DACS General Meeting By Lisa Leifels On Tuesday, November 6th we were very fortunate to have Joe Mazzeo and Dr. James Marcus from Crossfire Consulting give us a joint presentation on the current trends in mobile computing. Crossfire Consulting is based in Yorktown Heights, New York and is a full service information technology company that develops software, places people in IT jobs, and now offers courses in building Advanced Websites and Mobile Apps. One of the reasons Crossfire began educating students in the latest mobile technology was because they were having trouble finding people with the skills they needed to do the work that their customers demanded. The meeting started off with a few statistics showing some of the current trends from the year 2011:
What conclusions can we draw from these measurements? Does this mean email is on its way out? We’ve often been told to watch young people to see where technology is headed. By now most of us have figured out if you want to get the attention of a teenager, you’re better off sending them a text message, instead of an antiquated email. Facebook and Twitter do seem to be everywhere you look and who doesn’t enjoy watching a video on their handheld device, which is always with you and much more convenient. Although there are more people who own Android devices, Steve Jobs would be happy to hear that most of the apps that are purchased are for people who own an iPhone. It was interesting to hear the story about how Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, was one of the early pioneers of cloud computing. Jeff Bezos started asking questions about the business, people, and power, and discovered that hardware and software make up 82% of his company's costs. At one time Amazon had a data center everywhere they had a warehouse, which was getting to be expensive. He realized that the hardware and software costs were going to come down over time, and that with the use of virtualization technology his costs would eventually be reduced. A lot of the utility companies in many states give businesses inexpensive rates for power. Data centers started popping up in the states that gave away free power. It takes about 7 people to man a data center 24x7X365. Jeff Bezos consolidated Amazon’s data centers to reduce their expenses. Then he made the wise decision to commercialize what he learned and in 2002 Amazon Web Services came into existence. Amazon may have been one of the first companies to use the cloud, but the cloud is lowering the costs for everyone on the web. Now that the majority of consumers are using multiple devices, Crossfire believes in the 1’-2’-10’ design rule, which refers to the distance between a screen and a person’s face. A smartphone is usually about a foot away, the tablet and desktop computer are about 2 feet away and a television is approximately 10 feet away. First design your website for a smartphone, second design it for a tablet and finally design your site for a desktop, which was referred to as a boat anchor in the presentation, since you can’t take it with you. Most people would prefer to be looking at a website that looks appealing when it is viewed in a way that is presentable on all of your devices. In general, mobile consumers use less of the ‘classic’ web, which consists of webmail, weather sites, map sites, PDF’s and multi-page documents, preferring to use apps, video, Instant Messaging and SMS. The audience was eager to hear more about the two courses that Crossfire is currently offering. The first one is called Building Advanced Websites & Basic Mobile Apps and it began on September 8, 2012. It is held on Saturdays from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm and goes through February 3, 2013. The second course is Building Native Mobile Apps for Android & IOS Devices and began on September 10th, 2012. It is held on Monday evenings from 5:30 pm to 9:30 pm and goes through January 28, 2013. The first course is not a prerequisite for the second and both are taught at the Crossfire headquarters in Yorktown Heights, NY. The next session will be starting up in March of 2013. The best part of all was finding out that there is no tuition fee, but keep in mind that the classes are limited to 40 students on a first-come, first-qualified basis. And the reality is nothing is ever really free. If you do decide to take one of these courses, you must make the commitment to attend the classes and do the homework, which takes approximately 8-9 hours a week outside of class. The class is filmed and you do have the opportunity to review and replay the parts that you may have missed. The class is set up to use an Eclipse environment for version control, which is similar to most work environments. Their current students range in age from 21 to 75. Crossfire believes that it’s possible for anyone to learn this new technology if they put the time into it. The teachers at Crossfire were blown away to find out that after only 16 weeks of class their students actually got jobs. It may be human nature to resist change but deep down we all know that we live in a world that is constantly changing and if we don’t at least acknowledge this, we will be left behind. It’s hard not to notice the growing number of people who are using smartphones and tablets for working, shopping, and travelling and all kinds of tasks that used to be done on a laptop or desktop. With the high unemployment rate constantly in the news, it’s encouraging to hear that there are job opportunities available for people who are willing to put the energy into learning something new. It’s good to see that a company like Crossfire is embracing the recent changes and has transformed itself from a company that solely created software to a company that teaches people the skills that are need to be successful in today’s world. If you would like to learn more about what Crossfire has to offer, you can go to their website at CrossfireConsulting.com.
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