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Lunch & Learn

Lunch & Learn

Aaron Geh from the Karcher Group presented search engine optimization (SEO) techniques at the last Lunch & Learn series on 4/13/09. Students learned about the important differences between paid and natural (organic) search results, the optimization process, how to enhance a site’s architecture, and other important elements to consider regarding SEO. Additionally, once a firm has covered SEO, it should consider utilizing social media. Search engines are changing their search criteria so often, that Aaron suggested it is most important to adapt your website for users and not search engines. The purpose of the Lunch and Learn Series is to provide students with a format to discuss new trends and technologies in detail and interact with IT professionals.

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CITe News

Mentoring Program

Students who participated in the CITe mentoring program this semester highly recommend the program to other students. Mentors provided students with valuable insight concerning the IT business during the recession, offered them internships with their companies or their partner’s companies, and also gave the students helpful career advice. In addition, many times students do not have a lot of opportunity to interact with IT professionals while earning their degrees, so this program is a great way for students to improve professional communication skills.

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Executive Business Forum

Executive Business Forum

The third annual Executive Business Forum featured William Lewis, author of the bestseller: Software Testing and Continuous Quality Improvement. He is also the founder and CEO of Smartware Technologies, Inc. All IT organizations face software testing issues, but most are unprepared to manage them. At the forum, Lewis outlined his framework to create meaningful test cases for systems with evolving requirements. Lewis presented software testing as part of the project management process, emphasizing testing and quality goals early on in development.

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ITEE

ITEE – Open Source Software (March 2009)

Open Source Software (OSS) is developed when the efforts of programming are distributed to multiple parties to improve an application. During this process, code is open to a wider development community to freely exchange ideas among a vast knowledge pool. Successful applications survive by continually being developed while others that the communities are not interested in remain unchanged. Many firms are looking to solve similar business problems therefore this approach decreases the cost of development and increases quality, reliability and flexibility. The ITEE focused on companies’ and clients’ top concerns about OSS: security, availability of applications and ongoing support costs.

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ITEE

ITEE – Effective Benchmarks IT Can Use to Gauge Success (January 2009)

In this roundtable discussion, each high-level IT executive was asked to comment on benchmarks that he or she regularly uses to gauge IT success. Some that were mentioned included end-user surveys, users per IT professional and IT expenses in capital as percentage of revenue. No one set of metrics is right for all firms, but developing, incorporating, and tracking metrics over time is an essential management tool. Many local companies have improved individual and team goals by linking small proportions (anywhere from 2% to 10%) of annual compensation with IT metric outcomes. Other approaches link customer satisfaction surveys to compensation; sometimes a certain number of surveys must be reported before a bonus will be awarded. Companies have reported improvements in IT benchmark measurements after compensation was linked to metrics.