The never boring life of Me- Julie Yack's Blog

This girl from Indiana is humbled

Who would have ever guessed 25 years ago…20 years ago….10 years ago…even 5 years ago, that I would have been part of a group invited to speak at a meeting at The White House?  Certainly not I.  Regardless of your political inclinations, there is something awesome about being invited to such a historical place that is still the home of our Executive Branch of government.  And then the very next day, heading to Capitol Hill to speak with folks at the Legislative Branch?

The group that arranged these meetings on my behalf is The Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), a lobbyist group.  Now before you get all worked up over a “dirty word”, lobbyists are not all what you think.  Many groups, such as this one, give a voice to issues that pretty much all of us agree on. 

These are a few things we spoke about, both at The White House and on The Hill.

• Entrepreneurship- this takes many forms and is anything from protecting my intellectual property and that of my clients to better STEM education for our kids, all the way from K-college.  This can also cover the current state of patents/trademarks and international piracy (for example lots of folks in China have read our books, but I’ve never sold one there).
• Spectrum- most people don’t even know what this is.  I had a vague knowledge prior to my work with ACT, but am thankful for their education of me on the issue.  The wireless airwaves only have so much space and most of it is not open to commercial use.  The big companies (AT&T big, not just Google big) have said that they would put money into infrastructure if they have the opportunity.  We need to let them.  You know that random dead spot on your cell?  The sudden death of your navigation/mapping app on your phone?  No more unlimited data plans on phones?  Yup, that’s spectrum.  At some point devices won’t be able to make up the difference for lack of spectrum and our innovation with stagnate on mobile.
• Privacy- online and mobile privacy is a hot topic for all.  But what most people don’t realize is that the mere collecting of information doesn’t really put your privacy at risk.  Most folks that make apps have no interest or incentive to DO anything with your details that they may gather to enhance your app experience.  They quite honestly wouldn’t know what to do with it either.  I am all for protecting our kids, but I know we need to take it slow and regulate BEHAVIOR not technology. 

I guess all I have left to conquer is the Judicial folks, but I would hope that in my idealistic brain, I would have zero influence over The Supreme Court, but I would love a visit nonetheless.

I am woman watch me vote

(what follows is political and full of my opinions)

So I was clearing the clutter this weekend and found my pin. No, it’s a badge. A Badge of Honor. It is an honor to be able to not only voice my opinions here in my own home on the interwebs, but at my local polling place. My voice is heard locally by my city and county government. My state legislature hears my vote and my voice. Our collective federal elected officials hear my voice with my vote.

It is a huge responsibility that I for one take seriously. I don’t think I have ever filled out an entire ballot. I refuse to vote for an issue or a candidate that I have not researched. I would prefer to leave a blank than offer an uneducated vote.

So what is important to this woman? What things pop into MY head when deciding how to vote? What makes me speak up? There’s a list. I’m not sure there’s an order of importance here, I think it’s just a list.  I’m pretty sure that not a single issue here would decide my vote, but a collective attitude I suppose.

• War- It is my children that will go off and fight more wars. They will be honored to do so. We need to make sure to choose the correct fights. And that we define what it means to win, not just fight. We don’t need to be the world’s police but we have the obligation to help those that can’t help themselves (and want our help) and to defend our own freedom. Oh, and for the record, it’s a disgrace that any service members would need to be on welfare of any kind. Period. Fix that.
• Economy- Seriously already. Does ANYONE think it’s a good idea to have China holding so much of our debt? Would it kill you to take even one part of one department’s budget and go with a zero-base and save a bajillion dollars? Then after you save ALL.THAT.MONEY. take that zero-base to other departments? Please take a few years and run this place like a business and get us back on our feet.
• Social Security- See item above. Why in the heck should I trust you, the federal government, to safeguard any of my money when you can’t even manage what you have now? Privatize social security, insure it (think FDIC-like), move on.
• Unemployment- We have built ourselves a global economy. We have worked our own out of jobs. We need to do something. Complaining is NOT the same as doing. We need to get up off our collective asses and train for new jobs. We need to offer creative incentives to the unemployed (like reduction in benefits in exchange for moving expenses to a fresh start with a new job in a better place). We need to limit benefits. It’s a crutch, not a way of life. Most people see it that way and the ones that don’t need to be cut-off.
• Choices- Stop this war on ovaries already. Let’s honor what our framers intended and have this discussion free from religious references. I can respect the religious aspect of this discussion, I really can. But it has no place in our government. Do you even realize that some “mainstream” religious views on this totally stomp on the views of other widely accepted mainstream religions too? Remember, pro-choice DOES NOT equal anti-life (and the Constitution guarantees the PEOPLE freedoms, not businesses or churches, no?).
• Freedom of religion is freedom of religion- You have yours, I have mine and they may or may not be the same thing AND THAT’s OK. Do you even realize that Islam and Christianity share a common beginning in Abraham? That it’s the same roots as Judaism, Shi’ite, Pentecostals, Sunni, Catholics, Baptists and Mormons? A Muslim woman in a Burqa looks a whole lot like a Catholic woman in a Habit. A little respect goes a long way on this one. Ignorance is the enemy, not each other.
• Equality- Marriage, as we see it, has Biblical roots. Marriage, as our government sees it, has federal recognition. Tax status. Survivorship. Parenting. End-of-life decisions. All given weight by our government. Our government, by design, is supposed to be free of religion. Marriage, as viewed by the government, needs to be nothing more than a contract. Make marriage a religious ceremony between you and your church. Make the government recognized union just that, a government recognized union. It’s a contract between consenting adults, regardless of gender. It’s the “sex addicted” celebrities with publicists that reduce the value of the idea marriage, not the happily married gay couple quietly raising responsible children in suburbia.
• Business- Small business really is the heart of our economy. It’s not big business. Do you have any idea how much work it takes to run a small business? To employ people? To keep people? The business becomes your family. Stop encouraging me to take a loan, even if it’s a low interest rate or subsidized. Just because you run your business (the government) based on a house of cards (debt) doesn’t mean that small business should do the same thing. Give us a break. Don’t tax us more if we want to keep a few months of payroll in the bank. It’s the responsible way to do business.
• Welfare- If I am subjected to a drug test to earn my paycheck to pay taxes that then pay for welfare, then the recipient damn well better be subjected to a drug test to get my money. And it needs limits.
• Education- This system is broken. Kids want to learn. Teachers want to teach. The system is preventing that from happening. National and state directives that come down with no funding? Asinine. No child left behind? Some children NEED to be left behind, it’s why “behind” existed. Hold teachers accountable for student progress, but give them other measures of success also. Hold students accountable for their own education. Make them work for it. It’s ok to use a red pen to grade papers; it’s ok to be told you’re wrong. It’s how you learn to be right. We need to teach our kids the same old basics as before. But more than that we need to teach them how to learn. Make them into lifelong learners. They should never be done learning. WE should never be done learning.
• Education- part two College- To me, personally, my education was important. I went back to college as I neared 40 to get my MBA because it was a big deal to ME. My daughter is currently shopping around for colleges. We have some money for her for college, but also feel it’s important for her to have some skin in the game. We aren’t just writing a big fat check to any ole college. Unless she lives at home and goes to community college, she will have to work for some portion of her college education, and that is our goal. She pointed out to us that the only colleges that are affordable have such low standards for admissions that she basically won’t have to do much more than show up for the rest of high school and she will still get in and get some academic scholarships as well. Why should she work harder and stress herself out? Yea for her for figuring this out. How sad that it’s true.

These are big ticket items, items that many of us (the gender neutral collective) find important, regardless of what side of the specific issue we fall on. These are my over-simplified opinions, each topic would be worth its own blog post or more to fully discuss.

Have we doomed the next generation?

Tomorrow my daughter takes the ACT.  It is paid for by the State of Colorado.  The state pays for all high school juniors in Colorado to take the exam.  The rest of the students at the school are on a delayed start to give the juniors a quiet testing environment.  The kids are given free pizza for lunch after the exam.  As a parent (and general member of the public) I truly appreciate this commitment to show our kids that their future is important and it matters to us.

Except if they want to go to school in Florida.  In what can only be described as a dumbass move, the University of Florida has shut down the computer science department.  Not only have they shut down the computer science department, they have increased funding to athletics by almost the same amount “saved” by that useless computer science department.  How’s that for a big fat FU from UF?

And just for some icing on the cake, the state of Florida has a new university on the horizon, Florida Polytechnic University.  Two days prior to the announced cuts at University of Florida, the governor said :

“At a time when the number of graduates of Florida’s universities in the STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] fields is not projected to meet workforce needs, the establishment of Florida Polytechnic University will help us move the needle in the right direction.”

The Associated Press recently published a great read about how many unemployed and underemployed recent grads we have.  There are actually more college educated bartenders than there are chemists.  And yes for the smart-asses, bartending is sorta like mixing chemicals in a lab.

So why bother with college anyway, right?  We only want the jocks with decent test scores.  Who needs an educated workforce?

Please comment.  I want to hear what others have to say.  I will follow-up with another post about more of my opinion on educating our kids.

The net difference in CRM 2011 RTM and CRM 2011 now

So I am working on updating some courseware and have been tasked with making sure we update for all products updates/upgrades/new features.  I was looking for a list of where a single version of the truth would be and came up with nothing.  I asked some smart people, they came back with nothing, but agreed we needed a list somewhere.  So here it goes.

I spent a couple of hours yesterday reviewing the contents of every update rollup (ur) that’s been put out since RTM happened.  There have been many many bug fixes and those aren’t going to be listed here.  If you experienced the bug, you’ll know it and know that it was fixed. 

As best I can tell this list is current as of RIGHT NOW.  At the end I will also include a list of what we anticipate to come out in the near term (this quarter).

There is no particular order to the list.

• Activity feeds- Internal facing social CRM.  Records have walls and posts.  Users can view a rollup of these and on a specific record as well.  Internal facing only.  (Limit of 500 follows, not configurable)
• Configurable, real-time notifications on important relationships and significant business events via a blended view of micro-blog posts and interactions for a person, customer or sales opportunity.

• Micro-blogging. Status updates and notifications regarding business events and actions, providing simple experiences for users.

• Conversations. Post questions, observations, suggestions and status updates, allowing users to collaborate quickly and efficiently, locate information or expertise and gather feedback from others.

• Automated activity updates. Post information directly to the activity feed based on configurable event rules (for example, when a sales opportunity is closed). People can subscribe to or “follow” these activity feeds and consume them in a variety of ways.

• Mobile activity feeds. A new Microsoft Dynamics CRM mobile Activity Feeds application for Windows Phone 7 allows users to view their activity feeds while away from the office. Limitation of mobile is the metadata changes don’t load except every 24 hours, by design. Product team listening to feedback and open to options.

• New chart choices- Multi-series charts and a few different ways to display as well covering area and such.
• Multi-series charts (limit of 5 series)
• Multiple category charts (limit of 1 series and 2 categories)
• New chart types e.g. Area charts
• Ability to create stacked charts (relative proportions of closely related items)
• Read optimized forms- I LOVE this concept.  I think the execution needs some work, it’s still a little buggy here and there.  The essence of ROF is that a CRM user that mostly consumes data without editing it can do that faster and without as much risk of accidentally (or maliciously) making data changes.  A user that needs to change data is one click away from changing data.  In addition to increase in data integrity and user performance, the system performance should be improved as well.
• Process enhancements- both workflows and dialogs now have hyperlink support. Dialogs have data retention as you move thru the process as well as new data types.
• Dup detection enhancements-
• Ignore blank values in duplicate detection
• Exclude inactive records in duplicate detection
• Outlook client updates- The Reading Pane has been enhanced to include: Sub grids & Notes, clickable links (email, telephone, lookups, party lists) in the form and sub grids,  clickable links in sub grids, Lync presence integration and several other miscellaneous enhancements.
• User access audit- Auditing happened with general delivery of CRM 2011.  Now you can audit user access to CRM.  It’s not a detailed comprehensive list of ACTIVITY, it’s ACCESS auditing.  Did they sign in, and when?
• SDK updates- the SDK team has always impressed me.  They update this ALL THE TIME. 
• Help files updates- don’t have a comprehensive list but will assume it covers at least all of the above items and then some.

Coming soon

• Mobility
• Cross browser
• Social enhancements
• Industry templates
• SQL 2012
• Certifications
• BI Insights
• Portal enhancements
• Custom WF activity for CRM Online

The link above is to my detailed blog post about the new features promised for Q2 2012.

Colin Powell at #conv12

I have long respected Colin Powell.  And even if you disagree with his political and personal persona, he is still living history.  When I heard he was to keynote at Convergence this year, I was very excited.  For a political junkie like me, this was perfect!

He is a great speaker.  He has great stories.  He is human.  He is funny.  He knows his place, and his wife will put him back there if he forgets (love that).

I know several people responsible for some of the behind the scenes aspects of the big Microsoft conferences, Convergence included.  So when I heard that General Powell (or is it Secretary?) was on the lineup, I started asking people to get me a meet and greet.  And I asked.  And I asked.  And I got crickets.  Could I hang out back stage and stalk him, shake his hand?  Crickets.  I did manage to swing a great seat for his talk, but that was about all I could hope for, or so I thought.

I wound up on the big stage with this:

So how did I get from denied access and a seat in the second row to hugging the General?  They opened the floor for questions.  My question was: (insert genuine compliments here), can I shake your hand?  He grinned and invited me on stage.  MS executive Doug Kennedy helped me on stage (thanks Doug) and when I got there, I got the hug above and the handshake I asked for.  Woohoo.

In answer to so many of you that asked, yes, I guess he is pretty tall, it looks like I am on my tiptoes here in the hug, and he’s still quite taller than me (I’m 5’7” for comparison).

And the handshake I asked for:

So thank you to Mr. General Secretary Powell for the hug and handshake, you are quite gracious.

And thanks to Murat Ozturan, Donna Edwards, David Kohar and Gus Gonzalez for the pictures you sent!

Introducing the CRM Crash Course

I cannot tell you how many conversations I have had the last few years about there being a huge shortage of qualified CRM talent.  That is quickly followed by the conversation about the utter lack of training for functional CRM skills.

I am trying to change that with the new course, CRM Crash Course.  The goal of this course is simple, become functional in Dynamics CRM in a week so you can go back and do your job better.  Whatever job you have that is in the Dynamics CRM world.  Send me your new hires with expertise in other areas, they will become great CRMy kinds of people.

Developers:  We won’t talk code, but that’s ok, you don’t need code here; you need to know what’s there out of the box.  Otherwise you will waste time and money on building functionality in things that are OOB.  We’ll throw you some extensibility bones along the way, I promise.

Business analysts:  Sure you can speak with a client and gather their needs, but this course will get you the core knowledge you need to better define those requirements in CRM-speak and then go do the work in CRM.  We’ll cover lots of the WHY things work and HOW they work using real world business requirements.

Project managers:  Reality is you need to know the OOB product better than most.  The client and your team will be looking to you to lead them along the project and you need to be able to confidently do that, even though you may never build a custom entity or design a form in an implementation.  This knowledge will enable you to make better estimates, assignments and all other essential planning because you will have the know-how of how CRM works and how it can work.

Those are the big three, but really anyone in a role based on Dynamics CRM implementations is the target audience.  Each class will have a mixture of skills (by design, we can learn lots from each other) and each student will learn each skill on the agenda, regardless of their job title back home.

Are you looking to pass a certification exam?  Probably not the course for you.  Sure we’ll get you some great core knowledge, but we will not be focusing on academics, we will be focusing on useable skills for real world jobs.

This is a brand new course, created by my team.  The agenda includes real scenarios based on CRM in the wild.  We’ve got hands on work, team projects.  Yes, all in a week.  Your brain will hurt, but you will learn a ton.  This course covers a little bit of 100 level content but is primarily 200-300 level.  Since we control the agenda we can also tweak it as the product evolves so the content is always applicable.

Agenda includes:

• Sales and marketing automation
• Service and service scheduling
• Processes, aka workflows and dialogs
• Customization and configuration
• Org structure and security
• Relationships and mapping
• Best practices for solutions
• Consuming your CRM data (reports, charts, dashboards, etc.)
• …and more

Class size is controlled between 5 and 15.  Dates have yet to be decided, drop us a note if you’re interested or have specific dates in mind, we’ll try to set up a course time that meets your needs.  Right now this is just this is just an in-person course, we might do virtual later on, we’ll let you know.

Cost per student is $1995 for the week, this is the cost for training only.  Bring a laptop, we’ll give you materials here.  Travel and meals is not included in this price, but chances are I’ll buy you a pizza or something along the way, I have to eat too.  Happy to give travel advice if you need it.  Who doesn’t want a business excuse to go to Colorado Springs?  It’s an awesome place.

(drop me an email if you want to discuss delivery at your site by one of our trainers)

The website here is a simple (SIMPLE) one-pager with a contact form.  I promise you’ll hear back from us.

http://www.crmcrashcourse.com/

International Women’s Day?

So happy international women’s day?  I personally struggle with things like this.  I know it must be because I live in a world (in my head) where I am treated like I feel I should be treated, gender aside.  But I do also know that I am so much more fortunate than so many other women in the world.  Maybe I’m arrogant, maybe I’m stupid, but I know that my being a woman is an advantage, not a disadvantage.  And I live my life and raise my kids and treat those around me accordingly.  Is that wrong?

One of the good things about days like today is that it will bring awareness to women around us that are not treated well, simply because they are women.  And that for some reason in their current situation they cannot overcome the challenges they face.  Maybe they’ve only known physical intimidation and have no real path to get out of that situation.  Maybe they were raised to feel weak and have not found a way to grow their own self-worth.  Maybe they live in a country where they can’t even drive their own kids to the emergency room without fear of getting arrested.  Maybe they live in a place where their daughters will be sold into the sex trade so the other children can have food once a day.

Maybe you (and me) can do just one thing to help make the world a more fair place for each gender.  What I have done recently…I facilitated transportation of a couple of hundred bras to be donated to girls forced into the sex trade in Mozambique.  These girls can earn more money by selling these bras (a luxury item where they live) than they do in the sex trade and can get out of that awful cycle of mistreatment.  It didn’t cost me a dime to do this.  (learn more about this particular cause here)

If you are not in a position to act just now, then you can certainly educate yourself, find a challenge that you can take on, you can influence change for others.  How can you influence legislation in your area?  Can you teach the next generation about an important global issue?  Find out just what can you do to help?  Then do it.

Things aren’t always as they first appear

Nine years ago this week I slipped on an icy handicap ramp and wound up with a compound tib/fib fracture (yes, I can appreciate the irony).  It was a hell of a break, I pretty much slipped just right and shattered almost everything from knee to ankle, with a few bits of bone sticking through the skin for good measure.  The fun part of the story is that the sight of my leg actually made all the firemen say “ewww.”  Another good part is that Dave was out of town, little kids were getting dropped off at school and with me in an ambulance our back-up plan worked.  This person picked up kids from school, someone else took care of the dog, another friend picked up Dave from the airport and brought him to the hospital.  No one wants to use their “just in case” plan, but ours worked.  Surgery, days of hospitalization and six months with my ass in a chair cause I wasn’t allowed any weight-bearing.

I have loads more stories of that day and of my travel adventures as wheel-chair bound Julie, but that’s a whole other blog post.

But, a wise man told me that my breaking my leg was the best thing to happen to me professionally.

Once I was home and mostly free of narcotics hubby handed me a laptop and basically said “make software.”  I had been sitting in the lazy boy in the living room, really being an awful couch potato.  But I had been passively involved with CTC since its inception, but I hadn’t yet found my place.  Suddenly I found my place.  I loved this software thing.  And I was good at it.  And the rest his history. 

I have loved working with my husband.  He is by far the smartest man I know and I get to work with him everyday.  Collaborate on projects.  I don’t think I can ever work someplace else though, I am spoiled.  I try to be the kind of boss I always wanted to have and that includes to myself.  The chances of me being where I am now had I not broken my leg?  Nada. 

Hey @xRMVirtual- we’ve got SWAG from @INETA

This month marks INETA’s 10th anniversary and as a member of INETA they sent presents to us!  We get goodies all the time from different places, but how do we get it out to our global membership on our shoestring budget?  It’s nearly impossible.  The goodies we have now…they are all downloads, valuable downloads, tools, books, etc. 

In traditional on-ground user groups you have a drawing of attendees to give away stuff.  Our members can’t always attend a meeting as it happens, we’re pretty global, our recordings get more views than our live meetings.  I think we have a good plan to address this problem.

Thanks to INETA, ComponentOne, GrapeCity Power Tools, &  Infragistics, we’re giving away one ComponentOne Ultimate (full version, valued at $1995), one GrapeCity PowerSuite (valued at $1999) and one Infragistics NetAdvantage Ultimate (valued at $1800).

The heart of any user group is its members, and we would love more of you to be involved and can now bribe you with SWAG . We want your ideas for speakers and topics for future meetings.  What do you want to learn about?  What do you want to present to the group?  Everyone who submits an entry will receive a free online cookbook from GrapeCity, written by their .net people (yes, the .net people can cook – some better than others). Everyone that submits an idea will be entered into a weekly drawing, winner of the weekly drawing picks from available items mentioned above.This will go in three week-long waves, your entry is valid for the week you submitted and won’t carry over.  So if you have three ideas, you might want to spread out the entries to get entered into each drawing.  Folks that submit AND offer to present it to the group get entered into that week’s drawing twice!

How to enter?  The Contact Us page on the group website, that gets it time stamped and into our CRM, where we already manage speakers/content.  The weeks run from Sunday to Saturday, mountain time (since that’s where I am and it makes it do-able for me to manage).

Oh, it you tweet about this and tag the user group (@xrmvirtual) you get an entry into that week’s drawing too. 

Winner chosen randomly from eligible entries for that week.  We will read your entry and if you submit total nonsense just for the chance at a prize, your entry will get thrown out.

Week One:  February 12-18
Week Two:  February 19-25
Week Three:  February 26-March 3

 

xRMVirtual User Group - Contact Us

My Colorado Caucus experience 2012

I love the idea of caucusing.  It brings decision-making down to an individual level, it helps you feel that your one vote is important.  There is so much more to a caucus than simply choosing the party’s candidate.  There are casual rules of order, motion for this, second that, all in favor say…  You elect your neighbors to represent you are the various levels of party-based voting.

Our precinct was new, like just about all of them in Colorado.  Ours is the combination of two former smaller groups.  I was both surprised and not surprised to see so few people I knew there.  This is supposed to be my neighbors, and there were maybe half a dozen people I knew there.  Our precinct has 1710 registered Republican voters, but only 97 were at the caucus.  That is frankly unacceptable.  Of those there about 25% of us were interested in moving forward representing the group at the various conventions and such, county, state, Congressional, national and so on.  That doesn’t surprise me.  If you are aware enough to be part of the less than 10% that showed up, you are aware enough to be involved.

I think our group failed in one aspect, giving folks a chance to talk about their favorite candidate and try to influence other voters.  That’s part of the heart of a caucus.  This part made us look and feel naive and quite honestly makes the “votes” that came out of our precinct less valid (in my opinion, no idea the official call).  When you read the results below, you will know how I voted.  I had truly hoped for someone to be passionate and sway my vote.  I was totally ripe for it.  It didn’t happen.

The final outcome from our group:

Romney      41
Santorum   41
Gingrich     10
Paul            3
Bachman     1
Perry           0
Huntsman    0
And 1 write-in for none of the above.

The official results for the county:

I am an alternate for the conventions (I think all of them here in Colorado, voting went late and I’m not sure I got all the results).  I am happy (and proud) to go, but do find it odd that only 1 person asked me my view on anything before voting for me to represent them.  Interested in how many are out there googling/binging/yahooing me right now.