Case Competition!!!

The Graduate Information Technology Management Association would like to solicit feedback from you so that we can gauge university wide interest in a GITMA hosted case competition.

Student Benefits:
1. Opportunity to network with prominent industry leaders
who will judge the competition
2. Exciting prize money for first, second and third place.
Will you be interested to participate?

Cast your vote now!!
Please respond promptly so that we can begin to prepare the competition!

Were you unable to attend GITMA’s career panel on November 3rd?  Check out the video and pictures of the event below.

Click here to launch the video.  (Note: You will need RealPlayer installed on your PC).

Click on the photos to enlarge:

GITMA will be hosting a Career Panel Night on Monday, November 3rd from 6-8PM in the Adamian Commons.  Please join us as we welcome back Bentley McCallum Graduate School of Business alumni from IBM, EMC, Deloitte Consulting, Raytheon, and Edgewater Consulting to participate in discussions about their careers in IT.  Light refreshments will be served.  The event is free and open to all graduate students and faculty.  If you would like to attend, please RSVP to [email protected] no later than Monday, October 27th to reserve your spot.

Social Software is commonly referred to as “Facebook for the enterprise.”  This past summer, I spent 14 weeks working for IBM in Westford, MA as a Social Software Product Manager Intern for IBM’s Lotus Quickr, an online team collaboration software that enables group members share content via document libraries, wikis, blogs, team calendars, and task lists.  I spent most of the summer building Quickr templates for two purposes.  First, the templates would provide proof of concept for clients and the sales team would use the templates to demo during sales presentations.  Second, they would be available for download as add-ons from the IBM website and/or shipped in future releases of Quickr.  At the risk of sounding corny, the templates would help customers get Quickr places started quicker.  Microsoft Sharepoint, one of Quickr’s biggest competitors, has similar templates available.

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SAP Labs, the innovation arm of SAP AG, is excited to welcome you to its newest location in Technology Square. Get an exclusive tour of the office, meet employees and interns, and view cutting-edge demonstrations of new projects.

Participate in a “tech talk” that will be led by  Dr. Ike Nassi , Executive Vice President, SAP Research, Americas and China.

What: SAP University Networking Reception (appetizers and drinks provided)

When: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Where: SAP Labs, 400 Technology Square, Floor 9, Cambridge, MA 02139

Please RSVP by October 6, 2008 by emailing [email protected] or clicking the link SAP Day in Cambridge

Don’t miss this great opportunity to learn how you can be part of SAP, one of the world’s fastest growing software development company

Come and network with university recruiters and hiring managers. Receive feedback on your resume and talk about internship, co-op and full-time opportunities.

The Graduate IT Management Association went for a good field trip to Cisco Systems on the 18th of April, 2008. Below are links to a few files from the trip that may interest you. Do comment on what you liked/disliked and what types of events do you want to see in the future. You are encouraged to register at and visit this website often to stay updated on our exciting events!!

Shahid
President - GITMA

Key Note Presentation

Key Note Speaker - Did you know video

Hey,

We are organizing a field trip to Cisco. Let us know your comments, suggestions, and feedback…

Shahid

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Come join the Graduate IT Management Organization (GITMA) for a site visit to CISCO Systems on Friday, April 18^th

Do not miss a great opportunity to learn and network with and know more about a leader in networking and communications technology and services company. There is something for all graduate students in all programs. This is a morning program and a continental breakfast will be hosted by Cisco. Brands under Cisco Systems include Cisco, Linksys, WebEx, IronPort, and Scientific Atlanta.

Register quick - A limited number of students, based on a first come first serve basis, will get an opportunity to experience the very exclusive Tele-Presence facility, the next generation in virtual meetings, set in a specially design room with an 180 inch plasma screen (See here for a related web page)

Date, Time and Venue:
18th April, 2008 (Friday) from 9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Building 500 - Newburyport Conference Room
500 Beaver Brook Drive, Boxborough, MA

Other details: The dress code is business casual. We should be done by noon and be back in Bentley well before 1:00 PM.

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A Code Camp (in this context) is an event organized to either exhibit or learn from a code developed in a Microsoft .Net platform. The event consists of a series of sessions held at the Microsoft Offices in Waltham. Each session is on a different topic and you can attend one, two or any number of sessions as you wish, or even present a session, if you wish.

For a list of sessions for the upcoming Code Camp to be held on the 5^th and 6^th of April ’08, check out: http://thedevcommunity.org/Events/PresentationList.aspx?id=6. Try to get there for some sessions on XNA game development, Silverlight or LINQ. They should be pretty cool. You may also want to visit some community websites such as:
Boston DotNet Usergroup: http://www.bostondotnet.org
The Dev Community: http://www.thedevcommunity.org

And it’s an entirely different experience over version one…

Silverlight is a browser plugin that allows development of rich web applications with features such as animation, vector graphics, and audio-video playback. It’s somewhat similar to and competes with products such as Adobe Flash, Java FX, and Apple QuickTime, but it is from Microsoft. As of version 2.0 it can now be implemented via the .NET development suites.

Silverlight is also the tool used to create the web application of NBC’s 2008 Summer Olympic coverage (Look out for updates on http://www.nbcolympics.com). Ideally, a television can only cover about 1,200 hours of live Olympic events, but with Silverlight, this is expected to be about 2,200 hours of live coverage and 3,600 hours of video on demand. In addition, users will be able to pause and play, rewind, watch up to four sports at the same time, and look up info on different sports, sportspersons, etc applicable to the currently viewed sport. In effect it is going to be an integration of YouTube, Wikipedia (for sports), PiP, VOD, etc. for some Olympic size entertainment.

Check out these demos:
(You may need to click on the content area and / or download a plugin to view the video)
NBC’s Olympic Website demo at the MIX 2008 conference
Hard Rock Cafe’s Memorabilia

By Zarla Ludin ~ Zarla writes about the connection IT needs to have with Human Factors…

Human Factors: the overarching philosophy behind user-centered design. User-centered design is an iterative problem solving process that demonstrates a user’s limitations, abilities, and typical uses of an interface. Usability research is essential for information technology because it examines these aspects of the user and then implements them in the design. Without a focus on the user, information technology has the potential of being completely inaccessible to the average person.

Usability research begins with knowing who the user is. Once this is accomplished, the user’s intended goals from using the interface can be determined. From these goals, a usability professional can then figure out exactly what the user needs of the interface in order for the user to achieve these goals. For example, architecture software tends to be used by only one user type: architects. They may be using the software to create plans of a building. Because their goal is to come up with a true-to-life architectural plan, graphics and images are probably going to be an important element of the software. Although this may seem like common sense, it is often overlooked by designers and developers. Having the Human Factor perspective, as well as the user’s prospective, is essential in creating a successful product.

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