How to Motivate Employees

Discover what each employee/group likes and then reward them with what you are able to discover.  Here are a few discovery tips and pros of the appropriate reward:

• different employees like different rewards
• reward instills in an employee that the company actually cares about them, their happiness, their well-being
• this will help motivate employees to better serve the needs of the company
• will help instill owner mentalities in employees

These are some prime examples of rewards: money, praise, social recognition, use education as a reward (if they like to get out of the office and travel, then send to trade show, but have them gather data and then report back to main group when they return)

This YouTube video has been viewed by more than 2,000,000 times and I feel that it hits the nail on the head when it comes to motivating employees.  Speaking from experience, many employers are clueless at how to motivate employees that do jobs other that pulling a lever or placing the same item into a box repeatedly.   This video does an excellent job of explaining why rewards for thinking jobs do not necessarily work.  You have to find other ways to motivate people that "think" and "create" for their job.

Job titles don't mean squat...or do they?

Job titles don't always mean a whole lot to people, but sometimes they are all that is needed to give an employee the necessary motivation to work hard for the company.  This goes back to different people are motivated by different means.

Job titles are most often placed on business cards and email signatures, so changing them can be relatively easy and inexpensive.  Why not reward an employee with a title that they can feel proud of and want to tell others about.  The auto repair industry figured this concept out a long time ago.  Before you just had mechanics, as cars got more complicated, you now have automotive technicians.  In all actuality, those people are still mechanics, but now that the job has gotten much harder, the employees are rewarded with a title that bears some weight as to what they are actually doing.  The "new" mechanics are performing a much higher level of skill in order to diagnose and repair modern car problems, so it is nice to reward them with a more powerful title.

This is true with any employee that works hard at a job everyday.  Reward that person with a title that can be respected by others and will be worn with pride by the employee.  Titles don't cost a thing and are easily altered, so go ahead a reward employees with something that has a small monetary value, yet can be a huge moral booster and motivator.

SE Linuxfest - Drupal Camp 2010

I had the pleasure of attending another meeting of the minds.  While it was a Linux based weekend, I was there for some Drupal interaction.  Like Wordpress, Drupal is another free, open source software package for developing a Website.  I, like most of the IT world, am interested in inexpensive solutions that produce powerful results.  By developing a fun Website with Wordpress (drwhovians.com) I was able to see the power of an open source Website design tool or CMS.  So, when I heard about Drupal, another open source Website software development tool, my interest was super peaked and I wanted to learn more.

Thank goodness for like minded people wanting to get together (great example of networking) and share knowledge about Drupal.  Centered around the SE Linuxfest in Spartanburg, SC, Drupal Camp 2010 was taught and I learned a great deal of information about how powerful Drupal can be to produce an awesome Website.

A few of the speakers that I got to hear were Adam Gregory, Isaac Sukin and Doug Vann.  Adam gave a great overview of Drupal and what the CMS can do to help meet Website needs and demands.  Isaac spoke about how Drupal can intergrate with social media outlets and also the growing trends that can not be ignored that social media is driving, i.e. engagement, tw0-way communication, sharing, etc.  Finally, I was able to catch Doug Vann and his introduction to CCK/Views.  This was a little out of my technical expertise, but was a talk to listen to and get ideas about what to explore next concerning Drupal.  Over all a great group of speakers that wanting to share their knowledge and help the community.

If you get the chance I would highly recommend attending SE Linuxfest next year.  Learning about different options to achieve a Web presence is always a good time!

Upstate FAUN in Greenville is back!

I wrote a few months ago about a great GIS organization here in Upstate South Carolina. The group is known as FAUN (Foothills Arc Users Network) and they do great things to help GIS folks in the Upstate area. Well I became a little concerned a few weeks ago when I could not access the FAUN Website. After going through many fiery, technical hoops, the Website is back up and informing us again of what is going on with the FAUN group. Thank you Amy Wright Webber for all of your efforts to get the Website issue resolved.

A FAUN meeting was held on May 19, 2010 and it was another great gathering of like minded GIS professional sharing ideas and networking in order to improve the GIS profession.  At the meeting, Tim DeTroye, the SC State GIS Coordinator, spoke about how he and his office are pushing for GIS resources that will be accessible to most, if not all, state agencies. This will be powerful in letting different agencies actually try to view the same information and work together to solve issues.  He also informed the meeting about a Yahoo Group, GISandFlexApps.  This is an excellent resource for all people involved with GIS in SC.  This Group gives SC GIS professionals a place to interact with one another and ask questions and get answers to GIS issues and concerns in the State of South Carolina.  Thank you Tim for going the extra step to help all SC GIS users!  For information regarding GIS in South Carolina look at the Website: http://gis.sc.gov/.  Tim DeTroye is always a pleasure to have come and speak.

Next, Amy Wright Webber, the FAUN Treasurer, gave everyone a run down of the latest initiatives by ESRI to promote and support a cloud computing GIS project.  She attended a seminar held by ESRI where they spoke about ESRI using Amazon Cloud Services in order to provide Web-based access to many GIS resources.  This included access to base maps and other GIS information to provide a place to upload and share GIS data amongst private organizations and groups.  ESRI is attempting to build a stronger, better supported, GIS community where everyone can learn and benefit from each other.  This shows that ESRI is fully embracing the Web 2.0 mentality and moving forward to promote unity and comradery in the GIS realm.  Thanks to Amy for letting us all know about this wonderful new initiative from ESRI.

The final speaker was Kevin Armstrong from ESRI and he explained to the group about Model Builder.  Kevin demonstrated and explained some of the key attributes and advantages to using Model Builder.  Work processes and automated procedures can be easily planned and constructed using Model Builder.  A great quick tip that Kevin shared with the group was using the "in_memory/filename" to specify local input or output paths for parameters of Model Builder.  This trick can greatly reduce latency times and speed up response to processes built within Model Builder.  Another great advantage that Model Builder holds is the ability to do iterations of a process automatically.  This can be a huge time and frustration minimizer when a large amount of data needs to be run.  Kevin finished the presentation by briefly touching on aspects of the Network Analyst tool that can be purchased to compliment ESRI products.  It is an ESRI extension that can help to determine and improve problem areas in GIS data and processes.  Thanks to Kevin Armstrong for a highly informative and educational presentation.

To conclude the FAUN meeting, Amy Wright Webber went through administrative tasks for the group.  The main accomplishment was the nomination and election of Matt Hebert, GIS and Technology Director at Site Design Inc., to the position of Communications Officer.  He replaced Justin Glenn at the position of Communications Officer for the FAUN group.  I am looking forward to seeing how Matt utilizes his role as Communication Officer for FAUN.  Also, Amy mentioned that an application is being developed/released for the Droid mobile operating system.  iPhone and Blackberry users are not the only devices that will have GIS capabilities.  For a copy of the meeting agenda, feel free to click the Meeting Agenda Handout link.  Also, peruse the FAUN Website to get more information about joining this helpful group or to get more information about ESRI training and upcoming events.

POSSCON 2010 in Columbia, SC

Palmetto Open Source Conference (POSSCON) 2010 is an experience like non other on the East Coast.  For years the West Coast has enjoyed close proximity and accessibility to many of the great minds that work in the Open Source (OS) software community.  Now for the first time, many of those great minds made the trek to the East Coast to enlighten us with their wisdom and experience.  This is truly a great event for the software community and those of us involved with open source software on the East Coast.  Plus this event helps illustrate a key part of effective networking.

POSSCON this year was a 3 day event with each day having a unique focus on open source software.  Day one involved government and business leaders talking about OS software.  The purpose was to educate and showcase how OS software is a justifiable resource to invest and foster within an organization.  Hosts and speakers included Randy Senn (CIO, SCANA), Dr. William Hogue (CIO, USC), and Khushru Tata (CIO, SC Technical College System).  Also of notoriety were Robert S. Cringley and John "Maddog" Hall.  Day two offered a developer and a educator track.  I was able to jump between the two tracks and learned interesting concepts and trends in open source in the education arena and new development areas.  In terms of development, Christopher Zorn from Collecta spoke about the power and versatility of XMPP (Jabber) for instant messaging applications.  I also got to hear Eric Evans from Rackspace talk about the open-source database platform Cassandra and where that project is going in the area of DB development.  Github was in attendance and I thoroughly enjoyed Chris Wanstrath's presentation and opinions of what you should do and how you should approach open source software development.  To round out my Friday, I attended the Moodle software presentation put on by Dee Appleby, director of E-Learning for the SC Dept. of Education, and other members of her staff.  The presentation enlightened me to the fact that the state of SC is embracing open source technology as a means to solve problems within the educational system.  All in all, Friday was a very informative day with many intelligent, knowledgeable speakers talking about all of the nuances of the open source community.

Saturday's portion of POSSCON was held at the Un. of SC Engineering Bldg and was a day filled with workshops instructed by the professionals that use the solutions every day.  The first workshop for me was the Introduction to Wordpress class taught by Hew Sutton from Automattic (host/run Wordpress.com).  I have taken a Wordpress class and wanted to see how my knowledge base fared when put up against an expert.  I am happy to report that I grasped the Wordpress concept well from my original class and actually had good insight and input for the instructor.  I was able to hold my own while discussing Wordpress concepts and new ideas with Hew.  After the Wordpress seminar, it was off to the Introduction to Drupal seminar conducted by Chrys Rynearson from SPAWAR Charleston.  I had heard of Drupal, but had not exposure so I was highly interested in this seminar.  Chrys said that Drupal was like Worpdress on steroids.  After going through the demonstration, I concur with that statement.  Chrys convinced me that the Harvester Solutions Website will be re-vamped in Drupal.  And, I am looking forward to discovering the power of Drupal for Website design.  Wrapping up Saturday afternoon, I attended the GoogleDocs presented by Mark Gunnels from Catamorphic Labs.  He presented all the basics of GoogleDocs and showed how GoogleDocs could be used as a possible MS Office replacement.  One of the greatest functions of GoogleDocs is the collaboration mechanisms that Google has put in place to make working with a group and a document much easier.  The portion that caught my attention was the ability to create Forms, embed them into almost anything, then have a spreadsheet generated as results from people filling out the form were submitted/collected.  I definitely saw the pros for using a GoogleDocs solution.  The entire day was workshops, but that was alright because all instructors were knowledgeable and passionate about the subject matter that they taught.  This made the day quite educational and a pleasure.

Overall, the POSSCON event was a total success in my eyes.  The event brought together many open source leaders with people on the East Coast that are engaged in open source software and initiatives every day.  Event coordinators said over the course of the 3 days that they want to grow the POSSCON event and be able to offer even more to members of the open source community.  I highly recommend attending next year if you are able.  For more information about POSSCON 2010 and finding out more about next years event, take a look at the http://posscon.org/ Website.

Follow Up with New People

I have been actively networking now for almost a year. When I say actively, I mean going out to meet people with the intention of branding myself and getting my name propagated through the local community.  I usually engage one to three people at an event with meaningful conversation.  Not just the "Hi, my name is..." spiel, but actually find out a little about that person and tell that person a little bit about you.  The next key step is to ask for their business card, not hard to do at all.  Example, "Can I get your card?" does the trick.  And, since I knew I was going to meet at least one to three people, I always remember to take my cards.  I tell people, "let's swap cards, it'll be fun."  The humor people like and it makes me stick out in their minds more than the other guy.

Now you have their pertinent information and other people know more about you and what you are doing.  Go another step and reinforce what "you" do to then again.  Send a personalized email to your new contact and mention some of the things that the two of you discussed in the initial meeting.  That will reinforce who you are and again reinforce what you do. (That is because you talked about what you do in some form or fashion when the two of you first met, right!?!)  Go another step and look for that new contact on LinkedIn.  Connect with them via LinkedIn because this is the social site for professionals.  When sending over that "join my network" invite be sure to include some sort of personalized message.  Mention something from the conversation at the initial meeting and DO NOT just send the generic statement.  Just sending the generic message shows you are not truly looking to meet and interact with other people, but trying to grow a "friend" list.  Be sincere and it will go a long way to win the hearts and affection of others.

Lastly, networking is an on-going project that can take several years to see benefit from.  Be patient and enjoy meeting new people.  Sharing ideas and having a sounding board for new ideas will benefit a career and a business to no end.

Google on Main

Well Greenville, SC has determined that Google's experimental high-speed fiber connectivity experiment should be here.  In less than a few weeks, organizers have been able to orchestrate a massive initiative to get Greenvillians to show their support for Google and the project by organizing themselves in a massive production of glow-sticks and congregation in downtown Greenville, SC.  You MUST sign up on the official Web site (We Are Feeling Lucky) and view the rather purposely quirky video explaining how to participate.  Basically, sign up on the Web site, wear all dark clothing and show up behind the Peace Center around 7:30pm 3/20/2010 to sign in with the volunteer staff.  Afterward, downtown businesses are offering discounts on items and the support for Google can go on into the night.  Please show your faith in Greenville, SC and the fact that we are a technologically minded area with people that support the future and care about what happens to our community.  It will be wonderful to have a experimental high-speed fiber optic network in our town.  Sign up, show up and support the wonderful city of Greenville, SC!

If you are using Twitter and want to promote/talk about the event please use hash tags that will show support for Google on Main initiative.  They are #GoogleOnMain and #LuckyGVL . Look forward to seeing you all there.  I will be the guy dressed in dark clothing with a whole lot of Google supporters around him.