After
their annual month off, the SFTA comes back with one of the most informative
events of the year! Join us on Thursday,
August 28th as Simone Brown of StockTheMind moderates a panel that
will show us how to avoid disaster on the Information Superhighway by controlling
your investments.
Come early for our special pre-event workshop
titled: "Selling IT the SMART Way: Finding and Choosing the Best
Customers to Drive Your Success." presented by Ellen Bristol of
Bristol Strategy Group.
Free drink ticket for the
first 25 people to register online before August 14th! Drinks courtesy of
Setnap Network Security!
Drew Nathanson To Talk About Basic Photoshop Principles
Join us on Thursday, August 28th in Davie as Drew Nathanson teaches us how to use the basic functions in Photoshop to make your web sites look professional.
Join us at Citrix Headquarters in Ft. Lauderdale for an Unofficial MSDN event on Tuesday, September 2nd as Microsoft's Russ Fustino hits 3 big topics: 1. Demystifying WPF, 2. Ten reasons your applications will be more secure when deployed on Vista and 3. Developing applications with Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1. Russ is one of Microsoft's Top Speakers in the Nation and for him to tackle 3 topics such as these makes for an event you don't want to miss!
S. Florida PMI To Hold Special Dinner Meeting with PMI President and CEO Greg Balestrero
Join us on Tuesday, September 30th as PMI President and CEO Greg Balestrero visits the S. Florida chapter. Greg will be talking about the “Battle for Talent: dealing with the shortage of
Project Managers across the globe”. Greg Balestrero was Executive Director for CSI for 8 years before becoming the CEO of the Project Management Institute in 2002. During
his tenure, PMI has grown from 93,000 members to almost 250,000 members
in 164 countries with 283 Components, Special Interest Groups and
Colleges worldwide.
This is an event that doesn't happen too often so you can't afford to miss it!
Joe Homnick To Talk About SQL Server 2008 And It Is FAST!
Join us on Thursday, September 11th in Boca Raton as Joe Homnick looks at how the increase in performance in this latest release is reason enough for an upgrade.
Joe touches all the bases from Performance Studio to TSQL
enhancements. If you run a server or plan to, this is the event you
can't afford to miss!
**GCUG has gone GREEN! RSVP for your MS logo Green Bag**
Join us on Thursday, September 11th in Ft. Lauderdale as Jay Sears, Sr. VP at EVP discusses how testing an ad exchange must be part of any advertising plan for 2008. This would be an introduction to the subject of Ad exchanges and what they do. Given
Google's recent approval to acquire DoubleClick (another Ad Exchange
vendor) for more than 3 billion dollars, the subject of Ad Exchanges
could not be more timely.
They are starting at some of South Florida’s
top companies such as Carnival Cruise Lines, Burger King, and Sherlock
Technology, but they didn’t graduate from the University of Miami,
NovaSoutheastern, or FIU. They haven’t
even graduated from High School. Thanks
to the Academy of Information Technology (AOIT), today’s best and brightest are
getting a head start at some of Miami-Dade County’s Fortune 500 Companies.
And their on-the-job training is something
that even the best Information Technology (IT) schools can’t provide.
“I personally think this is a good experience
for my future career,” said Cristopher Jimenez, AOIT student and intern at
Carnival Cruise Lines in Miami, “and it really helped me figure out that this
is what I want to do.”
Jimenez, a Senior at Miami Central Senior
High School, has been in his school’s AOIT program since the ninth grade. The AOIT is a program that is being picked up
by more and more schools around the country to help High School students decide
what aspect of IT they would like to get into.
“Unless we make inroads early on in student
IT education, students aren’t going to understand what IT jobs exist for them
with employers and how to decide on a career path to achieve success ,” said
Andrew Tabone, Manager of Information Systems and Recruitment & Career
Development for Carnival and AOIT Chairman. “Internships are an opportunity for high school students to gain insight
into how IT is being used to drive business decisions and draw from this
on-the-job experience to journey from high school to college and into
industry.”
This is the third year that Carnival has
participated in the AOIT’s Summer Internship Program and with companies such as
Carnival, Burger King, Ryder, and Sherlock Technology leading the way, the AOIT
has made significant progress toward placing senior high school students at
companies throughout South Florida and both interns and companies alike are
feeling the benefits.
“We are very pleased with our interns and it
energizes our employees, too, because it brings a different kind of enthusiasm
to our IT department and it’s contagious,” said Tabone. “This may be the first time that high school
students even see the inside of a Fortune 500 company in action. They’re
already majoring in IT, so internships show them what to expect before going on
to college and entering the IT job market.”
“Having worked with over 120,000 IT
professionals worldwide, this is the kind of experience that anyone would have
jumped at the chance for,” claimed Alex Funkhouser, President of Sherlock
Technology. “The students that are
working with me have had the chance to speak with close to 2,000 IT
professionals in the State of Florida and they gained valuable insight into
their future profession. All the while,
they have helped improve the overall effectiveness and productivity of our
company.”
The three-year-old internship program has
given the students an unparalleled insight into the various fields within the
IT industry from Project Management to system development to programming to
telecommunications. It also gives them
the opportunity to meet with people who are in various jobs within Fortune 500
companies and find out how and why they are there and understand the path they
took to get here.
“I saw how their systems work and they even
took me out to one of their ships to see how [the on-board] systems
worked. It was really interesting and
something I would like to get into,” said Jimenez. “I personally think this is a good experience
for my future career and it really helped me figure out that [networking] is
what I really want to do.”
The AOIT is part of the National Academy
Foundation and was created in 1978 by Sanford Weill, who is the former chairman
of Citigroup and has continued to be a big part of the program on the national
level. The program is essentially a
school within a school where a student who knows that they want to get into the
IT field can get a head start on their education at their local high
school.
For more information on the AOIT, you can
visit their national website at www.naf.org.
Get Involved With INETA - Further Your IT Career
INETA provides structured, peer-based
organizational, educational, and promotional support to the growing
worldwide community of Microsoft® .NET user groups. Our mission is to
offer assistance and resources to community groups that promote and
educate their membership in Microsoft's .NET technologies. INETA
welcomes all facets of the .NET user community, from developers and
architects to project managers and IT professionals. Members can be
user groups or special interest groups that focus on a single aspect of
.NET, such as C#, target the entire .NET platform or concentrate on
other development technologies but are also interested in .NET. INETA
is the next evolution in user group communities a non-profit,
independent organization, chartered with supporting all user groups
interested in the Microsoft .NET platform. INETA is run by a board of
user group leaders, elected by their peers, and supported by Microsoft
Corporation and other sponsors.
There
are 21 different User Groups in Florida involved with INETA. For the
User Group closest to you and your specialty, please visit:
Sure
we've seen illuminated keyboards before, but then we saw the Luxeed
Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard and stopped looking. With 430 LEDs the
Luxeed is capable of individually lighting each key in your choice of
color. What's more it can do some amazing tricks like an animated
rainbow across all the keys, or make each key light when you press it.
You get four "preset" buttons above the arrow keys you can use to
instantly choose between different customizable lit skin presets.
Set-up a glowing skin for your favorite game with different colors to
indicate each key action... or create illuminated patterns and designs
IT Industry News
See Tomorrow’s
IT Leaders Getting Ahead Today article left and below.
Expert Advice
Sherlock Helps You Enhance Your Professional Career
Weird tactics can sometimes get you the job
By Anthony BalderramaCareerBuilder.com
Rules are meant to be broken. Think outside the box. Be an original.
These are all clichés meant to inspire and remind you that creativity can often be rewarded in life.
Yet, even the most adventurous of us can't overcome our reservations when it comes to job hunting.
Everything you've been told about the application and interview
processes emphasizes being professional. Don't try to be funny in your
cover letter. Wear a conservative business suit. Show how you'll fit in
as one of the team.
In other words, do what everyone else is doing.
For some people, that just won't do.
Tony Beshara, author of "Acing the Interview," has seen his share of
unusual job search methods over the years, ranging from quirky to bold.
And several of them have been successful.
"For a marketing job, the candidate bought a pair of baby shoes,
wrapped one in a box along with her résumé and sent it directly to the
hiring authority," Beshara remembers. "The box had a tag that said 'Let
me get my foot in the door and you will be pleased.' When she went to
the interview, she took the other shoe with her, which was a great way
to start the interview."
Another job candidate who was hoping to
land a sales position sent his résumé to the hiring manager with
miniature star tickets that fell out when you opened it up. Across the
top he had written "Hire a Star."
Quiet and clever tactics don't
work for everybody, though. Beshara recalls another job seeker who
decided to wear a sandwich board that read, "Brand new, hardworking MBA
needs work." He then stood at one of Dallas' busiest intersections
during the morning rush hour.
"He had a job by noon."
Even advertising your job hunt to thousands of morning commuters seems
insignificant when compared to the gutsy move of John Gaines, a
copywriter in Seattle. During his weeklong freelancing stint at an ad
agency, he decided he wanted a permanent position with the company.
"The Monday after my assignment ended, I came in early and fished some
important-looking papers out of a recycling bin. I found an empty
office with a computer whose monitor didn't face the door and sat in it
surfing the 'Net for a few hours every day."
He walked around
the office at regular intervals carrying the papers and interacted with
other employees. If they asked what he was doing, he told them he was a
freelancer who was "handling some paperwork." He eventually had another
freelancing stint with them that became a five-year relationship.
Other tactics aren't as premeditated or elaborate.
When marketing and management expert Mark Stevens met with a candidate
whose credentials showed great promise, he was disappointed when the
interview didn't go well. The applicant wasn't engaged in the interview
and as soon as he left he threw away his résumé.
"The next day,
I received a FedEx package from him, with a book of poetry on human
loss and a loving letter about how his mother had died that week,"
Stevens remembers. He knew he hadn't made a good impression and asked
for a second chance. Stevens gave it to him and ended up hiring him.
When you're hunting for a job,
keep in mind that these unorthodox methods worked for these job
seekers. Not only did they have the guts to try them out, but they also
encountered hiring managers who were willing to take their efforts
seriously.
Although wearing a sandwich board
on a highway isn't the most reliable way to land a job, that job seeker
did set himself apart from the thousands of other new MBAs fresh out of
school. In a competitive job market, look for any opportunity, big or
little, to give yourself an edge over the other applicants.
Look for more tips in our next newsletter.
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Please use the options at the bottom of the page if you'd like to opt-out on future invitations, or call Alex Funkhouser 305-458-5579 or email alex@sherstaff.com
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