 and belongs to other telecommunications organizations such ATVC and CWNP, in 2013 he was inducted into the ATVC Technical Commission from Argentina. He is one of the foreign members and speakers of many of the seminars and telecommunication events around Latin-America, Central-America and United States. Rolando has a Master of Business Administration with General Manager Specialist earned in 2013 by the European Postgrad Institute and San Pablo University. In 2009 Rolando created the South and Central American Meeting Group with Latin-American SCTE members, to have the objective to spread knowledge and SCTE resources to all Latin American members.

The book – “Enfoques de Telecomunicaciones para Redes Convergentes: Madurez de la Tecnología” - was published by the EAE (European Publishing Group) in 2013, distributed through large companies such as Amazon, morebooks, eBay, as others.

In 2013 he joined the Spanish translators working group for white papers, primers, and live learning webinar archives, he has translated almost 33 documents, which were distributed and available to all SCTE members. Rolando has a great understanding of cable theory, trunk network experience and is able to leverage this knowledge to facilitate greater customer experiences inside and outside Bolivia, providing an excellent foundation for new technicians.

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Dennis Brown started telecommunications by joining a contractor firm working with Cox communications in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1995. Dennis has held several roles in the field operations from the installer, service tech, and maintenance. A few years after starting his cable career in Virginia, he moved back to his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, to install prime star satellite. A few years after that, Dennis helped join an emerging team at BellSouth in their attempt to deliver wireless cable to the Alanna Metro area. In 1998, Dennis decided to get back into the wire tie the cable. The door opened up a Cablevision Duluth allowed Dennis to be installer again. A year later, Cablevision became Charter. Dennis stayed at Charter for 16 years, moving up the ranks from installer, service, and maintenance. In 2005 while at Charter, Dennis took the role of technical trainer, which fostered his passion for giving back to the industry by sharing his experiences in the field and tying it to industry theory. In 2013 Dennis and his family relocated to Dallas, Texas, and he left Charter to join Time Warner Cable as their business-class training. In this role, Dennis was able to train on IP and fiber optics. In 2015 Dennis took the opportunity to help Ericsson build a fiber construction department. In this role, Dennis helped set up training needed for crews to build fiber backbones, fiber to the curb, and fiber to the home. Dennis has served on 2 SCTE chapter boards, the Chattahoochee chapter and the north-central Texas chapter. Dennis is always excited about sharing his knowledge and experiences with anyone in the telecommunications space. When Dennis is not at work, he enjoys helping to coach his son’s baseball team and fishing.

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Craig Chamberlain has over 25 years in the cable television industry. He has spent time at CableLabs, Hewlett Packard/Agilent and Motorola. Until recently he was responsible for laboratory activities at CableLabs, which included certification testing for DOCSIS and PacketCable. He was also a part time instructor teaching electrical engineering communication theory at the University of Colorado Denver. Craig is co-inventor on 9 patents relating to cable networks. Craig has a MSEE from the University of Colorado with an emphasis on communication theory.

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/harrisnj/

Steve is international subject matter expert, author, and thought leader who serves as the VP of Global Market Development and Education for SCTE, a subsidiary of CableLabs®. With over 30 years of experience in technology, telecommunications, and adult learning, he is responsible for the architecture of education programs, professional credentialing, hands-on skills training, and customized career learning journeys. These programs are designed to demonstrate return on investment (ROI) for operators. In addition, he leads business development and partnerships for his organization around the world. As a practitioner, he has instructed much of the SCTE educational library internationally. He is also the Fiber Source for the Broadband Library magazine, as well as a Cisco, CompTIA and CWNP Instructor.

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As a Cisco Academy Instructor, William Hocker has extensive experience in delivering Cisco education since 2003. He has delivered many courses for several colleges in the St. Louis Region and is currently a professor at St. Louis Community College. While working as a technical instructor for New Horizons and St. Louis University (SLU) Workforce, William has also delivered many CompTIA and official Cisco boot camp training courses. Currently he provides Cisco training for the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) and the Society of Cable and Telecommunication Engineers (SCTE). His field experiences have included providing infrastructure support for the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) in New York; was a VoIP technician on the State Farm Insurance VoIP project through World Wide Technology and was a Senior Conversion Engineer for Bank of America's (BoA) VoIP project in Missouri and Charlotte, NC corporate headquarters. William holds several degrees in Computer Networking including a Masters from Fort Hays State University and has completed several certifications including the CompTIA A+, Network+, Cisco CCAI, CCNA R&S, CCNP, and GIAC-GSEC.

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Ron’s career in the CATV industry began over 25 years ago in construction, executing work for the local cable company.

Ron joined Cogeco Cable in 1998 as a Service Technician. While employed there for 18 years, he was exposed to the interdependence of Maintenance, Construction, Headend/Data departments, and Planning within Cogeco, building the knowledge vital to the success of a cable MSO. He worked his way through several roles in the field and eventually into management. In 2017 Ron joined Telonix as their Sales Engineer supporting the RF and outside Plant products.

Ron has been a member of the SCTE for 14 years, was elected to the Ontario Board in 2013, and served as President for two years.

Contact Ron Huinink

Jay Junkus is the author of the three textbook DigiPoints series on cable digital technology, and retired President of KnowledgeLink, Inc., a training and consulting firm he founded in 1992. During his tenure at KnowledgeLink, he trained thousands of technical personnel in data communications and telephony, and published numerous articles that discuss digital technology applications in telecommunications systems. He has been a consultant and trainer to several cable company multiple system operators and communications equipment vendors, and developed one of the first SCTE courses for SCTE data training and certification. Over his career, he has taught numerous SCTE courses in communications theory, installation, and applications.

Jay’s instructional style is to present technical material in everyday language that everyone can understand. Because of this, he is an excellent resource for training delivery to management and non-technical audiences, as well as technical personnel. In addition to his work at KnowledgeLink, Jay has also served as a member of adjunct faculty at DePaul University, College of DuPage, and DeVry University. He has a BSEE degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and an MBA from Loyola University. He has served on the boards of the Greater Chicago Chapter of the SCTE, and the SCTE Central Florida Chapter.

Jay’s current research includes 5G wireless communications and the applications of communications systems to automated vehicles, such as self-driven cars.

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Lenny has been in the telecommunications industry over 33 years. Lenny grew up in the Cherry Hill, NJ cable system, starting in 1988 as an installer/technician for NYT Cable TV. NYT Cable later became Garden State Cable and eventually Comcast. Lenny left the field in 2006 as a customer facing NCT4 (troubleshoot the CPE back to the first active).

In 2006, Lenny joined the team at Comcast University as a technical trainer for the Freedom Region (Philadelphia Metro area). There, Lenny enjoyed nearly 15 years training and coaching new hires and legacy technicians on the fundamentals of the HFC system, safety, and customer service skills.

Lenny enjoys ‘coaching’ technicians on best practices and improving their troubleshooting toolbox with new tools and techniques, such as software troubleshooting tools.

When not on the clock, Lenny enjoys most outdoor activities and sports. He still can go out and play soccer and softball. He coaches a 2009 girls travel soccer team, The TBAA Swarm.

He enjoys fishing, gardening, baseball, and spending time at home or on vacation with his wife and daughter. Sitting poolside with friends and family with a bit of music in the background is a perfect day.

Paul Rodrigues has 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry and has worked for multiple industry leaders, including AT&T and Comcast. He joined the SCTE in 2017, where he leads the design, development, and implementation of field training programs and certifications. These programs leverage interactive technologies, including 3D simulations, enhanced eBooks, and games, to enhance the learner experience and retention.

Paul has experience in multiple areas in the industry, including Information Technology, Technical Operations, Management, and Learning and Development. Over half of his career has been focused on Learning and Development. Paul has a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Technology degree from Kean University. He also has obtained the following industry certifications: CWNP Certified Wireless Network Trainer, CWS, CWT, CWNA, CWDP, CWISA, CompTIA Network +, and Six Sigma.

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Lamar West has over forty-five years of experience in the telecommunications industry. Twenty-eight of those years were spent at Scientific-Atlanta (Cisco Systems) where Dr. West was a Principal Engineer. During that time he worked on all phases of CATV / HFC technology, including headend, RF transmission, set-top terminals, fiber optics and satellite earth stations. Lamar has participated in numerous conferences and symposia, with an emphasis on those concerning upstream issues.

Lamar is cited as inventor on 47 US patents and numerous international patents. He has published 24 papers and articles in the field of CATV and HFC engineering. He is currently an independent system consultant and owns LEW Consulting, LLC.

Lamar is currently participating in several industry standards bodies. He is also actively participating in SCTE training with emphasis on fiber optic and DCOSIS technologies.

Contact Lamar West