Study Three - Key Stakeholders Interviews: Educational Institutions

Workforce Now is a regional research initiative to identify current and future talent requirements for the five counties of Southwest Florida. The initiative was created in October 2012 as an outcome of the Education Summits produced by The News-Press Media Group. The initiative is designed as a systematic, multi-year program designed to provide better information on workforce gaps including skills and characteristics desired by regional employers, and to understand and meet the critical workforce needs in the Southwest Florida region.PREFACE …. ................................................................................................... i RESEARCH TEAM/SUPPORT ....................................................................... iv EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................................................ v 1.0 INTRODUCTION & METHODOLOGY ...................................................... 1 2.0 STUDY FINDINGS ................................................................................... 5 APPENDICE A: Interview Guide…. ............................................................... 1

IT Employment in Southwest Florida: Opportunities and Challenges

This study examines information technology related fields; the education, certification, and experience required for employment in those fields; the outlook for those who would seek employment in IT; and prospective positions resulting from emerging technologies. The study covers employers in the five counties that comprise Southwest Florida - Charlotte (16%), Collier (56%), Glades (4%), Hendy (13%), and Lee (47%) - and clusters employers into four groups ranging from 1-5 to greater than 500.Preface ………………………………………………………………………………. 1 Executive Summary ……………………………………………………………. 4 Introduction & Methodology……………………………………………… 8 I. General ………………………………………………………………………. 11-12 II. Type of Service …………………………………………………………… 13 III. In-house Services………………………………………………………… 14-27 Size of Company………………………………………………………….. 14-16 Major IT Job Classifications ………………………………………… 17 Difficulty Filling IT Positions ………………………………………… 19-21 Fastest Growing IT Positions ………………………………………. 22 New Emerging Jobs in IT …………………………………………….. 24 Formal Training/College Degrees Recommended ………. 26 Industry Certifications Recommended ……………………….. 27 IV. Contract for Services…………………………………………………… 28-29 V. Software Applications…………………………………………………. 30-34 Software Applications Being Used ………………………………. 30 Software Training 32 VI. Internships………………………………………………………………….. 35-38 VII. Comments…………………………………………………………………… VIII. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………… 39 39 IX. Appendix (Survey Questionnaire) ……………………………….. 40-4

Contingency for Cost Control in Project Management: A Case Study

This paper provides a case study of the application of cost management techniques for project management of capital works within a major Australian electricity corporation. Historical data was collected from the corporation's archived files to establish the performance status of completed capital works projects. A survey of the corporation's project staff was also conducted to determine the current usage of cost management techniques and further explore the findings of the historical data search.The research indicates a reluctance to utilise formal cost management procedures on minor projects, estimated to cost less than $1 million. The time constraints allocated to project management planning and the perceived cost to implement procedures were identified as contributing to the limited use of formal cost management on minor projects.The paper concludes that increased risk of poor budget performance is inevitable if formal cost control is not applied to capital works projects, and recommends informal risk assessment and cost contingency measures to address this issue

Study Three - Key Stakeholders Interviews: Educational Institutions

Workforce Now is a regional research initiative to identify current and future talent requirements for the five counties of Southwest Florida. The initiative was created in October 2012 as an outcome of the Education Summits produced by The News-Press Media Group. The initiative is designed as a systematic, multi-year program designed to provide better information on workforce gaps including skills and characteristics desired by regional employers, and to understand and meet the critical workforce needs in the Southwest Florida region.PREFACE …. ................................................................................................... i RESEARCH TEAM/SUPPORT ....................................................................... iv EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................................................ v 1.0 INTRODUCTION & METHODOLOGY ...................................................... 1 2.0 STUDY FINDINGS ................................................................................... 5 APPENDICE A: Interview Guide…. ............................................................... 1

IT Employment in Southwest Florida: Opportunities and Challenges

This study examines information technology related fields; the education, certification, and experience required for employment in those fields; the outlook for those who would seek employment in IT; and prospective positions resulting from emerging technologies. The study covers employers in the five counties that comprise Southwest Florida - Charlotte (16%), Collier (56%), Glades (4%), Hendy (13%), and Lee (47%) - and clusters employers into four groups ranging from 1-5 to greater than 500.Preface ………………………………………………………………………………. 1 Executive Summary ……………………………………………………………. 4 Introduction & Methodology……………………………………………… 8 I. General ………………………………………………………………………. 11-12 II. Type of Service …………………………………………………………… 13 III. In-house Services………………………………………………………… 14-27 Size of Company………………………………………………………….. 14-16 Major IT Job Classifications ………………………………………… 17 Difficulty Filling IT Positions ………………………………………… 19-21 Fastest Growing IT Positions ………………………………………. 22 New Emerging Jobs in IT …………………………………………….. 24 Formal Training/College Degrees Recommended ………. 26 Industry Certifications Recommended ……………………….. 27 IV. Contract for Services…………………………………………………… 28-29 V. Software Applications…………………………………………………. 30-34 Software Applications Being Used ………………………………. 30 Software Training 32 VI. Internships………………………………………………………………….. 35-38 VII. Comments…………………………………………………………………… VIII. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………… 39 39 IX. Appendix (Survey Questionnaire) ……………………………….. 40-4

A Call to Action

In October 2018, I had a call to action. It was the not the result of an unarmed Black man unnecessarily killed by a white police officer, nor the horrific botching of a no-knock search warrant in a woman’s apartment resulting in her death. My call to action came when a Black colleague, Denver District Court Judge William Robbins, announced his retirement. At that time, Judge Robbins was the only Black district court judge out of 181 in the state of Colorado. Soon after, Colorado Court of Appeals Judge Karen Ashby, a Black woman, announced her retirement. She was the only Black appellate court judge or justice out of 29 in Colorado. These two announced retirements could have resulted in zero Black judges on the highest courts of Colorado. This possibility distressed me. It seemed that the prospect of bringing diversity to Colorado’s judicial branch, initiated by the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, had come to a halt. The potential of zero Black judges and an equally bleak number of Hispanic judges at the highest judicial levels was more than just an embarrassment to our legal system—it was an affront to our judiciary and to the citizens of Colorado

An investigation of the impact of language runtime on the performance and cost of serverless functions

Serverless, otherwise known as “Function-as-a- Service” (FaaS), is a compelling evolution of cloud computing that is highly scalable and event-driven. Serverless applications are composed of multiple independent functions, each of which can be implemented in a range of programming languages. This paper seeks to understand the impact of the choice of language runtime on the performance and subsequent cost of serverless function execution. It presents the design and implementation of a new serverless performance testing framework created to analyse performance and cost metrics for both AWS Lambda and Azure Functions. For optimum performance and cost management of serverless applications, Python is the clear choice on AWS Lambda. C# .NET is the top performer and most economical option for Azure Functions. NodeJS on Azure Functions and .NET Core 2 on AWS should be avoided or at the very least, used carefully in order to avoid their potentially slow and costly start-up times

Group Play in Games and the Role of Consent in Network Formation

We study games played between groups of players, where a given group decides which strategy it will play through a vote by its members. When groups consist of two voting players, our games can also be interpreted as network-formation games. In experiments on Stag Hunt games, we find that that the structure of the voting rule completely determines which equilibrium is played, independently of the payoff structure. Thus, we find a stark contrast between how groups and individuals play our games, with payoffs playing a much more important role in equilibrium selection in the latter case. We also explore play between groups where one member of each group dictates the play of that group. We find that the dictator tends to play a less risky strategy when choosing for a group than when playing only for him or herself. We develop a new solution concept, robust-belief equilibrium, which explains the data that we observe. We provide results showing that this solution concept has application beyond the particular games in our experiments

The Oregon Sustainable Community Digital Library: Built to Fill a Need

The article focuses on the launching of the Oregon Sustainable Community Digital Library (OSCDL) at the Portland State University Library in Portland, Oregon. The digital library is created to be a central repository for an access of historical planning documents within the area. The collaboration among the university, library, state and municipal agencies in this common goal has made the project more significant. Making the digitalization of vital planning reports and images from the 1960s through 1990s has been the latest goal of the project. This is in line of its vision in making information accessible regardless of physical location and off-site storage