synergit

Bagels & Bytes Meeting Notes – March 2016

Note from CL: I owe a huge thank you to the group for stepping up to self-manage the meetup in my absence!  Extra, extra thanks to Rebekah Jenkins and the Grow Pgh staff, not only for hosting us, but for picking up the breakfast food too.  I’m so grateful and touched by the aspect of “community” that we have in our group.  You all rock!

Bagels & Bytes attendees discussing tech around a large conference tableNext month we will be having our meetup at the Frick Art & Historical Center in Point Breeze on Wednesday, 4/6.  I hope to see you there!

Here are the notes and resources from the meeting (thanks Nicole and Heather!):

General Troubleshooting

  • Discussed a BYOD problem Johna is having
  • Discussed a Office 2013 issue with deleting a recurring appt that then dupes itself

Disposing of Old Equipment

  • Computer Reach – recycling for anything but CRT monitors, they re-image them to Linux OS for redistributing to other orgs (small fee applies for wiping drives)
  • DBAN program – for wiping drives
  • YUMI – turn a flash drive into a Boot Device
    • will check all partitions

Bagels & Bytes attendees discussing tech around a large conference tableAnti-virus Recommendations

  • Best to have same AV software on all equipment for ease of maintenance to serve out updates
  • No McAfee
  • Norton (cloud based, good price through Techsoup)
  • Symantec ($4/license, can clas with Spiceworks and other software)
  • Avast (free AV)
  • Avira (free AV)
  • ClamWin (free, open source AV)
  • ESET (good for Windows OS updates and AV)
  • Webroot
  • Malwarebytes

Internet in the Field

  • phone tether vs hotspot vs tablet with data
  • Tether to cell and reimburse?
  • Mobile app – enter the info offline then synchronize?
  • Voice dictation in Google Docs?
  •  Chromebook – can split between Gmail logins but need wifi
  • Add as tether ($10 on Verizon)
  • Firefox, other programs will tether outside the phone

Google Grants

Bagels & Bytes attendees discussing tech around a large conference tableHacking

Policy re: Encryption

  • Should company sponsored cell phones have encryption?
  • Formatting into partitions w/encryption
  • Diskcrypter

Passwords

Document Sharing in Real Time

  • Google Drive vs secure intranet (Drive is real time, local server would have file locking occurring)
  • Egnyte – cloud-based server with apps or in browser
  • 2 people in the local file on a shared drive can corrupt the file

Encrypted Flash Drives

  • Use an app or can buy some with encrypted options
  • Some external drives are encrypted (some numeric and some biometric) of the hardware (not the software)
  • Enclosure also that takes any laptop drive

Outsourcing IT

Moving Email to the Cloud

  • Moving email to Google or Office 365 can cut IT costs $100K to $60K.
  • Include data migration if you go Exchange to cloud
  • Ask if you can migrate email yourself

Allegheny B&B – February 2011 Meeting Notes

This month we met for the first time at the Frick Art & Historical Center’s Haller House.  It’s quite a lovely campus, building, and meeting room!  Big thanks to Chris Chambers, Linda Buker, and the rest of the Frick staff for hosting us!

At the meeting, Bob Walker, a consultant from local tech company SynergIT, and Michelle Hines from UCP/CLASS gave us a demo of SharePoint.  They showed us UCP/CLASS’s old SharePoint site and the one that has been redeveloped (and about to launch) using SharePoint 2010.  Michelle shared some resources after the meeting:

 

We will meet again at the Frick next month on Wednesday, March 2, 2011.  Please join us!

Get 2011 B&B meeting info and location/directions here.

Allegheny B&B – September 2010 Meeting Notes

This was our last meeting for this year at Rodef Shalom in Shadyside.  (Off to ACHIEVA in the South Side for October through December.)

Here are the topics, resources, and links discussed during our September meeting:

  • Where to have the B&B Holiday party in December?
    • The group agreed that touring the server room at one of the local casinos would be fun and interesting.  Several members are going to work some contacts and see if we can get in there.
    • Our second choice is Dave & Buster’s, but we agreed that we don’t want to eat there (will go to a restaurant nearby for lunch).
  • How to dispose of older tech equipment?
    • Try to sell back to vendor or manufacturer if an option.
    • There are companies out there who will eBay equipment for you.
    • Construction Junction does electronics recycling, will even pick up for a $250 freight fee (better to have a large load for this service).
    • DBAN is good for wiping your hard drives prior to recycling.
  • Hosted data centers
  • Bandwidth issues
    • Good bandwidth is really important if using VoIP.
    • Seems to be a general need for increasing overall organizational bandwidth as of late (more remote users, memory-heavy apps, etc.).
    • If shopping around for a different provider, a broker can sometimes get you better deals.  (M. Hines mentioned ConnecTel as an example – contact person there is Scott McKinney – can also do a telecom “audit” for your agency.)

I hope to see you all at ACHIEVA on October 6!  Don’t forget to register for TechNow 2010 if you’ve not already done so!! Oh, and the breakout sessions and presenter information are now available online:   http://technow2010.wordpress.com.