■  President's Message
■  Holding a Web Meeting
■  Why Outsource?
■  Unknowing Victim
■  Meet the Staff
 

Message from the President

Spring Cleaning

Raise your hand if you strongly dislike spring cleaning. . . me too!!! Scrubbing, power washing, disposing of all kinds of basement and attic 'stuff'. . . and just where does all that excess 'stuff' come from anyway? How is it that year after year I even have to clean the basement? Ah well. . .  (oh, you can put your hands down).

This whole idea of spring cleaning has some merit though in the computer world and thankfully it isn't nearly as labor intensive. As I look for information on my hard drive, I find myself perusing lots of files and folders that are from, well, a long time ago. They have accumulated just like that 'stuff' in the basement. I see pdf's that I only needed to read once and not saved forever. I see pictures that have long since been burned to CD's. I see folders scattered all over the place because I forgot where I was originally keeping such files. And my Internet Favorites? As we say in New York, "Foh-geddah-boud-it"!

Many don't even link to working sites anymore.

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Think hard now. Can you remember your first virtual meeting? For many of you, it was in the latter decades of the 20th century, and you likely called it a "teleconference." If so, chances are you can recall how simple - but expensive - the technology used to be.

Well, virtual meetings aren't expensive anymore.

But they're still relatively simple, even if you're talking now about meetings held via the Internet instead of by phone.

In fact, getting up and running with Web conferencing software today is so easy that virtually anyone with a PC and an Internet connection can do it. For example, it took me less than two minutes to sign up for Microsoft Office Live Meeting's free 14-day trial.

If it's that easy, how much harder can holding a Web conference be?

Hardly! Outsourcing is as American as Mom and Apple Pie! A lot of people believe that outsourcing is the problem with America's economy today. For the most part they equate outsourcing with sending jobs overseas (off-shoring). The fact is that outsourcing started long ago when production lines where first formed to manufacture everything from nails for building to autos for driving.

Yes, outsourcing has gotten very sophisticated over the last decade or so. Yes, we are competing on a global scale for jobs, especially in certain sectors. But the fact remains that small businesses can help themselves grow and thrive by outsourcing tasks that are:

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