However, there was one man who could present and held the audience captivated.  He was Steve Jobs. During his keynote speeches, he managed to get the audience hanging on to his every word and anticipating that “one more thing” that would leave everyone in awe.  It helped that he had great products to present, but in addition, he used visuals as one of the most important tool of his presentation.  He used minimal words (and numbers) written using a giant font. He used graphical icons to represent the current topic. He used animation for impact. Very concise and to the point.

So why doesn’t everyone follow Steve’s presentation methods?  Perhaps it’s because of the old thinking: “More is good”. The more stuff written down, the more credible and complete it gets. Unfortunately, these days, people are busy and have a short attention span. They don’t want to be held up in a long winded presentation.

The best ways to present effective visuals:

• Be simple
• Use graphics, icons, and symbols to reinforce or communicate a concept
• Use key words, not full sentences
• Contain only one concept per slide or page
• Contain only three to six ideas on each flip chart sheet
• Use color where possible, but not excessively

Steve Jobs was known to obsess over design.  He was also obsessed with simplicity.  It showed in his quality presentations. One can learn a great deal from his obsessions. It would make sitting in presentations a much more pleasant experience.

Post from: Building IT

Quality Visual Presentation

Customers are very fickle when checking out a company’s web site.  Unless they’re desperate, a person browsing a site tend to go quickly from one page to another.  Their attention span is short.  Their time is valuable.  They don’t want to spend too much time waiting for a web page to load.

Companies have spent a substantial amount of money to improve page loading times.  Improvements include upgrading internet connectivity, buying faster computers, reducing web applications RAM usage footprint, or investing on a content delivery network.

What other important reasons to improve web performance?

• Increase in traffic due to natural business growth, or advertising campaigns.
• Snappy response times are required when using the latest web browser tools, such as AJAX.
• Google is planning to rank web pages by their load times.
• Increase use of videos using embedded Flash, and future HTML5.

There is a cheaper way to improve web site performance: Optimize Content.  It means reducing the use of heavy graphics, Flash files, or client side Javascripts.  It also means reducing HTML and CSS file sizes.  It may seem contradictory, but ultimately, content dictates page loading times and can improve the web browsing experience.

Post from: Building IT

The Importance of Page Loading Time

Rock Star:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqLPHrCQr2I

Parties:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddZo9GEAUrg

Team Players:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6nOlgNJfHo

Co-workers:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWd_yG_a-CQ

Perks:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=36d7jLn0pQY

Jokes:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0FULHGwPkw

Post from: Building IT

Fun Intel Ads

IT is certainly the first (and best) place to start for going green.  The savings are easily measurable and the latest technology allows the reduction in expense.

Shared Services

This model works best when a company has divisions around the globe.  A centralized data center, with excellent resources, needs to be chosen to handle the IT needs of the regional offices.   The consolidation includes servers and experienced IT teams.  With one data center, IT will save money by cutting the expenses of maintaining multiple sites.

Professional Open Source

Much of the open source products out there are excellent.  The support of the community made them a valuable source of technology.  The cost of open source software is free to begin with, so comparatively, building a professional version of it will be much less than a proprietary one.  The value in professional open source is in the tech support, which is the main reason a company purchases an Enterprise product.

Virtualization

With increasing CPU power, and decreasing prices for memory and hard drives, building a powerful server is easy and affordable.  Hardware capabilities have now outpaced the software requirements.  Modern operating systems are now able to “virtualize“, or carve out sub-sections, within the same hardware, to multiple software applications.  In a data center environment, the reduction in server hardware will be apparent by cutting power, rack space, and licensing requirements.

SaaS

Software as a Service (SaaS) is valuable when IT resource is severely limited.  One example is outsourcing a company that does e-mail newsletters.  For a company to run an in-house mail server, it will require a lot of resources.  Running bulk mailing lists through it will burden the infrastructure even more, possibly running the risk of an outage.  Outsourcing the software will also off-load the hardware, as well as the man power to maintain it.

The real benefits are to cut costs, reduce duplications, and streamline processes.    These should be standard operating procedure for every company.  Whether or not these steps are considered “green” is a matter of opinion, but everyone needs a renewed purpose to refocus on saving money.  It’s especially relevant in this slumping economy.  Going green is a great idea – only if it’s implemented efficiently, without much bureaucracy, paperwork, and politics.

Post from: Building IT

Green IT

American IT workers are specialized and skilled workers.  They’re smart and creative people.  They’re also hard working.  They are extremely loyal if the companies treat them right.

But is all that worth sacrificing for the sake of cutting expenses?

Let’s take an example an offshore IT worker being paid $20/hour.  He does a good job.  Problem is, he’s now a hot commodity, so he won’t work for less anymore.  He’ll move on to the highest bidder.

So, let’s hire another offshore IT worker being paid $20/hour.  Now, the company has to waste time while he’s learning the ropes (or “ramping up”).  It’ll cost additional money in delayed projects, missed deadlines, high stress, and low morale.  Does he even have the same quality as the first one?

If yes, then we’re back to the guy looking for greener pastures.

If no, then we’re in a sink hole.  A company then needs to hire another candidate (or two) to help complete  the project.

Offshore turnover rate for IT workers is bad.  It also applies to non-IT workers.

Some companies have thought about offshoring to other countries with “emerging” skilled workers, such as China and Vietnam.  But those places are not any better, since China and Vietnam lack in communication skills, mainly with English language.

They’re also not up-to-date with technology due to export controls and lack of relevant education.  They’re trying to catch up with educating recent graduates with emerging technologies.  But it might be too late.  The market is being flooded with new graduates in the same field.  Also, now the job market in a slump due to the worldwide recession.

So what’s the best move now?

Stay home. In-source.  On-shore.

Nowadays, a lot of people are out of work, and they include skilled IT workers.  This is a great time to hire them at a competitive rate — possibly even cut rate!  Local IT workers are willing to work, and ready for the long term commitment.   Companies just need to step up and keep America working again!

Post from: Building IT

IT Outsourcing Is a Bad Move

I maintained marketing web sites for more than 11 years. I learned the process a company must do to succeed in marketing their product on the Internet. Twitter’s approach to product marketing is fundamentally similar to a web site promotion, with a few unique differences:

Preparation

1. Have management, or executive level approval. It will serve as an insurance, or a due dilligence, if you will, in case something goes wrong and the finger-pointing starts.
2. Form a social media committee. Choose the right people to handle Twitter updates. If possible, choose folks who understand Internet Social Media.
3. Set an engagement policy. Everyone’s must be clear on what information (and when) to share with the public.
4. Have direct lifeline to the support teams, both technical and business, to escalate difficult questions. These questions need not be handled on Twitter, but can be taken offline via phone, or e-mail.

Execution

1. Create a professional looking Twitter profile. Update the Twitter profile’s background picture to include company logos, or brand images.
2. Twitter updates (or tweets) must contain only useful information. Tweets must have value. A good example is OC Register’s @ocreggie. They hand picked the articles posted on Twitter. The human attention to detail is important.
3. Start slow, and not rush into getting thousands of followers right away. Followers will come when they see the company’s updates are important to them.

The above are steps in the right direction for a business to adopt Twitter as its new communication and customer service tool. There are other suggestions on how companies can succeed with Twitter. There are also questions to ask if Twitter is right for corporations.  Either way, when business takes Twitter seriously, it will reap the benefits, and work out the disadvantages. As long as it focuses on providing creative and valuable information, using Twitter is going to feel natural and easy.

Post from: Building IT

Business Use for Twitter