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Articles by John Allen
Shaping up for Money
Kajal Sanghrajka led the London School of Economics first ever accelerator programme supporting 15 early stage businesses focused on profit and purpose in 2020. She is the Director of Growth Hub Global where she supports European companies and universities to grow globally leveraging her own experience starting and growing a business internationally and building Columbia university’s first incubator as a graduate entrepreneur.
Op-Ed: NJ must follow its neighbor, make polluters pay
New York just made history by passing a Climate Superfund Act to hold corporate polluters accountable for billions in climate damage. Now it’s New Jersey’s turn. Every day our leaders delay, they’re leaving working families and taxpayers to pick up a tab that should belong to Big Oil. The case is simple: Fossil fuel companies made billions while knowingly fueling the climate crisis. They lied about the risks and funded disinformation.
TMT Under Threat: Building Cyber Resilience Against Increasing Attacks
This article was co-written by John Allen and Tamara Nolan, Managing Directors at MorganFranklin Cyber. The Technology, Media, and Telecommunications (TMT) industry is essential for digital transformation, driving connectivity, content, and innovation worldwide. However, its importance and rapid expansion also make it a prime target for cyber threats.
Pope Francis Isn’t Actually Visiting Peripheries—He’s Leaving Them Behind - Word on Fire
ROME—As of this writing, Pope Francis is undertaking the longest and most demanding voyage of his papacy, a twelve-day outing to what’s widely being described in most media accounts, and even some Catholic commentary, as the peripheries of the world: Indonesia, East Timor, Papua New Guinea, and Singapore. To be honest, however, the idea that these venues are “peripheries” is mostly a Western conceit, and, from the point of view of the Catholic Church, a terribly superannuated one.
Bridging the IT-OT divide mitigates escalating cyberthreats
As cyber risks escalate in — particularly in critical industries, like manufacturing, energy, and transportation — boardrooms are taking center stage in fostering a truce between information technology (IT) and operation technology OT. The surge in technological dependencies controlling vital infrastructure prompts cyber-savvy boards to intervene strategically, advocating for heightened security collaboration across the IT and OT technology estates.
Tackling transit infrastructure project risk
By John Allen In 2023 Canada invested around $36 billion in transportation infrastructure. This investment has grown substantially in recent years as provinces and municipalities try to keep up with the rapid growth of their communities. It still arguably isn’t enough to keep up with what is needed. That is why it is important to ensure every dollar is well spent. According to a recently published Australian study, rail projects see an average cost escalation of 45 per cent worldwide.
ProRodeo Hall of Famer John Farris Passes Away
Long-time rodeo supporter John Allen Farris, a ProRodeo Hall of Fame inductee in 2006, passed away Aug. 4 in Duncan, Okla. He was 95. Farris, and his late wife Mildred Farris, who passed away May 13, 2013, at 79, were inducted together into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame on July 15, 2006, in Colorado Springs, Colo. John and Mildred were inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in the Notables category, as the first husband and wife to enter the hallowed Hall together.
Catholics and Contempt
How Catholic Media Fuel Today’s Fights, and What to Do About It by John L. Allen Regular price $19.96 USD Regular price $24.95 USD Sale price $19.96 USD SAVE 20% Sold out Cover Material Paperback Share
3 Ways to Confront the Culture of Contempt
The following is an excerpt of pp. 274-277 from Catholics and Contempt by John Allen Jr. (Word on Fire Publishing). Light a Candle As the oft-cited Chinese proverb goes, “It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” In general, when faced with a choice between attempting to tear something down or to build something up, experience tells me the latter is almost always more satisfying in the long run, even if it’s far harder, more expensive, and requires greater personal commitment.
3 Ways Your CRM Can Improve Your Business Relationships
When we think ‘CRM’, we tend to think of customers. After all, it’s right there in the acronym - ‘Customer Relationship Management’. However, when used in the right way, your CRM can also help to streamline and manage your business relationships. Here, we’ll take you through the fundamentals of what a CRM is, and how it can improve your business relationships as well as your relationships with customers. What is a CRM? Image created by the author CRM stands for ‘Customer Relationship Management’.
2023 Top100 Projects Preview
Cost rises cast a shadow over government infrastructure plans By John Allen Annual lookaheads are notoriously treacherous as recent years have shown. Barring unforeseen, once-in-a-lifetime global events, the main challenge governments across Canada face going into 2023 is achieving a heavy slate of policy and infrastructure priorities while trying to help tame rampant inflation.
The 3 Basic Cloud Service Models Everyone Should Know : @VMblog
By John Allen, Director, SEO, 8x8 The popularity of cloud services has exploded in recent years. In a decade, the cloud applications market has risen by 5 times and is predicted to keep growing.
GUEST COLUMN: Sharp wit not worth losing head
In past letters, I have attempted to enlighten our fair county about information that might benefit them, if only made aware. Trying to emulate my patron saint John the Baptist, I have discovered it’s a good way to lose your head. Since the desert isn’t an option and I prefer All-Star’s to locusts, this is my last communication to my fans. About three in number, I think.
All parties have pledged to spend big in the run up to the Ontario Election
By John Allen and Jess Neilson A lot has happened since the Ford government came into power in 2018. A global pandemic that stretched healthcare to breaking point, decimated transit ridership, and shifted teaching and other public services online, have significantly changed the landscape. Going into the June 2 election, all parties have put infrastructure at the heart of their promises to the electorate, with each party trying to outdo the other with the scale of their ambitions.
All parties have pledged to spend big in the run up to the Ontario Election
By John Allen and Jess Neilson A lot has happened since the Ford government came into power in 2018. A global pandemic that stretched healthcare to breaking point, decimated transit ridership, and shifted teaching and other public services online, have significantly changed the landscape. Going into the June 2 election, all parties have put infrastructure at the heart of their promises to the electorate, with each party trying to outdo the other with the scale of their ambitions.
Google Tells Publishers Economic Censorship will be the Consequence for Going Against “Go Ukraine”
by John Allen, GM, VT Today, Google sent out a notice to PUBLISHERS via email effectively enacting economic censorship against those who go against the “mainstream”. Here’s what they sent out today… Dear Publisher, Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause the monetization of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war.
Canada’s Federal Election and the Infrastructure Impact
By John Allen After a 2019 election that saw Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party form a minority government, the Prime Minister sent Canadians back to the polls hoping to capitalize on a bounce in the vote from his government’s handling of the COVID pandemic. Going into the election a significant poll lead vanished, with pollsters anticipating another minority government led by either the Liberals or Progressive Conservatives.
The business case for diversity, equity, and inclusion
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) has been a hot topic in business for the past several years but gained more attention as social justice issues took center stage across the nation and the world last year. But what does it mean for your business and why should you devote your time and resources to this pursuit? Read on for four good reasons (and more) to get on board. First, do the right thing. As business leaders, we make decisions and take actions every day.
5 Innovative Ways to Integrate MDM Capabilities with Business Processes
Master data management (MDM) refers to the discipline of harmonizing information tech and business or organizational needs by ensuring the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency, and accountability of an enterprise’s shared master data assets. Master data can be any data that requires consistency and interpretability by different interests within an organization.
5 Ways to Leverage Mind Mapping to Boost Productivity
Recent months have seen businesses around the world forced to make major changes. The rise of technologies such as telephony, work from home call centers, and remote management tactics are just some of the new phenomena we’ve seen emerge. Maintaining a good level of productivity is one of the immediate challenges businesses have faced with the widespread shift to remote working. So what is effective teamwork in these altered circumstances?
Getting off the Roller Coaster
Canada Launches Engagement for First National Infrastructure Assessment By John Allen When it comes to infrastructure, announcements of billions of dollars for new transit lines or hospitals capture the imagination, new policies and processes not so much. The Federal Government’s recent announcement of Canada’s first National Infrastructure Assessment could be one of the most nationally significant for some time.
5 Reasons Why Your Remote Sales Team Should Be Using VoIP
Excellent communication is crucial for the success of your team. For a remote team, it’s ten times more important. Whether it’s customers interacting with sales representatives or internal communication between team members, effective communication can make or break your business. Thanks to advances in the digital world, remote work is fast becoming the norm. With internet access, your sales team can now do their work from anywhere in the world.
How to Respond to Sexual Harassment or Racial Discrimination Allegations in the Workplace
Dealing with sexual harassment and/or racial discrimination in the workplace can be a terrible time in a person’s career. That’s why understanding how to respond to this situation correctly is crucial for any company. Businesses that do not have this knowledge or dismiss the importance of such allegations – deliberately or unwittingly – can face lawsuits, brand damage, and employee dissatisfaction. Research shows that: – Over 70% of BAME employees have been subjected to racial discrimination.
How to Optimize Your Webinars and Improve Audience Engagement
Due to the digitalization of the marketplace and the rapid development of the Internet companies have successfully developed new ways to engage with leads. In the middle of this new digital ecosystem, webinars have risen to the occasion as great platforms for ecommerce brands. While techniques like sending out a customer service email or two is good every now and then, these days, it’s not enough to sustain engagement.
5 Easy Automated Solutions to Boost Ecommerce Operations
If you work in ecommerce, especially in a family, small, or even medium enterprise, you will notice just how much repetitive work there is to do. In fact, comparatively small tasks might occupy a significant amount of your time, leaving you feeling detached from the actual decisions and goals in building your business. And really, time is the one of the most limiting factors in the life of a person or a business. If we had as much time as we’d like, we could work on creating so much more.
5 Best Practices for Small Businesses Using Video Conferencing
Image Source The last year has seen major changes in the way we conduct business, both within our organizations and among our customer base. Many of these changes are not novel developments but represent a need to adapt to new technology and systems quicker than we had envisaged. Video conferencing was an existing tool that was utilized more when we had to ‘meet’ with people who were considerable distances away.
10 Must-Haves of a Highly Engaging Digital Workspace
Deloitte considers the digital workplace to be the “natural evolution” of the workplace, and defines it as “all the technologies people use to get work done in today’s workplace”. That might be a simple definition, but the digital workplace already exists in most companies. The image below charts the direction of a simple intranet system employed by many companies to a fully digital workspace.
How to Close More Sales Deals Through Video Conferencing
Image by Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay If face-to-face meetings provide the best route to securing a sale, video conferencing is the next best thing. After all, video is the most useful platform out there to improve the customer experience, having a much greater impact on sales than plain content ever will. Making a sale can be a complex business, depending on several factors, in addition to the quality of your service offering.
Infrastructure’s role at the heart of the recovery
By John Allen At the start of the year, 2020 was expected to be a relatively quiet one politically in Canada. After a global pandemic and three provincial elections it was far from that, and any predictions for 2021 come with some fairly large caveats. Going into 2021 the onus will be on adapting infrastructure to become more resilient, repairing the damage done by the pandemic, and advancing projects that get people back to work and deliver lasting benefits for local communities.
How Unified Communications Can Ease Customer Service Friction
As the advance of the tech industry marches on, jargon becomes ever more complex and niche, but at least ‘unified communications’ is one of the simpler and more straightforward terms to emerge. It does exactly what it says on the tin: unifies communications. Simply put, unified communications is the term used to describe tools that integrate and connect different types of communications via a single platform.
8 Website Maintenance Tasks That Help to Improve Traffic
In digital spaces especially with online store platforms, time moves quickly. If left alone, a great website today could have competitor websites outperform it in no time. By maintaining your website, you can give customers a great impression of your brand. This will show that you are a credible expert in your niche and will improve website traffic. Every carefully curated aspect of your image requires maintenance, and there are no exceptions.
Ecommerce Fulfillment - Develop Your Strategy to Win and Keep Customers
The digital world has made us all more impatient. We expect technology to make things faster, and we get frustrated when we have to wait. This applies particularly to ecommerce customers, who demand speed in everything from online searches to the checkout process to customer service responses. Savvy customers are also seeking value for money, and they want the lowest shipping rates alongside the shortest delivery time.
How to Improve E-Commerce Through Efficient Supply Chain Strategies
A successful business strategy requires more than on-the-spot, knee-jerk reactions. Strategies need to encompass a company’s goals and future objectives. This applies to every aspect of e-commerce, especially the supply chain. An effective supply chain model can accelerate your business processes and delight your customers.
The Future of UCaaS: What to Look Out for in the New Decade
The future of modern communication infrastructures is cloud-based. With the accessibility of the internet, a hosted phone system is simply a more cost-effective option for most businesses than maintaining in-house networks. Source: GM Insights You can see this in the increasing rate of adoption of UCaaS over the last decade. This transition to UCaaS is a trend that will continue. The UCaaS market is predicted to exceed $20 billion by 2022. Let’s briefly define UCaaS. What is UCaaS?
The Rise of Virtual Conferences For Business Events Amidst the COVID-19 Outbreak
The need for social distancing during the Covid 19 crisis has meant that thousands of business events have had to be canceled or postponed. But a significant number of companies have decided to host their conferences virtually – aided by the many new and innovative technological solutions available.
4 Essential Components of a Streamlined Mobile DevOps Strategy
The mobile revolution of the last 20 years has radically changed our everyday lives. That’s not just the way we communicate, but also the way we find information, purchase goods and services, entertain ourselves, and more. This has gone in tandem with great technological advances elsewhere. Now it’s never been easier to organize a business teleconference or simply catch up with friends and family, wherever they happen to be.
How to Plan Your Video Marketing Campaign Through Each Step of the Sales Funnel
When thinking about marketing, we tend to think of catchy slogans and billboard ads. We think of people standing in a board meeting, discussing numbers and target markets. But as the digital world changes, the world of marketing campaigns changes along with it. It’s no longer enough to pay a celeb to talk about your brand on a TV ad. You need to be brilliant at content and engage with an audience. You need to use video marketing to reach out to customers and to modernize the way you work.
How to Use NPS Feedback to Reduce Customer Effort
Image from Unsplash.com Do you wish you knew more about your customers? And no, that doesn’t mean learning what their favourite color is or the name of their pet cat. Knowing more about your customers means knowing what they find useful, what they want to see more of, and what they think you could improve. It means knowing what they think of your business. Do these sound like things you want to know? If so, you need to start using net promoter score (NPS) feedback. What is NPS?
6 Strategies to Help CFOs Navigate the COVID-19 Crisis
Image: https://unsplash.com/photos/rFUFqjEKzfY The COVID-19 crisis is a huge challenge to businesses right now. As the situation evolves, it’s vital that the C-Suite can steer their company safely through. CFOs need to be prepared to manage financial difficulties in innovative and transformative ways. Here are six strategies to help CFOs navigate the COVID-19 crisis.
How to Counter Negative SEO Attacks
As any seasoned digital nomads will tell you, search engine optimization (SEO) is an intense battleground for businesses. There’s constant competition and jockeying for position, as rivals go to war with one another for prime spots in search engine results pages (SERPs). Those who succeed put themselves at a major advantage over their competitors. Whatever line of business you’re in the chances are that the competition will be hard-fought.
8 Ways to Improve the Customer Experience With Online Ordering
Running a business is always a huge challenge. When you’re in the initial set-up phase, there’s a lot to get your head around, and a lot of questions to ask yourself — including where you’re going to find any contingent workers you need. In addition, you need to do thorough research to understand the marketplace you’re entering. Once you’ve got your building blocks in place, your small business call center being not the least important of them, you can then proceed with launching your firm.
How VoIP is Changing the Future of Business
You might not realize it, but communications is the lifeblood of your business. Your ability to do everything from team collaboration to customer experience hinges on your communications technology. VoIP (voice over internet protocol) is one of the latest communications technologies to emerge. In this post, we’ll talk about VoIP’s capabilities and how you can use it to your advantage. What is VoIP? As the name implies, VoIP allows you to make calls through the internet.
How to Perform a Successful Social Media Audit
We’ve heard a lot in recent years about the importance of social media, and few would disagree that it’s radically changed the face of business. Whether you’re using social networking as a group chat for business or as a kind of online chat facility to help keep in touch with customers, no business can afford to ignore it.
5 Solutions For When Your Organic Reach Starts to Decline
While it used to be possible to grow your brands through organic reach alone, it’s getting harder to do so. Many social media platforms have changed their algorithms to show brand-based content far less often – unless, of course, it’s promoted. Even people who have opted in to following you may find they see your posts less frequently. So what can you do when your organic reach starts declining? Find Your Community First up – it’s time to figure out who your people are.
Admiral Mike Mullen: I cannot remain silent
Admiral Michael Mullen, served as the 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007 to 2011 Atlantic.comy: It sickened me yesterday to see security personnel—including members of the National Guard—forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president’s visit outside St. John’s Church.
Proof, Tons of It: White Supremacists, Proud Boys, Police, all paid fake demonstrators exposed
VT is finding an interesting mix and now the proof is flooding in. Demonstrators are carrying printed instructions, the fake demonstrators, the ones with paintball or SWAT gear, the Proud Boys, the DeVos-Prince paid “anti-lockdown” types, and the White Supremacists. Behind them, US Army Intelligence School team leaders and Steve Bannon’s “Gladiator School” teams, drenched in MAGA/MEGA money from the Kosher Nostra.
CONFIRMED: Trump Ordered Syria's Wheat Crop Burned During Pandemic
Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator Apache helicopters of the US occupation forces flew low Sunday morning, according to residents of the Adla village, in the Shaddadi countryside, south of Hasaka, as they dropped ‘thermal balloons’, an incendiary weapon, causing the wheat fields to explode into flames while the hot dry winds fanned the raging fire.
COVID-19 Reporting Resembles Both “Entertainment” and Ideological Combat
By Andre Vltchek It is now the beginning of April 2020, and our planet has already come to an almost complete standstill. Some human beings are mesmerized; they are under the spell of the novel coronavirus (flu), named COVID-19. Well, not as novel, one could argue; not anymore. Every day, we are being bombarded by sensationalized numbers and analyzes.
The Quebec Moment
There was a time when elections meant the knives were drawn as commitments of incumbent government were not so much dissected, but hacked up and displayed as examples of incompetence. Nowhere was this more prevalent than around infrastructure. Analysts see the Quebec 2018 election as a potential watershed, the first where the choice does not boil down to federalists versus separatists.
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