Celebrating our First Born!

6 pound 4 ounce baby Alice bounced into our lives this morning!  The PR Team are so excited to welcome our "first born" into the world.  We expect Alice to be extremely bright and precocious given the fact she chose to be born in the midst of a hurricane!

Welcome Alice, and congratulations to her excited parents!

Greenville gets top ranking by Verizon

Courtesy of Upstate Business Journal, 9/28/18

Greenville, South Carolina, recently ranked 21 in Verizon Business’ first annual “Best Small Cities to Start a Small Business Report.” Being in the top 10 percent in the nation, Greenville was named one of the top small cities for small businesses to grow and thrive.

Those making the list of 50 small cities were chosen by Verizon analysts based on education level of the local workforce, in-city commute times, income per capita, broadband access, availability of SBA loans, and overall tax friendliness. Data was gathered from nearly 300 small cities with populations between 50,000 and 75,000 people, which is how the U.S. census classifies small cities. 

While Verizon is more popularly known as a cellphone service provider, Verizon Business also strives to provide businesses with a variety of tools necessary to operate efficiently.

The complete study can be found here.

Remote Workers are Outperforming Office Workers - Here's Why

By Brian de HaaffCo-founder and CEO, Aha!

Have you seen any of these gimmicky office designs? Candy dispensers in conference rooms. Hammocks and indoor treehouses. Tech companies tend to be the worst offenders with the startup favorites: beer taps and table tennis.

Maybe there is fun for a moment when the candy bar drops -- but does all that money spent on gimmicks deliver anything meaningful for the people who work there?

I have to wonder why company founders are trying so hard with these in-office "perks." I get that the goal is to create collaboration and fun. But I think this is doing more harm than good. And research shows that the problem is only getting worse.

In fact, one study found that the number of people who say they cannot concentrate at their desk has increased by 16 percent since 2008. Also startling: The number of workers who say they do not have access to quiet places to do focused work is up by 13 percent.

It should not matter where people are getting the work done -- as long as they are focused and working hard each day. This is one of the reasons why we founded Aha! on the premise and promise of remote work. Remote work is working for us. We are one of the fastest-growing software companies in the U.S. and a 100 percent distributed team.

I am not alone in this belief. Plenty of studies and surveys show the power of remote work when it comes to productivity.

Here are three reasons remote workers outperform office workers:

1. Productivity

With no office distractions and greater autonomy, remote workers have the freedom to get more done. This is something most people crave. According to a nationwide survey, 65 percent of workers said that remote work would give their productivity a boost. Another 86 percent said that working alone allows them to hit maximum productivity.

2. Teamwork

Despite the distance, remote workers make the best teammates. This is because that distance demands more communication. Without being able to lean on physical proximity, remote workers must reach out to one another frequently and with purpose. This leads to stronger collaboration and camaraderie. And all those long-distance video chats? An astounding 92 percent of workers say the video collaboration actually improves their teamwork.

3. Presence

Office life is littered with absences -- workers who are calling in sick or sneaking out early to run an errand or get to an event on time. But remote workers do not need to make excuses. Since they are not tied to an office, they can design their workday to meet the demands of their lives. If they have a cold, they can work from home without spreading the germs to others. And if they need to run an errand, they can handle it quickly without losing a workday. This ultimately makes remote workers more present for their work and team.

These are just a few of the reasons that I say the most effective workers are the ones who do not work in an office. Remote workers are able to cut through the noise and focus on what really matters: meaningful work and being happy doing it.

No beer taps or hammocks necessary.

SC Residents: Learn Coding!

A new program that will provide free access to code education is being offered to all residents in South Carolina.

The S.C. Department of Commerce’s Office of Innovation partnered with Build Carolina to offer the program, called S.C. Codes, statewide. The program will use state resources to connect students with industry mentors and to provide a path for continuing education and employment in technology-related fields.

“The continued development of South Carolina's digital workforce is critical to ensuring future economic prosperity within our borders,” S.C. Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt said in a news release. “Our ability to compete in the global economy will rely on the availability of an educated, job-ready technology workforce in South Carolina. S.C. Codes will help us develop such talent, preparing the citizens of this state for the jobs of tomorrow."

The program started as a pilot project in 2016 funded by grants from the S.C. Commerce Innovation Challenge with BMW and the Greenville County Library System. The statewide platform uses technology created by coding bootcamp Iron Yard Academy, which was headquartered in Greenville before its 15 nationwide locations closed in July 2017.

“The beauty of the platform is that anyone who wants to learn to code can access educational resources that are specific to the needs of employers right here in our state,” Lelia King, executive director of Build Carolina, said in a release.

Build Carolina is a nonprofit organization that supports talent initiatives and innovative companies throughout the state.   

The S.C. Codes program is available to all residents with access to the internet and provides beginner and advanced curriculum. Classroom sessions will be available through local partners.

According to an analysis by the Computing Technology Industry Association, a nonprofit trade group, state employment in the technology industry grew by nearly 2,520 jobs in 2017 and contributed $10.8 billion to the state’s economy.   

- courtesy Columbia Business Report

UWIT Meeting Today Featured IBM's Watson

Upstate Women in Technology presents, “IBM’s Watson and Social Programs in the Cognitive Era”, presented by Richelle Mathieu.  Richelle shared some of the innovative cognitive solutions her team at Watson Health built to transform the way social programs help the citizens they serve.

UWIT is held monthly at City Range on Haywood Road.  Networking starts at 11:30 and lunch is served at 12:00.  Please register online  for future gatherings at www.uwitsc.com.   Walks-ins welcomed with cash or check payment of $20.  Contact Jill Rose at 864-908-0105 or uwitsc@outlook.com for more information. 

Wanted: Coders Who Can Cobol

TEN YEARS before man walked on the moon, a group of software engineers created the Common Business-Oriented Language—better know as Cobol— to standardize business computer programming.

Not long after, in the early 1960s, Bill Hinshaw began plying his trade as one of the thousands of Cobol programmers working in banks across the world. Now, more than 50 years later, the 76-year-old coder is still working in Cobol, much to his amazement.

“I was coming to the end of my career and I thought that Cobol might be going away,” says Mr. Hinshaw. “But it has actually grown.”

Indeed, despite its advanced age, Cobol is still the most prevalent programming language in the financial-services industry world-wide. Software programmed in Cobol powers millions of banking transactions every day and underpins critical computer mainframes.

And Cobol isn’t going away anytime soon. Banks and other companies have come to the uncomfortable realization that ripping out old mainframes is pricey and complicated. Transitioning to new systems is likely to take years, and besides, a lot of the older tech works just fine.

The problem is that Cobol isn’t popular with new programmers. So, with a generation of Cobol specialists retiring, there is a continuing hunt to find a new generation of programmers to service this technology.

In Texas, Mr. Hinshaw’s company, the Cobol Cowboys, a group of mostly older programmers, is training U.S. military veterans in the programming language. 

Accenture PLC is coaching hundreds of Cobol programmers every year in India and the Philippines to work at banks. In Malaysia, one consultancy that provides engineers versed in Cobol for its clients, iTAc MSC Outsourcing, has adopted the slogan “Keeping the Dinosaurs Alive.”

A host of companies offer online courses in Cobol in places like South Africa, India and Bangladesh. Developing economies are key technology-outsourcing centers for banks.

Can’t let go

Detractors say Cobol isn’t versatile and results in reams of code, because it is partly written in actual English words. It’s also used to configure mainframes, which isn’t exactly a career-enhancing proposition for young coders in an era dominated by cloud computing.

Still, for banks that expect to be tied to their old technology to some extent for the foreseeable future, fluency in Cobol remains key. While a bunch of smaller banks have successfully ripped out their old core processing systems, no major bank has dared to do so, says John Schlesinger, chief enterprise architect at Temenos, a company that sells software to banks. The cost of a major overhaul and the risk of a botched upgrade leaving customers without access to their bank accounts are too great, he says.

Several companies are making hay while the sun still shines on Cobol. 

Micro Focus International PLC is offering courses to some 400 colleges to train Cobol programmers. The company, one of whosespecialties is upgrading old computer systems, polled its customers last year and found that 90% plan to use Cobol systems for the next decade.

“We don’t see that demand going anytime soon,” says Derek Britton, who runs a unit at Micro Focus that modernizes old systems.

Nod to Hollywood

Mr. Hinshaw’s Cobol Cowboys— the name is a nod to the Clint Eastwood movie “Space Cowboys,” about a crew of aging test pilots—has a team of some 200 freelance coders. The average age is around 60. “They can work when they want to,” says Mr. Hinshaw.

“They can spend time with their grandchildren.”

When it comes to coding, age is in the eye of the beholder, says Mr. Hinshaw. Several other coding languages have comfortably slipped into useful middle age. For instance, the coding language “C”—one of the most popular of all time—is still widely used more than 45 years after it came on the scene.

And Cobol isn’t retiring on his watch, Mr. Hinshaw says. “I don’t see Cobol going away in my lifetime.”

Max Colchester is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in London. He can be reached at max.colchester@wsj.com 

Ranks of Women in Tech Show Slight Growth

by Steve Rosenbush of the Wall Street Journal

Good day, CIOs. Diversity is at the top of the corporate tech agenda, but scant progress is being made when it comes to expanding the ranks of women and minorities within the U.S. divisions of large companies, CIO Journal’s Sara Castellanos reports. Women were represented in 24% of technical roles this year, a slight gain over 2017, according to a survey of more than 628,000 technologists across 80 large companies. The study was conducted by AnitaB.org, a nonprofit organization aimed at increasing the representation of women technologists. 

A broader view of diversity. Black, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander and multiracial women accounted for about 13% of the technical roles, according to the report, which did not measure racial diversity last year.

The business case. “Diversity in experience and diversity in thought is going to produce much better solutions for our customers,” said Mary Beth Westmoreland, chief technology officer at Blackbaud Inc., a cloud software company for nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. Blackbaud was among the 80 companies surveyed for the study, which included American Express Co., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and SAP SE.