Hackomotive Featured on CBS Evening News

Hackathons began with computer programmers, but now people of various industries are participating in these high-tech brainstorming session.  Carter Evans of CBS Evening News reports.  More Businesses Participate in Hackathons

Edmunds Wins Perforce Software Customer Innovation Award

Perforce Software Announces Winners of Its First Annual Customer Innovation Awards: The Versionaries

Organizations Honored for Achievements Using Perforce's Version Management Software

ALAMEDA, Calif. (April 24, 2013) – Perforce Software today announced the winners of its inaugural Versionary Awards for customer innovation. Elite organizations were recognized for their excellence in applying Perforce software to challenging collaboration and development requirements, such as continuous delivery and third-generation globalization. Winners in 10 categories will be recognized at Merge 2013, the Perforce conference, held this year in San Francisco, April 23 - 26.

"We are continually impressed by our customers and are honored to play a supporting role in the many innovations and creative work they deliver," said Christopher Seiwald, CEO of Perforce. "We started the Versionary Awards as a way of recognizing our customers who are stretching the boundaries of what can be done in software development, and who boldly go where no version management has gone before."

Versionary Award winners were selected from 114 nominations submitted from around the world. Categories and recipients include:

Best Adoption of Continuous Delivery Principles – Edmunds.com
Version control is essential to establishing a continuous delivery pipeline. This award recognizes the Perforce customer who most completely adopted these principles, storing all product source code, configuration, environment and related documentation in a single version control platform.

Best Versioning of Everything for Everyone – McKesson Specialty Health
This award recognizes Perforce customers who are opening up versioning to users and content beyond developers and source code.

Best Third-Generation Globalization – Ruckus Wireless
In 3G globalization, development teams across continents and time zones all commit to the same project. This award recognizes those companies that are using Perforce to enable this challenging, but rewarding development style.

Best Use of Open Source with Perforce – Bank of America
This award recognizes companies that are using Perforce to version and connect their open-source and in-house components.

Best Perforce Product Developed by a Customer – ALOC A/S
Perforce customers often use Perforce technology as a versioning platform on which they build advance new applications and capabilities. This award recognizes these innovations.

Most Innovation Application of Perforce – AMD
This award recognizes companies using Perforce in unique and creative ways.

Best Use of Perforce for Auditing and Compliance – GE Healthcare
This award recognizes companies that are managing risk by using Perforce to track key deployment information.

Perforce World Records:
Versionary Awards are also given to companies that raised the bar in their use of Perforce and include the following:

• Most Unusual File Stored in Perforce – Pixar Animation Studios and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (co-winners)
• Highest Changelist Number – Blackberry
• Most Varied File Types in a Single Depot – Ubisoft

Perforce Enterprise Version Management products power the world’s most demanding development environments. Versioning and managing any variety of digital assets—from software and firmware to documents and artwork—Perforce fosters collaboration on a global scale and enables enterprises to enjoy the benefits of greater productivity, security and compliance. More than 400,000 users in over 5,500 organizations—including Fortune 500 companies, world-class innovators, emerging market leaders—use Perforce as their enterprise version management platform.

About Perforce Software

Perforce Software is trusted by industry-leading companies like Salesforce.com, SAP and the New York Stock Exchange to manage their most valuable IP. Perforce products help teams work in concert on important digital assets including software code, documents, multimedia, spreadsheets, images and more. They are unique in their ability to handle large and distributed collections of content, enabling higher productivity, lower costs, improved security and compliance. With the addition of Commons, Perforce is now making it easy for everyone to take advantage of its powerful versioning capabilities. The company is headquartered in Alameda, California, with international operations in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. For more information, visitwww.perforce.com.

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http://www.perforce.com/press/perforce-software-announces-winners-its-first-annual-customer-innovation-awards-versionaries

Edmunds and TechHive Partner Up

TechHive Fuels Up on Car Tech Coverage through Partnership with Edmunds.com

The consumer tech site, from the publisher of PCWorld and Macworld, forges a partnership with car-shopping resource Edmunds.com to expand car tech coverage.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — March 20, 2013 — TechHive, the newest consumer tech media brand from IDG, has struck a partnership with popular car-shopping resource Edmunds.com to expand its car tech coverage and help its audience find their automotive sweet spot.

"Automakers realize that today's drivers want cars that work well with their personal technology," notes Jason Snell, SVP, Editorial Director for IDG Consumer & SMB, the division that manages TechHive. "As important as smartphones, tablets, and always-on Internet connections have become to all of us, it's become far more important for our cars to fit into our digital lives."

PARTNERSHIP WITH EDMUNDS
With the unique, collaborative editorial partnership, Edmunds.com will bring their auto tech expertise directly to TechHive's audience to help them get the most out of their devices. TechHive editors will bring their consumer tech expertise to the Edmunds.com audience of car shoppers to help them make the best tech choices. Content produced together will appear on both TechHive.com and Edmunds.com as it's created, with the first feature length story, Best Tech-Friendly Cars of 2013, slated for this spring.

"TechHive's goal is to help its readers make the right choices about technology, just as we are committed to helping people find the car that meets their every need," says Edmunds.com Editor In Chief Scott Oldham. "Anyone shopping for a car will benefit from the collaboration, especially given the significant amount of technology in today's cars."

TECHHIVE'S AUTO COVERAGE
TechHive editors are taking car tech coverage head-on, and turning it into one of the stronger categories covered on TechHive.com. Editors Sarah Purewal-Jacobsson and Melissa Riofrio are doing most of the car tech duties, including watching for cool stuff in the auto pavilion at CES and visiting the Detroit Auto Show in January.

"We're very excited about expanding our coverage of car tech," explains Snell. "Technology in cars used to be an afterthought, but now it drives buying decisions. Whether it's interacting with your smartphone, providing in-car Wi-Fi, or adding intelligence to the driving experience itself, the technology inside your car matters. We expect to see a lot of innovation in this area from tech companies and automakers alike in the coming years, and we'll be there to report on all of it."

TechHive has recently featured several tech-focused auto reviews and reports:

• Ford C-Max Hybrid talks, plays movies, and nags you while you're parking
• Automatic parking and other cool tech on the Ford Escape Titanium
• Tesla's Model X crossover SUV looks to rock the suburbs
• Volvo shows off smooth, snappy touchscreen infotainement system
• City Safety Technology Package
• Volvo cars watch the road with camera, radar, laser
• Future Ford vehicles may improve your social life

For more, check out TechHive.com or the Car Tech section on the site.

ABOUT TECHHIVE & IDG CONSUMER & SMB
IDG Consumer & SMB publishes leading tech media brands, PCWorld, Macworld and TechHive, and offers innovative marketing services to technology vendors. Reaching a combined 20 million early adopters and tech influencers, IDG Consumer & SMB's brands cover the tech spectrum from PCs, laptops and printers to the newest mobile tech devices and Apple offerings. IDG Consumer & SMB's marketing services group offers tech-focused custom content through their Content Works division along with high-impact advertising/marketing solutions for a wide array of technology marketers.

IDG Consumer & SMB is a wholly owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading technology media, events and research company.

Additional information about IDG Consumer & SMB is available at http://www.idgcsmb.com/

Additional information about IDG, a privately held company, is available at http://www.idg.com

About Edmunds.com, Inc.
Edmunds.com is a car-shopping Web site committed to helping people find the car that meets their every need. Almost 18 million visitors use our research, shopping and buying tools every month to make an easy and informed decision on their next new or used car. Whether you're at the dealership or on the go, we're always by your side with our five-star Edmunds.com iPhone and iPad apps and ourEdmunds.com Android App. Our comprehensive car reviews, shopping tips, photos, videos and feature stories offer a friendly and authentic approach to the automotive world. We're based in Santa Monica, Calif., but you can connect with us from anywhere by following @Edmunds on Twitter or by becoming a fan of Edmunds.com on Facebook.

How to Run Hackathons People Love

Hackathons are exhilarating, fulfilling, and exhausting.  People commit a precious day of personal time to work on solutions - technical or otherwise - for real problems.

Having run over seven internal hackathons and an external one, we feel we’ve learned quite a bit about what works, what doesn’t work, and what needs to happen in order for the event to be successful.   

Want to host a hackathon?  Here’s what you need:

Dream Team

Putting a hackathon together is a tricky process.  You need to understand developers and their needs, as well as how to put on a great event.  Additionally, the planning committee needs to be able to work together well.   

Executive Sponsorship

If your company is holding a hackathon, you need the backing of executives on your team - as they are, after all, the purse-string holders of the company, and well…need we say more?  Not only will it be particularly helpful to have their support if you happen to go a few pennies over budget, they will also be able to provide valuable input along the way.

Budget, Budget, Budget

Budget cautiously but realistically.  You don’t need a ton of money to put on a great event, however, it is important to closely monitor those company dollars that you are spending.

Promote Like Crazy

Holding an external hackathon could be daunting, especially the first time around.  Most worry about traction and whether people will even show up!  The key is to socialize the message within your network and encourage (more likely ask) everyone in the company to do the same.  Word of mouth is critical for getting the message out.  Also, Twitter and other social media outlets could prove to be very helpful in increasing awareness of your event. 

The Registration Process

Always plan on overbooking your hackathons.  Rule of thumb is that 25-40% won’t show up.  That’s just the way it is.  The attrition is especially high for free events.  If you’re not charging for the hackathon, then overbook it by 40%.  You’ll get just the right amount of people. 

Most importantly...relax and have fun!  Participants will pick up on your positive energy and they will want to be a part of it.  The more relaxed people are, the more their creative juices will flow which will lead to great ideas.

Good luck!

Should Car Buying Be Like Online Dating Versus a Dental Visit?

Edmunds' Hackomotive event was recently written up in Forbes magazine.  

"The car-buying experience is 'so torturous,' Hyundai Motor America CEO John Krafcik told an industry gathering a couple years ago, that consumers would rather go to the dentist than visit a car dealership. Krafcik’s comment was surprising only in its public candor. Consumers often cite a root canal being preferable to car buying..."

 Click on the link to read the full article: http://onforb.es/YmDwZS.

Kingpin: The Backbone of CD at Edmunds.com

David Hudson, an Automation Engineer at Edmunds, recently spoke at the most recent Los Angeles Chef User Group meeting (held on February 4).  Click on the link just below to view a video stream of his presentation: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/29048142

Performance Reviews Go by Wayside at Edmunds

Ditch Your Performance Reviews

BLOG: Author: Amy Hirsh Robinson | Source: HCI | Published: February 27, 2013

Last year Adobe Systems’ SVP of HR, Donna Morris, announced that the company was abolishing performance reviews. Employee complaints about the existing appraisal process coupled with Adobe’s need to retool its talent management practices to compete in the digital marketing space were reasons given for this bold move.

Edmunds.com also recently scrapped performance reviews to focus on goal setting and feedback rather than a “check the box” process for ratings’ sake. The decision, according to Edmunds’ SVP of HR, Karren Fink, was met with negligible employee reaction, validating Fink’s theory that the reviews lacked enough value to justify the time spent on them.

Effective performance feedback is critical to employee engagement, especially for members of Generation X and the Millennial generation who place a high value on the frequency and quality of feedback received. However, sentiment is growing among human capital experts that formal reviews do little to provide the type of feedback that employees need. And let’s face it, most managers loathe the process.

I am in favor of ditching the type of performance reviews that are used in over 95% of the companies I’ve observed. They are outdated tools for the New Economy, and in most cases the amount of organizational time, energy and money spent each year on the process far outweighs the purported benefits.

An Alternative Approach

But what’s the alternative for providing employees with effective feedback, development and rewards? The answer is so simple, yet so difficult for employers to embrace and implement. Here’s why.

Investing in training & support of middle management to provide effective feedback: In order to eliminate performance reviews, companies must replace them with a method of giving meaningful, real-time (and sometimes instant!) feedback to their employees. That responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of direct supervisors, who are either unskilled in the task or lack the bandwidth to do it consistently. In fact, the ability to effectively communicate and provide productive and helpful feedback to employees, especially across generational divides, is one of the most underdeveloped competencies among middle managers that I witness in organizations.

Separating reviews from rewards: Another reason why companies, and specifically HR departments, hold on to their existing performance review process has to do with the conventional pairing of reviews with rewards. That is, salary increases, bonuses and promotions happen as a direct result of the annual performance evaluation. Employees need to be fairly compensated and companies are unsure of how to uncouple the rewards process from performance reviews.

Better Recognition, Rewards & Results

Both of these challenges can be successfully mitigated with the proper strategy, tactics and training. Through targeted development and accountability, we can perfect the ability of middle management to provide meaningful feedback to employees. By realigning compensation and advancement opportunities to team and company-wide metrics and goals, we can uncouple performance reviews from individual rewards.

Working without performance reviews is not a revolutionary concept, but it requires a cadre of middle managers able to hold individuals accountable and motivate teams effectively. And it needs a HR team willing to think boldly about recognition, rewards and engagement. Is your company ready to take the plunge?


Amy Hirsh Robinson, MBA, is Principal of the Interchange Group and a leading expert on the impact of generational differences in the for-profit and not-for-profit workplace. She consults to C-level leaders on enterprise-wide strategies to reduce attrition costs, increase profitability and create agile workforces able to adapt to change. Amy is a popular speaker and author on the topic of attracting, retaining and managing top talent, and has been cited and quoted in publications such as Forbes, The Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post.