“SQL Master Data Services 2010 vs. SharePoint Managed Metadata Services for Enterprise Taxonomy Stores” will be the theme on Wed., May 16, 2012, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. when Crescent Solutions hosts the May event for the OC SharePoint User Group (OCSPUG).

The event will be held at Crescent Solutions’ headquarters, 17871 Mitchell Avenue Ste. 100, Irvine, Calif.

SQL Master Data Services (MDS) is a little known product that provides a very compelling feature set that rivals and perhaps trumps SharePoint’s Managed Metadata Service (depending on the use case) in providing an enterprise taxonomy store. In this crossover presentation and demonstration, the group will aim to cover the following topics:

• What is SQL MDS?
• How does it compare to SharePoint’s Managed Metadata Service as an enterprise taxonomy store?
• How can MDS be integrated with SharePoint and other applications?
• SQL MDS + SharePoint Workflow Integration.

More details at http://ocspugmay.eventbrite.com and http://www.crescentsolutions.net/calendar.php

For further information, contact Stephanie Phillips, Crescent Solutions’ Mission, Vision, and Values Director: 949-724-0304 Ext: 250 (O) | 626-806-2367 (C)

As three key trends – Coud Computing, Social Networking and Big Data – emerge in the IT world, the role of the CIO is continuously evolving.

SearcCIO has published an informative white paper on this topic: “Top 3 Trends That Could Influence CIOs.”

Rather than an IT organization aligned with business — the past decade’s holy grail — the IT organization of the future will be structured as a fully integrated business services organization, according to Andrew Home, managing director at the Corporate Executive Board Company (CEB).

This expert e-guide explores how CIOs can take advantage of these business and technology drivers to advance both their companies and careers. It offers key tips on how to handle developments in important area, including:

Consumerization of IT

Social networking and mobile technology are falling under a catch-all term — Consumerization of IT.  Just as enterprises are trying to figure out how to develop social media services and avoid the pitfalls of social media projects, large organizations are experimenting with mobile collaboration services for employees and customers.

Shared Services

The cloud is pushing CIOs and IT departments into being general managers of business services and shared services.  Because shared services reside on shared infrastructure, CIOs are going to spend more time acting as services brokers of internally and externally integrated services.

Data Analytics

Among technology areas, perhaps the most difficult one to create is that of data analytics services.  Enterprises have vast amounts of information but need new services that can decipher which data is most relevant to the business — or better yet, can help create new business service offerings based on that data.

Do you plan to hire people in the following categories during the stated periods of time?

• Contractors/consultants–
  • Within 30 days: 26.9 percent
  • Within three months: 19.2 percent
  • Within six months: 3.8 percent
  • Within 12 months: 3.8 percent
  • No hiring plans at all: 46.2 percent

• IT Staff–
  • Within 30 days: 25 percent
  • Within three months: 21.4 percent
  • Within six months: 7.1 percent
  • Within 12 months: 3.6 percent
  • No hiring plans at all: 42.9 percent

• IT Middle Management–
  • Within 30 days: 11.5 percent
  • Within three months: 7.7 percent
  • Within six months: 3.8 percent
  • Within 12 months: 3.8 percent
  • No hiring plans at all: 73.1 percent

• IT Senior Management–
  • Within 30 days: 8 percent
  • Within three months: 4 percent
  • Within 12 months: 4 percent
  • No hiring plans at all: 84 percent

• IT Executives–
  • Within 30 days: 3.8 percent
  • Within three months: 3.8 percent.
  • No hiring plans at all: 92.3 percent

Note: Percentages may not add up to 100 because of rounding.

Social Recruiting finally went mainstream in 2011 with corporate and agency recruiters embracing LinkedIn and Internet sourcing as a required skill for the modern recruiter, shifting away from job-board advertising to digital headhunting. Here are Social Talent’s Top 10 predictions for 2012:

1. LinkedIn will reach 300 million users by the end of 2012.

As of December 27, 2011, LinkedIn had more than 146 million members, up from the 100 million milestone that the company announced early in 2011. We predict that growth will continue to gain pace throughout 2012 as most developed or developing markets hit membership levels equivalent to 30-40 percent of their working population.

2.  Facebook’s decline in usage will continue throughout 2012 as Facebook Apathy takes a firm hold.

Facebook has had a roller-coaster year.  The first half of 2011 saw Facebook’s total number of users surge to over 800 million with the time on site and average number of page-views growing to dizzying heights.  The second half of the year saw most of those latter gains lost as the average amount of time that each user spent on Facebook dropped off considerably, the largest such decline in the social network’s history.

3.  Video Assessment will go mainstream for Corporate Recruiters.

Video interviewing, video CVs and video assessment have been around for years. Many professionals may have written off the technology as “unnecessary” for the modern HR or recruitment department, but we predict that 2012 will change perceptions of video technology in the recruitment mix.  Faster Internet speeds and an explosion in smart phone usage on fast, wireless networks has put a video camera in the pocket of nearly every potential jobseeker, demolishing many of the previous barriers to video usage in the industry.

4. Twitter will explode as a Recruitment Communication Tool.

Twitter’s power to both interrupt and inform us continued apace in 2011 with steady growth in the network’s user base and time on site. TV networks now display the hashtags of their leading shows on-screen and decide on whether to renew new programs based on Twitter chatter and mentions. In the world of recruitment, most corporate and agency recruiters have finally “got it” and started using Twitter during 2011.

5. Social Media Litigation will become the single largest headache for HR departments.

Most social media experts tell us that we need to be “true” or “honest” on social networks, ensuring that we share at least some of our personal side as we blog, tweet or post on social media sites on behalf of our employers. This is generally good advice but when building contacts is part of your job, aka sales or recruitment, the question of who owns those contacts is going to become an even hotter issue.

6. Mobile will dominate the total spend in recruitment websites/ career portals.

Have you launched a mobile recruitment app yet?  Is your careers page or agency website optimized for mobile?  My answer to this question used to be “when the mobile traffic to my site gets to a serious enough level, I’ll fix it”.   In early 2011, the company website received an average of 5.1 percent of its visitors from mobile devices (topped by iOS at 85 percent of all mobile visits.  By year’s end it was receiving 8.5 percent of total visits from mobile devices (iOS devices still top the list but have fallen to 73 percent of all mobile visits).

7. LinkedIn will move aggressively into the HR software space.

Let’s face it—LinkedIn’s paying customers are nearly all recruiters. I am sure there are many non-recruiters who throw $20 a month at them, but the serious customers are corporate recruiting departments.  LinkedIn barely offer any products not aimed at recruiters.

8. Free or Freemium will become the new ATS pricing model.

The price of applicant tracking software (ATS), aka recruitment management software, has crashed in the last few years. This has largely been driven by the introduction of SaaS as the dominant hosting platform among the main players, but differentiation has become less about price these days as average per-user licenses have hit the $1k mark and is now more about quality of implementation, support and socially integrated features.

9. Third-party Recruitment Platforms will emerge as the New Job Boards.

Job Boards are broken, and they have been so for some time.  But they are not dead—they just haven’t been fixed yet.  From a job-seekers point of view, the act of searching for a job in one place and then being able to apply for it in that same place is simple and for years it worked really well. But the combination of the Great Recession and changing attitudes to Web communication, aka Social Media, have meant that this 15-year-old system needs a re-haul. At the same time, there have been several companies trying to “crack” Facebook for job seekers, noticeably BranchOut and BeKnown (Monster.com’s property).  But we’re still not sure that job seekers are comfortable mixing their personal lives with their professional lives.

10. We will share an increasing amount of content and learning via video.

In November 2011, U.S. Internet users watched 21.1 hours of video on the Web, an increase of 35 percent on the previous year and 22 percent alone over the last half of 2011. It is hard to deny that we are all watching an increasing amount of video over the Internet. Facebook marketers and SEO experts will tell you that video is more powerful as a method of social engagement than text and will massively increase the chance of your website/ career site being found online.

Crescent Solutions hosted its first “Man Shower” — a baby shower for some of the company’s expectant fathers — on Tuesday, May 1, 2012, at company headquarters in Irvine.

Congratulations in advance were offered to Derek and Denise Berger, Mitch and Geni Balzer and Lubo and Jennifer Popov — all of whom are expecting the imminent arrivals of their bundles of joy.

The man-gathering featured a lot of really fun male bonding over brew, pizza and Wingstop Restaurants (Irvine) chicken wings. Hand-painted “onesies-of-a-kind” were provided by artist Whitney Hack of the Crescent Solutions Las Vegas team.

Highlight of the party: a game of Bag O’ Diapers Toss.

Go to the Crescent Solutions Facebook page to see more pics.

Be thankful that these people are doing them — otherwise, you might have to.

The Crescent Solutions team thought we’d share highlights from Tynan’s fifth installment in the series: “Dirty IT Jobs: Grime and Punishment.”

Dirty IT job No. 1: B&E artist

“You get a job breaking into facilities to steal data and you think you’ll be doing all sorts of cool crazy stuff all the time. Instead you wind up spending hours looking for a security hole, there’s a couple of minutes of excitement when you get to break in, and then you spend the rest of your time writing reports.”

Dirty IT job No. 2: Big data backup slave

Yes, we know, big data will transform life as we know it. But there’s a dark underbelly to big data that few people talk about: Somebody has to back up, catalog, and restore all that data.

Dirty IT job No. 3: Sexy games producer

You spend all day staring at pictures of naked women and talking dirty in three languages. Sounds like dream job, right?  More sad than sexy–”I had to approach my job kind of like I was an ob-gyn.”

Dirty IT job No. 4: Tech forum flame warden

Becoming the moderator of an online tech forum can be a nasty business. “I can’t escape the feeling that some Internauts hang around Usenet just because they’ve found out that it’s a safe place to act like a jerk.

Dirty IT job No. 5: Orphaned code debugger

Cleaning up after someone else’s programming mess with nothing other than their badly written code as your guide? That’s when things get really dirty.  “You couldn’t pay me enough money to work on vBulletin.  Whoever created that code is some crazy whacked-out psycho.”

Dirty IT job No. 6: Content hussy

There are now more than 550 million websites on topics ranging from apiphobia (fear of bees) to zygomycosis (fungal infections), with everything in between. Someone has to generate copy for all of those sites.  “We frequently get weird writing projects, but the weirdest had to be when we were asked to create an entire website about vaginal discharge monitors.”

(Photo Source: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images North America)

The event will be held at Crescent Solutions’ headquarters, 17871 Mitchell Avenue Ste. 100, Irvine, Calif. An optional Happy Hour (and networking opportunity) will begin at 6 p.m.  Prize giveaways will take place at 8:30 p.m.

Agile software development is a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development in which requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. Agile promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change.

During the past 20 years, Watkins (@allineo) has programmed, taught and managed teams in various organizations, including the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), Tata Consultancy Services, an Indian CMM Level 5 company, and TBABrazil, a Microsoft partner.

An Agile activist, a Certified Scrum Master and a Certified Scrum Product Owner, Watkins, who graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Brazil’s University of Brasília, developed a software Toolkit that is in the commercialization process.  She regularly presents her tools in developer communities such as SoCalCodeCamp.com, AgileSanDiego.org and SDJUG.org.  She also actively engaged in programs to increase the participation of women in Computer Science through programs like FounderLabs.org, the Microsoft DigiGirlz and through organizing events like the next Customer Development Day or Agile Hackathon in Southern California.

For further information, contact Stephanie Phillips, Crescent Solutions’ Mission, Vision, and Values Director: 949-724-0304 Ext: 250 (O) | 626-806-2367 (C)

CIA/ Central Intelligence Agent

2.      How long have you been at Crescent?

Going on 8 years

3.       What do you like most about working for Crescent Solutions?

Working with the great people here and contributing to training new hires

4.      Do you have a Nickname?

Big Papa

5.      What are you most inspired by?

My boys Tyler and Matthew

6.      What are your passions/interests outside of work?

Tyler/Matthew (Sons), Music, Movies, Raiders/Lakers/Cardinals

7.      Before working here, What was the most interesting job you’ve ever done?

I was a Full Line Cook at a Mexican restaurant during college

8.      Are you married? Pets? Kids? What do you enjoy doing with family?

Yes to my understanding wife Laura, have 2 boys, Tyler and Matthew, 1 dog Misty, 2 cats Raider and Lego

9.      What is the greatest thing about working for Crescent Solutions?

The people I work with

10.   What does extraordinary customer service mean to you?

It means doing whatever needs to be done to get the job completed, even if it’s not on the job description

Partner Manager

2.      How long have you been at Crescent?

September of 2010

3.       What do you like most about working for Crescent Solutions?

This is a very exciting time for all of us at Crescent.  As the economy continues its gradual recovery, our business and our relationships will grow in kind.  Crescent has wonderful people.

4.      What is your background? What is the most significant trend that you’ve seen in your field?

I came from IT hardware distribution.  I used to sell and distribute tier 1 data center servers, storage, and network products to VARs nationwide who would in turn distribute to their clients.  The biggest trend I see is virtualization and a shifting focus towards managed services.  Big data is hurting enterprise firms nationwide, and our solutions can help.

5.      Do you have a Nickname?

Thach

6.      What is something that most people would NOT know about you?

I’m a nerd.  I love learning and love to read.  I read with my blackberry next to me so I can research nuanced words as I come across them.

7.      What are you most inspired by?

Creativity.  Creativity and humility.

8.      Who do you admire most?

My mother—just an unbelievable person in every way.

ITWorld recently wrote an article with tips on nailing the job interview.  The Crescent Solutions team wants to share some of these recommendations.

First and foremost, the best advice offered is that what you CAN control is HOW you handle the interview.

Of course, this all assumes that you already are aware of the importance of dressing appropriately, being on time and researching the company with which you’re interviewing.  What else can a tech pro do to turn your interview into an exciting (and hopefully lucrative) offer?

Passion play

“Sell yourself, and sell yourself hard,” says Bud Bilanich, a career success coach, speaker and author who bills himself as “The Common Sense Guy.”

“One mistake a lot of technology professionals make when they’re interviewing for a job is assuming that because their skill set aligns so closely with an enterprise’s needs, they don’t have to push to ‘close the deal,’” he says. “But the truth is, it’s hard to be too aggressive in letting the interviewer know you want the job.”

Be the solution

You not only must “sell yourself hard” as a boundless bundle of vibrant talent, you must sell yourself in terms of the specific “problem” the people interviewing you are trying to solve.

Thus you should consider an interviewer’s “biggest pain point and show them how you’ll make things better, not more complex,” advises Alice Hill, managing director of Dice.com, a career site for technology and engineering professionals.

Running the gauntlet

Since tech pros invariably are destined to be part of a “team” should they be hired for a job, there’s an excellent chance you’ll have to endure several interviews during your visit as you meet various team members.

“Interview gauntlets,” Hill says, can leave job candidates “drained and searching for something new to say as the day goes on.”

Listen for a repeating theme and hone a few key responses that resonate and hopefully will get talked about when people compare notes.

The ‘Write’ Stuff

Speaking of problems, if you’re interviewing for a developer or programmer position, invariably you’ll have to prove how well you write code.

Obviously, at this point, you either can or can’t code.  But even experienced code jockeys can tighten up in a stressful interview situation and underperform if, say, they’re asked to step up to a white board.

Puramu Elitist, who writes a blog called The Bleeding Edge and has interviewed numerous tech candidates, advises, “Write some code by hand on paper the night before. Writing code by hand and writing code by IDE are very different. … You don’t want to get derailed on a simple question because you can’t remember the syntax for a command line program in C#. Make sure you can write a basic ‘hello, world’ that compiles and runs, in any language you might be asked questions on.”