SourceCast: Episode 59: Remote Possibilities
News You Can Use: 11/2/2016
- New Comcast data caps spotlight disturbing trend
Data caps are becoming the norm, and that’s very bad news for consumers, who increasingly choose to stream video instead of paying exorbitant fees for pay TV. No other reason exists to impose such caps than the desire to increase profits. Here’s how Comcast justifies its data caps: “Our data plans are based on a principle of fairness. Those who use more Internet data, pay more. And those who use less Internet data, pay less.”
Sounds fair … except it isn’t true. Unlike wireless providers, broadband ISPs have capacity to spare, and Comcast admits as much. In a memo leaked last year, Comcast told its sales people that data caps were not related to network congestion.
- How a 100TB hard drive works:
- How To Tell Your Boss You’re Completely Overwhelmed
Feeling like you’re personally contributing, connecting with others, leveraging your creativity—or whatever your role means to you—is an anchor for the work you do. It’s why you do what you do. Without personal meaning, you’ll start to wear down from relentlessly throwing yourself into the churn and pulse of things. You can’t sustain this kind of disconnected, meaningless work for very long.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3064498/work-smart/how-to-tell-your-boss-youre-completely-overwhelmed
- Are We Solving the Right Problem with Supplier Risk Management?
An agile supply chain means that you can be reliable even though an increasing number of things are going wrong. You can only do this if you can avoid those things in the first place or recover from them when they happen. Either way, this requires supply chain risk management, not just supplier risk management, and certainly not just supplier viability management via financial statement monitoring.
http://spendmatters.com/2016/10/10/solving-right-problem-with-supplier-risk-management/
- A Tour of WeWork’s New Coworking Space in Philadelphia
The office space is just minutes away from the Old City District, the home of Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, and many other historical landmarks. The Market-Frankford Line has a stop on Girard Avenue, a five-minute walk from the office. There’s also a parking lot located diagonally across the street. Attracting a wide range of businesses, this Philadelphia office space is a great option for artists, designers, and other young entrepreneurs, as well as corporations looking for a local base of operations”, says WeWork
http://www.officelovin.com/2016/10/10/tour-weworks-new-philadelphia-coworking-space/
Philly getting some co-lo love…
Photo: Chirobocea Nicu
News You Can Use: 9/28/2016
- Indian workers staged one of the largest strikes in human history and no one in the USA noticed
The strike came after Modi began a push for increased foreign investment and privatization of some state-run industries. Unions fear these policies will undermine both wages and employment.
The size of the strike alone forced the government to offer concessions prior to Friday in an attempt to avert it, offering a boost in the minimum wage for some non-skilled workers and the unfreezing of some public employee bonuses.
The unions were not persuaded by this offer. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his fight is with poverty, but it seems his fight is with the poor in this country,” Indian National Trade Union Congress Vice President Ashok Singh said prior to the strike.
http://boingboing.net/2016/09/08/indian-workers-staged-one-of-t.html
- Three Helpful Techniques to Ease You Into Talking With Strangers
Use “triangulation”: Triangulation is the process of talking about something in the environment that both you and the other person can see. The book they’re reading, a street performer playing a song, or even a beautiful sunset can be a great opener.
http://lifehacker.com/three-helpful-techniques-to-ease-you-into-talking-with-1786019077
- Gartner study highlights disparity between supply chain leaders and staff
Ken Chadwick, Research Director at Gartner, said: “To adapt and response on the fly to challenges their organisation faces, supply chain leaders must develop the organisation’s change capabilities. Being ‘change agile’, having the ability to design and adopt new ideas and changes quickly and completely should be the goal of supply chain leaders in the digital era.
- Eight Proven Strategies for Better Remote Work
One way to measure your progress is by using the X-card technique. (Some people call this the “Seinfeld Technique,” named after comedian Jerry Seinfeld who committed to working every day to hone his craft, without breaking the chain.)
The technique is simple enough: start by creating an “X-Card,” an index card divided into a 7×7 grid of 49 boxes. You could also use a dedicated app like 7 weeks or a good old-fashioned calendar.
On top of each card, write the habit you want to stick with. Every time you stick to that habit, you mark it with a big X in one of the boxes.
http://lifehacker.com/eight-proven-strategies-for-better-remote-work-1786346960
- Coupa IPO: Is The Unicorn Dead?
However, with yesterday’s announcement that Coupa has filed the preliminary paperwork to take the company public by way of a $75 million IPO, the purpose of this post is to help you to avoid getting caught up in the usual analyst speak and blogger assessments.
In the new age of the commoditized cloud – where technological differences between one provider and the next are becoming increasingly indistinguishable, it is the people behind the company that matter the most. In particular, those in positions of leadership.
https://procureinsights.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/coupa-ipo-is-the-unicorn-dead/
Photo: Joey Kyber
News You Can Use: 9/14/2016
- 5 Tips For Sourcing Success When Your Employer Brand Is Poor
Instead of: providing a generic pitch to candidates of what a great employer you are, what great benefits you have, how much people enjoy working there, when you know you can’t do so with any real enthusiasm,
You may try to: accentuate the positive aspects by speaking glowingly of the hiring manager and how dedicated he is to mentoring his direct reports. Also, you may try to highlight how much the specific division the job sits in has been outperforming the rest of the company, the unique culture of this particular team, division, and office, and how much this specific position, with this specific hiring manager, in this specific division, in this specific office, presents an exclusive opportunity for the right candidate to advance his career.
http://www.eremedia.com/sourcecon/5-tips-for-sourcing-success-when-your-employer-brand-is-poor/
- The jobs we’ll lose to machines — and the ones we won’t
- To avoid supplier disputes, VW reconsiders procurement strategy
The Irish Times explained that it is a popular practice within the auto industry to try and steer clear of relying too heavily on a single supplier. This decision, the source noted, is fueled primarily by the dispute that occurred between VW and Prevent – the parent company of the car maker’s two suppliers, Car Trim and ES Automobiluss – when Prevent licensed Car Trim to manufacture parts for luxury brands of vehicles. People familiar with the matter, the source explained, said that Prevent “retaliated by moving some of Car Trim’s financial claims against VW to Automobilguss.”
http://www.strategicsourceror.com/2016/08/to-avoid-supplier-disputes-vw.html
- GE buys supply chain software provider ShipXpress
ShipXpress provides cloud-based software solutions, which allow transportation, industrial, and commodities businesses to effectively operate and collaborate with their supply chain partners.
The deal is said to expand GE Transportation’s portfolio of solutions into the logistics value chain, helping to deliver information and transaction services for railroad customers across the globe.
- If You Work From Home, Do This Every Day
The art of not working requires discipline of a different sort than working. You have to discard the entrenched belief that being present at a desk is the same as being productive. And you have to become intimately acquainted with your mental needs. When it’s time to rest, you need to learn to do so without guilt. As a native New Englander raised with the classic Puritan work ethic, I can attest that this is harder to do than it looks.
Photo: Ian Schneider