Archive for March 26, 2018

Gainsight Announces The Largest Industry Gathering In Customer Success at Pulse 2018

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 26, 2018 by itnerd
Gainsight, the Customer Success company, today announced its sixth annual Customer Success industry conference, Pulse 2018, is expecting more than 5000 executives and Customer Success professionals to convene at the San Mateo County Events Center in San Mateo, CA. on April 10-11, 2018. Pulse is the annual destination for Customer Success professionals from all industries to share best practices, learn about new industry developments, network with peers, and celebrate being pioneers of the emerging profession.
 
The two-day event aims to help executives and professionals in post-sales and customer-facing roles manage effective Customer Success programs and grow into successful recurring revenue businesses. The conference includes educational sessions on industry best practices, exciting special events and compelling keynotes from leading companies such as Box, Microsoft, Okta, ServiceNow, VMware and others. Gainsight has partnered with over 30 companies to produce the conference, including N3, ServiceRocket, Accenture, Deloitte and others.
 
Confirmed to keynote Pulse 2018 this year is Beth Comstock, former Vice Chair at GE and one of the most prolific change agents in modern business, as well as Geoffrey Moore, business luminary and author of books such as Crossing the Chasm and Zone to Win: Organizing to Compete in an Age of Disruption. In addition to the conference, Gainsight is also offering Pulse Academy Live, the premier Customer Success education event, on April 9th for Customer Success professionals of any level. The day-long event will include a keynote, workshop, breakouts, and opportunities to connect with peers and ultimately accelerate the careers of Customer Success professionals.
 
Registration and ticket information is available at www.gainsight.com/pulse.

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STEM Camp Launching In Canadian First Nation communities

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 26, 2018 by itnerd

STEM Camp, the Saugeen Ojibway Nation and Bruce Power are pleased to announce the launch of two STEM Camp’s in the communities of Saugeen and Neyaashiinigmiing this upcoming summer. Through discussions and coordinating with the community Youth Leaders and Bruce Power’s Indigenous Relations team, this initiative will be the first-ever STEM Camp to be carried out within First Nations.

The purpose of providing a STEM Camp to these communities is to provide inspirational and fun educational activities for Indigenous children aged 5 through 13 and to provide a mechanism to learn more about their history and culture through, or in conjunction with, STEM-based activities. This is a pilot project that, if successful, could be transferred to other First Nation communities.

STEM Camp is a Canadian registered not-for-profit organization with a mandate to offer quality STEM-based programming through educational activities. STEM Camp started in 2013 and specializes in summer camps designed to inspire children ages 5-13 through hands-on and inquiry-based activities in the STEM fields. In the summer of 2017 STEM Camp was expanded in Ontario to 46 locations resulting in 8500 campers enrolled. In 2018 STEM Camp has committed to 77 locations including 15 francophone and/or bilingual and to the exploration of pilot projects within indigenous communities.

 

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FTC Investigating Facebook

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 26, 2018 by itnerd

Well, I bet a bunch of people in Facebook HQ are saying “oh noes” right now because the news is out that the FTC is investigating Facebook according a statement put out by Tom Pahl, Acting Director of the FTC:

“The FTC is firmly and fully committed to using all of its tools to protect the privacy of consumers. Foremost among these tools is enforcement action against companies that fail to honor their privacy promises, including to comply with Privacy Shield, or that engage in unfair acts that cause substantial injury to consumers in violation of the FTC Act. Companies who have settled previous FTC actions must also comply with FTC order provisions imposing privacy and data security requirements. Accordingly, the FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook. Today, the FTC is confirming that it has an open non-public investigation into these practices.”

Facebook stock which was already in free fall because of this data breach scandal promptly cratered as per this image:

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This is not the worst case scenario for the company. But it’s pretty darn close. The FTC doesn’t fool around which implies that Facebook is in a world of hurt because the FTC can force Facebook to radically change the way they do business or face all sorts of untold pain and suffering. Either way, it could be an extinction level event for the company.

Stay tuned. This is about to get interesting.

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#PSA: Apple Watch Apps Need To Be Native Staring Sunday April 1st

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 26, 2018 by itnerd

If you’re an Apple Watch owner, you can expect a slew of updates for the apps on your Apple Watch this week and next week. That’s because Apple a while ago gave those who develop apps for the Apple Watch a deadline of Sunday April 1st to have make their apps to be native apps. What does that mean for you? It means the following:

  • The apps can work with as little as a Internet connection to the Apple Watch and without a phone being present.
  • The apps will perform better.
  • The apps will get access to new background modes for navigation and audio recording, built-in altimeter capabilities, direct connections to accessories with Core Bluetooth among other things. That will make the apps way more functional than they are now.

Thus when you get requests to update the apps on your phone over the next couple of weeks, and you know that it installs an accompanying app on your Apple Watch, you should install it as you’ll likely get a bit of an improvement in terms of how it works and performs.

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#DeleteFacebook Is Your Only Option As It’s Been Discovered That Facebook Gathers Up Far More Data Than Previously Thought

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 26, 2018 by itnerd

Last week, I posted a story and a tweet about your choices when it came to Facebook. From the #DeleteFacebook camp came this story that laid out the reasons why you should delete Facebook. But if that wasn’t you, this tweet laid out a second option:

But today, I’m here to tell you that the second option is not an option. I say that because of this story on The Register where users of Facebook who decided to join team #DeleteFacebook discovered that Facebook was gathering up all sorts of info including text messages, call histories, and interactions with other apps that weren’t owned by Facebook. Oh yes, this also applies to Instagram which is owned by Facebook.

Now you likely agreed to all of this data collection when you signed up to Facebook as that was likely in the terms of service that you likely didn’t read. But it doesn’t make it any less creepy. In my mind it means that you need to #DeleteFacebook as this company has really shown that it’s not above doing things that at the very least are unethical.

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