The MIX 2008 Internet presentation Advanced SEO for Web Developers, by Nathan Buggia, was Rated! 4 Stars.
Rated! Value Scores™ (5 being the highest)
The MIX 2008 Internet presentation Advanced Cross-Browser Layout with Internet Explorer 8, by Scott Dickens, was Rated! 3 Stars.
Rated! Value Scores™ (5 being the highest)
The MIX 2008 Internet presentation Welcome to Internet Explorer 8, by Chris Wilson, was Rated! 4 Stars.
Rated! Value Scores™ (5 being the highest)
MIX ‘08 took place on March 5 through March 7th at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Microsoft holds this conference annually for web developers and designers to showcase their upcoming web technologies.
Unable to attend the event this year, I opted to check out some of the sessions available on their website. I chose the sessions that drew my attention. I recommend you download the presentations that interest you and save them for future reference.
Here are my Rated!™ review scores (5 Stars being the highest) for the sessions I viewed.
Adding Instant Messaging to Any Site, by Keiji Kanazawa and Nikhil Kothari
Rated! 3 Stars | Rated! Value Scores™ | View Presentation
Advanced Cross-Browser Layout with Internet Explorer 8, by Scott Dickens
Rated! 3 Stars | Rated! Value Scores™ | View Presentation
Advanced SEO for Web Developers, by Nathan Buggia
Rated! 4 Stars | Rated! Value Scores™ | View Presentation
Welcome to Internet Explorer 8, by Chris Wilson
Rated! 4 Stars | Rated! Value Scores™ | View Presentation
I took the opportunity to check out a few CIO Executive Council Outlook videos the other day and ran across a very interesting “conversation” with Mary Hall Gregg, CIO of Quest Diagnostics. What I found most interesting was how the use of language helped change an IT culture. Today I wanted to share some of this language with you.
The idea is to stop using the old IT language and use the new business language. From what I understand the CIO Executive Council put this together for the beneficial use of all businesses and their IT organizations. Check it out:
| IT Language | Business Language |
|---|---|
| Internal customer | Business partner |
| External customers | Customers |
| IT governance | Investment planning |
| IT and the business | IT in business, business technology |
| CIO’s business peers | CIO and other business leaders |
| Internal SLAs | Quality goals, excellence standards |
| IT project (or priority) | Business project (or priority) |
| Functionality enhancement | Business process change |
| Resources | People |
I really liked the example of changing the language used to describe internal customers to business partners. Mary Hall Gregg made a great point when she explained the conscious decision her organization made to never use the word customer to refer to colleagues (the people inside the organization) and instead refer to them as as business partners.
Our colleagues — they are our business partners and together we are trying to drive growth for the company, and IT is a tool and a technology to drive growth. Our customers are the people that we serve, so patients are our customers and the patients are first in everything that we do. Physicians are our customers, health plans are our customers, employers are our customers. The people who use our services, who pay the bills — those are our customers. The employees of Quest Diagnostics, they’re either our business partners or, in some cases we refer to them as users, if they are using a service of IT, but we don’t allow anyone in IT to talk about our partners as being customers because it changes the dialogue and it sets a different expectation. If you think you’re my customer, you’re less willing to engage in a dialogue about how we can improve things and work together and collaborate. You just expect that I’m going to deliver a service, and when I don’t get it right, you don’t want to engage in a discussion about how we improve and move forward, so the use of the word partner versus customer I think is very essential for a company and an IT organization, that is about the growth of the company.
Language is important in the corporate culture. Every business and industry defines its culture by their use of language. I have worked for some of the best companies in their industries and each had their own language for industry-specific terms and for general terms, like employees. In my businesses I call employees team members and partners and consider all divisions to be groups, in order to discourage silos and invisible walls and to promote collaboration and a sense of family - an association of people who share common beliefs or activities. I am amazed at how powerful language is.
Kudos to the CIO Executive Council for their fine work on the Outlook series. It was very educational to watch the videos and read the transcripts. I cannot wait to put this information to good use. How about you?
Christmas and New Year’s is my favorite time of the year. I try to enjoy this very special, festive season and to keep focused that if it wasn’t for Jesus Christ, there would be no reason for celebration. Boys and girls that means that because Jesus Christ is alive today we have Christmas and a good reason to celebrate Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection. Everyone is born, but Jesus’ birth was very special, because it was the fulfillment of prophecy and of the promise God made to his people.
In addition to keeping that joyous perspective in mind, I also try very hard to ignore the commercialized message that erroneously tells us that Christmas is about sales, stores, shopping, lust, and buying and getting gifts. Every time I hear that message I sense gilded deceit, anxiety, error, shallowness, pity, and disgust.
Nevertheless, I found CBN’s Christmas Resources site very inspiring with plenty of good information, ideas, stories, recipes, and more. It is exactly what I need to help me keep this joyous season in good perspective. Check it out!
During this season if you come across other good Christian Christmas and New Year’s resources, please share them with me by writing a brief comment. It’s that easy. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
If you are a student who wants to know what the top schools for Latinos [1] are, or a parent looking at a child who’s off to college in a about a year or so, check out the September 2007 issue of Hispanic Business Magazine. They came out with the top 10 business, engineering, law, and medical schools.
When you look at ratings, no matter who they are from, do your research. Take the propaganda, marketing, and biases out the door. I’m not saying Hispanic Business necessarily did that, nevertheless be smart about the information presented to you, don’t take it as fact and “that’s that”. For starters find out what their criteria was and how they arrived at their top ten. See who the people and company(ies) behind the magazine are, sponsors and stuff. Then, compare their choices with other well respected publications. In the end it is going to be a matter of personal choice what school you go to. Unless, of course, you have strict parents 
For example, Hildy Medina wrote on page 34 of the issue,
Most college rankings, including our Top 10 Business, Law, Engineering, and Medical schools lists, take into account a school’s academic excellence. But the Hispanic Business lists go beyond the straight curriculum questions to look at enrollment by U.S. citizens, faculty, student services, and retention rates.
Kudos to the magazine’s leadership for going above and beyond to bring us their list of top 10 business, engineering, law, and medical schools for universities around the United States. Read up and let me know if this was helpful.
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