We had a great time on Wednesday morning at the Children’s Museum of Pgh. and a productive, informative meeting! A big “thank you” to George, Mercy and the Children’s Museum Cafe for hosting & catering our meeting.
Meeting Topics and Resources
- Social media questions
- What networks? Linkedin? Facebook? Twitter? Blog? (Find out where your audience is.)
- Personal vs. professional – a persistent question.
- Slideshow: 10 Social Media for Business Myths.
- Virtual servers
- Is one physical server/computer that has been partitioned at the hard drive level to function as two or more separate servers (they share hardware resources, but have separated disk space and operating systems).
- VMware: “How Virtualization Works.”
- It’s good to have a second server (physical, not virtual) to back up the virtual one(s).
- Benefits – you can allocate hard drive space as needed, assign disk space “on the fly,” upfront costs are a little higher but the overall long-term costs are lower (less servers to replace).
- VMware has a feature – ability to move servers to another server easily.
- When should you virtualize? Generally if you have three servers or more, you should begin to consider it.
- Backups / disaster recovery – people typically use external hard drives or cloud-based backup.
- Sonic CDP (stands for “Continuous Data Protection”) is a good backup tool.
- Mobile app for remote access called 2X Client.
- Internet service providers (ISPs)
- Connectel is a local isp/phone broker, they get paid in commission by telecom companies, so orgs pay nothing to get their assistance. Local rep is Doug Dembiczak / ddembiczak@connectelinc.com.
- Considerations: having a redundant internet line, shared vs. dedicated, up/down speeds.
- Free online speed test available.
- Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) issues
- Agency-owned vs. personal?
- Who pays? For equipment? For data plans/service?
- Important to have a policy for this.
- Data/file system housekeeping policies
- If your org has a document retention policy, use that for guidance on digital files.
- Ok (and frequently necessary) to set limits on staff’s storage space.
- A method for archiving email must be found. Gmail is easy, Outlook and other programs are trickier.
- 7 years seems to be a standard timeframe for keeping most docs, but check with your org’s solicitor for guidance.
- Duplicate File Finder – free software that will go through your file system and find/display duplicate files. Can be installed on a PC, doesn’t have to be the server.
- SharePoint
- What are the uses for it? Uploading/sharing docs, doc versioning, collaboration.
- Can put in server policy so automatically shows up as browser home page.
- Bayer Center is having an introductory SharePoint class on Tuesday, March 5, 2013. Learn more and register for “Getting Started with Microsoft SharePoint” here. (Class fee is $55 if paid online/$65 if paid later.)
Our next meeting will be at the Children’s Museum, Wednesday, March 6 (8:30-10 am). Hope to see you there!
Bagels & Bytes - Allegheny 