IT Insights Blog — TestOut Life

Once a year in spring, usually about the time that summer is just around the corner, TestOut staffers can be found on their hands and knees digging thousands of small holes. It's not some sort of delayed celebration of Groundhog Day where we construct seasonal burrows for the prophetic earth-dwelling rodents. Rather, we team up with employees of Pleasant Grove, the Utah city where our home offices are located, to beautify locations around town.

There are many, many different conferences, conventions, and other gatherings that are themed around IT, education, or some combination of the two. Frequently, tech groups rope in celebrities (or at least "celebrities") to speak at such events. Former NBA MVP Shaquille O'Neal will be at CompTIA's ChannelCon event in August. Hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger will deliver the keynote address at (ISC)²'s Security Congress gathering in October.

About this time last year, intrepid TestOut account manager Wendy Edwards used some MoonPie snack cakes as a promotional giveaway at a conference. For those of you not in the know, a MoonPie is sort of like a jumbo s'more, only frozen in time instead of fresh from the campfire. The basic blueprint is two graham crackers (cut round), with a marshmallow pattie between them, with the whole thing dipped in chocolate. It probably either sounds delicious or repulsively sweet.

It was poet, biographer, and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sandberg who wrote, "Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come," a charming witticism that has echoed down through the ages. Here at TestOut Continuing Education, we enjoy a piquant commentary as much as the next bystander

As the old saying goes, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. And nobody likes a dull boy. Maybe more to the point, a dull boy — or girl — probably doesn't get nearly as much work done as someone who's a little bit fresher and livelier. If you can figure out ways for your work team to get regular breaks from whatever their routine is, then those same employees are likely to be more invested and energetic when it's "back to the grind" time.