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Technology News You Can UseMarch 2009 – Issue XLIVIn This Newsletter
Comments from the EditorsThis month's issue is once again chock-full of informative and educational articles by your hard-working North Chamber Technology Council members. Feel free to email any of the authors, or us, if you have any questions aut the content or if you need more information. We're here to help you make sense of technology and put it to use in a practical way in your business. Following on the heels of the tremendously successful North Chamber CIO Panel luncheon at InnoTech, the Tech Council is offering up an enlightening breakfast seminar of eDiscovery on Thursday, April 16th. Read more about this topic in article below. To learn more about this breakfast event, click here Have a great day Brent Daugherty and Matt Reedy Don't Become a Victim of eDiscovery; Tony Avey, Brendan McBride and John Saba; Prichard Hawkins McFarland & YoungThe law is catching up to the world of modern business, developing new rules governing the way in which lawyers obtain electronically stored information from the opposing side for use in a case (“e-discovery”). Starting back in December 2006, new regulations were enacted as part of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to better define the parties’ obligations in seeking and responding to civil discovery of electronically stored information (or “
As a practical matter the area of focus for any business, regardless of pending litigation, is to write down and diligently follow a working electronic retention policy. The new rules provide limited protection from being “sanctioned” (ordered to pay fines or the other side’s attorneys’ fees for discovery abuse) for parties who, in “good faith” and during the ordinary course of business, have disposed of potentially discoverable
A company should have a process in place to communicate to all company personnel who have access to potentially discoverable
Managing Your Public Self in the New Media World -- The Importance of Professional Presentation on LinkedIn; Jay Fraser; Tracer Detection TechnologyIt is said that perception is more important than reality. In today’s world where the Internet and the new media like LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are all taking hold, many people fail to remember one very important fact. The Internet is an exceedingly public place. In fact, it is so public that you can attract the attention of potential employers without ever meeting them in person. Solely on the strength of my LinkedIn profile I’ve been recruited three times for “C” level jobs, none of which I will pursue if for no other reason than they are all in cold weather climates. But I’ve also become involved in professional discussions relating to my field of endeavor with people from around the globe…people with whom I might never have had a chance to interact. The message, however, is that the new world of social media has the power to promote your business and yourself in ways that did not exist even two or three years ago. Why is this important? Over the past few months or so, an eager beaver type wanting to become involved in infrastructure security latched onto me as a mentor. That is perfectly OK with me. While interacting with this person, I found some quirky behavior that made me wonder. One of the first things I noticed was the proclivity to present things on LinkedIn, both in his profile and in answers/questions that were replete with typos. One question posed by this individual was particularly pathetic (all spelling errors are his from the original text): Headline: Looking to volunteerly share my personal “health” information to drive my iniatatives
Comment: This is just one of a series of endless entries by this individual containing seriously flawed spelling, grammar and syntax. I edited much of the work that I read and sent it to him. In the last exposure, this individual told me that “I don’t spell well, but so what?” My response was that no matter how smart you were, LinkedIn was a very public place. After a series of increasingly angry emails, this person lodged a complaint against me. Questions: 1) Should I care? Or did I care too much, trying to help this individual present a professional image on LinkedIn? 2) When you see a profile or a question, answer or comment on LinkedIn that contains embarrassingly poor spelling (typos), grammar etc, how to do you react? Would you ever recruit or hire someone like this? 3) If you were a supervisor, division manager or owner of the company where this individual worked, and you saw this unprofessional presentation, what would you do? Well, somehow not surprising to me, he was terminated from his job right after the first of the year. And when that happened, he posted this: Terminated 1.9.09 I was a Tridium AX Certified...Branch 991 Corporate Structure could not handle mulit-cross discliplinary functionality of my inherient nature due 2 the nanotechnology infused reformat that took place during a www.jhu.edu experiment that I volunteered 4. Unfortunately 4Corporate America, the training modules that I self induced during the course of seven years, took hold and I was brainwashed by corporate ethical modules 2 function as covert systems risk analysis in more zoomed out functionality that I am not premited 2 disclosure pertaining 2 multiple contracts regarding the future tense of my soul. If this sounds confusingly articulate & double meaning, then take a deep breath, mediate on the simplistiy of the Universe that contains Orions Belt, then meaning is quite clear provided
There was more, and maybe this is an extreme example, but the message is clear. While LinkedIn is a very powerful marketing tool, the Internet is a very public place, especially sites like LinkedIn. How you are perceived by your peers, as well as by strangers, is still on first impression. But remember how public things are and that millions of people might be looking at your next typo or gaff. Web 2.0 technologies are very powerful, but at the same time, they are double-edged swords.
International Tech Updates, City of San Antonio
U.S. Department of Commerce helping American IT companies win projects in Mexico The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Commercial Service is helping American companies partner, bid on and win over 300 projects available now as a result of
Local colleges building bridges with Mexican tech universities San Antonio’s Alamo Community Colleges (ACC) have formed a partnership with the National Association of Technology Universities in Mexico to foster faculty and student exchanges that will include training, development, and certification courses as well as distance learning covering a number of technology fields. This effort is funded by both the
Netherlands Consulate-General seeks innovation in San Antonio Two representatives from the Dutch Consulate-General in
Economic & Cultural Alliance to be formed with Dresden, Germany Mayor Phil Hardberger lead a delegation of
Did you know…? §
§ Tech exports support 183,900 jobs statewide. §
§ Provided the U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement is signed into law, it would greatly lower tariffs on
ATTENTION: Adobe Reader Security Issue! ; Roger Hall ; Full FusionRaise your hand if you know what Adobe PDF files are? Go ahead, raise your hand... Now, there are many who don't know what the format is or what it was developed for, but if you spend any amount of your day on your computer downloading or sharing documents, you very likely use them frequently. Adobe Systems is the company that created the Acrobat family of programs in the early 1990s among a handful of other software created by competitors for presenting information with a fixed layout similar to a paper publication. Acrobat was designed to view, create, manipulate and manage files in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). Some software in the Acrobat family are commercial (Adobe Acrobat), and some are freeware (Adobe Reader). The Reader freeware is available as a no-charge download from Adobe's web site, and allows the viewing and printing of PDF files, the de facto document standard on the Web since the later 1990s. [source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Acrobat] So, back to the everyday use... Since PDFs are used for almost every downloadable document out there on the Web, people are used to using them and view them as a safe download during their browsing. In February of this year, Adobe announced security-related "Javascript vulnerabilities." Users were encouraged to disable two default preferences in the program: one related to JavaScript functionality and the other to the ability of displaying PDF documents in the web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.). Users of Internet Explorer were also encouraged to prevent the browser from automatically opening PDF documents (a registry key edit in Microsoft Windows). Needless to say, these recommended actions are pretty much "greek" to the average user. Failure to follow these warnings leaves both Mac and Windows users vulnerable and could allow a hacker to gain 100% control of your computer. Here's the kicker... you never even have to open the file! From Adobe: "A critical vulnerability has been identified in Adobe Reader 9 and Acrobat 9 and earlier versions. This vulnerability would cause the application to crash and could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. There are reports that this issue is being exploited." This exploitation would use a file with an "unknown graphic type" to cause a download in the background prior to Adobe crashing on your system. These infected PDF files would be delivered onto your system via email or even through a visit to a web site that could execute a "background download" via a JavaScript action and place it on your hard drive. This vulnerability can now be fixed by updating your installation of Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader to version 9.1 today! Go to: http://get.adobe.com/reader/ and the page will determine what version of Reader you need to install. The bottom line: If you didn't realize that a program like Acrobat and Reader, which has a high saturation install base, had such a huge vulnerability, then what about the rest of your hard drive? Contact your IT professional and ask them to review the security and stability of your system. Oh, you can put your hand down now... :-) Buy in Required: Implementing Business Change; Gary Glick, Resources Global Professionals, LLCResearch continues to show that more than 60 percent of large scale projects, including system implementations, fail to achieve their stated business objectives. However, most often, technology is not the limitation. Today’s failed projects are often missing one critical success factor: business integration. Closing the gap between business requirements and IT execution lies at the core of thriving implementations. Business integration differs from system integration by ensuring that the people, process and technology aspects of the initiative are addressed and that the company minimizes resistance to change. This is why we say, “buy-in required,” because if the process is effective and “owned” by those using the system, then the project will almost always be successful. Innovative companies are recognizing that even before starting to redesign a business process, they must first work to get the people involved and on board with the change. Studies cite that up to 70 percent of project failure result from a lack of proper planning for the people side of change. To move the change forward, companies must understand the processes currently in place and what it will take to adapt to a new system. We see it all the time. One of our clients, a controller of a large corporation, was in the process of implementing a major ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system to enhance productivity, eliminate costs, and expand knowledge of key business data. But testing revealed that the majority of staff did not embrace the ERP even in the final phases of implementation. As we discussed the process leading to the testing phase, we uncovered the problem. The project team assumed that unless someone objected during the design process, everyone was in agreement and everything was working. Unfortunately, the implementation plan did not address the issue that people’s roles and responsibilities would change. Nor did the plan include consistent and effective communications or provide the necessary training and tools to ensure that everyone could accomplish their jobs within the new system effectively. Building a strong team is mission critical to achieving success. The most effective teams include project managers with functional and technical backgrounds who can effectively partner with IT and business stakeholders to translate business requirements into technical solutions. Furthermore, they must be able to help prioritize the business requirements, ensuring that the system supports the business today and tomorrow. Teams that excel also include: • IT auditors to assess, develop, implement and embed IT controls; • System analysts to test systems independently of system integrators; • Business analysts with specific functional and industry expertise to document processes and controls, map and convert data, and roll out systems. Ensuring a system initiative is well integrated into the business and that it sticks is largely dependent on how quickly and effectively your company addresses the human, technological and process sides of change. If you don’t look comprehensively at the impact on all your business functions and people, then morale and communication will break down and your initiative is much less likely to have a positive impact on your business and its bottom line. Technology Adoption: A guide to help when you have to jump tomorrow; James Raab, Methodist Healthcare SystemThe purpose of this article is to give you a basic outline to follow when you are expected to move quickly in the adoption of new technologies. It presents a tool that will help to understand any technology and showcase the best and worst case scenarios for the rollout. It’s
Marshal McLuhan is best known for two concepts. The first concept is the medium is the message. This concept speaks to the selection of media for a message which says a lot about what the originator is trying to let you know. The second is the Global Village. McLuhan saw that the world was shrinking as technology advanced. What happens far away from you can now be reported in a timely fashion. You can communicate with people no matter the distance. Thus, the world is shrinking to become a global village. You can use a “tetrad” he designed to see “artifacts” to help you with your impending technology adoption. What is a tetrad? A tetrad is composed of four conceptual questions about an artifact. An artifact is defined as anything created by human beings. In your situation, the artifact is the technology that you are going to adopt. The tetrad uses a series of questions to help you examine a singular artifact for clarity of purpose and use. This is the tool that will help you meet the rollout with some insight and action items. The tetrad is created through a process of asking questions, based on historical, social, and technological knowledge of the artifact. The first question is ENHANCE. What does the artifact enhance or intensify? The second is REVERSE. If pushed to the extreme, what would happen? The third is RETRIEVE. What from the past has the artifact made possible again? The fourth is OBSOLESCE. What did the new artifact obsolete or replace? Here are some examples to help you understand the tetrad in the context of radio and the internet. From Wikipedia, radio: Enhancement (figure): What the medium amplifies or intensifies. Radio amplifies news and music via sound. Reversal (ground): What the medium does when pushed to its limits. Acoustic radio flips into audio-visual TV. Retrieval (figure): What the medium recovers which was previously lost. Radio returns the spoken word to the forefront. Obsolescence (ground): What the medium drives out of prominence. Radio reduces the importance of print and the visual. From Media-Studies.com, The Internet Enhances: decentralization, associative searches, speed of access, electronic communications, access to information, self-publishing, media convergence, networking, immediacy, virtual community, e-trade Reverses (Into): obsession with data, isolation, loss of affect (feeling), information, overload, loss of private time, nervous disorders Retrieves: writing and correspondence, tribes and villages, anarchy, chaos, rendezvous, direct representation, local activism Obsoletes: travel, distance, national borders, face-to-face interaction, single-source propaganda, centralized censorship, print monopolies, retail outlets So, it’s 9:35. What do we do now? We take a moment to think through the new technology artifact that is coming, by placing it in the tetrad. What will the new technology Enhance? What if pushed to the extreme will the new technology Reverse? What will the new technology Retrieve? What did the new technology Obsolete? When we know the answer to these questions, we can start a remediation or work plan. For example, the application may fill an enhancement need; Do you have the computers, electrical and staff to support the application? The artifact may have brought an older communication style back; Do we need to re-educate on that process to make it work? The application may have made an older system obsolete; Are there critical pieces of the older application that are not in the new application? Will there be trouble in extracting the old information or housing it? End-User training? If pushed to the extreme (reversed), what happens? Are all of our eggs in one basket? What if we get locked out of the application? What are our Downtime, Disaster Recovery and Emergency Management Plans? Are they up to date? This approach will not answer all of your questions. But, this will give you an edge when you are asked about an object you know nothing about. You can ask these general questions if need be to get an understanding of what the technology is, what it can do, what it could do, and where it could go wrong. In closing, we are part of a culture of change. We can agree that change is usually good. However, we should not go into an environment of change uneducated. We should take the time to look at what is coming and analyze the impact on our current systems, support staff, and resources. The tetrad is only one tool in our library. If we use tools like it and seek input from our colleagues, we will make the best informed decisions for our organizations when technology adoption is faster than we prefer. Resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan http://www.media-studies.ca/articles/mcluhan.htm http://www.horton.ednet.ns.ca/staff/scottbennett/media/ Contact Us
Technology Chair: Chuck Weisbrich Co-Editors: Matt Reedy, Matt Reedy & Assoc and Brent Daugherty, Time Warner Cable North Chamber Contact: Debby Zucker
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