Sprint Nextel promises “a secure wireless channel” with broadband communication first quarter of next year.  WiMAX is here and Wayne Ward, vice president of Sprint’s emerging solutions unit, said the wireless provider is testing a technology to deliver the quality of service broadcasters require.  Ward described a secure transmission over a wireless and public network.

Where would the WiMAX standard with secure channels place microwave and satellite transmission of live video from the field?  Wireless technology remains far behind the quality microwave or satellites provide. TVNewsCheck reports Fred Fourcher, chief executive of Bitcentral described the capacity of wireless broadband transmission as “a constant juggling between how much time you have and how much quality you can submit."  Speed and quality of transmission of standard and high definition video is still best handled by microwave and satellite.

When expense and acceptance of lesser classes of transmission enter the decision process WiMAX would become a feasible method to send video from the field for broadcast news operations.  TVNewsCheck applauds KIFI TV in Idaho Falls, Idaho as pioneering WiMAX in television news coverage by using the technology along with two microwave trucks. 

In the same article Streambox project manager Benjamin Larson said “a dedicated line is essential for suitable transmission” with WiMAX.  Streambox provides compression technology for KIFI.  More is required to compete with microwave and satellite.  Broadcasters demand a quality of service beyond the value cell phone users accept from high speed broadband. 

News production uses a number of technologies to deliver video and audio to an audience.  Some methods are best and some are just good enough.  The transmission path chosen depends on immediate advantages specific technology offers in speed and cost compared to quality.  Cost, timeliness and quality make WiMAX Sprint is expected to deliver in the next four months one the three best choices to be weighed in transmission decisions.

Next week Broadcast Newsroom Computing offers SMART goals as a success factor in getting the job done.

James Rowe

Rowe and Company, LLC

Hi Everyone!

Sorry I have been out of touch for a few months.  I put 1,000% effort into saving my client from drowning.   She is severely in debt and her expenses were more than $20K of her revenues per month.   I was able to cut her expenses more than $15K a month by reviewing her financials and going over each and every bill with a fine tooth comb to cut corners whenever possible.  Also, taking a step back and reviewing the strategy.  Sometimes doing things just because that’s how they have always been done is not a good strategy.  :)  

I am looking for other opportunities to help companies grow and operate more efficiently.  Who do you know either in the United States or Australia?  Yes, I am targeting work in Australia to obtain International experience for 2-3 years or longer if the stars line up.  There are other countries I would consider if you know of opportunities.  

I still have my NASA client in Maryland at the Goddard Space Center overseeing a few machine shops for the James Webb Space Telescope project.   I have several other opportunities I am contemplating as well.  I would like to partner with other consulting firms so I am not going it alone, or take on some projects where I am able to work in an office with a team and support the growth of the company.   My gifts are helping companies operate more efficiently, manage their resources and increase profits and productivity.  Most of you know that the industries I have experience in are very diverse.  They range from Telecommunications / Technology, Automotive, Aerospace, Entertainment / Media and Tourism.

In an effort to provide value to all of you in my network here is a link to a really insightful article.  Enjoy!!!!!!!!   It’s worth reading.

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/Strategys_strategist_An_interview_with_Richard_Rumelt_2039

This article confirmed a lot of what I have experienced myself.  Moderately diversified companies or niche companies do appear to be more successful.  I have also know plenty of entrepreneurs who were NOT successful until they focused on that ONE THING they did best and stopped trying to launch 10 projects at once.  Entrepreneurs don’t realize that they must first focus on ONE THING and do it well before they can celebrate success and diversify in other projects.   They just get all excited and the next thing you know they are all over the map and not “doing” anything.

It’s interesting to read Richard’s views. I could not agree more with his position about strategy.

I was talking to an associate recently and he said that his client has 1,100 strategic goals for next year.  That’s insane!!!!  No one can manage that type of list.  Most companies can bucket their strategic goals to less than 50, or even less than 30.  He said they can’t get below 1,000.  

I had researched Level 3 Communications in depth because I thought I could help them get back to “good”.  They keep moving the chairs around on the Titanic.  They have invested billions in fiber and most is still dark.  Richard alludes to the fact that an over powered computer is not worth more than the user can use.  Level 3 will NEVER recoup on their investment if they don’t find a customer use for all the fiber they own and are not using.

I also liked the concept of “value denials”.  It’s true that every new product or invention or new service will create an opportunity for improvement or a need for another product, service or invention.  You just have to be clever enough to see it before the next great mind.  

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving and have a wonderful Holiday Season.

Sincerely,
Gail

Sitting in an Entrepreneur’s group meeting at accountants Price Bailey on behalf of a client, the conversation (nicely facilitated by Nick Mayhew) turned to the concept of  ”lean”, which took me back to the operations management module on the MBA. While at first sight many of the process improvements that have led to successful improvements in manufacturing may not seem applicable to the world of professional services, if we scratch beneath the surface, there is much to ponder.

A good starting point is perhaps that one of the key drivers for operational improvement in manufacturing organisations was the need to do “more for less” ie improve output (quality, volume etc) in return for less (revenue, margin etc). The same dilemma is now facing law firms in the world of deregulation and global competition. One of the ways law firms can compete more successfully in this increasingly competitive market, is to improve their “operational excellence” (to borrow a phrase from the Value Disciplines management model). In my experience, when law firms thinking about improving operations, the objective is often just to strip out cost. Managing cost is of course critical (particularly in the current economic climate), but it is far from the only aspect of operational excellence.

Operational excellence: not just for widgets

One other key improvement area is looking at the process of actually providing legal advice, and seeing how it can be improved. I think the historic hourly rate pricing structure for legal services has traditionally provided a reason not to focus on improving the process (if the client will pay for the inefficiency, why remove it?). Now pressure is forcing firms to adopt new pricing models, which is in turn squeezing margin. If firms can make their processes more repeatable, more efficient and performed using the right level of resource each time, I believe they have the opportunity to create a more consistent, higher quality product, at a lower cost. Which is where they need to be right now (more for less).

If we look at some of the legal sectors that have faced competition from outside the profession earlier (conveyancing, insurance claims etc), there are examples of this type of process improvement (which of course may include a technology component). Some may protest that high end work is very different (it is), but while the same degree of commoditisation might not follow so quickly, I believe it is very unwise to believe the process for providing that advice cannot be improved. Ignore operational improvements at your peril, embrace them and see what is possible.

Some pics from Parteen Villa Weir, O’Briensbridge, Montpelier, Castleconnell, Annacotty and Plassey here.

We often tell our customers we don’t sell software.   And in fact we don’t.  We sell, or rather we lease, a service.  Compliantia is a hosted and fully managed web-based service like salesforce.com or Google Apps.  This new computing paradigm is aptly named “Software As as Service” (SaaS) and is rapidly gaining grounds in the enterprise.  But what exactly are the benefits of using a service?

1. We manage the infrastructure.  With Compliantia, there is no server to procure and maintain,  no software to download, no patches.  The software is web-based, entirely managed by us (on a worldwide secure computing cloud infrastructure) and always up to date.   This creates significant savings for strained IT departments.  It also allows us to cut our time to market from weeks and months to just days.

2. No expensive software license to purchase, install and maintain.   Commercial grade software is, as a general rule, very expensive to procure and maintain.  Customers are expected to pay for a software license ($100,000 or more),  consulting cycles for integration ($1,500 per diem for weeks/months of consulting work) and again for a maintenance contract ($50,000 a year or more) for the life of the product.  A service is billed differently.  No upfront costs, no software license.  A nominal fee for integration (typically a fraction of a software project’s cost of integration) and a monthly, “all in” service charge.

3. We make low-risk pilots possible.  Billing our offering as a service allows our customers to effectively “try before they buy”, and do this for a nominal cost.  This is again a departure from the software norm.  A typical software vendor needs to convince you his/her software is going to transform your operations, has enormous ROI and negligible costs.  Vendors to this because they expect you to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars “upfront”.  We don’t. In fact we encourage customers to run pilots, get comfortable with the product on a small set of stores, configure it to their needs and determine ROI on their accord.    This means our service needs to impress and demonstrate value in actual usage, not just in the boardroom.  Demo-ware be gone, try before you buy.

In summary, Compliantia’s service model is low-risk and low cost and allows our customers to focus on what they do best: running their business.   Thanks for reading.

Statement from ESB regarding River Shannon as at 9:20am, Thursday 26th November 2009

Water levels rose again last night in Lough Derg and are at a record high. As a result, discharge levels must be increased today at Parteen Weir. ESB will be increasing the discharge incrementally over the morning by up to 8% on the existing flow. The development is expected to cause increased flood levels downstream of Parteen Weir by an estimated three inches over the current level. A slight fall in water levels was detected downstream this morning in a number of locations. [...]

Three years ago I was at a TAG event listening to one of the more accomplished software CEOs talk about sales. Towards the end of the presentation, he made a statement that has stuck with me to today: build your sales goals for the following year from the bottom up based on your existing sales reps productivity in the current year. If your reps aren’t making quota now, don’t expect them to make quota next year without some serious overhaul. If you need to make a bigger number, don’t have good sales reps in your recruiting pipeline, and have a six month ramp up time before a rep is productive, include that in the model.

As much as technology companies are driven by cool, ground-breaking products, it really comes down to sales and revenues. My advice for entrepreneurs is to only do bottom-up sales forecasts as part of their planning process.

We have the opportunity to interview Captain David Shennan, Harbour Master of Port of Melbourne Corporation as he talks about the significance role that Harbour Masters play in the daily operations of ports, current challenges for Harbour Masters, the theme for IHMA Congress 2010 and the main message he hopes to come out of next year’s congress.

Website: http://www.globalportoperations.com
Contact: +61 2 9080 4307

We have the opportunity to talk to Alan Birchmore of Fremantle Ports and Captain Eric Atkinson, Vice President of the International Harbour Masters Association, in regards to the upcoming International Harbour Masters Congress 2010 that will be held in Perth in 2010; its main focus, its benefits being some of the topics discussed.

Website: http://www.globalportoperations.com
Contact: +61 2 9080 4307

By me
All photos me too, copyrighted as usual

Looking back through all the articles I’ve posted here, I saw I’d made quite a few boastful promises about topics that in the end never materialized . So, still waiting for something to happen here in the present, I’ve decided to clear my topic backlog, starting of with my first true air-to-air photo experience – banner towing .

1. Fly-by-wire

While banner towing in flight seems – and is – a pretty straightforward affair, down on the ground, getting the thing airborne, is a different story altogether. Despite popular myth, taking off with the banner attached causes more problems than it solves, particularly on uneven grass runways such as at Lučko – where it would promptly be torn off and shredded, not to mention all the adverse effects it would cause for the unlucky towplane.

To get around this problem, somebody somewhere at some point had borrowed a WW2 method – why not snag the banner inflight? To quote Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear, “How hard can it be?” . The idea is that the banner’s tow cable is suspended between two poles at some height above ground, usually about 2-3 meters. The towplane would then, trailing a hook on another cable, come down low and snag the banner, lifting it off the ground as it climbs away. Those of you who have seen images of Dakotas picking up troop transport gliders during WW2 will immediately see the similarities.

A visual illustration as 9A-DMJ goes down for a snag. Note also the hook cable attachment assembly at the base of the tail. Sorry for poor quality, but for the life of me I can't find the original, so I had to take this one of my Facebook photo gallery

9A-DDD going down for the pickup. The approach is usually flown at about 70 knots and 10 degrees of flaps in the Skyhawk. The speed has to kept at around that figure - any faster and the sudden drag and inertia of the banner will stress the airframe unnecessarily, while any slower means that when the banner yank does come, it can pull the aircraft very near the stall (with the added complication of the engine run-up delay at low throttle settings)

During taxi and takeoff, the hook end of the cable is carried in the cabin by the second crew member. Once airborne, the hook is lowered into the airstream until all the slack in the cable is picked up

A frontal view on a recent mission

Side view. Note the reinforced cable mid-section that acts as a sort of bungee to absorb some of the forces and inertia during pickup

A nice and clean hook up. Sometimes the hook and banner cables can tangle up, with the banner towed not by the hook, but by the tangled cables. This can be quite problematic if the knot untangles in flight - the banner then freely falling away - the reason for which there is always a "ground spotter" with a radio station observing the pickup. If the cables tangle up, the SOP is to jettison the entire thing and start over

Banner snagging being pretty much a visual art, it is not uncommon to miss the banner cable altogether (by anything from inches to meters). In this case a go-around is executed for another attempt

After a successful snag and climb away, the rest of the flight becomes routine – with careful monitoring of the engine temperature gauges that is. Despite most banners weighing not more than 20-ish kilograms altogether, their large surface area creates a lot of drag. This necessitates a higher throttle setting and if not flying fast enough for sufficient engine cooling, it’s not really that difficult to overtemp the engine.

With the mission completed, the banner is then dropped from the aircraft during a slow, low pass. The release itself depends on the hook and tow mechanism, but in our case the whole cable – all the way from the attachment hook below the tail – is jettisoned, to be untangled and separated on the ground. This leaves the aircraft free to perform a normal, unencumbured landing.

Note that the entire cable is released, with only the fixed tail hook remaining in place. For many pilots, hitting an exact bull's eye with the cable is almost a sport

2. A skiing competition, a casino and some fog

While all of the above is fine and dandy, back in the winter of 2008 my aeroclub had gotten a bit ambitious . The mission was to tow the largest banner ever towed in Croatia, measuring 5 x 30-something meters. Doesn’t sound like much the first time you hear it, but in effect that’s a 150 square meter airbrake – more than three times the surface area of my apartment!

The venue was the Snow Queen skiing competition held on the northern slopes of the Medvednica mountain between 15. and 17. February 2008. And the customer – a large casino near Šentilj, on the border between Slovenia and Austria. Connection – I see none, but it didn’t matter since it got us up in the air with no questions asked .

Fortunately for our towplane, the temperatures had plummeted during the weekend, down to around -15 Centigrade at the altitude at which we had expected to do our run. (round 2,000 ft) With such a draggy mass behind it, and the requirement to fly at 70-75 knots so people on the ground could actually read what was being towed, engine cooling was a serious issue, so the lower the outside temp, the better.

Now, the original plan was to do a run on the 15th, with DMJ acting as the towplane and DMM – with me on board – acting as the photo ship to immortalize the whole event . However, even before leaving the ground we had run into a small problem…

Going up! As you can see, the weather was, for our intents and purposes, crap. It was still okay here in the open, but north of Medvednica - where the wind kept blowing moisture up the slope - it was downright awful

Rounding Medvednica from the west near Zaprešić. As you can see, the weather was steadily deteriorating, but undaunted we went ahead to see what's what

In an ironic twist, our 100 HP Cessna 150 turned out to be faster than the 210 HP Reims Rocket, so we had to orbit around a bit to let DMJ gain some distance before our photo run

Lining up for another run, showing just how large that banner actually was . While weighing just under 20 kilograms, its sheer area caused so much drag that DMJ - lightened, with half-full tanks and one person on board - needed to be run at near maximum continuous power

Closeup of DMJ while skirting the northern slopes of Medvednica. The visibility was still good compared to what we hit a few minutes later...

Pretty soon however we ran into problem #2. The ski track which we were supposed to fly over – a track very popular with local skiers – is quite narrow and tucked away between two mountain crests. To follow it, we’d have to fly up the through, climbing continuously, in formation and poor visibility, with one aircraft that was underpowered and another that was barely hauling itself as it was. Realizing conclusively that it would all end in a pretty big accident, we turned round and scurried back toward Zagreb, to try and at least save some of the mission there.

Following one of the city's fast peripheral roads, with visibility mercifully increasing

Keeping low above town. Though the minimum altitude for flyovers is 2,000 ft - about 1,600 AGL - during banner-towing missions this can be lowered by approval. We may have taken that a bit too seriously...

A wide view of the historic city center, with the Cathedral and old Kaptol fortifications easily identifiable

So far so good as far as the towing was concerned, but my photo session was turning into a bit of a mess. The poor visibility and light, coupled with the turbulent downdraft from the mountain, meant I couldn’t really do much with my unstabilized telephoto lens, so to conserve fuel, we turned for home, leaving DMJ to fly two more short runs above town.

3. Cold, cold, cold!

While the results of the first run were mildly disappointing to say the least, the designated god of aviation – Murphy – allowed us to make it all up on the 17th, when the weather finally cleared. Beautifully clear skies, still air, visibility one can only hope for and an even lower temperature were just too good to pass up, so we  saddled up and full of optimism decided to give it another shot…

A spirited low-level departure above the field to kick off an excellent mission!

Now this is more like it! Shot with the window open - and -17 C outside - with a wide angle to give an impression of size and distance

What a beautiful setting for a photo shoot! Looking north above the northern foothills of Medvednica, with the track right behind us

Because the shoot was going so well, Mr. Murphy decided to intervene again and as we neared the ski track, our coordination sort of broke down . The problem was that to get good shots, we had to fly to the left, above and somewhat in front of DMJ. This meant that my photopilot couldn’t see DMJ because I was in the way, DMJ couldn’t see us because it’s wing was in the way, and the need to maneuver around hills and keep station above the track meant that our graceful aerial ballet quickly degenerated into a left-footed cha-cha-cha as we tried to keep our little formation together.

My favorite shot of the day, just as DMJ is about to pass below us - without actually seeing us until we were right on top of it

A beautiful day, the throaty roar of the engine, and playing catch above the mountaintops. Can it get any better than this?

With my hands trembling and my skin cracked from the cold – -17 C at 70 knots in propwash without gloves, absolute genius on my part – and our mission completed (relatively, given there were few spectators out ), we set course for home. As before, DMJ went to do a circuit of the town, while we proceeded directly to Lučko, so I could catch a shot from the ground as well (I was having a photo field day).

Turning final for RWY 10 after one of my best photo experiences to date

DMJ inbound for release. The angle exaggerates the size of the banner, but it looks cool

Unfortunately, getting some “inside” photos from the towplane is a bit difficult and impractical – mostly because both crew are busy with other things… and there’s honestly not much to see; most of the time the banner itself is outside the the crew’s field of view, so it pretty much looks far better from the outside . I’m also hoping to get a good, systematic sequence of the pickup, but that will have to wait for some warmer weather…

Some photos here of Dromineer, Garrykennedy, Killaloe, Parteen Villa Weir, O’Briensbridge and Castleconnell.

Key performance indicators are tremendously important to the operations of a large retail organization.  They help measure and thus define “success”.   They set the goal and measure actual performance against it.

At Compliantia we believe KPI’s are so important, they shouldn’t be found strictly on a dashboard, isolated from the rest of the application.  They should be interwoven with the application, reinforcing the objectives, at the macro and the micro-level. We call this the ubiquitous KPI.

On the Compliantia platform you will find KPI’s in various places.  First on the dashboard (aggregated metrics) which is particularly important to executives.  You will also find them in reports in the form of trends and averages.  Lastly, you will find them at the visit level, illustrating the results achieved with the visit.

We believe success is measured in terms of high level objectives precisely measured and aggregated.  Success is measured at the organization level, the region, the manager, the store or the visit.  Ubiquitous KPI’s  help all levels of your organization measure their individual performance.

This month Faith, Hal, Katherine and Rob are joined by Tristam Coffin, CEO of Alternatives Federal Credit Union.  Here are the topics:

–Never ending Regulation Z update.
–Operational challenges facing credit unions in 2010.
–Reg E Overdraft Rules Effective 7/1/2010.
–What to do when you get an LUA?
–Big K Roundup (The “Robinhood” Foreclosure; Why do Banks Really Hate Credit Unions; www.findacreditunion.com;
Your Credit Union–There’s an app for that–maybe?)

The CIiCU hosts are:

Brian Witt
Hal Scoggins
Farleigh Wada Witt,
Attorneys at Law
121 SW Morrison Street, Suite 600
Portland, Oregon 97204
Telephone:
Fax: 503-228-1741
http://www.fwwlaw.com

Guy Messick
Katherine Weber
Messick & Weber P.C.
The Madison Building, 108 Chesley Drive
Media, Pennsylvania 19063-1712
Telephone:
Fax: 610-891-9008
http://www.cusolaw.com

Faith Anderson
American Airlines Credit Union
P.O. Box 619001
MD 2100
DFW Airport, TX
75261-9001

https://www.aacreditunion.org/default.asp

Robert Rutkowski
Shareholder
Weltman, Weinberg & Reis Co., L.P.A.
323 W. Lakeside Avenue, Suite 200
Cleveland, Ohio 44113
Telephone:
Fax: 216-739-5642
http://www.thatcreditunionblog.com
http://www.weltman.com

Subcribe to the show via iTunes Music Store: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=151785964&s=143441

I’m of the same opinion of The Globe and Mail article “Bonuses don’t mean better performance” where the author cites several examples in the real world as well as academic research of bonuses not improving output in non-manual labor roles. In my company, we don’t do bonuses, but rather we focus on above-average pay, a great work environment, and positive corporate culture. My line of thinking is that people automatically incorporate the bonus into their standard compensation, and don’t separate fixed from variable pay.

This strategy won’t work for everyone, but I encourage entrepreneurs to proactively decide on their desired type of corporate culture and compensation strategy, and not just blindly follow the plan from their previous employer.

I hate to admit it, but it’s a well known fact that some people arrive at high availability by frequently rebooting their servers. As a developer I always abhored this idea. Good software should be able to stay up for a long time.

At some point early in my 2 year tenure as CTO at Angel.com I could no longer fight the obvious: trying to keep the system up for long periods of time simply made us less reliable.

It was at lunch with a CIO friend of a local SAAS company thayt he shared his dirty little secret: “we restart our servers every night. That’s why we get a lot less alerts than you seem to be getting”.

If you think about it, though, this practice is harder than it seems. You need:

* your restarts to be mostly transparent to your users. This probably implies stateless and horizontal partitioning.
* an automated restart procedure. This probably implies a certain degree of script-based automation
* a person in charge of the restarts. This implies a staffed 24/7 rotation.

So all in all, for my money, not a bad attack vector after all, if your goal is to improve uptime, as you will get procedural improvements along the way and peacefully sleeping admins as a bonus.

This position is an Application Administrator to support operations within our client’s department. This position has a critical role in delivering our services to clients and ensuring successful ongoing operation of our applications and services. It services a highly interactive software development build/release process as well as a rich operational environment with many interrelated applications/database services. The candidate should be self-motivated, detail oriented, adaptable to change and must work well in a flexible team environment with developers, QA, operations staff, system administrators and managers.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Application and database support

• Provide on-going database administration in both back-end and front-end with application infrastructure support for our client’s administration systems, including the deployment of new applications.
• Review the physical design of existing databases for optimal database structures, database performance tuning, security, database backup/recovery strategy, implementing high-availability, and pro-active and reactive performance analysis, monitoring, troubleshooting and resolution of issues, capacity planning, monitoring data growth and system utilization, trend analysis and predicting future database resource requirements.
• Install web-base applications from ground up to full-ballooned implementation and support, including configuration at Unix/Linux/Windows system level, back-end integration with database, front-end integration with user-interface, final delivery to users to fulfill users’ requirement and on-going maintenance.
• Take the lead in ensuring that application and web services are configured and tuned according to application needs; provide troubleshooting as needed.
• Work with System Administrators to ensure test and production boxes conform to the software application configuration needs.
• Support the department-wide infrastructure application for database management, system monitoring and notification, job scheduling, deployment, provision and patching automation, application topology and service level management for campus-wide system performance.

Build/release activities

• Manage the build, tagging and release processes for a number of interdependent Java web applications and background processes in the QA and production environments. Ensure the build and release process is scalable and repeatable.
• Work with the development team to ensure efficient and understandable build procedures are adhered to and conform to a standard process for configuration and release management
• Develop and maintain tools that automate the building of software releases for an Agile-based development process. This is one of continuous integration, where the automated build process can be run many times a day if necessary.
• Work with and support the QA team to ensure automated test suites run as part of the continuous integration build process.

REQUIREMENT FOR SKILL AND COMPETENCIES:

• Expert hands-on with shell scripts, other scripting languages, preferably Perl, and tool automations
• Minimum 2 years database administration experience in Oracle and 3 years Application administration experience in Unix/Linux infrastructure environments is required.
• Hands-on experience of Oracle databases 10g for 24/7 database operations and tool automation in installation, configuration, backup/recovery, startup/shutdown, data refresh, and application integrations.
• Experience with OEM/Grid Control is highly desired.
• Knowledge and understanding of large scale ERP implementation and support like Oracle Financial and PeopleSoft systems.
• Expert knowledge of Apache and Tomcat, and other web/application servers such as JBoss
• Strong Unix and system administration skills with basic network and security knowledge
• Strong experience and ability in web applications deployment, configuration and integration from both OpenSource and Commercial based systems with or without sophisticated vendor support.
• Java/J2EE based programs
• Java/servlet/JSP based web applications
• Experience with Subversion, PVCS or similar source code repository
• Experience with Maven and familiarity with automated build processes
• Experience with the Agile development methodology and concepts of extreme programming and continuous integration
• Understanding of the layers/tiers of web applications and the communication protocol between the tiers with networking protocols (TCP/IP, HTTP, SSL, DNS, FTP, etc.)
• Ability to multi-task and work in a team environment is critical and should have excellent communication skills in both verbal and written forms.
• Ability to manage multiple competing priorities and work under pressure in high stress situations
• Excellent communication skills in both verbal and written
• Ability to work under pressure and to deliver results in a complex and dynamic operational environment

Qualifications

Minimum 5 years as an IT professional in build/release and application/database administration, plus one or more of the following areas: IT infrastructure operations 24/7, systems analysis and design, or application development.

Education
Bachelors Degree in Computer Science, Engineering or related field or equivalent experience

If you are interested, please send your resume to tsotelo@mindsource.com.

FOCUS: TECHNOLOGY AND OPERATIONS

BY: Lucio T. I. Maramba, Director of Response Tracking, Mercury Media Santa Monica

Is your direct response media agency running on all cylinders? 

Clients often evaluate potential media agencies based on their rates and relationships with media outlets, but what about the agencies whose departments directly support the media buying engine?  

In today’s competitive environment, your campaign has enough challenges to overcome without having to worry about the operational efficiency of your media partner.  The lowest media rates will not matter if the operational departments behind the scenes drop the ball on vendor setup, traffic and tracking.  Operational departments are vital in bridging the gap between media buying and accurate and actionable response tracking.  Clients should expect their media partner to have their operational departments working at peak efficiency to maximize the potential for success on all fronts.  Afterall, your campaign should be judged on its own merits, not on its technical glitches.

Transparency and competence on the operational side is vital to a smooth running campaign.  Your media agency should be utilizing a robust airdate management system which can ingest all the important data sources from your campaign and provide you with regular and accurate profitability reporting.  Efficient data handling can facilitate in-depth analytics which will lead to actionable items that fuel campaign optimization.  Your agency should take advantage of technologies, such as broadcast monitoring services, to accurately track media clearance.  For the tech savvy client, your agency should be able to provide custom data exports or online reporting based on your own database and audit needs. Technology has advanced and so should your expectations for your media partner.

In addition to a strong technology backbone, a well rounded  direct response agency should have solid relationships with vendors in addition to media buyers and station reps.  Your agency should also have highly trained industry veterans who work regularly and efficiently with their operational counterparts at call centers, web partners and on the client side.  These individuals are often the most qualified people to troubleshoot a technical problem and protect the integrity of your data.  This ensures that the costly investment of bringing your campaign to market doesn’t end up as an equally costly technical disaster. 

An agency’s ability to efficiently manage operations and distill insight from the constant tidal wave of incoming data is your most valuable tool in your evolving campaign strategy.  At Mercury Media, we believe clients should expect more from their media partner, and we deliver by providing our clients with the right technology and the right operational talent.  Your campaign deserves nothing less.

Lucio Maramba is Director of Response Tracking at Mercury Media in Santa Monica.  A veteran of the DR industry, Lucio has more than 12 years of experience in tracking, operations and vendor management.

Reach him at lm@mercurymedia.com

My previous blog entry on November 10, 2009 talked about how to get the most out of the information you get from the presentations at local, regional or national conferences.  But there’s another important source of information at these meetings that you ought to be tapping into: the conversations with other advisers.  If you can take full advantage of THAT source of information, your practice life can actually be supercharged.

The key is to be intentional about your goals before you attend the conference, and disciplined about how you approach conversations with strangers.  Another key is to recognize your own limitations.

Let’s start with the second part first.  Everybody–and I include me and every other human being on the planet–has blind spots in our thinking, and these blind spots tend to be the biggest obstacles to our success.  Everybody’s blind spots are different, but we all have them, and they become the bottlenecks in our business life.  You know you have a bottleneck when you realize that you have something sitting on your desk that you never get around to, or when you notice that you’ve been planning to move forward in some area and it never happens.

Before you leave for an industry meeting, sit down and do your best to identify the roadblock to your practice that you’d like to bulldoze away.  What hurdle can’t you seem to get past?  What’s missing in your practice?  Having everything working well except for one area–like marketing, or hiring staff, or creating job definitions, or getting work off your desk by delegating intelligently–means that your business is essentially crippled, like a really nice car with a powerful engine, new transmission, and only three tires.  Until you have that fourth tire, it won’t really matter how great you are at tuning the engine.

When you’ve identified what you want to make happen in your practice, your mission is to talk about this challenge, and ask questions about it, every time you sit down to lunch with a table full of other advisers, and every time you find yourself in a hallway conversation.  How did they overcome this challenge?  What did they do to install that fourth tire?  Chances are very high that none of these other people has your particular blind spot (though it is inevitable that they will have others), and so it will be easy for them to offer advice based on their experiences. 

They will tell you things you would never have thought of before, and once they talk it through with you, the solution will seem absurdly simple–even though, with your blind spot, it would never have occurred to you on your own.

Advisers who follow this process–and I know quite a few of them–tend to sail past the rocks in the river while their peers are stuck, and this ability to move beyond your limitations and challenges, each year, can make an enormous difference in your professional progress.  Like a lot of things, once you know how to do it, everything becomes a whole lot easier.

Bob Veres
Owner
Inside Information
San Diego, CA

Here is a page covering the effect of the floods of November 2009 on the old Limerick Navigation from Plassey downstream. (This page complements another about the upper reaches of the navigation.)

This page covers:

• Plassey, including the Black Bridge and the towing-path
• the regulating weir at Corbally
• the upper lock on the Park Canal, the lady’s hole and the 2.4m increase in depth above the lock
• the lower lock and its patented mechanism
• the current in the Abbey River and under Mathew Bridge.

1. Compliantia now available in French

The Compliantia interface is now available in French with more languages to follow.    Our customers may create Store Walk-through forms in up to 3 languages allowing a single form to reach different user populations, provinces or countries.

2. More scoring options

The brand Administrator may now check the “section penalty” check box next to each form item.  When checked, if the item is non-compliant during the visit, the section score is automatically set to zero regardless of other items.

3. Built-in visit approval process

A Compliantia visit has an implicit life-cycle.  A visit is first labelled “In progress” while the visit is taking place.   The status is automatically advanced to completed when the visit is completed.    Yet many organizations require the visit to be signed by the store owner or franchisee.   Compliantia’s built-in approval process effectively acts as an electronic signature.  Store owners can now easily and quickly approve a completed visit.  The Audit Trail function displays the complete history of the visit, date and user-stamped, from in-progress, to completed and approved.

Here is a page about the upper end of the old Limerick Navigation, with photos of the Ardnacrusha headrace, Castleconnell and its weir and quay, O’Briensbridge, Errina bridge and Doonass. There are photos taken over the last few days and older photos, showing normal (post-Ardnacrusha) levels at the same locations. The recent photos do at least give a hint of the levels that the pre-Ardnacrusha waterway coped with.

At time of writing, the ESB says it is going to release more water down the river to O’Briensbridge, Castleconnell and Limerick.

Photos of the lower stretches (Plassey, Corbally, the canal harbour and the Abbey River) will be posted later (floods permitting).

Overall Purpose of Role:

The successful candidate will have full responsibility for managing and supporting the current online marketing operational functions of the business. They will be in charge of the successful delivery of our online marketing projects, chief of which is new website features, promotions and content. The candidate will be measured on centralising and monitoring current online marketing projects, effectively managing and improving the core marketing operational function. They will work directly with our Product Development team, scoping the online marketing requirements, creating the marketing brief, coordinating the delivery team which includes Copy, Graphics, Web Development and IT, and ultimately managing and owning the successful and timely delivery of the brief. This role requires a high level of business acumen and project monitoring and management capability combined with a genuine interest in the online poker/gaming industry. The successful applicant will have experience of marketing roles within large on-line tech companies. It is imperative that the successful candidate is able to work within a dynamic, fast paced and leading-edge technological environment where consistent delivery of results is paramount to business success. The role involves both operational and strategic marketing challenges within an emerging business sector where our company is recognised as a leading and the fastest growing organisation.

Responsibilities/Accountabilities:

• Own and manage the delivery of online marketing projects
• Manage the relationship with key internal stake holders, including business unit managers and the online marketing department, to ensure the smooth running of the online marketing operations
• Detail the functional requirements and specifications in a clear and concise manner to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of human and technical resources
• Maintain and monitor schedules and deliver projects on time and to budget
• Identify potential problems in advance and put plans in place to mitigate risks
• Monitor online marketing trends and ensure company is well placed to take advantage of all opportunities that arise
• Ensure we are using the best of breed online marketing technology in the most cost effective manner possible
• Develop existing processes to maximise efficiency, improve return on investment, increase use of technology and to continuously improve the services provided by the online marketing operations function to the business
• Consult with software development resources in understanding technical requirements and challenges faced

Skills/Experience Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing or business/technical field
• 5+ years of experience as a Marketing Operation/Project Management experience
• Must be currently working a global organisation where the key corporate sites are available in multiple languages
• Self-motivated with ability to work independently
• Ability to manage staff effectively and maintain positive working relationships with a diverse group of internal and external personnel
• Experience of working with web, graphics, copywriting, business analysis, and software development teams
• Strong communication, organisational and project implementation skills
• Strong general internet experience
• Understanding of the localisation process
• Knowledge and love of the game of Poker
• Understanding of the online poker industry
• Common sense and trustworthiness
• Ability to adapt to changing priorities and to thrive in a fast-paced work environment
• Ability to work with other highly talented individuals
• Fluency in the English language