Global Nerdy

Here’s a quick list of the some the Black Friday / Cyber Monday specials for developers and aspiring developers:

Apress have a Cyber Monday ebook sale in which all Apress ebooks have been reduced in price down to $10 each, and all Springer books are just $20 each. The sale runs until Monday, November 30th at 11:59 p.m. (they don’t say which time zone, but for safety’s sake, assume it’s Eastern).

Packt are offering their ebooks at 50% off from now until the end of Cyber Monday.

O’Reilly’s Cyber Monday sale gets you 50% off all their ebooks and videos. It runs until Tuesday, December 1 at 5:00 a.m. Pacific / 8:00 a.m. Eastern. If you spend more than $100, they’ll increase the discount to 60%. Just use the coupon code CYBER15 when checking out.

The Next Web / Laughing Squid Store has a Black Friday coupon code — BLACKFRIDAY — that gets you 15% off everything in their selection. The code expires Saturday, November 28th at 7:00 a.m. Pacific / 10:00 a.m. Eastern.

Code School has a $75 off deal for their 6-month subscription, bringing the price down to $99. This offer’s good until Monday, November 30th at 11:59 p.m. Eastern.

Click the comic to see the source.

Alternate title: This is me and regular expressions.

Sometimes when I make changes to the code, it ends up like this…

…and other times, it works out a little better:

The Bechdel test for tech conferences: 1) two women speaking 2) on the same panel 3) not about women in tech.

— Monica Rogati (@mrogati) November 15, 2015

Data scientist Monica Rogati won the internet with this recent tweet.

If you’re not familiar with what’s often called the Bechdel Test (or the Bechdel-Wallace Test), it’s an idea that appeared in Alison Bechdel’s comic Dykes to Watch Out For, and it points out a major problem of representation of women in popular fiction:

Click the comic to see it at full size.

As in the comic, the Bechdel Test is typically applied to movies (although you can apply it to any popular fiction medium). It’s been observed that if passing the test were a requirement, many Oscar nominees would be disqualified. If the Techdel test were mandatory for tech conferences, we may have to cancel a lot of plane and hotel reservations.

If you’d like to know about which movies pass and fail the Bechdel Test, there’s a site for you: bechdeltest.com.

All right, tech conference organizers: you know what your next challenge is!

Call it the “UC conundrum”: While 7 in 10 IT and business decision makers can see “significant and even enormous benefits to be realized from the deployment of UC”, more than a quarter of IT decision makers and 4 in 10 business decision makers are “somewhat or very fearful” of actually deploying it at their organizations. These figures come from a recent survey conducted by Osterman Research on behalf of ConnectSolutions, a cloud-based unified communications provider.

This “I want it, but I don’t want it” reaction isn’t all that different from the thought process we go through when making pricey personal purchases. Think back to the last time you were thinking one over: perhaps a 4K or Ultra HD TV for your home theatre, or the latest high-end smartphone or tablet (I’m sure there are a number of readers having this internal debate right now about purchasing a Surface Book or iPad Pro). You’ve already figured out the benefits that will come out of that purchase, but are unsure of the added value you’ll get over your existing setup.

The problem is that a lot of UC functionality is already addressed, if in a piecemeal fashion, by systems that employees are using right now. Basic voice is covered by existing office voice systems, mobile devices, and voice chat applications, email is most often handled by a separate system, instant messaging can be done via SMS, Skype, or many other ways, teleconferencing is done with third-party applications such as GoToMeeting or Webex, many teleconference applications also do desktop sharing, and so on. A UC system brings all this functionality into a single, centralized, manageable unit that’s more likely to be safe, secure, and more efficient, but that doesn’t solve any immediate problems. As far as many people are concerned, UC is just incrementally better than systems they already have.

Selling UC to customers requires providing them with a solid value proposition. That means explaining the benefits of a single platform over a hodgepodge of solutions accreted over time without thinking of the larger IT picture, which run the gamut from uniformity and interoperability to manageability and security. You may find that this is easier to “sell” to organizations with distributed/remote workforces or distant customers and partners, where having several modes and channels of communication is highly valuable. Along with the value proposition, you should also take the various deployment models into account (on-premises, cloud, and hybrid), and look at the viability of the UC platform’s partner ecosystem.

Reading list

• eWEEK: Businesses Hesitant About Migration to Unified Communications
• IT Business Edge: Why the Unified Communications Ecosystem Is So Odd
• Fierce Enterprise Communications: Many IT and business decision makers still fearful of UC, but adoption is on the rise
• TechTarget: Three buying principles for unified communications products

GSG’s partner Enterprise Mobile has just published a blog post and solution brief on “dark mobile”, a term I coined in my capacity as GSG’s Platform Evangelist to describe that area of an organization’s mobile telecom environment that goes, unobserved, unknown, or unmanaged. Dark mobile is one case where what you don’t know can definitely hurt you — and your business. It can have negative effects on spending, management, security, and efficiency.

The good news is that dark mobile isn’t inevitable. A properly-managed mobile environment means that you know what devices, accounts, and users you have, which in turn means that you don’t have dark mobile, and aren’t troubled by its side effects.

I recently did a webinar on dark mobile with Enterprise Mobile, and we took its content and turned it into a blog post on their site along with a solution brief with Your Truly on the byline. Check them out, and find out what dark mobile means, and how you can counter it to avoid wasting money as well as facing administrative and security headaches.