I am fairly new to the education space but in my efforts to take in as much knowledge I can, I start to see a big hole. I don’t think this any secret but colleges are failing to help students achieve employability. This failure is happening on multiple levels, for example:

• Outdated and irrelevant curriculum
• A lack of career planning services
• Pushing students through the system to make the numbers look good
• Lowering the standards on what “passing” means

At the end of it all, the student is in left in debt and unemployed. The whole economy is pulled down.

Fewer people with student loans are buying homes, according to data in the report. Of borrowers ages 25 to 30 who are taking out new mortgages, the percentage of those with student debt has fallen by half, from nearly 9 percent in 2005 to just above 4 percent in 2012.

The fed report sees a connection, stating, “The higher burden of student loans and higher delinquencies may affect borrowers’ access to other types of credit and the performance of other debt.”

source: Student Debt Nearly Tripled In 8 Years, New York Federal Reserve Reports

People want jobs.

Small companies are popping up all over the place because they know people want jobs. A great example of this is Dev Bootcamp. For $12,200 a student can be enrolled in a 9-week intensive training program. Monday – Friday, 40 hours a week the student will be trained to get a job as an entry level developer. Starting pay for an entry level Ruby on Rails developer – about $75,000 a year, if in San Francisco or New York it is almost $90,000.

If I were 18 again, sign me up!

As I sit here and write this I wonder is the degree obsolete? Sure I want my doctor to have a degree as well as my nephew who is architecting bridges – overall though, how many jobs really need it?

Is credentialing and proving competency, like we do at CfA, the way to go — a trade school like renaissance? Electricians don’t sit through history class; they learn the skills needed to get licensed.

Do you need four years of college to really get the job? Is this just one check box on the human resources list or just because that is the way it has been? Can we reduce it to two years of focused work and rethink education, rethink what success means and encourage life-long learning? Clearly Dev Bootcamp thinks they can do it in nine weeks.

I don’t have the answers, just thinking out loud. I do see educators scared to change and that scares me. The people who I would have thought to be most open to it haven’t been. I know this a sweeping generalization and I know there are amazing teachers doing incredible work — however I see a lot of fear.

Education needs to change, a teacher’s role needs to evolve and people need jobs.

Opinions expressed here are my own and not that of the College for America.

Login in to Salesforce and go to Setup → Security Controls → Identity Provider

Once here download the Metadata, this is just an XML file. Open it up with any text editor. In the file you will find a string of characters enclosed in the tag labeled <ds:X509Certificate>. This is the X.509 certificate.

To generate a fingerprint of this certificate, copy the character string and paste it into a new text file. You’ll need to add a header and a footer to this file so that SSL can recognize it as a certificate.

The header should be
“– – – – –BEGIN CERTIFICATE– – – – –”
and the footer should be
“– – – – –END CERTIFICATE– – – – –”

Place each on their own line in the file and do not include the double quotes. Stripped down example:

At this point you can simply copy and paste the whole file into http://certlogik.com/decoder/. Scroll down a little and look for the properties. Copy and paste the Fingerprint (SHA-1) into your service and you should be all set. If you are not comfortable using this site you can use openssl command line tools.

My Take:
When you first start a business your goal shouldn’t be to sell it for as much money as you can. That rarely works. You should start a business because you think it is cool, people will like it and because you are passionate about it. Then you create a great customer experience so people stay with you. The intangibles. The product matters but the people behind the products matter more. There are dozens of companies that do what you do. The people who sell, implement and support day to day are what keep a customer happy. They want to trust you will do the right thing for them. As Seth said, once those things are taken care of then revenue solves itself.

To borrow from James Carville’s “It’s the economy stupid.” — I think this can be boiled down to, “It’s the people stupid.”

Great Advice.

5 Signs It’s Time To Jump Shipp (And Quit Your Dead-End Job)

• Unplug the washing machine.
• Remove the panel on the front by removing three screws at the very bottom. You will probably need to tilt it back to get a good angle on them.
• The pump is in the center and has a plastic handle that can be unscrewed to remove the filter. As you unscrew it water will come out. Be ready with some towels.
• Look amazed at the dirty filter.
• Clean the filter.
• Put it all back in.

I did a small load with the front panel off just to make sure there were no leaks before I put it back on.

As I started to follow the tutorial on getting setup I started to run into issues. After googling around a bit I finally got things rolling so I hope this saves some people a little bit of time.

Issue 1: make: command not found

This was an easy one. I had to install XCODE 4.3 using the App Store.

Once I installed XCode I was hoping to be on my way again but quickly ran into another issue. Turns out the command-line tools are now a separate install within the XCode application. To install the command-line tools look under the “Downloads” tab of the preferences panel, under “Components”.

I tried to continue but ran into the next issue.

I later found out I could have just downloaded the command line tools from: Downloads for Apple Developers. 
I confirmed this with another developer in my office who was trying the same setup.

Issue 2: rvm requires autoreconf to install the selected ruby interpreter however autoreconf was not found in the PATH

After a little research it appears Apple no longer provides this tool so I had to find the gcc. I came across a few articles and multiple variations but the simplest seemed to be just to download the package from: : https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer/downloads

I am sure there are other ways to get this going but it worked for me. Please let me know if this worked for you or if you had any variations that could help others.

• Once you’re sure an employee isn’t working out, act on that conclusion. The longer it takes to fire someone, the more you’re in danger of losing respect from the rest of the organization.
• Firing someone is never something we want to do, but it’s inevitable, and if you’re a leader it’s something you’re going to have to get used to.
• Nobody likes conflict, but while you dither, your company may lose customers, money, or productivity.
• Tolerating sub-par performance can also impact the morale of other employees.
• Other employees will want to leave if they feel they’re not being recognized while someone else is doing less and getting a break.

It is never fun firing someone, especially in this economy, but bad employees can be a drain on an organization. If you are having discussions on a regular basis about a bad employee it is time to pull the trigger and move on. You will be happier and so will your employees.

I’d add, ‘try’ not to alter your road map for a client. As great as the deal is, as much as you want to close it and do whatever it takes to close the deal, once you get into this cycle you will go from being a software/product company to a pro-services company. Once in a while it might make sense, but be careful, once you start to slide down that slope it is hard to turn back.

According to nationmaster.com the United States is #1 for:

• Oil Consumption
• Assault by Rifle, Shotgun or Larger Firearm
• Drunk Neighbors
• Death by Reptile
• Car Thefts
• Obesity
• Divorce Rate
• Defense Budget
• Television Viewing
• External Debt (Owed to Other Countries)

Here is where we rank in a few things that matter:

• 15th – Infrastructure
• 32nd – Air Transportation Infrastructure, behind Panama and Malaysia
• 18th – Port Infrastructure
• 22nd – Rail Infrastructure
• US Students rank 32nd in Math
• US Students rank 17th in Reading

As Dean Wormer said, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son.”

How about Sponsored Likes or even just enhancing the existing Likes. Either method could potentially allow the Page owner to earn revenue like a site does with Google Ads today. When someone wanted to run a new ad in Facebook, options would be presented of possible Pages their targeted audience may visit. I am sure Facebook has all the demographic information already on Pages so this should be an easy addition.

Sponsored or Enhanced Links could also just be used for the Page owner to promote something special going on.