Where do I begin? This class honestly exceeded my expectations.

Jun, without a doubt made each class session interesting and I always left each session with something to ponder about. Whether it was learning the functionality of Google Sites, Wikis, blogs, Workday, DataDimensions, Mr. Ted, Successfactors, and many many more -- I never managed to stop learning something new in this class. Each of my classmates always brought something new to the table, making each session an engaging and extremely interactive one. The two together made this class one I didn't want to miss.

I accomplished doing two new things in the 10 wks - one skyping into class & delivering a presentation w/out using "paper". Skyping into class was a first and probably last time, because I don't know any other professor who would let us do so. Delivering the presentation paperless was nervewrecking and awesome all at the same time. Thanks to Jun & my classmates for giving me the courage to do so. I will def. remember both these moments.

I learned what I had hoped but unfortunately as it is ending it is making me yearn for more. I really had hoped to dive more into each system and gain a better understanding of HRIS as a whole. I guess the 10 wk session didn't leave us time to get into minuet detail...but it did leave me with the basic knowledge to grasp any new system I come across in the future.

I now can confidently speak about What web 2.0 really is and check in with Bill Kutik if I need direction.

Thank you to all the individuals who brought in snacks. It made each session feel like we were a family and the bonds we made will hopefully helps us to keep in touch.

Signing out...

-Ekta

As Jun mentioned the other day, this week or next week we will be listening to a presentation from someone at SuccessFactors. After hearing this I realized I didn't have any real background on who they are. Looking around at their website I def. learned a great deal. SuccessFactors is a human resource company who emphasizes on the relationship between managers & employers. They focus on business alignment & people performance. One part which was really neat in the Business Demo was the Ranker page. You can clearly identify your over-achievers and low performers. You can also scale them on a 1 to 5 graphic rating scale. The software also helps you to eliminate any gaps.

The interface reminded me slightly of Workday. Clean, crisp, and easy to pick up. They def. seem to emphasize more on performance then anything else. Getting the right people in the right place to achieve the right goals. I think this software would be more beneficial to a larger organization.

I'm excited to see more of SuccessFactors in the coming weeks.

This class seems to keep amazing me again and again. :) I'm gonna be a rock star in Web 2.0 after this! j/k :)

Tonight I explored the world of Google Forms. Super easy, Super convenient, Super efficient, Super friendly, Super pretty, Super Super Super! I created a form in matter of minutes. I love the form templates, and how clean and crisp they look. They have such an elegant feel and professional touch. This is definitely one feature on Google that I will be using a lot, recommending and bragging about!

Tonight I decided to take a look at Zoho Creator. I started off by surfing around the website to pick up some general knowledge of the SAAS based database. The interface is straightforward & easy to navigate. The templates they provide are a superb feature for someone who is new to the site. I love the schedule feature!!! You can have all sorts of reports scheduled to be delivered to your inbox on specific dates. This is extremely convenient and a great add-on to the site. I like how you can customize the database to suite your individual needs. And the last thing that I found pretty neat was that you can embed any of the forms onto your own website directly from the Zoho creator site.

I'm sure to an expert database creator, Zoho may not fill its needs but for a newbie this definitely does the job. I will for sure keep Zoho Creator in mind for the future. Zoho Creator was intuitive & very impressive.

Plateau

Hey Everyone,

Sorry I have been MIA for sometime. I'm excited to dive back and learn more about HR Technology. Today, I started off with learning about Plateau Systems. Plateau, is a SAAS based Talent Management System. Looking at the Plateau 6.1 Interactive Tour was extremely informative in getting to know this product. I can definitely see a large company or fast paced company benefiting from this type of SAAS. The four elements in their package include performance, compensation, career&succession, and learning.

Plateau along with others out there are focusing on shifting from an on-premise to being a SAAS based company. You can definitely get that vibe from surfing on Plateau's website. They emphasize the benefits of being a SAAS talent management provider. Bill Kutik's podcast featuring Paul Sparta the Chairman & CEO of Plateau was a great podcast to listen to if you want to hear more about SAAS vs. On-premise. A few of the companies he discussed were Taleo, Workday, Verve,Plateau and more. I believe SAAS is the way to go, being a web 2.0 country this type of software is more efficient, streamlined and easy to pick-up. The Workday presentation yesterday in class was a great example of how SAAS is taking over.

Watching this video was similar to reading the article "What is Web 2.0?". The difference, this article focuses more on the back end of websites. I liked watching it to see the differences between HTML and XML. Learning about the format in which sites are written is a whole new world to me. I sometimes wish I could grasp this topic a lot better. Reading how XML separates form and content doesn't make complete sense, I get the gist but its not completely clear. Watching this video definitely helped to give some clarity.
I love blogs and think they are a great source of sharing information. Except I'm really bad in checking my google reader or my blogger dashboard to keep up with new items. I wish there was some type of push notification or an application where you can glance easily. I'm sure you can keep your google reader/blogger dashboard open in your window but you still have to manually check it.
Web 2.0 is definitely changing society and the way we should think. Taking this class seems to be the first step since we're all communicating in the cloud.

The Machine is Us/ing Us YouTube video

Having a background in online media and being pretty internet savvy I thought I would breeze through this article but I was wrong. I definitely got the gist of what web 2.0 is but all the computer babble kept making me re-think what I read.
Being part of the Generation X crowd I witnessed the move from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. In the section about RSS feeds I realized how convenient web 2.0 has made things. In the past I would have to go to 10 different websites just to get all my news and now I can use an RSS feeder or Google reader. Web 2.0 has definitely made things more efficient and easily accessible.
My husband always talks about how Perl is starting to get outdated and his company currently uses it. At first it was just a foreign language to me but now I get what he is talking about. He mentions how his company is trying to move into Ruby on Rails. He told about the site Tiobe which tells the current rankings for programming languages.
Soooo, I've heard over the term VOIP(VOICE OVER IP) but never really truly understood what it meant. But after reading this article I realized I use it every single day through my house phone line OOMA. Ooma lets you make free U.S. calls over the Internet with your existing home phone.
And the last item I want to mention is AJAX. Allowing pages to update without reloading makes the user experience extremely seamless. After reading about AJAX, I noticed how many sites that I use on a daily basis use this function. Some examples are Flickr, Facebook, Googlemaps, Twitter, and ESPN.