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Hardware configuration is one of two components of a computing system. The other component is software. When choosing computer software or hardware, it is important to pay attention to their efficiency and performance. As a rule, the average cost of hardware is higher.The implementation of software solutions requires the attention of highly qualified specialists. Modern computers and computing systems usually have a block-modular design. Hardware configuration allows users to perform certain types of work. It can be assembled from blocks and nodes.
Main Components
The main hardware components include the central processing unit, memory, and peripherals.They are connected by a system highway.Main memory allows the computer to store programs and data in binary form.It is organized in cells. Each cell has an individual digital address. The size of one cell is one byte. All memory operations are standard in nature, they include reading the contents and recording.
The central processing unit is the main component of the computer. It processes data and controls peripheral devices. The components of the central processing unit include:
control unit;
arithmetic logic unit;
storage device;
clock generator.
The central processor performs various data operations.To do this, it uses special cells to store temporary and variable results called internal registers. There are two types of registers:
general purpose register;
special purpose register.
Programmers can use data registers to temporarily store data from different objects and perform certain operations with them.
Computer hardware
The address of each cell consists of words. The first word indicates the way the segment is located in memory. The second word indicates the offset within the given segment. The size of each segment depends on the amount of data it contains, but cannot exceed 64 KB. This is the maximum possible offset. The segment address is always stored in a special register.The offset to the address byte is located in the instruction pointer register.
The computer processes information by transferring data from memory cells to general purpose registers.This is the task of the central processor. The results are then transferred to the main memory. All programs are stored as sequential machine instructions.They are executed by the central processor.Commands consist of operand fields and an operation field. A machine language is a set of such operations. Central processing units usually operate in two modes: kernel mode and user mode.
There are external and internal devices, depending on their location relative to the processor.External devices include most of the data input and output devices.People also call them peripherals.Hardware-logic devices provide coordination between blocks and nodes. These are hardware interfaces. The standards for them are protocols. This set of conditions must be provided for the successful organization of coordinated work between devices.
Another major hardware component is memory. Its system consists of layers.The upper one consists of CPU registers. The next layer is hardware-controlled cache memory. Then there is RAM, which is the main workspace in the system structure. If the user works in several programs, it is better to place complex programs in RAM.The next component of the memory structure is the hard drive. It consists of several plates on which information is recorded. The hardware configuration of computing systems is rather complicated. |
Sometimes it is convenient to be able to have variable variable names. That is, a variable name which can be set and used dynamically. A normal variable is set with a statement such as:
A variable variable takes the value of a variable and treats that as the name of a variable. In the above example, hello, can be used as the name of a variable by using two dollar signs. i.e.
At this point two variables have been defined and stored in the PHP symbol tree: $a with contents "hello" and $hello with contents "world". Therefore, this statement: |
Running with sudo means you run it with root privileges. If you don‘t set a User in the systemd file, the service is automaticly run as root. So this isn‘t the problem.
I had the same problem last week, the only thing that helped, was Setting up the whole thing again. And start it directly as a service.
arpagor62970 July 27, 2020, 5:14am #6
what do you mean by: “start all over ??”
arpagor62970 July 27, 2020, 5:59am #7
I think the problem lies with the launcher -> / usr / bin / rhasspy which itself launches the “supervisord” assistant service |
So I just got these super cute earrings yesterday. I saw them a few weeks ago when Miami fashion blogger Kelly Saks of KellySaks.com and I was like omg. I need these! So anyway, I’ve followed Kelly since….well college. We went to high school together (go Cobras!) and so I’ve always admired her style like even in high school. Plus, she’s a Libra which is like the best sign ever (sorry I’m a bit biased). What I’m totally not biased on are products. I will give y’all the honest truth about how I feel about anything that I review. I’m not getting paid for this at all. I just saw something I thought was cute and decided to treat myself to a good birthday gift.
Anyway, she’s pretty major on the fashion scene in Miami, so I was stoked when she first shared her collaboration with Taudrey, which is a jewelry boutique in miami that makes hand crafted jewelry (cool tidbit! She went to school with the owner of Taudrey, Tiffany). She’s been featured in magazines such as The Knot, Cosmo for Latinas, Vogue, and so much more! She can be seen every Friday at 11:30 am on NBC 6’s In The Mix in Miami (or online for those gals who aren’t local). Her style can be described as classic yet eclectic, bringing that Miami flair wherever she goes.
I ordered the Love earrings through Taudrey’s website (they ship nationwide!) and about a week and a half later, the earrings were in my possession. There’s more to her jewelry collection with Taudrey on the site so I suggest you make a beeline over there (no seriously like go!).
So wanna know about the earrings? First of all, let’s talk about price (because that’s important, right?). These earrings are $42 (before taxes) which to me if its worth it, I see no issue paying for it (after all, I’m a babe on a budget). To others this is a steal! Its 18K gold filled and as I stated before, are hand crafted. Lots of love and care went into making these beauties and in every bit of the detail in the packaging as well. They’re 1.5 inches in diameter (something I didn’t really realize until I saw them in person). They are apart of her Taudrey x Kelly Saks Birthday Collection. They’re perfect for a brunch with your girlfriends or a date night with your boo.
So here’s my downside: The closure. On the site, it says that its a continuous closure (again something I didn’t notice until after I got them). They can easily come out of your ear (unless y’all know a trick to get them to stay in). I was a bit disappointed in that. Also, since its like super thin, if it falls out, it can be difficult to find (like I still can’t find the other earring) if you have carpet or anything like that. Again, this is just my opinion.
So is it worth the purchase? Yes! Definitely just make sure you’re super careful when wearing them.
XOXO,
LolaDasher
I love this card. I’m all above female empowerment. I’m tacking this up on my bulletin board at work
I am a sucker for cute packaging. Again, all of this is hand made and hand sown.
They’re so cute. I’d recommend these for a girls brunch or a date night! I love classic pieces
This is my only downer: the lack of a back can make it easy for the earring to come out. I’m not kidding. The same day I got them in the mail, one was missing by the end of the night and I still cannot find it because it’s pretty thin and I have carpet on my flooring. So be aware! |
Cloud and mobility have ushered in a new era of enterprise technology. By adding key innovations to existing models, these trends allowed companies to change their approach and redefine the processes for choosing, implementing, and supporting business systems.
New technologies such as cloud and mobility account for nearly all projected revenue growth in the IT industry. Traditional areas like security, networking, and help desk are still major factors in a $3.7 trillion industry, so the net effect of new technologies is to add options and complexity.
With more technology options available and more input being added from business units, the typical IT goal of building business systems becomes a greater challenge. However, it is also more critical as businesses use technology to compete in a fast-paced global market.
Welcome to the Cloud/Mobile Era
In 2006, Amazon Web Services released their first offering: Simple Storage Service (S3). In 2007, Apple announced a new device that promised to combine the best qualities of the iPod with revolutionary mobile phone design and Internet capabilities: the iPhone. In the time since, the IT industry has been saturated with information and discussions on cloud and mobility, and that saturation has obscured the disruptive nature of these two trends.
Neither of these early offerings represented a never-before-seen concept. With cloud computing, Amazon built on a foundation of virtualization technology along with the recognized advantages of hosted systems over on-premise systems. The key innovation was the software layer that automated many virtualization tasks and allowed for greater flexibility and speed.
With mobility, the foundation was even more solid. Considering laptops as mobile devices, many companies had been exploring best practices around mobility for several years. Even smartphones were well entrenched as Blackberry had captured significant share among business users. The iPhone accelerated mobility momentum with a groundbreaking user interface and an app ecosystem that redefined the possibilities of mobile computing.
S3 and the iPhone introduced these new elements, and as more companies adopted them and adapted them for their own offerings, the era of cloud and mobility was born. Rather than creating an evolutionary step, cloud and mobility represent a true revolution. CompTIA, IDC, and other industry observers believe that cloud/mobility will be the third wave of enterprise technology, following mainframes and PC/Internet.
The revolution is not confined to the IT department, though. As technology becomes more accessible and more widespread, entire organizations are changing their approach and redefining the processes for choosing, implementing, and supporting business systems. The function of the IT team is certainly changing, whether that team is an internal department, an informal collection of employees, or a third party responsible for technology management. However, there are also changes in inter-departmental dynamics and in the drivers behind technology projects.
After several years of looking at cloud and mobility individually to understand how they were being implemented, CompTIA is taking a step back to assess the bigger picture. Building Digital Organizations explores the transformations taking place in businesses beyond the IT team. It also explores the steps the IT team can take to continue providing value in this new era of enterprise technology.
Growing the IT Pie
Without a doubt, the new trends in technology are the major growth drivers in the IT industry. IDC, which calls this new era of computing the “3rd Platform,” actually predicts that these new technologies will account for 100% of IT spending growth in 2015. With the lines often blurred between different areas in spending projections, there may still be incremental growth in some traditional areas of IT, but revenue for emerging areas has definitely skyrocketed in recent years, with high expectations for 2015:
$536 billion on wireless data, making that the largest component of telecom spending.
$484 billion in smartphone/tablet sales. This includes consumer spending, but businesses will certainly account for a healthy share.
$118 billion on the overall cloud ecosystem, including IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
$125 billion on data-related software, hardware, and services as late adopters pick up data management foundations and early adopters push new forms of analytics.
However, these growth areas are not necessarily replacing traditional components. Consider security as an example. Migrations to cloud systems and use of mobile devices force companies to invest in new security measures, such as DLP and IAM. At the same time, there is still a need for legacy measures such as firewalls and antivirus to remain in place. These areas may even require updates thanks to new technology models being deployed.
Flat spending in traditional areas, then, is still fairly significant in an industry that generated $3.7 trillion in global revenue in 2014. Companies will continue to spend in areas like security, networking, and help desk as they pursue new technology directions and seek greater efficiency and productivity. These macro revenue trends are the first sign that technology planning is has two separate components: operational and strategic.
Individual company budgets reflect this trend, and they also show that technology is a growing market. In order to meet both operational and strategic goals, budgets are becoming more distributed. Only 19% of companies report that the IT function still owns the entire technology budget. In most cases, the business units have some of their own funds, whether that is merely discretionary (33%), split evenly with the IT function (20%), the majority of the technology budget (9%), or complete control (19%).
There are obviously differences in budget distribution depending on company size. Small companies (1-99 employees) are less likely to have formal IT functions, so it’s no surprise to see that this is where business units are most likely to hold the full technology budget. Among medium-sized companies (100-499 employees), the most common model is for the business units to have discretionary funds while the IT function holds the majority of the budget. Large enterprises (500+ employees) use a variety of methods, but generally the IT function retains at least half the budget.
While the budgets may be spread across different areas, they all seem healthy. Distributing technology funds to business units has not adversely affected the budget of the IT function, and in nearly half of businesses both sets of budgets are growing. The fact that there is negligible difference between IT respondents and business respondents shows that all groups have good visibility to what is happening across the organization.
Growing budgets do not mean that companies are becoming less cost-conscious, but it is a signal that investments will be made if the business case is viable. With budgets held by different groups, that business case will take different forms depending on who is making the decision. Pitches for technology will often need to go beyond specifications and features to include user experience, innovative potential, and overall integration across separate functional areas.
The New Business Systems
The role of IT within business is complex, but one way of quickly describing the function is that IT exists to build and support business systems. In the early days of IT, these systems required highly specialized skill to build and operate. Only large companies could afford the expensive equipment and the highly skilled staff, and the systems were very self-contained. As PCs and the Internet entered the business world, systems evolved to include a strong backend for centralized computation and storage along with a connected frontend for the broader workforce to utilize technology.
In the age of cloud and mobility, the workforce is more aware than ever of technology options and more equipped to apply those options directly. Workers bring in their own mobile devices, and business units procure their own cloud solutions. The concept of a business system could mean different things to different people. A sales team may think of a CRM application and the various functions and features they need for driving new deals. The IT team will consider the CRM application along with the databases on the back end and all the devices that need to display that application in different settings.
Any application can qualify as a business system, especially as the focus on data grows sharper and companies expect to gain insights from data generated within any application. There are several systems that are commonly recognized across most organizations, including the corporate web presence, communications platforms, and customer relationship management (CRM).
Satisfaction with business systems is currently a function of business operations. Those systems with the lowest satisfaction are the ones with the goal of automating standard business operations and enabling connections between different functions. Systems like CRM or enterprise resource planning (ERP) hold a great deal of potential, and new experiences with technology can make it apparent that this potential is not being met.
This is especially true if these systems are a little long in the tooth. CRM and ERP are the least likely types of system to be installed over the past year, with small companies still holding off on these systems even with cloud-based options. The primary activity over the past year has focused on the portal between a company and the outside world. Websites (including mobile sites), content management, and e-commerce all work together as businesses try to make an impact in the digital space and reach new customers.
More and more, digital systems are becoming the battleground for business competition and the tools for building competitive advantage. By a wide margin, the smallest businesses are the least likely to have certain systems installed. For complex systems such as ERP (not in place at 49% of small businesses), there is probably not a pressing need. The gap still exists, though, in systems that are more critical, such as websites/mobile sites (not in place at 23% of small businesses).
For small and medium-sized businesses to truly become digital organizations and compete with larger enterprises, they will have to explore a greater degree of technical complexity and automation. Many SMBs recognize that they can expand their capabilities thanks to cloud computing, but building large business systems will require a broader, more aggressive approach.
CompTIA’s 5th Annual Trends in Cloud Computing report found that the top applications that have moved into the cloud are business productivity suites and email. While these applications could easily be connected to other pieces of a larger business system, it is more likely that companies in the early stages of adoption are using them stand-alone. Businesses still gain benefits from these types of migrations, but those firms moving into the Transformed IT stage of CompTIA’s cloud adoption progression are comprehensively changing their architecture to allow for greater connection between applications, driving towards fully cloud-enabled business systems.
Similarly, only 8% of companies in CompTIA’s 3rd Annual Trends in Enterprise Mobility study claimed to have made significant changes to workflow as a result of mobility adoption. Email is again a top application for mobile strategies, and that certainly provides employees with new efficiencies in communication. As applications are rebuilt for cloud systems, workflow will also have to be rebuilt to ensure that mobile devices can be used to drive a variety of business operations.
Business transformation is a topic that has been in the spotlight as much as cloud computing and mobility, and there is just as much reason to believe that it is also critical. In order to connect with customers in a global economy or even provide the products and services needed for today’s market, companies will need to transform into digital organizations that effectively use technology to drive forward.
What, then, are the characteristics of a digital organization? How are these business systems built, and how does IT provide value in the new world order? Building Digital Organizations examines these questions, taking the lessons learned in the first stage of cloud/mobile adoption and providing insight for IT departments and solutions providers as a more advanced stage begins.
The good news is that IT is up for the challenge. As these new trends have taken hold, there has been some uncertainty about the role that IT will play as delivery models change and business units become more powerful. With the first wave of cloud migrations and mobile device influx behind them, IT professionals are more confident in the value they provide and the ability to deliver service in the new environment.
Appendix
What exactly is a digital organization? The full report aims to answer that question in depth, but a quick glance at a sampling of business processes gives some insight into the ways in which a digital organization is using technology—both old and new—to optimize their workflow and improve efficiency.
Section 2:
Business Model Analysis
Key Points
The decision process for new business systems is the starting point for the changes that a business must make to its internal processes. Rather than the IT function being the command center for technology decisions, the process now focuses more on business objectives, includes different areas of the organization, and often has a different final decision maker.
While there are more voices involved in the decision process, IT is still seen as the primary driver for technology choices. Seven out of ten companies say that IT still has a primary role in the decision process, with finance, marketing, sales, and HR playing larger roles.
As business units contribute more to technology decisions, they are seeking input from a variety of sources. Along with knowledge or research internal to the line of business, information comes from business/technology events, peers, and third party firms. Existing technology partners are a common choice, but new firms with new capabilities are also sought out.
A New Way of Making Decisions
As cloud and mobility transform the approach to enterprise technology, the changes go much deeper than application architecture and infrastructure implementation. Digital organizations have new business processes thanks to the propensity of business units to drive technology choices and the responsibility that the IT team must take as a result.
The decision process for new business systems is the starting point for these changes. In the PC/Internet era, the IT team still held the vast majority of the technical knowledge and skill. Because of this, they maintained a high degree of control, selecting systems to match their interpretation of business needs and their knowledge of integration and security.
Today, business units are not only more aware of technology solutions but also more able to procure those solutions. Developers within business units can obtain virtual machines through IaaS providers instead of going through a process to secure internal resources. Other workers can select SaaS applications for their needs, and they can bring in their own mobile devices to access these applications.
Over the past several years, the concept of business units procuring their own technology has become known as “rogue IT” or “shadow IT.” In theory, this allows for greater speed and a better fit to business goals, but it also raises questions around integration and security. As businesses try to get the best of both worlds, they are making changes to the process for deciding on technology.
The most common change is in the objective for new technology. IT has always played a support role—the ultimate objective has always been to support the needs of the business. However, the view on enterprise technology is changing in the cloud/mobile era. Rather than simply enabling goals that the business has already chosen, technology is tightly integrated with the goals. In other words, new goals depend on the proper use of technology as they aggressively move the business into new areas.
There is a notable gap between IT personnel and business personnel in the perception of technology objectives being more business focused. Business personnel likely see new business goals as technology-fueled extensions of their previous activity. IT personnel, on the other hand, likely see the business imperatives in a new light. It’s the difference between “We need email so that we can communicate with each other” and “We need our email to connect to our CRM so that we can have a tighter process for communicating customer information.”
CompTIA’s cloud research has consistently shown that medium-sized businesses are in a unique position for adopting new technology models, and the data on technology objectives continues to affirm this. Six out of ten medium-sized businesses say that there is more of a business focus with technology decisions, compared to 52% of large companies and 49% of small firms.
The other major difference in the technology decision process is that there are more voices involved. This is true as ideas are being generated, discussion is taking place, and the final call is made. For most companies, IT is still seen as the driver for technology. This is true for IT respondents and business respondents, and it can be seen whether talking about the position of IT relative to other departments or the list of departments that play a critical role.
This picture is in flux—in another five years, there may be even greater balance than there is today—but this is a good sign that the role of IT is still highly valued. Some companies may still have IT in a primary position simply because of historical momentum, but others are likely realizing that IT’s expertise in those problem areas of integration and security is critical for ongoing success.
The data around final decisions tells a slightly different story, one that may indicate the shape this process takes over time. With fewer respondents saying that the final decision comes from a new source, the data for now simply acts as an indicator, but it appears that final technology decisions are more frequently being made by the CEO or business owner. This is true even at large enterprises.
Smaller technology investments may not rise to this level of executive approval. As business systems grow more complex, though, they will require greater investment and affect many different departments. There will often be trade-offs required between one department and another. As the decision process evolves, everyone may have a seat at the table, but the final call could be made at the highest levels.
Business Goals from the Business Units
New Criteria for New Systems
54% Improve innovation/build new products
51% Reach new customers/markets
49% Speed up processes and operations
40% Improve internal communications
40% Lower overall cost
37% Gather new types of data
29% Improve brand image
If the business units are taking a more active role in technology decisions, what does that mean for the decision process? Obviously, there is the push for technology to better drive business objectives. Since the first mainframes, the goal of IT has always been to enable a business to achieve things that would otherwise be impossible. New technology models allow companies to continue chasing typical pursuits such as cost cutting or increased efficiency, and they also open doors to new products, new customers, and new data.
To match business goals with technology solutions, business units must have the right level of technical knowledge. Most business professionals today are far more aware of technology capabilities than their counterparts from previous decades. Some of this is simply the cumulative effect of IT: as companies have built a strong foundation and integrated technology into their day-to-day operations, employees have become accustomed to the typical tools in use within their organization.
However, consumer technology has greatly accelerated technical savvy among business professionals. In the mainframe era, there was no consumer technology to speak of. In the PC/Internet era, technology moved into the consumer space, and it mostly trickled down from products created for enterprise use. The best technology was built for businesses since they were the ones that could afford it, and eventually it made its way into the consumer market.
One of the hallmarks of the cloud/mobile era is that some of the best technology is being developed for consumers. Smartphones, tablets, and many cloud services were initially designed to focus on user experience and convenience, with security taking somewhat of a back seat. The simplicity built in to these devices and services has driven rapid adoption and quickly raised the technology literacy level.
Given this newfound literacy, it is no surprise to see that the primary source of technology information for business units is their own experience or research. With direct knowledge of the problems they are facing and with the right tools at their fingertips, business professionals are eager to dig a little deeper to find the best solutions for their needs.
Internal IT departments also rate highly as sources of information, giving further proof that the IT team continues to deliver value. In this case, the IT team is shifting into a role as a consultant. As expected, small businesses see this happening far less often than medium-sized or large businesses.
The IT channel is not yet playing a major role in educating business units about available technology. Once again, medium-sized businesses take the lead here, with 41% using third party technology firms for information (compared to 32% of large businesses and 27% of small businesses). With enough resource to think seriously about growth and operations but not enough resource to fully bring everything in house, medium-sized firms are ideal candidates for exploring new forms of partnering.
Following the trend seen in CompTIA’s Enabling SMBs With Technology study, companies are most likely to seek out information from third party firms that already have an established relationship. For the business units, though, this relationship may be an unknown. Compared to the general SMB market, business units across all company sized show a greater tendency towards new firms, either as the single source of information or as a complement to an existing partnership.
There are two takeaways for solution providers. First, be sure that the connection with a company includes the lines of business along with the IT function. The IT function may still be a major driver in technology decisions, but the business units are becoming more critical. Second, be sure that services and skills are up to date. Even if current offerings continue to generate healthy revenue, there is always the possibility for disruption. The current offerings may remain viable, but they will need to be positioned in the context of the changing market.
Section 3:
Challenges
Key Points
One of the major challenges in the new technology environment is rogue IT: the selection and implementation of technology by business units with no IT function involvement. However, this trend may not be as rampant as some might think: of business units with their own technology budget, only 41% use that budget to procure technology on their own or start independent projects with outside firms.
Part of the issue with rogue IT is the perception of the IT function. Here again, the data points to a more positive picture than is often portrayed. Over half of the companies surveyed said that there is a good relationship between the IT function and the business units. There may be more strategic work that IT could do, but there is a desire on the part of the business units to be partners.
As the IT function implements the technology decisions that have been made, there are new considerations for every part of a business system. On the backend, cloud systems provide new options for application and drive new storage needs. On the frontend, mobile devices allow for more efficiency but require more development effort. Across the entire architecture, data and security have become greater cause for concern than the cloud/mobile pieces.
Going Rogue
Many challenges crop up as the business model for technology solutions changes, and one of the biggest challenges in this new dynamic is the incidence of rogue IT. Business units are knowledgeable enough about technology and enabled enough with their own budges to procure their own solutions. In some cases, this procurement may happen because business units have negative feelings about IT. In most cases, though, they are simply looking for the quickest path to meeting or beating their goals.
There are two major questions when it comes to rogue IT: How much is it happening and what are the effects? On the first question, CompTIA research has seen indicators for rogue IT rise over the past few years. The 5th Annual Trends in Cloud Computing study found that business units handled their own procurement for cloud applications between 18% and 36% of the time (depending on the application). This was a slight increase from the previous year’s numbers.
The data on business unit budgets in the Building Digital Organizations study indicate that rogue IT continues to grow. Four out of ten companies say that the primary action business units take with their own budget is an independent one, whether they are procuring their own technology directly or contracting with an outside firm. While small businesses show a greater tendency for independent outsourcing (which makes sense without an internal IT function), there is no significant difference in the likelihood for independent procurement across company size.
Rogue IT is clearly not rampant, though. As section 2 described, it is still more likely for the IT function to control at least half of the technology budget. Within business units that hold their own tech funds, the most common approach is to engage internal IT teams for projects. This matches findings from previous studies showing that business units typically keep IT involved, even if they are making the final decision.
Keeping IT involved or working with them directly on technology projects are both ways to avoid the major threats associated with rogue IT: integration and security. For as much technical savvy as they may have, business units still will not typically be well versed in these two areas. The early view on rogue IT was that business units might select applications that worked well in a vacuum but caused headaches in the context of the overall company architecture.
It certainly appears that businesses have learned these lessons, based either on missteps they have made themselves or on information they have gathered from early adopters. Even in the relatively short time CompTIA has been examining rogue IT in studies on cloud computing, the complete sidestepping of IT has gone down, and those companies that have done so have experienced the expected issues with integration and security.
In this new study, companies overwhelmingly claim that technology procured by business units is effective. This view is remarkably consistent among IT respondents and business respondents, so the two sides do not appear to be at war over this issue. Instead, it appears that there is some agreement being formed on how technology will be driven and which issues must be considered in the process.
The question on the effects of rogue IT has a partial answer. While companies view these solutions as effective, there is clearly a great deal of work being done to make this happen. Those companies that are pushing into new territory with line of business technology budgets and democratic decision processes are finding success, and companies with more traditional structures will soon follow suit. As they do so, the negative connotations of rogue IT should fall away as teams work together to marry the speed of business unit procurement with the safety of IT oversight.
Business Unit Views on IT
The level of agreement from business units to various statements about the IT function indicates a generally positive relationship.
52% “There is a good relationship between the IT function and all business units”
44% “The IT function plays a critical support role in our organization.”
40% “The IT function plays a critical strategic role in our organization.”
32% “The IT function drives our vision for technology.”
18% “It can be difficult explaining business problems to the IT function.”
18% “The IT function has a tendency to slow things down.”
Perception of IT
Just as rogue IT has some negative connotations, there are some views on the behavior of the IT function that are less than rosy. Many of these views correspond to the thinking that rogue IT is done primarily as a workaround of an IT team that is not moving quickly enough or finding new ways to meet business goals.
However, this concept of the IT function as the “department of no” does not seem to be the majority opinion. The idea has appeared in many industry articles and conference sessions, but its traction may have more to do with its weight as a rallying cry than its actual presence in the workplace. Every business has some degree of inter-departmental frustration and differing priorities, but business units tend to view IT as a valuable partner rather than a hindrance.
While only about half of the business units in the survey agreed with the statement that there is a good relationship between the IT function and the business units, this was the top response chosen and was far more popular than the more negative statements. This is likely a case of abstention—it is reasonable to assume that the 18% agreeing with the negative statements are the segment with negative feelings, and the gap remaining between that segment and the positive statement are simply in neutral territory. Having approximately 8 out of 10 businesses with positive or neutral relationships is still a far cry from a widespread negative viewpoint.
As good as the relationship may be between business units and the IT function, there is room for improvement. Overall, IT is still seen more in a support or tactical role rather than a strategic role, though not by a wide margin. This is particularly true in the SMB segment. In fact, more large businesses view the IT function as strategic (48%) rather than support/tactical (43%).
Medium-sized businesses, on the other hand, are more likely to view the IT function as driving technology vision. Forty-one percent of medium-sized businesses agree with this viewpoint, compared to 35% of large businesses and 24% of small businesses. Large businesses may agree less since they employ a more collaborative approach to technology, but small businesses are in need of someone to drive an innovative vision.
Each company segment has a different preference for the key action IT could take to become more strategic. Small businesses that are using IT providers or internal employees simply to maintain operations are looking for a better understanding of business objectives. Medium-sized businesses that have grown into more complex processes and architectures are looking for a more effective use of data. Large businesses that are highly concerned with efficiency are looking for metrics that quantify the collaboration between the IT function and the business units.
Although education is not at the top of anyone’s list, it is a growing need as technology becomes more complex and integrated with business operations. CompTIA’s 3rd Annual Trends in Enterprise Mobility study found that the top challenge in adopting mobility was the skill level of general staff. Since much of the momentum behind mobility initiatives (especially BYOD) is the adoption in the consumer space, this is surprising at first glance. However, organizations are finding that the requirements for safely using mobile devices in a corporate setting are new even to users with fairly strong mobile device proficiency.
Education, then, bridges the gap between what users think they know about technology and what they really need to know. New user interfaces have driven demands for ease of use and abstraction has made complex functions appear simple, but the expertise IT has built in proper security and smooth integration is highly valuable and should now be shared across the broader organization.
Building Business Systems With New Pieces
Aside from the issue of forming and maintaining strong relationships with the business units, the IT team has its own challenges to deal with internally. The construction and support of business systems has become much more complicated thanks to the wide range of options now available. In addition, certain aspects of these systems have now taken on an enhanced level of importance thanks to the new cloud and mobile components being used.
At the highest level, IT architecture consists of a backend (where applications are hosted and databases crunch numbers) and a frontend (where users interact with the backend and perform day-to-day operations). Cloud computing and mobile devices have transformed both of these aspects, with cloud changing how systems are constructed and mobile devices driving new user experiences and workflows.
The top change that cloud computing is driving within the IT function is the management of storage as systems and data are spread across multiple environments. Storage was the first cloud offering, and there are now many cloud solutions such as databases or analytics services that allow companies to build robust plans beyond simple storage of data. Backup and disaster recovery is a good example of a process that has been re-imagined, especially for companies in the SMB segment that previously had little in the way of BC/DR strategies.
Other changes driven by cloud involve internal expectations. In the early days of adoption, companies viewed cloud as a path to lower costs. Although many companies are now finding cloud to be cost-neutral (while delivering other benefits such as speed and new revenue opportunities), the expectation still lingers, and 61% of IT professionals say that controlling costs is the top challenge in the overall management of backend architecture. Other expectations for lower downtime or a stronger business voice in suggesting technical solutions drive new operational behavior and organizational collaboration for the IT team.
Although only a third of companies say that there is less focus on backend maintenance due to the cloud, this change may have one of the more dramatic effects on the composition of the IT function as it becomes more widespread. The notion of shifting the maintenance burden to cloud providers can be somewhat unnerving for IT professionals currently doing that work, but previous CompTIA research has found that companies are far more likely to redeploy these skills to something more innovative rather than reduce the workforce. As maintenance causes less burden, the IT team is free to pursue those activities that can put them in a more strategic position.
Aside from keeping costs under control, the main challenges with backend systems revolve around the complexity in managing multiple models. The challenges start at the beginning, with simply selecting the correct model (cited as a challenge by 47%). Things remain complex as the process moves on and models are integrated together (43%) and secured (43%). Finally, the entire system must be monitored (42%).
Moving to the frontend, the challenges follow a similar pattern. About half the companies that experience difficulties with frontend systems cite cost control as an issue as they need to support a growing number of devices. This growth also drives complexity, and companies struggle with new applications needed for mobile devices and ensuring that users are properly equipped to put their new devices to good use.
Some of these challenges are directly driving change. The IT team feels greater pressure to deliver on workflow efficiency, and that drives a development effort. Many companies are finding that their traditional desktop development experience does not perfectly translate to mobile app development, and many more are finding that they must start development efforts where there have been none in the past. For other challenges, more change is needed. Although educated users are a major problem, less than one third of companies are adding workforce training to go along with mobility efforts.
Companies are less apt to seek out third party expertise for mobile systems. The consumer familiarity likely causes organizations to believe that the transition will be smooth. However, the new work needed in mobile app development and the gap between user knowledge and training efforts both suggest that third parties will be able to step in where companies need help fully integrating mobile devices.
There are two components of business systems that are not directly tied to the main components of cloud and mobility but are indirectly magnified as those components are used. Digital data and cybersecurity have always been parts of IT operations; they have become serious concerns as data flows through multiple models and the entire architecture must be made secure. IT professionals actually rate these two areas of business systems as being more problematic than the primary focus areas of cloud and mobility.
The challenges with data begin with skills. At large organizations, there is a learning curve in dealing with distributed storage or non-relational databases. At smaller firms, the learning curve is even steeper as companies gain skill in more traditional areas such as data warehousing and SQL.
Even with the right knowledge, it can be difficult to know where all the data is. Whether it is moving through new systems, coming from different sources, or living in silos throughout the organization, the data itself now must be managed independently of the application or the location. Companies that previously relied on a secure perimeter for all their data must now examine other methods.
Security, then, becomes the final piece of the puzzle. New threats have emerged as a result of cloud and mobility, and understanding these threats is a top priority for the IT team even as traditional threats continue to be effective.
With the immense value of data and the myriad of new tools available to hackers, one of the biggest changes to a security mindset is preparing for an inevitable breach rather than putting all the effort into prevention. This makes the workload explode and also requires significantly different behaviors. CompTIA’s Trends in IT Security report goes into more depth on new approaches to IT security. It is no simple task, but the challenge now facing IT professionals is to change security and handle data in the age of cloud and mobility while partnering more with business units. These professionals have great opportunity to redefine themselves as they tackle this challenge and provide new value for their organization.
Section 4:
Opportunities
Key Points
With a positive view on the role of IT in an organization, business units have certain areas where they definitely see IT as the primary owner. Security is an operational concern, even though the approach to security needs to change. Driving new forms of technology is a tactical concern, and business units want IT to be proactive in offering new applications that are suited for the enterprise.
As business systems and organizations change, the role of IT grows to include four priorities: Infrastructure, Integration, Intelligence, and Innovation. Infrastructure and Integration were the traditional strongholds of the IT department, and they continue to be of high importance in the cloud/mobile era.
Intelligence and Innovation are more strategic paths for the IT function. There are skills needed here—both technical and business-related—that must be added to an IT function in some way, whether by training, hiring, or partnering.
The Once and Future IT
With cloud and mobility ushering in a new era of enterprise technology, the IT function can take on a new role within a digital organization. As section 1 described, that role has two parts: operational and strategic. The operational piece is the more traditional piece, where IT is responsible for keeping business systems up and running. The strategic piece is newer, requiring a new mindset and new behaviors.
IT is aware that this branching is taking place, and they definitely see it as added responsibility rather than a transition from one mode to the other. Over the past five years, 53% of IT professionals in the survey say that the operational workload has stayed the same, and 44% say that it has increased. Compare that to the strategic workload, where 40% feel there has been no change and 59% say there has been an increase. The operational work is clearly not going away, though the strategic work is quickly becoming more important.
The business side of the organization is helping define what this dual role should look like. Even if business units are not taking over technology decisions en masse, their growing influence in the process means that their view of the IT function should be given serious consideration.
First and foremost, business units see IT as a partner. For most areas of technical activity, business units hold the view that there are shared responsibilities in guaranteeing successful operations. Depending on the topic, this varies slightly between small, medium, and large companies, but in general the feeling is consistent: business units expect to work jointly with IT to solve many technical problems.
There are a couple of exceptions. The first is security, which falls into the operational camp. Business units show a clear preference for IT taking the lead on security issues. This is another data point suggesting that rogue IT will not take over the enterprise. There is recognition that security is vital to an organization’s success and that it must be managed from a center of expertise.
Becoming Better Partners
Business units and the IT function may already have a good relationship, but that doesn’t mean there are no ideas for making things better. The top items that business units would like to see from the IT team both have to do with speaking the same language, whether that means that IT understands the business a little better or that IT helps the business understand their concerns. Business units would also like to see IT be more proactive, looking into suggestions and providing their own innovative insights. The ultimate goal is a straightforward service catalog, relying on a number of different sources to make applications available for easy but safe use.
60% Better knowledge of business objectives
52% Better communication of IT concerns
50% Accept/explore ideas from business units
45% Proactive technology recommendations
32% Build a catalog of services
The second exception is more strategic. As much as business units may be learning about technology on their own and bringing ideas to the IT team, they would like the IT team to drive the technology vision. By combining their existing knowledge about enterprise security and integration with new insights about the direction of the business, IT is in the best position to explore potential solutions and bring them to the table. This is the type of forward-looking activity that businesses are starting to demand from their technical team.
Moving Beyond a Single Focus
Expanding into this new role will require IT departments and solution providers to broaden their focus. Constellation Research has described this broadening by defining four different personas that modern CIO’s need to adopt:
Chief Infrastructure Officer
Chief Integration Officer
Chief Intelligence Officer
Chief Innovation Officer
There is a sort of hierarchy to this description. The role of the modern CIO is based on traditional activities, such as choosing the right infrastructure and then integrating the pieces to build a comprehensive architecture. With that in place, the activity becomes more strategic, bringing intelligent insights from the stores of data and planning innovative ways to move the business forward.
At the simplest level, this description implies a four-fold increase in responsibility and workload as the focus shifts from simply Information to Infrastructure/Integration/Intelligence/Innovation. The real increase may be less than that, but it is still significant. The largest organizations demonstrate this through new positions that work alongside the incumbent CIO, such as Chief Technical Officer (CTO) or Chief Digital Officer (CDO). Small and medium-sized businesses often do not have the luxury of expanding the top of the organization, and they must find other ways to pursue these new efforts.
Responses from IT professionals clearly show that all four of these areas are driving behavior. Five years ago, infrastructure was the main focus, followed by integration. Both of these fit within the tradition purview of the IT department. Today, infrastructure has dropped dramatically, with most of the gains going to innovation. The picture now has much more balance between operations and strategy, though operations still carries some historical weight.
This is especially true among small businesses, where cloud and mobility now offer paths to vastly improved infrastructure without huge investments. These firms also see a shift towards more strategic IT behavior, but the natural first step is to build out architecture and set the stage for the exploration of new business possibilities.
Each of these areas has its own specific characteristics. Behaviors are changing because of newly balanced priorities, but they are also changing due to transformations brought on by cloud and mobility.
Infrastructure
This is the area where cloud and mobility have the most direct impact. On the backend, companies are reconsidering their hardware requirements as they analyze the economics of the cloud. Forty-seven percent of companies say that they require specialized hardware to achieve optimal application performance. This is a somewhat traditional mindset, though it will certainly be true of some applications, especially at the enterprise level. With that said, cloud options continue to evolve. Bare metal clouds, where the cloud automation runs on physical machines without a hypervisor level, are an example of cloud solutions aiming to deliver higher performance.
Another 33% of companies say that they do not require specialized hardware, but they keep some hardware on premise for security or cost reasons. Again, this will be application dependent, and companies without strict hardware requirements will have to evaluate their application suite to understand which model best fits each application.
The remaining companies freely use commodity hardware or have a low level of concern with the specifications of their backend equipment. Small companies especially exhibit little concern, making them ideal candidates for cloud-based infrastructure.
On the front-end, the great focus of the past five years has been how to deal with BYOD. With smartphones and tablets so prevalent in the consumer space, the question posed is often how to manage the BYOD flood, with the assumption that there is no way to stop it. It appears, though, that companies are moving in a different direction.
For the past three years, CompTIA has asked companies to describe their device approach by one of three buckets: 1) Full BYOD, where the company takes no responsibility for devices; 2) Partial BYOD, where the company provides some devices but allows some personal devices to access corporate systems; and 3) No BYOD, where the company provides everything and disallows the connection of personal devices.
There is a clear move towards a policy of no BYOD. Companies are finding that they can pursue mobility initiatives just as well by providing mobile devices, and employees are often happy enough to take a corporate device if it is the same thing they would choose on their own. A small percentage of companies—mostly small firms—elect to completely avoid device distribution. This can reduce the overhead required for device support, but it also raises issues for security and productivity. Many firms are clearly choosing to solve those issues by avoiding BYOD.
Of course, this is simply the stated policy. Ambitious employees will find ways to utilize personal devices and applications even if they are forbidden, so companies must also consider how to detect such usage and correct the behavior beyond merely building the preferred policy.
Integration
Those that are familiar with IT projects know that integration represents the lion’s share of the budget, both in financial costs and implementation time. Those less familiar with IT projects typically underestimate integration efforts, leading to surprises and scrambling as work gets underway.
As new cloud and mobile solutions are put in place, there is a learning curve for integration. Even among IT professionals, estimates for time and money are falling short as new technology is being implemented. There is not much difference between cloud or mobility, and there is not much different between technology chosen by the business units and technology chosen by the IT team. Integration has always been difficult, and cloud and mobility are impacting the level of effort that is required.
Another effect of cloud and mobility may be that integration is viewed from a broader perspective. Rather than integration applying to the technical work of putting disparate systems together, integration is coming to mean the smooth flow of technology, workflow, and processes to achieve goals. Fifty-seven percent of IT professionals still say that it is important to understand integration at an architectural level to allow the greatest degree of control, but 32% say that they prefer to consider integration at the application level for seamless workflow, and 11% say that they prefer thinking of integration at the business level. Viewing integration at higher levels is more strongly preferred in the SMB segment, where companies are increasingly focusing their limited resources on core competencies rather than technical details.
Intelligence
At first glance, there has only been a small uptick in the prioritization of intelligence among business professionals. This reflects the fact that business intelligence and data analytics have long been practices that companies have used to better understand the market and deliver the best products and services.
Under the covers, though, intelligence is changing as the nature of data is changing. The initial hallmark of Big Data was volume/velocity/variety: huge amounts of unstructured data constantly streaming into an organization and requiring analysis. Other attributes of data (such as veracity and value) have since been added to the definition, but the original description is sufficient to show that the format of data has drastically changed. CompTIA has conducted multiple studies on the topic of Big Data to understand how organizations are reacting to the new types of data.
These three aspects play into the priorities that businesses have as they revamp their intelligence efforts. Considering volume, 48% of companies say that they would like to more fully utilize the data they already have. Many companies are discovering data silos as they audit their internal data for analysis. Different departments have built their own data stores, and companies need to consolidate this data and understand the complete set before embarking on more advanced analytics.
The velocity of data is also an issue, as 44% of companies say that they would like to perform data analytics faster. Often, this will require new tools. For as much focus as Hadoop has gotten as a Big Data platform, its main weakness is in real time processing. Other tools, such as Storm and Spark, are better suited for that task. In addition to tools, there is a significant workflow component needed. Organizations need to define—or re-define—their processes in order to expedite the path from insight to decision.
Finally, variety is impacting data management and analytics, as 38% of companies say that they want to utilize new sources of data. Unstructured data that companies already have, such as documents and images, are certainly part of this equation. Data from social networks has been another major part in recent years. Looking forward, data collected from connected devices in the Internet of Things will continue to provide companies with new possibilities—if they are able to act on that data in intelligent ways.
Innovation
Innovation has become the guideline for companies as they seek to use their technical skills in more strategic ways. This area has seen the largest increase in priority, and it is the basis for the deeper IT/business connection that so many companies are pursuing.
Even deciding where to innovate can require a fresh approach. When choosing top priorities, the most popular objectives are reducing costs (60%) and improving operational efficiency (58%). These are common goals for a business, but they are also more of a means to an end. When applying technology to business problems, there is an opportunity to directly address mainline business targets, such as reaching new customers (44%), managing competitive threats (38%) or pivoting to a new business model (23%).
To achieve this innovation and truly become a digital organization, companies need to examine the skills they currently have and make adjustments as needed. Just as the approach to technology now has dual parts of operations and strategy, the workforce needs a dual set of skills. Both technical skills and business skills are needed to turn a company’s vision into reality through technology.
The exact mix of these skills will differ from organization to organization. Larger firms can create this mix with separate teams, some reporting to the CIO and some reporting to the CTO/CDO. Smaller firms must look for individuals that exhibit skills on both sides of the ledger, changing the notion of what it means to be a technical employee.
Either way, the skills are not limited to the technical team. Business units must also consider which skills they need to effectively manage their technology approach and team up with the IT function. Adding to the momentum behind business units and IT becoming effective partners, business units see ways that IT can support the skill-building that they need, including providing education (70%), the use of IT liaisons in business units (56%), or consultation on hiring (31%).
Cloud and mobility have done much more than provide fodder for conferences and industry debates. They have changed the way that enterprise technology is chosen, constructed, and implemented. Digital organizations are on the rise—companies that will effectively use technology throughout the entire business to meet their goals. In this change, IT has a tremendous opportunity to establish a valuable new position for themselves, helping to drive their companies forward in the new era.
Section 5:
Qualitative Interviews
Key Points
Finding 1: Corporate IT’s power and influence over business is growing (not waning), but multiple business leaders now have a voice in IT’s direction. Business unit leaders certainly have more say in IT decisions. But as cloud, mobile, big data and social waves grow larger, central IT will emerge as a service broker to in-house and third-party IT offerings.
Finding 2: IT’s transformation into an internal service provider is in its infancy and will require several more years to complete. Business executives and employees want self-service applications, but that requires several stages of IT investment.
Finding 3: The shift from CapEx to OpEx will gradually even out. Technology and business leaders are discovering that cloud computing isn’t about cost savings. Instead, the conversation is about speed to market and automated maintenance—with lingering concerns over IT management.
Finding 4: The security conversation is extending from device protection to total data protection. While overall device and infrastructure protection remains important, business and IT leaders are increasingly worried about data protection and customer privacy issues.
Finding 5: Mobile conversations are extending to the Internet of Things. Business and IT leaders are exploring if or how new IP-connected devices can be monetized, while also exploring the potential cost and management challenges.
Finding 6: Big Data is on the radar, but data-driven decisions are limited by information silos, a flood of new data sources, and business executive confusion over potential big data opportunities.
Finding 7: As innovation cycles get shorter and shorter, IT and business must get more and more closely aligned.
Deeper Findings: The New Balancing Act
Here, we explore qualitative interviews with end user executives (CEOs, Chief Marketing Officers, CIOs, etc.) within midmarket companies. Our interviews explored (1) the decision-making process for technology and business systems, (2) the perception of the IT function by business units; and (3) the operation of the IT function as systems are built.
Finding 1: Corporate IT’s power and influence over business is growing (not waning), but multiple business leaders now have a voice in IT’s direction.
Business unit leaders—chief marketing officers, chief revenue officers, etc.—certainly have more say in IT decisions these days. But as cloud, mobile, big data, and social waves grow larger, corporate IT is gradually transforming into a central service broker to users and customers.
1a: CIOs remain a central, trusted cog for driving business innovation.
From the infrastructure level to the application level, CIOs are still weaving together platform architectures and applications to move the business forward.
“For true midmarket companies like ours, it’s still our CIO calling the shots. Our CIO is more involved now at so many levels because IT has become so strategic now—especially as IT as a service emerges. If it’s an application discussion of course you’ll have business unit leaders involved. But what our CIO is really creating is a shared services infrastructure—for our employees and customers to consume. At the end of the day, only he can really define what that infrastructure layer and application layer will need.” CEO, Technology Company (Platform Provider).
“Our CIO has a good seat at the executive table, and we’re finally looked as partners with the business to enable our future. Much of that is the result of a journey we are on. We’ve consolidated our data centers and virtualized everything. Over the next few years, we’ll be rolling out automation and self-service capabilities to our users.” VP of Operations, Power Utility (Electric).
“On the one hand, we’re an IT department within local government. But on the other, you can think of us as an IT service provider to our ‘customers’–the school system, the community college, the library system. And all those ‘customers’ have a strong say in the applications we choose and manage for them.” CTO, County Government.
1b: Business leaders have growing influence over IT’s direction—without necessarily dictating the overall IT strategy.
Cloud, mobile and social platforms have empowered business leaders—and inspired them to bring new ideas to their CIOs, without necessarily dictating if or how the new concepts should be implemented.
“We still have a centralized IT budget. Every piece of IT is in it—all the pieces are there. But we break it out by line item for the businesses. Some of the solutions--like infrastructure—clearly touch every user. But others, like customer-facing applications are budgeted more for the sales and marketing departments.” CEO, Power Utility (Gas).
“In some companies, I hear about the marketing or sales department going off and doing a lot [of IT] on their own. With cloud services they can just go off and sign up with a credit card. But then the CIO has to come along and clean up the mess—after the fact. That’s not our approach. We’re lucky to be a trusted advisor to all the departments.” CIO, Manufacturing.
“Depending on the project need, we’ll see money allocated either to centralized IT or to a specific department—like if the HR department needs a new talent management application. In that case the money is allocated for HR—but only IT can spend it for them. We’re still involved in every IT decision—the selection of applications and so on, and then how the money actually gets spent.” CIO, City Government.
1c: In some organizations, corporate IT decisions are increasingly made via ad-hoc committees involving multiple business units.
While CIOs typically make the final call, peer CXOs and business unit leaders have a strong say in how IT systems are aligned to meet corporate goals. Those CXO and business unit voices have even more say if an IT project involves applications (rather than underlying infrastructure).
“Each time we embark on a new IT project we form a committee with key stakeholders. Our director of IT—essentially our CIO—is on every committee because IT is now strategic to every part of our company. And you’ll find our CFO on every IT committee because of the dollars and cents involved. But once we get to the application level, that’s where you begin to see specific business leaders on a committee. We had a committee for our cloud strategy that pulled in our VP of Mass Markets because the applications were customer-facing.” CEO, Power Utility (Gas).
“Our innovation effort includes three teams of business and IT leaders: (1) one to generate ideas; (2) folks who are tasked with finding the right resources internally to address the ideas and opportunities; and (3) a so-called innovation garage to build the prototype solutions. Five people from IT work in the innovation garage. They rotate in and out on 12- to 18-month schedules. When they rotate back into their specific departments, they have greater skills focused on innovation rather than maintenance.” CIO, Insurance Company.
“We have a Strategic IT Workplan that looks out over a seven-year horizon. The real point behind a plan is to get work done. Every year, we adjust IT’s priorities for the next 18 to 24 months. It’s basically a list of all the things each department director—in the business world, that would be each business leader—wants to do. Then we create the plan with the directors and the queue of work. Directors get to make the final call on which IT needs are at the top of their specific priority lists. We do ‘course corrections’ every two weeks. It’s like applying the agile software development approach to your overall IT plan.” CIO, City Government.
1d: Chief marketing officers have an incredibly strong say in customer-facing application selection, but it’s not always the final say in application choices.
As all businesses increasingly shift to digital models, chief marketing officers are striving to find, engage, delight and monetize customers. That process requires new data management tools and customer-facing applications. In some rare cases, CMOs now control their own IT budgets with complete autonomy. But for the most part, a CMO’s digital decisions require continued collaboration with central IT—as well as final sign-off from a CIO.
“IT still holds and manages the technology budget here. And I think that’s the approach in the majority of midmarket shops. Shadow IT [the rise of cloud applications that were not approved by central IT] taught midmarket companies some important lessons about security, privacy and runaway costs. I do hear about marketing leaders or sales leaders holding some IT budget in some companies but we haven’t gone that route. I suspect maybe 10 percent to maybe 20 percent of midmarket companies have shifted their IT budgets outside of the IT department. But it’s early in that trend. ” CIO, Manufacturing.
Within our own company and across the midmarket, I’ve never been in a meeting where a Chief Marketing Officer was making all of the decisions on IT—not even if it involves a specific application for marketing. Yes, the CMO has growing say in customer-facing applications. And that makes sense in the digital age. But even there, you still have to really focus on security, access, privacy and compliance issues. To ignore your experts on those topics—your CIO, your CTO or our compliance officer—would be foolish.” CEO, Technology Company.
“The basic infrastructure responsibilities remain with our CIO reporting into our CFO. But I see a pretty dramatic shift where the CMO is accountable for customer-facing experiences. I have my own six-person team focused on this—a visual designer, two front-end developers, two back-end developers and me. I can’t take a number and wait in line for project engineering or IT to get back to me. I needed autonomy when it comes to my own IT budget and my application development decisions. And I have that autonomy. My IT budget is a line item in my overall marketing budget—and I control it.” Chief Marketing Officer, Technology Company.
Finding 2: The transformation of IT into an internal service provider is in its infancy and will require several more years to complete.
Midmarket CIOs are increasingly committed to deploying self-service systems for their employees and customers.
2a: The first step to self-service typically includes converged data centers that are virtualized.
Next, CIOs are seeking to roll out automation and self-service tools that allow employees to select and activate applications on-demand.
“In some ways this is all about the hybrid cloud trend. It’s not only about using some public cloud resources while virtualizing your own data centers. On-premises, you also need dynamic provisioning of servers and applications. We’ll do that this year for our developers and longer-term we’ll offer application-level dynamic provisioning to our employees.” VP of Operations, Power Utility (Electric).
“Our big focus the past few years was completing a $100 million federally backed fiber network. Now that we have that infrastructure in place, we can really focus on how we’ll deliver more self-service applications to our users and citizens.” CTO, County Government.
“The first step toward IT becoming a service provider involved converging the infrastructure—servers, storage and networking in one system that gets virtualized. Then, we focused on orchestration and automation—and providing a service catalog for employees to pick and choose the IT services they want to activate. The big challenge? Most midmarket companies don’t have the time to maintain their own service catalog.” CEO, Technology Company.
2b: Continual enhancements through business and IT alignment are taking hold, but it’s not quite a “DevOps” mindset just yet.
Constant communication between IT leaders and business leaders is starting to trigger faster decisions and more innovation. But true DevOps (formalized communications, collaboration and automation) for new software deployments hasn’t really taken hold yet in the midmarket.
“When it comes to innovation, some of the new approaches come from us in IT but some come from the business. A lot of it comes down to collaboration. A business unit may have a germ of an idea and then ask us what IT solutions will enable or enhance a concept.” CIO, Manufacturing.
“Take something like IT infrastructure and the innovations around that. Our sales folks want to make sure any new infrastructure has great support for remote access. Our supply chain and risk management people want to make sure that infrastructure is reliable and robust. They all have a voice in the process of shaping the infrastructure needs. But our director of IT—essentially our CIO—has to deliver on those specifications.” CEO, Power Utility (Gas).
Finding 3: The shift from CapEx to OpEx will gradually even out. (Translation: Technology and business leaders are discovering that cloud computing isn’t about cost savings.)
During the early days of cloud computing, some business and technology leaders expected to experience cost savings. The idea was to shift some IT budget from “expensive” CapEx (lump sum) hardware and software to “less expensive” OpEx (pay-over-time) cloud services. But midmarket businesses now say cloud computing is rarely about cost savings. Instead, it’s about flexibility and speed to market. Moreover, it’s about a hybrid world where on-premises workloads can be extended to the public cloud when it makes business and financial sense.
3a: When analyzing the cloud’s perceived value, the speed to market conversation must also include automated maintenance and management tools.
Customers know they can turn public cloud services on and off very rapidly. But they’re also starting to value the fact that cloud providers maintain specific pieces of the IT stack (IaaS, PaaS and/or SaaS).
“When we really price out cloud computing, we discovered it’s ultimately the same cost or more expensive than traditional IT purchases. But that doesn’t mean cloud computing is somehow bad. It’s really about shifting the responsibility of delivery and maintenance to the cloud provider. Those are high-value outcomes if your IT staff doesn’t have the time or expertise to focus on a specific application or service.” CIO, Manufacturing Company.
“After Hurricane Sandy hit us in New York, we really had to ask ourselves: How can users get to the data we’re restoring? Virtual desktop infrastructure tied to cloud computing became the solution. This was all about time-to-recovery: Getting everybody back online as quickly as possible even if local offices or towns were dark. If you could at least get a powered laptop to a WiFi connection, you could get to our cloud. We gained a lot of respect from our business leaders when we made that happen.” Director of Operations, Healthcare Provider.
3b: Hidden cloud costs remain a concern across business and IT.
Basic per-user or compute cloud costs are well understood. But midmarket companies are worried about hidden or overlooked costs tied to managing hybrid clouds or bursting heavy on-premises workloads out to the public cloud.
“The ‘debate’ about extending from on-premises to the cloud has largely gone away in our company. We see the value of the cloud. Now it’s all about finding the best value—the commodity hardware with the right software above that. For the most part we really like that OpEx model but we focus heavily on metering to really watch prices—especially when business units burst more cycles into the cloud. That can be a hidden gotcha.” Executive VP, Business Consulting (Supply Chain Mgmt.)
“Most of current IT infrastructure is on-premises and leased and the renewal is 2019—so we have a time-sensitive cloud mandate. CRM, HR and some other applications are out in the cloud for us and we’ll adopt even more—but mostly in a hybrid way. My big concern involves the cost of managing hybrid services. Plus, the tools for managing a hybrid environment are in their infancy. I worry about whether I’m making the move too early—but we have that lease renewal concern bearing down on us.” VP of Operations, Transportation.
Finding 4: The security conversation is extending from device protection to total data protection.
While overall device and infrastructure protection remains important, business and IT leaders are increasingly worried about data protection and privacy issues. Much of the concern stems from high-profile cyberattacks and data breaches across such verticals as retail, healthcare, and financial services.
4a. Business leaders want security and compliance status reports.
Even so, that doesn’t mean business leaders want to “own” the security conversation.
“Each IT project now involves a deep level of discovery around compliance, security, and privacy. Business leaders want a general overview on security but they generally don’t want all the deep details. So you come back to the business leaders with some broad strokes about the security of a particular platform or service. A multi-tenant, public cloud solution may look really tempting. But then our internal risk department may spot an area of concern or weakness, raise it with business leaders, and they’ll instead opt for a single tenant private cloud model.” Executive VP, Consulting Firm.
“Once you’ve stepped from a small business mindset into the midmarket, you’ve shifted your IT security stance into a far more comprehensive approach. The CFO or CEO has pointed to a specific individual or department and said: “You’re responsible for protecting our assets—our people, our customer data and our IT systems.” CEO, Technology Company.
4b. Security is becoming an industry-wide conversation without corporate borders.
Proper data protection now requires coordinated initiatives across multiple industries and government organizations.
“Cybersecurity is certainly front-of-mind. Even companies with nine-digit security budgets [i.e., $100 million or more] are getting breached. I see a market shift toward more automation—where some standardized tools at least block threats from the base level. Next, I expect to see far more cross-industry coordination between the FBI, the security industry, government agencies and vertical markets.” CIO, City Government.
Finding 5: Mobile conversations are extending to the Internet of Things.
The current mobile conversation—across business and IT—increasingly involves the Internet of Things (IoT). Specifically, business and IT leaders are exploring if or how new IP-connected devices can be monetized. That exploratory research also seeks to pinpoint hidden costs and management challenges.
5a: BYOD and Mobile Device Management (MDM) debates have largely subsided.
The older BYOD and mobile device management (MDM) conversations still occur. But those challenges are increasingly addressed by (1) formalized business policies/processes and (2) standardized MDM device management tools.
“MDM was a hot-button but it has moved beyond that with enterprise mobility management and overall app development. We’ll be taking a look at really well thought-out mobile apps that aren’t just scaled down desktop apps. The app development paradigm will likely need to change as the Internet of Things takes off. Instead of phones, tablets and notebooks, the conversation will shift to sensors and machine-to-machine computing.” CIO, Manufacturing.
5b: The Internet of Things offers immediate business opportunities.
While cloud and mobile (smartphone, tablet) computing took several years to emerge, the Internet of Things wave appears to be building even more quickly.
“Our IT team is already involved in a lot of connected vehicle projects for law enforcement and school district buses, so for us the Internet of Things is already real. For our business leaders, it opens up a whole new range of privacy, security, management and monetization questions and answers.” CEO, Technology Industry.
“The next step for IT, from my perspective, is when the Internet of Things takes off. By the way, the car is a ‘thing,’ and it's a pretty big and important ‘thing’ for us. Consumers of that data, whether they're insurance companies or others, are going to need some standards to emerge. We have no desire to only have insight into cars that happen to have the Apple operating system, or cars that run the Microsoft operating system. Instead, we want to insure everybody. So we're going to have to work through that.” CIO, Insurance Company.
Finding 6: Big Data is on the radar, but data-driven business decisions are limited by information silos and a flood of new data sources.
Midmarket companies are exploring predictive analytics to optimize current product offerings or to spot new market opportunities. Sales leaders and chief marketing officers (CMOs) are particularly attuned to big data—seeking new ways to monetize unstructured and structured information.
6a: IT and business leaders together must address new data silo concerns.
Data-driven decisions are difficult to make because so much information is scattered across relational databases, email, CRM systems, social media and more.
“Increasingly the big data conversation is shifting to information integration. How do I get all of our existing technology silos integrated? And how do new silos like social media factor into that effort? Things get even more complex when you consider how much new data is being created by mobile users. As a technology marketer, I need my CIO to solve the data silo problem.” VP of Marketing, Technology Company (Software).
“We’re now in a world where employees want to make real-time decisions based on real-time information. Some of that information is going to be structured data from something like a CRM system. But much of it also might be unstructured data or maybe even batched data out in Hadoop. Data scientists may want to analyze all that data right now. But only our CIO can ultimately link it all together—through the right infrastructure—to make that happen.” CEO, Technology Company (Storage).
“Our customer support is already data-driven in nature. Our call center technology leans heavily on our phone systems, reporting, and analytics. But we’re certainly trying to figure out how to work social media customer conversations into our support strategy and data strategy.” CEO, Power Utility (Gas).
6b: Despite potential hurdles, midmarket organizations are testing new approaches to data management and analysis.
Often, the moves involve business intelligence and analytics software.
“We felt it was important to get to the game early by creating teams of high-end analytics on the business side and some of our better data architects and data people on the IT side—even before the tool sets were all there. It didn't matter because we had coders and analysts and the raw technology, and we could start to understand some of the promise of that technology so we wouldn't be caught behind.” CIO, Insurance Company.
“We are deploying business intelligence as the first part of our journey toward analytics and then predictive analytics and big data. We’re starting that journey. We picked the tool, and I needed a lot of people at that table to do that. The business folks gave us the problem they were trying to solve. Then IT does the visioning—the scoping of the solution, whether it’s in-house or found out in the market. The longer-term journey is toward big data and social management—bringing a Facebook-like mentality into our company. And that’s driven by a marketing-led culture.” VP of Operations, Transportation.
6c: Some organizations are thinking about big data without necessarily understanding the overall business opportunity.
“There’s lot of opportunity for big data in government. Richer data sets and data sources will drive more use cases. But when we talk to departments, there’s not much interest so far because they don’t quite understand the opportunities yet.” CIO, City Government.
Finding 7: As innovation cycles get shorter and shorter, IT and business must become more and more closely aligned.
Somewhat similar to public cloud service providers, midmarket businesses are building private clouds that deliver infrastructure and applications on-demand to employees and customers. The resulting hybrid cloud world will further accelerate innovation cycles—allowing businesses to enter new markets more rapidly.
Finding 7a: The lines between business and IT management will further blur.
To properly manage innovation cycles and corporate pivots, the line between business operations and IT must further blur—and may even disappear in some cases.
“The alignment of business and IT is all about striking the right balance. I think it’s a good balance in our company. It has evolved over time because both sides have gotten wiser. The business has an appreciation for what we’re doing, and we have an appreciation for their needs. In a lot of companies, it’s difficult for CIOs to show the value of IT. They are so focused on keeping the lights on, which means IT is a cost-reduction story rather than an innovation story. Once you commit to innovation cycles between business and IT, the innovation can happen even faster.” CIO, Manufacturing Company.
“Today’s midsize organization needs a CIO who can hit the brakes on certain items AND be the enabler on others. The big IT push will increasingly involve all employees in all departments to grow, and linking the larger vision of an organization back to IT. When you’re growing as a person you’re more inclined to think like an innovator. IT has to help spark that.” CIO, City Government.
7b: Improved communications between IT and business leaders have allowed the IT team to more easily demonstrate its value.
In some cases, business and IT leaders work together to address immediate business threats. In other times, the cooperation involves proactive innovation. Either way, the interaction creates stronger bonds between IT and business leadership.
“Hurricane Sandy taught us to ask this question: What is the business impact if IT fails? Based on that question and Hurricane Sandy itself, our business leaders realized they needed to be far more involved in IT strategy—because the business leaders were on the hook if the business went dark. But IT constantly pulled through and we never went dark. That success has caused more and more interaction between our IT functions and business organization leaders.” Director of Operations, Healthcare Provider.
“A few years ago, our business leaders looked at IT as a red-tape department that had a lot of processes that meant we weren’t dynamic and agile. By 2014 our IT team really began to pivot for the digital age and the cloud age. They’re increasingly brokers of services rather than IT support." VP of Operations, Power Utility (Electricity).
“The IT strategy is really indistinguishable—at about 90 percent—from the business strategy. My entire time that I've been here, we've focused on the fact that we have a product that is technology-enabled. Sometimes folks say, "We're really a technology company that sells insurance." I think that kind of gets it backwards. The truth is we can't sell our service without technology.” CIO, Insurance Company.
Conclusions and Trends
Midmarket CIOs and their business-centric counterparts are building closer and closer working relationships. Their mutual goal: To transform corporate IT into a technology services broker (i.e., service provider) for all business users and customers. The idea is to allow users and customers to procure and activate a range of applications from a well-defined service catalog. Still, the journey to self-service applications across hybrid clouds will take many years to complete.
In some cases, specific business leaders—particularly Chief Marketing Officers and Chief Revenue Officers—have growing influence over public- or customer-facing application choices. Moreover, some IT budgets are now distributed across specific departments—particularly sales and marketing. But business executives typically don’t want the security, privacy, and compliance headaches that CIOs must address on a daily basis. For those reasons and others, CIOs often have final veto power over specific IT spending decisions.
While business executives aren’t all that concerned about infrastructure decisions, they do want a growing say in application and data decisions. For the most part, CIOs still oversee how data is managed and protected. But business executives are influencing how data is gathered, analyzed, and monetized. Together, CIOs and business leaders must therefore focus on overall big data strategies.
Many of those big data strategies involve gradual steps forward. For instance, business executives may increasingly leverage analytics or business intelligence to spot data trends that previously went unnoticed. At the same time, business and technology leaders are already discussing how big data and the Internet of Things (IoT) can potentially combine to unlock new business opportunities.
Longer term, CIOs and business leaders will carefully coordinate how data is integrated and normalized across applications—CRM, ERP, finance, email, social media, IoT sensor networks, and more.
While technology and business leaders rarely used the term DevOps during our interviews, it’s clear that midmarket companies are on a journey toward DevOps without necessarily realizing it. Indeed, DevOps stresses communication, collaboration, integration and automation between developers, IT operations and business leaders. That DevOps mindset must take hold in order for midmarket companies to deliver continuous innovation more and more rapidly.
Guidance for IT and Business Leaders
The journey that transforms corporate IT into a true service provider for all business units and customers will be a lengthy one. It started with data center consolidation and virtualization across servers, storage, and networking. It will continue with automation and self-service software.
Over time, hybrid cloud users and will be able to select the applications they want—when they want them—from a corporate service catalog, much in the way that public clouds work today.
CIOs and IT leaders must increasingly accept the fact that business leaders want just-in-time application delivery that drives new revenue and customer opportunities. On the flip side, business leaders must accept the reality that the corporate IT department must fully vet new applications for security, compliance, privacy, scalability, and cost issues.
Moreover, corporate IT and business leaders must partner on an overall information management strategy—outlining how big data information is:
Gathered
Managed
Secured
Analyzed
Monetized
As part of that information strategy, business and IT leaders must knock down corporate silos (CRM, email, ERP, social media, etc.) to gain a complete, accurate view of customers and partners. The information management strategy must be extensible to address the next waves of IT—including sensor networks, the Internet of Things, and the gathering of data from a new generation of devices.
The bottom line: Although business leaders increasingly weigh in on IT’s direction, CIOs maintain a strategic seat at the executive table—acting as the voice of reason who must carefully balance IT innovation vs. corporate risk.
Appendix: Characteristics of Study Participants
The participants chosen for this study worked in midmarket organizations (defined as having approximately 100 to 500 employees). Interviewees represent a variety of vertical markets. All participants are executive-level decision makers across the C-suite, or VPs who have C-level responsibilities.
About this Research
CompTIA’s Building Digital Organizations study provides insights into the changing business dynamics and role of IT as cloud and mobility drive new technology solutions. The study consists of five sections, which can be viewed independently or together as chapters of a comprehensive report.
Section 1: Market Overview
Section 2: Business Model Analysis
Section 3: Challenges
Section 4: Opportunities
Section 5: Qualitative Interviews
This study was conducted in three parts:
Part 1: Online survey fielded to technology professionals during April/May 2015. A total of 375 companies based in the United States participated in the survey, yielding an overall margin of sampling error at 95% confidence of +/- 5.2 percentage points. Sampling error is larger for subgroups of the data.
Part 2: Online survey fielded to business professionals during May 2015. A total of 275 companies based in the United States participated in the survey, yielding an overall margin of sampling error at 95% confidence of +/- 6.0 percentage points. Sampling error is larger for subgroups of the data.
Part 3: A series of in-depth interviews with 14 technology and business professionals, conducted by technology consultancy AfterNines. Interviewees were selected to represent a range of organizational responsibility. Interviews were conducted on a one-on-one basis over approximately a four-week period in April and May, 2015, with an average length of approximately 30 minutes.
As with any survey, sampling error is only one source of possible error. While non-sampling error cannot be accurately calculated, precautionary steps were taken in all phases of the survey design, collection and processing of the data to minimize its influence.
CompTIA is responsible for all content and analysis. Any questions regarding the study should be directed to CompTIA Research and Market Intelligence staff at [email protected].
CompTIA is a member of the Marketing Research Association (MRA) and adheres to the MRA’s Code of Market Research Ethics and Standards. |
I am seeking a position on the CCWFC board because I believe the Co-op is at an especially exciting time in its life cycle. The co-op is amazingly successful, especially given the size of the store and the size of our community. It is time for the board to re-engage with owners as we hire a new general manager and build on our past successes. I believe the most important role of a board member is ensure the co-op’s continued growth and success and to ensure that we continue to move toward meeting the values and expectations of the owners we represent. These values and expectations are spelled out in our Ends Statements. Chief among these is the continued financial success of our cooperative grocery, but the co-op is now so successful that we are in an enviable position to make significant growth in meeting our other Ends. I envision a time of exciting opportunities for furthering the values of our owners while maintaining and improving upon the financial successes of recent years. We have never been at a better time to improve the quality of life for our staff, owners, and community while staying true to our core of healthy, organic, food produced as locally as possible. We can now afford to be the best environmental stewards we can be. We can find ways to bring these products and services to underserved members of our community and to be a safe and welcoming space for all.
I believe my past years of experience on the board at CCWFC and at Whole Foods Coop in Duluth make me an ideal candidate. I believe my work as a teacher and professional writer have given me the skills to effectively communicate with and listen to owners, fellow board members, and general manager.
Alyssa Hedstrom —
I would like to continue serving on the board to support the hiring process of the general manager, and the continued evolution of the Co-op in our community.
I will continue to attend board meetings and serve on sub-committees as needed, while being a listening ear for the community.
The most important role currently is to hire a new general manager and then support and follow through with that hire to see that the Co-op continues to thrive. The board holds both a supportive role and a quality assurance role, ensuring the Co-op continues to operate at its high standards and reaches its Ends.
My vision is to support the process of hiring a new general manager and then support the transition from current GM to new GM. I am committed to the overall wellbeing of the Co-op; I want our Co-op to continue to support our community along with continuing to grow into its place as a leader in the community.
I am a business owner and longtime community member; I have served on the board in the past and understand policy governance. I have a long-term understanding of the Co-op and its role in our community, along with how it can evolve to meet the needs of our community in the future.
Jaye White —
My name is Jaye White and I would like to serve on the Cook County Whole Foods Co-op Board of Directors because I love the Co-op and the community surrounding it, and want to become a more active and engaged member. I have been a member of the Co-op since moving back to the area in 2014. I am someone who likes to eat healthy and practice alternative wellness so the Co-op has been a valuable asset for me and my family, and I hope to help it move into the future and continue to be the valuable community asset it has become.
I will likely be able to commit at least 10-15 hours per month to BOD activities. My schedule is busy but very flexible and I have a supportive employer who understands and encourages community engagement so I am happy to dedicate the time needed to be an active member of the BOD.
I feel the most important role of the BOD is to ensure the direction the Cook County Whole Foods Co-op goes in will benefit the members and community the most. Ensuring that the Co-op stays true to its purpose and goals in order to benefit members, employees, and the community. In other boards I serve on I especially love the process of visualizing the future of the organization and found this process to be very important. Creative visualization and implementation is a strength of mine and I always aim to bring that with me to any board I sit on.
Visualizing the future is challenging these days. It’s still unknown how much longer we will be in “pandemic mode” and what the long term results will be from the pandemic in regards to how community spaces and organizations function. However, I feel the pandemic has also opened up opportunities to reach people in new and innovative ways. Expanding social media reach, online ordering, and utilizing technology to make interactions easier and more efficient regardless of where you are in this world. Technology has opened up more of the world to many who had to learn to interact and communicate in a socially distant world. I do see this continuing beyond 2021 and becoming an important element in society going forward. I visualize how the Cook County Whole Foods Co-op can harness these opportunities and grow the organizational reach, hopefully reaching new potential members in areas of the county like the Gunflint Trail, Arrowhead Trail, Grand Portage, and even Lake County.
I feel I can best support the Cook County Whole Foods Co-op Board of Directors through my knowledge and experience with digital technology and social media. I have the ability to assist with technology-related projects like photos, videos, website development, SEO, and other innovations. With social media I would love to assist the Co-op in reaching a wide variety of owners and potential members through multiple social media platforms. |
Celebrating 50 years of coeducation at Holy Cross gives us a wonderful opportunity to pause and consider the amazing contributions that have been made by the women in our community – both here at the College and in the wider world. It also offers us a chance to reflect on the struggles faced by those women, and on ways in which we can and should do better. The fascinating conversation we heard during our Faculty Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of Coeducation highlighted historical experiences and current challenges. I have been asked to add my voice, as the longest-serving female member of the Department of Economics and Accounting, to this narrative. I hope you will be able to appreciate how much has changed in all this time.
When I arrived in fall 1989, I was the only woman in the department, with the exception of a one-semester overlap with a female colleague who then left the College. It was a pretty lonely place for me in a lot of ways! Many of my classes had no female students, or at most one or two. I suspect it was pretty lonely for those women as well. In the early years, some male students publicly (in class) and aggressively challenged my qualifications to be a member of the faculty. On the advice of a colleague, I changed “Prof. Rask” to “Dr. Rask” on my handouts, which elicited an immediate response.
Other students openly raised concerns during class discussions about my decision to work at all. They maintained that my place was to be home with my husband, and later with my children, thereby opening up more job opportunities for men. I heard the same sentiments from some colleagues at the College. In fact, one colleague explained to me in detail how scientific evidence proves that women and people of color have lower intelligence, despite the existence of a few outliers.
When I got up the nerve to tell someone higher up the food chain that I was being stalked and harassed by a member of the College community, I was told that I should change my wardrobe or consider finding different routes between my office and classroom. I was also told that “that’s just the way guys are”. Can you imagine having these conversations today?
On several occasions I seriously considered leaving the College. But I love to teach, and Holy Cross is committed to teaching as its central mission. I benefited from several tremendously supportive male colleagues and mentors who helped balance the pain of the more difficult times, and women from other departments generously reached out to me with empathy and advice. Most compelling, it was clear to me early on that my presence on the faculty was important to the few female economics majors. In fact, female students sought me out for advice and mentoring even if they had not taken a class with me, and soon students of color did as well. Just BEING a woman in the department opened a channel for students to ask questions about a wide range of life experiences, a channel of which they took advantage immediately: what does it feel like to be pregnant and working; how do I balance the demands of a career with raising young children; and what is it like to be so outnumbered in my workplace? I have been very open with my students over the years, finding that these stories resonate with them and help personalize and contextualize the concepts we are learning in class. What is economics if not the study of the choices we all make? On a few occasions, I brought my young daughters to work, placing pop-up tents in the front of the class so I could keep track of them while teaching. We had some hilarious moments, which the students remembered and appreciated for a long time. Teaching opportunities come in many guises.
The College and the department have made great strides since the early days. We soon hired Prof. Baldiga on the accounting side, and the two of us worked hard to establish a safe and supportive space for other women to succeed in our department. It is astonishing to realize that no woman was granted tenure in our department until 1996 (think about that for a moment – 24 years after coeducation began, and almost into the 21st century), but I am both proud and humbled to have finally broken that barrier. We all have worked tirelessly over the years to hire a truly gifted group of women and men, and they have transformed and uplifted the atmosphere in Stein, benefitting all our students tremendously.
Given my own personal experiences in graduate school and then as a new professor at Holy Cross, I know how important it is to have representation, and I feel good about the women and men that make up our department now. The Symposium participants stressed that other forms of diversity – racial, religious, sexual orientation, socio-economic background, to name a few – are also important components of a truly representative community, so our work is far from complete.
Throughout my 30+ years of teaching economics, I have been privileged to work with many amazing students, including some very impressive women. I continue to be a bit puzzled that our percentage of women students in the economics major remains consistently low, reflecting nationwide trends. European numbers are a bit higher, and I’d like to consider why that might be. This anniversary year offers the perfect moment for us to reflect on whether we are doing what we can and should be doing to make sure all students, including women and people of color, feel welcome and valued here.
Looking back at over 30 of the 50 years of coeducation, I am heartened by the steps the College is now taking to reckon with its past, and I’m proud of the great strides the department has made in shaping its future. The women and men who comprise the economics and accounting majors and department faculty are well positioned to continue this trajectory. I look forward to celebrating our future accomplishments. |
Brian Jeffrey Krause is an American actor. Born in California, he got nationwide recognition with his role on the television series, Charmed. Following the end of Charmed, Brian nearly disappeared from the scene. So, how much is Brian Krause’s cash flow?
We take a look at the career path and journey of the American actor. Most fans recognize him as Leo Wyatt on Charmed, and Charles Brady in the 1992 movie Sleepwalkers.
Quick Bio
Born in 1969, in El Toro, California, he has an elder brother. His parents, Alice and Jeff Krause adopted him. Brian and his elder brother grew up in Southern California. He had his first acting class at The Actors Workshop during junior high.
During his teenage years, he studied karate. He also attended El Toro High School. There, he got his graduate degree in 1987 and then continued his education at Orange Cost College.
Two years after his graduate degree, Krause got his first role as a student. He appeared in the TV series TV 101. After that, he starred in the made-for-TV movie Match Point. He also appeared in An American Summer. Brian landed his first major role in the movie Return to the Blue Lagoon.
Before landing his role on Charmed, Brian appeared in another iconic television series. He was a co-star in the Bandit series. Fun fact: Brian auditioned for the role of Andy Trudeau. Yet, he got cast as Piper’s handyman and love interest.
Brian appeared in the first seven seasons of the show. Due to budget restrictions in the eighth and final season, he appeared in just the first 10 episodes and the last two episodes.
Following the end of Charmed, he appeared in a couple of TV shows and made-for-TV movies. Brian had a guest-appearing role in Madmen, Closer, Castle, and a few other shows.
Krause also lent his voice and image for a minor character in the video game L.A. Noire. He also appeared in the YouTube video series Chad Vader.
And then he mostly disappeared from the public’s eye. Nowadays, Brian is a semi-retired actor. He works mostly as a producer.
As for his private life, he got married to Beth Bruce in 1996. They have one child together, but they got a divorce in 2000.
Net worth
Brian manages to earn a decent income throughout his career. As of November 2020, Brian Krause’s fortune is more than $500,000. He is an American actor, screenwriter, and producer.
He earned most of his fortune during his time on Charmed. There is no official source regarding his salary on the show. Most of the main cast members earned up to $60,000 per episode. But we can assume Brian didn’t earn that much.
As of November 2020, Brian has more than 110 credits as an actor. And he has 5 producer credits, including Ribbons, Be Afraid, The Christmas Switch, The Mission, and Abeo Pharisee. |
The inside of the human body, and all its organs, cells and molecules can be tricky to visualise, and that makes it difficult to understand how conditions like diabetes work. We can use things like models to help us see all these different features, and work out how they link together to do different things.
But models can take up a lot of space, and most of us don’t have anatomically accurate physical representations of the internal workings of the human body conveniently accessible at home, or even in many schools. Diagrams are an alternative, but they’re generally not very interactive.
The virtual construction game Minecraft, on the other hand, is great for exploring scientific concepts because it has many features and processes that relate to the real world, and can be used to visualise things that we can’t usually see – such as cells in the human body. Children and young people are often familiar with the game as it’s hugely popular, and this can give them a sense of expertise and ownership.
Minecraft – Inside the cell
The recent ‘Building our Understanding of Diabetes with Minecraft’ (BUD-M) project, developed by Science Hunters and led by UWE Bristol in collaboration with the Universities of Lancaster, Aberdeen and Hull, uses Minecraft to help children understand the molecular basis of diabetes.
We know Minecraft can act as a hook for children to engage with science topics, and that students who participated in the BUD-M project increased their subject knowledge and understanding, making it an effective tool for both catching children’s interest, and supporting their learning.
The team developed a school session that introduced diabetes and how it works within the human body, followed by exploration of a specially built human body in Minecraft. Once school visits were curtailed by COVID-19 restrictions, two videos were produced for use in schools and at home – introducing diabetes and taking children through the Minecraft human body. These videos are freely available for schools to use, and giving some very short feedback would be very useful to the project.
Minecraft – Inside a blood vessel
The videos take you on a virtual tour through the human body, exploring the relevant parts and processes involved in diabetes. They talk about what it’s like to have diabetes, and how it’s treated, and explore the pancreas, blood vessels, and cells and molecules to learn about their roles in diabetes. If you would like a creative challenge, the introducing diabetes video gives some ideas for activities, including building with Minecraft and Lego.
The human body world was constructed by Jonathan Kim, who has produced three videos to complement those used to deliver the session. These cover design and planning of the world, construction of the human body in Minecraft, and the techniques used in the technical creation of the world. They can be viewed on the BUD-M playlist on YouTube.
Exploring the molecular basis of diabetes with Minecraft is a Science Hunters project based at UWE Bristol, in collaboration with the University of Aberdeen, the University of Hull and Lancaster University and funded by a Royal Society of Chemistry Outreach Fund grant. The project was devised by Dr Laura Hobbs (UWE Bristol and Lancaster), Dr John Barrow (Aberdeen) and Professor Mark Lorch (Hull), and developed and delivered by them along with Sophie Bentley (UWE Bristol and Lancaster), Dr Jackie Hartley (Lancaster), Naziya Lokat (Lancaster), Jonathan Kim (UWE Bristol and Lancaster), Rebecca Rose (Lancaster), Dr Carly Stevens (Lancaster) and Jordan Bibby (NHS Lanarkshire). Science Hunters projects takes a child-led, play-based approach to learning and engagement, and have an inclusive Widening Participation ethos. |
Mr. Dodge is a graduate of Franklin & Marshall College, earning his degree in 1977 with a double major in Economics and Government. He attended The Delaware Law School of Widener University, graduating in 1980. He sat for and passed the Delaware Bar Examination in 1980 and was admitted to practice in December of that year. He has practiced in the Dover, Delaware community since that time. He was admitted to practice before the United States District Court for the District of Delaware in 1981, and admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in 1986.
His areas of practice focus on residential and commercial real estate transactions and real estate related litigation, as well as general civil litigation including personal injury work, on several occasions having been sole or lead counsel in several of the largest jury awards in Kent County history.
Mr. Dodge has represented the Kent County Association of Realtors since 1988, and has served as a consultant for other Realtor boards on both the local and state levels. He has taught extensively in the field, having developed and/or taught continuing education courses as well as pre-licensing courses for both salespersons and brokers. He served a four year term as a member of the Education Committee of the Delaware Real Estate Commission, completing that term in March, 2002.
He presently serves on the Civil Advisory Committee for the judges of the Superior Court of the State of Delaware in and for Kent County, and has served on the Professional Guidance Committee of the Delaware Bar Association since its inception in the mid-1980’s. He is a member of the Kent County Bar Association, the Delaware Bar Association, and the Delaware Bar’s Real and Personal Property Section. In that capacity, and as a community representative, he has served on task forces for the Delaware Department of Transportation, and the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.
In 2003, he helped form, and led, a grass roots community group in a successful effort to preserve a valued community asset, the Garrisons Lake Golf Course, from residential development.
He, his wife, JoVonna, and their family have lived in the Garrisons Lake area of Kent County since 1993, where they have been active in the community, and in particular, their children’s educational activities as they progressed through the Smyrna public schools.
In 2006, Mr. Dodge was recognized by the Delaware Supreme Court for exemplary pro bono public service. |
For over a decade, Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty have been working collaboratively, seeking evocative and poetic combinations of video, film, audio, sculptural objects, and performance. Shaun and Lauren are Brooklyn based media artists who make multi-disciplinary performances, multiple-screen media installations, single-channel works, documentaries and interactive video scores for live performance.
Their provocative, hybrid work has been exhibited in diverse locations in New York and internationally and was recently seen at BAM's Next Wave Festival (in collaboration with Phantom Limb Company), the Abrons Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory, Governors Island Arts Fair, and Anthology Film Archives in NYC, and the Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM. Recently, they created a new dance and multi-media installation called Keep Your Electric Eye One Me, which was commissioned by HERE through their Artist Residency Program (HARP). In addition, they are also developing an impressionistic, backstage documentary portrait of ERS's acclaimed 8-hour theatrical event Gatz as well as a self-generating, video/sound installation called Atmospheres & Accidental Ghosts.
Shaun and Lauren have received numerous awards in support of their work including two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, multiple grants from the NEA, New York State Council on the Arts, Jerome Foundation, Greenwall Foundation, Experimental Television Center, and the Asian Cultural Council, and residencies from MacDowell, Yaddo, Harvestworks, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Bogliasco Foundation and the Tokyo Wonder Site. Their video design work has been seen at venues such as St. Ann's Warehouse, The Public Theater, The Kitchen, HERE, PS 122, EMPAC, American Dance Institute, the Pompidou Center, Holland Dance Festival, The Noorderzon Festival, the Venice Biennale, and The Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Shaun was a longtime associate of famed New York Theater company The Wooster Group and has performed with them at the Performing Garage, on Broadway, and on many international tours. Shaun is also an Instructor at the International Center of Photography where he teaches classes in video and moving image production and is a visiting artist at The Kitchen, where he creates videos and performances with New York City high school students.
Lauren received her MA in Media Art and Performance from New York University. She is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at the New School, teaches Projection Design in the Theater Department at Sarah Lawrence College and is a Part-Time Instructor at ICP and Pratt Institute. She has been a guest lecturer at Bard College and is a visiting teaching artist at The Kitchen. |
The clock is ticking and Peter Sagan’s time with the Tinkoff-Saxo team is officially moving into a new phase. The Slovakian rider transferred to the team from previous squad Cannondale over the winter and, after training hard and getting to know his new team-mates, will finally affix a race number and make his competitive debut on Sunday.
“I raced in Qatar four years ago and that was the start of a great season,” said the three-time Tour de France green jersey winner, who hopes to make a Classics breakthrough this season. “I think it’s the right race for my official start in the Tinkoff-Saxo jersey. I look forward to start racing there.”
Sagan’s class has long been apparent but he has come up with several near misses in the top one day races. Those include runner-up slots in Milan-Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders and Strade Bianche, third in the Amstel Gold Race and sixth in Paris-Roubaix.
He has topped the podium in races such as Gent-Wevelgem, Brabantse Pijl, the GP Cycliste de Montréal and E3 Harelbeke, but a Monument win is still missing.
Sagan is now 25 years of age and thus reaching an age where he should have the strength and experience to step things up. He needs to; his move to Tinkoff-Saxo has led to an increased salary and greater expectations from others, not least the ambitions team owner Oleg Tinkoff.
In short, he’s being paid to win, and Tinkoff expects him to do so.
Qatar is the first chance of him to show off his new team strip and to try to open his account, but will also serve as a building block towards those one day races.
Directeur sportif Tristan Hoffman makes clear that he will get the full support he needs to show himself in the race.
“Peter Sagan is our team leader and we’ll support him 100 percent,” he said. “The Tour of Qatar is a special race for him and the team as it marks his debut for Tinkoff-Saxo. We have a very strong team, also taking into account the seriousness with which the guys have prepared.
“No doubt that Peter has a good chance in the fight for stage wins and the ten kilometre time trial also makes the GC quite interesting for us.”
The Slovakian will be backed up by Maciej Bodnar, Matti Breschel, Michael Mørkøv, Pavel Brutt, Christopher Juul-Jensen, Ivan Rovny and Nikolay Trusov.
They too may have the form to do something, but the main goal is to bolster Sagan’s prospects.
“Looking at our squad, I think we have a strong lead-out if a stage turns into a classic sprinter’s duel,” he said, noting that there will be five stages for the gallopers.
“All the guys are capable of setting a very high pace – and in especially Michael Mørkøv and Matti Breschel, who finished second overall in 2005, we have two really fast riders to do the lead-out for Peter.”
He realises that things won’t be as straightforward as waiting for the sprinters, however.
“There’s a high risk that the crosswinds will split up the peloton as Qatar is generally a quite windy race with long open stretches,” he said. “We have to ride the race from the front and act in the wind instead of reacting”.
The overall classification will depend on good performances on the flat stages, but also in the 10.9 kilometre time trial on stage three.
Providing the bunch stays together on the other stages, the final general classification will likely go to a rider who places well in the sprints and also fares well against the clock.
Hoffman notes that Sagan can do a very strong time trial, but chooses not to bank absolutely everything on hims.
“We need to keep our opportunities open. Maciej Bodnar is a three-time national TT champion and really strong against the clock. We’ll keep Breschel and Bodnar in a protective role for the first stages and see how everything plays out at the time trial.”
The race starts on Sunday with a 136 kilometre stage from Durkhan to Sealine Beach. It’ll be Sagan’s first day of competition in 2015 but, if the legs are good and the opportunity arises, he’ll seize the opportunity to show he means business. |
I did great this summer with my blog in terms of topics. I had tons of ideas. But now it’s fall, and I’ve got nothing. I’m not panicked, though, because a topic always appears.
As a former newspaper reporter, I had to turn in a story every day. That meant having a few evergreen stories in reserve for the days when there was no breaking news. As a reporter, I always became adept at finding the unique hook or angle to a subject and turning it into a story.
When I’m really stumped for blog fodder, here’s what I do:
Review posts from prior years. Anniversaries, events and other activities have dates associated with them. Often I’ll write a post on an annual event, but from a different perspective.
Surf the web, read a magazine. I find ideas from stories I am reading on the web or in magazines. Sometimes, one sentence can trigger an entire blog post.
Talk to people. I sometimes ask my colleagues for ideas.
Peruse my idea folder. I frequently tear out articles that could be an idea and put them in an old-fashioned file folder. Sometimes, I put a sticky note with a random idea. When I’m stuck, I open the folder and am frequently surprised at the fodder within.
Attend a meeting or lecture. Most newspapers publish a list of business events. Sometimes I’ll see one that interests me, and I’ll attend. I particularly like breakfast meetings because I can go before heading to the office. Invariably, I end up with a blog post.
Examine my content calendar. I keep a calendar with all the days I’m going to post for the year along with ideas. Sometimes I have written posts in anticipation of traveling. However, if I’m really stuck for an idea, I’ll publish the blog sooner and hope that inspiration strikes again. |
I love to shop for toddler high heel sandals. I have to admit shoes have been a weakness of mine since I got young. We used to spend all of my allowance on or even. aktivo of my money began shoes. I to have every color you can imagine, and still not to mention LOTS of parents. Shoes can do or die an outfit in my estimation. Yes this even applies to toddlers. Their outfit looks so cute with those perfect boots or shoes. I am so picky when it comes down to my son’s clothes and shoes. So you can understand why I feel the same for his boots and shoes.
There are actually thousands of sellers for your internet screaming about their collection of replica handbags. ‘EBay’ has become another place where sellers hope to pass replica bags off as the genuine article. Despite every one of these sites advertising replica handbags, no situations give a definitive opinion on which sites carry greatest replica handbag.
Baby bags differ from diaper bags in virtually all of the ways, but primarily, they differ in functionality. Baby bags are designed to hold all your valuable essential baby gear as well as all within the gear you’ve to as a mom on a day-to-day basis. Baby bags are the ultimate, utilitarian bag for parents of infants on a busy schedule.
This type of buckskin is one pure moist cloth. It’s very soft and smooth household leather. It is also one quite expensive types of buckskin. It’s very used your making of luxury shoes for consumers.
Buckles will often deter a thief whenever they know they take longer to undo and steal the issues. If the saddle Bags do have quick release buckles, they need to be hidden from sight or they become pointless. Leather saddle bags look great when first bought, but do need maintenance to ensure that they’re in top condition. The weather and riding conditions can damage the leather easily, causing it to sag.
However young people need to be attentive when they’re buying replica for the product may look just same as the original but their quality differ. Most replicas will not have a very good quality and would possibly not last that long. There’s two types of people who buy these watches those that know it’s a fake and people who does not really.
Laceless shoes aren’t only good for most adults and they provide a lot of benefits to children too. Children walk, run and play without thinking about the perils of slipping and tripping. Important to your personal shoes have laces, they then become planning to injuries. Therefore, parents should make sure to buy shoes for a children who do not have inconvenient shoelaces. |
The days of summer are longer. The sun stays up a little longer and all of the sudden things that weren’t possible before become possible. Gardeners and farmers can grow veggies to their hearts content.
Children whose bedtimes are always dictated by the sun get to experience life after 8pm. And, business owners have extra hours to take their business to the next level.
I like to use the long days to refine my current offerings, brainstorm new ideas, work on a new launch or workshop or find ways of growing my business. Having so many sun-filled hours is just can be energizing and it’s like this small window of time where you can get… more time!
I encourage you to use these long summer days and get to work on something that will bear you lots of fruit come fall.
Make headway on that new goal or come up with a new product or service so you can take advantage of the hustle and bustle of winter.
Despite the longer daylight hours of summer, it will pass too quickly. Don’t waste a single ray of light. Get started on something that will pay off for you and your business.
Kick-Start Your Goal into a “Strategy in Action” will help keep you accountable to your summer plans. Together we can make this a summer to remember.
by Carla Kroger
Carla Kroger
Carla is the founder and secret weapon behind Daily Administration where she works with small businesses assisting them in establishing manageable marketing strategies that attracts, engages and enrolls clients. Along with the Daily Administration team, she works with her clients to establish processes for profit¬able and repeatable growth. |
Amandla Crichlow is the gorgeous girlfriend of British actor and writer, Daniel Kaluuya -who is set to produce live-action Barney the Dinosaur movie.
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Amandla’s boyfriend is an Oscar-nominated actor who began acting while in his teens in improvisational theatre. He gained major acclaim for his role of Chris Washington in the 2017 horror film Get Out -for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor.
Kaluuya was born to Ugandan parents on May 8, 1989 in London, England. He acted on British television in Skins (2007-2009), Psychoville (2009-2011), one episode of Black Mirror (2011). In movies, he appeared in Johnny English Reborn (2011), Kick *** 2 (2013) and had a supporting role in Denis Villeneuve’s film Sicario.
In 2018 he portrayed W’Kabi in Marvel’s Black Panther and appeared in Steve McQueen’s heist film Widows. Also in 2018, he won the BAFTA Rising Star Award. Most recently he played the role of Slim in the 2019 film, Queen & Slim -which is currently in pre-production and will premiere later this year.
Is not clear when he and stunning girlfriend, Amandla began dating. However, she isn’t just a pretty face, she is also an actress herslef.
Amandla Crichlow is the duaghter of late black activist, Frank Crichlow. Her father immigrating to the U.K. from Trinidad and opened celebrity hotspot restaurant, Mangrove. At the same time, his retaurant became a target of raids, result of racist policing. He was arrested in 1970 protesting against police harassment and later established the Mangrove Community Association.
Amandla has two sisters, Lenora and Francesca and one brother, Knowlton. Her sister, Lenora Crichlow is also an actress.
According to Amandla’s IMDb page, most of her work has been in television, as she played Gloria in Prime Suspect 7: The Final Act, the mini-series starring Helen Mirren, and also played Alisha Daniels in The Bill. Since then, she has acted in two short films, but hasn’t had any acting credits since the short Anonymous in 2012. |
The Graduate Students Association (GSA) is proposing an escort service for Middle Eastern and minority students who feel threatened by backlash from the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
On September 17, a Saudi Arabian Santa Barbara City College student was assaulted in what Sheriff’s Dept. Lt. Mike Burridge called a hate crime. At its October 9 meeting, the GSA suggested a service to counteract mental anguish and physical harm for students who feel threatened, Student Affairs Vice President Soomin Chun said. Chun plans to coordinate an open forum on the topic, but has not yet set a date.
“As an Asian-American student, it would be a horrible situation to be in fear of going out into public,” Chun said. “We as a community need to make sure that every person feels safe.”
The Community Service Organization (CSO) is helpful in increasing student safety, but that organization alone is not completely sufficient in all circumstances, Chun said. The new escort service would serve more to address the mental state of students who live in fear or feel their safety is threatened due to religion or ethnicity.
Through a combined effort of religious, ethnic and law enforcement organizations, the new volunteer-based escort service would be available to escort students not only in the vicinity of campus and Isla Vista, but also surrounding communities. People could request an escort by telephone.
Muslim Student Association President Abeer Khan said the gesture was appreciated, but that the service was unnecessary.
“I think most students on campus feel pretty safe – more safe on campus than anywhere else,” she said. “Everyone should utilize the escort service that’s already provided. No specific group needs their own escort service.”
Khalid Hanif, a member of the Muslim Student Association, said he also feels safe on campus.
“So far there have been no problems with threats or anything,” he said. “People have been pretty understanding.”
Khan said most students she knows may have been frightened at the beginning of the quarter, but supportive messages from campus administration and the campus’ focus on tolerance have helped even those students who were uneasy feel much safer.
UCSB Police Captain Michael Foster said the police would support a new organization if students wanted it.
“Obviously we want a safe campus, and anything people want to do to help promote that, we want to stand behind,” he said. “Whether there’s a need or not, that’s a personal perception.” |
The Gauchos kicked off their Big West matchup against UC Riverside late Saturday night with the offensive-minded approach they showcased in their first conference game of the year against Cal State Fullerton.
With that mindset, Santa Barbara was able to outlast the Highlanders 3-1 to improve to 4-4-2 overall, and now 2-0 in conference play sitting atop the standings with six points. UCR falls to 0-9 on the season and 0-2 in the Big West with a last-place standing.
UCSB was able to hold possession of the ball for most of the first ten minutes of the match, being able to get through the UCR defense multiple times for shots on goal that were ultimately kept out of the net. The Highlanders offense was also able to put together some runs but were denied any good looks at the goal by a Gaucho defense that showed signs of an ability to defensively recover.
However, in the 12th minute of the match, Riverside sent a pass down the right side of the field over the UCSB defense where junior Eduardo Sanchez was able to poke the ball past Gaucho keeper Alan Carrillo, who was drawn out from his position. The capitalized opportunity for UCR gave the team an early lead, 1-0.
UCSB wasted no time in trying to get an equalizer, multiple plays by freshman No. 9 Rodney Michael and sophomore No. 13 Ignacio Tellechea lead to the Gauchos being able to take good shots on goal, forcing the UC Riverside keeper Vincent Morales to make plays in front of the net.
The unsuccessful scoring opportunities lead to UCSB Head Coach Tim Vom Steeg making changes in the 33rd minute, substituting No. 13 Ignacio Tellechea and No. 10 Noah Billingsley for No. 17 Derek Kryzda and No. 21 Alex Liua.
The newly brought in duo of Kryzda and Liua were quickly able to maneuver the offense and create some close chances for the Gauchos. It was in the 37th minute where Liua found himself in the right place to receive a bounce off a UCR defender that went left of the box. Liua was able to perfectly send the ball over the keeper’s head and into the corner of the net to leave the game all tied up at halftime.
It was in the 37th minute where Liua found himself in the right place to receive a bounce off a UCR defender that went left of the box. Liua was able to perfectly send the ball over the keeper’s head and into the corner of the net to leave the game all tied up at halftime.
The beginning of the second half did not bring an end to UCSB being able to find ways through the Highlander’s defense and it was Gaucho sophomore Noah Billingsley who put UCSB out in front. The forward took a shot from the left side of the box and floated the ball over the keeper’s head and into the right corner of the net.
UCR stayed in the game and would occasionally get through the UCSB defense, but the Highlanders were unable to find a way into the net throughout the second half and any shot on goal was either saved or cleared away. The Highlanders were more often finding themselves in their own end trying to prevent the game from getting too ahead of them.
The defense for the Highlanders finally lapsed in the final five minutes of the game, allowing Gaucho forward Rodney Michael to run past two defenders into the right side of the box and sending a shot past the goalkeeper that was buried into the left corner of the net, allowing the game to end in a 3-1 UCSB victory.
UCSB players Rodney Michael, Ignacio Tellechea, and Alex Liua continue to work well in the offense through making the correct passes and being able to finish the opportunities presented in front of the net, a great sign for a team looking to establish itself early on in the season.
The Gauchos next game is Thursday, October 5 at the Cal State Northridge where the Matadors will be playing the Gauchos at 7 p.m. |
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How can a lawyer help with identity theft
Nov 22
Missouri Cook Law is an experienced identity theft lawyers near me. We have extensive experience filing lawsuits against credit bureaus and credit furnishers to remove items from credit reports. People are quickly turned down by the terms lawsuit, lawyer, litigation. A lawsuit is not something anyone wants to deal with. They consider all the possible negative consequences and costs. This could be your last and best option to remove an item from your credit history. This is also not as expensive and as bad as you might think.
After your case has been set up with dispute letters, responses from credit bureaus and any negative items still reported, the next step is to have a lawyer file a lawsuit. You could be eligible to have a clean credit history and monetary compensation if your attorney sues them under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. You can recover attorney fees, actual damages and punitive damage under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. This is just fancy language to say that you could make a lot of money from this process. Your lawyer will not be paid by the companies you sue. A Missouri identity theft lawyer such as Cook Law will often take a case contingent. This means they get paid only if the other side wins.
Identity theft can lead to many negative credit effects. Your credit score could drop, your insurance may be increased, and it could make it difficult to get a job. Depending on the severity of your situation, you might also lose access to financing, loans, or general credit. This nightmare is not permanent, but it can be fixed. You would be entitled to have your credit restored and stop any unwelcome debt collection activity. Additionally, you could also make some money for your efforts. A Missouri attorney who is experienced in identity theft can help you get your credit and identity back.
What's the next step?
Cook Law is available to help you or anyone you know who believes they may have been victims of identity theft. It is possible to fix identity theft, but it can take time. It is crucial to get started early by pulling your credit report and sending the dispute letters. It may take a few more months for a court case to be filed. If you feel you have been victim to identity theft, it is crucial that you start immediately. Missouri Cook Law advises clients to obtain copies of their credit reports at least once or twice per year. If there are any errors or omissions in your credit report, a quick scan will show you. Many clients don't realize they have been victims of identity theft until they get copies of their reports. This is often because collectors sent letters to another address.
An identity attorney in Missouri can ease the burden of dealing with identity theft. They will also help you navigate the process as smoothly as possible. Cook Law offers a free consultation. All you need is a quick telephone call. Cook law is a credit bureau, debt collector, and credit furnisher lawyer. This helps clients get clean credit, stop unwelcome collections, and sometimes, monetary compensation. Get in touch with us today! |
DAVAO CITY — Mayor Rodrigo Duterte does not think President Gloria Arroyo’s all-out war policy against the Communists and the release of 1 billion pesos of additional funds for the military as a good idea. He said the only effective means to deal with the insurgency is to continue talking with the rebels “without surrendering the authority of the government.”
“What is that 1 billion for? To attack more people? Is every single amount of the one billion peso be spent to buy bullets?” the mayor said during a press forum this week.
The Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) in Southern Mindanao, meanwhile, said Arroyo’s latest move to augment the government�s counterinsurgency fund is proof of the vindictiveness and �fascist� character of the regime.
“It is obvious that the target of the war fund are the unarmed, noncombatant or civilians perceived by the Arroyo regime as its enemy,” Ariel Casilao, Bayan�s secretary general, said.
Casilao said the fund should have been allotted to address the problem of inadequate school facilities, deteriorating quality of public education, health and other social services. (Cheryll D. Fiel/davaotoday.com) |
Dust the sand from your feet, don your comfortable walking shoes and take a stroll through Old Town Pensacola for a new adventure when visiting the oldest settlement along Florida’s Gulf Coast, predating St. Augustine by six years and Jamestown by 50. The city has so much charm with its architecture and brick-lined sidewalks. It takes pride in showing off its history, one that began with the settlement of Native Americans before the Spanish landed and claimed the land as its own in 1559, then ceded the land to America 200 years ago this year.
Today, a trip to the downtown area makes for a fun getaway from the sun, surf and sand for history buffs, foodies, bar hoppers and shoppers. It’s an easy drive from Chattanooga to Pensacola — about 6 hours. Or, Southwest offers direct flights from Nashville that will get you there in about an hour.
Experience History
Pensacola Village, located smack dab in the center of downtown, is an all-encompassing look at who and what made Pensacola the town it is today. Its archaeology tells the story of battles on the water; its position as the Middle Passage during the days of slavery; its industry; the arts; and its people.
Pensacola Museum of History is one of 17 museums within a 44-block area and anchors Pensacola Village. The museum has a number of permanent collections that feature items discovered underwater and on land, as well as a re-creation of Trader Jon’s, a popular downtown restaurant/bar (now a law office) for military stationed at nearby Naval Air Station Pensacola.
The Village also features Julee Cottage, one of a very few remaining examples of Creole-style architecture that once dotted the landscape around Pensacola Bay. Costumed guides tell its story and are well-versed in the history of the area. Once you’ve learned about daily life in the 1800s, step across the street and into the Appleyard Storytelling Cottage to sit and listen to recordings of historian John Appleyard tell of local and regional history, then visit the Manuel Barrios Cottage, an example of small two-room cottages, a style of architecture common in the early 20th century.
The neighboring Museum of Industry and the Museum of Commerce are hosts to permanent exhibits and tell the stories of Pensacola’s early industries and downtown Pensacola circa the 1890s. And the Pensacola Children’s Museum will give the kids something to do besides building sandcastles and body surfing.
Tickets to experience Pensacola Village and its many offerings may be purchased online and are good for seven days. Tickets include admission to all of the museums as well as guided tours held at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. For tickets and more information, log onto www.historicpensacola.org.
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Children learn about cooking in the early 1800s from a guide at Pensacola Village/photo by Anne Braly
Costumed guides roam through Pensacola Village telling its history and answering questions about the people who lived in the neighborhood in the 19th century/photo by Anne Braly
There are many exhibits in the Pensacola Museum of History, including this one that tells of the Battle of Pensacola in 1781/photo by Anne Braly
The Pensacola Museum of History is located in the former Pensacola City Hall and is large enough to house a wealth of the city’s history/photo by Anne Braly
St. Michael’s parish was established in 1781. The Gothic Revival-style church was dedicated in 1886 and is one of Pensacola’s oldest churches/photo by Anne Braly
The architecture of downtown Pensacola is reminiscent of that found in New Orlean’s French Quarter/photo by Anne Braly
Bubba’s Sweet Spot, owned by golf pro Bubba Watson, has everything you need for your afternoon sugar rush/photo by Anne Braly
Vendors set up early on a Sunday morning for the market on Palafox Street/photo by Anne Braly
Locals recommend getting to The Coffee Cup early to get a seat and enjoy brunch that may feature Shrimp Eggs Benedict and crispy hash browns/photo by Anne Braly
Louis Shapero takes a cold lick of ice cream from Bubba’s Sweet Spot on a hot summer afternoon/photo by Anne Braly
Historic buildings in Pensacola Village/photo by Anne Braly
What to See and Do
Palafox Street is a main corridor that runs north and south through town. The area you’ll want to visit is known as SoGo (South of Government Street). A wide plaza stretches down the center of the street and is home to a Sunday market with local vendors and numerous activities the year round. You’ll notice the architecture of the area is very much like that you’d find in New Orleans.
Downtown is very walkable and offers free parking. Try to park somewhere close to The Artisan, a restored French-Quarter building that offers high-end shops and dining.
Downtown Pensacola also has a varied genre of musical offerings.
For a memorable night of music, magic or whatever entertainment happens to be on the menu, visit the Vinyl Music Hall located in the restored Masonic Temple. Or, get a ticket and a seat in the Spanish Baroque Saenger Theatre for ballet or a Broadway show.
Where to Eat
From tacos to tapas, downtown Pensacola has the restaurants you need to satiate your hunger and the bars you want to get a sip of relief from the heat of the day.
Get your sugar rush at Bubba’s Sweet Spot, owned by golf pro Bubba Watson, a shotgun-style ice cream/chocolate shop that will blow your mind. A long counter lined with all kinds of fudge and chocolates leads to a small cooler with a dozen or so ice creams. Take your pick and snag a seat outside.
Next door to Bubba’s is Nom, the place for fresh sushi and amazing ramen in SoGo. Around the corner, Jackson’s Steakhouse has a tempting menu of yes, steaks, but also seafood. Chef Irv Miller tempts the palate with entrees like his petite filet with fried green tomatoes, lump crab and Thibodaux andouille cream.
No matter how tempting, drive right past Kristy Kreme on Cervantes Street, bypass McDonald’s entirely and enjoy brunch at the Coffee Cup. No social distancing here. It’s one of those places known by t Locals recommend going early to beat the brunch crowd. Seating inside is rather tight, but there is outdoor seating for those wanting to social distance and enjoy a beautiful Florida morning. Specials change often, but might feature a dish such as Shrimp Eggs Benedict, and there are always ample Southern breakfasts on which to break the fast.
There are plenty of seafood places on the water around Pensacola — its beaches and its bay. One of the standouts is The Oar House just minutes from downtown Pensacola on Bayou Chico overlooking MarineMax Pensacola. Dine outside or beneath the tiki roof — either way, you’ll witness stunning sunsets and the bounty of nature in and out of the water while dining on a menu filled with po’ boys, fish tacos and numerous dishes featuring fruits de mer.
Where to Stay
If you want a beach, the best suggestion is Pensacola Beach with its numerous rental homes and hotels. Downtown Pensacola is less than 15 minutes away. But if you’d like a break from sand in your room and between your toes, there are a number of good hotels downtown.
· New World Inn is a boutique hotel on Palafox Street featuring 15 guest rooms named after figures tied to the history of Pensacola. It’s restaurant, Skolepos, is no longer there, thanks to Hurricane Sally, but its owner and chef, Gus Silivos, has now opened Agapi Bistro + Garden in East Pensacola and is serving award-winning Mediterranean cuisine. It’s the talk of the town, according to folks at VisitPensacola. Online: www.newworldlanding.com
· As the only Pensacola hotel overlooking the waterfront, Oyster Bay Boutique Hotel offers sweeping views of the downtown overlooking the waterfront and beyond. The ferry to Pensacola Beach is within easy walking distance. Online: www.stayoysterbay.com.
· Holiday Inn Express is a new property on Main Street and is within easy walking distance of the action around Palafox. It’s located next to Pensacola Village and many of the museums, and is also within walking distance of the ferry to Pensacola Beach. Online: www.ihg.com.
· Sole Inn and Suites features 45 rooms with a hip, modern flair, a beautiful courtyard with private cabana areas, free continental breakfast, free happy hour meet-and-greet for guests, and upscale amenities in all rooms including microwave, mini fridge and coffee maker. Online: www.soleinnandsuites.com.
· Courtyard by Marriott Downtown Pensacola is within walking distance to more than a dozen of Pensacola’s most popular restaurants and entertainment venues. There’s also an outdoor pool and spa. Online: www.marriott.com.
· Pensacola Victorian is a bed-and-breakfast in a beautifully restored Queen Anne Victorian house once the home of ship captain William Hazard Northup in the late 1800s. Today it is a place where vacationers and business travelers can relax and enjoy the hospitality of innkeepers Chuck and Barbee Major. Online: www.pensacolavictorian.com. |
This is another set of images I took in Charleston, SC at the direction of Kevin McQuade of secretcharleston.com, whom I mentioned in my previous post. To read more about how this scavenger hunt changed my photographer click here. As we were walking around finding these places, we saw parts of Charleston that were off the beaten path and simply gorgeous. This house on Anson Street was one of those. As I took these photos I began to wonder: would this landscape benefit from a fill flash?
Not using a Fill Flash.
These images were taken around dusk when there was still plenty of light but the shadows were darker. In these photos I did an experiment. I wanted to see what difference a fill flash would make. As you can see in the first image, there was plenty of light without the fill flash. However, there was no dimension in the vegetation. One plant just blends into the others. Also, the sky is blown out in the background because of setting for the darker shadows It’s a beautiful image, but I wondered if it could be better.
Fill flash can make a huge difference in the way a captured image comes across and is perceived. But using a fill flash in a landscape photo??? I’d never tried that before. Could this scene be improved by the use of a fill flash?
Using a Fill Flash
In the second picture, I used a fill flash and I am pleased with the results. The main difference is on the branches and leaves of the closest tree on the right side of the image. To me the added front light separates the trees and adds dimension to the photo because there is clearer demarkation of what is closer and what is farther away. The sky is also much more in balance with the rest of the picture.
Sacrifices of using a Fill Flash
As much as I like the effects of the flash, there are some sacrifices. The flash emphasized the exposed wood of the cypress trees that lined the lake, whereas in the non-flash image those trees look greener with the woodiness deemphasized. Also the leaves in the photo with the fill flash are not as crisp as the photo without the flash.
Because the photos were taken around dusk, some of the colors were flat and needed adjusting to get the vibrance and warmth that I was looking for. I used Luminar by Skylum to brighten the colors a touch and give the images a deeper contrast.
Did this landscape benefit from a fill flash? All in all, I like both images, but I tend to favor the one with the fill flash. Therefore answer the “to flash or not to flash” question? Well, I think is based on your preferences. Nine times out of ten when I experiment like this, I find that I prefer one image while the members of my family prefer the other. Why not take one of each and see what you think?
Happy shooting!
Note: Some of the links on this page are affiliate links. I get paid a small amount of money if you buy using my link, but your cost doesn’t change. It’s a win – win! |
So we had great news yesterday when it was announced weddings could soon take place again. Very slowly and only small amounts at first. I’m sure many within the wedding industry (myself included) were hoping for a speedier return but we will get there. Hopefully by June wedding planning will be full on and couples can once again enjoy their very special day in the way they want, surrounded by family & friends.
I long for the days of working flat out and very long hours. Juggling my time between the sewing machine, answering the phone & returning emails.
Being busy with weddings is my world and I’ve missed it!
I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve still been able to work the past year, just at a much slower pace than normal.
So, baby steps at first.....but fingers crossed we are finally getting this damned virus under control. |
When you ask him about sports, he’ll raise his blue eyes to mine and press his lips together. I’ll nod to assure him it’s safe, he’s okay, this isn’t the school lunch table where the kids can taunt.
“I dance,” he’ll say. “Ballet. This year I’m doing hip hop and tap and jazz, too, but ballet is my favorite.”
Try as you might, progressive thinker that you are, modern and open-minded for all the decades you carry, your eyebrows will move up a quarter of an inch.
“Oh!” You’ll tilt your head and hopefully you’ll smile. For a heartbeat you’ll spin through a lexicon of words and phrases, seeking the correct positive acknowledgment.
And I’ll hold my breath as your eyes meet mine over his shaggy blonde head of hair, a wordless prayer as we wait for the moment of reaction. What does one say to a seven year old boy who is built for carrying a football but wears ballet shoes?
Will you be the one who nods, intrigued, silently assuming his parents must be dancers, or that we’ve exploited our child in an attempt at our own anti-sexism statement?
Or perhaps you’ll be the one who asks incredulously what his dad thinks of him doing ballet, because what dad would be okay with a son who dances?
Maybe you’re the family friend who repeatedly assures him it’s acceptable to enjoy ballet – after all, NFL players have been known to take a few ballet lessons it will be valuable when he plays real sports in a few years.
What if you’re the man who scoffs in the face of my little boy’s uncle, declaring loudly that you would “beat that boy’s ass” to cure him of whatever it is that makes him want to dance?
You could be the distant relative who eyes him curiously at gatherings, making frequent mention of the need for masculinity and “boyish” pursuits, taking care he doesn’t accidentally grab the pink piece of cake because, “What are you, a girl?!” followed by a quick inhale and, “So Troy, are you still doing that ballet thing? How’s that working for you? You have any girlfriends there yet?”
You might even be the one who glances over your shoulder, catching my eye knowingly, suggesting in veiled terms that we be “concerned” about our seven year old’s sexuality.
So I catch your eye when you ask him about baseball and soccer, not because I don’t want you to be interested or I’m expecting your reaction to be as nonchalant as if he had said he’s the star of the peewee basketball team. I bore my eyes into yours, conveying with a look my son’s intuitive nature and telling you with silence that I’m not going to answer those questions.
Instead, I’ll tell you about a baby boy who felt music in his soul before he could crawl, grooving to the beat of push-button toys in the church nursery and spawning jokes about his young parents’ need to curb the tendency if he was to become a “good Baptist baby.”
I’ll tell you about a toddler spinning on his head on the living room carpet, the grocery store linoleum, the church foyer tile, eliciting amused comments from strangers about his wannabe break dancing. I’ll tell you of his unquenchable need to move in the presence of rhythm and an obvious inborn ability to feel music.
I’ll revisit the memory of him bounding in the front door on a December afternoon, tossing his kindergarten backpack and, wild eyed, telling us of the music class in which people leaped and twirled to music, strong men jumped high in the air, danced on their toes and lifted ballerinas across the stage. He wore black sweat pants and a white undershirt every day of Christmas break that year, asked Santa for black ballet shoes, watched dozens of online videos of boys’ ballet techniques and by Christmas day had memorized every note and crescendo of the entire Nutcracker Suite.
I’ll laugh and sigh and tell you of his own carefully choreographed dances to specific pieces by Beethoven, Taylor Swift and Mumford & Sons.
I can show you a clip from his first recital, when he was awarded an unsolicited, unexpected dance scholarship and hadn’t a clue what it meant as he smiled and accepted the sheet of paper. I’ll try to keep from beaming, as parents do, and will refrain from repeating every accolade and declaration of talent his instructors have bestowed upon him.
I’ll tell you of the way he glows after a six hour practice, the finesse with which he glides across the floor, the way his very soul leaps from his eyes when he manages a toe touch or perfects a difficult series of steps. I’ll show you a boy who carries himself with grace in manner and spirit, who is strong in character and skill, who is learning of compassion and team effort and how to appreciate the brilliance of life’s beauty.
When you ask my dancing son about this passion he carries and you catch my eye, slightly uncertain how to proceed, I won’t try to convince you this was all his idea or give ten examples of his father’s unwavering pride or waste breath assuring you that my second grader isn’t gay.
I’ll simply tell you what he said to us after his first Nutcracker performance last winter:
“Mama, it feels like my heart is flying when I’m dancing. I think God made ballet because he knew I’d love it.” |
The ski and ride hill at the Frisco Adventure Park will be hosting the 5th Annual Bubble Gum Race Series for six Mondays in February and March:
Monday, February 19th- Dual Slalom
Monday, February 26th- Obstacle Course
Monday, March 5th- Dual Slalom
Monday, March 12th- Nordic Obstacle Course
Monday, March 19th- Obstacle Course
Monday, March 26th- Finale- Dual Slalom
From the “never ever” to seasoned racer, all levels are encouraged to compete in this free race series.
This fun, non-competitive, community race series provides an opportunity for children and adults to try out racing in a relaxed environment.
Racers will have the chance to race the course multiple times and racers will not be timed, but instead participants will be given pieces of bubble gum which they will keep or give away based on their race finishes. The racer who has the most bubble gum at the end of the races wins.
All ages and abilities are welcome to participate in the Bubble Gum Series races and friendly competition between parents, siblings and friends is encouraged.
The Bubble Gum Series races are free, and registration is day of from 4:00pm – 5:00pm inside the Frisco Adventure Park Day Lodge located at 621 Recreation Way in Frisco (map). Races will run from approximately 5:00pm – 6:00pm. Racers must provide their own ski equipment and helmets are required in order to race. Free hot cocoa and cookies will be served at the Day Lodge post-race. |
I really hope your fall is as pretty as mine’s been. Orange, yellow, and red leaves cover the sides and down through the middle of the main road into our town, and everyday the street sweeper comes by sweeping them up. But its futile because by the end of the day there is another pile. I love living in a neighborhood that has so many trees, it’s gorgeous this time of year.
Doing
As we head into November I’m concentrating on a ton of inspiration, tools, and tutorials on photography for you. I’m changing things here and I’m really excited about it because I’m focusing on my passions: photography and teaching. So you’ll see little changes here week after week.
Making
A new installment is the free album template I made you that you can scoop up if you sign up for my weekly emails! I’m really excited by this because I wanted to urge you to print your photos and this simple template is perfect for the gratitude challenge this month. Check out my post here! This is one of many free things I plan on making for you too. I am so excited by all the ideas I’ve had recently but I’m also trying to take it a little slower so I don’t overwhelm myself and my family.
Learning
I took another small workshop on creating more moody and emotion-filled photos from Clickin’ Moms. It was reflective and I learned more about transferring the vision I have for the emotion to post-processing my photos.
I am teaching myself InDesign as well now to make mostly album templates. I really want to create one for my 365 project and am almost finished processing those photos.
Marketing – I have a to-do list a mile long that I created based on the course with April Bowles-Olin on Creativelive.
On the Web
Photofocus has a fantastic article on artistry that I think applies to any creative. It is a kick in the bum to put yourself out there. Don’t put what other people want you to put out there, put yourself out there.
Kari Patterson had another beautiful post reminding us to do good even when life seems to hand us rotten apples.
I cringed when I read the title to this post: One Husband’s Response To Retouched Photos of His Wife. But it was not at all what I expected, and I think I teared up at the end. It is a gorgeous story.
Reading
Once again, I only made it through 1 book this month, Be Strong (Joshua): Putting God’s Power to Work in Your Life |
Austin has traveled the world—from the receding glaciers of Patagonia to the deep snow of Hokkaido— with his camera as a compass. His principal solo exhibition was held at the Telluride Arts HQ Gallery in 2018, and since then he has shown his work as a featured artist at the Dawn Tekler Gallery at 78th Street Studios and a number of other venues across Cleveland. Primarily self-taught, Austin has loved learning from brilliant artists at Santa Fe Photographic Workshops & Maine Media Workshops + College. Austin recently graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Film and Media Studies from Colorado College, in Colorado Springs. Being outside and making images are some of the things that make Austin really damn happy.
Available Work
Artist Statement
EL-E-MEN-TAL: pertaining to the forces of nature and relating to earth’s major elements—Water, Fire, Ice, and Air.
The earth is a living, breathing organism. It has sheltered us and given us life. In response, the earth asks that we protect it. But, we have not protected it. As global temperatures continue to rise, greater amounts of water evaporate into the air. Warmer air can hold more water vapor, leading to intense rainstorms, violent flooding, and extreme threats to many of the world’s coastal communities.
All six of these images were created in Chile—a country that is singularly vast in its spectrum of geographic conditions. Situated in the northern part of the country is the Atacama Desert, the driest desert on the planet. While the southern tip of the country is home to Patagonia, known for its dramatic glaciers, rainforests, and fjords. In effect, these two opposing landscapes, viewed together, represent the full magnitude of Earth’s natural wonders.
And yet… the high-altitude Atacama is fed by glacial meltwater. And today, rivers are running dry and species are being displaced and extinguished. In Patagonia, glaciers are receding at some of the highest rates on the planet. Meltwater from Patagonian icefields is largely contributing to global sea levels rising.
We’ve reached a tipping point in many aspects of contemporary life. Our world is on fire, from the interdependent tragedies of climate change and racial inequality. In East of Eden, John Steinbeck introduces the concept of “Timshel,” a Hebrew word that translates to “thou mayest.” It suggests that we have the power to choose between good and evil, between dark and light. Let ELEMENTAL open your eyes to the beauty of our earth and inspire you into action to protect it, just as my travels and my camera lens have served as my own catalysts into activism. |
With the right working policies and role models, concerns about women in FinTech should be rapidly consigned to history.
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Rosie Silk, R&D Tax Manager at Kene Partners, explains why with the right working policies and role models, concerns about women in FinTech should be rapidly consigned to history.
The financial services industry is well known for being fast-paced, competitive and male-dominated. In FinTech, women are vastly underrepresented, making up just 29% of staff in the sector, despite representing 47% of the UK workforce.
But this is also an industry in transition – and growing numbers of companies now recognise the importance of promoting gender-neutral pay structures and flexible working policies. As Rosie Silk, R&D Tax Manager at Kene Partners, explains, with the right working policies and role models, concerns about attracting women to the industry should be rapidly consigned to history.
Zero Bias
Gender pay gaps. Endemic sexual harassment in Silicon Valley. It is easy to assume that the experience of women in the workplace has failed to improve over the past three decades. But that is patently untrue. Many organisations within the FinTech sector are passionate advocates for generating a positive working environment, and one that has zero gender bias.
Given the challenge of recruiting high calibre individuals, companies need to encourage working practices that suit today’s attitudes towards work/life balance. Both women and men should have equal access to flexible working policies, for example.
>See also: Innovate Finance Publishes Women in FinTech Powerlist 2018
However, of course, FinTech is a young industry. Fast growing, start-up organisations will often overlook the need for flexible working models to support parents of both sexes. Indeed, in many start-ups, such flexibility is simply not an option. But this is an industry that offers choice: if flexible working is important to any individual, then look for a different employer.
There is, without doubt, a divergence in cultural attitudes and behaviours as well as working practices in firms across the FinTech sector, and it is incredibly important for both employer and employees to understand and identify those issues up front. Skills and experience alone are not enough to ensure a great fit.
Role Models
This is also where female role models can play an important part, not only to inspire contemporaries and the next generation but also to set expectations within the workplace. The days when women leaders felt the need to adopt so-called male leadership traits are long gone; successful women are leaders on their own terms in FinTech as much as any other industry, and that is an important message.
Attending an innovation conference recently and finding four women on a panel of five, is incredibly inspiring. Furthermore, these women can also reinforce a strong culture by acting as coaches or mentors to new starters. But it is also important to remember that changes to the workplace alone can never achieve zero gender bias without a broader shift in culture, at home and in education.
Chat to any successful women in FinTech, or just any successful women, and the story will be the same: they were provided with a huge amount of confidence at home, encouraged to try new experiences and treated equally. As a result, they expect to be treated fairly at work and to have access to the same opportunities. They are also confident enough to take risks and embrace innovative business areas such as FinTech.
For any business leaders carefully crafting good flexible working policies, don’t forget to apply the same encouragement and support once you get home from the office!
Consigned to history
Despite the occasional negative headlines, times have without a doubt changed. In addition to the support provided by switched on employers, women leaders are now becoming commonplace and acting as role models to the next generation. Companies across the board are investing in new working practices to support all staff and, as this continues, hopefully, within the next few years this conversation will be consigned to history. |
At Divine Complexions we believe that you deserve to be treated like Royalty. That's why when you come to Divine Complexions it's more than just coming for a spa appointment, it's an experience you won't forget. Here at Divine Complexions, we are more than just about offering amazing services and products, it's about how you're treated when you're here. Come experience the service you deserve!
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Driven by passion, the spa professionals at Divine Complexions pride themselves on providing the highest quality esthetic and beauty services. Staying up to date with the latest technologies and techniques is important to us. We value continuing education and promise to always strive to bring you the very best.
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Scores for the SAT Essay are reported separately and aren’t part of a student’s total SAT score.There are certain universities that consider the SAT Essay score vital for assessment despite it being optional.The essay counts for 30% of your writing score.2008 SCORING GUIDELINES Question 2 (Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting) The score reflects the quality of the essay as a whole—its content, its style, its mechanics.There are certain universities that consider the SAT Essay score vital for assessment despite it being optional.Course grades are based upon teacher evaluation of student writing produced during the course..Review the different factors that result in your final SAT score.We understand you need help now with quick essay paper Doctoral Thesis 2008 writing and we are at your service, delivering you 100% custom essays.In the middle are “some” and “effective,” scores of 3 and 4 respectively, and probably where most students score.The writing section reported a multiple-choice subscore that ranged from 20 to 80 points.Get information on how to navigate your score report.Stage 1: Read the Passage (5-10 minutes) There are a couple of different ways to read through the passage on the SAT essay, each with their own advantages In his essay Dropping the Sat?It is true the SAT writing section will still not be counted for initial eligibly for the NCAA, but, clearly, based on the change from 2006 to 2007, the credibility of the SAT writing section scores is growing and will make a difference in 2008 790.SAT: 400–1600; PSAT/NMSQT and PSAT 10.None of them come in handy, nowadays Your final scores will be reported on a scale of 200-800 for Math, 200-800 for evidence-based reading and writing, and 2-8 for the essay.For the Analysis section, the mean score was a little lower at 3, simply because Analysis is a skill that high school students spend less time honing than Reading or Writing.The following three scores for the SAT Essay, if applicable, are on a 2–8 scale: § Reading § Analysis § Writing These scores aren’t added together or combined with any other test scores.You will receive the score and feedback about your essay from your school The sat scores 2008 writing essay highest score that you can receive on the SAT is 2400 (800 for the writing, critical reading, and math sections).New SAT Scores SAT Score Ranges since 2009, and the SAT since 2008.The essay counts for 30% of your writing score.Submit an Essay it was 501, one point lower than for students in the class of 2008.March SAT Scores Available Details.The Essay also became optional and was separated from the composite score (previously it factored into your Writing score) 790.The student responded to and the student’s essay.
Types Of College Students Classification Essay
The top colleges, the same ones that care about your 800 in Writing and Language, will look for a score on the SAT® Essay.The writing section reported a multiple-choice subscore that ranged from 20 to 80 points.If you took the January 2008 SAT Reasoning Test, you would have been given one of the essay prompts below: Prompt 1.Each of the three major sections, Mathematics, Critical Reading, and Writing, are divided into three parts, with 10 sub-sections The average overall score is 7.For a detailed breakdown of how 2019’s test takers performed, here are a few score.The average SAT essay score for students graduating high school sat scores 2008 writing essay in 2020 was 5 out of 8 for Reading, 3 out of 8 for Analysis, and 5 out of 8 for Writing (source: CollegeBoard 2020 Total Group Report) The SAT essay score is measured on a scale of 2 to 8.A combined score of 2100 was the 96th percentile in 2010, but it was the 97th percentile in 2009 and 2008.While the older version of Reading + Writing SAT was calculated out of 1600, with both Reading and Writing sections consisting of 800 each, the new version of EBRW SAT section is scored out of 800 in total.The new SAT combines the former Critical Reading and Writing sections into a single section called Evidence-Based Reading and Writing.Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below The essay score is not a part of the 400–1600 score.Registration Deadline for May SAT Details.Section Scores (2) – Range from 200 to 800 and are given for the Math and Evidence-Based Reading & Writing Sections SAT Essay Scores.This section has a Reading test and Writing and Language test.More or less the same scale, with different words, also applies to analysis and writing.As students and colleges adapt to new realities and changes to the college admissions process, College Board is making sure our programs adapt with them." The SAT Essay Formula - That Gets High Scores by Rodney Daut EzineArticles.Decide if you agree or disagree with the essay prompt and write your thesis There are only minuscule percentile changes for a specific scaled score from year to year because the ACT is equalized specifically to ensure the same curve every test date.Long before it was launched, the College Board hailed the new SAT writing essay as a major step in improving writing instruction in America (McGrath 24).* Scores of 7 and 8 are average.Each of the assessments in the SAT Suite reports a total score that is the sum of two section scores: Evidence-Based Reading and Writing and Math.We have a collection of SAT Essay Prompts from March 2005 till the most recent test released by College Board.However, regardless of the Sat Scores 2008 Writing Essay essay type or the specific requirements of your instructor, each essay should start.It has used human-scored writing samples allowing 48 hour completion to sat scores 2008 writing essay identify students for instruc-tional support.Between his time at Bard College and teaching abroad, he has studied Japanese, Czech, and Korean.Which is posted on the Affirmative Action and Diversity Project's Website, George Will considers the proposal by some that schools stop using student's SAT scores when choosing which students to admit.We offer APA, MLA, or a Sat Essay Example Score Chicago style paper in almost 70 disciplines.It has used human-scored writing samples allowing 48 hour completion to identify students for instruc-tional support.The SAT essay score is measured on 3 criteria - reading, analysis, and writing with each section marked on 1 - 8.Students are rewarded for what they do well.A 17 could be many different combinations of Reading/Analysis/writing.
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It’s sat scores 2008 writing essay worth reiterating that SAT readers are held exactly to this scale and the specific breakdown under each score The highest score that you can receive on the SAT is 2400 (800 for the writing, critical reading, and math sections).Each of these sections are scored between 200 and 800, and they are combined to form your total score out of 1600.It has used human-scored writing samples allowing 48 hour completion to identify students for instruc-tional support.The scores are simply the sum of two readers’ 1–4 ratings in each dimension It absolutely is true.This means that your EBRW score is a huge component of your overall SAT.As soon as you pick the writer you like, you can reach them directly Sat Essay Questions 2008 and with no third Sat Essay Questions 2008 party involvement.Starting the Essay with a Hook: Hooks for Essay Introduction When you get the task to write an essay, sat scores 2008 writing essay professors expect you to follow the specifics of that type of essay.Us, there was a study done in 2008 that showed that the average scores for the three different sections were as follows: Mathematics: 515.Students are rewarded for what they do well.Can I superscore a reading and writing score from an SAT W/O ESSAY with a math score from an SAT WITH ESSAY and vice versa?The scores are simply the sum of two readers’ 1–4 ratings in each dimension The most recent SAT essay score data bears this out except when it comes to the Analysis dimension.You will have 25 minutes sat scores 2008 writing essay to write a well-developed essay, for which you will receive a score of 1-6.Takers can score up to 1600 points on the overall test, with a total of 800 potential points per section. |
Last Wednesday morning Jon and I decided that we would join the rest of my family for a short hike just a few miles away from our cabin. This decision was a big step for me because the hike would interfere with Leta’s sleeping schedule, and I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to Leta’s sleeping schedule. Interference causes screaming. Have I ever told you about the screaming? I don’t know if I have ever mentioned the screaming, but in case I haven’t this is all you need to know: you won’t like Leta when she screams.
The previous day Leta had taken three thirty minute catnaps, and that was all the napping she did for the entire day. It was partly her fault because she is very stubborn and finds her Mama’s anxiety attacks somewhat amusing. But her catnaps were also the result of the family in the cabin directly next to ours, a family who thought it was perfectly normal to rev their ATVs ALL DAY LONG outside our window. I should point out right now that if that family is missing their 16-year-old son who had a bad attitude and needed to stand up straight and button up his shirt, the 16-year-old kid who based his entire self worth on how loud he could gun that engine, that I MOST CERTAINLY DID NOT strangle him and throw him in the river.
So I woke up Wednesday and thought to myself, why am I sitting around this cabin being held prisoner by an unbuttoned 16-year-old? And when Leta woke up I informed her, “It’s your turn to work around MY schedule, and we are going to go on this hike and you are going to LIKE IT whether you want to or not.” And then she burped and shit her pants. I took that as a sign that all systems were GO.
The entire family drove up to the trailhead in three separate cars. We would have taken four cars but that seemed excessive. The surrounding scenery was indescribably beautiful, like this:
and this:
and this:
And I remember thinking to myself, this is totally worth it, I am so glad we decided to shatter all semblance of Leta’s daily schedule and walk a mile up this gorgeous mountain where there is no hot water to make a bottle and no soft surface to take a nap. She is liking it even though she doesn’t want to like it. I am Master of the Universe.
And that’s when God decided to smite me with his sword of Screaming Leta.
With no hot water to make a bottle and no soft surface on which to take a nap, we found ourselves assaulted by an inconsolable force of fury. On the side of a mountain. In the sun. By a lake. With pretty trees.
I tried plying her with beef jerky and all ten of my yummy fingers. I tried walking her up and down the path while singing every song in the Morrissey catalogue. I idiotically tried to feed her a cold bottle with cold milk and a cold nipple and was met with a reaction that said, “You are wretched, fiend-mother. I would rather you offer me a witch’s tit.”
And that’s when the anxiety attack hit, my mouth spewing forbidden obscenities in front of my mother and several innocent nieces and nephews. And I began running back down the mountain clutching Leta to my chest in an effort to shield innocent birds and squirrels and baby rabbits from the screaming sword of God’s wrath. Jon followed closely behind carrying all of our gear and speaking rational words of logical logic to guide us down the trail.
About 20 steps into our descent God opened up the heavens and began to rain down upon my wickedness heavy rains and golf-ball sized hail. I managed to hold Leta close enough that her head was spared any pelting from the golf balls even though she tried every maneuver in her repertoire to pry herself from my grasp, arching her back and pushing her body away from mine. It was like she knew there were golf balls falling from the sky and she was trying to catch them with her mouth.
Rain and hail and wind and screaming followed us the entire hike back down the mountain and when we got back to the car she continued to scream until we could warm a bottle up in front of the heating vents. We were soaking wet and bruised from God’s game of miniature golf.
That was probably the lowest point of the week, other low points being screaming matches between certain members of my family and the throwing of keys BY SOMEONE OTHER THAN ME! And then there was the constant fear that certain nephews might crush Leta’s skull by walking back and forth around her play area, except these nephews have never really walked anywhere in their lives, unless you can classify STOMPING AND THRASHING as a leisurely stroll.
We are so happy to be home, to be sleeping in our own beds, to be dodging flying objects thrown only by me. Leta took two two-hour naps yesterday as if to say, God thinks you deserve a break, Crazy Lady. No more food poisoning, no more enclosed quarters with my lovely family who all eat hotdogs with no buns, no more revving ATVs. No more cabbage in my bra, no more sleeping on my back because every other position sends searing pain to every part of my body, NO MORE GRUMPY BABY. |
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Have you heard of VAP? You will. It’s a newly developed cholesterol test. It stands to make your total cholesterol number obsolete.
Total blood cholesterol is not a very good predictor of heart attack or stroke. Many people with high cholesterols never have a heart problem and half of the people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol levels. Nevertheless, we know that cholesterol plaguing in the arteries can be a factor in both heart attacks and strokes.
The VAP (Vertical Auto Profile) cholesterol test provides a more thorough approach to cholesterol testing. VAP was developed to satisfy the new cholesterol guidelines set by the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP). The guidelines call for a more aggressive role in diagnosing and treating high cholesterol.
I disagree with the treatment recommendations portion of the new guidelines. Under the guidelines, millions more Americans will be asked to take dangerous cholesterol-lowering drugs and no mention is made of safer natural alternatives. But accurate early assessment of risk is important. And that will be aided by the new VAP test.
* New Measurements *
New cholesterol research has demonstrated what some of us have been saying for years. That is, that total blood cholesterol is just one piece in a complex puzzle. Other factors like homocysteine and C-reactive protein are actually more important but are being neglected.
VAP improves the predictive value of cholesterol testing by introducing five new categories of cholesterol measurement. Among the most important new measurements are Lp(a) and LDL pattern size.
Research has proved that the size of cholesterol-carrying particles is more important than the amount of cholesterol in your blood. Some of the most dangerous are a type of lipoprotein called Lp(a). These particles help determine whether cholesterol will stay soluble in your blood where it is harmless, or whether it will precipitate into cholesterol plague narrowing your arteries.
There is a strong statistical link between Lp(a) and heart attacks. Researchers at The University of Pittsburgh have reported that high levels increase heart attack risk by 300% making it a better cardiac predictor than traditional cholesterol tests.
Smaller lipoprotein particles are dangerous. They are dense and heavy making them more likely to precipitate. The larger lighter particles cause less buildup on blood vessel walls.
* The Difference *
The VAP test costs about the same as routine tests. It is covered by most insurance. Discuss it with your doctor. He can order it from the manufacturer, Atherotech.
The traditional cholesterol test sometimes scares people (and their doctors) with false alarms. The new parameters should be used to reassure them. Even more importantly, the old test only picks up about 45% of cholesterol abnormalities.
Atherotech’s data suggests the new test can show 90% of cholesterol abnormalities. You can learn more about the VAP test by visiting their website: www.atherotech.com. |
Today, it’s now common for many people to invest in gold as this is considered to be the best hedge against inflation. Gold happens to be a precious metal and appears to have timeless value. The good news is that there are various IRS-approved ways you can use to invest in gold. One of them is called a gold individual retirement account (IRA).
The IRA offers a good stability of gold and is convenient. Remember that these investments can be an excellent option for any person who wants to diversify. But before you open an IRA, it’s a good idea to know more about it. In this post, you will learn about a gold IRA.
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Understanding a gold IRA
Simply put, a gold IRA refers to a self-directed individual retirement account that allows you to have your gold bullion. It’s worth noting that you can’t have physical gold in regular IRAs, but you can decide to invest in various assets that expose them to gold, such as gold exchange-traded funds and stocks of gold mining companies.
Opening a self-directed IRA allows you to invest in alternative assets, such as physical precious metals, real estate, and cryptocurrencies. Likewise, a gold IRA follows the same rule as a conventional IRA when it comes to withdrawal and tax benefits rules. The IRA also has some record keeping and tax reporting requirements for these self-directed gold IRAs.
Managing your gold IRA
Conventional and large brokerage companies usually don’t provide gold IRAs. Instead, you have to work with custodians that specialize in managing gold IRAs. A custodian can assist you to manage all the tax reporting and paperwork for your gold transactions so that they can meet the IRS requirements involving retirement planning.
Even better, a custodian can manage the specific storage needs associated with keeping physical gold bullion. Keep in mind that the IRS doesn’t want you to store precious metals you own through gold IRAs at home. Therefore, if you handle your physical gold and are no longer in a self-directed IRA, then the IRA considers this as a withdrawal. In this case, you can be eligible for early withdrawal penalties and taxation. Worse still, the IRS can decide to close your entire account.
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The rules of the gold IRA require you to store eligible precious metals with a bank, national depository, or any third-party entity approved by the IRA. The custodian is in a better position to direct you to an approved custodian and even handle the gold transfer while setting up your gold IRA.
When you open your self-directed gold IRA with Goldco, you should transfer money into this account so that you can buy physical gold. One of the ways to fund your account is to roll over a current retirement account. There are no taxes on this transfer because the money remains in a qualified retirement plan.
Another good way you can fund your self-directed gold IRA is to deposit money each year, but you need to follow the limits of the annual IRA contribution. With the funds in the gold IRA, you can start buying gold for your gold IRA. |
Arnab has been a journalist and a keen film enthusiast, and has worked with some of the leading national dailies like Times of India, Hindustan Times and Mail Today. He has been a business journalist and later focussed on features specialising in stories on music, films, music & film personalities; art, culture, books, and social issues.
Anuradha Das
Anuradha has an amazing repertoire of culinary delights that range from both Western to Indian cuisine. She lives in Calcutta and is a prized writer for the best Bengali women's magazine, Shananda.
Prasanta Paul
The author has served no less than Al Jazeera and German TV, and India’s Parliamentarian magazine among others! To his credit goes a deep-rooted empathy for social issues and humans. He has wide experience in covering the northeast of India. His coverage on the 2020 Amphan cyclone in eastern India has easily been the best around the world |
Encourage one another and build one another up. Pray without ceasing. Test everything. Keep what is good. Avoid all evil. -1 Thess 5:11,17,21,22
Monday, November 9, 2015
In the beginning, there was chaos
"Littlest angel, I have a job for you and your slingshot."
Sorry Sheldon and Leonard, Big Bang losing out to theory where a four dimensional star sling-shotted through a black hole to become our universe.
Picture the black hole as a lens and our universe as light projected upon a screen.
One of the major problems with the Big Bang is that matter is too evenly distributed in our universe. Far more mass should be at the center and far less at the edges.
Perhaps the title should read, in the presence of good science, there will always be periods of chaos.
Hat tip to Remus who is (sort of) back in the saddle again at the Woodpile Report. His new format is to update it every two or three days, depending on how he feels. |
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