The Tech Salon

Archive for December 20, 2010

Reflections

December 20, 2010 Cynthia Smith Archive, Blog, Other

As the end of the year and decade approach, I think it is essential to take some time to reflect on the projects you started, implemented, and delivered. By understanding where you have been, you can be clear about where you want to go. The Tech Salon has composed a few questions for you as you reflect upon your past year. Although they relate to implementing projects, they apply to any area of your business and life.

What projects did you complete?
What project did you not get a chance to implement? Why?
If you were to change anything about your technology, what would it be?
Social media for small business is the new “new”, are you leveraging it for your business? Are your competitors?

Keep in mind that reflecting about your projects is not a once a year activity. In fact, The Tech Salon encourages you take at least an hour or two every month to reflect about active projects. It is important to know at any time during the year, what are the milestones and key dates? Are we on target? Why or why not?

What other questions would ask yourself as you wind down the year? What will you do to schedule time for thoughtful project reflection?

No comments Business, Project Reflection, Understanding

Holiday wishes…

December 10, 2010 Cynthia Smith Archive, Blog, Business Solutions

One of the things on my holiday wish list is that entrepreneurs and small business owners safeguard their companies’ data through valid backups and be assured they can successfully restore data in the event of an emergency, theft, or accident. For the record, that is two things.

Many, many people tell me they want to make sure their data is safe but they do not have time or resources to do so. This is especially the case when it does not always seem to contribute to the bottom line. However, as a friend of mine is so fond of saying, “you cannot NOT afford to make it happen.”

I know this is not the sexist of topics but take a second to think about losing all of your business data. What would you do? How would you recover? Could you recover? Would you recover?

This is overwhelming to think about, is it not? Let us briefly outline a solution and break it into small steps. Here are a few tips to get started:

Give yourself a date for putting plan in place
State the goal for wanting to put backup and restore processes in place
Identify what machine(s) and/or network(s) to backup
Determine when you want to schedule backups

In each of these steps there are several other steps that are needed but creating the plan is crucial. CRUCIAL.

Anyone who has worked with computers for a while knows it is not a matter of if you will lose data, but a matter of when you will lose it. The best thing is to be prepared when the time comes.