Jekyll2023-10-15T07:07:39+00:00https://samjenkins.com/feed.xmlSam JenkinsMy little piece of the Internet
Sam JenkinsBusiness Card Tips2023-10-10T11:30:11+00:002023-10-10T11:30:11+00:00https://samjenkins.com/business-card-tips<p>You might wonder if business cards are relevant in today’s digital age. Surprisingly, they are. They remain a powerful tool for networking and making a memorable first impression. A physical card is tangible and leaves a lasting mark, especially when it stands out. While I’m no networking guru, I’ve picked up a few useful tips along the way that might help you make the most out of your business cards.</p>
<h2 id="include-your-photo">Include Your Photo</h2>
<p>During a networking event, you’re likely to speak to many people; however, remembering who those people were and which business card relates to whom can be challenging.</p>
<p>Adding a picture of yourself to your business card can help improve the chances that the person you were talking to can remember that you were the person they wanted to speak to about their next JV or connect you to someone useful.</p>
<p>Choose a professional, friendly photo that aligns with your brand image to leave a lasting impression.</p>
<h2 id="link-to-linktree">Link to Linktr.ee</h2>
<p>Incorporate a link to your Linktr.ee profile. Linktr.ee is a convenient tool that allows you to compile various links into a single, easily accessible page. This way, you can direct people to your social media profiles, website, or portfolio, providing them with a comprehensive view of your online presence.</p>
<p>This is an excellent way of giving them access to various resources about you without using up all the space on your business card. “Want to book a meeting with me? There’s a link for that on my linktr.ee”</p>
<p>Linktr.ee isn’t the only available option. However, it seems to be the most popular.</p>
<h2 id="qr-code-for-vcard">QR Code for vCard</h2>
<p>Including a QR Code that leads to your vCard (electronic business card) is a modern and efficient touch. It simplifies the process for others to save your contact information directly to their smartphones, making it more likely for them to contact you later.</p>
<p>When I give someone a business card, I’m not just looking for them to have my business card; I want to be on their contacts list. I want it to be easy for them to call/message me when they think of me.</p>
<p>Remember that a vCard QR Code will be far more detailed than the QR Code for a link. While it might be helpful to get onto your business card if you don’t have the QR Code large enough on your card, it won’t be possible for people to scan the code, so make it as big as you can reasonably get away with.</p>
<h2 id="use-both-sides">Use Both Sides</h2>
<p>If all of that sounds like a lot of information to fit into a single side of a business card, then you’re right; it is. However, so many people seem to forget that there are two sides to every business card. Using the back of your business card to provide more information can be a great way to include everything you want without the business card getting too cluttered.</p>
<p>Personally, I have my photo and QR code on the back of my business card, leaving the front free for the more usual details.</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Front of card</th>
<th>Back of card</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="../assets/images/2023/Front_of_card.png" alt="Front of card" /></td>
<td><img src="../assets/images/2023/Back_of_card.png" alt="Back of card" /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2 id="have-a-trades-card">Have a Trades Card</h2>
<p>Consider creating a separate business card specifically for trades. This card can offer incentives, such as a finder’s fee, encouraging tradespeople to refer potential vendors to you. By establishing this sort of partnership, you open up a direct avenue to potential leads, particularly those interested in selling property.</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Trade card</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="../assets/images/2023/Trade_card.png" alt="Trade card" /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2 id="final-thoughts">Final Thoughts</h2>
<p>Let me know if these tips pique your interest and if you’d like to learn how to implement them effectively! I’d be happy to create a guide to help you make the most out of your business cards in this digital age. Networking is about making meaningful connections, and a well-designed business card can pave the way.</p>SatalYou might wonder if business cards are relevant in today’s digital age. Surprisingly, they are. They remain a powerful tool for networking and making a memorable first impression. A physical card is tangible and leaves a lasting mark, especially when it stands out. While I’m no networking guru, I’ve picked up a few useful tips along the way that might help you make the most out of your business cards. Include Your Photo During a networking event, you’re likely to speak to many people; however, remembering who those people were and which business card relates to whom can be challenging. Adding a picture of yourself to your business card can help improve the chances that the person you were talking to can remember that you were the person they wanted to speak to about their next JV or connect you to someone useful. Choose a professional, friendly photo that aligns with your brand image to leave a lasting impression. Link to Linktr.ee Incorporate a link to your Linktr.ee profile. Linktr.ee is a convenient tool that allows you to compile various links into a single, easily accessible page. This way, you can direct people to your social media profiles, website, or portfolio, providing them with a comprehensive view of your online presence. This is an excellent way of giving them access to various resources about you without using up all the space on your business card. “Want to book a meeting with me? There’s a link for that on my linktr.ee” Linktr.ee isn’t the only available option. However, it seems to be the most popular. QR Code for vCard Including a QR Code that leads to your vCard (electronic business card) is a modern and efficient touch. It simplifies the process for others to save your contact information directly to their smartphones, making it more likely for them to contact you later. When I give someone a business card, I’m not just looking for them to have my business card; I want to be on their contacts list. I want it to be easy for them to call/message me when they think of me. Remember that a vCard QR Code will be far more detailed than the QR Code for a link. While it might be helpful to get onto your business card if you don’t have the QR Code large enough on your card, it won’t be possible for people to scan the code, so make it as big as you can reasonably get away with. Use Both Sides If all of that sounds like a lot of information to fit into a single side of a business card, then you’re right; it is. However, so many people seem to forget that there are two sides to every business card. Using the back of your business card to provide more information can be a great way to include everything you want without the business card getting too cluttered. Personally, I have my photo and QR code on the back of my business card, leaving the front free for the more usual details. Front of card Back of card Have a Trades Card Consider creating a separate business card specifically for trades. This card can offer incentives, such as a finder’s fee, encouraging tradespeople to refer potential vendors to you. By establishing this sort of partnership, you open up a direct avenue to potential leads, particularly those interested in selling property. Trade card Final Thoughts Let me know if these tips pique your interest and if you’d like to learn how to implement them effectively! I’d be happy to create a guide to help you make the most out of your business cards in this digital age. Networking is about making meaningful connections, and a well-designed business card can pave the way.IT Risk Prompts2022-07-03T11:30:11+00:002022-07-03T11:30:11+00:00https://samjenkins.com/it-risk-prompts<p>Identifying what risks you hold across your IT infrastructure is a key part of any risk management strategy. This is especially true when it comes to your data. If you don’t know what risks you hold, you can’t manage them. This is why it’s important to have a risk management strategy in place.</p>
<p>To help you identify what risks you hold, I’ve put together a list of IT risk prompts. These prompts will help you identify what risks you hold across your IT infrastructure. This isn’t an exhaustive list, and not all of the items on this list will be applicable to all organisations but it should give you a good starting point.</p>
<h2 id="security">Security</h2>
<ol>
<li>Network security:
<ul>
<li>Firewall protection
<ul>
<li>Stateful inspection</li>
<li>Application-level gateways</li>
<li>Network address translation (NAT)</li>
<li>Demilitarized zone (DMZ)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Intrusion detection and prevention
<ul>
<li>Signature-based detection</li>
<li>Anomaly-based detection</li>
<li>Behavior-based detection</li>
<li>Network-based detection</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Virtual private networks (VPNs)
<ul>
<li>Site-to-site VPNs</li>
<li>Remote access VPNs</li>
<li>SSL VPNs</li>
<li>IPsec VPNs</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption
<ul>
<li>SSL certificates</li>
<li>SSL key exchange methods</li>
<li>SSL protocol versions</li>
<li>SSL termination points</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Access controls:
<ul>
<li>Password policies
<ul>
<li>Password complexity requirements</li>
<li>Password aging requirements</li>
<li>Password history requirements</li>
<li>Password storage and protection</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Two-factor authentication
<ul>
<li>Something you know (e.g., password)</li>
<li>Something you have (e.g., smart card)</li>
<li>Something you are (e.g., biometric data)</li>
<li>Multi-factor authentication</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Role-based access control (RBAC)
<ul>
<li>User roles and permissions</li>
<li>Group roles and permissions</li>
<li>Resource-based access control</li>
<li>Attribute-based access control</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Account management
<ul>
<li>User provisioning and deprovisioning</li>
<li>Account lockout policies</li>
<li>Account recovery procedures</li>
<li>Account auditing and monitoring</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Data encryption:
<ul>
<li>Symmetric and asymmetric encryption
<ul>
<li>Key management</li>
<li>Key exchange methods</li>
<li>Key strength and length</li>
<li>Encryption algorithms</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Transport Layer Security (TLS)
<ul>
<li>TLS certificates</li>
<li>TLS protocol versions</li>
<li>TLS key exchange methods</li>
<li>TLS cipher suites</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
<ul>
<li>SFTP authentication methods</li>
<li>SFTP encryption methods</li>
<li>SFTP data integrity checks</li>
<li>SFTP access controls</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Key management
<ul>
<li>Key generation and storage</li>
<li>Key rotation policies</li>
<li>Key distribution and revocation</li>
<li>Key recovery procedures</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Malware protection:
<ul>
<li>Antivirus software
<ul>
<li>Virus definitions and updates</li>
<li>Scanning policies and schedules</li>
<li>Quarantine procedures</li>
<li>Remediation procedures</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Email filtering
<ul>
<li>Spam filtering</li>
<li>Phishing filtering</li>
<li>Malware attachment filtering</li>
<li>URL filtering</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Web filtering
<ul>
<li>URL filtering</li>
<li>Content filtering</li>
<li>Application filtering</li>
<li>Protocol filtering</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Endpoint protection
<ul>
<li>Host-based firewalls</li>
<li>Host-based intrusion detection and prevention</li>
<li>Data loss prevention (DLP)</li>
<li>Application whitelisting and blacklisting</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Physical security:
<ul>
<li>Access control systems
<ul>
<li>Card readers and access codes</li>
<li>Biometric systems</li>
<li>Door locks and alarms</li>
<li>Physical barriers (e.g., gates, fences)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Video surveillance
<ul>
<li>Cameras and recording devices</li>
<li>Monitoring and alerts</li>
<li>Privacy considerations</li>
<li>Storage and retention policies</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Environmental controls
<ul>
<li>Temperature and humidity controls</li>
<li>Fire suppression systems</li>
<li>Water detection and prevention systems</li>
<li>Power management and backup systems</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Backup power supply
<ul>
<li>Uninterruptible power supply (UPS)</li>
<li>Backup generators</li>
<li>Power distribution and redundancy</li>
<li>Power outage response procedures</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<h2 id="availability">Availability</h2>
<ol>
<li>Disaster recovery:
<ul>
<li>Business impact analysis (BIA)
<ul>
<li>Critical business functions and dependencies</li>
<li>Recovery time objectives (RTOs)</li>
<li>Recovery point objectives (RPOs)</li>
<li>Maximum allowable downtime (MAD)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Disaster recovery planning
<ul>
<li>Backup and recovery procedures</li>
<li>Alternate site locations</li>
<li>Communication and notification procedures</li>
<li>Testing and maintenance procedures</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>High availability
<ul>
<li>Redundancy and fault tolerance</li>
<li>Load balancing and failover</li>
<li>Clustered systems and virtualization</li>
<li>Geographically distributed systems</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Capacity planning:
<ul>
<li>Resource utilization monitoring
<ul>
<li>CPU usage</li>
<li>Memory usage</li>
<li>Storage usage</li>
<li>Network usage</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Performance tuning
<ul>
<li>System optimization</li>
<li>Database tuning</li>
<li>Application tuning</li>
<li>Network optimization</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Scalability planning
<ul>
<li>Vertical scaling</li>
<li>Horizontal scaling</li>
<li>Elastic scaling</li>
<li>Capacity forecasting and planning</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Workload management
<ul>
<li>Load testing and simulation</li>
<li>Capacity allocation and prioritization</li>
<li>Resource allocation and scheduling</li>
<li>Workload balancing and optimization</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Fault tolerance:
<ul>
<li>Redundancy
<ul>
<li>Hardware redundancy</li>
<li>Software redundancy</li>
<li>Network redundancy</li>
<li>Data redundancy</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Error detection and correction
<ul>
<li>Parity checking</li>
<li>Error-correcting code (ECC)</li>
<li>Checksums and hashes</li>
<li>Redundant array of independent disks (RAID)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Failover and failback
<ul>
<li>Automatic failover</li>
<li>Manual failover</li>
<li>Failback procedures</li>
<li>Clustered systems and virtualization</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Backup and recovery
<ul>
<li>Backup procedures</li>
<li>Recovery procedures</li>
<li>Backup types and schedules</li>
<li>Off-site storage and replication</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Monitoring and alerting:
<ul>
<li>System monitoring
<ul>
<li>Network monitoring</li>
<li>Application monitoring</li>
<li>Performance monitoring</li>
<li>Security monitoring</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Log management
<ul>
<li>Log collection and aggregation</li>
<li>Log storage and retention</li>
<li>Log analysis and correlation</li>
<li>Log archiving and backup</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Alerting and notification
<ul>
<li>Threshold-based alerts</li>
<li>Event-based alerts</li>
<li>Escalation procedures</li>
<li>Notification methods and channels</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Dashboard and reporting
<ul>
<li>Real-time dashboards</li>
<li>Historical reports</li>
<li>Executive summaries</li>
<li>Trend analysis and forecasting</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<h2 id="scalability">Scalability</h2>
<ol>
<li>Horizontal scalability:
<ul>
<li>Load balancing
<ul>
<li>Round-robin</li>
<li>Weighted round-robin</li>
<li>Least connections</li>
<li>IP hash</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Auto scaling
<ul>
<li>Scaling policies</li>
<li>Auto scaling groups</li>
<li>Cloud provider services</li>
<li>Elastic scaling</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Vertical scalability:
<ul>
<li>Capacity planning
<ul>
<li>Resource utilization monitoring</li>
<li>Performance tuning</li>
<li>Capacity forecasting and planning</li>
<li>Workload management</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Hardware upgrades
<ul>
<li>CPU upgrades</li>
<li>Memory upgrades</li>
<li>Storage upgrades</li>
<li>Network upgrades</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Elastic scalability:
<ul>
<li>Cloud services
<ul>
<li>Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)</li>
<li>Platform as a service (PaaS)</li>
<li>Software as a service (SaaS)</li>
<li>Function as a service (FaaS)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Containerization
<ul>
<li>Docker</li>
<li>Kubernetes</li>
<li>Microservices</li>
<li>Service meshes</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Database scalability:
<ul>
<li>Vertical scaling
<ul>
<li>Database tuning</li>
<li>Replication and sharding</li>
<li>Partitioning and indexing</li>
<li>Query optimization</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Horizontal scaling
<ul>
<li>Database clustering</li>
<li>Replication and sharding</li>
<li>Distributed databases</li>
<li>Consistency and availability</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Network scalability:
<ul>
<li>Network topology
<ul>
<li>Switching and routing</li>
<li>Load balancing and traffic management</li>
<li>Virtual private networks (VPNs)</li>
<li>Content delivery networks (CDNs)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Protocol optimization
<ul>
<li>TCP/IP optimization</li>
<li>HTTP and HTTPS optimization</li>
<li>Content optimization</li>
<li>Protocol-level security</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Network virtualization
<ul>
<li>Virtual LANs (VLANs)</li>
<li>Software-defined networking (SDN)</li>
<li>Network function virtualization (NFV)</li>
<li>Network overlays</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<h2 id="integration">Integration</h2>
<ol>
<li>Data integration:
<ul>
<li>Data format and structure
<ul>
<li>Data mapping and transformation</li>
<li>Data validation and cleansing</li>
<li>Data modeling and normalization</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Data transfer and synchronization
<ul>
<li>File-based transfer</li>
<li>Message-based transfer</li>
<li>API-based transfer</li>
<li>Database replication and synchronization</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Data governance and security
<ul>
<li>Data ownership and stewardship</li>
<li>Data privacy and compliance</li>
<li>Data encryption and decryption</li>
<li>Data access control and auditing</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Application integration:
<ul>
<li>Application interfaces
<ul>
<li>Web services (SOAP and REST)</li>
<li>Messaging systems (JMS and AMQP)</li>
<li>Event-driven architecture (EDA)</li>
<li>Enterprise service bus (ESB)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Application data flow
<ul>
<li>Request and response patterns</li>
<li>Data correlation and aggregation</li>
<li>Data caching and throttling</li>
<li>Asynchronous processing and queuing</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Application security and compliance
<ul>
<li>Authentication and authorization</li>
<li>Access control and auditing</li>
<li>Compliance with standards (HIPAA, PCI DSS, etc.)</li>
<li>Error handling and reporting</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Infrastructure integration:
<ul>
<li>Systems integration
<ul>
<li>Middleware integration</li>
<li>API integration</li>
<li>System adapters and connectors</li>
<li>Legacy systems integration</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Cloud integration
<ul>
<li>Cloud-to-cloud integration</li>
<li>Cloud-to-on-premise integration</li>
<li>Cloud federation and orchestration</li>
<li>Hybrid cloud integration</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Integration testing and validation
<ul>
<li>Functional testing</li>
<li>Regression testing</li>
<li>Performance testing</li>
<li>Security testing</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Partner and third-party integration:
<ul>
<li>Vendor interfaces and APIs
<ul>
<li>Onboarding and integration</li>
<li>Data exchange and synchronization</li>
<li>Service-level agreements (SLAs)</li>
<li>Vendor management and governance</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Third-party integrations
<ul>
<li>Integrations with social media platforms</li>
<li>Integrations with payment gateways</li>
<li>Integrations with logistics providers</li>
<li>Integrations with other third-party services</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Security and compliance
<ul>
<li>Data privacy and protection</li>
<li>Compliance with regulations (GDPR, CCPA, etc.)</li>
<li>Contract management and auditing</li>
<li>Risk assessment and mitigation</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<h2 id="data-management">Data Management</h2>
<ol>
<li>Data privacy:
<ul>
<li>Data classification
<ul>
<li>Confidentiality levels</li>
<li>Regulatory requirements</li>
<li>Data ownership and stewardship</li>
<li>Data retention and disposal</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Data protection
<ul>
<li>Access controls</li>
<li>Encryption</li>
<li>Anonymization and pseudonymization</li>
<li>Data masking and obfuscation</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Data breach response
<ul>
<li>Incident response plan</li>
<li>Forensic investigation</li>
<li>Notification procedures</li>
<li>Remediation and mitigation</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Data quality:
<ul>
<li>Data profiling
<ul>
<li>Data completeness</li>
<li>Data accuracy</li>
<li>Data consistency</li>
<li>Data validity</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Data cleansing
<ul>
<li>Data standardization</li>
<li>Data matching and merging</li>
<li>Data parsing and transformation</li>
<li>Data enrichment and augmentation</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Data governance
<ul>
<li>Data ownership and stewardship</li>
<li>Data policies and procedures</li>
<li>Data lineage and audit trails</li>
<li>Data quality monitoring and reporting</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Data storage:
<ul>
<li>Storage architecture
<ul>
<li>Block storage</li>
<li>File storage</li>
<li>Object storage</li>
<li>Distributed storage</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Storage performance
<ul>
<li>IOPS and throughput</li>
<li>Latency and access time</li>
<li>Storage tiering and caching</li>
<li>Storage optimization techniques</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Data backup and recovery
<ul>
<li>Backup types and schedules</li>
<li>Data recovery objectives</li>
<li>Recovery time objectives</li>
<li>Disaster recovery planning</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Data integration:
<ul>
<li>Data modeling
<ul>
<li>Entity-relationship modeling</li>
<li>Dimensional modeling</li>
<li>Data flow diagrams</li>
<li>UML modeling</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Data integration techniques
<ul>
<li>ETL (extract, transform, load)</li>
<li>ELT (extract, load, transform)</li>
<li>Data virtualization</li>
<li>Change data capture (CDC)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Data synchronization
<ul>
<li>Real-time synchronization</li>
<li>Batch synchronization</li>
<li>Conflict resolution</li>
<li>Data replication and distribution</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Compliance:
<ul>
<li>Regulatory compliance
<ul>
<li>GDPR</li>
<li>HIPAA</li>
<li>SOX</li>
<li>PCI DSS</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Industry standards
<ul>
<li>ISO 27001</li>
<li>NIST</li>
<li>CIS Controls</li>
<li>OWASP</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Internal policies
<ul>
<li>Acceptable use policies</li>
<li>Data retention policies</li>
<li>Information security policies</li>
<li>Employee training and awareness</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<h2 id="compliance">Compliance</h2>
<ol>
<li>Regulatory compliance:
<ul>
<li>Industry-specific regulations
<ul>
<li>HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)</li>
<li>GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)</li>
<li>PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard)</li>
<li>SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Country-specific regulations
<ul>
<li>Data localization laws</li>
<li>Export control laws</li>
<li>Cybersecurity laws</li>
<li>Privacy laws</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Compliance management
<ul>
<li>Compliance assessment and gap analysis</li>
<li>Compliance monitoring and reporting</li>
<li>Compliance training and awareness</li>
<li>Compliance risk management</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Contractual compliance:
<ul>
<li>Customer contracts
<ul>
<li>Service level agreements (SLAs)</li>
<li>Data protection agreements (DPAs)</li>
<li>Business associate agreements (BAAs)</li>
<li>Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Vendor contracts
<ul>
<li>Service level agreements (SLAs)</li>
<li>Data protection agreements (DPAs)</li>
<li>Business associate agreements (BAAs)</li>
<li>Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Compliance management
<ul>
<li>Contract review and negotiation</li>
<li>Contract monitoring and reporting</li>
<li>Compliance risk management</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Security compliance:
<ul>
<li>Standards and frameworks
<ul>
<li>ISO/IEC 27001:2013</li>
<li>NIST Cybersecurity Framework</li>
<li>CIS Controls</li>
<li>OWASP Top 10</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Security controls and practices
<ul>
<li>Access control and authentication</li>
<li>Vulnerability management</li>
<li>Incident management and response</li>
<li>Security awareness and training</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Compliance management
<ul>
<li>Compliance assessment and gap analysis</li>
<li>Compliance monitoring and reporting</li>
<li>Compliance training and awareness</li>
<li>Compliance risk management</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>SatalIdentifying what risks you hold across your IT infrastructure is a key part of any risk management strategy. This is especially true when it comes to your data. If you don’t know what risks you hold, you can’t manage them. This is why it’s important to have a risk management strategy in place. To help you identify what risks you hold, I’ve put together a list of IT risk prompts. These prompts will help you identify what risks you hold across your IT infrastructure. This isn’t an exhaustive list, and not all of the items on this list will be applicable to all organisations but it should give you a good starting point. Security Network security: Firewall protection Stateful inspection Application-level gateways Network address translation (NAT) Demilitarized zone (DMZ) Intrusion detection and prevention Signature-based detection Anomaly-based detection Behavior-based detection Network-based detection Virtual private networks (VPNs) Site-to-site VPNs Remote access VPNs SSL VPNs IPsec VPNs Secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption SSL certificates SSL key exchange methods SSL protocol versions SSL termination points Access controls: Password policies Password complexity requirements Password aging requirements Password history requirements Password storage and protection Two-factor authentication Something you know (e.g., password) Something you have (e.g., smart card) Something you are (e.g., biometric data) Multi-factor authentication Role-based access control (RBAC) User roles and permissions Group roles and permissions Resource-based access control Attribute-based access control Account management User provisioning and deprovisioning Account lockout policies Account recovery procedures Account auditing and monitoring Data encryption: Symmetric and asymmetric encryption Key management Key exchange methods Key strength and length Encryption algorithms Transport Layer Security (TLS) TLS certificates TLS protocol versions TLS key exchange methods TLS cipher suites Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) SFTP authentication methods SFTP encryption methods SFTP data integrity checks SFTP access controls Key management Key generation and storage Key rotation policies Key distribution and revocation Key recovery procedures Malware protection: Antivirus software Virus definitions and updates Scanning policies and schedules Quarantine procedures Remediation procedures Email filtering Spam filtering Phishing filtering Malware attachment filtering URL filtering Web filtering URL filtering Content filtering Application filtering Protocol filtering Endpoint protection Host-based firewalls Host-based intrusion detection and prevention Data loss prevention (DLP) Application whitelisting and blacklisting Physical security: Access control systems Card readers and access codes Biometric systems Door locks and alarms Physical barriers (e.g., gates, fences) Video surveillance Cameras and recording devices Monitoring and alerts Privacy considerations Storage and retention policies Environmental controls Temperature and humidity controls Fire suppression systems Water detection and prevention systems Power management and backup systems Backup power supply Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) Backup generators Power distribution and redundancy Power outage response procedures Availability Disaster recovery: Business impact analysis (BIA) Critical business functions and dependencies Recovery time objectives (RTOs) Recovery point objectives (RPOs) Maximum allowable downtime (MAD) Disaster recovery planning Backup and recovery procedures Alternate site locations Communication and notification procedures Testing and maintenance procedures High availability Redundancy and fault tolerance Load balancing and failover Clustered systems and virtualization Geographically distributed systems Capacity planning: Resource utilization monitoring CPU usage Memory usage Storage usage Network usage Performance tuning System optimization Database tuning Application tuning Network optimization Scalability planning Vertical scaling Horizontal scaling Elastic scaling Capacity forecasting and planning Workload management Load testing and simulation Capacity allocation and prioritization Resource allocation and scheduling Workload balancing and optimization Fault tolerance: Redundancy Hardware redundancy Software redundancy Network redundancy Data redundancy Error detection and correction Parity checking Error-correcting code (ECC) Checksums and hashes Redundant array of independent disks (RAID) Failover and failback Automatic failover Manual failover Failback procedures Clustered systems and virtualization Backup and recovery Backup procedures Recovery procedures Backup types and schedules Off-site storage and replication Monitoring and alerting: System monitoring Network monitoring Application monitoring Performance monitoring Security monitoring Log management Log collection and aggregation Log storage and retention Log analysis and correlation Log archiving and backup Alerting and notification Threshold-based alerts Event-based alerts Escalation procedures Notification methods and channels Dashboard and reporting Real-time dashboards Historical reports Executive summaries Trend analysis and forecasting Scalability Horizontal scalability: Load balancing Round-robin Weighted round-robin Least connections IP hash Auto scaling Scaling policies Auto scaling groups Cloud provider services Elastic scaling Vertical scalability: Capacity planning Resource utilization monitoring Performance tuning Capacity forecasting and planning Workload management Hardware upgrades CPU upgrades Memory upgrades Storage upgrades Network upgrades Elastic scalability: Cloud services Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) Platform as a service (PaaS) Software as a service (SaaS) Function as a service (FaaS) Containerization Docker Kubernetes Microservices Service meshes Database scalability: Vertical scaling Database tuning Replication and sharding Partitioning and indexing Query optimization Horizontal scaling Database clustering Replication and sharding Distributed databases Consistency and availability Network scalability: Network topology Switching and routing Load balancing and traffic management Virtual private networks (VPNs) Content delivery networks (CDNs) Protocol optimization TCP/IP optimization HTTP and HTTPS optimization Content optimization Protocol-level security Network virtualization Virtual LANs (VLANs) Software-defined networking (SDN) Network function virtualization (NFV) Network overlays Integration Data integration: Data format and structure Data mapping and transformation Data validation and cleansing Data modeling and normalization Data transfer and synchronization File-based transfer Message-based transfer API-based transfer Database replication and synchronization Data governance and security Data ownership and stewardship Data privacy and compliance Data encryption and decryption Data access control and auditing Application integration: Application interfaces Web services (SOAP and REST) Messaging systems (JMS and AMQP) Event-driven architecture (EDA) Enterprise service bus (ESB) Application data flow Request and response patterns Data correlation and aggregation Data caching and throttling Asynchronous processing and queuing Application security and compliance Authentication and authorization Access control and auditing Compliance with standards (HIPAA, PCI DSS, etc.) Error handling and reporting Infrastructure integration: Systems integration Middleware integration API integration System adapters and connectors Legacy systems integration Cloud integration Cloud-to-cloud integration Cloud-to-on-premise integration Cloud federation and orchestration Hybrid cloud integration Integration testing and validation Functional testing Regression testing Performance testing Security testing Partner and third-party integration: Vendor interfaces and APIs Onboarding and integration Data exchange and synchronization Service-level agreements (SLAs) Vendor management and governance Third-party integrations Integrations with social media platforms Integrations with payment gateways Integrations with logistics providers Integrations with other third-party services Security and compliance Data privacy and protection Compliance with regulations (GDPR, CCPA, etc.) Contract management and auditing Risk assessment and mitigation Data Management Data privacy: Data classification Confidentiality levels Regulatory requirements Data ownership and stewardship Data retention and disposal Data protection Access controls Encryption Anonymization and pseudonymization Data masking and obfuscation Data breach response Incident response plan Forensic investigation Notification procedures Remediation and mitigation Data quality: Data profiling Data completeness Data accuracy Data consistency Data validity Data cleansing Data standardization Data matching and merging Data parsing and transformation Data enrichment and augmentation Data governance Data ownership and stewardship Data policies and procedures Data lineage and audit trails Data quality monitoring and reporting Data storage: Storage architecture Block storage File storage Object storage Distributed storage Storage performance IOPS and throughput Latency and access time Storage tiering and caching Storage optimization techniques Data backup and recovery Backup types and schedules Data recovery objectives Recovery time objectives Disaster recovery planning Data integration: Data modeling Entity-relationship modeling Dimensional modeling Data flow diagrams UML modeling Data integration techniques ETL (extract, transform, load) ELT (extract, load, transform) Data virtualization Change data capture (CDC) Data synchronization Real-time synchronization Batch synchronization Conflict resolution Data replication and distribution Compliance: Regulatory compliance GDPR HIPAA SOX PCI DSS Industry standards ISO 27001 NIST CIS Controls OWASP Internal policies Acceptable use policies Data retention policies Information security policies Employee training and awareness Compliance Regulatory compliance: Industry-specific regulations HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) Country-specific regulations Data localization laws Export control laws Cybersecurity laws Privacy laws Compliance management Compliance assessment and gap analysis Compliance monitoring and reporting Compliance training and awareness Compliance risk management Contractual compliance: Customer contracts Service level agreements (SLAs) Data protection agreements (DPAs) Business associate agreements (BAAs) Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) Vendor contracts Service level agreements (SLAs) Data protection agreements (DPAs) Business associate agreements (BAAs) Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) Compliance management Contract review and negotiation Contract monitoring and reporting Compliance risk management Security compliance: Standards and frameworks ISO/IEC 27001:2013 NIST Cybersecurity Framework CIS Controls OWASP Top 10 Security controls and practices Access control and authentication Vulnerability management Incident management and response Security awareness and training Compliance management Compliance assessment and gap analysis Compliance monitoring and reporting Compliance training and awareness Compliance risk managementSetting up rclone through docker2022-04-15T11:30:11+00:002022-04-15T11:30:11+00:00https://samjenkins.com/rclone-docker<p>I run a variety of websites, both for myself and for clients. One thing that is very important to do is to ensure that when you have a decent backup approach in place. I personally achieve this through the use of <a href="https://wpvivid.com/">WPvivid</a> to perform nightly backups of files and the database to a cloud storage provider.</p>
<p>However, just having the backups saved to a cloud provider isn’t always enough. I would feel a lot more comfortable if I had a local copy of them on my NAS (I have a <a href="https://amzn.to/3Mb5u6K">Synology DiskStation DS1520+</a>).</p>
<p>To achieve this I have been using <a href="https://rclone.org/">rclone</a>, which describes itself as “rsync for cloud storage”, running on a Windows virtual machine on the NAS (a great extra for this version of the Synology DiskStation). In this virtual machine I had a scheduled task set up that would run rclone at 06:20 every morning to pull down all the latest updates from the storage provider.</p>
<p>While this solution with the virtual machine worked fine, it annoyed me that I had to have the virtual machine running all the time and that I would have to go in and perform Windows updates to keep it up to date. This is where Docker has come to the rescue.</p>
<h2 id="rclone-docker-image">Rclone docker image</h2>
<p>Rclone provides a <a href="https://hub.docker.com/r/rclone/rclone">docker image</a> for their tool, which makes it easy to run the tool without having to worry about having it installed.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, while I highly rate their docker image, it does leave quite a bit to be desired when you’re looking at their documentation.</p>
<p>One of the first things you need to keep in mind when you’re running this docker image is that it will only be running for the short period of time it need to be running to perform the sync.</p>
<h2 id="steps-to-set-up-rclone-docker-image">Steps to set up rclone docker image</h2>
<div class="language-bash highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>docker run <span class="nt">--rm</span> <span class="se">\</span>
<span class="nt">--volume</span> ~/config/rclone:/config/rclone <span class="se">\</span>
<span class="nt">--volume</span> ~/my_backups:/data <span class="se">\</span>
rclone/rclone <span class="se">\</span>
copy pCloud: /data/
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>Let’s go through this command line by line. The first line is calling docker with the run command. The <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">--rm</code> is telling docker not to persist the file system that is briefly created when we run rclone. While keeping the file system around can help with debugging issues, as we will be running this image frequently we don’t want to retain those file systems as they’ll start to eat up our space.</p>
<p>The backslashes at the ends of the lines are just saying to the Linux command line that the command continues onto the next line. As this is on all but the final line, I won’t be including it in the explanations.</p>
<div class="language-bash highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>docker run <span class="nt">--rm</span>
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>The next line is mounting the folder that contains the configuration file, which we will talk about more in a bit. You need to remember that the left-hand side is on your system, so set it to wherever you want to store the configuration. Whereas the right-hand side is within rclone, this must be set to <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">/config/rclone</code>.</p>
<div class="language-bash highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="nt">--volume</span> ~/config/rclone:/config/rclone <span class="se">\</span>
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>We are then specifying the folder that will be used for storing our backups. I’ve set this to the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">my_backups</code> folder in my home directory. This needs to be mounted into /data within the container</p>
<div class="language-bash highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="nt">--volume</span> ~/my_backups:/data
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>We are then specifying that we want to run the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">rclone/rclone</code> image.</p>
<div class="language-bash highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>rclone/rclone
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>Finally, we are providing the command that is going to be passed through to the rclone application in the container.</p>
<p>You can find a full list of the commands you can pass into rclone and their required parameters at <a href="https://rclone.org/commands/">https://rclone.org/commands/</a>.</p>
<p>In my case I am telling rclone to copy the contents of my <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">pCloud</code> remote site to <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">/data/websites</code></p>
<div class="language-bash highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>copy pCloud: /data/websites
</code></pre></div></div>
<h2 id="rclone-configuration-file">Rclone configuration file</h2>
<p>One issue that you’re likely to come across when you’re setting up rclone to work through docker is generating the configuration file. If you’re running rclone on a local machine with a display you’re able to get rclone to open up a browser to create the necessary configuration file for your connection to your cloud storage provider. However, if you’re running rclone through docker you don’t have that option.</p>
<p>Currently the recommended way to generate the configuration file is to actually run another copy of it, just for the purposes of creating the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">rclone.config</code> file.</p>
<p>I won’t go through the process of creating the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">rclone.config</code> file here, as it depends on what cloud storage provider you’re using and, in my opinion, is well documented on the <a href="https://rclone.org/docs/#configure">rclone website</a>.</p>
<p>The key bit here for us is that once you have generated the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">rclone.config</code> file you take that file and place it in the folder that you’ve specified in the docker command as your configuration folder.</p>SatalI run a variety of websites, both for myself and for clients. One thing that is very important to do is to ensure that when you have a decent backup approach in place. I personally achieve this through the use of WPvivid to perform nightly backups of files and the database to a cloud storage provider. However, just having the backups saved to a cloud provider isn’t always enough. I would feel a lot more comfortable if I had a local copy of them on my NAS (I have a Synology DiskStation DS1520+). To achieve this I have been using rclone, which describes itself as “rsync for cloud storage”, running on a Windows virtual machine on the NAS (a great extra for this version of the Synology DiskStation). In this virtual machine I had a scheduled task set up that would run rclone at 06:20 every morning to pull down all the latest updates from the storage provider. While this solution with the virtual machine worked fine, it annoyed me that I had to have the virtual machine running all the time and that I would have to go in and perform Windows updates to keep it up to date. This is where Docker has come to the rescue. Rclone docker image Rclone provides a docker image for their tool, which makes it easy to run the tool without having to worry about having it installed. Unfortunately, while I highly rate their docker image, it does leave quite a bit to be desired when you’re looking at their documentation. One of the first things you need to keep in mind when you’re running this docker image is that it will only be running for the short period of time it need to be running to perform the sync. Steps to set up rclone docker image docker run --rm \ --volume ~/config/rclone:/config/rclone \ --volume ~/my_backups:/data \ rclone/rclone \ copy pCloud: /data/ Let’s go through this command line by line. The first line is calling docker with the run command. The --rm is telling docker not to persist the file system that is briefly created when we run rclone. While keeping the file system around can help with debugging issues, as we will be running this image frequently we don’t want to retain those file systems as they’ll start to eat up our space. The backslashes at the ends of the lines are just saying to the Linux command line that the command continues onto the next line. As this is on all but the final line, I won’t be including it in the explanations. docker run --rm The next line is mounting the folder that contains the configuration file, which we will talk about more in a bit. You need to remember that the left-hand side is on your system, so set it to wherever you want to store the configuration. Whereas the right-hand side is within rclone, this must be set to /config/rclone. --volume ~/config/rclone:/config/rclone \ We are then specifying the folder that will be used for storing our backups. I’ve set this to the my_backups folder in my home directory. This needs to be mounted into /data within the container --volume ~/my_backups:/data We are then specifying that we want to run the rclone/rclone image. rclone/rclone Finally, we are providing the command that is going to be passed through to the rclone application in the container. You can find a full list of the commands you can pass into rclone and their required parameters at https://rclone.org/commands/. In my case I am telling rclone to copy the contents of my pCloud remote site to /data/websites copy pCloud: /data/websites Rclone configuration file One issue that you’re likely to come across when you’re setting up rclone to work through docker is generating the configuration file. If you’re running rclone on a local machine with a display you’re able to get rclone to open up a browser to create the necessary configuration file for your connection to your cloud storage provider. However, if you’re running rclone through docker you don’t have that option. Currently the recommended way to generate the configuration file is to actually run another copy of it, just for the purposes of creating the rclone.config file. I won’t go through the process of creating the rclone.config file here, as it depends on what cloud storage provider you’re using and, in my opinion, is well documented on the rclone website. The key bit here for us is that once you have generated the rclone.config file you take that file and place it in the folder that you’ve specified in the docker command as your configuration folder.Update all Git repositories2022-02-19T11:30:11+00:002022-02-19T11:30:11+00:00https://samjenkins.com/update-all-repos<p>Over the years I’ve been working to move more and more of the content into version control. This spans both my development work and writing for this site and books/documents. However, as I switch between multiple computers where I will use one as my day-to-day driver and a second one for when I’m travelling to and from work, ensuring that I keep all the repos up to date can be an issue. I also use a varient of this on my phone to ensure everything is kept up to date on there as well.</p>
<p><span id="ezoic-pub-video-placeholder-1"></span></p>
<p>For this reason, I have created a bash script that I can use on my laptops to iterate through all of my repos and pull down the latest commits. While this is not necessarily best practice, it suits my purposes and I imagine that it will be something that will be helpful for a large number of other people, hence creating this.</p>
<h2 id="the-code">The code</h2>
<p>Below is the code that I use to go through my code folder and update any repos in there, personally I have this file saved as update_all_repos.sh.</p>
<div class="language-bash highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="c">#!/bin/bash</span>
<span class="k">for </span>d <span class="k">in</span> <span class="k">${</span><span class="nv">PWD</span><span class="k">}</span>/<span class="k">*</span>/ <span class="p">;</span> <span class="k">do
</span><span class="nb">echo</span> <span class="s2">"</span><span class="nv">$d</span><span class="s2">"</span>
<span class="nb">cd</span> <span class="s2">"</span><span class="nv">$d</span><span class="s2">"</span>
<span class="k">if</span> <span class="o">[</span> <span class="nt">-d</span> .git <span class="o">]</span><span class="p">;</span> <span class="k">then
</span>git pull
<span class="k">fi</span><span class="p">;</span>
<span class="k">done</span>
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>The first line of interest is <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">for d in ${PWD}/*/ ; do</code>, this starts off the for loop for each directory. The <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">${PWD}</code> is used to get the current directory, avoiding us hardcoding the current directory.</p>
<p>We then print out the directory name and change directory. While not necessary when running in the background, I found that having it print out the directory helps to make it clearer in the output if there were any errors.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>:warning: One thing that caught me out was not putting quotes around the directory. This led to the code not working occasionally when there was a space in the directory name.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While all of my folders in my source code directory are Git repositories, I thought it would be worth checking to see if it is a Git repo before I try and perform the pull. The <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">if [ -d .git ]; then</code> checks to see whether there is a <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">.git</code> folder in the directory and only, in that case, will it perform a pull.</p>
<h2 id="running-the-script">Running the script</h2>
<p>To run the script, the first thing you will need to do is make the script executable</p>
<div class="language-bash highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="nb">chmod</span> +x update_all_repos.sh
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>Once this has been completed you’re able to run the script by running <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">./update_all_repos.sh</code>.</p>SatalOver the years I’ve been working to move more and more of the content into version control. This spans both my development work and writing for this site and books/documents. However, as I switch between multiple computers where I will use one as my day-to-day driver and a second one for when I’m travelling to and from work, ensuring that I keep all the repos up to date can be an issue. I also use a varient of this on my phone to ensure everything is kept up to date on there as well. For this reason, I have created a bash script that I can use on my laptops to iterate through all of my repos and pull down the latest commits. While this is not necessarily best practice, it suits my purposes and I imagine that it will be something that will be helpful for a large number of other people, hence creating this. The code Below is the code that I use to go through my code folder and update any repos in there, personally I have this file saved as update_all_repos.sh. #!/bin/bash for d in ${PWD}/*/ ; do echo "$d" cd "$d" if [ -d .git ]; then git pull fi; done The first line of interest is for d in ${PWD}/*/ ; do, this starts off the for loop for each directory. The ${PWD} is used to get the current directory, avoiding us hardcoding the current directory. We then print out the directory name and change directory. While not necessary when running in the background, I found that having it print out the directory helps to make it clearer in the output if there were any errors. :warning: One thing that caught me out was not putting quotes around the directory. This led to the code not working occasionally when there was a space in the directory name. While all of my folders in my source code directory are Git repositories, I thought it would be worth checking to see if it is a Git repo before I try and perform the pull. The if [ -d .git ]; then checks to see whether there is a .git folder in the directory and only, in that case, will it perform a pull. Running the script To run the script, the first thing you will need to do is make the script executable chmod +x update_all_repos.sh Once this has been completed you’re able to run the script by running ./update_all_repos.sh.Review round: 5 easy ways to maximise your score2017-08-10T16:30:11+00:002017-08-10T16:30:11+00:00https://samjenkins.com/maximise-review-round-score<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/08/Stormtroopers.jpg" alt="Stormtrooper review round" /></p>
<p>You might have thought that working hard, getting results and doing a good job would be enough to get you a good review round score. Unfortunately, this only really works in small organisations where everyone knows you and they’re aware of how you’re performing. In larger organisations, the people making the final decisions around promotions and pay rises are unlikely to be personally familiar with your work. They will need to utilise a more formal appraisal process to ensure that everyone gets reviewed fairly.</p>
<h1 id="why-am-i-talking-about-review-round-already">Why am I talking about review round already?</h1>
<p>You might be thinking “it’s August, why are you thinking about performance reviews already?” and this is quite a natural view. It is extremely common to leave working on your review round until shortly before it is due. Afterall, you have work that you need to be getting on with right now and that isn’t due until the end of the year.</p>
<p>I, like most other people, dislike preparing for the review round. I find writing about myself cringe-worthy and unnatural, regularly finding myself stuck for what to say. By putting a little preparation in throughout the year you can make your preparation quicker and easier. I, therefore, am writing about the review round now because it’s not too late to get ahead of the game. Below are a number of methods that I have used, or will be using this year, for making my life easier when it comes to appraisals.</p>
<h1 id="methods-to-maximise-your-review-round-score">Methods to maximise your review round score</h1>
<h2 id="know-your-objectives">Know your objectives</h2>
<p>Chances are if you work for a consultancy company you’ll have multiple sets of objectives. These could include objectives from your project, your account, your organisational group, any company wide objectives, and that’s not even thinking about your personal objectives. The more different sets of objectives you have the more important it is for you to know what is expected of you. Gathering these together is likely to be time-consuming but it can one of the most important things you can do for your appraisal.</p>
<p>If you are going for promotion then this is doubly important as you will need to demonstrate that you are working at the next level already. There are a number of ways that you could do this. The clearest way is to list the objectives and expectations of the next grade up and details of how you are meeting them. There may be additional requirements for promotion (e.g. years served) but preparing this information will not hurt your review score.</p>
<p>Now that you know all the factors that you are being measured against, you can start thinking about the next step. Tracking your performance against them.</p>
<h2 id="track-your-achievements-throughout-the-year">Track your achievements throughout the year</h2>
<p>This may sound like an obvious suggestion but most people don’t track their achievements. Saying “I’ll remember this”, then when trying to prepare, struggling to recall what has happened during the year.</p>
<h3 id="ways-to-track-your-achievements">Ways to track your achievements</h3>
<p>Keeping track of your achievements and your progress towards meeting your objectives does not need to be arduous. One simple method you can take is just creating a folder in your email client. When you receive an email that could be used as evidence for your review round, keep a copy of it in there. Be quite liberal with putting copies of emails in this folder. It is far easier to decide an email doesn’t make the cut but far harder to find emails later. I’ve gone as far as setting up a keyboard shortcut for the task, <a href="https://samjenkins.com/minimising-customer-resistance/">minimising the resistance</a> to doing this.</p>
<p>In addition to the folder, I use a spread sheet for tracking my progress. In this spread sheet, I have a list of each of my objectives, next to that I have space to write down how I have evidenced it and a RAG status for how confident I feel about it. This can be done in Excel if you want but I personally use Google Sheets as I can access it on my phone as well as my computer. This makes it easy for me to quickly add notes to it when I think of them out and about.</p>
<p>You can download a copy of the spread sheet (both Excel and Google Sheets) that I use, below.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/08/Objectives-progress-tracker-1024x258.png" alt="Objectives progress tracker" /></p>
<div>[contact-form-7 404 "Not Found"]</div>
<h4 id="regular-reflection">Regular reflection</h4>
<p>While I would strongly recommend making updates as you go, it can be helpful to have a weekly reflection. Five minutes a week should be adequate, have a think about what you’ve done and note it down. I have a 15-minute weekly meeting in my diary where I fill in my client time sheet, company time sheet, note anything good from the last week that you’ve missed and I still have time to go get a coffee. Hopefully, this is more a reflection of the regular updates than my lack of achievement!</p>
<h4 id="non-email-feedback">Non-email feedback</h4>
<p>Not all feedback you receive will be written in an email, you may receive it verbally. In this case, it may be worth asking if you can get this in writing for your records. Asking this can feel a little awkward but if it’s a sincere comment then there shouldn’t be a problem. Getting this in writing if far better than a “they said…” in your review. As an aside, if you feel someone has done something praiseworthy then in addition to saying it to them, drop them an email. The email doesn’t need to be long, a couple sentences should suffice; what they did and why it was praiseworthy.</p>
<h4 id="share-and-review-your-progress-with-your-career-manager">Share and review your progress with your career manager</h4>
<p>Tracking how you are progressing against your objectives is fine but it is worth validating that you are hitting the mark. There’s nothing worse than working hard collecting evidence only to find out it isn’t what your career manager is looking for or isn’t strong enough evidence. That is why is it worth at least once during the year validating your tracker with your career manager. Best case, your career manager agrees and you can be more confident on those objectives. Worst case, they aren’t strong enough but you know in advance so can work to gather more evidence before the performance review.</p>
<h2 id="chat-with-your-career-manager">Chat with your career manager</h2>
<p>I’ve been very fortunate to have very friendly career managers, who I have enjoyed talking to about work and common interests. This has therefore been quite easy for me, but it is worthwhile putting in the effort to build up your relationship with your career manager.</p>
<h3 id="discuss-expectations-early-in-the-year"><img src="/assets/images/2017/07/Review-chat-640x350.jpg" alt="Review chat" />Discuss expectations early in the year</h3>
<p>Do you want to go for promotion this year? If so you should be speaking to your career manager about this at the beginning of the year. They may have a view of whether you are ready for the promotion or not. Knowing this early can help you plan for the year. If there’s a lot of competencies to demonstrate before they will put you forward, you can discuss options for demonstrating them during the year.</p>
<h3 id="understand-how-your-career-manager-works">Understand how your career manager works</h3>
<p>Every career manager is different and will prefer to work in different ways. Understanding how your career manager works can benefit you greatly. It will allow you to tailor the presentation of your review round to suit them. Do they prefer to have bullet points of your achievements or more in depth written notes? If you know this in advance you can put the little extra effort in to make their lives easier.</p>
<h3 id="let-them-know-if-youre-having-problems">Let them know if you’re having problems</h3>
<p>While most of us think about our career managers only when it comes to review rounds, they are there to mentor us through all aspects of our career. There will be times when things aren’t going your way and talking it through can be helpful. Your career manager may be able to give you advice on how to resolve issues, how to deal with <a href="https://samjenkins.com/stress-finding-the-right-level/">stressful situations</a> or act as a sounding board. If you’re having problems with your role then speaking to your career manager can raise issues early, which left unchecked can impact your review round when it comes up later in the year.</p>
<h3 id="general-comments-regarding-career-managers">General comments regarding career managers</h3>
<p>This should be obvious but your career manager won’t be able to do all the work for you. They may be able to open doors or give guidance about what you should do but at the end of the day, you’re the one who has to put in the work.</p>
<p>Be aware of your career managers time. Your career manager may get a little bit of time allocated for helping you but it is unlikely to cover the effort required over the year. Keep this in mind when you ask for their time, they will likely have a few managees and their own work to do.</p>
<p>What can you do to help them? Your career manager is primarily helping you for your benefit so it can be good to look at opportunities to help them in thanks. We’re not talking “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” but genuine offers to help out. There may not be anything that you can help your career manager with but it is always nice to ask.</p>
<h2 id="start-next-years-objectives-when-writing-this-years-review">Start next year’s objectives when writing this years review</h2>
<p>Did you fall short on a couple of your objectives from this year? If so then this is the perfect opportunity to start on next years. Look at these areas and think about how you can demonstrate them during the next year. You can then validate these with your career manager that what you’ve proposed would adequately demonstrate it.</p>
<p>Starting next year’s objectives during the review round process may not help you this year but it will make your life easier for the next. It will also help to demonstrate that you’re willing to take on feedback and proactive in implementing it. The feedback you receive is likely to be enough for you to create relevant <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria">SMART objectives</a> quickly that you know will demonstrate personal progression.</p>
<h2 id="make-your-career-managers-life-easy">Make your career manager’s life easy</h2>
<p>If you think you dislike the effort that you have to put into your review round, take a second to consider your career manager. They are having to do their own self-assessment while also providing their feedback for you and probably many other managees. You only have to write your own, that doesn’t seem quite as bad now, does it?</p>
<p>As you’ve already spoken to your career manager about how they work, implement it. By providing your career manager with all the information they need, in the way they want it will bode well for you. By making sure the information they want is easily accessible it will be clearer for them that you have excelled this year. That being easily identifiable allows any discussions about the outcome of this year to get straight to the point. As mentioned above I use the spread sheet to make this as easy as possible.</p>
<p>In the run up to the deadline for review round submissions your career manager will be preparing their own submission, working on the response to their other managees and on top of all that, doing their day job. If you’re able to submit your part of the appraisal early it allows them to spread their work out a bit more. Something that they are likely to appreciate.</p>
<h1 id="wrapping-up">Wrapping up</h1>
<p>So what do you think, will you be implementing any of the above ideas this year? Do you have anything else that you do to make your review round go smoothly? Do you perform performance reviews and have any tips on things you would like to see?</p>SatalYou might have thought that working hard, getting results and doing a good job would be enough to get you a good review round score. Unfortunately, this only really works in small organisations where everyone knows you and they’re aware of how you’re performing. In larger organisations, the people making the final decisions around promotions and pay rises are unlikely to be personally familiar with your work. They will need to utilise a more formal appraisal process to ensure that everyone gets reviewed fairly. Why am I talking about review round already? You might be thinking “it’s August, why are you thinking about performance reviews already?” and this is quite a natural view. It is extremely common to leave working on your review round until shortly before it is due. Afterall, you have work that you need to be getting on with right now and that isn’t due until the end of the year. I, like most other people, dislike preparing for the review round. I find writing about myself cringe-worthy and unnatural, regularly finding myself stuck for what to say. By putting a little preparation in throughout the year you can make your preparation quicker and easier. I, therefore, am writing about the review round now because it’s not too late to get ahead of the game. Below are a number of methods that I have used, or will be using this year, for making my life easier when it comes to appraisals. Methods to maximise your review round score Know your objectives Chances are if you work for a consultancy company you’ll have multiple sets of objectives. These could include objectives from your project, your account, your organisational group, any company wide objectives, and that’s not even thinking about your personal objectives. The more different sets of objectives you have the more important it is for you to know what is expected of you. Gathering these together is likely to be time-consuming but it can one of the most important things you can do for your appraisal. If you are going for promotion then this is doubly important as you will need to demonstrate that you are working at the next level already. There are a number of ways that you could do this. The clearest way is to list the objectives and expectations of the next grade up and details of how you are meeting them. There may be additional requirements for promotion (e.g. years served) but preparing this information will not hurt your review score. Now that you know all the factors that you are being measured against, you can start thinking about the next step. Tracking your performance against them. Track your achievements throughout the year This may sound like an obvious suggestion but most people don’t track their achievements. Saying “I’ll remember this”, then when trying to prepare, struggling to recall what has happened during the year. Ways to track your achievements Keeping track of your achievements and your progress towards meeting your objectives does not need to be arduous. One simple method you can take is just creating a folder in your email client. When you receive an email that could be used as evidence for your review round, keep a copy of it in there. Be quite liberal with putting copies of emails in this folder. It is far easier to decide an email doesn’t make the cut but far harder to find emails later. I’ve gone as far as setting up a keyboard shortcut for the task, minimising the resistance to doing this. In addition to the folder, I use a spread sheet for tracking my progress. In this spread sheet, I have a list of each of my objectives, next to that I have space to write down how I have evidenced it and a RAG status for how confident I feel about it. This can be done in Excel if you want but I personally use Google Sheets as I can access it on my phone as well as my computer. This makes it easy for me to quickly add notes to it when I think of them out and about. You can download a copy of the spread sheet (both Excel and Google Sheets) that I use, below. [contact-form-7 404 "Not Found"] Regular reflection While I would strongly recommend making updates as you go, it can be helpful to have a weekly reflection. Five minutes a week should be adequate, have a think about what you’ve done and note it down. I have a 15-minute weekly meeting in my diary where I fill in my client time sheet, company time sheet, note anything good from the last week that you’ve missed and I still have time to go get a coffee. Hopefully, this is more a reflection of the regular updates than my lack of achievement! Non-email feedback Not all feedback you receive will be written in an email, you may receive it verbally. In this case, it may be worth asking if you can get this in writing for your records. Asking this can feel a little awkward but if it’s a sincere comment then there shouldn’t be a problem. Getting this in writing if far better than a “they said…” in your review. As an aside, if you feel someone has done something praiseworthy then in addition to saying it to them, drop them an email. The email doesn’t need to be long, a couple sentences should suffice; what they did and why it was praiseworthy. Share and review your progress with your career manager Tracking how you are progressing against your objectives is fine but it is worth validating that you are hitting the mark. There’s nothing worse than working hard collecting evidence only to find out it isn’t what your career manager is looking for or isn’t strong enough evidence. That is why is it worth at least once during the year validating your tracker with your career manager. Best case, your career manager agrees and you can be more confident on those objectives. Worst case, they aren’t strong enough but you know in advance so can work to gather more evidence before the performance review. Chat with your career manager I’ve been very fortunate to have very friendly career managers, who I have enjoyed talking to about work and common interests. This has therefore been quite easy for me, but it is worthwhile putting in the effort to build up your relationship with your career manager. Discuss expectations early in the year Do you want to go for promotion this year? If so you should be speaking to your career manager about this at the beginning of the year. They may have a view of whether you are ready for the promotion or not. Knowing this early can help you plan for the year. If there’s a lot of competencies to demonstrate before they will put you forward, you can discuss options for demonstrating them during the year. Understand how your career manager works Every career manager is different and will prefer to work in different ways. Understanding how your career manager works can benefit you greatly. It will allow you to tailor the presentation of your review round to suit them. Do they prefer to have bullet points of your achievements or more in depth written notes? If you know this in advance you can put the little extra effort in to make their lives easier. Let them know if you’re having problems While most of us think about our career managers only when it comes to review rounds, they are there to mentor us through all aspects of our career. There will be times when things aren’t going your way and talking it through can be helpful. Your career manager may be able to give you advice on how to resolve issues, how to deal with stressful situations or act as a sounding board. If you’re having problems with your role then speaking to your career manager can raise issues early, which left unchecked can impact your review round when it comes up later in the year. General comments regarding career managers This should be obvious but your career manager won’t be able to do all the work for you. They may be able to open doors or give guidance about what you should do but at the end of the day, you’re the one who has to put in the work. Be aware of your career managers time. Your career manager may get a little bit of time allocated for helping you but it is unlikely to cover the effort required over the year. Keep this in mind when you ask for their time, they will likely have a few managees and their own work to do. What can you do to help them? Your career manager is primarily helping you for your benefit so it can be good to look at opportunities to help them in thanks. We’re not talking “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” but genuine offers to help out. There may not be anything that you can help your career manager with but it is always nice to ask. Start next year’s objectives when writing this years review Did you fall short on a couple of your objectives from this year? If so then this is the perfect opportunity to start on next years. Look at these areas and think about how you can demonstrate them during the next year. You can then validate these with your career manager that what you’ve proposed would adequately demonstrate it. Starting next year’s objectives during the review round process may not help you this year but it will make your life easier for the next. It will also help to demonstrate that you’re willing to take on feedback and proactive in implementing it. The feedback you receive is likely to be enough for you to create relevant SMART objectives quickly that you know will demonstrate personal progression. Make your career manager’s life easy If you think you dislike the effort that you have to put into your review round, take a second to consider your career manager. They are having to do their own self-assessment while also providing their feedback for you and probably many other managees. You only have to write your own, that doesn’t seem quite as bad now, does it? As you’ve already spoken to your career manager about how they work, implement it. By providing your career manager with all the information they need, in the way they want it will bode well for you. By making sure the information they want is easily accessible it will be clearer for them that you have excelled this year. That being easily identifiable allows any discussions about the outcome of this year to get straight to the point. As mentioned above I use the spread sheet to make this as easy as possible. In the run up to the deadline for review round submissions your career manager will be preparing their own submission, working on the response to their other managees and on top of all that, doing their day job. If you’re able to submit your part of the appraisal early it allows them to spread their work out a bit more. Something that they are likely to appreciate. Wrapping up So what do you think, will you be implementing any of the above ideas this year? Do you have anything else that you do to make your review round go smoothly? Do you perform performance reviews and have any tips on things you would like to see?Imposter Syndrome in Consultancy2017-07-02T19:22:54+00:002017-07-02T19:22:54+00:00https://samjenkins.com/imposter-syndrome-consultancy<p>Do you find yourself feeling like you’re a fraud? Feeling like you’re getting by on chance, that your friends, colleagues and the client will soon find you out? If so, then you might be dealing with Imposter Syndrome also sometimes referred to as the Imposter Complex.</p>
<h1 id="what-is-imposter-syndrome">What is Imposter Syndrome?</h1>
<p>Imposter Syndrome is a term originally coined by clinical psychologists Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes in their paper “The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: dynamics and therapeutic intervention”. While the original work focused on its impact on women, it is actually extremely common in both men and women. Pauline Clance and Gail Matthews identified that up to 70% off people will experience Imposter Syndrome at some point in their lives.</p>
<p>To give you an idea of how pervasive it is, some of the famous people who have commented that they experience imposter syndrome include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Tom Hanks</li>
<li>Emma Watson</li>
<li>Tina Fey</li>
<li>Chris Martin (Coldplay member)</li>
<li>Kate Winslet</li>
<li>Renée Zellweger</li>
<li>John Cheadle</li>
<li>Meryl Streep</li>
<li>Director-General of the World Health Organisation Dr Margaret Chan</li>
</ul>
<p>I could go on but I think you get the idea.</p>
<p>Imposter Syndrome, as the name suggests, is the feeling that you’re an imposter in a situation. The feeling that you don’t deserve to be where you are, that people will find out that you’re making it up as you go along. Other examples of feelings that those who experience Imposter Syndrome encounter:</p>
<ul>
<li>The feeling that you’re untrained and unqualified for what you’re doing</li>
<li>Anxiety about the work that you’re doing</li>
<li>Have difficulty accepting praise or compliments</li>
</ul>
<p>Imposter Syndrome is also terrible in that it is self-reinforcing. As someone feels that they need to work harder to avoid being viewed as a fraud, they produce more high-quality work, which they then continue to discount in their own mind.</p>
<h1 id="dealing-with-imposter-syndrome">Dealing with Imposter Syndrome</h1>
<p>Recognising Imposter Syndrome and the impact it can have is useful in its own rights but we can seek to address it. Imposter Syndrome is something that is, unfortunately, not something that can be completely “cured”, it is something that is likely to lurk in the background throughout your life. We can, however, seek to manage it.</p>
<p>The following are some methods for helping to manage Imposter Syndrome.</p>
<h2 id="recognise-that-there-are-things-that-you-dont-know">Recognise that there are things that you don’t know</h2>
<p>In consulting, there is an expectation that we are the experts, that we know everything necessary for the task at hand, however, this simply isn’t true or possible. It is important to recognise that there are things that you don’t know and there are things that you will never know, and that’s okay.</p>
<p>A common thought with Imposter Syndrome is that everyone knows more than you. In meetings with clients or colleague, others having knowledge that you don’t will reinforce this belief but it is only half the story. While you know the times’ someone has said something you didn’t know, you don’t know the times you say something that another person didn’t.</p>
<p>Everyone has their areas of knowledge, while your colleague may have talked about network configuration, which you know nothing about, they may not know the difference between Change and Release management. This doesn’t make either of you smarter than the other. The Venn diagrams below very simply explain people’s overlapping knowledge bases in a very nice way.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/07/Imposter-Syndrome-Belief.png" alt="Imposter-Syndrome-Belief" /></p>
<p>Source: https://open.buffer.com/impostor-syndrome-8-tips-i-wish-i-had-known/</p>
<p>Another area that can cause stress for a consultant is the feeling that you need to know all the answers all the time. While ideally, it would be nice to have the answers to all the client’s questions, that isn’t how life works. Sometimes you see people muddle their way through a question and you can see that it isn’t fooling the client. A better approach is to say you don’t know and that you will get back to them with the answer later. This will almost always go down better than muddling through. There are exceptions to this rule, questions like “was the software deployed yesterday?” or “have we met this milestone yet?” are good examples.</p>
<h2 id="approach-life-as-a-life-long-learner">Approach life as a life-long learner</h2>
<p>One of the key drivers behind Imposter Syndrome is the feeling that you do not know enough. Along with recognising that there will always be things that you don’t know, viewing yourself as a life-long learner can be helpful. If you’re still learning then you can be a little more forgiving of yourself.</p>
<p>Taking opportunities to learn new things and expanding your knowledge will mean you have knowledge in areas others don’t. Don’t be afraid to fail, failing is actually a good thing! As long as you take the time to learn from your experience you can potentially learn more from it than if you had been successful. A great book on the subject of failure is <a href="http://amzn.to/2sBKWeb">Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed</a>, which I recommend reading for anyone looking to improve themselves.</p>
<p>Remember, the ‘you’ of today is the most knowledgeable you’ve ever been.</p>
<h2 id="accepting-feedback">Accepting Feedback</h2>
<p>As part of our work, we should be regularly collecting feedback. Through this, we are able to get thoughts from our colleagues and clients about our strengths and areas for improvement. If we receive positive feedback then this can help to disprove our inner demons. On the other hand, if an area we’re concerned about is raised as an area for improvement then we can speak to them about methods that we could improve.</p>
<p>Imposter Syndrome can make it difficult to accept positive feedback as it is, I know that I sit waiting for the ‘but’ following any compliment. While it can be difficult, try to embrace what has been said, by denying it you can almost be viewed as insulting the other person’s judgement.</p>
<p>It can be useful to write down compliments or good feedback you receive and keep them safe. This allows you when you’re experiencing doubt about yourself you can refer back to this list and it will, hopefully, help to reassure you.</p>
<h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2>
<p>Imposter syndrome is something that almost everyone will experience during their career. It is important that we recognise that we are not the only ones experiencing it and it is, in fact, something that is very normal. Something to consider is that if you’re pushing your limits then Imposter Syndrome is almost inevitable! By pushing yourself, setting yourself stretch objectives, by definition you will be facing new and more difficult challenges than you have faced previously. This can lead to feelings of being unable to manage, that you’re doomed to fail and increased stress, something I talk about in my post about stress (<a href="https://samjenkins.com/stress-finding-the-right-level/">Stress – What is the right level of stress?</a>).</p>
<p>The key message is, you can almost guarantee that everyone around you has experienced the same feelings of doubt as you, and it’s perfectly normal. If you don’t believe me, then take a look at the chart below (because charts never lie).</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/07/Being-okay-with-imposter.png" alt="Being Okay with Imposter Syndrome" /></p>
<p>Source: http://errantscience.com/imposter-syndrome/</p>
<p>Do you occasionally feel that you’re an imposter? If so, feel free to share a time when you’ve felt like an imposter.</p>
<p>For me, a very poignant example is this post, I don’t feel qualified to write about Imposter Syndrome and its impact on people. A little ironic perhaps?</p>SatalDo you find yourself feeling like you’re a fraud? Feeling like you’re getting by on chance, that your friends, colleagues and the client will soon find you out? If so, then you might be dealing with Imposter Syndrome also sometimes referred to as the Imposter Complex. What is Imposter Syndrome? Imposter Syndrome is a term originally coined by clinical psychologists Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes in their paper “The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: dynamics and therapeutic intervention”. While the original work focused on its impact on women, it is actually extremely common in both men and women. Pauline Clance and Gail Matthews identified that up to 70% off people will experience Imposter Syndrome at some point in their lives. To give you an idea of how pervasive it is, some of the famous people who have commented that they experience imposter syndrome include: Tom Hanks Emma Watson Tina Fey Chris Martin (Coldplay member) Kate Winslet Renée Zellweger John Cheadle Meryl Streep Director-General of the World Health Organisation Dr Margaret Chan I could go on but I think you get the idea. Imposter Syndrome, as the name suggests, is the feeling that you’re an imposter in a situation. The feeling that you don’t deserve to be where you are, that people will find out that you’re making it up as you go along. Other examples of feelings that those who experience Imposter Syndrome encounter: The feeling that you’re untrained and unqualified for what you’re doing Anxiety about the work that you’re doing Have difficulty accepting praise or compliments Imposter Syndrome is also terrible in that it is self-reinforcing. As someone feels that they need to work harder to avoid being viewed as a fraud, they produce more high-quality work, which they then continue to discount in their own mind. Dealing with Imposter Syndrome Recognising Imposter Syndrome and the impact it can have is useful in its own rights but we can seek to address it. Imposter Syndrome is something that is, unfortunately, not something that can be completely “cured”, it is something that is likely to lurk in the background throughout your life. We can, however, seek to manage it. The following are some methods for helping to manage Imposter Syndrome. Recognise that there are things that you don’t know In consulting, there is an expectation that we are the experts, that we know everything necessary for the task at hand, however, this simply isn’t true or possible. It is important to recognise that there are things that you don’t know and there are things that you will never know, and that’s okay. A common thought with Imposter Syndrome is that everyone knows more than you. In meetings with clients or colleague, others having knowledge that you don’t will reinforce this belief but it is only half the story. While you know the times’ someone has said something you didn’t know, you don’t know the times you say something that another person didn’t. Everyone has their areas of knowledge, while your colleague may have talked about network configuration, which you know nothing about, they may not know the difference between Change and Release management. This doesn’t make either of you smarter than the other. The Venn diagrams below very simply explain people’s overlapping knowledge bases in a very nice way. Source: https://open.buffer.com/impostor-syndrome-8-tips-i-wish-i-had-known/ Another area that can cause stress for a consultant is the feeling that you need to know all the answers all the time. While ideally, it would be nice to have the answers to all the client’s questions, that isn’t how life works. Sometimes you see people muddle their way through a question and you can see that it isn’t fooling the client. A better approach is to say you don’t know and that you will get back to them with the answer later. This will almost always go down better than muddling through. There are exceptions to this rule, questions like “was the software deployed yesterday?” or “have we met this milestone yet?” are good examples. Approach life as a life-long learner One of the key drivers behind Imposter Syndrome is the feeling that you do not know enough. Along with recognising that there will always be things that you don’t know, viewing yourself as a life-long learner can be helpful. If you’re still learning then you can be a little more forgiving of yourself. Taking opportunities to learn new things and expanding your knowledge will mean you have knowledge in areas others don’t. Don’t be afraid to fail, failing is actually a good thing! As long as you take the time to learn from your experience you can potentially learn more from it than if you had been successful. A great book on the subject of failure is Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed, which I recommend reading for anyone looking to improve themselves. Remember, the ‘you’ of today is the most knowledgeable you’ve ever been. Accepting Feedback As part of our work, we should be regularly collecting feedback. Through this, we are able to get thoughts from our colleagues and clients about our strengths and areas for improvement. If we receive positive feedback then this can help to disprove our inner demons. On the other hand, if an area we’re concerned about is raised as an area for improvement then we can speak to them about methods that we could improve. Imposter Syndrome can make it difficult to accept positive feedback as it is, I know that I sit waiting for the ‘but’ following any compliment. While it can be difficult, try to embrace what has been said, by denying it you can almost be viewed as insulting the other person’s judgement. It can be useful to write down compliments or good feedback you receive and keep them safe. This allows you when you’re experiencing doubt about yourself you can refer back to this list and it will, hopefully, help to reassure you. Conclusion Imposter syndrome is something that almost everyone will experience during their career. It is important that we recognise that we are not the only ones experiencing it and it is, in fact, something that is very normal. Something to consider is that if you’re pushing your limits then Imposter Syndrome is almost inevitable! By pushing yourself, setting yourself stretch objectives, by definition you will be facing new and more difficult challenges than you have faced previously. This can lead to feelings of being unable to manage, that you’re doomed to fail and increased stress, something I talk about in my post about stress (Stress – What is the right level of stress?). The key message is, you can almost guarantee that everyone around you has experienced the same feelings of doubt as you, and it’s perfectly normal. If you don’t believe me, then take a look at the chart below (because charts never lie). Source: http://errantscience.com/imposter-syndrome/ Do you occasionally feel that you’re an imposter? If so, feel free to share a time when you’ve felt like an imposter. For me, a very poignant example is this post, I don’t feel qualified to write about Imposter Syndrome and its impact on people. A little ironic perhaps?Stress – What is the right level of stress?2017-05-16T19:48:43+00:002017-05-16T19:48:43+00:00https://samjenkins.com/stress-finding-the-right-level<p>When you think of stress, you no doubt think of a situation similar to this picture. A situation of discomfort, strain and pressure, which could be caused by innumerable reasons. While this is definitely one form of stress, stress is also something that can also make you feel excited, motivated and challenged.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/03/Stress-photo.jpeg" alt="Man showing signs of stress" /></p>
<h2 id="types-of-stress">Types of Stress</h2>
<p>As I’ve alluded to above, there are actually two types of stress that we encounter within our lives:</p>
<h3 id="eustress">Eustress</h3>
<p>Eustress is a positive stress, that will tend to have the following characteristics:</p>
<ul>
<li>Motivates you</li>
<li>Is short-term</li>
<li>Feels exciting</li>
<li>Feels within our ability to cope</li>
</ul>
<p>Eustress happens when you’re put into a position where you’re stretched but not past our perceived capability to cope. Things like starting a new job, buying a home, marriage or having a child, these are all stressful activities but I would hope an overall positive one.</p>
<h3 id="distress">Distress</h3>
<p>Distress is the form of stress that we normally associate with the word “stress”. It tends to be characterised with the following traits:</p>
<ul>
<li>Feels unpleasant</li>
<li>Feels to be outside of our ability to cope</li>
<li>Causes anxiety</li>
<li>Can be short or long-term</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="pressure--performance-curve">Pressure – Performance Curve</h2>
<p>The pressure performance curve is a diagrammatic representation of the ability of an individual against the level of situational stress. As everyone is unique the levels of pressure and performance levels are obviously relative.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/03/Performance-pressure-curve.png" alt="Performance-Pressure Curve" /></p>
<p>Source: https://rubica.co.uk/insights-resources/top-tips-for-building-team-resilience</p>
<p>On the right we can see the minimum level of pressure, this leads to situations where you find yourself bored. This could be something like doing a large amount of photocopying. This is something that you’re unlikely to find taxing without there being some additional conditions around the issue.</p>
<p>We then move into the relaxed and comfortable region, this is where you may have been doing something for a while. While it may have excited you and been a challenge at the beginning, it’s now comfortable and rarely challenging.</p>
<p>The Stretch area is where you will really come into your own. Tasks are difficult enough that you feel challenged but not so difficult that you feel that you’re unable to achieve it. It is important to note that while you’re able to work in this region for a while, continually being in this region for a long while will move you towards strain. It is, therefore, important that you have breaks to relax spread out over the year.</p>
<p>We then move into the Strain and Overwhelmed side of things. These are when you are moving from eustress into distress. When you are in this region you are likely to start suffering from impaired judgement and decision making. This is on top of the likelihood of suffering from exhaustion and if you remain overwhelmed for an extended period of time potential physiological issues. (<a href="http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/understanding-chronic-stress.aspx">http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/understanding-chronic-stress.aspx</a>)</p>
<h2 id="dealing-with-stress">Dealing with Stress</h2>
<p>I won’t look at how to give yourself more stress, as this can easily be achieved by finding a more challenging role or taking on new responsibilities. I will, however, look at dealing with stress and methods for decreasing it.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/04/Zen.jpeg" alt="Stacked stoned over a stream" /></p>
<p>It is important to realise that we work in a competitive and stress filled world. Every one of us will find times when we will start to stray into the strain and overwhelmed side of the graph. Being able to identify when we are feeling stressed and finding ways of reducing it that work for us is important.</p>
<p>I have listed some of the most common recommendations around managing stress below but will take the opportunity to go into a few more in a little more detail afterwards.</p>
<ul>
<li>Stepping away from the problem, taking a walk</li>
<li>Taking deep breaths</li>
<li>Physical Activity</li>
<li>More sleep</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="recognise-that-talking-to-people-is-not-a-sign-of-weakness">Recognise that talking to people is not a sign of weakness</h3>
<p>While we all know that we can and should talk to our managers if we are struggling there is a great hesitancy to do so. Some of the reasons that we may decide against doing this are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Within our culture, we associate being busy with being successful. If we feel we aren’t able to keep up then this must mean that we aren’t successful.</li>
<li>Our desire to appear to be in control</li>
<li>Not wanting to feel that we are letting the team down by struggling with our workload.</li>
<li>Concern about the impact of sharing our struggles may have on review round and promotion cases.</li>
</ul>
<p>No one likes talking about where they are struggling but it can be very helpful if only for saying what the problems are out loud and getting someone else’s perspective on them. If initially speaking to your manager about it seems intimidating then try speaking to a close friend or colleague first.</p>
<h3 id="think-about-what-is-the-absolute-worst-case-outcome">Think about what is the absolute worst case outcome</h3>
<p>This is something that I know I personally struggled with. One of my core values is punctuality, I find the idea of being late almost physically painful. Therefore I struggle with missing deadlines, pushing both myself and my team to meet them.</p>
<p>Eventually, I had a chat with my career manager who challenged me with the question “What is the worst case of you missing the deadline?”. I have to admit, I was initially stumped, “missing a deadline” was a big ‘no-no’ to me. After being pressed to provide an answer, I was only able to come up with there being a delay and people being disappointed. Both of these are obviously undesirable but neither of them are unresolvable or would even necessarily reflect badly on the project. Thinking this through can help you rationalise what the worst case outcome is and you will usually find it’s not as bad as you will have been building up to in your head.</p>
<p>Now, this is not always the case, if you’re managing a project with liquidated damages, where missing a deadline will result in financial repercussions, there are greater impacts. In these cases, there would be a greater interest from senior levels and hopefully greater support for when things aren’t going to plan.</p>
<h3 id="appropriate-breaks">Appropriate breaks</h3>
<p>As mentioned above, while we want to be in the stretch region of the pressure-performance curve, being in the stretch region for extended periods of time can be a bad thing. It is, therefore, advisable to try and make sure there are opportunities for you to relax and destress throughout the year.</p>
<p>I’m personally terrible at taking holiday, I end up getting to the end of the holiday year finding that I’ve taken a couple days and have the rest of my allocation unused. To prevent that, I’ve taken the approach of looking at when the bank holidays are then adding some time onto each of these to get nine days off for the price of four. This still leaves days to use for holidays away, Christmas and things like that but helps avoid that last minute rush at the end of the holiday year.</p>
<h3 id="learn-to-recognise-when-youre-starting-to-feel-stressed">Learn to recognise when you’re starting to feel stressed</h3>
<p>While most people know what it feels like to be stressed being able to recognise it earlier allows us to catch it early.</p>
<p>An exercise that I was shown to help build recognition, is to imagine something very stressful, a job interview, public speaking or finding that your computer has a virus (WannaCry?). Now where in your body you do feel it? Personally, I feel the stress in my chest, a tense, almost crushing sensation. The feeling you’re experiencing while imagining it is likely to be much milder than if you were in those actual situations but this level will give you an idea of how it will feel when you’re starting to get stressed.</p>
<p>Knowing this feeling can give you the prompt you need to start taking pre-emptive actions to prevent you from slipping into distress.</p>
<h2 id="summary">Summary</h2>
<p>Finding the right level of stress can be a difficult task and isn’t something that you can do once and be done with. Hopefully, in this post, you’ve learned something that will help you in managing your stress to keep you from slipping into distress or, at least, the knowledge that being stressed is common and is nothing to be ashamed of.</p>
<p>I’d love to hear if anyone else has methods that they’ve used to help keep themselves from slipping into distress.</p>SatalWhen you think of stress, you no doubt think of a situation similar to this picture. A situation of discomfort, strain and pressure, which could be caused by innumerable reasons. While this is definitely one form of stress, stress is also something that can also make you feel excited, motivated and challenged. Types of Stress As I’ve alluded to above, there are actually two types of stress that we encounter within our lives: Eustress Eustress is a positive stress, that will tend to have the following characteristics: Motivates you Is short-term Feels exciting Feels within our ability to cope Eustress happens when you’re put into a position where you’re stretched but not past our perceived capability to cope. Things like starting a new job, buying a home, marriage or having a child, these are all stressful activities but I would hope an overall positive one. Distress Distress is the form of stress that we normally associate with the word “stress”. It tends to be characterised with the following traits: Feels unpleasant Feels to be outside of our ability to cope Causes anxiety Can be short or long-term Pressure – Performance Curve The pressure performance curve is a diagrammatic representation of the ability of an individual against the level of situational stress. As everyone is unique the levels of pressure and performance levels are obviously relative. Source: https://rubica.co.uk/insights-resources/top-tips-for-building-team-resilience On the right we can see the minimum level of pressure, this leads to situations where you find yourself bored. This could be something like doing a large amount of photocopying. This is something that you’re unlikely to find taxing without there being some additional conditions around the issue. We then move into the relaxed and comfortable region, this is where you may have been doing something for a while. While it may have excited you and been a challenge at the beginning, it’s now comfortable and rarely challenging. The Stretch area is where you will really come into your own. Tasks are difficult enough that you feel challenged but not so difficult that you feel that you’re unable to achieve it. It is important to note that while you’re able to work in this region for a while, continually being in this region for a long while will move you towards strain. It is, therefore, important that you have breaks to relax spread out over the year. We then move into the Strain and Overwhelmed side of things. These are when you are moving from eustress into distress. When you are in this region you are likely to start suffering from impaired judgement and decision making. This is on top of the likelihood of suffering from exhaustion and if you remain overwhelmed for an extended period of time potential physiological issues. (http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/understanding-chronic-stress.aspx) Dealing with Stress I won’t look at how to give yourself more stress, as this can easily be achieved by finding a more challenging role or taking on new responsibilities. I will, however, look at dealing with stress and methods for decreasing it. It is important to realise that we work in a competitive and stress filled world. Every one of us will find times when we will start to stray into the strain and overwhelmed side of the graph. Being able to identify when we are feeling stressed and finding ways of reducing it that work for us is important. I have listed some of the most common recommendations around managing stress below but will take the opportunity to go into a few more in a little more detail afterwards. Stepping away from the problem, taking a walk Taking deep breaths Physical Activity More sleep Recognise that talking to people is not a sign of weakness While we all know that we can and should talk to our managers if we are struggling there is a great hesitancy to do so. Some of the reasons that we may decide against doing this are: Within our culture, we associate being busy with being successful. If we feel we aren’t able to keep up then this must mean that we aren’t successful. Our desire to appear to be in control Not wanting to feel that we are letting the team down by struggling with our workload. Concern about the impact of sharing our struggles may have on review round and promotion cases. No one likes talking about where they are struggling but it can be very helpful if only for saying what the problems are out loud and getting someone else’s perspective on them. If initially speaking to your manager about it seems intimidating then try speaking to a close friend or colleague first. Think about what is the absolute worst case outcome This is something that I know I personally struggled with. One of my core values is punctuality, I find the idea of being late almost physically painful. Therefore I struggle with missing deadlines, pushing both myself and my team to meet them. Eventually, I had a chat with my career manager who challenged me with the question “What is the worst case of you missing the deadline?”. I have to admit, I was initially stumped, “missing a deadline” was a big ‘no-no’ to me. After being pressed to provide an answer, I was only able to come up with there being a delay and people being disappointed. Both of these are obviously undesirable but neither of them are unresolvable or would even necessarily reflect badly on the project. Thinking this through can help you rationalise what the worst case outcome is and you will usually find it’s not as bad as you will have been building up to in your head. Now, this is not always the case, if you’re managing a project with liquidated damages, where missing a deadline will result in financial repercussions, there are greater impacts. In these cases, there would be a greater interest from senior levels and hopefully greater support for when things aren’t going to plan. Appropriate breaks As mentioned above, while we want to be in the stretch region of the pressure-performance curve, being in the stretch region for extended periods of time can be a bad thing. It is, therefore, advisable to try and make sure there are opportunities for you to relax and destress throughout the year. I’m personally terrible at taking holiday, I end up getting to the end of the holiday year finding that I’ve taken a couple days and have the rest of my allocation unused. To prevent that, I’ve taken the approach of looking at when the bank holidays are then adding some time onto each of these to get nine days off for the price of four. This still leaves days to use for holidays away, Christmas and things like that but helps avoid that last minute rush at the end of the holiday year. Learn to recognise when you’re starting to feel stressed While most people know what it feels like to be stressed being able to recognise it earlier allows us to catch it early. An exercise that I was shown to help build recognition, is to imagine something very stressful, a job interview, public speaking or finding that your computer has a virus (WannaCry?). Now where in your body you do feel it? Personally, I feel the stress in my chest, a tense, almost crushing sensation. The feeling you’re experiencing while imagining it is likely to be much milder than if you were in those actual situations but this level will give you an idea of how it will feel when you’re starting to get stressed. Knowing this feeling can give you the prompt you need to start taking pre-emptive actions to prevent you from slipping into distress. Summary Finding the right level of stress can be a difficult task and isn’t something that you can do once and be done with. Hopefully, in this post, you’ve learned something that will help you in managing your stress to keep you from slipping into distress or, at least, the knowledge that being stressed is common and is nothing to be ashamed of. I’d love to hear if anyone else has methods that they’ve used to help keep themselves from slipping into distress.Creating dynamic sub-menu in Excel2017-03-04T15:54:52+00:002017-03-04T15:54:52+00:00https://samjenkins.com/creating-dynamic-sub-menu-excel<p>Excel is a powerful tool and has a lot of opportunities that people aren’t aware of. In this post, I’m going to talk about one of these, the ability to easily make a dynamic sub-menu.</p>
<h2 id="the-example">The Example</h2>
<p>We are going to make a simple look up, which when you specify a country will give you a list of major cities. For this example, we are only going to use five countries and ten cities in each. If we were doing this for all countries and all cities we might choose to use a different method.</p>
<h3 id="creating-the-data-for-the-dynamic-sub-menu">Creating the data for the dynamic sub-menu</h3>
<p>The first thing we are going to do is create six tables, one table for the names of the countries and one table for each of the countries. In my case, I have chosen Belgium, Croatia, Italy, Spain and the UK, and Googled a list of ten cities in each of them.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/02/Excel-Dynamic-Sub-Menu-Tables.png" alt="The tables for the dynamic sub-menu" /></p>
<p>You’ll notice for I have made the column header for each table to be a description of what the table contains. This is just for clarify. Depending on how clear you like your references to be, you could also go ahead and specify a name for each of the tables by going into Table Tools > Design, then updating the Table Name. It is important that you don’t name any of the tables just their country name, you’ll see why later. Instead, I would suggest something like UKCities.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/02/Excel-Dynamic-Sub-Menu-Changing-Table-Name.png" alt="Changing the table name" /></p>
<h3 id="creating-the-named-ranges">Creating the named ranges</h3>
<p>When we are creating the drop down lists we will need to use named ranges to specify the information that should be displayed. You cannot specify a table as the Data Validation source, therefore we need to use a named range.</p>
<p>To define a new named range we can go to the Formulas tab and click on the Define Name button.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/02/Excel-Dynamic-Sub-Menu-Define-Name.png" alt="Define name button in Ribbon" /></p>
<p>This will then give us a pop-up where we specify the name of the named range and what cells it refers to. You will need to type in the table name and column as selecting the cells will give you absolute references.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/02/Excel-Dynamic-Sub-Menu-New-Named-Range.png" alt="Add new named range" /></p>
<p>We now have our countries named range created and can create the first of the two drop downs. This can easily be achieved by selecting the cell you wish to add the drop down to and selecting the Data Validation button in the Data tab.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/02/Excel-Dynamic-Sub-Menu-Data-Validation-Button.png" alt="Data Validation Button" /></p>
<p>Once you’ve opened up the Data Validation box, you’ll need to change the Allow type to List. This will then allow you to specify the source for the drop down list, in our case, it’s going to be the Countries named range.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/02/Excel-Dynamic-Sub-Menu-Countries-Data-Validation.png" alt="Creating the countries menu" /></p>
<p>Once you’ve done that you will have the following:</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/02/Excel-Dynamic-Sub-Menu-Country-Drop-Down.png" alt="Country drop down list" /></p>
<p>Now for the dynamic sub-menu part of this, for this, we are going to use the INDIRECT function. What the INDIRECT function does is allow you to specify a cell or range through text. In our case, we are going to take each of the country names and turn them into a named range for their cities.</p>
<p>To achieve this we just need to follow the steps above, creating a named range called UK for the table of UK Cities.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/02/Excel-Dynamic-Sub-Menu-UK-Cities.png" alt="UK Cities named range" /></p>
<p>Once we have done that for all of the sub-lists we can then create the drop down list for the cities. For clarity, I have changed the name of the country cell to SELECTED_COUNRTY, though you don’t need to do this. We then add data validation to the Cities cell using the formula</p>
<div class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>=INDIRECT(SELECTED_COUNTRY)
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>Which will look like this.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/02/Excel-Dynamic-Sub-Menu-Sub-Menu.png" alt="Data Validation for the dynamic sub-menu" /></p>
<p>When you click on OK, you might get a warning that this formula gives an error, that is fine and to be expected. What is causing this is that there currently isn’t a country selected. Your users won’t be shown this.</p>
<p>We are now complete, if you select one of the countries then the options available in the city cell will be those specified in the corresponding table. If you add an item to the table it will automatically be added without having to worry about changing the named range.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/02/Excel-Dynamic-Sub-Menu-Final-Drop-Downs.png" alt="The final drop downs" /></p>
<h2 id="why-i-chose-to-use-tables">Why I chose to use Tables</h2>
<p>It is possible for you to create named ranges within using tables but I have chosen to use them for a few reasons:</p>
<ul>
<li>You can add new items without worrying about the size of the named range;</li>
<li>You can easily sort them; and,</li>
<li>Personal preference but I like that they have clearly defined areas, where all content within them is related to the one subject.</li>
</ul>SatalExcel is a powerful tool and has a lot of opportunities that people aren’t aware of. In this post, I’m going to talk about one of these, the ability to easily make a dynamic sub-menu. The Example We are going to make a simple look up, which when you specify a country will give you a list of major cities. For this example, we are only going to use five countries and ten cities in each. If we were doing this for all countries and all cities we might choose to use a different method. Creating the data for the dynamic sub-menu The first thing we are going to do is create six tables, one table for the names of the countries and one table for each of the countries. In my case, I have chosen Belgium, Croatia, Italy, Spain and the UK, and Googled a list of ten cities in each of them. You’ll notice for I have made the column header for each table to be a description of what the table contains. This is just for clarify. Depending on how clear you like your references to be, you could also go ahead and specify a name for each of the tables by going into Table Tools > Design, then updating the Table Name. It is important that you don’t name any of the tables just their country name, you’ll see why later. Instead, I would suggest something like UKCities. Creating the named ranges When we are creating the drop down lists we will need to use named ranges to specify the information that should be displayed. You cannot specify a table as the Data Validation source, therefore we need to use a named range. To define a new named range we can go to the Formulas tab and click on the Define Name button. This will then give us a pop-up where we specify the name of the named range and what cells it refers to. You will need to type in the table name and column as selecting the cells will give you absolute references. We now have our countries named range created and can create the first of the two drop downs. This can easily be achieved by selecting the cell you wish to add the drop down to and selecting the Data Validation button in the Data tab. Once you’ve opened up the Data Validation box, you’ll need to change the Allow type to List. This will then allow you to specify the source for the drop down list, in our case, it’s going to be the Countries named range. Once you’ve done that you will have the following: Now for the dynamic sub-menu part of this, for this, we are going to use the INDIRECT function. What the INDIRECT function does is allow you to specify a cell or range through text. In our case, we are going to take each of the country names and turn them into a named range for their cities. To achieve this we just need to follow the steps above, creating a named range called UK for the table of UK Cities. Once we have done that for all of the sub-lists we can then create the drop down list for the cities. For clarity, I have changed the name of the country cell to SELECTED_COUNRTY, though you don’t need to do this. We then add data validation to the Cities cell using the formula =INDIRECT(SELECTED_COUNTRY) Which will look like this. When you click on OK, you might get a warning that this formula gives an error, that is fine and to be expected. What is causing this is that there currently isn’t a country selected. Your users won’t be shown this. We are now complete, if you select one of the countries then the options available in the city cell will be those specified in the corresponding table. If you add an item to the table it will automatically be added without having to worry about changing the named range. Why I chose to use Tables It is possible for you to create named ranges within using tables but I have chosen to use them for a few reasons: You can add new items without worrying about the size of the named range; You can easily sort them; and, Personal preference but I like that they have clearly defined areas, where all content within them is related to the one subject.Positive impact of changing my hosting provider2017-02-25T12:44:00+00:002017-02-25T12:44:00+00:00https://samjenkins.com/changing-hosting-provider<p>In this post, I’m going to talk about my recent change of hosting provider and the impact it has had. Honestly, I hadn’t expected there to be one, so I have been left surprised by the impact it has had.</p>
<h2 id="why-move-hosting-provider">Why move hosting provider?</h2>
<p>While in hindsight this is very obvious, it was something that I hadn’t thought about properly previously. Prior to moving my websites to <a href="https://www.siteground.com/index.htm?afcode=b054fc32316f479125dd83ae49ac7a11">SiteGround</a>, I had a few different websites with different hosting providers. This is obviously a sub-ideal arrangement as it duplicates costs between them. With moving all my sites to the same hosting provider I was able to decrease the amount of money I was paying for each website as the cost of hosting was split between the sites. Always a good thing!</p>
<h2 id="why-siteground">Why SiteGround?</h2>
<p>I have to admit, when setting up <a href="https://samjenkins.com">SatalKeto.com</a> originally, I hadn’t gone out of my way to find the best hosting provider. I had just chosen a well-known hosting provider and never went back to review if it was the best option. It was an approach I had taken for other websites too, which looking back is rather foolish.</p>
<p>Towards the end of last year, I started looking at setting up a new website. When looking for a hosting provider for that website I came across a lot of good reviews for <a href="https://www.siteground.com/index.htm?afcode=b054fc32316f479125dd83ae49ac7a11">SiteGround</a> and thought I would give them a try. Obviously, how little the website would cost was a factor, so I won’t talk about, but some of the other reasons I chose it were:</p>
<ul>
<li>Automatic updates for <a href="https://www.siteground.co.uk/tutorials/wordpress/siteground-autoupdate.htm">WordPress</a> and <a href="https://www.siteground.co.uk/tutorials/joomla/joomla-autoupdate.htm">Joomla</a>;</li>
<li>Promises of great support (more on that later);</li>
<li>Ability to easily connect your website to Cloudflare Content Delivery Network;</li>
<li>Daily backups; and</li>
<li>HTTP/2 Enabled Servers.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="introducing-free-ssl">Introducing Free SSL</h2>
<p>Since I originally joined <a href="https://www.siteground.com/index.htm?afcode=b054fc32316f479125dd83ae49ac7a11">SiteGround</a>, they have started providing free SSL on ALL accounts. This is enabled by default for all new website. For existing websites, they have made it incredibly simple to switch on.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.siteground.com/index.htm?afcode=b054fc32316f479125dd83ae49ac7a11">SiteGround</a> talk about how they’ve joined up with <a href="https://letsencrypt.org/">Let’s Encrypt </a>to allow all users to run their websites through HTTPS <a href="https://www.siteground.com/blog/lets-encrypt/">here</a>.</p>
<h2 id="siteground-support">SiteGround Support</h2>
<p>One thing that has really pleasantly surprised me is how good <a href="https://www.siteground.com/index.htm?afcode=b054fc32316f479125dd83ae49ac7a11">SiteGround</a>‘s support has been. They have been able to quickly and easily resolve the standard sort of questions that you would get with hosting. In addition, they have been able to help with very specific WordPress/Joomla issues and resolve them for me.</p>
<p>As far as timeliness, while I haven’t tried asking them questions at weird and wonderful hours, <a href="https://www.siteground.com/index.htm?afcode=b054fc32316f479125dd83ae49ac7a11">SiteGround</a>‘s support have always answered within 20 minutes. The longer instances have been where they have already resolved my issue for me and are just writing to confirm it’s sorted! Now that’s service I can get used to.</p>
<h2 id="impact-of-changing-hosting-provider">Impact of changing hosting provider</h2>
<p>Having moved this website over to <a href="https://www.siteground.com/index.htm?afcode=b054fc32316f479125dd83ae49ac7a11">SiteGround</a> 6 days ago and the number of weekly visits has DOUBLED its normal number. This is without having added new content or having advertised the website at all.</p>
<p>Realistically I would predominantly put this down to the addition of HTTPS to the entire website. Google have previously said whether a website uses HTTPS is taken into consideration for rankings (blog post <a href="https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html">here</a>). It may seem unfair to attribute the increase in visitors to <a href="https://www.siteground.com/index.htm?afcode=b054fc32316f479125dd83ae49ac7a11">SiteGround</a> because I implemented HTTPS but I wouldn’t have implemented it if <a href="https://www.siteground.com/index.htm?afcode=b054fc32316f479125dd83ae49ac7a11">SiteGround</a> hadn’t made it free and so simple to implement.</p>
<p>While it is perhaps a little more subjective, I have also felt that the website has been more responsive since the move. Unfortunately, I failed to take the necessary measurements to definitely state that this is true.</p>
<h2 id="summing-up">Summing Up</h2>
<p>Overall I’ve found <a href="https://www.siteground.com/index.htm?afcode=b054fc32316f479125dd83ae49ac7a11">SiteGround</a> to be a great option for when you want to get a simple WordPress or Joomla up and running. <a href="https://www.siteground.com/index.htm?afcode=b054fc32316f479125dd83ae49ac7a11">SiteGround</a> have made it ridiculously simple to get your site running over HTTPS while keeping it up to date.</p>
<p>If you’re looking to start a new website or like me want to consolidate your websites into one hosting provider, I’d strongly suggest giving them a look.</p>SatalIn this post, I’m going to talk about my recent change of hosting provider and the impact it has had. Honestly, I hadn’t expected there to be one, so I have been left surprised by the impact it has had. Why move hosting provider? While in hindsight this is very obvious, it was something that I hadn’t thought about properly previously. Prior to moving my websites to SiteGround, I had a few different websites with different hosting providers. This is obviously a sub-ideal arrangement as it duplicates costs between them. With moving all my sites to the same hosting provider I was able to decrease the amount of money I was paying for each website as the cost of hosting was split between the sites. Always a good thing! Why SiteGround? I have to admit, when setting up SatalKeto.com originally, I hadn’t gone out of my way to find the best hosting provider. I had just chosen a well-known hosting provider and never went back to review if it was the best option. It was an approach I had taken for other websites too, which looking back is rather foolish. Towards the end of last year, I started looking at setting up a new website. When looking for a hosting provider for that website I came across a lot of good reviews for SiteGround and thought I would give them a try. Obviously, how little the website would cost was a factor, so I won’t talk about, but some of the other reasons I chose it were: Automatic updates for WordPress and Joomla; Promises of great support (more on that later); Ability to easily connect your website to Cloudflare Content Delivery Network; Daily backups; and HTTP/2 Enabled Servers. Introducing Free SSL Since I originally joined SiteGround, they have started providing free SSL on ALL accounts. This is enabled by default for all new website. For existing websites, they have made it incredibly simple to switch on. SiteGround talk about how they’ve joined up with Let’s Encrypt to allow all users to run their websites through HTTPS here. SiteGround Support One thing that has really pleasantly surprised me is how good SiteGround‘s support has been. They have been able to quickly and easily resolve the standard sort of questions that you would get with hosting. In addition, they have been able to help with very specific WordPress/Joomla issues and resolve them for me. As far as timeliness, while I haven’t tried asking them questions at weird and wonderful hours, SiteGround‘s support have always answered within 20 minutes. The longer instances have been where they have already resolved my issue for me and are just writing to confirm it’s sorted! Now that’s service I can get used to. Impact of changing hosting provider Having moved this website over to SiteGround 6 days ago and the number of weekly visits has DOUBLED its normal number. This is without having added new content or having advertised the website at all. Realistically I would predominantly put this down to the addition of HTTPS to the entire website. Google have previously said whether a website uses HTTPS is taken into consideration for rankings (blog post here). It may seem unfair to attribute the increase in visitors to SiteGround because I implemented HTTPS but I wouldn’t have implemented it if SiteGround hadn’t made it free and so simple to implement. While it is perhaps a little more subjective, I have also felt that the website has been more responsive since the move. Unfortunately, I failed to take the necessary measurements to definitely state that this is true. Summing Up Overall I’ve found SiteGround to be a great option for when you want to get a simple WordPress or Joomla up and running. SiteGround have made it ridiculously simple to get your site running over HTTPS while keeping it up to date. If you’re looking to start a new website or like me want to consolidate your websites into one hosting provider, I’d strongly suggest giving them a look.It’s been a while and what the future holds2017-02-19T21:13:41+00:002017-02-19T21:13:41+00:00https://samjenkins.com/updates-to-the-website<p>Hello Internet, it’s been a while! My last update was written in January 2014! This is obviously a very long time ago and a lot has happened in my life since then. The primary change in my life is that I have moved away from primarily working in development roles into more business consulting and project management. This means that while I might still post the occasional piece of code or tech they are likely to be less frequent.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2017/02/the-future-11-300x150.jpg" alt="The future next exit" /></p>
<h1 id="so-what-happens-next">So what happens next?</h1>
<p>I’m not going to start promising that I’ll be posting regular content but I have wanted to get back to putting up information that I find useful and share solved problems. The subjects you’re likely to see content around are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Project Management</li>
<li>MS Office Skills
<ul>
<li>Excel</li>
<li>Project</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Presentation skills</li>
<li>Professionalism</li>
</ul>
<p>In my professional life, I’m putting together training material for a couple talks that I am working on. Once I’ve started to get these to a position where I’m happy to share them with you then I might start putting these up and seeing what people think of them.</p>
<p>I am also in the process of going through a lot of the old draft posts that I have written on here, if any are nearly complete, up to scratch and are still relevant then I may choose to publish them</p>
<p>Anyway, hopefully, this won’t be the last post for another three years but only time will tell.</p>SatalHello Internet, it’s been a while! My last update was written in January 2014! This is obviously a very long time ago and a lot has happened in my life since then. The primary change in my life is that I have moved away from primarily working in development roles into more business consulting and project management. This means that while I might still post the occasional piece of code or tech they are likely to be less frequent. So what happens next? I’m not going to start promising that I’ll be posting regular content but I have wanted to get back to putting up information that I find useful and share solved problems. The subjects you’re likely to see content around are: Project Management MS Office Skills Excel Project Presentation skills Professionalism In my professional life, I’m putting together training material for a couple talks that I am working on. Once I’ve started to get these to a position where I’m happy to share them with you then I might start putting these up and seeing what people think of them. I am also in the process of going through a lot of the old draft posts that I have written on here, if any are nearly complete, up to scratch and are still relevant then I may choose to publish them Anyway, hopefully, this won’t be the last post for another three years but only time will tell.