Divine Driven Leadership: The Great Power Within

The Bondage Breaker

I was inspired by my inner compass to write "The Great Power Within" three years ago and I feel that the vision depicted in my writing is for all to realize ones own inner power, which is installed by our creator. To me this is so relevant as the first African American is sworn in as President of the United States of America today. He was not to be denied.

The Great Power Within

A man from generational bloodlines of conquerors and kings is not always guaranteed victory, even though one from such a lineage is often powerful, feared and rarely challenged. A man whose only material belonging is the air his lungs acquire to sustain his life, and who has the ability to hone into his inner strength and harnesses the spirit of all beautiful things around him, gains a strength far superior to any conqueror or king. If this man is raised by wise handlers, a pure heart will be harvested that can attain a power never imagined by limited minds or hearts. This man will develop a desire to challenge himself by competing with the best around him. He lives for the thrill of contest and unknowingly is being prepared to protect himself and the universe from any threat. Fueled by his sense of righteousness, bestowed upon him by his creator, he will prevail in any situation despite the hopeless odds placed against him and when all is said and done, he will not lie down to die until he has fought and won a perceivably un-winnable fight.

Author, Julius Clark Sr.

Obama’s Infrastructure Stimulus Hopes to Increase IT Jobs

The Business Software Alliance reports that President Elect Obama's economic stimulus agenda will include a "Pro-Tech" emphasis; a sweet sound to an IT professionals ears!





Information Technology Job Creation Breakdown:

Obama's' Stimulus Impact Estimate

• 10 percent increase in IT Jobs: 300,000 new IT jobs.
  

Skills Needed In

• Construction & Engineering Firms
  
• Alternate Energy Systems
  
• Health Care Process Modernization
  
• Bioinformatics
  

Hottest IT Areas

• Business analysis
  
• Financial and human resources applications
  
• Program management
  
• Application development
  
• And last but not least. Information Security
  

To Sum it Up

Information Technology will continue to a Rosetta stone for interpreting and translating historic complex problems to formulas that we can solve in this economic crisis.

The Lighter Side of Information Security

Presidential Risk Management

To the Office of the President-Elect: Kids, Technology & Problem Solving

I received and email from President Elect Obama's Change.Gov. Open government was a campaign promise that Obama consistently made, and he is delivering on his promise. Change.gov is set up to take ideas from Americans that can be used to fix our nation's problems. I could not resist the opportunity to offer my two cents to the Office of the President-Elect.

My Comments:

Teach Kids How to Use Computer Technology to Solve Problems

To the Office of the President-Elect,

I volunteer in a professional organization (BDPA) that teaches children (8th-12th grade) in underserved communities, 3 tier web design (HTML, .NET & MySQL) to solve problems. We accept students from all walks of life, with little to no programming experience. Along with programming, students across the country in this volunteer initiative, learn project management, career skills and team building. We are proving that kids in underserved communities can learn and apply college level education, while in still in grade school to solve complex problems, when they are mentored and handled by wise hands. Some of those students go on to compete against other students across the country in a High School Computer Competition (HSCC) for bragging rights, but most importantly college scholarships. They have created Information Technology Systems in these competitions such as:

• Global Troop Deployment Systems
  
• Charity Donation Sites
  
• Online PC Ordering Sites
  
• Terrorist Tracking Databases
  

Children are naturally interested in computer technology, so let's develop a national directive that takes their passion with the internet, gaming and teach them to solve problems, which in return will create a workforce of very talented future leaders, who will keep America competitive and creative, while solving a world of problems. If the volunteers of the BDPA can turn out hundreds of students each year on Saturdays to and influence them to pursue Computer Science careers, imagine the impact to our economy, business innovation and Homeland Security if our nation can reproduce our results.

Julius

SharePoint Team Sites: Rich Information Collaboration & Document Management Solution

SharePoint Solving Problems

In 2008 I proposed to the Charlotte chapter of the Black Data Processing Associates (BDPA) to use Microsoft SharePoint Team sites to manage our chapter and possibly become our main website. I presented to BDPA Charlotte the powerful and rich document management and calendar features that we as Information Technology professionals were so accustomed to using in corporate America. Prior to this we solely used Yahoo Groups for document management and calendar usage, but most of us work for corporations that block or restrict Yahoo Groups for us to effectively use it to collaborate, manage, and share information while on the job. Not to mention that you don't need a web designer to maintain it.

SharePoint Collaboration Features

http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/capabilities/collaboration/features.mspx

Cost Effective Solution

For $29.00 per month an organization, club or small business can obtain SharePoint services from an Internet Service Provider (ISP). To support SharePoint In house it could cost over $3,000 to purchase the product, hardware to run it, with software licenses and thousands more in support and maintenance costs.

SharePoint Website as Internet Presence

Many organizations, businesses, the federal government and colleges are using SharePoint to efficiently manage their Internet website allowing department to quickly update information on their own with no lag time due to a web designer finding time to update the website. View the following links for SharePoint examples and case studies.

• Top 100 SharePoint Sites
  
  • http://www.wssdemo.com/Pages/topwebsites.aspx
    

  
  

• Top 17 case studies for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and several new MOSS-based web sites
  
  • http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/05/03/top-17-case-studies-for-microsoft-office-sharepoint-server-2007-and-several-new-moss-based-web-sites.aspx
    

SharePoint ISPs

We selected sharepointhosting.com to suite our needs, but there are many more ISPs that offer the service. Many will allow you to use the service free for 30 days before being billed.

The Future

I feel that the future of website management will be done with products like SharePoint that will allow organizations without skilled programmers or web developers to manage their documents and work collaborately.

Rid Yourself of Information Security Bad Habits

Improving on Your Information Security Bad Habits

First, I welcome 2009 amidst a multitude of perplexing world challenges. Second Technology is going to be more important than ever as more things are done with less people and with people trying to find more opportunities with limited time. Start the year off with better Information Security habits that will protect your physical wellbeing and database wellbeing. Adhere to the following suggestions and make measurable efforts to rid yourself of these Information Security bad habits:

Things to improve on

• Not respecting and adhering to your employer's computer security policies.
  
• Not changing your passwords with some frequency. If you have had your password for a while or if others know it, Change it!
  
• Sharing your login account name and passwords with others.
  
• Start using strong passwords comprising of numbers, upper & lower case letters and special keyboard characters.
  
• Stop using the same password for all of your online login activities.
  
• Not using or renewing the anti-virus product you use to keep receiving critical security updates to help protect your online computer activities and identity.
  
• Not inspecting the content of your Childs social networking profiles. Your children can fall prey to others if they reveal information that others can use to steal from them, find them or hijack their identities.
  
• Stop signing up for everything online that you receive via email. The less information you give out about yourself the less you have to worry about protecting.
  
• Not backing up your data routinely. Once it is lost is gone!
  
• Not respecting an entities copy write rights.
  

Happy New Year!

Julius Clark, MBA, CISSP, CISA