Week 11

This week I want to address one of the biggest problems facing IT departments across the country if not the world...the users. Maybe this is coming out of my own experience, but probably eighty to ninety percent of the issues I deal with every day are not problems with the computers or other devices it's the people using them. This isn't to say they are doing anything on purpose to mess with the computer. The majority of issues are because they don't know what they are doing. This is especially the case amongst older tech users. They didn't grow up with computers and depending on their career may never have had to use one. Suddenly they are faced with a plethora of devices that confuse and sometimes frighten them (not in the horror sense but more the "Oh my god, I don't know what to do with this!" sense). Luckily ignorance is something that we as IT personnel can fix. A large part of my job is sitting down with people and showing them how to use their new laptop, Ipad, Kindle or other device. I also spend a significant amount of time teaching grandparents how to go online and email their families or fill out applications.
This is to say that even though we complain about the insane things we see the people around us do to their computers, one of our most important jobs is to educate and train the people we support so that they don't keep opening up strange emails and downloading viruses. To that end I would like to share a couple of links to sites that I use on a fairly regular basis when working with the public. Both are free and contain both videos and activities to help with training.

 
www.gcflearnfree.org
This link is to the Goodwill Community Foundation Learn Free website. They have an amazing selection of videos and tutorials on topics from internet or computer basics to how to use Facebook.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/
Microsoft's very own site for training for Office products. This includes previous versions of office like 2007 and 2010 as well as Office for Apple devices.

Week 10 - Youtube

Like most of my generation I spent many an hour everyday, often 3 or more, in front of the television. That number has shifted more or less over the years until one day several years ago I discovered YouTube. YouTube is a website where anyone can create and upload videos to share with the public. While viral videos of cats, babies, vlogs and people hurting themselves continue to be ridiculously popular; product reviews, news and how-to videos are heavily represented. As someone who has tried to help people over the phone with technical issues or any number of other problems, it brings a great deal of joy to my day when I can go on YouTube and find a video of a professional demonstrating exactly how to solve the problem. I am seeing this very heavily in the IT profession as well. There are entire series on various technology related issues and how to handle them your self. I personally learned years ago how to use a soldering iron properly. I have included a few links below to examples of this amazing trend, including one put out by YouTube on how to use YouTube, and I hope to see it continue.

https://www.youtube.com/user/YouTubeHelp

https://www.youtube.com/user/iyogi

https://www.youtube.com/user/CNETTV

Week 9- Apps

There is a word that has emerged into today's vocabulary that everyone in our society knows, whether they know what it actually means or not. That word is "app".  We are bombarded on a daily basis with companies and products promoting that "there's an app for that". When Apple coined that phrase a couple of years ago I don't think anyone foresaw just how imbedded in our society it would become.
An app, short for application, is a software package or program that does something. It could be something small like a timer, or something big like a health tracker/calorie counter, or it could simply allow you to twist the pictures you take of people into funny shapes. Apps have grown along with smartphones and are found on most portable devices such as tablets as well. Apps are wide spread and cover the gamut of interests great and small. Businesses have capitalized on this by saturating the market with free or inexpensive apps that constantly bombard the consumer with ads promoting their products. Many corporations have entire IT departments working to develop apps for banking, entertainment, product integration and more.
While the usefulness of apps can't be denied, the majority are time wasters.  New, seemingly addictive games are constantly trending with the public and the prevalence of smartphones means that the distractions go with you everywhere. Companies no longer can just monitor or block traffic to known distracting sites on employee computers, they have to contend with John playing Candy Crush Saga in the bathroom. While company issued smartphones can be outfitted with apps to monitor or block other distracting apps, this doesn't help with personal devices.


Austin, Kelly. (2014, February 5). Smartphones Distracting Employees from Office Tasks. MobileSpy. Retrieved from http://www.mobile-spy.com/blog/smartphones-distracting-employees-in-office/

Smartphones Distracting Employees From Office Tasks - See more at: http://www.mobile-spy.com/blog/smartphones-distracting-employees-in-office/#sthash.32YAZFPq.dpuf

Smartphones Distracting Employees From Office Tasks - See more at: http://www.mobile-spy.com/blog/smartphones-distracting-employees-in-office/#sthash.32YAZFPq.dpuf

Smartphones Distracting Employees From Office Tasks - See more at: http://www.mobile-spy.com/blog/smartphones-distracting-employees-in-office/#sthash.32YAZFPq.dpuf

Week 8- Crowdfunding

A few years ago I started hearing about this new site called Kickstarter. I was told that people would put ideas, projects, most anything up there and if you liked the idea you could essentially pre-purchase whatever they were selling and support the idea. This blew my mind. Anyone that had ever thought, "If I just had the money, I bet I could make that and sell millions!" could now go online and try to convince the internet how awesome their idea really was.
Since I backed my first project in 2012 crowdfunding has exploded across the internet. Multiple sites have sprung up catering to different types of projects and crowdfunding has become a multi-billion dollar phenomenon. Everything from art, music, technology, games, and movies can now be supported by the people who want to enjoy them. We aren't tied to a corporate entity somewhere telling us what we should or should not get to enjoy.
Since 2012, I have backed 19 projects. I like to think that I have helped to bring some pretty amazing things to the marketplace through my support (funding and social marketing), and I look forward to seeing what projects pop up next.


Barnett, Chance. (2013, May 8) Top 10 Crowdfunding Sites for Fundraising. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/chancebarnett/2013/05/08/top-10-crowdfunding-sites-for-fundraising/

Week 7 - Phoning it in, in 2014

As anyone that has worked in a business environment knows, one of the most dreaded aspects is the "never-ending meeting." That is not to say that all meetings are bad, but they have a tendency to either drag on too long or degenerate into a chaotic mess of blame and complain. Add to that the fact that time spent in a meeting is time that could be spent actually doing something, and a lot of people dread and resent them. Enter the teleconference. For years the business professional on the go has had the option of the conference call. They would dial into the meeting and participate via phone (now cell phone) and they could be anywhere. Over the years this has evolved to cell phones and a large push was made to start incorporating video.
Today, what was once a grainy and static filled mess with bad audio, has become a mobile HD experience used by some of the biggest companies in the world (Collett, 2014). Advances in technology have put videoconferencing in the palm of our hands via smartphones and laptops are almost guaranteed to have a built in web camera. This allows global communication such that it doesn't matter where a person is they can participate in important meetings.
It also has opened up a new market for speakers and experts to be hired for events at a largely discounted cost. There are a growing number of authors, experts, speakers, and consultants that are willing to Skype or Face Time into a meeting for little or nothing. With no travel costs and minimal time consumption many companies are turning to this as an option and websites, such as Zintro, are gathering these experts under one site. This has spread to classrooms, community groups, we even have looked at inviting a children's author to Skype in at the library for a Q&A session.
The point is, with the capability of telepresence on a global scale there is no end to how much more interesting and productive those boring old meeting can become. Fore example, my brother, a mid-high level executive at a prominent worldwide bank, recently had a teleconference that consisted of around 25 people where only 10 of those individuals were in the same board room. The rest were scattered around the globe and this was business as usual.


Pradhan, Nitin. (2014, January 23). Better Videoconferencing in the Cloud. InformationWeek.  Retrieved from http://www.informationweek.com/government/cloud-computing/better-videoconferencing-in-the-cloud/d/d-id/1113504

Collett, Stacy. (2014, January 20). Facebook CIO Supports Video Calls to Preserve Employee Culture. CIO. Retrieved from http://www.cio.com/article/746946/Facebook_CIO_Supports_Video_Calls_to_Preserve_Employee_Culture#undefined