Features January 2017

Long before she worked in IT, Pamela Banchy was a nurse. She spent 14 years at the University Hospitals of Cleveland where her excellent communication skills helped her establish strong relationships with patients and physicians. That ability prompted Banchy’s supervisor to approach her with a bluntly worded job offer that ushered her into the tech […]

Daniel Morreale uses an apt metaphor to describe the task of implementing new technologies: It’s a little like building an ocean liner when it’s in the midst of crossing the ocean. The key is to make change while in motion, carefully, efficiently—and without sinking the ship. That’s true from both a technical standpoint and a […]

Emerging from the ashes of the dot-com bubble era, Convergence Technology Consulting was founded in 2002 with a simple mission: provide people and businesses the infrastructure virtualization services they need to succeed in a rapidly changing market. Centered on a philosophy of “People, process and technology,” Baltimore-based Convergence made a name for itself by delivering […]

When he first met Shawn Carnahan and Steve Tilley at a preschool function 22 years ago, Dan Castles says he was just trying to shoot the breeze and keep his sanity around dozens of screaming children. Castles struck up a friendship with the two other fathers and says he quickly learned that Carnahan and Tilley […]

Los Angeles has two sides: the one seen by outsiders, and the one seen by Angelenos, the people who live there. “When people think of Los Angeles, they think about Hollywood celebrities and great weather, but, as a government, we think about things like traffic,” says Ted Ross, CIO for the city of Los Angeles […]

When the police department for the City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, issued a citation to the regional IT department, it wasn’t ordering the techies to appear in court. In fact, it was giving the department recognition for a job well done through a special “unit citation” that’s issued only as an award, […]

Dan Coldiron’s first job for the City of Fort Collins, Colorado, seems far away from the lead technology role he now occupies. “I was the guy that ran around and got parts for the mechanics when they were working on vehicles,” he says. Having just left Colorado State University in 1984, Coldiron worked as a […]

Years ago, Jane Nickles was a dance major at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, paying her way by working at a department store. She remembers the fateful day when a co-worker, bringing in a stack of classwork, introduced her to computer programming and inspired her to pursue it as a career. Now, 30 years […]

College students today can meet someone at a party or a bar and, out of the thousands or even tens of thousands of young people in the area, find them the next day on Facebook or Twitter with a few swipes of the finger. Yet they often struggle to do digital academic research. Phil Ventimiglia, […]

When you tell the faculty at your liberal arts college that you’re going to replace all of the computers in their offices, classrooms and technology labs, including computers that have years of data and research stored on them, there are basically two options. Be very, very specific, or brace for chaos. Anthony Hambey, vice president […]