http://qwantify.com/blog/team/ en scott.fradkin@qwantify.com Copyright 2008 2008-07-18T01:07:00-06:00 http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/barcampmadison2-is-happening/ http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/barcampmadison2-is-happening/#When:01:07:00Z BarCampMadison2 will be held on July 26 and 27 at the Extra Bold Portfolio School downtown. Registration will be available very soon [1]. We still need help getting things together, so check out the website and the notes from our last meeting [2]. Attendance for the BarCamp will be limited, so register as early as possible. As always, BarCampMadison2 is open to the public and free, but be prepared to share your knowledge! [1] – http://barcampmadison2.org [2] – http://barcamp.org/BarCampMadison2-2008-07-13-Planning-Meeting 2008-07-18T01:07:00-06:00 http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/electronic-voting/ http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/electronic-voting/#When:00:49:00Z Electronic Voting rears its ugly head yet again. From just that one sentence it should be relatively easy to tell where I stand on the issue. Technology does a lot of great things for us, but sometimes technology is completely unnecessary. Electronic voting seems to suffer from the elephant gun syndrome. Although it would be easier to collect and tabulate votes for an election electronically, using paper and pencil is a tried and true mechanism for correctly identifying and counting votes. I know that I wouldn’t want my vote to be counted by a machine that is built by a company like Diebold. Bruce Schneier has a blog post [1] that points to another blog entry [2] written by a guy named Dan Wallach who is an associate professor in the Comp. Sci. department at Rice University. His specialty is electronic voting security. He’s been called on numerous times to testify in front of the Texas House Committee on Elections about the topic. It seems that the various companies that build electronic voting machines are bending over backward (think crazy Matrix bullet time Neo moves) to twist the results of some studies that have been done on the security of these voting machines to convince states that the machines are safe to use. It’s not exactly easy to corrupt or change results on these machines, but it’s not impossible. Downright scary is what I think. Voters that have to use these machines to vote cannot be assured that their votes will be tabulated correctly. Municipalities cannot necessarily detect that the results are corrupt according to Mr. Wallach. Voting is too important a thing to be left entrusted to companies developing these machines behind closed doors. Mr. Schneier is consistent in saying that security by obscurity just doesn’t work. I’m still not sure I’d want to use any electronic voting machine even if it’s completely open source and been vetted by numerous third parties. Pen and paper any day for me. I won’t mind if it takes a week to figure out who won a particular election as long as I know that all the votes have been counted correctly. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, if you work with computers and technology on a daily basis, this should scare you. It’s necessary to get people talking about the issues with their governmental representatives to ensure that everyone’s vote will count. [1] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/07/dan_wallach_on.html [2] http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1304 2008-07-07T00:49:00-06:00 http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/startling-findings/ http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/startling-findings/#When:19:05:00Z I’ve talked in the past about the GET IT (Girls Educating Themselves about Information Technology) roll-playing exercise one of our members, Kacie Conroy, created. Kacie has met with three different local Girl Scout Troops, working with each of them to learn different information technology roles so they understand what types of information technology careers are available to them upon college graduation. During these exercises, Kacie gathered some startling statistics that I want to share with you. She has asked the 21 girls, from her three sessions, a series of questions prior to and after each role-playing exercise. Here is a synopsis of the questions along with corresponding responses. At the beginning of the sessions, none of the girls were familiar with information technology or the Business Analyst, Database Analysts, Technical Writer, Quality Assurance Analyst roles, though some had heard of the Project Manager, Developer and Graphics Designer roles. Only 1 out of 21 students was willing to consider Information Technology as a career prior to the roll-playing exercise, and 17 of the 21 students wanted to add it to their list of potential careers after the exercise. None of the girls felt, either prior to or after the roll-playing exercise that boys were a better fit for information technology roles. This pleased me. While I didn’t think most middle school students would have heard about specific roles in information technology, I was shocked that none of them, prior to the exercise, could define what information technology was and that only one would consider information technology. After the roll-playing exercise, students had a much better appreciation of the definition of information technology and whether the field interests them. If young students know nothing about the information technology field, how may we better educate them? It begins with something as small as these roll-playing exercises and must extend to educators, guidance counselors, parents and all of us. The one thing that is not going to change in business is the need for easily assessable information, and Information Technology is the answer to this challenge. 2008-06-29T19:05:00-06:00 http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/lussier-education-center-tour/ http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/lussier-education-center-tour/#When:21:30:00Z This afternoon after work I toured the new Lussier Education Center construction site, on Gammon Rd., with many other volunteers and community citizens. The site is coming along well and is slated for full occupancy sometime in October of this year. We’re truly blessed with so many wonderful volunteers and community leaders who give so much of their time and resources to our wonderful communities, and we are additionally blessed to have so many fine young men and women who will attend programs at the center. Take a look at a couple of pictures of the construction. 2008-06-16T21:30:00-06:00 http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/a-fun-elementary-school-video/ http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/a-fun-elementary-school-video/#When:22:02:01Z Eric Sorenson, one of our team members, has for the past two years put together a DVD of his mother’s 2nd Grade classroom activities. Eric stops by their classroom on the last day of class to personally show them the DVD and give each student their personal copy. The 30-minute DVD captures the students throughout the year as they enthusiastically go about their studies. Footage consists of student’s painting, reading poems and stories, learning arithmetic, working on science projects, taking field trips and participating in class parties. The DVD is a wonderful keepsake for the 21 students to treasure the remainder of their lives. Eric’s unselfish efforts are just one example among a large number of activities where QWANtify team members give their time to make lives richer through volunteering. 2008-06-06T22:02:01-06:00 http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/alliant-energy-recognized-as-2008-best-diversity-company/ http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/alliant-energy-recognized-as-2008-best-diversity-company/#When:10:59:00Z Supplier Diversity is very important to many of our customers. Alliant Energy Corporation, of Madison, recently received the 2008 Edison Electric Institute’s Supplier Diversity Innovation Award in the area of supplier diversity. Between 2002 and 2007, Alliant spent more than $133 million on products and services supplied by certified minority and woman-owned companies. The EEI Supplier Diversity Innovation Award recognizes EEI members for their innovative approaches to diverse supplier development. The EEI panel judged over 60 Utility Supplier Diversity programs in the following areas: • Supplier Diversity corporate policy • Spend goals • Achievements in 2007 • Demonstration of how the supplier diversity program is woven through the organization (i.e., communication to business units, reports, training and accountability) • Outreach to diverse suppliers As Bill Harvey, Alliant Energy’s CEO says, “Supplier diversity is more than an expression at Alliant Energy. At our company, supplier diversity is a way of doing business that adds value to our company and helps us achieve long-term growth.” It is wonderful to work with a company that recognizes the value of working with diverse workforces and vendors. 2008-05-22T10:59:00-06:00 http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/QWANtify-president-ceo-featured-wisconsin-state-journal/ http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/QWANtify-president-ceo-featured-wisconsin-state-journal/#When:19:26:00Z QWANtify President/CEO, Tammy L. Adler, was featured May 18, 2008 in the Wisconsin State Journal Business Section. The article discusses QWANtify’s three-year growth, why Adler wanted to start her own company, how the company was named, the value of winning the Make Mine a Million$ Business Award and the biggest challenges facing the information technology industry. QWANtify, an information technology consulting company, specializes in software development, solutions and integration, business and quality assurance analysis and project management. Text Here 2008-05-18T19:26:00-06:00 http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/QWANtify-team-member-delivers-her-third-get-it-presentation/ http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/QWANtify-team-member-delivers-her-third-get-it-presentation/#When:19:53:00Z QWANtify team member, Kacie Conroy, delivered her third GET IT (Girls Educating Themselves about Information Technology) presentation today to a local Girl Scout Troop. Kacie has now excited 21 local middle-school girls about various careers available upon college graduation with a degree in Information Technology. See our related Blog, Text Here for additional information. 2008-05-13T19:53:00-06:00 http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/QWANtify-president-ceo-featured-on-madisons-channel-3-television/ http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/QWANtify-president-ceo-featured-on-madisons-channel-3-television/#When:19:33:00Z QWANtify President/CEO, Tammy L. Adler, was featured May 8, 2008 on Channel 3’s 10:00 pm newscast. Adler was interviewed by Reporter Andy Choi as part of Channel 3’s weekly Inspirational Woman feature. To view the Podcast and learn more about QWANtify and Adler’s passion for mentoring young people about information technology, click below. QWANtify, an information technology consulting company, specializes in software development, solutions and integration, business and quality assurance analysis and project management. 2008-05-08T19:33:00-06:00 http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/little-brother/ http://qwantify.com/blog/entry/little-brother/#When:01:22:00Z One of my favorite authors is Cory Doctorow. He writes some great science fiction that is both relevant and contemporary. Cory is somewhat unique in that while he publishes his books in dead tree format through major book publishers, he still gives away the text of his works and podcasts his works in audio form all under a Creative Commons license. A few years back he worked for the EFF and he still lectures and writes about electronic freedoms. His newest novel was just released at the beginning of the month. It is a young adult novel titled “Little Brother”. It’s a story about a high school hacker who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was accused of being a terrorist. The novel recounts how he fights back against the Department of Homeland Security for taking away freedoms. Cory put up a website for the book [1] that contains news about the book, his tour schedule, links to download the text of the book, and even a place to submit remixes of the book. One of my favorite tie-ins is an RSS feed written by the main character from the book at the website Instructables [2]. It’s a bunch of how-tos for various things from the book like how to screen print t-shirts and how to avoid digital camera noise signatures. Fun stuff. [1] – Little Brother Website [2] – w1n5t0n’s Instructables feed 2008-05-08T01:22:00-06:00