Congratulations to Jon for completing the SUBARU IRONMAN CHALLENGE in Penticton, BC today!!!
Jon battled 32+ degree heat to complete the grueling IRONMAN triathlon along side his brother-in-law Pat. It was a family affair and a point of pure pride for the Holt’s, the Teucher’s and everyone here at E-By Design Technologies. Congratulations to you both.
Join us and raise a glass to Jon for having the strength of an Ironman and integrity to match!
Cheers,
Eunice
I recently had the privilege of speaking at a Teleforum for CanWIT (Canadian Women in Technology).
The first speaker, Ms. Shelley Hessian, presented us with the statistics of exactly where we stand with regards to representation in this industry. The truth is we are under represented in the field and that under representation gets more and more significant as you move up the career ranks. It is shockingly low when comparing the numbers of start up founders and C-Level positions held by women versus those held by men.
The third speaker, Chadia Moghrabi, enlightened us on the challenges and statistics of positions and income levels of females in Academia. Similarly the differences in salary and opportunities for women in technology and Academia in general are significant. As women it is often our careers that suffer in the face of heavy obligations outside of our careers.
These challenges are real, significant and surmountable. I have been extremely fortunate to have bucked the trends outlined by my fellow speakers. I graduated from a high tech college, I climbed the career ladder to the directorship level and I started my own tech firm.
The most significant statement I would advise women to take from the forum was a question from Ms. Simpson-McKay.
The question was: “Eunice, Did you have a mentor ?”
The answer is that I have had a mentor throughout my entire career, someone that advised me, helped me navigate my career for the sake of my success. In the coming posts I will write about my mentors, how they became my mentors and how they allowed me to be as strong and committed in this career as I have been.
So I have a question for you. Are you a women in technology, do you have a mentor?
E-By Design Technologies is pleased to announce that we’ve just closed an agreement with the National Research Council’s Industry Research Assistance Program to develop a prototype of a new technology we’re very excited about. If you’re interested in hearing more about the prototype or getting involved, please contact us here: irap@e-bydesign.ca
So I sat down to write out my GTD 50k goals and work my way into the next quarter. And its hard. Let me rephrase that … it’s haaaaaaaaaaaaard. The question is why? I know what’s important to me, I know what I want to accomplish, don’t I? Why is it so ever-loving hard to sit down and write out those goals? More…
Eunice has accepted a Senior Project manager position with ZedIT Solutions to round out her ERP experience with SAP. And she gets to spend the bulk of 2011 “home” in beautiful St. John’s Newfoundland.
Every day we gather our resources and our connections to make the world a better, busier or bulkier place. Have you ever thought about how you are buying your services and spending your favors?
The best piece of advice I can give is to never spend your goodwill where you can spend your good dollars. Goodwill is a hard won trophy built with an investment of character and integrity. You earn it by showing yourself as honorable, reliable and worthy of a friendship at least and a partnership at best. With goodwill a partner can share it with others and it never diminishes. Like ideas, goodwill never separates, it duplicates, creating more and more goodwill.
Dollars on the other hand can be earned in many ways far more easily. They can be replaced if lost and simple to find if needed. Dollars take little effort and can be managed by hired guns or summer students. They are undiscriminating, and unfettered by accountabilities and responsibilities. Dollars can be stolen or gambled and, truly, you cannot take them with you when you go…to a new job or a new relationship.
So when you think to yourself “How can I save money and get this done” make sure you are still spending money not goodwill. If you find you are spending goodwill, make sure you can afford it.
Because fall in the Valley is absolutely beautiful we thought we would share…here’s the view from the staff room.
Phew! It has been two months of sorting, organizing, packing, planning, directing, unpacking, and reorganizing. We are finally here.
On October 9th we moved from 3196 Capstan Cres to 4003 – 1178 Heffley Cres and what a beautiful move it is. We still over look the scenic North Shore. The west side of the office offers a view straight out through the inlet and Lion’s Gate bridge. On the south a beautiful view of Mount Baker.
If you find yourself in the neighborhood stop by E-By Design Tech in the Obelisk building, the tallest building in Coquitlam (I’m told).
While its not hot in the mainstream media, there’s been a great deal of talk lately in financial circles about Basel III. There’s a great review of the what Basel III is over at BankSimple, but the gist of the changes to the world’s banks is this:
The question I have is, so what? Credit Unions in this country have been doing that and better for years.
….I do not think it means what you think it means. - Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
There are many words like this in the technology industry but today’s word is Integrate. We hear it often, we are building software that must integrate into our back office. We are integrating our social media into our financials and CRM and so forth.
Software Systems Integration: the process by which smaller units of software are combined together to form a larger system of software – sometimes a very large software system – to solve design problems. – Wikipedia
Integration of units of software that are not small or do not resemble each other is a little more tricky. When you purchase a system that you would like to complement an existing system the likelihood of integration is rather slim. There’s a good chance the new system was not built when the old system was built. Although the technology names are similar the technology is very different. C++ is not the same animal and C#. Oracle 7 is a fundamentally different than Oracle 11i and if you’ve ever upgraded Peoplesoft to Peoplesoft you completely understand why its called magic (or miracle, depending on your faith).
When you are “joining” two products produced by different organizations from different technology eras(1) integration is a term often used but as conceivable as having a pet dinosaur in modern day Alberta. The actual event that happens is mapping, an application programming interface is built that is multilingual and adaptable to all eras that allows each system to live while communicating through time.
It is this type of “joining” the software industry refers to in design diagrams as “the Magic Happens Here”(2)
1 Technology Era: Period of time spanning 24 to 48 months.
2 Magic Decoder Ring Forging. ”One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. ” – The Lord of the Rings
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