IT Insights Blog — Office Pro

Once upon about five tons of hair gel and many, many dope threads ago, a vocal quintet from Boston (more specifically from Dorchester) burst onto the late-1980s music scene with the release of smooth ditty called "Please Don't Go Girl." Thus was the origin of New Edition. Or was it N Sync? Or maybe that's how Backstreet Boys came to be. Or it perhaps could have been 98 Degrees. The point is not what they called themselves, but that they were part of a teen boy band new wave.

Twenty-four years ago, Microsoft launched one of the best remembered ad campaigns in the history of Madison Avenue. The focus of the campaign, albeit elliptically, was the then-pending release of Windows 95, the 15th iteration of the world's most ubiquitous (even at the time) computer operating system. The tag line, "Where do you want to go today," is still alive and well in the vernacular.

I recently read an article in Certification Magazine about an older woman who suffers from physical disabilities so severe that she was considered unemployable. Lois Agler made her way to a Goodwill facility in Michigan that offered free IT training. She trained using PC Pro, earned her CompTIA A+ certification and is now working as a Tier-1 helpdesk technician earning more than $19 an hour. The article reminded me of a conversation with one of my Office Pro customers who suffers from dyslexia, a developmental reading disorder in which the brain has trouble recognizing and processing certain letters.

Databases are an essential part of our modern society. They’re so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget how often we deal with them. Let’s look at a typical Friday evening and count the databases you’ll encounter along the way: At 5:00, you clock out using your company’s time keeping software (1) and drive home. On the way, you stop by the grocery store. You scan each of your items using the self-checkout stand (2), swipe your loyalty card (3), and pay with your debit card (4).

Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi had a passion for reviewing the basics. At the start of every season, he would stand in front of his players, hold up the ball, and say, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” Lombardi would then explain the basics of what a football is and its role in the game. He would follow this up by taking the team onto the field and explaining the out-of-bounds and yard lines and the end zones. Lombardi didn’t think his players were stupid, and he knew what he wasn't telling them anything they didn’t already know. He just strongly believed that having the basics firmly in mind was essential to long-term success.