It’s Friday afternoon, and your team is filing into the conference room, mumbling and grumbling as they take their seats for yet another meeting. An hour passes and the meeting comes to a much-anticipated end, leaving everyone involved wondering why the meeting was held in the first place. After all, the usual suspects dominated the discussion, and the same ideas that came up in last week’s meeting were once again batted around. No one seemed to write anything down, and no one agreed to put anything discussed into action.

If this kind of ineffective meeting sounds familiar, you’re not alone, says Kimberly Douglas. It’s a problem that plagues many organizations—but it’s also one, she adds, that can be remedied.

“In these tough economic times, every second of the work day is valuable,” says Douglas, author of “The Firefly Effect: Build Teams That Capture Creativity and Catapult Results (Wiley, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-470-43832-9). “None of it should be wasted in meetings that seem to go nowhere or that are plagued by conflict or lack of participation. If leaders know how to conduct better meetings, those meetings can actually become time well-spent—time that increases employee productivity, participation, and innovation.”

The question of productivity is a huge issue when it comes to meetings. According to a Microsoft survey of over 38,000 employees, almost 70 percent felt that the average 5.6 hours they spend each week in meetings are unproductive. Another survey conducted by OfficeTeam had 28 percent of its 150 senior executives responding that meetings are a waste of time. Furthermore, 45 percent of respondents said they believed their employees could be more productive if meetings were banned at least one day a week.

“In too many companies, meetings have become a way for leaders and their employees to simply go through the motions,” says Douglas. “If a new initiative is being implemented or new product ideas are needed, the feeling from management is often, ‘Well, let’s have a meeting. At least it will seem like we are doing something.’ Unfortunately, not enough thought goes into how to conduct those meetings. Having a meeting, in and of itself, is not a bad idea. In fact, meetings can be the most engaging and thought-provoking times of the day for leaders and team members alike. The key is avoiding those pitfalls that sink a meeting’s productivity.”

If it’s time for a meetings overhaul at your organization, consider these questions

What’s the point? A common problem with many meetings is that they’re scheduled with seemingly no clear objective in mind. “Being clear about the meeting’s objectives will ensure a greater likelihood of it being effective than anything else you can do,” says Douglas. “Simply answering, ‘So why are we meeting?’ before everyone is gathered in the conference room will help you ensure meetings are productive for everyone and will also help you avoid lost opportunity cost and draining employee motivation.”

Where’s the agenda? Remember the last time you actually received an agenda in advance of a meeting? Likely, you immediately had a higher perception of whether that meeting was going to be a waste of time or not. Once you know who will be attending the meeting, you need to finalize the agenda.

Conference room overcrowding. Would you attend a meeting if you didn’t know why the meeting was being held and why you, in particular, were invited? Often, too many people who don’t have a clear understanding of what role they are supposed to play are invited to meetings. Those in attendance need to know if you want them to be an expert, an influencer, or a decider.

The meeting becomes a free-for-all. Anyone who’s ever attended a meeting or led a meeting knows that it doesn’t take long for things to get off track. The best way to avoid losing control of the conversation and the meeting as a whole is to set some conversational ground rules right away. “Always ask for the input of the group,” says Douglas. “They may think a rule will hinder the productivity of the meeting, or they may have a suggestion that will help to keep everyone on topic. The bottom line is: create rules that will help everyone stay focused on the meeting’s goals. Do that consistently, and your meetings will be the better for it.”

When the meeting is over, don’t forget to evaluate what occurred and how productive the process was for the team. This evaluation allows you and meeting attendees to assess what worked well in the meeting (the plus) and what could be improved for the next one (the delta,) Douglas adds. “Don’t look at meeting evaluations as a throwaway step. They are key to ensuring that your meetings are consistently well-organized and productive.”

Health information technology (HIT) allows comprehensive management of medical information and its secure exchange between health care consumers and providers. Broad use of HIT has the potential to improve health care quality, prevent medical errors, increase the efficiency of care provision and reduce unnecessary health care costs, increase administrative efficiencies, decrease paperwork, expand access to affordable care, and improve population health.

What are the tools that will transform American health care? How is a secure, interoperable nationwide health information system being created?

http://www.njtc.org/events/ehealth/home.html

How Do Viral Infections Spread So Fast? The Answer Is Right Under Your Fingertips

While millions of us hope for the success of the H1N1 vaccine, we are also on the lookout for telltale sources of infection to avoid: people who sneeze, cough, have fever or just look sick. If ever there was a perfect time for becoming a profiler of the apparently ill, this is it.

And, while most of us have become more frequent hand-washers and are savvy enough to move swiftly away from a sneezing, coughing associate, experts have determined that a frightening array of stealth bacteria and viruses thrive and breed unnoticed, but right under our noses – on our computer keyboards.

Epidemic Intelligence Officer Dr. Shua Chai of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, in 2008, first alerted the world to the fact that computer keyboards – and their accompanying “mice” – were the root cause of a 2007 outbreak of norovirus that closed a Washington D.C. elementary school. More than 100 children and staffers were infected. Viral germs spread incredibly fast; when computers are shared, he said, so are viruses.

Donald S. Hetzel, Ph.D., former head of R&D for several multinational pharmaceutical corporations, concurred noted that “shared computer keyboards serve as the perfect home and launching pad for a wide range of bacteria and viruses.”

“In a 2008 study in the U.K., researchers found keyboards to be laden with more germs than a public toilet. Even in a typical U.S. office setting, cultures from swabs from computer keyboards revealed salmonella, rotavirus, staph and MRSA. That’s nothing to sneeze it — especially when you consider that germs may live on inanimate object for hours and can jump to dozens of keyboard users in a day.”

The fact is: one germ can wind up infecting hundreds of users, especially if the users eat near their computers. Crumbs provide the food and fuel for bacteria to replicate and run rampant on the keys and in between.

“If this scares you, then I’ve succeeded,” Dr. Hetzel said. “Billions of dollars and millions of lost days from work and school are attributed to the spread of infectious disease every year. So much of this could be avoided if we used a few simple precautions.”

Even as early as 2002, medical investigators found that contaminated computer keyboards where students picked up their college email at Dartmouth, were the vectors through which more than 700 students contracted conjunctivitis in a matter of days. Hundreds were re-infected before the source was identified.

Just a few years ago, a study conducted by public health and safety organization NSF International, at an elementary school in Tennessee, found that computer keyboards harbored aerobic bacteria, yeast, mold and coliforms.

In environments where even more exotic and dangerous strains are found – i.e., hospitals — studies warn that computer keyboards in intensive care units can serve as reservoirs for microorganisms from which pathogens may be transferred via the hands of personnel to the patient — causing nosocomial infections. This is particularly problematic for patients with already compromised immune systems.

Many of the usual suspects on hospital keyboards and mobile diagnostic units include MRSA, norovirus, strep, staph, influenza A, coronavirus, Candida and gram-negative organisms. Faucet handles and computer keyboards in ICUs have shown particularly high colonization rates of MRSA in rooms with patients who tested positive for MRSA, suggesting cross-contamination.

While it would seem logical that today’s omnipresence of antibacterial sprays and wipes would keep most bugs in check, misuse of wipes and sprays works against the theory. “In our study,” reported Dr. Gareth Williams of Cardiff University at a 2008 American Society of Microbiologists scientific conference in Boston, “we saw there was a tendency to use one wipe on consecutive surfaces, such as bed rails, computer monitors and keyboards.” This pattern of use often transferred live bacteria to uncontaminated surfaces.

As they say, knowledge is power. In the case of illness, awareness may our best defense this season. When you realize the potential of your computer keyboard to function as a kind of Typhoid Mary, and understand the keyboard’s disease-spreading potential, you’ll be in the right mindset to start protecting yourself, your associates and your loved ones this flu season.
In fact, Many experts suggest that reducing the surface bacterial and viral count on your computer may ultimately be just as important as wearing a face mask, staying home when you’re sick or washing your hands 20 times a day.

Author: Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, http://katenasser.com

Every minute of teamwork in the 21st century requires adaptation to each other, to changing conditions, and sometimes to changing goals. The traditional definition of a team, a group of people working together toward a common goal, sounds logical, is clear — and doesn’t work. Most people participate from their own perspective and the organization gets stuck performing based on how they are organized. Sometimes leaders don’t even consider business opportunities because of the current organizational structure.

Now picture an organization using this definition of team: Talent engaged in growth and change to achieve a common success. It’s applicable to this century, is very clear — and it works. 

This definition creates startling results when you use it with these precious gems.

RUBY. Passion for learning. When you create a learning (not training) culture, the team exercises its change muscles. Learning is change and one that most people welcome since it enhances their careers and no one can fail. 
The startling result is a stream of new contributions because all are involved in continuous improvement.

Creativity increases and critical thinking improves. Athletic teams regularly exercise for improved performance and theater troupes explore new ideas for this same reason. Unfortunately teams focused on production often get locked in daily routines. Create startling new results with a learning culture.

Action Item: Pick one topic related to business, teamwork, service, sales, or technology. Have each team member Google/Bing on the topic and collate those results online.  At a virtual team meeting, take 15 minutes for team members to identify aloud what info they can use and how.  Make this a weekly event and watch the teams create, collaborate, and flex to changing needs.

EMERALD. Leader with a confident ego. If you have a learning culture, the leader must feel confident even with constructive dissenters and creative strategic thinkers on the team. This confident leader is the emerald gem of teamwork reminding us all of The Wizard of Oz. Toward the end of the movie the curtain is drawn back to reveal there is no all-powerful wizard. He is instead a wise caring person.  His insights flow from there.

SAPPHIRE. Human bonding on diverse and distributed teams.  The evil of isolation due to distance or differences undermines the full potential of teams. Picture world-wide technology rollout teams who have never met, come from different cultures, and rotate team members. If no bonding is addressed, the teams will fall short of full success. Use video-based virtual meetings to introduce team members. Build understanding on topics of personality type, generational differences, cultural norms, learning style, and pet peeves!

DIAMOND. The I’s in Team. There are several I’s in teamwork – individual initiative and identity committed to the team. Respect and acknowledge individual talents contributed to the whole. It inspires greater contributions and willingness to share and teach. Some organizations call this the essential piece culture where each person knows how s/he contributes to the whole success.

 
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, CAS, Inc. delivers team building workshops, distance bonding, and innovative solutions for startling team results in technology organizations. http://katenasser.com. 908.595.1515. info@katenasser.com.

An important ingredient in the stimulus package is reducing the cost of healthcare and electronic record keeping for hospitals and doctors. It is imperative that these new methods of collaboration between the IT, Communications and Life Sciences sectors be developed if these goals are to be achieved. Making electronic record keeping a reality for practitioners and hospitals, innovative R&D, and clinical decision support will be critical, and a tremendous opportunity for business growth. Join our panel of experts as we look at how the rules are changing.  Learn more and register at: http://www.njtc.org/events/indevt.asp?dbid={89F60162-086A-DD11-889F-0013725A113C}&svdate=N

Virtualization is perhaps the “hottest” topic in technology these days, offering a wide range of benefits.  Although there are many things you can virtualize – servers, desktop operating systems, applications, application presentation, storage, and personalization – most people start with server virtualization.

Server virtualization provides a number of significant benefits.  The most obvious is reduced hardware costs – instead of purchasing 4 or more new servers, you can purchase one server with extra memory and disk space (or networked storage), and run all of these applications, isolated logically from each other, on one piece of hardware.  This is possible because of the sharp increase in computer hardware power – most new servers you buy have 2-4 cores per processor (think of a core as a brain, so a quad core system is two brains in one head) and having two or more processors is fairly inexpensive, so it is easy to buy servers with 8+ cores of CPU power fairly inexpensively.  Running just Windows and a single program on such a server severely under-utilizes the hardware.  With virtualization, the hardware is more fully utilized, and there are significant reductions in power consumption, space consumption and cooling requirements from server virtualization. 

Virtualization essentially breaks the one-to-one relationship between hardware and software.  We are used to buying a computer or server, and running one copy of Windows (or another operating system) on the computer, then we install our applications.  Virtualization allows a server to run multiple copies of Windows.  This is mainly done by running a “hypervisor” on top of the hardware – the hypervisor then manages hardware access and sharing for the multiple instances of Windows, just as Windows today allows multiple software programs to run at once on the same computer.

Furthermore, by virtualizing the server operating system, we separate it from the hardware, making it portable – essentially, each server becomes one big disk file that can be copied.  Servers can now be moved from one piece of hardware to another, either manually or automated, to create load balancing, high availability and even disaster recovery, or just providing more flexibility.  These are features that the more advanced versions of VMware and Citrix XenServer, as well as Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition with Cluster Services, provide (at a higher cost), either in full or with additional software.

This is why SANs (“Storage Area Networks”) are complementary to virtualization – by connecting your servers to shared storage on a SAN, virtual machines can run on any of the connected servers, or be moved between them (even while they are running).  Although SANs have been prohibitively expensive for smaller businesses in the past, older FIbre Channel technology is being replaced by iSCSI (which uses regular Ethernet cables, switches and network cards), cutting the cost of the infrastructure to 1/5 or 1/10 of prior costs.  And, by centralizing your storage you can allocate it more efficiently between servers and functions.  Finally, if your servers are virtualized and stored on the SAN, then they can be replicated (copied) to other SANs along with your data, including to another location – this is a great disaster recovery solution!

Although server virtualization was pioneered by VMware, there are several solutions available, including from Microsoft and Citrix.  Virtualization even has an “open source” hypervisor, Xen, just as Linux provides an open source operating system platform.  Virtualization is becoming increasingly common and the cost is coming down because of increasing hardware power, Microsoft’s entry into the market (they’re giving away their Hyper-V hypervisor as part of Windows Server 2008) and the inclusion of all three major hypervisors directly on the system boards of many new servers, which are virtualization-ready with special chipsets.

There are a lot of other ways you can approach virtualization, some of which you may already be doing today.  Just as you can virtualize servers, you can also virtualize desktops – instead of running 4-8 server operating systems on one server, you can run 30-50 Windows desktops – with the benefit of centralized management and standardization.  This is an area of huge potential for cost savings, security improvement and increased agility, particularly for mid-sized businesses.  To do this, you also need to virtualize applications – separating them from each other so they can be easily deployed without the traditional problems of programs being dependent on each other and one program “breaking” another with changes.  Traditional tools like Windows Group Policy (centralized control over policy settings on your PCs) and Citrix/Terminal Services (“thin client”) are also forms of virtualization, and storage on a SAN can also be virtualized to allow for easier allocation and management of space (some vendors also call this “Thin Provisioning,” which requires virtualizing storage from the underlying physical disks).  So virtualization can mean a lot of things to different people, depending on where you are focused.

There’s a lot to consider and plan for here – what’s the next step?  Consider bringing in a qualified reseller/partner company that can do an assessment of your organization and help you evaluate how virtualization can benefit your organization, and help you plan and execute a project to begin the process.  Typically the ROIs can be significant, particularly for companies with a lot of older hardware, but the flexibility gains and “softer” benefits can be significant as well.   This requires a bit of a paradigm shift as you need to let go of older ways of thinking about technology, but once you do so the benefits can be significant.  It’s a bit of a journey, but well worth the effort!

Neil Rosenberg is President and CEO of Quality Technology Solutions, a Microsoft and Citrix Gold Partner and VMware Enterprise Partner located in Morris Plains NJ.  QTS helps businesses implement and support new technologies and helps to implement Worry-Free Network solutions.  Mr. Rosenberg can be reached at nrosenberg@QTSnet.com.

QTS regularly runs seminars on virtualization and other IT topics – for more information, visit www.QTSnet.com/events or subscribe to QTS’ QuikNews email newsletter.

We presented two panel discussions – one on Cloud Computing and one on Virtualization – the Moderators each took questions from the audience – below are some of those questions – please feel free to answer – comment…

Are you using virtualization to support you compliance requirements and if so, how?

Do you expect virtualization to benefit the desktops in the future?

With virtualization being so valuable why do you suppose MSFT would provide it for free? 

Neil,  how do you differentiate the two offerings (vmware and MSFT)?

Are there any standard applications  that you do not recommend putting on VM or results stating that application is not stable on VM?

We have had issues with certain vendors certifying their applications in a virtualized enviornment.  Is this primarily a technical or licencing issue?

How are the panel colleagues handling management of vmware.

Meaning, self provisioning of vm’s, chargeback, reporting, and slas are still being developed/learned by internal infrastructure teams and very haphazard at best.  Also, Many organizations are less than 25 percent virtualized.

What are the best practices or ideas on Jeff’s point about the hardest part is getting the team and organization aligned and motivated in going to cloud computing?

We’ve heard a lot about deployment considerations of cloud-based apps.
What new challenges and opportunities should I anticipate in
developing IT applications for the cloud?

How do you do datawarehousing and reporting in a multi sas / cloud environent?

Are we being too premature with clouds when virtualization has long ways to go.

Meaning, self provisioing of vm’s, chargeback, and slas are still being developed/learned by internal infrastructure teams. Many organizations are less than 25 percent virtualized.

And also clouds have limits due to S.E.C and fnancial regulations.

You talked about the applications that lend themselves to work well under the cloud computing environment. Are there applications that you would recommend not using this technology as a platform?

As an individual that manages about a dozen cloud relationships.  I have 2 questions.

1) What are your approaches to manage multiple SAAS relationships and interdependences from business process perspective

2) What skill_sets do you think are needed with managing SAAS relationships from an internal and provider perspective. Do you see this as a PM type of role or relationship management.

It’s great to be a part of the New Jersey Technology Council, and to be invited to contribute to the NJTC Blog.

New Jersey gets way more than its share of being the butt of jokes, but  it’s pretty clear the reason is pure jealousy over our spectrum of landscapes, and our technical innovation!

Not even googling for obscure items such as the electric train, patent leather or saltwater taffy, most technology buffs can cite an impressive role call of New Jersey inventions including the light bulb, phonograph, FM radio, movies, color television, video tape, transistors, LCDs and, well, off the top of my head, anyway: pork roll!  Like the Lower Trenton Bridge, which reads “Trenton Makes The World Takes”, New Jersey can be said to have contributed more to transform the pre-industrical world into the global village it became in the 20th century than any other place on earth.

Pharmaceuticals may not come to mind when thinking about inventions, but it’s not surprising that NJ accounts for a sizeable portion of US drug innovation.  In 2002, for example, a full third of the drugs and bio products approved by the FDA were from New Jersey firms.

I fully expect some day to walk into a theater that allows me to be immersed in a moving scene from a real location miles away (could be a Superbowl, a performance, or a watering hole in the Serengeti) with 360-degree binocular vision and binaural audio, patented by a lifelong NJ resident I met in my first job.  People I’ve met in the NJTC itself have brought some of the most mission-relevant business continuity strategies to the table that I’ve heard or read about from any source.

Not bad for a place some like to quip should be paved over to create a super-highway between New York and Washington D.C., eh?

Watch this space for information about topics, issues and trends that drive the 100 events run each year by the NJTC.