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?
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).
….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
A few weeks ago an old friend and I did the Grouse Grind. It is a grueling trail often referred to as Mother Nature’s stair master. We are not exactly models of fitness but we thought “How bad can it be”, then “Can we really do this”, to “What do you mean “halfway to one third”?”, but we rallied “I’m not going back down, I don’t care if we sleep here”. And so the story went in a comedic struggle for how far we could or would push ourselves. In the end, I promised myself a beer at the top and she celebrated the journey the entire trek up.
It became obvious early in our hike that she was going to be the champion for this endeavour. Yet even in her role as the spirit guide for this exercise in human torture there came a moment when she held a quiet doubt. She whispered it with a smile as she turned a particularly steep corner on the final third of the climb. ”Where’s the chicken door?” she said “There’s always a chicken door.”
In every haunted house there’s a door that takes you out of the dark into the daylight where you can see all the corners and what is around them. There comes a time in most every project when its sponsor says longingly “Where’s the chicken door?”.
By this point you have enough experience to appreciate the magnitude of the task, enough invested to make the journey personal and enough strength to laugh.
Jon just sent me an article, “Why Gandhi Hated Iodine”, and suggested that it felt a great deal like some of the things we face in our work. The old truths that hold long after the context they were created in has fallen away. These are often the most steadfast characteristic of an organization. In our work, uncovering the old truths and building new ones is part of each project we take on and the most difficult part.
Like modern day India, when we arrive we have new tools, techniques and stories from around the economic community that suggests some things work better than others. What we don’t have is the old truths, hard won stays of execution on past challenges. And so we see the new list of Job Titles including Culture Officers and Corporate Evangelist whose responsibility it is to protect the hard won truths in the new contexts of technology, policy and social norms.
But for us, we bring new truths and bristle against the old ones, half in misunderstanding and half in disbelief. Without the context of the culture and a true appreciation of how deep those old truths run we wrestle. Thrashing our way to organizational change, slowly, often painfully, until we align the old truths with the new truths.
And as hard as it is, we know, one day, ours will be the old truths that hold steadfast for new ideas to come crashing against making them stronger and better.
Our custom document management and workflow solution is live and we’re so proud! Here’s the feedback so far:
From our client:
“The background checks went great! System works as designed and customers are really happy that they can now get rid of the faxes and emails – I believe you and Jon designed something that will give us competitive advantage in the marketplace….”
From our client’s client:
“I have to say that your site is by far the most comprehensive for all of our customers, and from a techie standpoint it is very impressive.”
Collaborative Development
/k??læb ??re? t?v, -?r ? t?v/
–adjective
where two or more people or organizations work together to an intersection of common goals
/d??v?l ?p m?nt/
–noun
the act or process of growth or progress
For an organization to invest in enterprise software, there is an oft quoted idiom: you buy or build. You buy a software package, customize your business to the software or spend as much again customizing the software to your business. Alternatively, you build your own software, from scratch, which requires knowledge and resources often far outside your core business and operational budget.
What if there was a third way?
Collaborative software development brings together a number of like-minded, non-competitive organizations with a similar software need to work together. As a group of peers, these organizations get immediate return on investment as they split the cost of the development. But in addition, they get brainstorming opportunities and sharing of best practices, increased business knowledge, and sharing of industry-common data not readily available.
Collaborative Software Development groups also benefit from shared risk, shared quality measures and a more objective focus on what the software can or should do. Through partnering with other organizations to build software for your industry you increase your own competitive advantage by becoming the designer of industry standards. Your software is built and implemented for you first then offered to your market while you continue to be the front of the line in technology, upgrades and feature decisions.
What can we build for you today?
xperience
