This is the First Florida-Wide eNewsletter from Sherlock Technology.
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Greetings!
Alex Funkhouser invites you to attend the following nine I.T. Educational and Social Events.
If you need to hire IT Professionals or be hired, ask for Alex at these events, and call or email Alex at
Sarasota.Net UG Meeting To Discuss Unity Framework
Join us on Wednesday, September 17th in Sarasota as Randy Patterson gives an introduction to Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control concepts. He will also give an overview of how to use and configure the Unity Application Block to build loosely coupled applications.
Join us on Thursday, September 18th in Melbourne as Oleg Sych talks about Code Generation with T4 Text Templates. Why write repetitive code when you can generate it? Learn about Text Template Transformation Toolkit (T4) - one of the best-hidden new features of Visual Studio 2008. T4 allows you to use simple ASP.NET-like template syntax to generate application source code, configuration files, stored procedures and more.
If you use or plan to use VS 2008, This is an event you don't want to miss!
Central Florida Users Group Talks Developer Injuries and Garbage Collection
Join us on Thursday, September 18th at the Orlando City Hall as we have two great speakers this month! First, Dr. Vickers will provide us with information on the typical injuries that impact software developers and others who do repetitive tasks (like typing). This is a first for our group and I think it will be a great opportunity to learn about the health concerns we may share.
Then, Arun Kumar shows us Garbage collection in .NET and how it is one of fundamental aspects of CLR runtime, yet it is also one of the most misunderstood concepts in CLR. Take a closer look at how .NET manages memory, allocates resources, and garbage collector works.
This will be a night that will make your life easier!
Microsoft's Joe Healy To Give First Look At Visual Studio 2008 SP1
Join us on Wednesday, September 24th in Orlando as Microsoft's Joe Healy comes back to Orlando to show us a Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Overview. Currently in beta testing, VS2008 SP1 is planned for release in late summer. It will deliver significant new components for web developers, including ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ADO.NET Entity Framework, and ADO.NET Data Services. Also including are a myriad of other features. We’ll take an overview snapshot of SP1 during this session. You don't want to miss this one!
Join us on Thursday, September 25th in Tampa as Stan Kennedy talks about ASP.NET MVC Framework. ASP.NET MVC Framework is Microsoft's solution to provide built in support for developing web apps using a model view controller pattern. In this session, Stan will go over the benefits and use of the ASP.NET MVC Framework. A demo will be presented to point out the ease of use and how this architecture is implemented in ASP.NET web applications.
Greetings Software Enthusiasts! Join us on Thursday, September 25th in Orlando as Zemian Dengpresents an "Introduction to Scala", a talk session geared toward Java developers. The introduction will let the audience get a feel for what Scala programming is like and explore some coding styles.
If you ever thought about getting into Scala, this is meeting for you!
Join us on Tuesday, October 7th in Orlando as ODUG Vice President Kurt Amstutz will be talking about the recently released Map Module. The DotNetNuke® Map Module project is an initiative crafted from very popular smash up DotNetNuke® Map Module, originally called GoMap. The module, using the Google Maps API, provides the ability to pump any custom data into the Google Map in a number of unique ways.
***IMPORTANT!***
Please register for this event at CodeZone so that we may correctly determine how much food and drinks to provide AND to be entered into the giveaway drawings at the end of the meeting.
Join us on Saturday, October 11th on the FSU Campus for the 2008 Tallahassee Code Camp! This FREE event will feature speakers from 8am-6pm and will feature some of Florida's Microsoft Developers and MVPs. It also provides training for local speakers to become the next rockstar in .net
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:
This animatronic brain incorporates The Concise encyclopedia from Britannica, a dictionary, and a world history timeline...Its database can store telephone numbers and the device connects to a phone jack, allowing it to become a your personal operator that dials the phone numbers of friends and family in response to verbal commands, or you can use the attached keyboard to prompt the animatronic roommate to initiate a phone call.
IT Industry News
Employment services up 5% in 2Q, Census says
The U.S. government estimate of quarterly revenue for employment services was up 5% year over year in the second quarter, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The Census estimates revenue for employment services at $45.7 billion in the second quarter, up from $43.5 billion in the second quarter in 2007. The Census reported year-over-year growth of 7.3% in the first quarter of 2008. These growth estimates for the first and second quarter are higher than growth reported from other industry sources. Staffing Industry Analysts projects 1% growth for the staffing industry in 2008.
Manpower survey finds Q4 hiring to slow
U.S. companies plan to hold back on hiring in the fourth quarter compared with the third quarter and the fourth quarter of 2007, according to the Employment Outlook Survey by Manpower Inc. (NYSE: MAN).
In the fourth quarter, 22% of U.S. companies plan to add staff while 13% plan to decrease their number of workers for a seasonally adjusted net employment outlook of 9%. That's down from the seasonally adjusted employment outlook of 12% in the third quarter and 18% in the fourth quarter of 2007.
"The continuing softness in hiring activity comes as no surprise as weakening market conditions are causing many companies to carefully adjust their hiring in line with the demand for their product or service," said Manpower Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Joerres.
The report surveyed 14,000 U.S. employers.
Source: Staffing Analysts Daily News
Expert Advice
Sherlock Helps You Enhance Your Professional Career
Develop A Firm Grip To Get A Job
By Anthony BalderramaCareerBuilder.com
Before you head out to the interview, check your suit for lint, your résumé for typos, your teeth for spinach and your hands for a firm grip.
A new survey finds that all of your years of experience and the hard work you put into preparing for an interview can disappear if you extend your hand and offer a languid shake.
A dead fish handshake can be just as dooming as ripped jeans and a neck tattoo when it comes to landing a job, says the survey conducted by Greg Stewart, a business professor from the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa.
Why is a good handshake so important? Because you're being interviewed the second you walk through the door.
Everything from your appearance to your body language sends signals to interviewers about you and your fit in the company. They're looking for anything to distinguish you from the pack, so they will let the handshake set the tone for the rest of your meeting.
"Job seekers are trained how to act in a job interview, how to talk, how to dress, how to answer questions, so we all look and act alike to varying degrees because we've all been told the same things," Stewart reminds. Your handshake is one of the few interview components that are unique to you.
"We probably don't consciously remember a person's handshake or whether it was good or bad. But the handshake is one of the first nonverbal clues we get about the person's overall personality, and that impression is what we remember," Stewart says.
For the survey, 98 students went through mock job interviews. Handshake raters, who did not reveal their purpose, were introduced to students and shook their hands.
After the interviews, the hiring managers scored how well the job seekers performed and the handshake raters graded the handshakes separately. The scores were compared and showed that those students with high scoring handshakes were the same ones the interviewers viewed most hireable.
The correlation between handshakes and favorable impressions goes beyond an interviewer's preference for a firm grip. Interviewers perceived students with good handshakes as being more outgoing and having better interpersonal skills.
What is a good handshake? Interviews are filled with opportunities for overthinking. Which tie exudes confidence? Which hairstyle says professional yet approachable? How early should I arrive so that I don't seem too eager or too disinterested?
And now you're probably wondering just how to go about crafting the perfect handshake. Chances are you probably already know the answer.
One of the first lessons of Business 101 is to have a firm, personable handshake, and that's exactly what interviewers favored.
The handshake that received the best responses involved a strong grip, maintained eye contact and deliberate pumps up and down. A lazy handshake makes you appear disinterested, sort of like a five-fingered yawn. If you're overzealous, however, it's distracting and annoying.
On your next interview, as you walk into the room and flatten the creases in your crisp suit jacket, remember to give the same attention to the hand you're extending.
Look for more tips in our next newsletter.
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