Our Commitments

So many companies proclaim a set of values and commitments. But at SAS, these aren’t just motivational quotes we put on posters. Instead, they’re deep and meaningful representations of who we are and what we strive for every day. But don’t take our word for it. Watch us work and see it for yourself. 

Our Commitments create an easy-to-remember acronym: CARPALE. If it’s been a while since your high school anatomy class, a carpale is one of the foundational bones of your wrist. For many developers, these small articulating bones are where the rubber meets the road, where the unique ideas and creative solutions to whatever project you’re working on move from thought to reality as those wrist bones dance your fingers across the keyboard. Where would we be without those flexible bones giving us a strong foundation from which to create and build? That’s how we feel about our commitments. 

  • We are active contributors to the LabVIEW community. Whether attending or presenting at conferences, engaging with online forums and social media discussions, or helping a friend, our primary goal is to make LabVIEW more accessible for all, regardless of someone’s current abilities or potential as a client.

    We love helping this community grow.

  • Every new project and line of code is an adventure, and we love adventures! Taking on new challenges, solving interesting problems, and cracking complex puzzles is the joy of this work. We embrace change and encourage our clients to do the same.

  • We see it as our duty to only preach what we have already practiced. We recommend a specific course of action because we’ve tried it before and seen the results.

  • You have various demands on your time. You can’t spend all day working! So ask yourself – are you moving the needle efficiently? We focus on gaining traction on the most critical tasks so we can enjoy our nights and weekends. We believe you can be effective at work and have a well-rounded life!

  • We live in a world of abundance. Our success, our customer's success, and our competitors’ success are not mutually exclusive. Therefore, we chose collaboration over competition.

  • What we do is an art form, and great artists are always learning. We are committed to constantly improving our knowledge and implementing new ideas. Just because “that’s the way we’ve always done it” does not mean there isn’t a more effective way of doing it. If there is a better way to do something, we want to know about it! We emphasize the value of continuous learning and constant improvement, internally and with our customers.

  • “If you have two equally likely solutions to a problem, choose the simplest,” said William of Ockham. That philosophy encourages us to search for elegant solutions to our challenges. We believe there is a minimal solution that not only alleviates the symptoms but addresses the underlying cause of the problem in a sustainable long-term way. We are committed to helping our customers find these elegant solutions.

Meet the Team

  • Sam Taggart

    OWNER, CEO

    Sam Taggart is a CLA, CPI, CTD, and LabVIEW Champion with over a dozen years of LabVIEW experience. He cut his teeth running a lab in the Science and Technology Center at Westinghouse Electric Company,  leading a team that designed various testing and monitoring systems for nuclear power plants.

    Since those days he has continued using LabVIEW on a variety of projects, such as testing soil samples and calibrating flow meters. He has also taught several classes at the Colorado School of Mines as well as various LabVIEW classes for National Instruments (NI). Sam is an international speaker, having spoken at the European CLA Summit in Madrid and GDevcon in Cambridge, in addition to appearances at NI week and various other NI-sponsored events. 

    Sam brings his philosophy from 20 years of rock climbing experience and instruction to his work with LabVIEW developers. As the president of Pittsburgh’s Explorers Club, he took an immense amount of pride in seeing his new climbers learn, grow, and find a supportive and joyful community to belong to.

    That remains the mission of SAS. Just as no two climbers scale a cliff the same way, neither do any two codes approach the same challenge. And that’s a good thing! Coding is a creative exercise, and the best developers approach their projects with agility and a willingness to let it teach them something new.

  • Taylor Jo Oxley

    DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS

    Taylor Jo Oxley has a Bachelors Degree in Dance Performance from Illinois State University. After retiring from her professional dance career, she moved from New York City to Denver and began her business, Oxley Consulting Services. She joined the team at SAS Workshops in 2021.

    Taylor helped create The LabVIEW Experiment Podcast and continues to edit and produce the show, now in it’s third season. After helping with GDevCon N.A. in 2023, she joined the team as their event organizer. Taylor planned their largest event to date, and hopes to increase attendance for their 2025 event in Chicago. In 2023, The LabVIEW Consultant Summit was born with partners Sam, Nancy Henson, and Malcolm Myers. This unconference was built to help consultants and entrepreneurs get their business questions answered. Taylor organizes and facilitates this yearly virtual event.

    In her free time, Taylor enjoys theatre and most recently movement directed Twelfth Night of the Living Dead with Loud Fridge Theatre Group in San Diego, CA. She authored her first book of poetry in 2021 (dear god, please don’t buy it from Amazon). She loves cooking, crafting, and taking her mini dachshund Huey Lewis to the beach.

10 Fundamental Coding Assumptions

When we work in LabVIEW, it’s important to remember that we’re operating on the boundaries of the digital and the physical, walking the line between people and machines. It can be all too easy to zoom in on our code and the machines it affects, and forget about the human side of things. 

After all, the goals of every project begin with human intentions. We get so caught up in the technological side that we forget it is just a passing phase, just a tool. We must remember the goal is a human goal, the outcome a human outcome.

The 10 Fundamental Coding Assumptions is a constant reminder that we are humans, working with other humans, to make the lives of even more humans better. We may work with codes and with machines, but great developers consider everything with the human element at the forefront.

  • Let the affected people choose their own processes and tools as they are needed. Flexibility and adaptability are keys to success. 

  • Never ask permission to do the right thing. Testing and refactoring are a part of writing code, not an add-on or extra step.

  • Avoid being dogmatic. Approach different ways of doing things with curiosity. There are certainly wrong ways to do things, but rarely one right way. Best Practices are situational. "It depends" is a perfectly valid answer.

  • Programming should be fun! If it’s not, change it! Code is just a tool that we create. We can change it. If something about the code is making life difficult, change it! The code works for us, not the other way around. The same thing goes for our processes and our tools.

  • Conway's Law: organizations design systems that mirror their communication structure. 

    The inverse of this is true as well. Just as the organization of your team influences your code, your code is a reflection of your team. Use that knowledge to improve your team.

  • Assume that everyone acts in good faith and does the best they can with the background, knowledge, and skills they have. Give people the benefit of the doubt. 

  • Always consider the experience of other developers and users in your designs and processes. Coding is about people, not machines. 

  • Try the simplest thing that works and only add complexity when necessary.

  • Don’t tell me your code works, show me. Code doesn’t work unless you can prove it.

  • Keep feedback loops short to help manage change and detect problems early. If something feels too hard or overwhelming, take smaller steps.

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