Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal, thinks so.  The self-made venture capitalist turned Silicon Valley black sheep is stepping out on an intriguing limb.  He theorizes that a 4 year college degree could measurably reduce a young entreprenuer’s chance of success.  Furthermore, he calculates a 4 year college degree will ultimately bring down overall net income for those who attend.

I watched an intriguing interview with Mr. Thiel on 60 Minutes recently which highlighted these concepts. Dig up the video on YouTube and also review his fellowship foundation summary here>>> The Thiel Fellowship

Consider the impact of his hypothesises on the American economy, ability to expand our education for the right purpose and the passing and folding of multi century-old institutions.

Are your employees utilizing your resources to manage their personal life?  As an employer myself it is important to allow employees the freedom and flexibility to extend their personal life into their work area, desk or shop space… however, with a few duly noted boundaries (stay tuned for this a near-term blog entry).

All too often we are asked by customers to lock out a freshly fired employee, track a specific user’s Internet usage or urgently change a user password.  And, lets not forget the many times we have been requested to block Facebook, eBay and streaming music.  All of these items, and your stance on them as an employer, should be clearly stated in your corporate computing use policy and distributed to ALL users.  While it is not our intention to create a ‘big brother’ environment for employees, it is, however, our intention, as employers to respectfully deny use of resources which, ultimately, pay our employee wages.

In the end, your computing resources are the backbone of your business operations and the lifeline and mechanism for exchanging communication and revenue.  Consider your employee’s personal life extension into the work place carefully.

There will come a time when your office space, for whatever reason, needs a change. Moving your operations to a new office takes thoughtful consideration and planning to be successful. Here are a few key topics to consider when moving your office and your information technology infrastructure.

Timing
Timing is everything when it comes to planning your move. Your Internet and voice service provider should be researched, quoted and ordered before you plan your move date. This install date often dictates the entirety of your move.

Service and Support Vendors
If you outsource your IT and phone equipment support service it important to, first, notify these vendors of your intended relocation day and immediately lock in this date with their calendars. Have each of your support vendors review the current state of your infrastructure and verify a physical move will not be unusually disruptive. The vendors should also be required to visit your new office space to verify forward planning and considerations such as network wiring, electrical placement, cooling considerations and generally physical moving requirements. If your core server and networking equipment is contained in a bulking rack mount cabinet have the vendors verify fitment in the new office space from pavement to the final server room. Moving a cabinet can be a physically challenging endeavor. Finally, your vendors should coordinate with each other and thoroughly plan your infrastructure move. It is important to identify which of the vendors will primarily drive the scheduling and project management. Often times this is the IT vendor and secondarily the voice equipment vendor. In any case it is your decision who to define as point person for the move.Read More