Announcing The Jim Ciallella Award
In Greenville, our community is made up of numerous different meetup groups from around the area covering a multitude of different topics, getting together on Slack [https://hackgreenville.com/join-slack] and Discord [https://www.dc864.org/]. Many of these groups [https://hackgreenville.com/orgs] are coordinated and supported under via Hack Greenville [https://hackgreenville.com/] and RefactorGVL [https://refactorgvl.com/].
Greenville is not unique in this either. Numerous tech communities exist in the southeast, particularly in our orbit around South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. At the Carolina Code Conference, we go out of our way to connect with other tech communities including making a special invitation video for you to share at your meetup groups [https://blog.carolina.codes/p/inviting-your-meetup-to-the-2026] to invite you directly. Our goal is to bring all of our communities together every year.
None of these communities happened by accident. It all came from the efforts of numerous people who care enough about our community to work together to help us all thrive. Those people who freely give of themselves to make our communities possible often do not receive the recognition that they deserve.
It’s time to change that.
This year we created an Annual Award for Service to the Southeast Tech Community and named it in honor of Jim Ciallella, one of our hardest working and most selfless contributors for approximately 20 years. Adam Gautsch shared on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7362125620186677248/] how proud he was to see Jim recognized; excerpt below.
“I couldn't be happier. Over the 25 years of our friendship, Jim has given more of himself than any sane human should. He's done this without expectation or desire for money, power, or awards named after him.…And over the last couple of decades, he's been the ballast of the Greenville tech community. OpenWorks, HackGVL, and so many communities depend on Jim's willingness to show up and not give up.”
- Adam Gautsch
We also back filled the award, giving out one for each of the 5 years the Carolina Code Conference has existed: 2018, 2019, 2023, 2024 and 2025.
You can scroll up to watch the video of the initial announcement during the 2025 conference, recognition of Jim and all of our initial award winners as well. Smiles and head nodding was almost universal as we talked through the intention of the award with our crowd from Asheville, Augusta, Knoxville, Athens, Atlanta, Columbia, Charleston, Charlotte and more.
Because this year’s award was a surprise we did not solicit public nominations so all of the winners were from the Greenville area. Going forward we want you to nominate the people in your communities who deserve to be recognized for their service.
The nomination form was initially shared in our 2025 Recap [https://blog.carolina.codes/p/2025-recap-finally] post. You can nominate as many people as you like and there are a lot of fields. We want to enable you to make the best case possible for your candidate. These recommendations will be considered every year, so you can make a strong case for 2026 and that individual may end up the winner in 2028! You can begin Submitting Nominations for the Jim Ciallella Award for Outstanding Service to the Southeast Tech Community [https://forms.gle/QUoH11FFhNcbXHQp7] right now!
The Jim Ciallella Award Winners
Congratulations to our first recipients of the The Jim Ciallella Award and thank you all for your service to our communities!
* 2018 - Joel Taddei
* 2019 - Christina Roberts
* 2023 - Ben Acord
* 2024 - Pamela Wood Browne
* 2025 - Robert Roskam
Video Notes
* 00:00 - Let’s talk about Community
* 02:18 - Jim Ciallella Recognized
* 08:12 - 2018 Winner - Joel Taddei Recognized
* 09:59 - 2019 Winner - Christina Roberts Recognized
* 11:44 - 2023 Winner - Ben Acord Recognized
* 13:26 - 2024 Winner - Pamela Wood Browne Recognized
* 16:21 - 2025 Winner - Robert Roskam Recognized
* 18:08 - We want to hear from your communities!
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