Project Management Coach

One of the projects or activities that I will be participating in this semester is coaching students in the ITEC 560 - Project Management class. This class teaches students all of the processes, knowledge areas, and process groups that are covered in the PMBOK (Project Management Book of Knowledge). When I was in that class last semester, I had the opportunity to compete in the Inter-Collegiate Project Management Triathlon in Pittsburgh. This was a very exciting and engaging competition and I enjoyed my visit to Pittsburgh. The purpose of me coaching the students is to not only help them learn the material, but to also encourage them and excite them about competing in the Triathlon next semester. As a coach, I will be mentoring the students during four quiz bowls this semester, which replicate the competition in the Triathlon. I'm excited about this opportunity and I hope the students are encouraged to participate. 

Science and Engineering Career Fair

Last week, I attended the science and engineering career fair at USC. This event was very important to me because as a December graduate, I am on the hunt for a job. This event gave me the opportunity to talk with recruiters and potential employers, specifically looking for students in my field. Not only was I able to speak with representatives from major companies, but I got to give them my resume and exchange contact information. Some of the companies that I spoke with include Blue Cross Blue Shield of SC, Spawar, CGI, Duke Energy, and Safe Systems. All of these are great companies that I wouldn't mind working for in the future. I am very happy to have had this opportunity and I have already followed up with some of the recruiters. There will be other career fairs hosted this semester, and I encourage any students who are interested in finding a job, or who just want to gain experience and network opportunities to attend. Below is a video from a career fair that was hosted last semester, Spring 2012. As you can see from the positive feedback, students are very excited about the opportunity to meet and talk with employers. 

ITPSC

Last Tuesday, I had the opportunity to attend the Information Technology Professionals of South Carolina  monthly meeting as a guest. They served lunch, and had guest speakers that talked about current trends in the field. The guest speaker at the meeting was from Sims Recycling Solutions. Their business focuses on the recovery and recycling of hardware, including old computers, printers, servers, blades, etc.. I enjoyed the presentation and had the opportunity to meet some new contacts, several of which were interested in me for future employment. The event managers also gave away a laptop via a random drawing of the current attendees. Unfortunately, I did not win, but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and my time at the event.

Linux System Administration

This past Thursday, I attended a workshop that was hosted by IT-oLogy that focused on teaching the basics of system administration in a Linux environment. Now, I'm not too savvy with Linux due to lack of experience using the OS, but I have had experience with system administration on a MAC and on Windows. Some of the topics covered during this workshop were familiar to me, but others were completely unique to Linux. For example, I learned that on Linux, everything is stored under one file directory, or "root". This means all files, hardware and software can be accessed from this one directory. This is very different from other operating systems like Windows, which uses multiple drives and directories to store data. This method used by Linux is much easier to navigate and locate files and the system allows for built in RAID capabilities. After attending this workshop I feel like I would be comfortable in using the command line in Linux to perform operations and I plan to play around with this new found knowledge on my Ubuntu system at home. For any of you that are interested in learning more about this workshop, I will provide the link to the presentation. Also, feel free to attend any future workshops hosted by IT-oLogy, they are all free and offer excellent information for beginners and experts. I know that I plan to attend many more over the next couple of months. See you there!

Presentation: https://ch1prd0202.outlook.com/owa/redir.aspx?C=ncgdWu9jqEukwSC3-trQR56y3oa9Z88IOcDblk9VzBWCClgUKVLfJ9l0U6tUqKh_MlU1C-iF-qY.&URL=http%3a%2f%2fjrs-s.net%2flinux_sysadmin_101%2flinux_sysadmin_101.odp

Technology Eliminating Privacy?

With the recent advancements in technology, some issues have been discovered by customers who are visiting retail stores that are participating in the use of "soft surveillance" technology. According to a recent blog post on Harvard Business Review, this type of technology allows retailers to obtain information about customers via the use of sensors and cameras that has facial recognition capabilities. Some retailers are even using sensors that can detect what kind of perfume or cologne a customer is wearing when they walk into the store. Obviously, this is used to increase sales by presenting customized adds and sales information for each customer based on their interests and recently purchased items. Some people say that this is an invasion of privacy, others are happy about the use of this technology and claim that it provides a better shopping experience. As technology continues to advance, there has to be a limit as to the extent we are able to use it, as it is already coming dangerously close to "crossing the line." A former hacker from Intellectual Ventures has shown how and RFID reader can obtain information from a credit card while it is still in a customers pocket. If retailers were to use something similar to this to obtain customer information as they entered the store, would that be an invasion of privacy? I'm excited about the advancement of technology and its impact on society, but I think there is a limit as to how far we can go with it. What do you think? Is the use of this type of technology acceptable?

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/retailers_turn_to_soft_surveil.html