Many of you belong to clubs. Some of those clubs were easy to join. You just had to sign up, pay some small annual dues, and enjoy the benefits of membership. Other clubs are more exclusive: the country club, the garden club, fraternal organizations.  All of these clubs carry with them a common cause, a sense of belonging, and a certain set of privileges for membership.

On January 20, 2009, our family joined an exclusive club in which nobody wants membership.  That was the day our daughter Charlotte was diagnosed with cancer. We became one of the many families affected by chronic and life threatening illness. 

Each school day, 47 families nationwide join this club when a child is diagnosed with cancer.  Each day, up to 75 children seek treatment on the 7^th floor of Children’s Hospital of Richmond at MCV. Many of these children are frequent flyers, making multiple visits every year and requiring care for illnesses such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, tumors, leukemia, other types of cancer, and complications due to HIV.

 The dues in this club are steep.  They include draining of emotional energy, sleeplessness, medical bills, financial hardship due to job loss or a leave of absence from work and excessive weight gain (or loss).  Sometimes, you pay the ultimate price: the life of your child.  

At CJ’s Thumbs Up Foundation, our primary goal is to help the families who have joined this club.  In a way, we help pay their dues.  In our first two years, we provided over $30,000 in financial assistance to over 60 families.  This year, we are poised to do the same.  Unfortunately, membership in the club continues to grow. CJSTUF currently has a waiting list of families requesting financial assistance and we do not expect this demand to wane.  

When individuals and businesses like TBL Networks support CJSTUF with their financial contribution, they help families pay their dues to a club they never wanted to join.  With your contribution, you help Roger and I pay forward the kindness that we received during our darkest hours in 2009.  With your contribution, you can help a family in your own community in their time of need. 

 If you would like to know more about our organization, visit our website for information on how to get involved.  You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook or hook into our blog for the latest updates.

In addition to great climate controlled golf, our tournament featured live demonstrations of TBL’s solutions, including a live leader board powered by Cisco WebEx,  our Cisco TelePresence 1100 rooms, a demonstration of the EMC VNX line and the future of VDI powered by VMware.  In addition, we were able to show the intersection of VMware, Cisco and EMC in the converged infrastructure of VCE’s Vblock.





    

As we did last year, TBL Networks was privileged to benefit a great organization in CJ’s Thumbs Up Foundation.  CJsTUF mission is to provide financial assistance to families of children with chronic and life-threatening illness.  

To learn about CJsTUF, check out their website,  blog, FaceBook and Twitter pages.  Also, TBL Networks Blog Home will have more information about this great organization in coming weeks.

Finally, special thanks to our corporate partners Cisco, VMware, EMC and VCE for helping make our day possible.

Check out more pictures from this event at www.facebook.com/tblnetworks

In a recent blog post “The Power of Touch,”  Dannette Veale discussed how researchers at the University of Munich are developing “a solution that enables anything to be touch driven.”  As the video demonstrates, you can finally use your spare bucket as steering wheel for video games.

For more practical and immediate use, the Cisco TelePresence Touch 12 allows you to integrate touch technology into your TelePresence solution.  This 12-inch device works with the entire end point line of Cisco TelePresence line. 

As touch technology continues to progress into the enterprise, it’s novelty will fade as it becomes commonplace.   The truth is simple.  You’ve got the touch.   You’ve got the power.

In addition, Thanksgiving marks the time to remember the things for which you are thankful.  On this day, I celebrate the mobile applications that make my life better.

Flashlight by Latter-Day Apps (Free)

With all the things that a smartphone can do, it is important to not forget the simple things.  Case in point, this flashlight application, which allows you to use your phone’s camera flash as a flashlight.  As a father of a two-year old, this application has increased my proficiency at quietly moving through the house, while still providing me access to crucial applications for business like …

Cisco WebEx Meeting Center By Cisco (Free)

With Cisco’s WebEx application, you can take your WebEx with you wherever you are.  You can host meetings and presentations, or just attend them if you are out of the office, with a click of a button.  This application is if you often travel by car, but still need to attend meetings.

Nike+ GPS By Nike, Inc. ($1.99)

I recently downloaded this application in anticipation of my holiday binge eating.  Nike+GPS uses your smartphone’s GPS capability to help you keep track of distance and time.  Unlike other applications that  I have used, this one does not lock up. This application easily integrates with your music playlists, and also keeps your history so you can chart your progress. 

Cisco Mobile By Cisco (Free)

Cisco Mobile allows  you to take your office phone with you, without the downsides (lost voicemails, sending calls from your cell phone number) that come with using just call forwarding.  This application allows you to achieve single number reachability – the ability place and receive calls using  your work number only.  Also, you can use the Wi-Fi feature to make calls without using your mobile minutes.

ooTunes Radio By Oogli LLC ($4.99)

ooTunes allows you to listen to most radio stations across the US from your smartphone.  You can search for stations by location, format or name.  I find this application a great alternative to the iHeartRadio application, which limits you to Clear Channel stations and requires to you use your Facebook account.  ooTunes also provides you the ability make recordings, and to integrate your Last.fm account.

Papa John’s Pizza by Papa John’s International Inc. (Free)

Turkey. Family. Stuffing.  Pie.  More Stuffing.  Football. Napping (also stuffing).  At a certain point (or as I call it, Friday), you have to eat something else.  This applications allows you to break up the monotony of turkey with the power of pizza.

• Two-thirds of college students will ask about social media policies during interviews.
• 56% will not accept a job from a company that bans social media, or they will circumvent the policy.
• 50% would rather lose their wallet or purse than their smartphone or mobile device.
• More than two of five would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to device choice, social media access, and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility.
• At least one in four said the absence of remote access would influence their job decisions, such as leaving companies sooner rather than later, slacking off, or declining job offers outright.
• Three out of 10 feel that once they begin working, it will be their right- more than a privilege -to be able to work remotely with a flexible schedule.

My initial thought was to see if Cisco planned on polling these same people in 10 years when they have 2.3 kids, a minivan and mortgage to see if they changed their position on social media access versus higher pay.  However, after my old man rage subsided, I wrote down some productive thoughts based on these findings.

Embrace social media

While it will continue to evolve, social media is here to stay. Companies need to embrace it in a manner that allows employees to use it, but with guidelines that maintain professionalism and brand integrity.

At TBL Networks, we embrace social media via blogs (like the one you are reading right now), in addition to using various channels like Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter.  However, if your company is not ready to embrace social media externally, you can reap the benefits of social media by using it internally. 

Cisco Quad is a tool developed to combine the four cornerstones of the modern workforce: social, mobile, visual, and virtual.  With Cisco Quad, your employees can collaborate internally, in a secure yet mobile environment. Cisco Quad comes with Cisco Enterprise Policy Manager, which help you enforce security and compliance while allowing mobility and flexibility in your collaboration environment.

Foster SECURE mobility

Remember when mobility meant that you had a laptop?  Perhaps even more so than social media, mobility is driving the changes in technology. Smartphones and tablets empower your employees to work more effectively and efficiently when away from the office. However, unlike times past when business first provided employees with new technology, odds are that your employees are going to have, and also want to use, their own tablets and smartphones before you provide these devices.   The “Bring Your Own Device”  (BYOD) trend raises mainly new issues for employers, with security challenges at the forefront.

To deal with issues brought forth by BYOD, Cisco has introduced Cisco SecureX architecture. Cisco SecureX  enforces security policies across the entire distributed network, not just at a single point in the data stream.  Also, according to this video, this service also comes your own referee!

While seeing the demands of the younger generation might release your inner Judge Smails, the fact is that social media and mobility are driving changes in technology.  However, the good news is that  you get to choose the vehicle.