At one point or another it is inevitable that you will experience an unexpected crisis that interferes with your career as an independent contractor. In a less serious scenario, you may lose your cell phone, kill your laptop or just come down with a 24-hour virus. But, in a total disaster, you might …
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A Crisis Plan for Contract Workers: 8 Career-Saving Steps
I attended this reception for German sweets & snacks manufacturers who were in town for the Institute of Food Technologists show @ McCormick Place. I highlight a few of these firms simply to bring out a few of the differences between German & American business. 1st of all, the exhibiting German firms are all family-owned
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those German sweeties
The premier conference and trade show for the hosted services industry — HostinCon 2010 kicks off ! Day1 Pictures HostingCon 2010 Helpdesk Emerging Crowd for HostingCon 2010 HostingCon Networking Day1 Vision Helpdesk HostingCon 2010 T-shirt Also iNET Interactive announced today the location and date for the seventh annual HostingCon, i.e, HostingCon 2011 will be held in San Diego, California, from August 8-10 at the San Diego Convention Center situated beautifully on the glistening San Diego Bay.
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HostingCon 2010 Kicks Off!
HostingCon 2010 kicks off on Monday 19th July ! Here’s all the information you’ll need to know before and during the conference. HostingCon Registration – Badge Pickup and Printing I got my Badge and a hostingcon informative kit along with some swags — check my HostingCon over sized T-Shirt You can pick up your badge/have your badge printed at the registration desk in the Austin Convention Center during the following hours: Sunday, July 18: 12:00pm – 5:00pm Monday, July 19: 8:00am – 5:00pm Tuesday, July 20: 7:30am – 6:00pm Wednesday, July 21: 8:00am – 4:00pm The registration desk is located in the 4th Level Foyer of the Austin Convention Center, just outside the keynote and luncheon rooms. You will see signs directing you to the registration desk at multiple points throughout the Austin Convention Center. Upgrading Your Registration If you want to upgrade your registration you can do so at the registration desk. The registration desk will be staffed during the hours listed above.
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HostingCon 2010 Attendance & Information Guide
I attended this event sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business international roundtable Doing Deals Around the World: What’s New, What’s Old, What Remains the Same? featuring Tom Miner, a well-traveled Chicago-based international businessperson who founded THE MID-AMERICA COMMITTEE FOR INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT COOPERATION, INC.
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lowdown on Mid-America Committee & Illinois Global Partnership
On the threshold of the publication of the 2010 edition of Gartner’s annual CIO Survey, where 1600 of CIOs were asked about their plans and priorities for the year, Mark McDonald, GVP of Gartner Executive Programs, shared some of its findings. According to the survey, 2010 will be a time of transition from recession to recovery economically, strategically from a focus on efficiency to productivity, and technically speaking from heavyweight to lightweight technologies. But all the while IT budgets will remain tight. Only 6% of the polled CIOs see actual real growth coming in 2010. Leading CIOs are inventing new rules for the new economy with the focus on productivity, collaboration, and innovation.
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2010 is the Year of Transition, Gartner Says
The day after the World Cup ended I received my copy of B2B Marketing with this lead article African ‘Lions’ ready to roar by Sean Callahan. The article quotes heavily from the McKinsey Global Institutes article Lions on the move: the progress and potential of African economies. I was surprised to see Morocco & Tunisia
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b2b marketing in Africa
A recent study conducted by Zinnov on Software R&D globalization revealed that only 5% of this R&D spend is currently being spent on outsourced partnerships, which means about 95% of the R&D is made by companies in-house. This presents a tremendous growth opportunity for companies providing Outsourced Product Development services . We attended the webinar on ‘Globalization Opportunities in Software Development for Enterprises and ISVs’ where Zinnov experts shared further research results. Vamsee Tirukkala, Co-Founder & Managing Principal, Zinnov, commented on the trend that companies leverage 3rd party global centers mainly for cost savings and access to relevant talent. 83% of the audience confirmed the increasing importance of OPD by answering affirmatively to one of the audience poll’s questions (“Are companies increasingly looking at OPD service providers for global RnD and product development?”).
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R&D Partnerships Should Become More Strategic
Recently I stumble upon TechCrunch article that reads — “ Z endesk Raises Prices, Pisses Off Customers ” I was wondering, how a company could ever think of raising price for just adding few features? Not at all a good business practice. The article also mentions that Zendesk later realized their mistake and they decided to run the same pricing for existing customers where as new customers will be still paying higher cost. Vision Helpdesk could never think of raising price for adding features – Just like we have released Vision Helpdesk Mobile Edition and thats completely FREE!! The article has also raised questions about the SaaS methods and What SaaS should practically be doing is reducing overall helpdesk management cost ? Isn’t it
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Helpdesk Pricing Comparison, Vision Helpdesk turns out to be most economical
I came across this article in Foreign Policy magazine A New Great Wall by Edith Grossman, who wrote a book entitled Why Translation Matters. She raises some interesting issues. Unfortunately, she confirms many reflections of American parochialism. My concern is that English-speaking publishers are contributing to this parochialism by filtering out great literature by non-English
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why translation matters
We are glad to announce that we are exhibiting at HostingCon 2010 at Austin, Texas on 19 -21 July 2010. We plan to showcase Vision Helpdesk’s unique Satellite Helpdesk feature, You can find us at booth # 128 — Attendees will have an opportunity to see a live demonstration of Vision Helpdesk and the Satellite feature. HostingCon is celebrating its Sixth Anniversary, and with a projected attendance of over 1,500 Internet professionals from over 30 countries, the 2010 show promises to be the best yet. HostingCon 2010 is expected to deliver the newest insights, practical knowledge and relevant connections to help you compete and win in tomorrow’s changing environment. The only premier conference and trade show for the hosted services industry.
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Vision Helpdesk exhibiting at HostingCon 2010
I have been running a software outsourcing business for the past 6 years (time flies!), and involved as a client of software outsourcing for many more years. Our offshore resources were originally all located in China, but as our business expands, we have been acquiring resources in Mexico, Argentina, and now Eastern Europe. Quite naturally, I built over the years my own opinion on the pros and cons of each of these countries, but could hardly justify why we would favor China over India as an offshore destination; or why we would now favor Argentina over Mexico, as a nearshore destination, although Mexico is geographically much closer to the USA. The work of Geert Hofstede (see references at the end of the post) has shed light on all this, and I was puzzled by how close Hofstede’s conclusions were to my own observations regarding outsourcing destinations relative to a US company
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Using The Power Distance When Selecting An Offshore Team
According to a new research, commissioned by Savvis Inc., a provider of cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprises, the number of companies that outsource their IT infrastructure is expected to increase drastically from 17 percent today to 64 percent in 2020. This independent survey was conducted by Vanson Bourne, a research-based technology marketing consultancy. The research firm surveyed more than 600 IT and business decision makers from mid to large enterprises and public sector organizations based in the United States, United Kingdom and Singapore.
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In-House or Outsourced IT Infrastructure?
I attended the Bio show last month, which returned to Chicago after only 4 years, the fastest it’s ever returned to 1 location. Despite the changes in the economy since the last time Bio was here, the numbers for this edition were up. Surprisingly it appears as if the number of exhibitors has increased from
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belated BIO wrap-up
Barclays Capital has unveiled their plans to recruit 500 IT professionals for a new tech centre in the Ukraine. BarCap is teaming up with EPAM Systems , the largest and most experienced software engineering services provider in Eastern Europe, which will build and operate the new tech centre in Kyiv. It already employs 50 engineers, but by the end of 2012 that figure will rise to 500.
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Banks Find Tech Talent in Eastern Europe
B2BITS, EPAM Systems’ Capital Markets Competency Center providing technology for FIX connectivity, announces the launch of a program to support the large base of commercial, in-house developed, and open source FIX solution users who are seeking to improve their operational capacity and lower costs by upgrading their existing Java, .NET and C++ based connectivity tools to modern solutions. The technology driving FIX trading is rapidly evolving together with the markets demand for efficiency as well as the FIX protocol. The last five years in the market have been characterized by a dramatic increase in acceptance of FIX protocol by exchanges worldwide. This evolution also applies to the increased adoption of FAST for distributing market data.
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B2BITS launches a replacement program for FIX, FIXML, and FAST enabled software
I attended this event sponsored by the Japan International Transport Institute High Speed Rail Seminar in Chicago for 400 attendees (& they turned away 100+) @ the Union League Club. They will make the presentations made available on the website soon, so I won’t rehash what’s contained in them. Here’s what they had to say
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japanese high speed rail
I attended a talk on THE END OF THE FREE MARKET? given by Ian Bremmer, President of Eurasia Group, who’s written a book entitled The end of the free market: who wins the war between states and corporations? This event was organized by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Here’s the summary: It’s a different
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end of the free market?
I caught this presentation offered by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs CLIMATE, ECONOMICS, AND THE FUTURE featuring Bill McKibben, of Middlebury College & 350.org, who was 1 of the 1st to write about climate change 21 years ago. We didn’t know then how quickly the problem would accelerate & now the scale of the
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climate economics
Within the overall current Russian economic pickup, analysts particularly single out Russia’s technology sector and appropriate it one of the leading roles in establishing the favorable business landscape. The latest “Russia Information Technology Report Q2 2010” testifies that the Russian IT market is expected to recover in 2010 from a double-digit contraction in spending on IT products and services suffered in the generically tough 2009. Below we highlight some extracts from the report touching upon Russia’s software and IT services market segments. Software Russia’s domestic software market is projected at around US$3.1bn in 2010.
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Russia Information Technology Report Released
I spent last week in São Paulo, Brasil meeting with potential partners of a nanotechnology client of mine. Without divulging anything proprietary about either side, here’s what we learned: Brasil hasn’t suffered much from the global recession & has maintained growth, if just a bit slowed, over the past few years. Brasil is still very
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an update from São Paulo, Brasil