Members of the Brandeis GPS Community may submit job postings from within their industries to advertise exclusively to our community. This is a great way to further connect and seek out opportunities as they come up. If you are interested in posting an opportunity, please complete the following form found here.
Where: Boston Private Bank & Trust Company in Boston, MA
Members of the Brandeis GPS Community may submit job postings from within their industries to advertise exclusively to our community. This is a great way to further connect and seek out opportunities as they come up. If you are interested in posting an opportunity, please complete the following form found here.
Where: Axis Communications in Chelmsford, MA
Did you know that Brandeis GPS offers courses for professional development? Enroll in an online course this fall and network with new colleagues in a 10-week, seminar-style online classroom capped at 20 students. Registration is now open and we’re celebrating by profiling our favorite fall courses.
Get an introduction to the “nuts and bolts” that span all areas of information technology. With this 10-week, graduate-level course, you’ll learn enough foundational information about each key area to assess and evaluate when and how each technology should be appropriately deployed to solve organizational challenges. Topics include:
Fall courses run Sept. 14-Nov. 22. Whether you’re looking to complete a full degree or advance your career through professional development, this course is designed to equip you with the necessary skills for making an impact in any industry or organization.
How it works:
Take a part-time, online course this fall without enrolling in one of our graduate programs. If you like what you learn and want to continue your education, you can apply your credits from this fall toward a future degree. Questions? Contact our enrollment team at gps@brandeis.edu or 781-736-8787 or fill out our first-time registration form and we’ll be in touch.
The Americas Society and Council of the Americas invited me to discuss scalable innovative practices for education with experts and leaders dedicated to advancing and shaping the political, economic, social and cultural agendas of the Western Hemisphere. The purpose was to take what works in New York City and bring it to other education systems.
Here are some ideas I shared that global leaders can bring back to their countries.
1) Online Learning Communities for Education Resources
It is no longer okay for companies to provide teachers with just a product. Today we ask companies whose products we use, like Google, PBS, and Common Sense Media to develop online learning networks comprised of their staff and NYCDOE educators who use the product. Communities on sites like Google, Facebook, and Edmodo allow educators to connect with one another to share ideas, best practices, troubleshoot issues, and more. A member from the NYCDOE and from the company participate in the group to provide appropriate support as needed.
Teachers love it.
Alone, exhausted, and unseen become connected, energized, and recognized.
2) Partnering with Companies to Develop Expertise within The System
Have you ever been to a classroom and seen a SMARTboard serving as a bulletin board or known that teachers were barely scratching the surface when it comes to using certain technologies? Technology without pedagogy is a waste of money.
Today companies must be held accountable to do more than just sell tools and resources to schools. They must come with an important additional component to grow capacity across the district. That component is a no-cost program that creates and connects teachers across the district who are power-users of the same resources so they can become area experts supporting others back in their school and districts.
Participants become experts and share their skills and knowledge by:
Products are no longer stand alone. They come with training and support that helps ensure their successful use. You can learn more about this program here.
3) Technology Single Point of Contacts (Tech SPOC)
Every school designates a single point of contact for technology who can participate in professional learning opportunities, receive information about technology (i.e. via a newsletter and website), and join an online community for anytime/anywhere support.
4) One Stop for Technology Professional Learning Opportunities
Sounds simple, but until recently we didn’t have a central place on our website where all learning opportunities were placed. Now there is one online place to find both internal and external opportunities such as workshops, institutes, conferences, meet ups, and webinars.
5) Incorporate Student, Educator and Parent Voice
One of the most important scalable practices that can be effectively implemented in any school system is to incorporate the voice of students, staff, and parents. Do this not only by speaking with all stakeholders, but also asking them to be a part of the rules, policies, guidelines, curriculum, and learning that takes place in your school or district. For example, our professional learning opportunities are created with and reviewed by a professional development team of educators who test the work and materials with their students then provide us with feedback.
Our Social Media Guidelines for students were created by interviewing more than one hundred students and numerous educators and parents. We then reached out to the stakeholders to help us create the guidelines in a format they choose. In this case infographics. Once created, we go back to the stakeholders and get feedback then update. We created guides for parents and teachers and professional development. You can see them at schools.nyc.gov/socialmedia.
6) Partner with Students for Learning
While educators are expected to be experts in pedagogy, it is smart to tap into the intelligence of students when it comes to technology. Invite students to be creative with technology. Make a chart of favorite tech tools and indicate who your class experts are. If educators want to be in the know, there is a great free site from Common Sense Media called Graphite.org that rates and reviews digital resources.
7) Embrace Social Media for Students
If we want to run for office, run a business, or change how things are run where we work, live, or play we must be savvy in the use of social media. It is crucial for college, career, and life success. Stay tuned for my next post, to learn some ways to do this right.
So, what do you think? Could some of these practices be put into place where you work? Are there challenges or concerns that are in the way of you implementing these practices? What are some scalable practices that are successful where you work?
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By Ariel Garber
Brandeis Graduate Professional Studies hosted the Analytics 360 Symposium on Wednesday, April 8, 2015 at Brandeis University. The symposium took a look at using analytics to guide strategic, operational and tactical decisions specifically in the areas of education, healthcare and business.
The sessions covered a wide range perspectives within the analytics field, from The Open Data Analytics Initiative, to 10 Steps to Tracking Engagement and Influence Online, to A Holistic Approach to Being Data Science Driven.
The keynote speaker was Dr. Robert Carver, award-winning Professor of Business Administration at Stonehill College as well as Adjunct Professor at the International
Business School at Brandeis University.
Other sessions included The Application of Analytics in the Student’s Academic Lifecycle session led by Leanne Bateman, Faculty Chair for Strategic Analytics at Brandeis University and Principal Consultant for Beacon Strategy Group, a Boston-based management firm specializing in project management services.
Other speakers, including professors, leading executives, and researchers, focused on topics such as publicity, e-learning, and big data. Alan Girelli spoke on The Open Data Analytics Initiative, with a comparative discussion of Learning Analytics (a link to his presentation is available here). Girelli is the Director of the Center for Innovation and Excellence in eLearning (CIEE) and has taught online, on-ground, and blended writing and instructional design courses at the graduate and undergraduate level for UMass Boston, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and ITT Technologies.
We want to extend a big thank you to our panelists, Rob Carver, Leanne Bateman, David Dietrich, Shlomi Dinoor, Alan Girelli, Haijing Hao, and John McDougall. The event was sponsored by Basho, Soft10, Brandeis International Business School, EMC and E-Learning Innovation.
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By Ariel Garber
Analytics is useful in any profession, with the potential to increase efficiency, profitability and accuracy. From healthcare, to marketing, to even sports, analytics is becoming an essential tool in all fields. Here’s a sneak peak into how data affects more industries that you expect.
Technology is shaping a new health care economy, evident in the advances of 
mobile devices, cloud computing and analytics. “‘We need to empower consumers with the in-the-moment guidance they need,’” said Dennis Schmuland, MD, Microsoft’s chief health strategy officer, “adding that a key technological component of that on both sides of the patient-provider equation is health analytics, thus the need to ‘make analytics easy for everyone.’”
Social media 
and marketing analytics tools are also important as social media becomes essential in all fields. Research has shown that “the conversations your customers have among themselves drive about 13 percent of business decisions and can amplify your advertising by 15 percent.
Sports analytics are valuable to both consumers and professionals, for the way we consume sports industry through sports data is dependent upon analytics. “Sports analytics is not just a catch phrase, but an influential part of the future of sports,” said Bloomberg Sports, the leading global provider in data and analytics, “We believe sports analytics plays an integral role in the future of sport, both at a fan engagement and elite sport performance level.” Bloomberg Sports offers a variety of resources to both consumers and professionals. For professional purposes, they provide analytic tools for scouting, video analysis and “player-centric applications to assess performances and aid the preparation of upcoming games.” They also have created a predictive analytics program and use their own broadcast and TV stations to “translate analytics-rich content into broadcast tools used on-air to inform and educate viewers.” They also host their own 
website, StatsInsights.com, featuring analytics-rich sports articles.
Big data is becoming incorporated into all aspects of sports, from devices that can track pitches during the game, to wearable technology. Adidas’ miCoach system collects data from a device attached to the player’s jersey that shows the top performers and who is tired, as well as “real-time stats on each player, such as speed, heart rate and acceleration.” The data from these devices assists trainers, coaches, and physicians in planning better training and conditioning.
There is also a demand for data analytics specialists to translate the data from these devices in a coherent manner for the players and coaches. Moneyball, a 2003 book and 2011 movie featured the Oakland Athletics competitive baseball that utilized analytics in their data-driven strategies. This highlights a shift in sports from gut instincts to a reliance upon science. Analytics is “gaining recognition as a tried and true instrument for competitive advantage in countless industries.”
Brandeis Graduate Professional Studies offers a Strategic Analytics program that produces professionals who understand the strategic potential of big-data analytics and who can translate analysis into effective organizational decision-making, poised to lead today’s organizations to new standards of efficiency and competitiveness.
Brandeis GPS is hosting an Analytics 360 Symposium on Wednesday, April 8, 2015 from 9am-4:30pm at Hassenfeld Conference Center of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
The day-long symposium will focus on promoting a discussion of the growing field of analytics and how organizations can leverage big data to make more strategic decisions. Panelists will engage in a conversation that places analytics in the context of big data, education, health, marketing and business.
Register here for the Analytics 360 Symposium on April 8, 2015 at Brandeis University. The cost for NERCOMP members is $135 and the cost for non-members is $265. Submit this form to learn more about special pricing available to members of the Brandeis community. For more information, email analytics360@brandeis.edu or call 781-736-8786. You can also find us on Twitter using #GPSAnalytics.
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Written by: Ariel Garber
Brandeis Graduate Professional Studies will host the Analytics 360 Symposium: Multi-Industry Insights into Data and Intelligence on April 8, 2015 from 8:30am to 4:00 pm at Hassenfeld Conference Center of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. The all-day symposium will focus on promoting a discussion of the growing field of analytics and how organizations can leverage big data to make more strategic decisions.
Panelists will engage in a conversation that places analytics in the context of big data, education, health, marketing and business. Sessions cover a wide range perspectives within the analytics field, from The Open Data Analytics Initiative, to 10 Steps to Tracking Engagement and Influence Online, to A Holistic Approach to Being Data Science Driven.
The keynote speaker, Dr. Robert Carver, is an award-winning Professor of Business Administration at Stonehill College as well as Adjunct Professor at the International Business School at Brandeis University. Dr. Carver specializes in applied quantitative methods, big data, statistics education and business analytics. He will speak on the ethical dilemmas of big data in analytics.
Other sessions include The Application of Analytics in the Student’s Academic Lifecycle session led by Leanne Bateman, Faculty Chair for Strategic Analytics at Brandeis University and Principal Consultant for Beacon Strategy Group, a Boston-based management firm specializing in project management services. Other speakers, including professors, leading executives, and researchers, will focus on topics such as publicity, e-learning, and big data.
Register here for the Analytics 360 Symposium on April 8, 2015 at Brandeis University. The cost for NERCOMP members is $135 and the cost for non-members is $265. Submit this form to learn more about special pricing available to members of the Brandeis community. For more information, email analytics360@brandeis.edu or call 781-736-8786. You can also find us on Twitter using #GPSAnalytics.
Click here to subscribe to our blog!
The need for talented software engineers is clear.
“I think if you talk to just about any company around here that has an engineering organization, they’re going to talk about howdifficult it is to hire good software engineers,” said Kevin Murray, director of talent acquisition at soon-to-IPO e-commerce giant Wayfair, in a previous interview with BostInno.
A key to becoming one of those good software engineers, however, is to be on the pulse of emerging trends, and the software space is no stranger to change.
Take Cambridge-based distributed database technology company NuoD
B, which recently raised$14.2 million to help legacy 3D modeling software leader Dassault Systèmes transfer to the cloud. The 33-year-old company — creator of everything from sustainable wind turbines to an Airbus — has started shifting its focus to software as a service, meaning the need to shift to the cloud was necessary if they wanted to keep up with manufacturing demands.
NuoDB is now assisting Dassault Systèmes in making that move, and is expected to start helping several other companies do the same. As Barry Morris, NuoDB founder and CEO, explained to BostInno, “Thousands of companies are in a similar situation to Dassault Systèmes in that they historically would have sold software. But that software needs to be able to run on the cloud.” To Morris, the move is a no-brainer, particularly because it boasts “economic benefits to the vendor and to the user.” After all, gone are the days of needing hardware and data center space, or shelling out cash for up-front costs. Instead, software can be integrated to the cloud with a few simple clicks at a relatively low price point. Once it’s there, Morris added, applications can start integrating with other cloud-based applications, thereby adding value and sparking more business.
Customer Relationship Management software provider Salesforce forced itself to move to the cloud, and is allegedly succeeding.
All-in-one inbound marketing software giant HubSpot is forging a forward-thinking path, as well. The local leader is currently beginning its IPO process, and saw a 50 percent jump in revenues in 2013.
That achievement stated, who better to ask for emerging trends than HubSpot’s VP of Engineers Elias Torres? He gave BostInno the inside scoop on where software engineers should focus their attention, as well as helpfully highlighted how HubSpot is innovating around those trends.
Per Torres:
- JavaScript and single-page web applications using Backbone.js, Ember.js or Angular.js. At HubSpot, we’ve completely shifted all client-side development from Python/Django to Backbone.js and are gearing up for the future to make sure we can keep using JavaScript on the server-side to create isomorphic applications using node.js.
- PaaS and the shift from virtual machines to containerized applications. The cost of managing static server allocations will force companies to look at containers and cluster management services such as Docker, Apache Mesos or CoreOS. HubSpot deploys 300 times a day on a minimal number of server instances by using Apache Mesos.
- DevOps is empowering engineering organizations to balance speed and product reliability. HubSpot does not differentiate between engineers and operators. We have created a release practice that minimizes roadblocks to customer satisfaction through better release and configuration management.
At the end of the day, customer satisfaction is key. One way to ensure customers are satisfied, however, is by repeatedly innovating and ensuring the product being delivered reflects the best of what’s happening in the ever-evolving field. Aspiring software engineers, take note.
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By: Phil Holberton, Adjunct faculty at Brandeis Graduate Professional Studies
Originally from: http://holberton.com/helping-your-teams-grow-through-coaching/
As team leaders, we evaluate our team members and expect them to do the job up to our standards. Sometimes our standards are out of sync with their ability or training. After all, 
these individuals have not traveled in the same shoes as we have and may not have the skills or cognitive preparation to achieve what we expect. Therefore coaching becomes an integral part of helping teams grow to the next level.
In my experience, the most effective leaders shine when they are helping others day in and day out. This is where coaching enters the picture. Those team leaders who are really performing up to their capability (in a leadership capacity) are consistently coaching their colleagues (and not trying to micro-manage their activities). Individuals don’t appreciate being managed. But, they are more open to coaching if the coach immediately establishes his or her desire to help the individual meet their established goals.
The first and most important coaching skill is to be in the moment, not distracted by six different things on your mind. Coaching is about 
respect for each other. There is no more predictable way to show lack of respect as not being “present” or “engaged” during a conversation. I once had a boss whose eyes would become “fish eyes” during our conversations. Do you think I was being heard? Do you think I respected him?
Secondly, a good coach (team leader) will seek to understand by asking open-ended, empowering questions. It is very difficult to understand what is going on in someone else’s head if we ask simple yes/no questions. Questions need to be open-ended so we fully understand the complexity of an individual’s state of mind.
A third critical skill is the need for the coach to suspend judgment and remain reflective and objective. Being contemplative shows that you understand the thoughts or feelings in the conversation. These first three skills will help develop understanding, balance, and respect—all very important ingredients in a successful coaching relationship.
The fourth critical skill is affirming the conversation. This action brings into focus the individual’s desire to move ahead, whether it’s an improvement in performance or learning new skills and growing as a professional or human being.
These skills, when practiced and used daily, will help you become the most effective leader imaginable.
Help your team grow. Be a coach not a just a team leader or boss.
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by: Nagendra Nyamgondalu, Senior Engineering Manager at IBM India and Brandeis Graduate Professional Studies Master of Software Engineering Alum
It was only a few years back that most IT managers I spoke to would smirk when they heard the term “cloud” in a conversation. They either didn’t believe that cloud computing would be viable for their businesses’ IT needs or were skeptical about the maturity of the technology. And rightly so. But, a lot has changed since then. The technology, tools and services available for businesses considering adoption of a public cloud, setting up their own private cloud or treading the middle path of a hybrid one, has made rapid strides. Now, the same IT managers are very focused on deploying workloads and applications on the cloud for cost reduction and improved efficiency.
Businesses today have the choice of consuming Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS) and Software as a service (SaaS). As you can imagine, these models map directly to the building blocks of a typical data center. Servers, storage and networks form the infrastructure on top of which, the required platforms are built such as databases, application servers or web servers and tools for design and development. Once the two foundational layers are in place, the applications that provide the actual business value can be run on top. While all three models are indisputable parts of the bigger picture that is Cloud Computing, I have chosen to focus on IaaS here. After all, infrastructure is the first step to a successful IT deployment.
Essentially, IaaS is the ability to control and automate pools of resources, be it compute, storage, network or others and provision it on-‐demand. Delivering IaaS requires technology that provides efficient and quick provisioning, smart scheduling for deployment of virtual machines and workloads, support for most hardware and of course, true scalability. OpenStack is an open source framework founded by Rackspace Hosting and NASA that takes a community approach to make all this possible. It was designed with scalability and elasticity as the overarching theme and a sharenothing, distribute-‐everything approach. This enables OpenStack to be horizontally scalable and asynchronous. Since inception, the community has grown to a formidable number with many technology vendors such as IBM, Cisco, Intel, HP and others embracing it. The undoubted advantage that a community-‐based approach brings, especially to something like IaaS, is the extensive support for a long list of devices and cloud standards. When a new type of storage or a next generation network switch is introduced to the market, the vendors have a lot to gain by contributing support drivers for their offerings to the community. Similar support for proprietary technology has dependencies on customer demand and the competitive dynamics amongst the vendors -‐ this almost always results in delayed support, if that. While proprietary versus open source is always a debate, the innovation and cost benefits that open alternatives have provided in the recent years, has clearly made CIOs take notice. Support for a variety of hypervisors, Open APIs, support for object or block storage and the mostly self-‐sufficient management capabilities are some of the common themes I hear on why businesses are increasingly adapting OpenStack. Additionally, the distributed architecture 
of OpenStack where each component (such as Compute, Network, Storage & Security) runs as a separate process connected via a lightweight message broker, makes it easy for ISVs looking to build value-‐adds on top of the stack. All the right ingredients for a complete cloud management solution for IaaS.
Most IT managers dream of the day when every request for infrastructure is satisfied instantly by the click of a button regardless of the type being requested, workloads run smoothly and fail-‐over seamlessly when there is a need to, resource usage is constantly optimal and adding additional hardware to the pool is a smooth exercise. Business managers dream of the day when they have instant access to the infrastructure needed to run their brand new application and once it is up, it stays up. Aaah Utopia.
The good news is it is possible here and now.
Nagendra Nyamgondalu is a Senior Engineering Manager at IBM in India. He is a 2003 graduate from Brandeis University, Graduate Professional Studies’ Master of Software Engineering Program.
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