Tag: Technology evangelist

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Do Recruiters Judge Your Email Address?

For those that have been on the internet since the early 90’s, it is safe to assume that you amassed several email addresses from the service providers that sprung to life during the internet’s infancy.

AOL. Hotmail. Live.com are just a few.

If you continue to use these older email services, will it reflect poorly on you? Does it say something about your ability to change and adapt or embrace newer technologies?

This video ponders this idea and provides some suggestions to move ahead and was inspired by a Lifehacker.com article by Jeff Somers that can be read here.

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News You Can Use: 10/3/2018

Social Media is Exhausting

  • You’re Probably Not Even Thinking About One of Social Media’s Biggest Dangers

    When people start sharing information with the public, it can open up doors for the information to be used against them. Details like full name, date of birth, hometown and even school locations and dates of graduation can become dangerous in the wrong hands. Social media platforms typically require your name and your date of birth, but most platforms will give you the option to not make the information shareable.

    Beyond basic information, be careful about what you post. Of course, you should not share your debit/credit card and social security numbers with people online, but images can be dangerous, too. A few examples would be things like posting a picture of your new car and not covering your license plate number or sharing event details that contain your home address.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/320172

  • More tech companies drop college degree requirement

    “In 2017, IBM’s vice president of talent, Joanna Daley told CNBC Make It that about 15 percent of her company’s U.S. hires don’t have a four-year degree. She said that instead of looking exclusively at candidates who went to college, IBM now looks at candidates who have hands-on experience via a coding boot camp or an industry-related vocational class,” according to this CNBC article.

    Now, Apple, Google and EY are joining the ranks of companies that don’t require a degree, according to a list from Glassdoor.com.

    https://www.cio.com/article/3309059/careers-staffing/more-tech-companies-drop-college-degree-requirement.html

  • Career advice from the “Edison of medicine”
  • LinkedIn’s Co-Founder Warns of Perils in Regulating Big Tech

    If Facebook was restricted and slowed down, maybe what we’d all have is [China’s] WeChat. So, instead of having Facebook as our platform, which is a thing we can evolve in, it’s actually in fact a Chinese company that’s doing it. It’s like simply saying, “Oh, we’re a monopoly in the whole world, and we’re gonna slow down our industry as a way of [solving tech problems],” but that is not a very rational policy.

    Tech needs to do a much better job being transparent. But I prefer a pattern where the government says, “We want you to show you’re having the following improving impact on society. If you’re doing that, we don’t need regulation.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/linkedins-co-founder-warns-of-perils-in-regulating-big-tech-1537967181?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Elon Musk is sad and disappointed by the SEC’s fraud charges

    Reached for comment, a Tesla spokesperson sent the following statement from Musk:

    “This unjustified action by the SEC leaves me deeply saddened and disappointed. I have always taken action in the best interests of truth, transparency and investors. Integrity is the most important value in my life and the facts will show I never compromised this in any way.”

    Later, Tesla sent a second statement, this one a joint statement from the company and board of directors:

    “Tesla and the board of directors are fully confident in Elon, his integrity, and his leadership of the company, which has resulted in the most successful US auto company in over a century. Our focus remains on the continued ramp of Model 3 production and delivering for our customers, shareholders and employees.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90243445/read-the-secs-full-fraud-complaint-against-tesla-ceo-elon-musk

Photo by Aleksandar Cvetanovic on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 12/6/2017

  • Tim Wu: Why the Courts Will Have to Save Net Neutrality

    But Mr. Pai faces a more serious legal problem. Because he is killing net neutrality outright, not merely weakening it, he will have to explain to a court not just the shift from 2015 but also his reasoning for destroying the basic bans on blocking and throttling, which have been in effect since 2005 and have been relied on extensively by the entire internet ecosystem.

    This will be a difficult task. What has changed since 2004 that now makes the blocking or throttling of competitors not a problem? The evidence points strongly in the opposite direction: There is a long history of anticompetitive throttling and blocking — often concealed — that the F.C.C. has had to stop to preserve the health of the internet economy. Examples include AT&T’s efforts to keep Skype off iPhones and the blocking of Google Wallet by Verizon. Services like Skype and Netflix would have met an early death without basic net neutrality protections. Mr. Pai needs to explain why we no longer have to worry about this sort of threat — and “You can trust your cable company” will not suffice.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/opinion/courts-net-neutrality-fcc.html

  • The Next Billion-Dollar Boom in Chinese Tech

    Businesses and government departments in China spent only 122 billion yuan ($18.5 billion) on software in 2016, compared with $245 billion in the U.S., according to Forrester. While Salesforce has a market capitalization of $78 billion, its dozens of Chinese wannabes are startups, with none valued at $1 billion.

    At this point, investors see the fragmentation as a plus, setting the stage for a fast uptake in enterprise applications. More businesses are turning to cloud-based services for data storage and software applications. According to a survey Deutsche Bank conducted with CIOs at about 50 Chinese companies in the finance, internet, manufacturing and other sectors this year, 84% of respondents plan to make “heavy use of cloud services” by 2019, up from 4% in 2016. Alibaba Cloud, the biggest in China by market share, doubled its revenue last quarter from a year earlier.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-next-billion-dollar-boom-in-chinese-tech-1511435069?mg=prod/accounts-wsj

  • How Emotion Hides What You Mean to Say—And How to Listen for It
  • How bad decision making could undermine good innovation

    “The patents that Kodak developed around digital photography — especially the 1989 [digital camera] patent — could have given Kodak a huge leg up in meeting the emerging consumer needs around digital photography.”

    Yet Kodak seems to have missed all the signals coming from the marketplace. “The market was captured by other competitors without the technological advantage or the IP [that Kodak had] — for example, the Casio QV-10, which was introduced in 1995, actually saw where the future of point-and-shoot digital photography was going, and pioneered the onboard LCD display that can be seen as a direct precursor to the smartphone, which came along equipped with cameras as early as 2000,” she explained

    They never saw the problem as converting their customers to a digital world, but rather as finding a way to increase their brick and mortar presence. That ended up taking the form of a kiosk that sort of answered a digital user need of printing out hard copies from the digital system. It wasn’t a terrible idea, but it completely missed the real digital mark.

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/25/how-bad-decision-making-could-undermine-good-innovation/?ncid=rss

  • The 6 Laws of Technology Everyone Should Know

    There is no absolute good or bad here, just how good or bad a technology is in a given context. This points to a problem tech companies are too often reluctant to face: Their enormous power means they have an obligation to try to anticipate the potential impact of anything they produce.

    “The dirty little secret of highly accomplished people is what we’ve had to neglect to achieve that,” says Bill Buxton, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research and one of the creators of the multitouch interface. “To become spectacular at any discipline in technology means you’re not well-equipped to address these questions.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-6-laws-of-technology-everyone-should-know-1511701201

Photo: Xan Griffin

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News You Can Use: 12/7/2016

sn_money_vitaly-taranov

  • Management Thought is Bankrupt

    We are seeing the dominance of measurement.  KPIs abound. Big Data everywhere. Your personality is tested and measured. As is your engagement. On an ongoing basis. Every project has thousands of targets, deadlines and measurable processes. Data, data, data. Numbers, numbers, numbers. Measure, measure, measure.

    Taylorism for the hi-tech generation. A model we know does not work and does not motivate, but one we’ve re-embraced anyway. And we wonder why there is no meaning or engagement at work.

    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/management-thought-bankrupt-dr-richard-claydon

  • Why Avoiding Office Politics Isn’t Always the Best for Your Career

    When it comes to office politics, Simosko warns, “There is no way around it. Once you start working with a team you are going to experience it. I am not a fan of politics, but I have learned that ignoring them can have negative consequences.” She insists that learning to deal with office politics is vital for leaders at any stage of their career. “It can determine whether you are successful in your career or not,” she said.

    http://lifehacker.com/why-avoiding-office-politics-isnt-always-the-best-for-y-1788946874

  • What everyone ought to know about Social Media (thanks JD!)

    How technology hijacks people’s minds

    http://www.timewellspent.io/
  • The tech that will feed the world

    Now computing capacity is cheap, and it’s possible to model all possible choices and their potential outcomes. A smartphone with Google Maps, for example, can evaluate every path from point A to point B to decide, based on the current traffic conditions, which will likely be the shortest or fastest route.

    Simulation and modeling also help from getting lost when it comes to growing crops. At the most basic level, plants need sunlight, water and nutrients at levels that vary during various stages of growth. It sounds simple, but at scale, optimizing each factor has a huge payoff.

    https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/19/the-tech-that-will-feed-the-world/?ncid=rss

  • Microsoft executive bonuses could soon be tied to diversity goals

    According to Gwen Houston, Microsoft’s General Manager for Global Diversity and Inclusion, Nadella is working on a plan that will make meeting diversity goals a major factor in deciding if executives receive their full bonus each year. “Diversity and inclusion is something you’ve got to ingrain,” Houston said. “That’s what Satya has been doing.” Still, Houston says the company has more to do. Layoffs from sale of Nokia assets severely hurt the company’s percentage of women and minority workers, and new hires haven’t made up the difference yet.

    https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/18/microsoft-executive-bonuses-could-soon-be-tied-to-diversity-goal/

Photo: Vitaly Taranov

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News You Can Use: 6/8/2016

sn_thecliff_Will van Wingerden

  • 3 Unrealistic Career Goals You Need To Abandon

    Creating career deadlines is all about balance. Planning ahead is a solid way to visualize what you want to achieve, but it can lose value if you only see those deadlines in black and white. Often times, new opportunities and unique ideas come from the gray areas, and strict schedules don’t always encourage that creativity. If you have a milestone you keep missing, remind yourself that it may not really exist and consider taking it off the list.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3060096/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/3-unrealistic-career-goals-you-need-to-abandon

  • IT career roadmap: Technology evangelist

    “You’re drawing on aspects of a bunch of different fields, technology, sales, marketing, psychology, even acting. You not only have to have technical depth and credibility, but also polished sales and marketing skills so that you can handle objections, you can promote messaging in a non-threatening way. And you have to know a lot about the business climate you’re operating in — what’s the market like? What are the circumstances that have brought a company to where it is?” Sage says.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3075440/it-skills-training/it-career-roadmap-technology-evangelist.html

  • Operating with Empathy: How to Build Organizations for Real People
  • Is Workplace Culture Overrated? (Infographic)

    Culture often influences an employee’s decision to join a company, and small perks go a long way. Two-thirds of employees with access to free food say they’re very happy at their current jobs, and workers who have strong relationships with their colleagues feel 50 percent more satisfied than those who don’t.

    Check out the infographic in the link to learn more about the benefits of fostering a healthy company culture.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/276152

  • U.S. CIO aims to cut legacy spending, proposes IT modernization

    The administration’s proposed solution is an IT modernization fund (ITMF) that would be subject to oversight of an independent panel that would help prioritize the most pressing technology projects while also evaluating the business case that the agency makes in pitching a project. And, crucially, agencies that dip into the $3.1 billion fund would be expected to repay the initial outlay for the IT project back into the fund over time, as operating savings materialize.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3075842/government-use-of-it/u-s-cio-aims-to-cut-legacy-spending-proposes-it-modernization.html

  • When This Boss Walks 10 Miles a Day, She Leads a Much Healthier Team

    A study by the University of Minnesota showed treadmill desks boost job performance, and we who work and walk are a testament to that fact. We not only feel great, we’re knocking it out of the park, with creative and innovative design ideas that come to us while walking/working. Leading by example is important for every business owner looking to improve his or her team’s health. Being fit and happy is contagious.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/275036

Photo: Will van Wingerden