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Why Don’t Jews Vote for Trump?

August 23, 2019 Humor

Donald Trump recently claimed that Jews who vote for Democrats have “a total lack of knowledge” or “great disloyalty” to Jewish people and Israel.

An opinion piece by David Schanzer in The Hill has a good response to this. First he points out that most minorities, including Jews, don’t like being treated as if they all think the same. People are smarter and more diverse than that.

However, it is true that 79% of American Jews voted Democratic in the 2018 midterms. Here is why he believes this is so:

First of all, most American Jews have a close connection to immigrants. Many of us are second, third or fourth generation immigrants. We feel strongly that refugees escaping persecution should be able to seek safety and shelter in America because throughout our history we have been persecuted and forced to flee to save our lives.

We have been on many refugee caravans. Ferdinand and Isabella evicted us from Spain, the tsars used pogroms to chase us out of Russia and we fled on boats and trains and by foot from the Nazis. We support today’s refugees because we know they could have been us.

We also support civil rights and diversity. We know what it’s like to be an oppressed minority for we “were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

We may feel very comfortable and secure in America, but we recoil when any American is targeted as “the other” — whether it be the Mexican you accuse of being a rapist or the Muslim you stereotype as being a terrorist — because so often we have been “otherized.”

The Jew with horns, the Jewish moneylender, the Jew with dual “loyalties.” We know that a frenzied mob calling for an American citizen of color to be kicked out of the country might be chanting to kick us out too one day soon. For there is one thing we know for sure: Those folks who don’t like people because they are black, brown or Muslims don’t like Jews much either.

I am half Jewish, so his arguments resonate with me, but my other half also understands that these are things that should be important to all Americans. It is always extremely dangerous to support a strongman who divides people for personal gain.

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Political Irony

Why are Employees Fired up about Working in Dynamics 365 Services?

August 23, 2019 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

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As my internship comes to a close, I wanted to gather the feedback I received from Dynamics 365 employees and turn it into something others could gain insight from. Of the many great things said about…(read more)

Why are Employees Fired up about Working in Dynamics 365 Services?

Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement in the Field

iDevices’ Instinct is a light switch with Alexa built in

August 23, 2019 Big Data

If you’ve been pining for a sleek wireless light switch with Alexa built right in, now’s your chance. iDevices, Hubbell’s smart home subsidiary, today took the wraps off the Instinct, a wireless switch natively integrated with Amazon’s voice assistant. It’s hub-free and compatible with existing internet of things (IoT) devices, and it boasts nice-to-haves like an LED light ring and motion and ambient light sensors.

“By combining Amazon Alexa with a smart light switch, counter space is no longer a barrier to whole-home voice control,” said iDevices president Chris Allen. “Instinct is the epitome of sophisticated intelligence, functionality, and design — a critical breakthrough in the smart home evolution. It represents the latest innovation from iDevices and a clear shift in how we’ll interact with our homes going forward.”

The single-pole Instinct, which starts at $ 100, ships with a custom faceplate and plays nicely with standard silicon-coated wiring. iDevices claims its dual far-field microphones (which have a mute switch) pick up commands more reliably than comparable Alexa-enabled switches and that its “high-performance” SOEN audio tech plays back music, podcasts, and Alexa’s responses with superior clarity for their compactness.

As for the aforementioned LEDs, they sit behind the Instinct’s rocker-style paddle and form an Amazon Echo-style light ring and night-light, both of which can be adjusted via a physical switch or through the Alexa companion app for iOS and Android. And since the Instinct features nearly the full Alexa experience (minus music streaming services other than those from Amazon Prime Music and Spotify at launch), it supports Routines that orchestrate other smart home devices, plus Amazon’s ESP feature, which make it so that only the Alexa device closest to you responds to your command.

In addition, the Instinct works with the over 90,000 third-party voice apps in the Alexa Skills Store and delivers personalized weather and traffic updates, news, notifications, measurement conversions, step-by-step recipes, and more. Additionally, it can be grouped with other compatible Alexa devices for synchronized music playback throughout the home.

The Instinct is available starting today from Amazon, where it slots in at a price point far higher than Alexa-enabled switches like the Ecobee Switch+ ($ 39). Still, considering all the extras packed in, it offers reasonable bang for your buck.

Despite the ubiquity of smart home devices, the market shows no sign of losing steam. Research firm Markets and Markets estimates it will hit $ 151.4 billion by 2024, coinciding with a rise in the number of devices that provide voice assistant access to over 1 billion.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

Budget for Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM with Our Quick Quote Wizard

August 23, 2019 CRM News and Info

Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM is the full function, cloud-based CRM/ERP system that runs on Microsoft’s Azure platform. Moving your CRM to Microsoft Dynamics 365 means that all of your sales, customer service, field service, marketing, project service automation, operations, and even financials can be done from one convenient, integrated cloud platform.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 combines the key elements of previous ERP and CRM systems into a robust and customer-centric platform. It includes built-in business intelligence and integrates with Office 365 to create an all-encompassing business application suite.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 has two licensing models available:

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Edition – Optimized for 10-260 employees, includes Financials, Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service functionality.

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Enterprise Edition – Optimized for 250 or more employees, includes the capabilities of Dynamics CRM Online and Dynamics AX, such as Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Project Service Automation, and Operations (ERP).

So, how much does it cost?

The CRM Software Blog has a Quick Quote Wizard designed to provide you with a budgetary estimate of the costs involved with Microsoft Dynamics 365.

The Quick Quote tool will help you calculate the total cost, which includes the license subscription, annual software assurance maintenance plan, and approximate implementation and training costs from a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Partner.

Find the Quick Quote tool on the right-hand side of each page of the CRM Software Blog. Click on the orange bar labeled: Get Instant Quote Dynamics 365/CRM and fill in the brief form.

The Quick Quote will arrive instantly in your inbox. It couldn’t be easier.

The Quick Quote carries no obligation; it’s a free service that we provide to our readers.

To get started with the new Microsoft Dynamics 365 Price Quick Quote tool, visit www.crmsoftwareblog.com/quick-quote.

By CRM Software Blog Writer, www.crmsoftwareblog.com

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

TIBCO Teams Up With AsyncAPI to Advance Modern Event-Driven Apps

August 23, 2019 TIBCO Spotfire

In an increasingly real-time and event-driven world, IT architectures are often still built in a request-reply structure. This has the potential to create latency and unfulfilling customer experiences. But with the emergence of new models of architectures, like serverless and Kafka, a new generation of technologists are creating new tools to build real-time, event-driven engagement with end customers.

Open-source project AsyncAPI is one such community where developers are working on these new tools. AsyncAPI is an API documentation specification for how event-driven services communicate with one another. As an emerging language standard, TIBCO is sponsoring the project with the goal of changing the way businesses execute event processing via APIs.

At San Francisco’s recent APIdays, AsyncAPI founder Fran Mendez shared how TIBCO is helping the open-source project to create a holistic solution for building event-driven apps. Mendez spoke about event-driven APIs and how the developing standard (AsyncAPI specification) can help companies evolve to event-driven thinking to solve problems in new ways.

TIBCO Teams Up With AsyncAPI to Advance Modern Event Driven Apps — *AsyncAPI founder Fran Mendez speaks at APIdays in San Francisco*

AsyncAPI is important because it empowers more developers than ever before to unlock the value of events and asynchronous APIs, making IT architectures far more efficient than they are with request-response structures. “The real difference between the request-response paradigm and the event-driven world is that events and messages allow your system to be real-time and reactive, as opposed to waiting until a request from the client is made. The server pushes the update when the time is right, no request needed,” explained Mendez. The open-source nature of the AsyncAPI spec means it does not enforce any particular type of protocol, and it is interoperable with any messaging system, including MQTT, Kafka, WebSockets, and more.

TIBCO has been closely associated with the project since its early days as a Gold Sponsor, with TIBCO Cloud Mashery and Project Flogo helping to enable enterprise use cases for event-driven APIs. “Messaging and event processing technologies, including Apache Kafka, are supported by TIBCO. They are the lifeblood of understanding and reacting to events. The AsyncAPI spec allows any system to interpret and trigger an action from the event, something that request-response are unable to do,” Mendez said.

The event-driven framework of Project Flogo, the API management capabilities of TIBCO Cloud Mashery, and the standard in event-driven APIs AsyncAPI bring together a powerful combination that is enabling developers to build event-driven apps that are changing the way digital businesses interact with their customers and partners.

Click here to learn more about the Async API initiative.

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The TIBCO Blog

David Oyelowo Joins George Clooney In New Film Titled ‘Good Morning, Midnight’

August 23, 2019 Humor

David Oyelowo is in final negotiations to join George Clooney in Netflix’s untitled adaptation of Lily Brooks-Dalton’s 2016 novel “Good Morning, Midnight,” sources tell Variety.

Felicity Jones and Kyle Chandler are also on board, with Clooney set to helm the pic — his first feature film directing gig since 2017’s “Suburbicon.” “The Revenant” screenwriter Mark L. Smith penned the script.

The post-apocalyptic tale follows the parallel stories of Augustine (Clooney), a lonely scientist in the Arctic, and an astronaut on board the Aether spacecraft, which is trying to return home to Earth, as Augustine races to make contact with the spaceship. Oyelowo’s role is being kept under wraps.

Clooney and Smokehouse Pictures’ Grant Heslov will produce alongside Anonymous Content and Syndicate Entertainment, who sourced the material. Production is expected to start in October.

Oyelowo most recently had a leading role in the BBC and PBS Masterpiece six-part adaptation of “Les Miserables,” on which he also serves as executive producer. The drama premiered on PBS on April 14. He is also producing, through his Yoruba Saxon banner, and starring opposite Angelina Jolie in the fantasy adventure “Come Away.”

Other recent credits include directing “The Water Man” for ShivHans Pictures and Harpo Films and appearing in the upcoming “Peter Rabbit 2.” He is repped by Hamilton Hodell and CAA.

Source: Variety

Bill Bellamy Lands In New Octavia Spencer Netflix Series Titled ‘Madam CJ Walker’

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The Humor Mill

What to Look for in an Employer: Dynamics 365 CE/CRM Software Jobs

August 23, 2019 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Searching for a Job Working with Dynamics 365 CRM? Here’s What You Should Look for in an Employer

Years ago, it was common for an employee to stay with a single company for decades — sometimes for their entire career. Nowadays, however, this is incredibly rare. Particularly in the rapidly changing tech world, professionals will switch jobs on a regular basis in search of the right employer and new opportunities.

But that isn’t always the case. There are still some companies out there who prioritize their employees and offer them real opportunities for long term growth. If you’re a software professional with experience in Dynamics 365 CRM and you’re searching for an employer, it’s important to know what to look for. With good opportunities for growth, a solid company culture, and the right people, you can find a long-term fit where you can truly thrive as a professional.

Opportunities for Growth

Whether you just graduated from college or you are a seasoned software professional, the ability to learn and grow is essential to your long-term success. The software industry is undergoing constant change, and you need to be able to stay on top of these changes to prevail professionally.

Particularly for young professionals, it’s easy to end up stuck in a position with limited opportunities for growth. This lack of opportunity for grown can seriously limit your long-term career potential — and it’s far from stimulating or motivating.

The right employer will provide you with opportunities to further hone your skill set, learn new skills, and participate in continuing education to stay up to date on the latest developments in the field. This ensures that you continue to grow as a professional — something that’s good for you and for your employer.

Company Culture

When it comes to finding the right employer, it’s important to consider your prospective employer’s company culture.

Does the company encourage transparency, open communication, and professionalism? Do they value their employees and take the necessary steps to let their employees know? Do they even have a clear sense of what constitutes their company culture?

Many tech jobs involve working remotely, and this can leave employees feeling disconnected from the rest of the organization. A business which prioritizes a positive company culture will go out of its way to keep its employees connected through annual events, employee trips, and local meetups. If you can find a company that truly values its employees, you’re much more likely to feel satisfied with your role there.

The People

In the same way that a positive company culture is essential to your success with any potential employer, it’s also important to consider the people that you’ll be working with. Though they may do so unintentionally, some companies promote a culture of employee rivalry. Coworkers who aren’t willing to be team players can be difficult to collaborate with.

Consider reading through online employee reviews of your prospective employer. Do they have positive things to say about the company culture? Do they feel connected to their coworkers? When you’re cooperating with a group of people who are focused on working towards the bigger picture — that is, pursuing the company’s larger mission and goals — you’ll derive a sense of purpose from your work and a feeling of comradery amongst your coworkers. At the end of the day, this can leave you looking forward to your next day at work.

A Career with AKA Enterprise Solutions

Are searching for the right employer? If so, AKA Enterprise Solutions would love to hear from you. We offer our employees excellent opportunities for professional development and a dynamic, positive company culture. Want to learn more? Visit our careers page here.

Don’t see an opportunity that matches your qualifications. Go ahead and send us your resume; we’d like to learn more about you!

[embedded content]

ABOUT AKA ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS
AKA specializes in making it easier to do business, simplifying processes and reducing risks. With agility, expertise, and original industry solutions, we embrace projects other technology firms avoid—regardless of their complexity. As a true strategic partner, we help organizations slay the dragons that are keeping them from innovating their way to greatness. Call us at 212-502-3900!

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

What to Look for in an Employer: Dynamics 365 CE/CRM Software Jobs

August 23, 2019 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Searching for a Job Working with Dynamics 365 CRM? Here’s What You Should Look for in an Employer

Opportunities for Growth

Company Culture

When it comes to finding the right employer, it’s important to consider your prospective employer’s company culture.

The People

A Career with AKA Enterprise Solutions

Don’t see an opportunity that matches your qualifications. Go ahead and send us your resume; we’d like to learn more about you!

[embedded content]

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

Carnegie Mellon and Oregon State team wins first leg of DARPA Subterranean Challenge robot competition

August 22, 2019 Big Data

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) kicked off the Subterranean Challenge in December 2017, with the goal of equipping future warfighters and first responders with tools to rapidly map, navigate, and search hazardous underground environments. The final winner of the four-event competition won’t be selected until 2021, but Team Explorer from Carnegie Mellon University and Oregon State University managed to best rivals for the initial prize.

On four occasions during the eight-day Tunnel Circuit event, which concluded today, each team deployed multiple robots into National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health research mines in South Park Township, Pennsylvania, tasked with autonomously navigating mud and water and communicating with each other and a base station for an hour at a time as they searched for objects. Team Explorer’s roughly 30 university faculty, students, and staff members leveraged two ground robots and two drones to find 25 artifacts in its two best runs (14 more than any other team), managing to identify and locate a backpack within 20 centimeters of its actual position.

“Mobility was a big advantage for us,” said team co-leader Sebastian Scherer, associate research professor in Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, in a statement. “The testing [prior to the event, at Tour-Ed Mine in Tarentum, Pennsylvania] was brutal at the end, but it paid off in the end. We were prepared for this … We had big wheels and lots of power, and autonomy that just wouldn’t quit.”

Team Explorer — which has the backing of the Richard King Mellon Foundation, Schlumberger, Microsoft, Boeing, Flir Systems, Near Earth Autonomy, Epson, Lord, and Doodle Labs — is one of 11 teams competing for a portion of the Subterranean Challenge’s combined $ 4.5 million prize pool. Future events will involve an Urban Circuit, where robots will explore complex underground facilities, and a Cave Circuit, where the robots will operate in natural caves.

“All the teams worked very hard to get here, and each took a slightly different approach to the problem,” said Team Explorer co-leader Matt Travers, a system scientist at CMU’s Robotics Institute. “This was a great experience for all of us and we are proud of the performance by our team members and our robots.”

The Subterranean Challenge also includes the Virtual track, in which DARPA-funded and self-funded teams are developing software using models of systems, environments, and terrain to compete in simulation-based events and explore larger-scale runs. The winner will earn up to $ 1.5 million in the final event, with additional prizes of up to $ 500,000 for self-funded teams in each of four Virtual Circuit events.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

Platform Power

August 22, 2019 CRM News and Info

For decades a database application was what we called an “app” that collected data and regurgitated it in preset formats on paper reports and screens. That’s becoming passé, but it once was a major advance because it gave a worker the necessary information to make decisions and take action.

Today that’s rarely enough. Downward cost pressures have been replacing some of the rote human effort with algorithms that often can satisfy the need — but that leaves more challenging and engaging work for people. We see this most concretely in customer service apps in which algorithms have been taking over some of the work once done by customer service reps.

For example, Oracle Vice President of Product Management Steve Fioretti recently told me that one Oracle customer using a government system focused on tax questions answers upwards of 70 percent of customer inquiries through automation. What’s impressive about this isn’t the big percentage but the rapid uptake.

Still, “the contact center isn’t going away,” Fioretti also cautioned.

The reason is simple. Sixty percent of customers expect that if the wheels fall off, they can still talk to a real person, Oracle commissioned research suggests.

In places where agents are still needed, the systems handle the relatively easy stuff, freeing the agents to dig into more basic customer needs and improve the customer engagement. For instance, another Oracle customer, a home goods retailer, hires more people with interior design credentials to help customers nail their layouts and color schemes.

Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained

The reasons that businesses can do so much more with their CRM systems come back to the platforms that the systems are built on. Even hand-coding these days is sequestered within a part of the apps and never overwritten by an upgrade, patch or fix.

More importantly, there’s a great deal of coding going on by machines that weave together important ancillary apps like artificial intelligence and machine learning, social media, and a lot more that you already know. The resulting systems of engagement would not, I believe, be possible except with the use of platforms.

In all of this you can see the commoditization of IT and the rising importance of customer engagement and experience. The often-cited concern over lost jobs might be overblown, at least in some ways, because technology is opening new doors as fast they’re being closed.

I saw the transition reflected in the advances Salesforce has been making with its Philanthropy Cloud. If you don’t know, Salesforce Philanthropy Cloud is an interesting app that brings together donors, resources like funding agencies and traditional charities, and people.

It works by helping them to find each other, and to coordinate a donation of time or money. It also captures the needed statistics to make it a useful accounting tool for corporations that wish to engage in programs like Pledge1Percent, which challenges businesses to donate any combination of their assets, like revenues or even employee time.

Striking a Balance

I also saw it in Salesforce’s just-announced
acquisition of ClickSoftware, a field service and manpower management suite. There are plenty of algorithms in all of these places, but there are also plenty of places where humans still need to apply their skills.

Everywhere in field service we’ve been witnessing how algorithmically driven systems can diagnose themselves and summon help before a fatal error. What’s most exciting is that we’re beginning to see these systems operating far outside of the tech bubble where they were born.

Healthcare systems use analytics and algorithms to drive care, and the Internet of Things is full of examples of machines talking to machines.

What makes all of this work well is the presence of platform technology that weaves together data from what once were systems of record with workflows, GPS, and plenty of AI and machine learning that can do some of the unglamorous grunt work that people once spent too much time on. Most of the apps we see and like today simply would not be possible without platform-driven code generation.

I don’t think there are a lot of app designers trying to figure out the right balance of people and algorithms in any of these situations yet. That’s in part due to the reality that a lot of technology is just being built and released, and the vendors are expecting their early adopter customers to figure out things like balance. This seems to be always the way it works.

That’s the point. We complain when we see jobs evaporate, but new jobs come about from all of the disruption. They rarely make headlines because they come in dribs and drabs, and no one is counting. However, cool things are happening, and they’re sometimes outside of the purview of CRM — and that only accentuates CRM’s impact on the later stages of the tech revolution.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ECT News Network.

Denis%20Pombriant Platform Power
Denis Pombriant is a well-known CRM industry analyst, strategist, writer and speaker. His new book, You Can’t Buy Customer Loyalty, But You Can Earn It, is now available on Amazon. His 2015 book, Solve for the Customer, is also available there.
Email Denis.

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CRM Buyer

Why Don’t Jews Vote for Trump?

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What to Look for in an Employer: Dynamics 365 CE/CRM Software Jobs

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Carnegie Mellon and Oregon State team wins first leg of DARPA Subterranean Challenge robot competition

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Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained

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