Giving Back – Continued
March 26, 2008
I was checking out our new blog today, and saw a post by one of our newest employees, David Bowman. It is great to hear about people in our company giving back. It is an important part of our culture and frankly, it’s one of the most special parts of living on this earth.
I guess when I think about giving, I go back to my parents and the stories that they taught me about their growing up in the Great Depression. In today’s world and the complex financial crisis that the sub-prime mortgage market has along with the recent failings of some of Wall Street’s giants, I have to admit: I still think we as a society have no clue about the real impact of what our families and relatives went through in the Great Depression. My parents were fortunate. My mother is First Generation American. Her parents immigrated from Eastern Austria-Hungary and the Ukraine shortly after the beginning of this last century. Coal-miner, shoemaker, Goodyear Rubber & Tire factory work, her parents always put food on the table and had a modest life of comfort and stability. During the Depression, they constantly had people coming to their door asking for chores. Back then, pride was 100% of your character. One never took hand-outs. You would not take “free food” even though my grandparents were willing and able to share. My father grew up the 6th child of a Southern Alabama farm family. Again, lots of people were very unfortunate in the South during the Depression. He learned to give to his neighbors and support the community. This was a practice that he continued throughout his entire life.
Fast forward over my years growing up with them. My 2 brothers and I were in Boy Scouts in our formative years. Outside of camping in the Upstate New York Adirondacks once a month, community service was the core of our activities. Weekends were spent participating in newspaper drives, helping in the neighborhood parks, cleaning up the “teen center” and many other volunteer activities. We learned to support our community.
Fast forward to today: I still have it in my blood. LUCRUM is committed to participating in Community Service through providing 4 approaches: economic, leadership, professional, and material assistance to local and regional organizations. Economic simply means donated cash. Leadership is where people in our firm invest their time in guiding, assisting, participating in community organizations. Professional is where LUCRUM provides consulting, web development, and general software development services. LUCRUM’s community support initiatives have recently included: The United Way(www.uwgc.org) and the Tocqueville Society Campaign, the Central Clinic (www.centralclinic.org), the Boy Scouts(www.danbeard.org), the Evans’ Scholar Golf Outing, the Epilepsy Foundation, the Cincinnati Art Museum (www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org), the Fine Arts Fund (www.fineartsfund.org) and their new Technology Sector campaign, and the National Father-Son Tennis Tournaments to name a few. As you can imagine, it’s contagious with our employees and their commitment to the community amplifies ours.
So, “thank-you” David Bowman. “Thank-you” to all of our LUCRUM professionals in their commitment in supporting our community.
Are People the Answer? Not Necessarily…
March 17, 2008
Happy St. Patty’s Day. We owe much of our country’s early infrastructure development to the large group of Irish immigrants that came over in the 1800′s. Masses of capable workers were the solution to getting the canals, railroads, and roads built in this country over a century ago. My wife’s family is Irish. She’s the 6th of 10 kids and has quite a nice family. In the 1800′s “people” were the answer to most economic growth initiatives. Nowadays, I’m not so sure that’s still the answer.
In a March 4th article in the Dayton Business Journal (Dayton, Ohio….the one team that should have made it into the NCAA March Madness and didn’t) there’s an article that quotes Robert Half, the Menlo Park, California-based IT Staffing firm, that shows Ohio has a robust hiring plan in IT for 2008. By polling CIO’s at Ohio-based Headquarters of large firms, they see a “fertile job market” where 10% of them are predicting adding staff in Cincinnati while 4% are predicting staff reductions. There’s other cities mentioned as well that show an increase in hiring people into IT. I have a problem with the very concept the article was written on. It’s really a “nothing article” since IT isn’t about “how many people are in your organization” but rather how are you increasing productivity of your end users, your vendors, your clients! We are in a race to add more computing power unleashing the power of DATA. Everyone defaults their focus on IT meaning Technology and thus, Technology is taken care of by PEOPLE. Then we talk about “how many people are in your organization?” as if one has an army of talent to lead into battle in the world economy…not so, from my viewpoint. The article didn’t say what the other 86% of the CIO’s are doing in the Cincinnati market??? The stronger companies are focusing on creating collaborative environments where the power of INFORMATION and not TECHNOLOGY is the key to their value proposition.Nick Carr in his recent book The Big Switch is espousing that the IT world is going to change significantly one more time. This metamorphosis is going to close down separate Data Centers just like the industrial revolution 100 years ago reallocated individual power generation dynamo’s into a centralized power generation model shared through the electric grid. In their case, the grid had to be built after the centralized power generation facilities went up. In our case, the grid is the Internet and all of that fiber that started to be laid 10 years ago and is now providing huge bandwidth. Centralized data centers needed centralized people to run the physical aspects of them. Frankly, the logical attributes are virtualized just in the same manner the centralized data centers’ hardware and processing infrastructure are being virtualized. Everything from developing logical architecture (SOA), application requirements, application development and testing, and even managing all of the databases once in production can be done “anywhere, anytime, by anyone.” People are certainly needed and yet, processes are even more important. For maximum productivity, the people shouldn’t be in Ohio. Let’s be frank. The people should be where the processes are most mature and their costs become the lowest common denominator (read: Asia although our falling dollar may make other places and even the US more competitive). By providing computing power “just in time” with managed services on a “just in time” basis as well, there isn’t much of a need for an IT organization. Perhaps we rename IT the “Processes and Measures Services Organization.” Even the word “Information” is not needed since Information is an assumed need every time!
Ironically, Robert Half does have a division called Provititi whose main services offerings are centered around “Processes and Measures!!!” Now that’s cool! So, next time, I hope the Dayton Business Journal writes a story about Productivity Improvement measures for the Ohio-based companies! (I would be happy to serve as a source.)
Move Forward One Step…
March 16, 2008
As we continue to experience the global economic correction in the US economy, we hear about the perfect storm: inflation, recession, credit markets becoming unbelievably tight, and the general struggle with the value of the dollar. Day after day, this is all we hear, and yet, if you read a lot of financial performance news, you understand that many companies are at or ahead of their forecasts and the economy is more sound. Who’s right?
What you can’t do is bury yourself in the sand. “No action” tends to be the less-than-optimal solution, for sure. “Back to the basics” theory historically says, “one step at a time” and you’ll have a lot of progress in anything you try to accomplish.
It is the same way for the world of Fine Arts. Cincinnati, Ohio, has historically made an economic name for itself as a predominant manufacturing economy. It is more likely that a person outside of this area knows Cincinnati as a sports town with the Cincinnati Reds and the Cincinnati Bengals. In fact, Cincinnati is really a “Fine Arts” town. At the center of the Fine Arts is the Cincinnati “Fine Arts Fund.” It is distinguished by having the oldest arts fund in the United States. Founded by the esteemed Charles Taft in 1923, the fund has continued to grow and prosper supporting hundreds of fine arts organizations and programs over the years.
Did you know that a lot of IT professionals are also artists? I know several that are musicians and still play in bands. Others are artists using paint and other medium. We once even had a former ballet dancer as a client-server developer! I’m a brass guy (trumpet) that now is constantly playing jazz on my Gibson Les Paul guitar. On this last week’s business trip to New York, I crashed in on Stanley Jordan at the Iridium Jazz Club, one of my favorite hideouts in New York. Stanley is still young looking and fresh. In fact, he told me afterwards that he’s 48 and playing as well as ever. I purchased a CD from him that I have never heard of before: “Relaxing Music for Difficult Situations.” It’s a 60-minute jazz guitar solo. Perhaps we play it for our economy!!!
LÛCRUM continues to be a great supporter of philanthropic causes in the greater Cincinnati community. This year, LÛCRUM is proud to participate in our first Fine Arts Fund Campaign. As you may or may not know, the Fine Arts Organization is also one of our clients. In addition to being a client of LÛCRUM, the Fine Arts Fund (FAF) does wonderful work within the Cincinnati community and throughout the region supporting more than 95 arts organizations, promoting the arts, and developing outreach programs to thousands of area schoolchildren.
Recently, LÛCRUM and the Fine Arts Fund co-hosted an “IT Entrepreneur Leadership Networking Event” late last month with Chris Hjelm, CIO, of Kroger, as the guest speaker. Chris’ talent outside of being an IT executive, is that he’s a weekend chef. Cherry pies, chili, and other delights can be found at the Hjelm residence.
LÛCRUM put a lot of time and effort into making this year’s campaign as well as making a modest monetary commitment. From a time and effort contribution, I am committed to doing as much as possible to support the FAF in their efforts to reach the $12 million goal set for the 2008 Campaign.
Did you know that if you give a personal gift this year of $75 or more, you get to receive the “Fine Arts Fun Card.” This discount card allows you to enjoy the arts and save money at the same time! There are even more benefits for donors at the $150 and $500 levels in 2008. Please go to
Breathe deep and keep taking “another step!”
LÛCRUM Calendar – Networking Made Easy
March 7, 2008
Do you think that networking is valuable? How about educational seminars. I do. One of the most difficult parts of networking is just knowing where to go. In this day and age business people are so busy, that combing the web for events to attend just isn’t a practical use of time. Still, you know that going to networking events and meeting new friends and acquaintances is one of the best way to build your business. Well, what if all of the networking event in Cincinnati, Dayton, and Northern Kentucky were on one, easy to find, easy to read, regularly updated calendar? Would that be valuable to you? Chances are the answer is yes. In our quest to try to make life better by using technology, we offer the LUCRUM Calendar. This one calendar is full of events from around town. Certainly we have a wealth of IT events, but it does not stop there. The calendar features events from area chambers, professional organizations, and more. It is a one stop networking shop. Give it a look. Is there an organization missing or an event you think we need to add? Let us know. We are always trying to improve what we do, and your feedback is valued. Thanks and enjoy the calendar. Hope to see you soon at a networking function.