Archive for October 23, 2017

BREAKING: Rogers Now Saying That There’s A “Secondary” Issue Keeping People Offline

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 23, 2017 by itnerd

Here’s another twist in the ongoing saga of the Rogers outage that has affected a client of mine along with untold others for the last few days. Rogers on Sunday promised that things would be up and running by that evening. Which by today was proven that they didn’t bring people online as promised. And to top it off while some people got online today, many didn’t.

The latest plot twist can be found in these Tweets that were just posted to the Rogers Helps Twitter account:

This is quite literally unbelievable. By that I mean that I am having a hard time believing this. Why? From where I sit, a significant number of Rogers customers are still not online as I type this. And they have been for days. Given how long this has been going on and the sort of resources that Rogers must be throwing at this, this new issue cannot be plausible.

Predictably, this isn’t going over well on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/Kevinjuanzo/status/922619099808645120

The fact is that at this point, Rogers can kiss whatever credibility that they had goodbye as none of their users who are offline are likely to believe what Rogers is saying.

Consider this to be a full blown PR crisis that is spiraling out of the control of Rogers.

UPDATE: An increasing number of people are coming back online. Details here.

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Stevie Award-Winners Celebrated at 2017 International Business Awards Ceremony

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 23, 2017 by itnerd

In the festive ambience of the W Hotel in Barcelona, the winners of the 14th annual International Business Awards were presented their Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Awards on Saturday, October 21, 2017. High-ranking representatives from more than 130 honored companies and organizations from around the world received their awards on stage.

The International Business Awards (IBAs) are the world’s only international, all-encompassing business awards program. Many organisations and individuals from all over the world are among the 2017 winners. One of the top winners this year is the Spanish PR agency Llorente & Cuenca, which won seven golds, times gold Stevie Awards, 15 silvers, and 11 bronzes. They also received a Grand Stevie Award for the Most Honored Public Relations Agency. The marketing agency Hanaroadcom from South Korea, ASDA’A Burson Marsteller from Dubai, Cisco Systems from the USA and India, the Ooredoo Group from the Maldives and PT Petrokimia Gresik from Indonesia were also honored with Grand Stevie Awards.

Among the winners of this year’s International Business Awards are 19 companies and individuals from Canda who have prevailed over the global competition. In total they’ll receive 40 Stevie Awards: 13 gold Stevies, 10 silvers and 17 bronzes. This high number of gold, silver and bronze Stevies is evidence of the great performance of Canadian companies and managers.

The leading winner among the Canadian companies is Toronto based insurance company RSA Canada, with one gold, two silver and six bronze Stevie Awards in various marketing categories. Another top-winner is the computer service provider RevenueWire, with one gold (Customer Service Department of the Year) and four bronze Stevie Awards.

Another company with multiple award winning entries is the computer software company J2 Global from Ottawa, winning one gold and two Silver Stevies in various Customer Service categories.

Resolute Forest Products from Montreal wins a gold Stevie in the category Health, Safety & Environment Program of the Year – in Canada and the U.S.A.. Manatee Holdings Ltd. from Courtenay wins with Lourdes Gant, Chief Visionary Officer, a Silver Stevie in the category Woman of the Year.

From Canada, J2 Global, Manatee Holdings Ltd., and Resolute Forest Products attended the IBA ceremony to receive their awards in Barcelona.

The International Business Awards are open to all organisations worldwide. Organisations and individuals are eligible to compete, and can submit entries in a wide range of categories, including management awards, company of the year awards, marketing awards, public relations awards, customer service awards, human resources awards, new product awards, IT awards, web site awards, and more.

The Stevie winners were selected from more than 3,900 nominations from more than 60 nations. More than 150 executives worldwide participated in the judging process this year to determine the Stevie winners.

More information about the 2017 International Business Awards and the calendar for 2018 is available at www.stevieawards.com/iba.

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Schneider Electric Announces New Canadian President

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 23, 2017 by itnerd

Schneider Electric today announced that Susan Uthayakumar will become Country President, Canada on January 1, 2018, reporting to Annette Clayton, CEO and President, North America, and Chief Supply Chain Officer.

Schneider Electric Country President, Canada - Susan Uthayakumar.JPG
Susan, a 13-year veteran of Schneider Electric, was most recently Vice President, National Sales, Canada, responsible for developing and executing the sales strategy for the company’s electrical distribution and industrial automation products and solutions. Susan’s prior roles at Schneider Electric include Vice President, Partner Business, Canada; Chief Financial Officer, Canada; Vice President Controller, North America; and Director, Mergers and Acquisitions, North America. Before joining Schneider Electric, Susan advised companies on mergers and acquisitions and growth strategies.

Susan holds multiple degrees in finance from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

In her role as Country President, Canada, Susan will be responsible for overseeing all strategic initiatives in the country and driving its revenue and growth. She will continue to play an integral part in elevating Schneider Electric’s presence in Canada as a leader in energy management and automation.

Juan Macias, whom Susan succeeds, will be leading Schneider Electric’s Prosumer in the New World of Energy initiative across the company.

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SOME Rogers Customers Are Coming Back Online…. Key Word: SOME

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 23, 2017 by itnerd

Here’s the latest update from the ongoing Rogers outage that has affected a client of mine along with untold others for the last few days. When I last left you, I related to you that Rogers on Sunday promised that things would be up and running by that evening. But by today, that still wasn’t the case. While the client that I mentioned in this story has yet to come back online. It appears that some Rogers customers are finally coming online. Take this example from Twitter that was provided by a reader:

I have found a few others who have come back online as well. So from that perspective, it does confirm what Rogers said in these Tweets from earlier today:

But it is nowhere near “the majority of Rogers Home Phone, TV and Internet customers”  from what I can tell and from what the dozens of people who I’ve been talking to over the last few days are telling me (and who are also among those who are yet to be back online). But there does seem to be a light to the end of this tunnel for Rogers customers who are affected by this. How long it takes them to get to the end of the tunnel still seems to be a very open question along with what the long term damage will be to Rogers in terms of their public image.

More updates as they come.

UPDATE: A reader sent me this statement which he also sent to major news outlets this morning:

My Rogers internet has been down for 5 days now and I’m very frustrated. NO news media have covered this outage. I have called Rogers many times and I’ve been total everything from “there’s no problem reported in your area”, “there is a small provisioning problem and we will be up shortly” to “it will be fixed by tonight ( two different days)”

I have no internet because Thursday morning I was talking to a tech support person about problem I had been having for about a week with internet. The girl I was talking to said it was not Rogers problem and my modem checked out remotely, it must be something in my house, maybe two many devices connected. I didn’t like this answer because nothing at the house changed and it was working weeks ago. So, she suggested I take the modem into a Rogers store and swap it. I did this Thursday at noon and asked the sales person at Rogers, “So all I have to do it plug this in and my internet will be back up and running”. They assured me it would be that easy. Well, I got home and no internet. After calling Tech support and getting many different answers and escalating the call up to a manager I found out the problem was with Rogers. And if I had not swapped my modem I’d still have internet. I was not happy at all.

This is the challenge that Canada’s largest telco faces at the moment. It’s lost a lot of goodwill because of the way that this has been handled and the lack of a resolution that encompasses the majority of their user base. The only way they can reverse this is to quickly (and by quickly, I mean today) resolve this once and for all. Then Rogers needs to work towards rebuilding the trust of their users by being forthright about what happened, why it happened, why it won’t happen again, and finally providing redress to their users. Otherwise, Rogers faces the potential of bad press as well as customers fleeing to the competition. Neither of which is ideal for them.

UPDATE #3: Angry Rogers customers have Tweeting me over the last couple hours:

It really doesn’t seem that Rogers is not winning hearts and minds here.

UPDATE #4: Another plot twist in this story. Click here for details.

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In Depth: Code-it Hacks

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 23, 2017 by itnerd

Everyone agrees that the next generation needs to learn how to code. But the question is how do you do it in a way that engages them and keeps them interested? That was the question that Shirin Merchant was confronted with when she quit her job for personal reasons. Her daughter loved to code, but Ms. Merchant noted that most of the coding classes that are out there start off with a large number of kids. But as the class goes on the numbers dwindle. This to her was a sign that what the kids were being taught wasn’t engaging enough. Thus she decided to create her own coding class to address that deficiency. Thus Code-it Hacks was born.

What Makes Code-it Hacks different than other coding classes is that it doesn’t teach coding in a “do as I say manner” which is how I learned how to code back in the age of the dinosaurs which is also known as the age of the Commodore Pet. It instead teaches kids how to code in ways that encourage imagination, critical thinking and leadership. I encourage you to look at this link for more details.

This past weekend Code-it Hacks held an event at the Runnymede Public Library, and the organization provided me with some pictures from the event:

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One thing that you’ll notice is that some of kids in these pictures have t-shirts from the organization. They act as mentors and this is what encourages the leadership part of learning how to code. The fact is that Code-it Hacks goes beyond learning a programming language. They are teaching skills that will prove invaluable later in life.

Code-it Hacks has programs for grade 7+ as well as grade 3-6 with three locations in Toronto to attend classes. I should also note that Milton will be added as a location in January. But I should also mention is that Ms. Merchant is  working with local schools and the Ontario Ministry of Education to bring this style of coding class to as many kids as possible. If that’s not enough, she’s also planning on bringing coding classes to her home country of Pakistan via an NGO called Developments in Literacy. From speaking with Ms. Merchant earlier today, I can tell she’s on a mission and I for one hope she succeeds.

If you have children who are interested in coding and you’re in the Greater Toronto Area, I’d recommend checking out Code-it Hacks. The approach to coding that they offer  is one that I can get behind as if coding was taught that way when I was in school, I’d likely be less computer consulting and more coding in my life today.

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Rogers Fails To Deliver On Their Promise To Bring Customers Back On Line

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 23, 2017 by itnerd

Yesterday I posted a story where Rogers had reached out to me and said this:

Some of our Home Phone, TV and Internet customers who have recently activated or had a new product installed may be experiencing a delay in connecting their services to the network. We are now processing transactions and are working to restore all services by later this evening. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

But what became clear as the day went on and transitioned into night was that Rogers wasn’t going to deliver on this promise as there was no evidence that customers were coming back online. As I type this the client that I mentioned in this story still has no Internet. And neither do other Rogers customers as evidenced by this:

https://twitter.com/Cristina_Avila_/status/922414646379679745

I’ve also got emails from Rogers customers asking me if they should dump Rogers at this point and switch to another telco. Well, my advice goes something like this. While there are smaller telcos out there, if you want a telco of the size and scope of Rogers, it means that you’re dealing with Bell Canada. There’s also Telus if you’re in Western Canada as well. You can always reach out to them to see what deals they have and what it would take to switch you over. I’m pretty sure that they’d be more than willing to help you out.

In the meantime, the failure to come through on their promise to get customers back online by yesterday evening really creates a credibility issue for Rogers. Any sort of latitude that customers might have given the company is gone now. I fully expect things to really go south for them today even if customers come online in short order. After all, I first posted a story on this last week, and we’re still here talking about it. That’s not good for Rogers. But it’s even worse for the customers that are affected by this.

I continue to monitor the situation and I will provide updates as they occur.

UPDATE: Things are going from bad to worse for Rogers as angry customers are now reaching out to the news media to shine a light on this situation:

Sooner or later, a news outlet will pick up this story and then Rogers will have a bigger PR disaster on their hands. That will make things far more interesting than they already are. On top of that, at least one person has decided to reach out to the CRTC about this as well:

Chances are others are doing the same. This isn’t good if you’re Rogers as it shines a big spotlight on this issue that I am sure that they don’t want at this point.

UPDATE #2: Rogers just put out a series of Tweets:

The problem with these series of Tweets is that nobody who is experiencing issues is getting their service back. Thus there’s no evidence that this is actually happening which would go a long way in terms of calming the waters. Thus I would ask if you are suffering from this issue and you get service back, please let me know on Twitter or via e-mail so that I can update this story accordingly.

UPDATE #3: The above Tweets are not resonating with Rogers customers who have been offline for days:

The only thing that is going to reduce the noise is if people come online quickly as this is clearly spiraling into a place where there is no scenario where Rogers comes out on top of this situation.

UPDATE #4: Canadian tech blogs MobileSyrup and iPhoneInCanada have picked up the story. In both stories, they indicate that some customers are getting back online. Thus again I would ask if you are suffering from this issue and you get service back, please let me know on Twitter or via e-mail so that I can update this story accordingly.

UPDATE #5: Evidence exists that customers are coming back online SLOWLY. Details here.

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