Desktop Sharing Portal

Desktop sharing technologies have existed since the late 80s. It is often used in scenarios where collaborative computing is beneficial to participants in the shared environment by the control of the more knowledgeable party. But the steps required in establishing a session is often cumbersome to many. Selection of a sharing method, obtaining sharing target’s network address, sharing tool’s desired ports, and firewall issues are major hurdles for a typical non-IT user. In this project, I have constructed a web-portal that helps collaborators to easily locate each other and initialize sharing sessions. The portal that I developed enables collaborated sessions to start as easily as browsing to a URL of the sharing service provider, with no need to download or follow installation instructions on either party’s end. In addition, I have added video conferencing and audio streaming capability to bring better collaborative and multimedia experience

Chasing Sustainability on the Net : International research on 69 journalistic pure players and their business models

This report outlines how online-based journalistic startups have created their economical locker in the evolving media ecology. The research introduces the ways that startups have found sustainability in the markets of ten countries. The work is based on 69 case studies from Europe, USA and Japan. The case analysis shows that business models can be divided into two groups. The storytelling-oriented business models are still prevalent in our findings. These are the online journalistic outlets that produce original content – news and stories for audiences. But the other group, service-oriented business models, seems to be growing. This group consists of sites that don’t try to monetize the journalistic content as such but rather focus on carving out new functionality. The project was able to identify several revenue sources: advertising, paying for content, affiliate marketing, donations, selling data or services, organizing events, freelancing and training or selling merchandise. Where it was hard to evidence entirely new revenue sources, it was however possible to find new ways in which revenue sources have been combined or reconfigured. The report also offers practical advice for those who are planning to start their own journalistic site

Leveraging knowledge at startups

Startups contribute to the economy and job creation in the United States. One of the primary assets of startups is tacit knowledge of the employees of the startup. Technical communicators can help startups capture, share, and leverage the tacit knowledge at startups. Technical communicators could benefit from learning how knowledge management initiatives at startups work. The current study is an ethnographic case-study that was conducted at a fast-growing startup in California. The data for the study was collected through observations, informal and semi-structured formal interviews with participants, and feedback from customers of the startup. The collected data was analyzed based on Wick\u27s conceptual framework. The framework describes four perspectives that technical communicators should know about knowledge management initiatives: document perspective, technological perspective, socio-organizational perspective, and knowledge organization perspective. The study shows that at the research site, the content creation process for knowledge management initiatives is similar to the technical writing process for documentation projects. Technical communicators are expected to be technologically proficient in collaborative tools, authoring tools, as well as complex products of the startup. Technical communicators need to secure buy-in from all stakeholders and develop rapport with SMEs. Finally, knowledge management initiatives were on the radar of senior management at the startup. Being a part of high-visibility team could help technical communicators advance their careers. However, the conclusions are relevant only to the research site and cannot be generalized --Abstract, page iii

Sherpany: should I stay or should I go; successful IT nearshoring of a tech startup

The sun slowly sinks into the Atlantic Ocean, casting its last golden rays onto the aggressively breaking waves below the Cabo da Roca. Their fury and power is not lost on Tobias Häckermann, the CEO of Sherpany. The idyllic scene in front of him has come to symbolize his Portuguese adventure - beautiful and rewarding. The Swiss CEO paused in the striking sunset for a moment of reflection. The events of the last year (2014) had been remarkable. Sherpany, his invention and a technology company providing solutions for boardroom communication, was gaining traction. Sales were now in the millions of Euros.1 Demand for services was high and the future was bright. This success story is not the result of just good fortune but rather the culmination of many strategic milestones. Häckermann’s hometown of Zurich (Switzerland) is one of the most expensive cities in the world (see Exhibit 1). It was impossible to enlist IT talent and exorbitant fixed operating costs threatened the viability of his business model. In short, Sherpany faced the classic “valley of death” scenario2a that every startup must overcome. In Häckermann’s case, the need for a fast and cost-effective way to securely grow the company and keep ahead of the competition forced him to nearshore a significant part of his operations - to Portugal. In hindsight, it all seemed so logical: a short flight from Zurich, great weather, 1-hour time difference, lower costs of labour, and abundant local IT talent looking for international opportunities, and all under the security blanket of the EU

Understanding Barriers to Internal Startups in Large Organizations: Evidence from a Globally Distributed Company

Large global companies need to speed up their innovation activities to increase competitive advantage. However, such companies' organizational structures impede their ability to capture trends they are well aware of due to bureaucracy, slow decision-making, distributed departments, and distributed processes. One way to strengthen the innovation capability is through fostering internal startups. We report findings from an embedded multiple-case study of five internal startups in a globally distributed company to identify barriers for software product innovation: late involvement of software developers, executive sponsor is missing or not clarified, yearly budgeting and planning, unclear decision-making authority, lack of digital infrastructure for experimentation and access to data from external actors. Drawing on the framework of continuous software engineering proposed by Fitzgerald and Stol, we discuss the role of BizDev in software product innovation. We suggest that lack of continuity, rather than the lack of speed, is an ultimate challenge for internal startups in large global companies.acceptedVersio