Category Archives: Featured

How to Land a Job the Startup Way

November 15, 2012 paulam

Photo Credit: http://blog.atrinternational.com/

It’s the morning after the lay-off. Where do you start your job search? Most likely, you sent out status updates to your networks and now your inbox is filling up with leads, recruiters and job searching tools. A moment of reflection sets in, thinking it might be best to work on that resume first. You quickly dismiss the thought and rush a resume over to everyone.

With a sense of great accomplishment, you sit back, relax and think this isn’t so bad. Before you know it, you are daydreaming best tactics and strategies to negotiate job offers. There’s someone knocking at the door and it’s your “Reality Check” that was delivered FedEx. Here is actually how this scenario plays out after your rushed updated resume reaches its destination: 1) Resume arrives with grammar and/or spelling errors; and my personal all-time favorite is 2) You receive a call from the company that you have not researched or even read the job description.

Now that you know exactly what you should NOT do to get started, let’s launch your job search the right way: startup style in 3 steps!

1. Resume / Online Profiles

Employers Google their candidates. Feel free to comment on this topic, it’s not the focus of this post, it’s just a fact. For quite some time, there are leading publications discussing how social media is replacing the traditional resume. Not convinced on the power of your online profile? Sorry, game over. It’s that simple. It’s proven employers are looking for that personal branding message and your passion.

You will still need a traditional resume. Less is more and the recommended format is Continue reading How to Land a Job the Startup Way →

Featured, Women In Tech

Stories from the WIT Trenches: Pam Conway

October 26, 2012 elisek

[This is the eleventh in a series of posts exploring the personal stories of real women in technology. Every woman in tech overcame, at the very least, statistical odds to be here; this blog series aims to find out why, and what they found along the way. This week we met up with Pam Conway (ln) of CompuWorks. If reading her story inspires you to share yours, please email me.]

Pam Conway

Pamela Conway has over 20 years of experience in the technical education field. A graduate of Purdue University, Pamela joined CompuWorks in 1991 as a technical writer and software trainer. After many years providing traditional classroom training and curriculum development, in 2000 she became part of CompuWorks’ management team concentrating on implementing new training modalities and planning training/support projects for Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. In 2007, Pamela, along with Andrew and Stacy Wight, assumed ownership of CompuWorks. Pamela has lectured throughout the United States and Europe.

1. Can you take us back to your “eureka!” moment—a particular instance or event that got you interested in technology?

I can still vividly remember the moment when I fell in love with technology. I was a freshman in college and had a paper due in one of my classes. As many of us have done, I’d procrastinated too long to write out the paper, edit it and then type it up to turn in the next morning – yes, we were stilling typing on actual typewriters back then, but it was just on the cusp of the explosion of personal computers. This was 1986. A friend of mine who was majoring in information technology – the program was one of the first of its kind at the time – told me to come use her Mac and I could compose, edit and type all at the same time. I was an English major and very wary of computers, but I was desperate. All it took was that one night typing away on her Mac using the first version of Microsoft Word and I was hooked. I turned the paper in on time and chucked my typewriter out the very next day.

2. Growing up, did you have any preconceived perceptions of the tech world and the kinds of people who lived in it?

I sure did. It was mostly based on my best friend’s brother and his friends who would sit in his room all day playing with his Commodore 64. Naturally, they were all male. So for me, the world of technology was populated by geeky boys who sat in dark rooms. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, but junior high perception is pretty compelling! Luckily, I attended a university that was very tech heavy and happily had my perceptions altered. The truth is, at this stage of the game, the tech world is THE world. It’s everywhere, but these old perceptions of things die hard for some folks. Continue reading Stories from the WIT Trenches: Pam Conway →

Events, Featured, Office Life

Board Games & Beer Nov 7th

October 24, 2012 elisek

FREE Beer. Need I say more?

Looking for a place to flex your logical prowess? Leave Life at home. Believe me I’ve tried. That one is a no-go. (No matter how hard I advocate, for some reason that board game always goes missing…weird.) And settle in for some good old-fashioned fun with the SoftArtisans and Riparian Data crew. We’re opening our game night to the community (aka you). So come enjoy pizza and beer on us Wednesday, November 7th at 6pm. We can arrange transportation if needed – just drop me a line at the email address below.

The Details:

When:
Wednesday, Nov. 7th, 6 p.m.

Where:
SoftArtisans
3 Brook Street
Watertown, MA 02472

RSVP: http://boardgamesandbeernov7.eventbrite.com/ So we know how much food/drink to supply.

What’s in it for us? Well, if you’re a quick-thinking, risk-taking team player, we probably want you on Continue reading Board Games & Beer Nov 7th →

ASP.NET, Business Intelligence, Enterprise Software, Excel, Featured, OfficeWriter, SharePoint, SQL Server, SSRS

Everything You Need to Know About OfficeWriter: The Whitepaper

October 23, 2012 elisek

Featured, UX, Windows Server

Windows 8 in Review: The Good, the Bad, and What You Need to Know

October 10, 2012 jim

I’ve been using the RTM enterprise version Windows 8 on my work laptop and workstation for about a week now and these are some of my initial impressions of it.

The Good

Some of my better experiences…

It’s fast. It’s as fast, if not faster, than Windows 7. On a Dell Precision T3400 and ThinkPad x220, the experience is snappy.

It’s beautiful. Minimalist metro style, live titles, square edges in metro and desktop mode, and sleek background artwork will really catch your eye.

Keyboard shortcuts. There is basically a Winkey shortcut for almost everything. The Windows 8 secrets book has a full list in the appendix or you can visit Paul Thurrott’s Super Site for Windows for a quick guide on Windows key shortcuts.

Search. Press the Winkey and start typing. Find stuff. Enough said.

My kids could use it. I spent about 30 minutes last night reviewing metro interface with my 9-year-old. After explaining the screen gestures, she was able to download and play a couple of free metro games.

The Bad

These may be nit-picky, but I demand perfection…

No search with the Windows store. You have to use Start Search and filter on the store to see results. This is kind of annoying.

No Hyper-V client support for my workstation. You need SLAT or second level address translation support on your processor for client side Hyper-V. This is an optional requirement for server so why not on the client. I will gladly forgo VM memory optimizations to ditch VMware workstation. You can check if your processor is SLAT compatible by following this helpful blog post on How-to Geek.

Metro is designed for a touch experience. Not an earth shattering realization, but Continue reading Windows 8 in Review: The Good, the Bad, and What You Need to Know →

Featured, Office Life, Staff Picks

Staff Picks: This Week’s News

October 5, 2012 elisek

Once a week I snoop around the office, bothering my coworkers with questions on what they’re reading, listening to, consuming, or any other random inquiries I’d like to subject them to. Sometimes they even respond.

The questions:

What was one thing you read/watched this week?
What do you wish you would have read/watched this week?

The answers:

David, CEO of Riparian Data
1. Watched the debates and fell asleep, woke up an hour later and don’t think I missed much of substance since I saw Romney firing Jim Lehrer and Big Bird. Watched The Avengers on blu-ray and did not fall asleep.
2. “Git from the bottom up” and J.K. Rowling’s new book, “The Casual Vacancy”

Kristen, Sales Rep
1. Watched the debate
2. Missed watching The Voice this week

Claire, Marketing & Development Manager
1. I watched the debate until I got too annoyed, and then I read John Cassidy’s level-headed response and felt a bit better.
2. What I want to read: The Writing Revolution, about one formerly failing highschool’s successful revamp of its writing program. Continue reading Staff Picks: This Week’s News →

Featured, Programming

The Programmer’s Guide to Choosing a Drink

September 21, 2012 Ramon 2 Comments

Photo Credit: http://www.89thandbroke.com/ — Photo Credit: www.89thandbroke.com

To celebrate the commencement of Oktoberfest festivities in Munich this weekend (and because it’s always fun to think about alcohol), we’re bringing you a handy-dandy guide to see how your programming languages match up to your favorite drinks. It’s important to be prepared – If all the programming languages were to suddenly turn into drinks, we should know what sort of world we’d be getting (besides a very drunk one)!

C – Tequila. It gets the job done quickly, but using it isn’t usually that great of an experience. Everybody uses it at some point, but not too many stick with it unless there’s no other choice, or they need it to do its thing fast. And if you don’t use it exactly right, chances are things are going to go horribly wrong.

Ruby – Scotch. You can use it for years, and still discover strange new undertones you hadn’t noticed before. And then you add a dash of water and discover everything is changed. But it’s easy to ruin the magic if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Python – Irish Whiskey. When first starting, you have two main options – Bushmills or Jameson? Python 2 or 3? But once you choose one and go with it, it’s remarkably smooth. There’s not a huge amount of subtlety, but it’s pretty easy to get into and use.

Java – Vodka. It’s everywhere. It can be used in pretty much any situation, and most people are willing to use it when it’s the most convenient thing on hand. But excluding a group of really dedicated fans, it’s not generally people’s first choice. It just doesn’t have the same elegance as some of the alternatives. But it can be mixed with other things pretty easily, for those who can’t stand using it straight.

Continue reading The Programmer’s Guide to Choosing a Drink →

Big Data, Featured, Women In Tech

Stories from the WIT Trenches: Abby Fichtner

August 24, 2012 elisek

[This is the ninth in a series of posts exploring the personal stories of real women in technology. Every woman in tech overcame, at the very least, statistical odds to be here; this blog series aims to find out why, and what they found along the way. This time around we chatted with Abby Fichtner (t|ln), better known as Hacker Chick for her devoted work with Boston startups. Recently named Founding Executive Director of hack/reduce, a non-profit big data hacker space, Abby is in constant search of shaking up conventional wisdom and finding out what lies beyond. If reading her story inspires you to share yours, please feel free to email me.]

Hi! I’m Abby Fichtner – although more people probably know me as Hacker Chick. I write The Hacker Chick Blog on how we can push the edge on what’s possible, and I’m about to launch a non-profit hacker space for big data called hack/reduce.

Prior to this, I was Microsoft’s Evangelist for Startups where I had the most incredible experience of working with hundreds of startups. I’ve been alternately called the cheerleader and the guardian angel for Boston startups. I love this community and am super excited to launch hack/reduce to help Boston continue solving the really hard problems and keep our title as the most innovative city in the world.

Questions:

1. Can you take us back to your “eureka!” moment—a particular instance or event that got you interested in technology?

I like to joke that programming is in my blood. My Dad has been programming since the 1960’s and my brother followed him into Computer Science. So when we were kids, my parents told us that whoever made the honor roll first would get an Atari. This was 1980 and so Atari game machines were The Thing to have.

Sufficiently motivated, I made the honor roll and my Dad came through – with an Atari 800, the PC! Pretty much nobody had PCs in 1980, so this was pretty elite. For games, we got these Atari magazines that had pages and pages of source code in them and our father-daughter bonding experiences were typing in the machine language to build our own games. Talk about hard core, right?!

2. Growing up, did you have any preconceived perceptions of the tech world and the kinds of people who lived in it?

Growing up I did not want to be a programmer! I thought that was something my Dad and my brother did. I was an independent woman and going to follow my own path. I heard that if you’re really good, they make you a manager. So my goal was to be on the business side of things. Continue reading Stories from the WIT Trenches: Abby Fichtner →

Featured

FileUp Website Design: Before and After Photos

August 23, 2012 elisek

The SoftArtisans homepage wasn’t the only site to receive a recent makeover. FileUp, our file transfer product which assists both corporations and individual developers in transferring their files securely, was treated to a face lift as well. Consistent with the deeper tones of the SoftArtisans homepage, the FileUp homepage is now live and sitting pristinely on Drupal.

Don’t let first glance fool you. Aside from simply the more aesthetically appealing aspects of the redesign, there are several bonus features as well. Among them is the added email functionality, where you can enter your email address and receive information back about the products you own. This is especially handy if you’re having difficulty remembering items you’ve already purchased. In addition to the email option, we drop-kicked the panel menus and replaced them with a sleeker drop-down navigation system, making the user-experience a much more pleasurable one.

And if that wasn’t enough, Continue reading FileUp Website Design: Before and After Photos →

Events, Featured, OfficeWriter, SharePoint

SP Tech Con Prize Giveaway: Call Me Maybe?

July 12, 2012 elisek

Coming to SP Tech Con in Boston this July? Visit us at booth #505 and enter to win a POP Phone. We will be raffling off 5 POP phones throughout the conference. A throwback to the 50’s style Bakelight design phone, these plug into all mobile phones, tablets, and computers. Plus they add an additional cool factor when you’re Skyping or video chatting with friends. See below for prize giveaway details.

Prize details:

Where:

Booth #505

When:

July 24^th – 25^th

Tuesday, 11am – 7pm

Wednesday, 11am – 4pm

How to Enter:

Continue reading SP Tech Con Prize Giveaway: Call Me Maybe? →