Search Results

Search found 3168 results on 127 pages for 'social selling'.

Page 117/127 | < Previous Page | 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124  | Next Page >

• Oracle participe au Forum MDM - 24 octobre 2013

  - by Louisa Aggoune

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Dédié aux Directions Générales, Fonctionnelles et Informatiques ce 2ème Forum MDM (Master Data Management) a pour objectif de présenter les dernières nouveautés et le savoir-faire des acteurs majeurs du marché sous la forme d'ateliers. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} ORACLE, sponsor de l'évènement, vous convie sur son stand et à son atelier: Oracle MDM et qualité des données au service de la gouvernance de vos données internes et externes ou comment enrichir et fédérer votre patrimoine informationnel avec le Social data, Big Data, Cloud data … De nombreux retours d’expérience concrets vous seront également délivrés lors de cette matinée, à travers les témoignages de : - Philippe Kirady, CARDIF, Directeur expertise métier et process- Michelle Martin, SOLVAY, Directrice Data Management- Thierry Chamfrault, TECHNIP, Directeur Qualité et méthodes IT- Manuel Amorim, LE PARISIEN, Responsable Audience et Fidélisation Département Numérique- Jean-Michel Collomb, Architecte d’entreprise, AMADEUS Global Business ServicesVous avez des problématiques de :- Gouvernance des données- Qualité des données- Référentiels de données, produits, clients, fournisseurs, RH Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Lieu : Jeudi 24 Octobre 2013, de 8h30 à 13h30 - Centre de Conférences Paris Victoire - 52, rue de la Victoire - 75009 Paris Inscription: Par retour d'email à Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} [email protected] ou [email protected]

  Read the article

• Configure IPv6 on your Linux system (Ubuntu)

  After the presentation on IPv6 at the first event of the Emtel Knowledge Series and some recent discussion on social media networks with other geeks and Linux interested IT people here in Mauritius, I thought that I should give it a try (finally) and tweak my local network infrastructure. Honestly, I have been to busy with contractual project work and it never really occurred to me to set up IPv6 in my LAN. Well, the following paragraphs are going to shed some light on those aspects of modern computer and network technology. This is the first article in a series on IPv6 configuration: Configure IPv6 on your Linux system DHCPv6: Provide IPv6 information in your local network Enabling DNS for IPv6 infrastructure Accessing your web server via IPv6 Piece of advice: This is based on my findings on the internet while reading other people's helpful articles and going through a couple of man-pages on my local system. Let's embrace IPv6 The basic configuration on Linux is actually very simple as the kernel, operating system, and user-space programs support that protocol natively. If your system is ready to go for IP (aka: IPv4), then you are good to go for anything else. At least, I didn't have to install any additional packages on my system(s). We are going to assign a static IPv6 address to the system. Hence, we have to modify the definition of interfaces and check whether we have an inet6 entry specified. Open your favourite text editor and check the following entries (it should be at least similar to this): $ sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces auto eth0# IPv4 configurationiface eth0 inet static  address 192.168.1.2  network 192.168.1.0  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.1.255# IPv6 configurationiface eth0 inet6 static  pre-up modprobe ipv6  address 2001:db8:bad:a55::2  netmask 64 Of course, you might have to adjust your interface device (eth0) or you might be interested to have multiple directives for additional devices (eth1, eth2, etc.). The auto instruction takes care that your device is enabled and configured during the booting phase. The use of the pre-up directive depends on your kernel configuration but in most scenarios this might be an optional line. Anyways, it doesn't hurt to have it enabled after all - just to be on the safe side. Next, either restart your network subsystem like so: $ sudo service networking restart Or you might prefer to do it manually with identical parameters, like so: $ sudo ifconfig eth0 inet6 add 2001:db8:bad:a55::2/64 In case that you're logged in remotely into your PC (ie. via ssh), it is highly advised to opt for the second choice and add the device manually. You can check your configuration afterwards with one of the following commands (depends on whether it is installed): $ sudo ifconfig eth0eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:21:5a:50:d7:94            inet addr:192.168.160.2  Bcast:192.168.160.255  Mask:255.255.255.0          inet6 addr: fe80::221:5aff:fe50:d794/64 Scope:Link          inet6 addr: 2001:db8:bad:a55::2/64 Scope:Global          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1 $ sudo ip -6 address show eth03: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qlen 1000    inet6 2001:db8:bad:a55::2/64 scope global        valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever    inet6 fe80::221:5aff:fe50:d794/64 scope link        valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever In both cases, it confirms that our network device has been assigned a valid IPv6 address. That's it in general for your setup on one system. But of course, you might be interested to enable more services for IPv6, especially if you're already running a couple of them in your IP network. More details are available on the official Ubuntu Wiki. Continue to configure your network to provide IPv6 address information automatically in your local infrastructure.

  Read the article

• Highlights from the Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by David Vap, Group Vice President, Oracle Applications Product Development The Oracle Customer Experience Summit was the first-ever event covering the full breadth of Oracle's CX portfolio -- Marketing, Sales, Commerce, and Service. The purpose of the Summit was to articulate the customer experience imperative and to showcase the suite of Oracle products that can help our customers create the best possible customer experience. This topic has always been a very important one, but now that there are so many alternative companies to do business with and because people have such public ways to voice their displeasure, it's necessary for vendors to have multiple listening posts in place to gauge consumer sentiment. They need to know what is going on in real time and be able to react quickly to turn negative situations into positive ones. Those can then be shared in a social manner to enhance the brand and turn the customer into a repeat customer. The Summit was focused on Oracle's portfolio of products and entirely dedicated to customers who are committed to building great customer experiences within their businesses. Rather than DBAs, the attendees were business people looking to collaborate with other like-minded experts and find out how Oracle can help in terms of technology, best practices, and expertise. The event was at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco as part of Oracle OpenWorld. We had eight hundred people attend, which was great for the first year. Next year, there's no doubt in my mind, we can raise that number to 5,000. Alignment and Logic Oracle's Customer Experience portfolio is made up of a combination of acquired and organic products owned by many people who are new to Oracle. We include homegrown Fusion CRM, as well as RightNow, Inquira, OPA, Vitrue, ATG, Endeca, and many others. The attendees knew of the acquisitions, so naturally they wanted to see how the products all fit together and hear the logic behind the portfolio. To tell them about our alignment, we needed to be aligned. To accomplish that, a cross functional team at Oracle agreed on the messaging so that every single Oracle presenter could cover the big picture before going deep into a product or topic. Talking about the full suite of products in one session produced overflow value for other products. And even though this internal coordination was a huge effort, everyone saw the value for our customers and for our long-term cooperation and success. Keynotes, Workshops, and Tents of Innovation We scored by having Seth Godin as our keynote speaker ? always provocative and popular. The opening keynote was a session orchestrated by Mark Hurd, Anthony Lye, and me. Mark set the stage by giving real-world examples of bad customer experiences, Anthony clearly articulated the business imperative for addressing these experiences, and I brought it all to life by taking the audience around the Customer Lifecycle and showing demos and videos, with partners included at each of the stops around the lifecycle. Brian Curran, a VP for RightNow Product Strategy, presented a session that was in high demand called The Economics of Customer Experience. People loved hearing how to build a business case and justify the cost of building a better customer experience. John Kembel, another VP for RightNow Product Strategy, held a workshop that customers raved about. It was based on the journey mapping methodology he created, which is a way to talk to customers about where they want to make improvements to their customers' experiences. He divided the audience into groups led by facilitators. Each person had the opportunity to engage with experts and peers and construct some real takeaways. From left to right: Brian Curran, John Kembel, Seth Godin, and George Kembel The conference hotel was across from Union Square so we used that space to set up Innovation Tents. During the day we served lunch in the tents and partners showed their different innovative ideas. It was very interesting to see all the technologies and advancements. It also gave people a place to mix and mingle and to think about the fringe of where we could all take these ideas. Product Portfolio Plus Thought Leadership Of course there is always room for improvement, but the feedback on the format of the conference was positive. Ninety percent of the sessions had either a partner or a customer teamed with an Oracle presenter. The presentations weren't dry, one-way information dumps, but more interactive. I just followed up with a CEO who attended the conference with his Head of Marketing. He told me that they are using John Kembel's journey mapping methodology across the organization to pull people together. This sort of thought leadership in these highly competitive areas gives Oracle permission to engage around the technology. We have to differentiate ourselves and it's harder to do on the product side because everyone looks the same on paper. But on thought leadership ? we can, and did, take some really big steps. David VapGroup Vice PresidentOracle Applications Product Development

  Read the article

• Defining Your Online Segmentation and Targeting Strategy

  - by Christie Flanagan

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A lot of times, companies will put online segmentation and targeting on the back burner because they don’t know where to start. Often, I’ve heard web managers say that their segments aren’t well understood yet, so they can’t really deliver personalized online experiences that are meaningful. This lack of complete understanding means that they don't really bother to try. But, I don’t think you necessarily need to have an elaborate segmentation and targeting strategy already in place to start delivering a more relevant online customer experience. Sometimes it helps to think of how segmentation and targeting might solve some of the challenges your sites visitors are currently experiencing on your web presence, rather than doing nothing and waiting until a fully baked segmentation strategy lands in your inbox.  For example, perhaps you have a broad and varied service offering that makes it difficult for site visitors to easily find the solutions that are most relevant for them.  How can segmentation and targeting help solve this problem?  Or maybe it’s like the airline I described in Monday’s post where the special deals featured on the home page are only relevant to site visitors from a couple of cities.  Couldn’t segmentation and targeting help them to highlight offers on their home page that are relevant to a larger share of their site visitors? Your early segmentation and targeting efforts do not need to be complicated.  There are simple ways to start delivering a more relevant online customer experience, even if you’re dealing with anonymous site visitors.  These include targeting content to site visitors based on: Referral: Deliver targeted content to your site visitors that is based on where they came from or the search term they used to find your site Behavior:  Deliver content to your site visitors that is related or similar to content they’ve clicked on already Location:  Deliver content your site visitors that is most relevant for their geographic location (this would solve that pesky airline home page problem described above) So as you can see, there really are some very simple ways in which you can start improving your online customer experience using very basic segmentation and targeting methods.  One thing to keep in mind as you start to define you segmentation and targeting strategy is that there are many different types of attributes or combinations of attributes upon which you can base your segmentation and targeting strategy.  In addition to referral, behavior and location, other attributes that you should consider are: Profile Information:  What profile information do you know about this customer already?  Perhaps they provided some information on their interests and preferences when they first registered with your site. Time:  What time is it and how does that impact what my site visitors are looking for or trying to do? Demographics: What are my site visitors’ ages, incomes or ethnicities? Which attributes you select to include in your segmentation strategy will depend on your unique business needs and objectives.  Attributes such as behavior or referral may not be the most important targeting criteria depending on your situation. For example, if you’re a newspaper you might know that certain visitors are sports fans based on their profile information.  You can create a segment for sports fans and target sports related content to that segment of your readership online.  Or perhaps, a reader is browsing stories that are related to politics; you can use that visitor’s behavior to assign him or her to a segment for those interested in politics. From there you can recommend more stories to that visitor based on their interest in politics. For an airline, the visitor’s location may be a more important attribute. By detecting the visitor’s location, you can assign them to an appropriate segment and then target special flights and offers to them based on their likely departure airport. As you can see, there are many practical ways that you can start improving the experience your customers receive on your web presence using fairly basic segmentation and targeting techniques. If you want to learn more about segmentation and targeting using Oracle’s web experience management solution, check out this helpful video that demonstrates these powerful capabilities in Oracle WebCenter Sites. ***** On Demand Webcast Featuring Brian Solis of Altimeter Group Trends such as the mobile web, social media, gamification and real-time are changing customer behavior and expectations. In this new environment, many businesses will struggle. Some will fall by the wayside, while others learn to adapt and thrive. Watch this on demand webcast with Altimeter Group digital analyst and author, Brian Solis, and discover what your organization needs to know about how to compete in the new era of Digital Darwinism. View now.

  Read the article

• Oracle Applications Day 2012. Experience the Global Innovation of Management Applications

  - by antonella.buonagurio

  1024x768 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} 1024x768 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} 10 ottobre 2012 – Milano, East End Studios | 17 ottobre 2012 - Roma, Officine Farneto Partecipa all’appuntamento dedicato alla comunità di Clienti e Partner per fare networking e condividere le esperienze sulle soluzioni più innovative per affrontare le sfide attuali e future. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A Milano (10/10/2012) interverranno, tra gli altri:  Enrico Ancona, Amministratore Delegato - Imperia & Monferrina e Business Reply  Massimiliano Gerli, CIO - Amplifon e Michele Paolin, Senior Manager - Deloitte eXtended Business Services A Roma (17/10/2012) interverranno, tra gli altri: Giulio Carone, CFO - Enel Green Power e Claudio Arcudi, Senior Executive - Accenture Gianluca D’Aniello, CIO - Sky e Giorgio Pitruzzello, Manager - Deloitte Consulting Spartaco Parente, EPD Change & Label Control - Abbott e Business Reply Sono inoltre previsti i contributi delle aziende Abbott, Aeroporto di Napoli, Amplifon, Dema Aerospace, Enel Green Power, Fiera Milano, Imperia & Monferrina, La Rinascente, Safilo, Sky, Spal,Technogym, Tiscali e Tivù che parleranno di: Innovation for Human Resources Performance Management Excellence Empower Applications with Technology (Milano) Applications for Public Sector (Roma) Next Generation Global Operations Customer Experience Revolution Oltre dieci Instant Workshop ti permetteranno di conoscere e condividere l’esperienza dei Partner e delle aziende che utilizzano le soluzioni Oracle.In più, oltre dieci Instant Workshop per conoscere e condividere l’esperienza dei Partner e delle aziende che utilizzano con successo le soluzioni Oracle. Iscriviti sul sito Partecipa al concorso fotografico Oracle I.M.A.G.E. e vinci il tuo iPad! Scatta le immagini che per te descrivono i cinque concept dell’evento (Innovation, Management, Applications, Global, Experience) e inviale per e-mail. Per iscriverti al contest visita la pagina Concorso sul sito Non perdere l’evento più “social cool” dell’anno!

  Read the article

• SQLAuthority Guest Post – Lessons from Life and Work by Srini Chandra (Author of 3 Lives, in search of bliss)

  - by pinaldave

  Work and life are confusing terms together. How can one consider work outside of life. Work should be part of life or are we considering ourselves dead when we are at work. I have often seen developers and DBA complaining and confused about their job, work and life. Complaining is easy and everyone can do. I have heard quite often expression – “I do not have any other option.” I requested Srini Chanda (renowned author of Amazon Best Seller 3 Lives, in search of bliss (Amazon | Flipkart) to write a guest post on this subject which developer can read and appreciate. Let us see Srini’s thoughts in his own words. Each of us who works in the technology industry carries an especially heavy burden nowadays. For, fate has placed in our hands an awesome power to shape our society and its consciousness. For that reason, we must pay more and more attention to issues of professionalism, social responsibility and ethics. Equally importantly, the responsibility lies in our hands to ensure that we view our work and career as an opportunity to enlighten and lift ourselves up. Story: A Prisoner, 20 years and a Wheel Many years ago, I heard this story from a professor when I was a student at Carnegie Mellon. A man was sentenced to 20 years in prison. During his time in prison, he was asked to turn a wheel every day. So, every day he turned the wheel. At times, when he was tired or puzzled and stopped turning the wheel, he would be flogged with a whip. The man did not know anything about the wheel other than that it was placed outside his jail somewhere. He wondered if the wheel crushed corn or if it ground wheat or something similar. He wondered if turning the wheel was useful to anyone. At the end of his jail term, he rushed out to see what the wheel was doing. To his disappointment, he found that the wheel was not connected to anything. All these years, he had been toiling for nothing. He gave a loud, frustrated shout and dropped dead. How many of us are turning wheels wondering what it is connected to? How many of us have unstated, uncaring attitudes towards our careers? How many of us view work as drudgery, as no more than a way to earn that next paycheck? How many of us have wondered about the spiritually uplifting aspect of work? Can a workforce that views work as merely a chore, be ethical? Can it produce truly life enhancing technology? Can it make positive contributions to the quality of life of a society? I think not. Thanks to Pinal and you, his readers, for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts in a series of guest posts. I’d like to present a few ways over the next few weeks, in which we can tap into the liberating potential of work and make our lives better in the process. Now, please allow me to tell you another version of the story that the good professor shared with us in the classroom that day. Story: A Prisoner, 20 years, a Wheel and the LIFE A man was sentenced to 20 years in prison. During his time in prison, he was asked to turn a wheel every day. So, every day he turned the wheel. At first, his whole body and mind rebelled against his predicament. So, his limbs grew weary and his mind became numb and confused. And then, his self-awareness began to grow. He began to wonder how he came to be in the prison in the first place. He looked around and saw all his fellow prisoners also turning the wheel. His wife, his parents, his friends and his children – they were all in the prison too, and turning their own wheels! He began to wonder how this came about. As he wondered more and more, he began to focus less on his physical drudgery and boredom. And he began to clearly see his inner spirit which guided him in ways that allowed him to see the world with a universal view. His inner spirit guided him towards the source of eternal wisdom and happiness. He began to see the source of happiness in everything around him – his prison bound relationships, even his jailers and in his wheel. He became a source of light to those around him. His wheel jokes and humor infected them with joy and happiness. Finally, the day came for his release from jail. He walked calmly outside the jail and laughed aloud when he saw that the wheel was not connected to anything. He knelt down, kissed it and thanked it for the wisdom it taught him. Life is the prison. The wheel is your work. Both are sacred. Both have enormous powers to teach us wisdom and bring us happiness. Whether we allow them to do so, is a choice we have to make. Over the next few weeks, I hope to share with you a few lessons that I have learnt at the wheel in my two decades of my career (prison). Thank you for reading, and do let me know what you think. Reference: Srini Chandra (3 Lives, in search of bliss), Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• RightNow CX @ OpenWorld: What to Experience

  - by Tony Berk

  We want to welcome our RightNow CX customers to Oracle OpenWorld next week. Get ready for a great week and a whole new experience! For a high level overview of what is going on during the week, please review these previous posts: Is There a Cloud Over OpenWorld? and What to "CRM" in San Francisco? CRM Highlights for OpenWorld '12. Also, don't forget you can add on the Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld to make your week even more complete and get involved with the Experience Revolution! Below is a highlight of only some of the RightNow related sessions at OpenWorld. Please use OpenWorld Schedule Builder or check the OpenWorld Content Catalog for all of the session details and any time or location changes. Tip: Pre-enrolled session registrants via Schedule Builder are allowed into the session rooms before anyone else, so Schedule Builder will guarantee you a seat. Many of the sessions below will likely be at capacity. No better way to start off than hearing where Oracle RightNow is going! Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service Vision and Roadmap (CON9764) - Oct 1, 10:45 AM. Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service combines Web, social, and contact center experiences for a unified, cross-channel service solution in the cloud, enabling organizations to increase sales and adoption, build trust, strengthen relationships, and reduce costs and effort. Come to this session to hear from David Vap and his team of Oracle experts about where the product is going and how Oracle is committed to accelerating the pace of innovation and value to its customers. Interested in the Cloud and want to know why some leading CIOs are moving to the cloud? You can hear first hand from CIOs from Emerson, Intuit and Overstock.com: CIOs and Governance in the Cloud (CON9767) - Oct 3, 11:45 AM.   And of course there are a number of sessions that drill down into more specific areas. Here are just a few: Deliver Outstanding Customer Experiences: Oracle RightNow Dynamic Agent Desktop Cloud Service (CON9771) - Oct 1, 4:45 PM. This session covers how companies have delivered exceptional customer experiences and how the Oracle RightNow Dynamic Agent Desktop Cloud Service roadmap will evolve in the future. The Oracle RightNow Contact Center Experience suite includes incident management, knowledge, guided processes, and other service capabilities to unify the customer experience across channels. Come learn about the powerful tools that enable even your junior agents to consistently provide outstanding service across all customer interaction channels. Self-Service in the Age of Data Intimacy (CON11516) - Oct 1, 3:15. Even though businesses are generating more and more data around their relationships and interactions with customers, very little of the information a business generates ends up available to the contact center and even less is made available to the online service experience. The generic one-size-fits-all approach that typifies most online service experiences ultimately fails to address all user needs, and that failure ultimately leads to the continued use of high-cost agent-assisted channels for low-value interactions. This session introduces Oracle RightNow Web Experience’s Virtual Assistant and discusses how you can deliver rich, engaging, highly personalized experiences with the quality of agent-assisted service at a much lower cost. Improve Chat Experiences: Best Practices for Chat Pilots and Deployments (CON11517) - Oct 1, 4:45 PM. Today’s organizations are challenged to grow revenue and retain customers with fewer resources, and many have turned to chat as an approach to improving the customer experience, increasing sales conversions, and reducing costs at the same time. From setting goals and metrics and training staff to customizing and tuning the solution, this session provides best practices and lessons learned from a broad set of implementations to help you get the most out of your chat solution. Differentiated Experience with Web Service (CON9770) - Oct 2, 1:15 PM. A reputation for excellent customer service can differentiate your brand and drive revenue. In this session, learn how to develop that reputation by transforming your online self-service into a highly interactive, branded customer experience. See live examples of how Oracle RightNow Web Experience has helped customers deliver on their Web service strategies. Unifying the Agent’s Engagement Console (CON11518) - Oct 2, 1:15 PM. Does your customer experience suffer because your agents are toggling between multiple tools? Do your agent productivity and morale suffer as well? Come to this session to learn how Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service seamlessly unifies these disparate systems into a single engagement console. Regardless of channel, powerful adaptive tools consistently guide agents across contextually aware personalized workflows. Great agent experiences drive great customer experiences. Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service and the Oracle Customer Experience Portfolio (CON9775) - Oct 3, 10:15 AM. This session covers how Oracle’s integrated suite of customer experience (CX) products fits with the Oracle CX portfolio of products (Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management; the Oracle ATG, Oracle Endeca, and Oracle Knowledge product families; and Oracle Business Intelligence) to increase revenues, strengthen customer relationships, and reduce costs across the entire end-to-end customer lifecycle for companies that sell to consumers and those that sell to businesses. Greater Insights from Customer Engagements (CON9773) Oct 4, 12:45 PM. In this session, hear how to leverage service interaction insights, customer feedback, and segmented service engagements to improve the customer experience. Discover how customers, such as J&P Cycles, learn and take action based on business insights gained through their customer engagements. Again, these are just some of the sessions, so check out the Content Catalog for details on Knowledge Management, Customization, Integration and more in the Oracle Develop stream for Customer Experience. Be sure to visit the Oracle DEMOgrounds in the Moscone West Exhibit Hall. If this is your first OpenWorld, welcome! If you are returning, hi again and enjoy!

  Read the article

• More Quick Interview Tips

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  In the last couple of years I have conducted a lot of interviews for application and database developers for my company, and I can tell you that the little things can mean a lot.  Here are a few quick tips to help you make a good first impression. A year ago I gave you my #1 interview tip: Do some basic research!  And a year later, I am still stunned by how few technical people do the most basic of research.  I can only guess that it is because it is so engrained in our psyche that technical competence is everything (see How to Manage Technical Employees for more on this idea) that we forget or ignore the importance of soft skills and the art of the interview.  Or maybe it is because we have heard the stories of the uber-geek who has zero personal skills but still makes a fortune working for Microsoft.  Well, here’s another quick tip:  You’re probably not as good as he is; and a large number of companies actually run small to medium sized teams and can’t really afford to have the social outcast in the group.  In a small team, everyone has to get along well, and that’s an important part of what I’m evaluating during the interview process. My #2 tip is to act alive!  I typically conduct screening interviews by phone before I bring someone in for an in-person.  I don’t care how laid-back you are or if you have a “quiet personality”, when we are talking, ACT like you are happy I called and you are interested in getting the job.  If you sound like you are bored-to-death and that you would be perfectly happy to never work again, I am perfectly happy to help you attain that goal, and I’ll move on to the next candidate. And closely related to #2, perhaps we’ll call it #2.1 is this tip:  When I call you on the phone for the interview, don’t answer your phone by just saying, “Hello”.  You know that the odds are about 999-to-1 that it is me calling for the interview because we have specifically arranged this time slot for the call.  And you can see on the caller ID that it is not one of your buddies calling, so identify yourself.  Don’t make me question whether I dialed the right number.  Answer your phone with a, “Hello, this is ___<your full name preferred, but at least your first name>___.”.  And when I say, “Hi, <your name>, this is Mark from <my company>” it would be really nice to hear you say, “Hi, Mark, I have been expecting your call.”  This sets the perfect tone for our conversation.  I know I have the right person; you are professional enough and interested enough in the job or contract to remember your appointments; and now we can move on to a little intro segment and get on with the reason for our call. As crazy as it sounds, I’ve actually had phone interviews that went like this: <Ring…> You:  “Hello?” Me:  “Hi, this is Mark from _______” You:  “Yeah?” Me:  “Is this <your name>?” You:  “Yeah.” Me:  “I had this time in my calendar for us to talk…were you expecting my call?” You:  “Oh, yeah, sure…” I used to be nice and would try to go ahead with the interview even after this bad start, thinking I was giving the candidate the benefit of the doubt…a second chance…but more often than not it was a struggle and 10 minutes into what was supposed to be a 45-minute call, I’m looking for a way to hang up without being rude myself.  It never worked out.  I never brought that person in for an in-person interview, much less offered them the job or contract.  Who knows, maybe they were some sort of wunderkind that we missed out on.  What I know is that they would never fit in with the rest of the team, and around here that is absolutely critical. So, in conclusion… Act alive!  Identify yourself!  And do at least the very basic of research.

  Read the article

• The Linux powered LAN Gaming House

  - by sachinghalot

  LAN parties offer the enjoyment of head to head gaming in a real-life social environment. In general, they are experiencing decline thanks to the convenience of Internet gaming, but Kenton Varda is a man who takes his LAN gaming very seriously. His LAN gaming house is a fascinating project, and best of all, Linux plays a part in making it all work.Varda has done his own write ups (short, long), so I'm only going to give an overview here. The setup is a large house with 12 gaming stations and a single server computer.The client computers themselves are rack mounted in a server room, and they are linked to the gaming stations on the floor above via extension cables (HDMI for video and audio and USB for mouse and keyboard). Each client computer, built into a 3U rack mount case, is a well specced gaming rig in its own right, sporting an Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 560 along with a 60GB SSD drive.Originally, the client computers ran Ubuntu Linux rather than Windows and the games executed under WINE, but Varda had to abandon this scheme. As he explains on his site:"Amazingly, a majority of games worked fine, although many had minor bugs (e.g. flickering mouse cursor, minor rendering artifacts, etc.). Some games, however, did not work, or had bad bugs that made them annoying to play."Subsequently, the gaming computers have been moved onto a more conventional gaming choice, Windows 7. It's a shame that WINE couldn't be made to work, but I can sympathize as it's rare to find modern games that work perfectly and at full native speed. Another problem with WINE is that it tends to suffer from regressions, which is hardly surprising when considering the difficulty of constantly improving the emulation of the Windows API. Varda points out that he preferred working with Linux clients as they were easier to modify and came with less licensing baggage.Linux still runs the server and all of the tools used are open source software. The hardware here is a Intel Xeon E3-1230 with 4GB of RAM. The storage hanging off this machine is a bit more complex than the clients. In addition to the 60GB SSD, it also has 2x1TB drives and a 240GB SDD.When the clients were running Linux, they booted over PXE using a toolchain that will be familiar to anyone who has setup Linux network booting. DHCP pointed the clients to the server which then supplied PXELINUX using TFTP. When booted, file access was accomplished through network block device (NBD). This is a very easy to use system that allows you to serve the contents of a file as a block device over the network. The client computer runs a user mode device driver and the device can be mounted within the file system using the mount command.One snag with offering file access via NBD is that it's difficult to impose any security restrictions on different areas of the file system as the server only sees a single file. The advantage is perfomance as the client operating system simply sees a block device, and besides, these security issues aren't relevant in this setup.Unfortunately, Windows 7 can't use NBD, so, Varda had to switch to iSCSI (which works in both server and client mode under Linux). His network cards are not compliant with this standard when doing a netboot, but fortunately, gPXE came to the rescue, and he boostraps it over PXE. gPXE is also available as an ISO image and is worth knowing about if you encounter an awkward machine that can't manage a network boot. It can also optionally boot from a HTTP server rather than the more traditional TFTP server.According to Varda, booting all 12 machines over the Gigabit Ethernet network is surprisingly fast, and once booted, the machines don't seem noticeably slower than if they were using local storage. Once loaded, most games attempt to load in as much data as possible, filling the RAM, and the the disk and network bandwidth required is small. It's worth noting that these are aspects of this project that might differ from some other thin client scenarios.At time of writing, it doesn't seem as though the local storage of the client machines is being utilized. Instead, the clients boot into Windows from an image on the server that contains the operating system and the games themselves. It uses the copy on write feature of LVM so that any writes from a client are added to a differencing image allocated to that client. As the administrator, Varda can log into the Linux server and authorize changes to the master image for updates etc.SummaryOverall, Varda estimates the total cost of the project at about $40,000, and of course, he needed a property that offered a large physical space in order to house the computers and the gaming workstations. Obviously, this project has stark differences to most thin client projects. The balance between storage, network usage, GPU power and security would not be typical of an office installation, for example. The only letdown is that WINE proved to be insufficiently compatible to run a wide variety of modern games, but that is, perhaps, asking too much of it, and hats off to Varda for trying to make it work.

  Read the article

• Walmart and Fusion Apps

  - by ultan o'broin

  Photograph: Misha Vaughan I attended Fusion Apps (yes, I know I am supposed to say "Oracle Fusion Applications", but stuffy old style guides are a turn-off in interwebs conversations) User Experience Advocate (FXA) training in Long Beach, California last week; a suitable location as ODTUG KSCOPE 11 was kicking off and key players were in the area. As a member of Oracle's Apps-UX team I know the Fusion Apps messaging, natch, and done some other Fusion Apps go-to-market content work too. For the messaging details themselves, see Lonneke Dikmans (@lonnekedikmans) great blog, by the way. However, I wanted some 'formal' training combined with the opportunity to meet and learn from people already out there delivering those messages. The idea in me reaching out to Misha Vaughan, Apps-UX FXA maven, to get me onto this training was that in addition to my UX knowledge, I could leverage my location in EMEA and hit up customer events more quickly and easily. Those local user groups do like to hear the voice of locals too you know (so I need to work on that mid-Atlantic accent). I'm looking forward to such opportunities. The training was all smashing stuff, just the right level of detail, delivered professionally and with great style and humor. I was especially honored to be paired off for my er, coaching with Debra Lilley (@debralilley), who shared with everyone all kinds of tips and insights from her experiences of delivering the message and demo. For me, that was the real power of the FXA event--the communal, conversational aspect--the meeting up with people who had done all this for real, the sharing in their experiences, while learning along with other newbies. Sorry, but that all-important social aspect doesn't work so well with remote meetings. Katie Candland (Apps-UX) gave us a great tour of the Fusion Apps demo and included some useful presentational tips too (any excuse to buy that iPad). It's clear to me that the Fusion Apps messaging and demos really come alive with real-world examples that local application users will recognize, and I picked up some "yes, that's my job made easier" scene-stealers from Debra and Karen Brownfield too, to add to the great ones already provided. This power of examples shouldn't surprise anyone, they've long been a mainstay of applications user assistance, popular with users. We'll offer customers different types of example topics in the Fusion Apps online help too (stay tuned), and we know from research how important those 3S's (stories, scenarios, and simulations) are to users when they consume and apply information. Well, we've got the simulation, now it's time for more stories and scenarios. If you get a chance to participate in an FXA event (whether you are an Oracle employee or otherwise), I'd encourage it. It's committing your time and energy for sure, but I got real bang for the buck from it for my everyday job too. Listening to the room's feedback on the application demo really brought our internal design work to life, and I picked up on some things that I need to follow up on (like how you alphabetically sort stuff in other languages). User experience is after all, about users. What will I be doing next, and what would I like to see happen? Obviously, I need to develop my story-telling links with the people I met in Long Beach and do some practicing with the materials, and then get out there and deliver them at a suitable location. The demo is what it is right now, and that's a super-rich demo that I know everyone will want to see and ask questions about. Then, as mentioned by attendees at the FXA event, follow up on those translated and localized messages for EMEA (and APAC), that deal with different statutory or reporting requirements of the target markets. Given my background I would say that, wouldn't I? However, language is part of the UX, and international revenue is greater than US-only revenue for Oracle, so yes dear, we all need to get over the fact that enterprise apps users don't all speak, or want to speak, American-English. Most importantly perhaps, the continued development of a strong messaging community between Oracle and partners and customers where we can swap and share those FXA messaging stories and scenarios about Fusion Apps in a conversational way. The more the better, a combination of online and face-to-face meetings. I must also mention the great dinner after the event at Parker's Lighthouse, and the fun myself and Andrew Gilmour (Apps-UX) had at our end of the table talking about just about everything except Fusion Apps with Ronald Van Luttikhuizen and Ben Prusinski (who now understands the difference between Cork and Dublin people. I hope). Thanks to all the Apps-UXers who helped bring the FXA training to town, and to Debra and all the others that I am too jetlagged to mention right who were instrumental in making it happen for me. Here's to the next one. And the Walmart angle? That was me doing my Robert Scoble (ScO'bilizer?)-style guerilla smart phone research in Walmart in Long Beach, before the FXA event. It's all about stories for me. You can read more about it on the appslab blog (see the comments).

  Read the article

• Jagran Prakashan Increases Staff Productivity by 40%

  - by Michael Snow

  Jagran Prakashan Increases Staff Productivity by 40%, Launches New IT Projects up to 4x Faster, Enables Mobile Service, and Improves Business Agility Oracle Customer: JPL Location:  Uttar Pradesh, India Industry: Media and Entertainment Employees:  10,000 Annual Revenue:  $100 to $500 Million Jagran Prakashan Ltd. (JPL) is one of India's premier media and communications groups with interests spanning print, advertising, event management, and mobile services for weather, cricket scores, and educational activities. It is a major media enterprise, with 300 locations across 15 states. Its impressive stable of print publications includes Dainik Jagran, the world’s most widely read daily newspaper––with a readership of over 55 million––the country’s leading afternoon dailies, and a range of popular local, bilingual, and English language newspapers. JPL was using multiple systems to manage its business processes. Users were resistant to using multiple passwords for various applications, preferring to continue their less efficient, legacy work practices. In addition, there was no single repository for sharing documents across the organization, such as company announcements or project documents. The company relied on e-mail to disseminate up-to-date company information, often missing employees. It was also time-consuming and difficult for managers to track the status of ongoing assignments or projects because collaboration and document sharing was inefficient and ineffective.With diverse businesses and many geographic locations, JPL needed to implement a centralized and user-friendly enterprise portal to improve document sharing and collaboration and increase business agility. The company implemented Oracle WebCenter Portal to create a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal to improve the user experience and increase operating efficiency. It improved staff productivity by 40%, accelerated new IT projects by up to 4x, boosted staff morale, and increased business agility.   Increases Staff Productivity by 40%, Launches New Products up to 2x Faster A word from JPL "With Oracle WebCenter Portal, we gained a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal that provided an exceptional user experience and enabled us to engage employees in a collaborative environment. It increased IT staff productivity by 40%, delivered new projects up to 4x faster, and enabled mobile service to improve our business agility.” Sarbani Bhatia, Vice President IT, Jagran Prakashahn Ltd Before implementing Oracle WebCenter Portal, JPL stored project-critical information, such as page planning of daily newspaper editions and the launch of new editions or supplements on individual laptops or in the e-mail system. Collaboration between colleagues was limited to physical meetings, telephone discussions, and e-mail. It was difficult to trace and recover important project documents when a staff member resigned, which represented a significant risk to business continuity. Employees were also averse to multiple passwords and resisted using the systems, affecting staff productivity. With Oracle WebCenter Portal, JPL created a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal with business activity streams. The portal allowed users to navigate, discover, and access information, such as advertising rates, requisition approvals, ad-hoc queries, and employee surveys from a single entry point with a single password. Managers can also upload important documents, such as new pricing for advertisers or newspaper distributors, and share them through the information and instruction section in the portal. In addition, managers can now easily track and review timelines for projects online rather than gathering information from meetings and e-mails. The company gained the ability to centrally manage information, ensured business continuity, and improved staff productivity by 40%.“In the media industry, news has a very short shelf life, so speed is crucial. Information delayed is like information lost,” said Sarbani Bhatia, vice president IT, Jagran Prakashahn Ltd. “Thanks to Oracle WebCenter Portal’s contextual collaboration tools, we can provide and share feedback for new project launches, such as career or education supplements, up to 2x faster through discussion forums or knowledge groups. Tasks that previously required four months, we now complete in one month.”In addition, the company can broadcast announcements, flash employee birthdays, and promote important events through the message section on the webpage, instead of using the e-mail system. The company can also conduct opinion polls to gauge employee response to organizational issues and improve management decision-making.“With over 10,000 employees across 300 locations, it is critical for management to hear the voice of employees and develop a cohesive organizational culture. Oracle WebCenter Portal enables employees to engage with business processes and systems in a collaborative environment, providing users with an exceptional experience,” Bhatia said. Enables Mobility Access and Increases Business Agility Newspaper advertisements generate the majority of JPL’s revenue. With most sales staff on the move, the company needed to ensure timely approval of print advertisement discounts for specific clients and meet tight publication deadlines.  By integrating Oracle WebCenter Portal seamlessly with its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and other applications, such as the organizational mass mailing system, business intelligence, and management information system, JPL embedded its approval workflow processes into the enterprise portal and provided users with an integrated and intuitive interface. About 30% of JPL’s sales staff members now have tablets and receive advertising discount approval from managers while in the field and no longer need to return to the office, which has significantly improved efficiency and increased business agility.“Application mobility was critical for sales representatives in the field to meet stringent auditing requirements for online accountability, particularly for our newspaper advertising business. Staff member satisfaction has improved significantly now that the sales team can use tablets to access the portal––a capability we will extend to smart phones in the second stage of the implementation,” Bhatia said. Accelerates Application Development by up to 4x and Cuts Costs by up to 60% With Oracle WebCenter Portal, users can easily create, modify, and upload information to their personalized webpages without IT assistance. By seamlessly integrating Oracle WebCenter Portal with the payroll database, managers can decide which members of their team can access the page and with whom they will share information, a decision based on role or geographical location. A sales representative selling advertising space for a local language daily newspaper, for example, can upload an updated advertising rate relevant only to that particular publication. Users can also easily adapt to the new platform, thanks to its intuitive design and look, reducing the need for training and lowering resistance to using the system.Using Oracle WebCenter Portal’s out-of-the-box reusable components, such as portal pages and templates, provided JPL’s developers with a comprehensive and flexible user experience platform and increased the speed of application development. In less than five months, JPL developed more than 55 workflows. The IT team accelerated deployment of new applications by up to 4x, as they do not need to install them on individual machines now that they have a web-based environment.   “Previously, we would have spent a whole day deploying a new application for each department or location. With a browser-based environment, we have cut costs by up to 60% by reducing deployment time to zero, because our IT team can roll out a new application from a single point, thanks to Oracle WebCenter Portal,” Bhatia said. Challenges Provide a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal to improve staff productivity and ensure business continuity Enable seamless integration with multiple enterprise applications to improve workflow efficiency—including approval of print advertisement discounts—and increase business agility Improve engagement with employees and enable collaboration to enhance management decision-making Accelerate time-to-market for new services, such as new advertising programs Solutions Oracle Product and ServicesOracle WebCenter Portal 11g Increased staff productivity by 40% and enhanced user satisfaction by enabling employees to easily navigate, discover, and access information from a single, self-service enterprise portal without IT assistance Launched new products, such as career or education supplements, up to 2x faster by enabling peer collaboration and incorporating feedback generated through discussion forums, thanks to Oracle WebCenter Portal’s out-of-the-box collaboration tools Accelerated application development up to 4x by enabling developers to optimize reusable components for managing and deploying new applications in a browser-based environment rather than spending one day to install applications for each department, cutting costs by up to 60% Ensured business continuity by enabling managers to easily track and review project timelines online rather than storing important documents on individual laptops or relying on the e-mail system Increased business agility and operational efficiency by seamlessly integrating with the in-house, ERP system and embedding business processes into a single portal Boosted company revenue by enabling sales team members to submit print-advertising discount requests through mobile devices instead of waiting to return to office, ensuring timely approval from managers to meet tight publication deadlines Improved management decision-making by enabling employees to easily share and access feedback through opinion polls or forums, boosting staff morale Introduced the single sign-on capability and enhanced security by enabling managers to decide access level for staff members based on role or geographical location Reduced the need for staff training and minimized user resistance to systems by providing a dynamic and intuitive user experience Why Oracle JPL did not consider other products because the company was already using Oracle Database, Enterprise Edition with Real Application Clusters and had a positive experience with Oracle. JPL chose Oracle WebCenter Portal to ensure no compatibility issues for integration with its existing Oracle products and to take advantage of the experience and support of a reputable vendor to ensure business continuity. “We chose Oracle because we knew we could rely on its support and experience. In addition, Oracle WebCenter Portal’s speed, agility, and mobile access features were a perfect fit for our business requirements,” Bhatia said. Implementation Process JPL launched the enterprise portal to 500 users in the first phase of the project, and plans to extend this to 2,000 users when the portal is fully launched. Oracle partner PricewaterhouseCoopers used Oracle Application Development Framework for the intial set-up, user training and to develop and design sample workflows. JPL’s internal IT staff then took charge of the implementation, bringing it to completion on budget. Partner Oracle PartnerPricewaterhouseCoopers (India)

  Read the article

• Partner Training on Endeca 2-Days Hands-on Fundamentals

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Utrecht, NL - Monday, January 28 until Tuesday, January 29 : To Register Click here   cost €475 per person Utrecht, NL - Thursday, January 31 until Friday, February 1 :  To Register Click here   cost €475 per person Oracle Belgium - Wednesday, February 6 to Thursday February 7: To Register Click here   cost €535 per person Oracle Belgium - Thursday, February 28 until Friday, March 1 :  To Register Click here   cost €535 per person The Oracle Endeca Information Discovery (OEID) fundamentals training is designed to give partners an understanding of OEID’s features, and how it complements the existing Oracle Business Intelligence suite. Participants will learn how to develop & implement solutions using a Data Discovery method.  Training is in Dutch. This is a two-day class which start with the introduction of Endeca in the proposition of Oracle Business Analytics. The underlying architecture and technology will also be covered. The majority of this fundamentals training is based on a hands-on wokrshop. In this workshop all participants will build several Endeca dashboards based on worked out examples. During this workshop we will also spend time on how to extract social media and other unstructured data combined with text enrichment. This training is developed and will be given by Aotrta Business Intelligence who is Oracle Approved Education Center for OBIEE and OEID in EMEA. Prerequisites You must bring a 64-bit laptop with you for the Hands-on labs: Attendees should have experience and familiarity with the basic concepts of business intelligence and be OPN Partners with Gold or above membership.

  Read the article

• Gamification = -10#/3mo

  - by erikanollwebb

  One of the purposes of gamification of anything is to see if you can modify the behavior of the user. In the enterprise, that might mean getting sales people to enter more information into a CRM system, encouraging employees to update their HR records, motivating people to participate in forums and discussions, or process invoices more quickly.  Wikipedia defines behavior modification as "the traditional term for the use of empirically demonstrated behavior change techniques to increase or decrease the frequency of behaviors, such as altering an individual's behaviors and reactions to stimuli through positive and negative reinforcement of adaptive behavior and/or the reduction of behavior through its extinction, punishment and/or satiation."  Gamification is just a way to modify someone's behavior using game mechanics. And the magic question is always whether it works. So I thought I would present my own little experiment from the last few months.  This spring, I upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy 4.  It's a pretty sweet phone in many ways, but one of the little extras I discovered was a built in app called S Health. S Health is an app that you can use to track calories, weight, exercise and it has a built in pedometer. I looked at it when I got the phone, but assumed you had to turn it on to use it so I didn't look at it much.  But sometime in July, I realized that in fact, it just ran in the background and was quietly tracking my steps, with a goal of 10,000 per day.  10,000 steps per day is this magic number recommended by the Surgeon General and the American Heart Association.  Dr. Oz pushes it as the goal for daily exercise.  It's about 5 miles of walking. I'm generally not the kind of person who always has my phone with me.  I leave it in my purse and pull it out when I need it.  But then I realized that meant I wasn't getting a good measure of my steps.  I decided to do a little experiment, and carry it with me as much as possible for a week.  That's when I discovered the gamification that changed my life over the last 3 months.  When I hit 10,000 steps, the app jingled out a little "success!" tune and I got a badge.  I was hooked.  I started carrying my phone.  I started making sure I had shoes I could walk in with me.  I started walking at lunch time, because I realized how often I sat at my desk for 8-10 hours every day without moving.  I started pestering my husband to walk with me after work because I hadn't hit my 10,000 yet, leading him at one point to say "I'm not as much a slave to that badge as you are!"  I started looking at parking lots differently.  Can't get a space up close?  No worries, just that many steps toward my 10,000.  I even tried to see if there was a second power user level at 15,000 or 20,000 (*sadly, no).  If I was close at the end of the day, I have done laps around my house until I got my badge.  I have walked around the block one more time to get my badge.  I have mentally chastised myself when I forgot to put my phone in my pocket because I don't know how many steps I got.  The badge below I got when my boss and I were in New York City and we walked around the block of our hotel just to watch the badge pop up. There are a bunch of tools out on the market now that have similar ideas for helping you to track your exercise, make it social.  There are apps (my favorite is still Zombies, Run!).  You could buy a FitBit or UP by Jawbone.   Interactive fitness makes the Expresso stationary bike with built in video games.  All designed to help you be more aware of your activity and keep you engaged and motivated.  And the idea is to help you change your behavior. I know someone who would spend extra time and work hard on the Expresso because he had built up strategies for how to kill the most dragons while he was riding to get more points.  When the machine broke down, he didn't ride a different bike because it just wasn't that interesting. But for me, just the simple jingle and badge have been all I needed.  I admit, I still giggle gleefully when I hear the tune sing out from my pocket. After a few weeks, I noticed I had dropped a few pounds.  Not a lot, just 2-3.  But then I was really hooked.  I started making a point both to eat a little less and hit 10,000 steps as much as I could.  I bemoaned that during the floods in Boulder, I wasn't hitting my 10,000 steps.  And now, a few months later, I'm almost 10 lbs lighter. All for 1 badge a day. So yes, simple gamification can increase motivation and engagement.  And that can lead to changes in behavior.  Now the job is to apply that to the enterprise space in a meaningful and engaging way. 

  Read the article

• Oracle Romania Summer School

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 What would you say about a Summer School within a corporation where you can learn, play and practice? You might think that this is something usually uncommon for a company and you would be right. However, Oracle’s main value being innovation, we came up with a new project for Romanian students and graduates. We organised Oracle Summer School , offering them the opportunity to develop their soft skills and gain valuable business knowledge and exposure. How was Oracle Summer School programme organised? We focused on students and graduates’ needs and combined business experience with training and practice. The twenty four participants had different backgrounds, being interested in Software, Hardware, Finance, Marketing or other areas. The programme fulfilled each of these needs, bringing them in contact with Specialists and Managers. The first two weeks were dedicated to the company visits, business presentations and networking. The participants got an insight about employees’ activities and projects. Storytelling was also part of the program and people from different departments spent a couple of hours with the participants, sharing their experiences, knowledge and interesting stories. The Recruitment team delivered a training about the job interview skills in order to make the participants feel better prepared for a Recruitment process. The second module consisted of two weeks of Soft Skills trainings delivered by professional trainers from different departments. The participants gained useful insight on the competencies required within a business environment. The evenings were dedicated to social activities and it not very long until they started feel part of a team. The third module will take place at the end of September and will put the participants in contact with senior people from the business who will become their Mentors. What do the participants say about Oracle Summer School? “ As a fresh computer science graduate, Oracle Summer School gave me the opportunity of finding what are the technical and nontechnical skills required in a large multinational company. It was a great way of seeing how the theoretical knowledge I received during college is applied in real-life scenarios and what skills I still need to develop. “  (Cosmin Radu) “ When arriving at Oracle I had high expectations, but did not know exactly what was going to unfold because of the program's lack of precedence. Right after the first day, my feedback outgrew the initial forecast and the following weeks continued to build upon it. I had the pleasure to acquaint with brilliant people. The program was outlined on various profiles, delivering a comprehensive experience. It was very engaging, informative and nevertheless fun. “ (Vlad Manciu) „ Oracle Summer School is by far the best summer school that I have ever attended. For me it has been a great experience so far, because I’ve learned not only how to use soft skills in a corporate environment, but I’ve learned a great deal about myself as well. However, the most valuable asset of this 3-week period were the people that I’ve met: great individuals and great professionals, whom I really grew fond of.” (Alexandru Purcarea) “Applying to Oracle Summer School has been the best decision I took in regard to how to spend my summer holiday. I had the chance to do job shadowing at some of the departments I was interested in and I attended great trainings on various subjects such as time management and emotional intelligence. Moreover, I made friends with the other participants and we enjoyed going out together after “classes”.(Andreea Tudor) If you are interested in joining our team and attending our events please follow us on https://campus.oracle.com/campus/HR/emea_main.html /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

  Read the article

• Discover What Powers Your Favorite Websites

  - by Matthew Guay

  Have you ever wondered if the site you’re visiting is powered by WordPress or if the webapp you’re using is powered by Ruby on Rails?  With these extensions for Google Chrome, you’ll never have to wonder again. Geeks love digging under the hood to see what makes their favorite apps and sites tick.  But opening the “View Source” window today doesn’t tell you everything there is to know about a website.  Plus, even if you can tell what CMS is powering a website from its source, it can be tedious to dig through lines of code to find what you’re looking for.  Also, the HTML code never tells you what web server a site is running on or what version of PHP it’s using.  With three extensions for Google Chrome you’ll never have to wonder again.  Note that some sites may not give as much information, but still, you’ll find enough data from most sites to be interesting. Discover Web Frameworks and Javascript Libraries with Chrome Sniffer If you want to know what CMS is powering a site or if it’s using Google Analytics or Quantcast, this is the extension for you.  Chrome Sniffer (link below) identifies over 40 different frameworks, and is constantly adding more.  It shows the logo of the main framework on the site on the left of your address bar.  Here wee see Chrome Sniffer noticed that How-To Geek is powered by WordPress.   Click the logo to see other frameworks on the site.  We can see that the site also has Google Analytics and Quantcast.  If you want more information about the framework, click on its logo and the framework’s homepage will open in a new tab. As another example, we can see that the Tumblr Staff blog is powered by Tumblr (of course), the Discus comment system, Quantcast, and the Prototype JavaScript framework. Or here’s a site that’s powered by Drupal, Google Analytics, Mollom spam protection, and jQuery.  Chrome Sniffer definitely uncovers a lot of neat stuff, so if you’re into web frameworks you’re sure to enjoy this extension. Find Out What Web Server The Site is Running On Want to know whether the site you’re looking at is running on IIS or Appache?  The Web Server Notifier extension for Chrome (link below) lets you easily recognize the web server a site is running on by its favicon on the right of the address bar.  Click the icon to see more information. Some web servers will show you a lot of information about their server, including version, operating system, PHP version, OpenSSL version, and more. Others will simply tell you their name. If the site is powered by IIS, you can usually tell the version of Windows Server its running on since the IIS versions are specific to a version of Windows.  Here we see that Microsoft.com is running on the latest and greatest – Windows Server 2008 R2 with IIS 7.5. Discover Web Technologies Powering Sites Wondering if a webapp is powered by Ruby on Rails or ASP.NET?  The Web Technology Notifier extension for Chrome (link below), from the same developer as the Web Server Notifier, will let you easily discover the backend of a site.  You’ll see the technology’s favicon on the right of your address bar, and, as with the other extension, can get more information by clicking the icon. Here we can see that Backpack from 37signals is powered by the Phusion Passenger module to run Ruby on Rails.   Microsoft’s new Docs.com Office Online apps is powered by ASP.NET…   And How-To Geek has PHP running to power WordPress. Conclusion With all these tools at hand, you can find out a lot about your favorite sites.  For example, with all three extensions we can see that How-To Geek runs on WordPress with PHP, uses Google Analytics and Quantcast, and is served by the LightSpeed web server.  Fun info, huh?   Links Download the Chrome Sniffer extension Download the Web Server Notifier extension Download the Web Technology Notifier extension Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Enjoy a Clean Start Page with New Tab PageEnjoy Image Zooming on Your Favorite Photo Websites in ChromeAdd Your Own Folders to Favorites in Windows 7Find User Scripts for Your Favorite Websites the Easy WayAdd Social Elements to Your Gmail Contacts with Rapportive TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 tinysong gives a shortened URL for you to post on Twitter (or anywhere) 10 Superb Firefox Wallpapers OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes

  Read the article

• Highlights from the Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  The Oracle Customer Experience Summit was the first-ever event covering the full breadth of Oracle's CX portfolio -- Marketing, Sales, Commerce, and Service. The purpose of the Summit was to articulate the customer experience imperative and to showcase the suite of Oracle products that can help our customers create the best possible customer experience. This topic has always been a very important one, but now that there are so many alternative companies to do business with and because people have such public ways to voice their displeasure, it's necessary for vendors to have multiple listening posts in place to gauge consumer sentiment. They need to know what is going on in real time and be able to react quickly to turn negative situations into positive ones. Those can then be shared in a social manner to enhance the brand and turn the customer into a repeat customer. The Summit was focused on Oracle's portfolio of products and entirely dedicated to customers who are committed to building great customer experiences within their businesses. Rather than DBAs, the attendees were business people looking to collaborate with other like-minded experts and find out how Oracle can help in terms of technology, best practices, and expertise. The event was at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco as part of Oracle OpenWorld. We had eight hundred people attend, which was great for the first year. Next year, there's no doubt in my mind, we can raise that number to 5,000. Alignment and Logic Oracle's Customer Experience portfolio is made up of a combination of acquired and organic products owned by many people who are new to Oracle. We include homegrown Fusion CRM, as well as RightNow, Inquira, OPA, Vitrue, ATG, Endeca, and many others. The attendees knew of the acquisitions, so naturally they wanted to see how the products all fit together and hear the logic behind the portfolio. To tell them about our alignment, we needed to be aligned. To accomplish that, a cross functional team at Oracle agreed on the messaging so that every single Oracle presenter could cover the big picture before going deep into a product or topic. Talking about the full suite of products in one session produced overflow value for other products. And even though this internal coordination was a huge effort, everyone saw the value for our customers and for our long-term cooperation and success. Keynotes, Workshops, and Tents of Innovation We scored by having Seth Godin as our keynote speaker ? always provocative and popular. The opening keynote was a session orchestrated by Mark Hurd, Anthony Lye, and me. Mark set the stage by giving real-world examples of bad customer experiences, Anthony clearly articulated the business imperative for addressing these experiences, and I brought it all to life by taking the audience around the Customer Lifecycle and showing demos and videos, with partners included at each of the stops around the lifecycle. Brian Curran, a VP for RightNow Product Strategy, presented a session that was in high demand called The Economics of Customer Experience. People loved hearing how to build a business case and justify the cost of building a better customer experience. John Kembel, another VP for RightNow Product Strategy, held a workshop that customers raved about. It was based on the journey mapping methodology he created, which is a way to talk to customers about where they want to make improvements to their customers' experiences. He divided the audience into groups led by facilitators. Each person had the opportunity to engage with experts and peers and construct some real takeaways. The conference hotel was across from Union Square so we used that space to set up Innovation Tents. During the day we served lunch in the tents and partners showed their different innovative ideas. It was very interesting to see all the technologies and advancements. It also gave people a place to mix and mingle and to think about the fringe of where we could all take these ideas. Product Portfolio Plus Thought Leadership Of course there is always room for improvement, but the feedback on the format of the conference was positive. Ninety percent of the sessions had either a partner or a customer teamed with an Oracle presenter. The presentations weren't dry, one-way information dumps, but more interactive. I just followed up with a CEO who attended the conference with his Head of Marketing. He told me that they are using John Kembel's journey mapping methodology across the organization to pull people together. This sort of thought leadership in these highly competitive areas gives Oracle permission to engage around the technology. We have to differentiate ourselves and it's harder to do on the product side because everyone looks the same on paper. But on thought leadership ? we can, and did, take some really big steps. David Vap Group Vice President Oracle Applications Product Development

  Read the article

• Seizing the Moment with Mobility

  - by Divya Malik

  Empowering people to work where they want to work is becoming more critical now with the consumerisation of technology. Employees are bringing their own devices to the workplace and expecting to be productive wherever they are. Sales people welcome the ability to run their critical business applications where they can be most effective which is typically on the road and when they are still with the customer. Oracle has invested many years of research in understanding customer's Mobile requirements. “The keys to building the best user experience were building in a lot of flexibility in ways to support sales, and being useful,” said Arin Bhowmick, Director, CRM, for the Applications UX team. “We did that by talking to and analyzing the needs of a lot of people in different roles.” The team studied real-life sales teams. “We wanted to study salespeople in context with their work,” Bhowmick said. “We studied all user types in the CRM world because we wanted to build a user interface and user experience that would cater to sales representatives, marketing managers, sales managers, and more. Not only did we do studies in our labs, but also we did studies in the field and in mobile environments because salespeople are always on the go.” Here is a recent post from Hernan Capdevila, Vice President, Oracle Fusion Apps which was featured on the Oracle Applications Blog.  Mobile devices are forcing a paradigm shift in the workplace – they’re changing the way businesses can do business and the type of cultures they can nurture. As our customers talk about their mobile needs, we hear them saying they want instant-on access to enterprise data so workers can be more effective at their jobs anywhere, anytime. They also are interested in being more cost effective from an IT point of view. The mobile revolution – with the idea of BYOD (bring your own device) – has added an interesting dynamic because previously IT was driving the employee device strategy and ecosystem. That's been turned on its head with the consumerization of IT. Now employees are figuring out how to use their personal devices for work purposes and IT has to figure out how to adapt. Blurring the Lines between Work and Personal Life My vision of where businesses will be five years from now is that our work lives and personal lives will be more interwoven together. In turn, enterprises will have to determine how to make employees’ work lives fit more into the fabric of their personal lives. And personal devices like smartphones are going to drive significant business value because they let us accomplish things very incrementally. I can be sitting on a train or in a taxi and be productive. At the end of any meeting, I can capture ideas and tasks or follow up with people in real time. Mobile devices enable this notion of seizing the moment – capitalizing on opportunities that might otherwise have slipped away because we're not connected. For the industry shapers out there, this is game changing. The lean and agile workforce is definitely the future. This notion of the board sitting down with the executive team to lay out strategic objectives for a three- to five-year plan, bringing in HR to determine how they're going to staff the strategic activities, kicking off the execution, and then revisiting the plan in three to five years to create another three- to five-year plan is yesterday's model. Businesses that continue to approach innovating in that way are in the dinosaur age. Today it's about incremental planning and incremental execution, which requires a lot of cohesion and synthesis within the workforce. There needs to be this interweaving notion within the workforce about how ideas cascade down, how people engage, how they stay connected, and how insights are shared. How to Survive and Thrive in Today’s Marketplace The notion of Facebook isn’t new. We lived it pre-Internet days with America Online and Prodigy – Facebook is just the renaissance of these services in a more viral and pervasive way. And given the trajectory of the consumerization of IT with people bringing their personal tooling to work, the enterprise has no option but to adapt. The sooner that businesses realize this from a top-down point of view the sooner that they will be able to really drive significant innovation and adapt to the marketplace. There are a small number of companies right now (I think it's closer to 20% rather than 80%, but the number is expanding) that are able to really innovate in this incremental marketplace. So from a competitive point of view, there's no choice but to be social and stay connected. By far the majority of users on Facebook and LinkedIn are mobile users – people on iPhones, smartphones, Android phones, and tablets. It's not the couch people, right? It's the on-the-go people – those people at the coffee shops. Usually when you're sitting at your desk on a big desktop computer, typically you have better things to do than to be on Facebook. This is a topic I'm extremely passionate about because I think mobile devices are game changing. Mobility delivers significant value to businesses – it also brings dramatic simplification from a functional point of view and transforms our work life experience. Hernan Capdevila Vice President, Oracle Applications Development

  Read the article

• Masters vs. PhD - long [closed]

  - by Sterling

  I'm 21 years old and a first year master's computer science student. Whether or not to continue with my PhD has been plaguing me for the past few months. I can't stop thinking about it and am extremely torn on the issue. I have read http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html and many, many other masters vs phd articles on the web. Unfortunately, I have not yet come to a conclusion. I was hoping that I could post my ideas about the issue on here in hopes to 1) get some extra insight on the issue and 2) make sure that I am correct in my assumptions. Hopefully having people who have experience in the respective fields can tell me if I am wrong so I don't make my decision based on false ideas. Okay, to get this topic out of the way - money. Money isn't the most important thing to me, but it is still important. It's always been a goal of mine to make 6 figures, but I realize that will probably take me a long time with either path. According to most online salary calculating sites, the average starting salary for a software engineer is ~60-70k. The PhD program here is 5 years, so that's about 300k I am missing out on by not going into the workforce with a masters. I have only ever had ~1k at one time in my life so 300k is something I can't even really accurately imagine. I know that I wouldn't have at once obviously, but just to know I would be earning that is kinda crazy to me. I feel like I would be living quite comfortably by the time I'm 30 years old (but risk being too content too soon). I would definitely love to have at least a few years of my 20s to spend with that kind of money before I have a family to spend it all on. I haven't grown up very financially stable so it would be so nice to just spend some money…get a nice car, buy a new guitar or two, eat some good food, and just be financially comfortable. I have always felt like I deserved to make good money in my life, even as a kid growing up, and I just want to have it be a reality. I know that either path I take will make good money by the time I'm ~40-45 years old, but I guess I'm just sick of not making money and am getting impatient about it. However, a big idea pushing me towards a PhD is that I feel the masters path would give me a feeling of selling out if I have the capability to solve real questions in the computer science world. (pretty straight-forward - not much to elaborate on, but this is a big deal) Now onto other aspects of the decision. I originally got into computer science because of programming. I started in high school and knew very soon that it was what I wanted to do for a career. I feel like getting a masters and being a software engineer in the industry gives me much more time to program in my career. In research, I feel like I would spend more time reading, writing, trying to get grant money, etc than I would coding. A guy I work with in the lab just recently published a paper. He showed it to me and I was shocked by it. The first two pages was littered with equations and formulas. Then the next page or so was followed by more equations and formulas that he derived from the previous ones. That was his work - breaking down and creating all of these formulas for robotic arm movement. And whenever I read computer science papers, they all seem to follow this pattern. I always pictured myself coding all day long…not proving equations and things of that nature. I know that's only one part of computer science research, but that part bores me. A couple cons on each side - Phd - I don't really enjoy writing or feel like I'm that great at technical writing. Whenever I'm in groups to make something, I'm always the one who does the large majority of the work and then give it to my team members to write up a report. Presenting is different though - I don't mind presenting at all as long as I have a good grasp on what I am presenting. But writing papers seems like such a chore to me. And because of this, the "publish or perish" phrase really turns me off from research. Another bad thing - I feel like if I am doing research, most of it would be done alone. I work best in small groups. I like to have at least one person to bounce ideas off of when I am brainstorming. The idea of being a part of some small elite group to build things sounds ideal to me. So being able to work in small groups for the majority of my career is a definite plus. I don't feel like I can get this doing research. Masters - I read a lot online that most people come in as engineers and eventually move into management positions. As of now, I don't see myself wanting to be a part of management. Lets say my company wanted to make some new product or system - I would get much more pride, enjoyment, and overall satisfaction to say "I made this" rather than "I managed a group of people that made this." I want to be a big part of the development process. I want to make things. I think it would be great to be more specialized than other people. I would rather know everything about something than something about everything. I always have been that way - was a great pitcher during my baseball years, but not so good at everything else, great at certain classes in school, but not so good at others, etc. To think that my career would be the same way sounds okay to me. Getting a PhD would point me in this direction. It would be great to be some guy who is someone that people look towards and come to ask for help because of being such an important contributor to a very specific field, such as artificial neural networks or robotic haptic perception. From what I gather about the software industry, being specialized can be a very bad thing because of the speed of the new technology. I When it comes to being employed, I have pretty conservative views. I don't want to change companies every 5 years. Maybe this is something everyone wishes, but I would love to just be an important person in one company for 10+ (maybe 20-25+ if I'm lucky!) years if the working conditions were acceptable. I feel like that is more possible as a PhD though, being a professor or researcher. The more I read about people in the software industry, the more it seems like most software engineers bounce from company to company at rapid paces. Some even work like a hired gun from project to project which is NOT what I want AT ALL. But finding a place to make great and important software would be great if that actually happens in the real world. I'm a very competitive person. I thrive on competition. I don't really know why, but I have always been that way even as a kid growing up. Competition always gave me a reason to practice that little extra every night, always push my limits, etc. It seems to me like there is no competition in the research world. It seems like everyone is very relaxed as long as research is being conducted. The only competition is if someone is researching the same thing as you and its whoever can finish and publish first (but everyone seems to careful to check that circumstance). The only noticeable competition to me is just with yourself and your own discipline. I like the idea that in the industry, there is real competition between companies to put out the best product or be put out of business. I feel like this would constantly be pushing me to be better at what I do. One thing that is really pushing me towards a PhD is the lifetime of the things you make. I feel like if you make something truly innovative in the industry…just some really great new application or system…there is a shelf-life of about 5-10 years before someone just does it faster and more efficiently. But with research work, you could create an idea or algorithm that last decades. For instance, the A* search algorithm was described in 1968 and is still widely used today. That is amazing to me. In the words of Palahniuk, "The goal isn't to live forever, its to create something that will." Over anything, I just want to do something that matters. I want my work to help and progress society. Seriously, if I'm stuck programming GUIs for the next 40 years…I might shoot myself in the face. But then again, I hate the idea that less than 1% of the population will come into contact with my work and even less understand its importance. So if anything I have said is false then please inform me. If you think I come off as a masters or PhD, inform me. If you want to give me some extra insight or add on to any point I made, please do. Thank you so much to anyone for any help.

  Read the article

• What do the participants say about the Open Day in South Africa?

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 On the 26th of September, a group of students who were specifically selected to attend an Open day at Oracle South Africa, joined us at our offices in Woodmead, Johannesburg. The Conference room was filled with inquisitive minds. What we had in store for them was a detailed presentation about Oracle which was delivered by Zuko - Cluster Leader: Tech GB South Africa. The student’s many questions were all answered especially when we started addressing the opportunities we have and detailed information on our Graduate Programme. Our employees then came to talk about their experience. This allowed all the students to have an integrated learning experience. By inviting the students to walk around our Oracle Offices allowed them to see, talk, experience a bit of the culture and ask more questions. Here is some of the feedback from the attendees: Maxwell Moloi: “The open day truly served its purpose and exceeded expectations in the sense that I got to find out more about Oracle and all the different opportunities it has to offer. The fact that Oracle supplies a full solution to a customer and not just part of it and how the company manages to setup professional development for their employees is what entices me to want to join the rapidly growing team of Oracle.” Nqobile Mabaso: “I found the open day to be quite informative and enlightening because coming from a marketing background I could apply the knowledge I got from varsity to the Company I was able to point out what they do as part of their corporate social responsibility (Oracle recently partnered with the department of education to build a school), how Oracle emphasizes on relationship building because they know they sell to people and not companies and how they offer the full stack of solutions which gives them a competitive advantage over their competitors.” Nondumiso Mvelase: “The Open Day was a wonderful experience for me especially because I have never been part of an Open Day before, so it was absolutely amazing for me. It gave me a good idea of how it is to be part of Oracle. We were served with lovely breakfast and lunch which I enjoyed. I wish the Open Day went on for a whole week. Seeing and hearing from 2013 Graduates, telling us about their experience within Oracle was very inspiring to me. They were encouraging us to work hard if we ever got the opportunity they had. After hearing this from them I will definitely not take it for granted.” Itumeleng Moraka: “Before I walked into the Oracle offices all that was in my mind was databases and cloud storage. I was then surrounded by passionate, enthusiastic and welcoming employees. I came across a positive energy within the multinational company. I realized that Oracle is not a company that operates in survival mode. This may sound idealistic, but they operate in a non-traditional way investing more into innovation, they stay focused on what matters most about where technology is going and at the same time they are not losing sight of how their products make a difference in the world.” For more information on how to be part of the Oracle Graduate Programme please follow us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/CampusAtOracle /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

  Read the article

• CS, SE, HCI, Information Science, Please recommendation for further education of the former performing art manager seeking career in IT industries? [on hold]

  - by Baek Seungjoo

  IT specialists there J Thank you very much for your collective efforts here, and I got huge help reading your professional comments and advices on each questions I have searched so far! This time, I would like to ask for your practical advices or recommendation on what I am struggling on at this moment. I am currently seeking higher education for my career transition from performing art manager and director to “IT software and/or service development and management specialist”. However, as this field is quite new to me, and there are lots of different work positions, I have no idea which grad major I better pursue in order to get qualification. Of course I know this question could sounds wired as it is kind of personal choice. But my lack of understanding on how IT software companies work in general, your practical and experience-based advice will be great help to me, who spent more than two months of self-research on net. OK. Before my question, here is my plan and history, which are quite different from those currently in IT industry I think… 1) Target Firstly, get career transition into IT service or products companies and get experiences. Eventually, pursue IT entrepreneurship in combination with my arts and cultural production and business expertise. 2) Background Career: performing arts director and manager in theatre-based scale opera and musical Art education in youth BA in literature and Chinese studies (Art & Humanities) MA in Cultural & Creative Industries (Art & Humanities) – dissertation with focus on digital prosumption and the lived experience of the prosumer. (a qualitative research on the agents in the digital world) 2) Personally Huge interest in IT hardware and software, and their trend. Skills to build up, repair, tune PCs -of course this is no more than personal hobby, but shows my interests in this field. 4) Problem Encounter a question “So, what do you think you can contribute practically in this position”. This question turn me down everytime I go through job interviews, and I decided more education in the relevant area. Here are my questions. 1) In terms of work positions in IT software companies, I wonder if I can put the comparison of what “Artists” is to “Arts Manager or Director” is what “Developer” is to “Product Manager”. (Of course, this stereotypical division of Artist-Art Manager is out of sense because the domain overlaps to some extent, and is blurring at least in my field, and they are in different contexts, but just speaking easily.) Normally, artist comes with special arts educations, and they live in their own world of artistic inspiration and creation, and they feel alive in practice and on stages. Meanwhile, from the point of staging and managing productions, the role of art manager is critical as well. Our role cares how the production appeals to the audience in effective way, how to make profit and future sustainable management through that, how to set up future strategy in consideration of the external conditions such as political and social circumstances, audience trend and level, other production trends from on-going and historical perspectives, how and what the production make voice to the society from political, economic, humanitarian stances. So, we need keen eyes on economic, political, and societal environment, have to understand human-being and their desires, must know how to make presentation and attract investors, must have sense in managing and fighting over the limited financial resource, how to extend networking and so on. It is common that the two agents create productions in collaboration (normally not in that ideal way but in conflict and fight though J ). So, we need to know each other’s expertise to some extent, for better production. What are the work positions in IT software industries equivalent to the role of “art manager” in performing arts? From my view, considering developers come with special education in the world of computer science, software engineering, or others (self-education sometimes), and they express themselves with the arts of coding, computer languages on the black screen, and make sort of their artistic production online to the audience, I guess there might be someone who collaborate with developers in creating, managing, and launching IT services or products. 2) Which education among CS, SE, HCI, Information Science, is needed for those seeking such work position? Especially for person like me. (At this moment, Information Science has the highest possibility to get in, since I lack Calculus and Math in undergrad educaiton. But please let me know irrespective of this concern, I think there are ways to back it up if CS or SE education needed in my case) 3) Which field between Information Science and HCI can be more practical background regarding job hungting? And which of them have more demands in job market? AS I checked, HCI is more close to CS than IS in its focus of study area. Thank you very much for your patience reading such a long inquiry, and I appreciate to your efforts in advance. Have a nice day in this beautiful summer.

  Read the article

• UK OUG Conference Highlights and Insights

  - by Richard Bingham

  As per my preemptive post, this was the first time the annual conference organized by the UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) was split into two events, one for Oracle Applications and another in December for Oracle Technology. Apps13, as it was branded, was hailed as a success, with over 1000 registered attendees and three days of sessions, exhibition, round-tables and many other types of content. As this poster on their stand illustrates, the UKOUG is a strong community with popular participants from both big and small Oracle partners and customers. The venue was a more intimate setting than previous years also, allowing everyone to casually bump into those they hoped to. It gave a real feeling of an Apps Community. The main themes over the days where CRM and Customer Experience, HCM, and FIN/SCM. This allowed people to attend just one focused day if they wanted. In addition the Apps Transformation stream ran across all three days, offering insights, advice, and details on the newer product solutions like Fusion Applications.  Here are some of the key take-aways I got from the conference, specific to my role in Fusion Applications Developer Relations: User Experience continues to be a significant reason for adopting some of the newer application products available, with immediately obvious gains in user productivity and satisfaction reported by customers. Also this doesn't stop with the baked-in UX either, with their Design Patterns proving popular and indeed currently being extended to including things like extending on ADF mobile and customizing the Simplified UI. More on this to come from us soon. The executive sessions emphasized the "it's a journey" phrase, illustrating that modern business applications are powered by technologies such as Cloud, Mobile, Social and Big Data and these can be harnessed to help propel your organization forward. Indeed the emphasis is away from the traditional vendor prescribed linear applications road map, and towards plotting a course based on business priorities supported by a broad range of integrated solutions. To help with this several conference sessions demoed the new "Applications Navigator" tool, developed in partnership with OUG members, which offers a visual framework to help organizations plan their Oracle Applications investments around business and technology imperatives. Initial reaction was positive, especially as customers do not need to decipher Oracle's huge product catalog and embeds the best blend of proven and integrated applications solutions. We'll share more on this when it is generally available. Several sessions focused around explanations and interpretation of Oracle OpenWorld 2013, helping highlight the key Oracle Applications messages and directions. With a relative small percentage of conference attendees also at OpenWorld (from a show of hands) this was a popular way to distill the information available down into specific items of interest for the community. Please note the original OpenWorld 2013 content is still available for download but will not remain available forever (via the Oracle website OpenWorld Content Catalog > pick a session > see the PDF download). With the release of E-Business Suite 12.2 the move to develop and deploy on the Fusion Middleware stack becomes a reality for many Oracle Applications customers. This coupled with recent E-Business Suite features such as the Integrated SOA Gateway and the E-Business Suite SDK for Java, illustrates how the gap between the technologies and techniques involved in extending E-Business Suite and Fusion Applications is quickly narrowing. We'll see this merging continue to evolve going forwards. Getting started with Oracle Cloud Applications is actually easier than many customers expected, with a broad selection of both large and medium sized organizations explaining how they added new features to their existing Oracle Applications portfolios. New functionality available from Fusion HCM and CX are popular extensions that do not have to disrupt those core business services. Coexistence is the buzzword here, and the available integration is also simpler than many expected, commonly involving an initial setup data load, then regularly incremental synchronizations, often without a need for real-time constant communication between systems. With much of this pre-built already the implementation process is also quite rapid. With most people dressed in suits, we wanted to get the conversations going without the traditional english reserve, so we decided to make ourselves a bit more obvious, as the photo below shows. This seemed to be quite successful and helped those interested identify and approach us. Keep a look out for similar again. In fact if you're in the UK there is an "Apps Transformation Day" planned by the UKOUG for the 19th March 2014, with more details to follow. Again something we'll be sure to participate in. I am hoping to attend the next half of the UKOUG annual conference, Tech13, that focuses more on Oracle technology and where there is more likely to be larger attendance of those interested in the lower-level aspects of applications customization and development. If you're going, let me know and maybe we can meet up.

  Read the article

• How to Hashtag (Without Being #Annoying)

  - by Mike Stiles

  The right tool in the wrong hands can be a dangerous thing. Giving a chimpanzee a chain saw would not be a pretty picture. And putting Twitter hashtags in the hands of social marketers who were never really sure how to use them can be equally unattractive. Boiled down, hashtags are for search and organization of tweets. A notch up from that, they can also be used as part of a marketing strategy. In terms of search, if you’re in the organic apple business, you want anyone who searches “organic” on Twitter to see your posts about your apples. It’s keyword tactics not unlike web site keyword search tactics. So get a clear idea of what keywords are relevant for your tweet. It’s reasonable to include #organic in your tweet. Is it fatal if you don’t hashtag the word? It depends on the person searching. If they search “organic,” your tweet’s going to come up even if you didn’t put the hashtag in front of it. If the searcher enters “#organic,” your tweet needs the hashtag. Err on the side of caution and hashtag it so it comes up no matter how the searcher enters it. You’ll also want to hashtag it for the second big reason people hashtag, organization. You can follow a hashtag. So can the rest of the Twitterverse. If you’re that into organic munchies, you can set up a stream populated only with tweets hashtagged #organic. If you’ve established a hashtag for your brand, like #nobugsprayapples, you (and everyone else) can watch what people are tweeting about your company. So what kind of hashtags should you include? They should be directly related to the core message of your tweet. Ancillary or very loosely-related hashtags = annoying. Hashtagging your brand makes sense. Hashtagging your core area of interest makes sense. Creating a specific event or campaign hashtag you want others to include and spread makes sense (the burden is on you to promote it and get it going). Hashtagging nearly every word in the tweet is highly annoying. Far and away, the majority of hashtagged words in such tweets have no relevance, are not terms that would be searched, and are not terms needed for categorization. It looks desperate and spammy. Two is fine. One is better. And it is possible to tweet with --gasp-- no hashtags! Make your hashtags as short as you can. In fact, if your brand’s name really is #nobugsprayapples, you’re burning up valuable, limited characters and risking the inability of others to retweet with added comments. Also try to narrow your topic hashtag down. You’ll find a lot of relevant users with #organic, but a lot of totally uninterested users with #food. Just as you can join online forums and gain credibility and a reputation by contributing regularly to that forum, you can follow hashtagged topics and gain the same kind of credibility in your area of expertise. Don’t just parachute in for the occasional marketing message. And if you’re constantly retweeting one particular person, stop it. It’s kissing up and it’s obvious. Which brings us to the king of hashtag annoyances, “hashjacking.” This is when you see what terms are hot and include them in your marketing tweet as a hashtag, even though it’s unrelated to your content. Justify it all you want, but #justinbieber has nothing to do with your organic apples. Equally annoying, piggybacking on a popular event’s hashtag to tweet something not connected to the event. You’re only fostering ill will and mistrust toward your account from the people you’ve tricked into seeing your tweet. Lastly, don’t @ mention people just to make sure they see your tweet. If the tweet’s not for them or about them, it’s spammy. What I haven’t covered is use of the hashtag for comedy’s sake. You’ll see this a lot and is a matter of personal taste. No one will search these hashtagged terms or need to categorize then, they’re just there for self-expression and laughs. Twitter is, after all, supposed to be fun.  What are some of your biggest Twitter pet peeves? #blogsovernow

  Read the article

• How do I dig myself out of this DEEP hole? [closed]

  - by user74847

  I may be a bit bias in the way i word this but any opinions and suggestions are welcome. I should start by saying i have a MSc in CS and a degree in new media +6 years expereince and im probably around a middleweight developer. I started a web development company with my friend from uni a year ago, there was a 4 month gap in the middle where i went miles away work on a big project. Ive since returned and picked up where we left off. A year on though i find im still staying up til 5am and getting up at 9 sometimes 2-3 days without sleep. While i was away i was working 9-5 and struggling to keep up with doing stuff for my clients 8 hours ahead, after work, so things stagnated. We currently have about 12 active projects, with one other part time developer and a full time freelancer who is dealing with one of our major projects. I am solely responsible for concurrently developing 2 big sites similar to gumtree in functionality, at the same time as about 5-6+ small WordPress based 5-10page sites. a lot of the content isnt in yet or the client is delaying so i chop and change project every other day which does my head in. Is it reasonable to expect myself to remember the intricate details of each project when i come back to it a week later? and remember the details of a task which hasnt been written down? my business partner seems to think so. or am i just forgetful? Im particularly bad at estimating timescales which doesnt help, added to that a lot of the technologies im am using are new to me (a magento site took weeks to theme rather than days and was full of bugs, even after 1000's of google searches and hours reading forums) im still trying to learn and find the best CMS for us to use and getting my head around the likes of Bootstrap and jquery, Cpanel / Linux (we just got a blank vps for me to set up with no experience) even installing an SSL certificate caused everyone's mail clients to go down which was more stress for me to sort out. I find the pressure of the workload and timescales and trying to learn this stuff so fast is beginning to turn me against my career path. The fact that i never seem to get anything done really winds up my business partner and iv come to associate him with the stress and pain of the whole situation especially when I get berated or a look that says "oh you retard" when I forget something. Even today i spent hours learning how a particular themeforest theme worked with wordpress and how i could twist it to work for our partiuclar needs, on the surface had done no work, that triggered a 30 minute tirade of anger and stress and questioning what i had done from my business partner. had i taken too long to work on that? shoudl i have done it in 2 hours instead of 6? i told him i would take 2 hours. i was wrong. I feel like im running myself into the ground. My sleeping pattern has got so bad that when im working im half asleep and making mistakes, my eyes are constantly purple underneath, i literally fall asleep at my desk, its affecting my social life too, ive not slept more than lightly for the last year and grind through impossible code puzzles in my half sleep wich keeps me awake, when im already exhausted. plus the work is rushed and buggy when it does get done so drags on into the next project. I also procrastinate quite badly, pacing the livingroom, looking out the window when Im alone for three days straight in the flat and start to get cabin fever which means i do even less work and the negative feedback loop continues. I get told im the only one with the problem when i say that i cant work from home any more, and examples of other freelancers get brought up. an office wouldnt bring any extra cash in to the company but im convinced having that moving more than 2 meters away from my bed to go to "work" would get me working, at the moment i feel guilty like i should be working 24-7. It is important that we do all this work to raise enough cash to get our business to the next level but every month still feels like a struggle to pay the rent (there is about £20K coming in by Jan) and i have to borrow money from friends often to buy food or get a taxi to a meeting, so it is vital the money keeps coming in. (im also 20 mins late for nearly all meetings but thats a different issue) have you experienced anything similar? how can i deal with the issues ive raised? is it realistic to develop 10 sites at once? how can i improve my relationship with my business partner? do you struggle to work at home? how do you deal with that? i think if i dont get my life on track by feb i will seriously consider giving it all up, but that seems like such a waste. any ideas!!? i need help! Thanks.

  Read the article

• How do I explain this to potential employers?

  - by ReferencelessBob

  Backstory: TL;DR: I've gained a lot of experience working for 5 years at one startup company, but it eventually failed. The company is gone and the owner MIA. When I left sixth-form college I didn't want to start a degree straight away, so when I met this guy who knew a guy who was setting up a publishing company and needed a 'Techie' I thought why not. It was a very small operation, he sent mailings to schools, waited for orders to start arriving, then ordered a short run of the textbooks to be printed, stuck them in an envelope posted them out. I was initially going to help him set up a computerized system for recording orders and payments, printing labels, really basic stuff and I threw it together in Access in a couple of weeks. He also wanted to start taking orders online, so I set up a website and a paypal business account. While I was doing this, I was also helping to do the day-to-day running of things, taking phone orders, posting products, banking cheques, ordering textbooks, designing mailings, filing end of year accounts, hiring extra staff, putting stamps on envelopes. I learned so much about things I didn't even know I needed to learn about. Things were pretty good, when I started we sold about £10,000 worth of textbooks and by my 4th year there we sold £250,000 worth of text books. Things were looking good, but we had a problem. Our best selling product had peaked and sales started to fall sharply, we introduced add on products through the website to boost sales which helped for a while, but we had simply saturated the market. Our plan was to enter the US with our star product and follow the same, slightly modified, plan as before. We setup a 1-866 number and had the calls forwarded to our UK offices. We contracted a fulfillment company, shipped over a few thousand textbooks, had a mailing printed and mailed, then sat by the phones and waited. Needless to say, it didn't work. We tried a few other things, at home and in the US, but nothing helped. We expanded in the good times, moving into bigger offices, taking on staff to do administrative and dispatch work, but now cashflow was becoming a problem and things got tougher. We did the only thing we could and scaled things right back, the offices went, the admin staff went, I stopped taking a wage and started working from home. Nothing helped. The business was wound up about about 2 years ago. In the end it turned out that the owner had built up considerable debt at the start of business and had not paid them off during good years, which left him in a difficult position when cashflow had started to dry up. I haven't been able to contact the owner since I found out. It took me a while to get back on my feet after that, but I'm now at University and doing a Computer Science degree. How do I show the experience I have without having to get into all the gory details of what happened?

  Read the article

• Looking for a function that will split profits/loss equally between 2 business partners.

  - by Hamish Grubijan

  This is not homework, for I am not a student. This is for my general curiosity. I apologize if I am reinventing the wheel here.The function I seek can be defined as follows (language agnostic): int getPercentageOfA(double moneyA, double workA, double moneyB, double workB) { // Perhaps you may assume that workA == 0 // Compute result return result; } Suppose Alice and Bob want to do business together ... such as ... selling used books. Alice is only interested in investing money in it and nothing else. Bob might invest some money, but he might have no $ available to invest. He will, however, put in the effort in finding a seller, a buyer, and doing maintenance. There are no tools, education, health insurance costs, or other expenses to consider. Both Alice and Bob wish to split the profits "equally" (A different weight like 40/60 for advanced users). Both are entrepreneurs, so they deal with low ROI/wage, and high income alike. There is no fixed wage, minimum wage, fixed ROI, or minimum ROI. They try to find the best deal possible, assume risks and go for it. Now, let's stick with the 50/50 model. If Alice invests $100, Bob invests work, and they will end up with a profit (or loss) of $60, they will split it equally - either both get $30 for their efforts/investments, or Bob ends up owing $30 to Alice. A second possibility: Both Alice and Bob invest 100, then Bob does all the work, and they end up splitting $60 profit. It looks like Alice should get only $15, because $30 of that profit came from Bob's investment and Bob's effort, so Alice shall have none of it, and the other $30 is to be split 50/50. Both of the examples above are trivial even when A and B want to split it 35/65 or what have you. Now it gets more complicated: What if Alice invests $70, and Bob invests $30 + does all of the work. It appears simple: (70,30) = (30,30) + (40,0) ... but, if only we knew how to weigh the two parts relative to each other. Another complicated (I think) example: what if Alice and Bob invest $70 and $30 respectively, and also put in an equal amount of work? I have a few data points: When A and B put in the same amount of work and the same $ - 50/50. When A puts in 100% of the money, and B does 100% of the work - 50/50. When A does all of the work and puts in all of the money - 100 for A / 0 for B (and vice-versa). When A puts in 50% of the money, and B puts in 50% of the money as well as does all of the work - 25 for A, and 75 for B (and vice-versa). If I fix things such that always workA = 0%, workB = 100% of the total work, then getPercentageOfA becomes a function: height z given x and y. The question is - how do you extrapolate this function between these several points? What is this function? If you can cover the cases when workA does not have to be 0% of the total work, and when investment vs work is split as 85/15 or using some other model, then what would the new function be?

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124  | Next Page >