Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Implementation Case on Information Technology Coursework

Execution Case on Information Technology - Coursework Example With regards to overseeing change, the primary issue that the administration faces is worker obstruction. This issue is tended to by including all the workers during the time spent overseeing change and by making an interchanges structure which shows to the association that the top administration is focused on making an effective progress. These components were not tended to for the situation. Furthermore, subsequently, the task colleagues lost trust in the project’s validity. The basic achievement factor was to pick a task chief who had the correct abilities and experience. This didn't have all the earmarks of being the situation as the picked venture pioneer couldn't resolve the contentions between the various gatherings associated with the undertaking. There was discussion as staff from the branch of bookkeeping and account felt avoided from venture the executives (Bernier, Roy and Brunelle, 2006C). This shows there was absence of between departmental coordination. This pro mpted challenges in venture the executives. It was the undertaking manager’s obligation to guarantee that all the colleagues were similarly spoken to. Anyway he flopped in this assignment. Accordingly the execution procedure was held up. The venture supervisor likewise didn't have the correct core interest. He concentrated on venture finish as opposed to on whether the execution was being led in a way which was deliberately adjusted to the business forms. Thus there were grievances from the colleagues. The execution was centered a lot around conveyance times. In executing ERP, the basic achievement factor is to guarantee that the product functionalities are adjusted to the business forms. It is progressively viable to change the product to suit the business forms than something else. Anyway in light of the fact that the venture leader’s just concern was to finished the usage in time, the vital arrangement process was overlooked. Subsequently the client bunches started to scrutinize the believability of the IT division. The client bunches likewise grumbled that the task director had gotten associated with political games which made him favor the IT division. In this manner the venture director had neglected to include all the divisions in venture the board. The outcome was a showdown between the IT division and the client gatherings and this prompted challenges in the usage procedure. In spite of the fact that the client bunches had been engaged with the undertaking supervisory crew, they didn't have a clue how their endeavors were attached to the key focal point of the organization. One of the colleagues griped that he was continually composing progress reports. Other colleagues felt that their time was not being utilized gainfully. Since the undertaking chief was concentrating a lot on fruition, the departmental necessities were not tended to. Subsequently the colleagues lost trust in the execution procedure and felt that the picked programming was not the correct one for the association. In these conditions the undertaking colleagues didn't feel propelled to put their time and endeavors in actualizing the task. This circumstance was endangering the fate of the venture. On account of the damaged correspondences process, there were clashes between the client gatherings and the product specialists. The client bunches felt that the product functionalities didn't address the business forms adequately while the product specialists were persuaded they had the correct setup of choices. In this circumstance there were issues in different elements of the undertaking. The

Saturday, August 22, 2020

There are two topicschoose one of them Coursework - 1

There are two topicschoose one of them - Coursework Example The creators, Carter and Usry (2002), characterize cost drivers as components that cause the cost to occur or any factor that is related to the occasion of a cost. Instances of cost drivers incorporate machine hours, direct material hours, direct work hours, etc. The way toward choosing the framework generally appropriate for a business relies upon having an away from of the advantages and confinements of the two essential costing frameworks. Otherwise called the ordinary technique, the customary costing system doles out assembling overhead expenses to the fabricated items. This strategy appoints a factory’s roundabout expenses to the fabricated things based on the volume of units delivered, the immediate work hours, or the creation machine hours. In this way, with a customary costing framework the suggestion is that processing plant overhead expenses are reliant on a given cost driver. The utilization of this supposition that was material in the previous decades on the grounds that the recorded cost drivers were the greatest supporters of assembling expenses of items. In any case, in present day times producing overheads have been driven by various factors subsequently the customary costing framework might be deluding in settling on viable administration choices (Cokins, 1998). Customary costing frameworks apply roundabout expenses to the items by thinking about a foreordained overhead rate. The procedure of customary costing starts with the ID and choice of the aberrant expenses and estimation of the costs for the reasonable period. The cost time frame can be month to month, quarterly, or yearly. The cost drivers that identify with the chose costs are then picked. Like the costs, the measure of the cost driver is assessed for the appropriate period. The evaluated cost drivers and assessed costs are then used to ascertain an overhead rate that is then applied to the items utilizing the figured rate. The regular

Friday, July 31, 2020

Gild

Gild INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi, today we are in  San Francisco, in the Gild office. Sheeroy, who are you and what do you do?Sheeroy: So, Im Sheeroy Desai. Im the co-founder and CEO of Gild. At Gild what we do is we help our customers, which are companies from startups all the way to very large enterprises. We have a software solution that helps them find, engage and end up hiring software engineers.Martin: Great!Martin: What is your background?Sheeroy: My background. I actually grew up in  Pakistan  and I came to the  US  to go to college. I went to MIT and got electrical engineering which I never used. I was fortunate enough that I graduated from the university right at the time when IT/software boom was just starting, which was the late 1980s. My first job was actually  at a startup, even though back then I didnt know what a startup was.Martin: Was it called a startup?Sheeroy: No, it wasnt. That wasnt even called a startup. It was just I thought it was just a small company. It was like 40 person company and I worked for it and I wasnt even quite sure what they did. But it turned out to be one of the very early companies that was pioneering in IT services. And it eventually became a company called  Cambridge Technology Partners, which went public and eventually got bought up by Novell.But anyway, I was there for about 3 years when we were very small and it was great training ground to just learn everything about, you know, I did some amount of engineering but really rapidly moved on to product development/product management. And then actually even I got a chance to engage a little bit of marketing and sales.So from there, a number of us who are actually mapped up at Cambridge Technology in the early days and worked together, about 5 of us, ended up leaving and regrouped and started a company called Sapient. That was in, like 91. And then I spent the next 17 years of my life at Sapient in various capacities, from again, doing product, management, client management, to opening new offices, to eventually doing international expansion, and then I spent the last 7 years as a Chief Operating Officer there.We took the company public, so by the time I left, it was over a 5,000 person company. Its still listed on the NASDAQ today, I think its about 13,000 people. Its enormous.So that was, you know, a really great experience in many, many different ways. I mean, taking a company from startup all the way to IPO and beyond. You know, obviously youll be able to side our ups and our downs. Because we also lived through the dot com bust and then survived that, so it was a lot of learning in those 17 years.Then, ultimately I left. I think I was really burnt out, quite frankly, after all that time in the company. And especially at least in the last at least 11 years, I was really being involved in running a public company that takes a toll after a while. And I was really missing being an entrepreneur again, doing something small again.My problem was that I didn t know what I wanted to do and I looked at a lot of smaller companies, or startups, and I just couldnt get passionate, excited about anything.Ultimately, I really came to comfort of doing a lot of soul searching. I came to the conclusion of what I was truly excited and passionate about is what we do here at Gild, which is really helping companies in. Let me back up and say it this way, which is the way, companies find talent and the way professionals find opportunities is one area that actually still the underlined way it works, the underlined processes, the structure, hasnt really changed in last 100 years. We rely in the same artifacts, whether thats a resume or LinkedIn profile now, whether thats an interview, we still do those things. There is no better way to get insights into people and to make better decisions. We use machine learning and analytics help our shopping experience for everything else today. But when it comes to shopping, lets call it for technology professionals or profession in general, we are still in the dark ages. So it was really that insight that prompted me to start Gild, and this was about a little over 3 years ago, at this point. Well, Luca and I got together and we kind of, he had his own startup and I was kind of thinking about doing this. And we got together and decide to initially focus on software engineers and here we are today.Martin: Great! How did you come up with this name and what are other alternative names did you think about?Sheeroy: We thought about like a million of them. We probably made a list of about 100 different names. You know the challenge today in coming up with the name is probably a couple of full. Number one, its very hard to find a real word that can be used as a name because theyre all taken. So a lot of companies make up names, right. The second challenge, even if you make up a name, is getting the URL. So quite frankly, these challenge for us wasnt being able to come up with names that we liked, that were creative, but actually being able to secure a URL and we wanted a dot-com URL. So ultimately, things converged towards Gild. The reason we like the name Gild because its a play on the word Guild, with a U, GUILD. The whole idea that there could be guild of technologist or the guild of other types of professions that we are trying to help. So that was the idea behind, but guild.com was taken and we couldnt get it but gild.com, GILD.com was taken but we were actually able to secure at a very reasonable price. So, thats how we ended up with the name.Martin: Great!BUSINESS MODEL OF GILDMartin: Can you briefly describe how the business model is working?Sheeroy: The business model is simple. The business model is really a SaaS, enterprise SaaS model. Our customers pay us for basically getting access to our database. So what we have, at the end of the day, is we have a database of over 11 million software engineers from around the world, for whom we have generated all kinds of public information, ranging from just a profile, a biographical information, all the way to downloading and analyzing  a new open source, code contribution that they may have. To analyzing their activity on QA forums, to analyzing the twitter feed. So we analyze anything possible about a software engineer and then trying to arrive to insights from that.Over time obviously, insights are getting better because the more data you have, the more correlations you have, the better are your predictions. Since ultimately we are really trying to make predictions around how good is a software engineer, how in demand might they be, and how likely is it that they move to a different job or opportunity.So those are the analytics that we provide to our customers, but then we also give them access to all the detailed data that weve collected on someone.  This is a highly rich profile. So with our software called Gild Source, you get access to all of these. Then there are some work flow built in there as well, so you can do a lot of relationship building with the candidates, you can do all kinds, you know think of it as almost like a CRM system for hiring. So you have a database and a CRM system, all combined together, and our customers get access to that and they just pay us on subscription base.Martin: Is it only for full time employees that you are trying to match with the employers, or is it also for project related kind of matching?Sheeroy: So, we dont distinguish. We are simply out there, looking for information on software engineers and trying to tell a customer how good they might be. Im sure many of them are looking for freelance opportunities and probably majority of them are looking for full time opportunities. But we dont differentiate between the two.Martin: Because I would imagine, if you distinguish between the two, then you can say that theres some kind of trigger or analytics behind that. Okay, that theres an 80 % chance that person would be willing to switch his jo b.Sheeroy: Right. I think we probably can if we have enough data that we probably could analyze it and be able to say, we think this person is more interested in a full time opportunity or this person is more interested in, you know some kind of part time or consulting. We dont do that. Thats an interesting idea. Something that our customers really havent brought up to us. And thats one of the things we really rely on quite a bit is, our customers.Very early on in the company, we made a decision to invest very heavily on what is today called Customer Success. Where 4 or 3 years ago, people refer it as customer service, we call it customer success from the start. The whole idea was not just so that we are making sure that our customers are successful in using our product but also, it builds a deep relationship so we truly understand, get feedback on the product. And thats really important to us.Martin: Theres one very interesting algorithm that you are using. Can you tell us a little bit more how this matching into supply and demand works.Sheeroy: I mean, its number one out of many algorithms over here. We started off very simple. In the first iteration of the algorithm really was all about just trying to tell our customers of how good some of them might be.The first iteration, that Luca built, was purely based on analyzing a software engineers open source code. So we would actually download the entire code repository that we would find, we parse it so we knew what programming languages they were using, how many lines of codes that were written, and then we would run analytics, basic analytics from the quality of the code, how extensive was the code, how well documented it is, etc. And based on those analytics, build issues of algorithms which would say, heres how good we think this software engineer is. It is heck of a lot more sophisticated today, 3 years later.So the software contribution is on the component of what we do, as I said, we also analyze activity and the level of activity on things like Stack Exchange, which is QA site. Then we start looking also at things, where the other developers that this individual is working with. So sometimes they collaborate on open source projects. Or maybe they are answering questions, or going back and forth with another developer, who is also very highly rated. Now, its like birds of feather flock together, so people of similar types tend to work together. So, if you are collaborating or working with really high engineers, chances are youre pretty too. Thats an additional insight we can grasp.And then it has gotten even more sophisticated because as we develop a very large database of what I called fact based software engineers. So now we can based on looking at quality of code or based on looking at their QA activity, etc., we can say that, in fact this software engineer is really very capable. But we can also start looking at matching people biographical backgrounds with the quality that  we think they are. So over time, weve also been able to get insights into Okay if we see a correlation on Im giving an example, I am not saying this is true, but an example maybe that anyone who worked at a certain company during the late 1990s as a software engineer, the chances are We see correlation that a lot of engineers there at that time were very high quality. So chances are, if we know nothing about you, all that we know is that you worked at that company in the late 1990s, now we can start making prediction that likelihood is reasonable that youre probably a pretty good software engineer. So analytics and as I said, there are many, many algorithms out here and the overall quality of the analytics and the complexity of the analytics, has gone up quite a bit over the course of the last 3 years.Martin: When you were a very young startup understanding your customer needs etc, its very important and you also said that the customer success is very important for you. How did you try to understand what the customers really want in the early days?Sheeroy: You know, it is still a challenge, not just early days, because, and I think this is the conundrum, because customers are great at telling you what is wrong with your product, what they dont like. They are very great at telling you how to tweak a certain feature, about what they like to see. That is good.Martin: Evolutionary stepSheeroy: Evolution stuff, they are very good at that. What customers are not very good at is revolutionary stuff. Because a lot of times, they dont know what they dont really need. So its really interesting because of what we focus on a lot. This is a trap, I think a lot of companies and entrepreneurs get into it, which is you start focusing on the recommendations that the customers are making.We tend to focus more on the pain that the customer has: what is not working for them, what is the problem. And then, Luca, the product team is doing an awesome job, of analyzing all the things th at are not going well for the customers to come up with a unique solution. We always ask ourselves: Can we address this need in a way that no one else has. Can we address them in a unique way that is going to be significantly better than what anyone else is doing? Thats the first place we go. If we cant do that, then the question  can we just get rid of the pain? But what we have found is, if you pay a lot of attention So what really comes down to all of this is being close to your customer and enough of your customer so you can see the patterns, where is the most pain.  Where are they most unhappy? And then being able to really look at ourselves Okay, is there a unique way in which we address that. So thats how we come up with the revolutionary solutions, and thats hard. That takes time.Martin: Would you describe the Gild business model more of a local market place or would you say its a more global market place where I can find and hire developers from another country?Sheeroy: I ts global. Our database is 100% global. So thats number one, the database is totally global. You can search developers anywhere. In terms of how customers implement that obviously smaller companies are more regional. They are looking to hire potentially in 1 or 2 locations. And our larger customers are more global. Theyre looking to hire people anywhere. Now having said all that, I think there are such a shortage of software engineers, they are such in high demand, we are even seeing startups now looking for software engineers anywhere in the world. You know, we are such a great example, actually more than half of our engineers team are actually in Europe, in  Milan. So, were seeing even smaller startups, 50 people or so, having operations in multiple continents.Martin: When you started, what were the minimum features that you that you tried to develop in the product and ship to the market in order to understand what the needs are, so you can decide for a revenue model etc.Sheeroy: The minimum features when we first started was basically was search and results. That really was the minimal things we were trying to do, which is a reasonably easy interface by which you can say: Okay I am looking for an iOS engineer in  San Francisco  or the Bay area; and then being able to give them results that are relevant to that search and having analytics be good enough that they would make sense.I remember reviewing the first version of the product, it was really rough. The UI (user interface) was extremely rough, we made a lot of assumptions. But I do think among things we did well was, we immediately start taking it to market. We just started talking to tons and tons of prospects, showing it to them, getting their feedback and then about 3 months later, we actually started charging customers. Not because honestly that I thought the product was so great that we should be charging. But again, a startup is all about testing a hypothesis, right. First half of the hypothesis w as, if we give this level of intelligence is anybody going to care? That was getting anybody to say, this is great, I really like it. So second half of the hypothesis was, has anyone willing to pay for it. Thats why we start charging for it. And within a couple of months we had actually. I think within 2 months were like 20+ paying customers. So like Okay, this is working, people are paying for it.Martin: How did you solve this hen egg problem? Because when you started, this is basically a type of market place which is connected by some kind of scoring algorithm. How did you create the first 1,000 or 2,000 of developers and their first 50 100 companies.Sheeroy: Its a great question, which comes first, the hen or the egg. Actually, right before we started doing what were doing, the Gild Source business, the prior incarnation of our business actually was, we were building a website where software engineers could come and take coding challenges and puzzles and write code and we would analyze that code. So thats truly trying to build a market place. On the one hand, trying to get the software engineers, on the other hand trying to get customers and kind of have supply and demand. That is very challenging. It was actually an outflow from them, which is as we kind of work on there for months and months and we finally realized Gosh, we were trying to build a two sided market is very hard because just the value proposition for the software engineers wasnt compelling if there werent any employers. And for employers its not very compelling if you dont have at least tens of thousands of software engineers that they can search and choose from. That was a big problem.Thats how initially, Luca came up with the idea. He said. Well, lets address the supplier issue just by creating profiles for this software engineers by looking at their public activity. So in a way, we started creating an inventory of software engineers, so then we can then just focused on building out the c ustomers side of it. The initial thought was we would go back and build a community of software engineers but as we continue to move down, we realized, we dont really need to do that. So thats how we got going.CORPORATE STRATEGYMartin: Sheeroy, lets talk about the corporate strategy. Youre currently have this kind of market for software developers. What are your thought on adding other verticals and whether you can also apply this kind of data driven decision process.Sheeroy: We started a company so that eventually we solve the problem of hiring any professions, not just software engineers. So that remains our mission over time. We want to provide this level of analytics and insight into any professional. Lots of challenges to it.Weve been thinking about this for a while, and we have a viewpoint on how we can eventually get there. Which is a secret, Im not going to share that. What Im thinking is on that. But no, we obviously have been thinking about that and well continue in the lo ng term to execute towards that. So thats one answer.Second answer is, were building a company here for the long term. In the way we think about ourselves and talk about ourselves, we want to build a company, this type of problem were trying to solve its not going to get solved overnight. Its going to take some time. So were Okay with that. We are in no rush to just get there tomorrow. With that realization, we also have realized that, if you want to build a very large company, theres a saying if you want to build a monopoly, a broad monopoly, first you got to build a monopoly in a small market. Get that going, get that right, and then  you have the opportunity to build a monopoly in the greater market.So thats what were trying to do, were really trying to get it right in software engineering. And really understand what it takes to win and be successful there. Because once we have all the answers there then duplicating this to other professions would be a lot easier for us.Martin: I n terms of competitive advantage, would you rather say that Gild has the advantage of having  a large network effects, or is it more that Gild scoring system is the key source?Sheeroy: I think our competitive advantage is our analytics. I mean no one else that Im aware of, no other competitor I mean competitors are doing very resourceful things, they are competitors who are aggregating profiles. So to your point earlier, Ill go on LinkedIn and scraping it, Ill go scrape Twitter, and Ill go scrape Facebook, and Ill try to give you an aggregated profile, and we do all that. But no one is doing is really the additional insight of really telling you how good some of us and why we really think this person is good and what they are good at. Why they are in high demand or not, or when they might be looking for a job. Those are analytics that no other competitors are providing. That remains our competitive advantage.Martin: Great!MARKET DEVELOPMENTMartin: Tell me about market development. C an you give us a brief overview of how you perceived the kind of market and the players in the market and what is currently happening over there?Sheeroy: So we play in kind of Recruiting HR market. Like most markets, its   fairly saturated, theres a lot of noise. Its a noise in market, which is a few are the head of HR, a few head of recruiting acquisition in a company. Chances are high, you probably get a 5-10 emails, voicemails a day telling you, Oh, I have this new amazing thing. A challenge for them, the challenge for us how do you actually get yourself above that noise level. Theres no easy answer to this. I mean I wish I could say, Heres the magic that we came up. But theres no easy magical answer to this. It is a number of things.For us, what we did is number one, that I think is a little bit unique and different than I see some other startups doing. We do all the normal stuff you would expect us to do: we do contact marketing, we do lead generation, and we do lead nurturing and all that stuff.But I think some of the things that we did differently is, we focus on brand building very early on in the life cycle of the company. So, we were only in the market less than a year, when we were able to get a business cover page story on the New York Times on Gild. That was huge. Probably when I think back in my career like years and years and years from now, Im most likely will remember that Sunday morning, getting the New York Times and right there on the cover. I mean, that doesnt happen very often. That was a good nine months of effort on our part. We had to cultivate a relationship with the New York Times, we had to stay on them, we had to give them really meaningful story that they could write about. It took a lot of effort, a lot of time, and a lot of money, I guess in some ways. I got to get to invest in PR, as an example. A lot of startups dont believe in that stuff and I understand why they say that. But I think in our case, thats one example of many di fferent things that weve done that have allowed us to stand up above everyone else. And as you know, Id say, I think, one of the things that has distinguish us and hopefully will continue to distinguish us, is our efforts and our emphasis on brand building, which is a long term payoffs. It doesnt payoff short term.Martin: Okay.ADVICE TO ENTREPRENEURS FROM SHEEROY DESAI In San Francisco, we meet co-founder and CEO of Gild, Sheeroy Desai. He shares his story how Gild was founded and how the current business model works, as well as what the current plans are for the near future, and some advice for young entrepreneurs.The transcript of the interview is provided below.INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi, today we are in  San Francisco, in the Gild office. Sheeroy, who are you and what do you do?Sheeroy: So, Im Sheeroy Desai. Im the co-founder and CEO of Gild. At Gild what we do is we help our customers, which are companies from startups all the way to very large enterprises. We have a software solution that helps them find, engage and end up hiring software engineers.Martin: Great!Martin: What is your background?Sheeroy: My background. I actually grew up in  Pakistan  and I came to the  US  to go to college. I went to MIT and got electrical engineering which I never used. I was fortunate enough that I graduated from the university right at the time when IT/software boom was just starting, which was the late 1980s. My first job was actually  at a startup, even though back then I didnt know what a startup was.Martin: Was it called a startup?Sheeroy: No, it wasnt. That wasnt even called a startup. It was just I thought it was just a small company. It was like 40 person company and I worked for it and I wasnt even quite sure what they did. But it turned out to be one of the very early companies that was pioneering in IT services. And it eventually became a company called  Cambridge Technology Partners, which went public and eventually got bought up by Novell.But anyway, I was there for about 3 years when we were very small and it was great training ground to just learn everything about, you know, I did some amount of engineering but really rapidly moved on to product development/product management. And then actually even I got a chance to engage a little bit of marketing and sales.So from there, a number of us who are actually mapped up at Cambr idge Technology in the early days and worked together, about 5 of us, ended up leaving and regrouped and started a company called Sapient. That was in, like 91. And then I spent the next 17 years of my life at Sapient in various capacities, from again, doing product, management, client management, to opening new offices, to eventually doing international expansion, and then I spent the last 7 years as a Chief Operating Officer there.We took the company public, so by the time I left, it was over a 5,000 person company. Its still listed on the NASDAQ today, I think its about 13,000 people. Its enormous.So that was, you know, a really great experience in many, many different ways. I mean, taking a company from startup all the way to IPO and beyond. You know, obviously youll be able to side our ups and our downs. Because we also lived through the dot com bust and then survived that, so it was a lot of learning in those 17 years.Then, ultimately I left. I think I was really burnt out, qu ite frankly, after all that time in the company. And especially at least in the last at least 11 years, I was really being involved in running a public company that takes a toll after a while. And I was really missing being an entrepreneur again, doing something small again.My problem was that I didnt know what I wanted to do and I looked at a lot of smaller companies, or startups, and I just couldnt get passionate, excited about anything.Ultimately, I really came to comfort of doing a lot of soul searching. I came to the conclusion of what I was truly excited and passionate about is what we do here at Gild, which is really helping companies in. Let me back up and say it this way, which is the way, companies find talent and the way professionals find opportunities is one area that actually still the underlined way it works, the underlined processes, the structure, hasnt really changed in last 100 years. We rely in the same artifacts, whether thats a resume or LinkedIn profile now, w hether thats an interview, we still do those things. There is no better way to get insights into people and to make better decisions. We use machine learning and analytics help our shopping experience for everything else today. But when it comes to shopping, lets call it for technology professionals or profession in general, we are still in the dark ages. So it was really that insight that prompted me to start Gild, and this was about a little over 3 years ago, at this point. Well, Luca and I got together and we kind of, he had his own startup and I was kind of thinking about doing this. And we got together and decide to initially focus on software engineers and here we are today.Martin: Great! How did you come up with this name and what are other alternative names did you think about?Sheeroy: We thought about like a million of them. We probably made a list of about 100 different names. You know the challenge today in coming up with the name is probably a couple of full. Number one, its very hard to find a real word that can be used as a name because theyre all taken. So a lot of companies make up names, right. The second challenge, even if you make up a name, is getting the URL. So quite frankly, these challenge for us wasnt being able to come up with names that we liked, that were creative, but actually being able to secure a URL and we wanted a dot-com URL. So ultimately, things converged towards Gild. The reason we like the name Gild because its a play on the word Guild, with a U, GUILD. The whole idea that there could be guild of technologist or the guild of other types of professions that we are trying to help. So that was the idea behind, but guild.com was taken and we couldnt get it but gild.com, GILD.com was taken but we were actually able to secure at a very reasonable price. So, thats how we ended up with the name.Martin: Great!BUSINESS MODEL OF GILDMartin: Can you briefly describe how the business model is working?Sheeroy: The business model is sim ple. The business model is really a SaaS, enterprise SaaS model. Our customers pay us for basically getting access to our database. So what we have, at the end of the day, is we have a database of over 11 million software engineers from around the world, for whom we have generated all kinds of public information, ranging from just a profile, a biographical information, all the way to downloading and analyzing  a new open source, code contribution that they may have. To analyzing their activity on QA forums, to analyzing the twitter feed. So we analyze anything possible about a software engineer and then trying to arrive to insights from that.Over time obviously, insights are getting better because the more data you have, the more correlations you have, the better are your predictions. Since ultimately we are really trying to make predictions around how good is a software engineer, how in demand might they be, and how likely is it that they move to a different job or opportunity.So t hose are the analytics that we provide to our customers, but then we also give them access to all the detailed data that weve collected on someone.  This is a highly rich profile. So with our software called Gild Source, you get access to all of these. Then there are some work flow built in there as well, so you can do a lot of relationship building with the candidates, you can do all kinds, you know think of it as almost like a CRM system for hiring. So you have a database and a CRM system, all combined together, and our customers get access to that and they just pay us on subscription base.Martin: Is it only for full time employees that you are trying to match with the employers, or is it also for project related kind of matching?Sheeroy: So, we dont distinguish. We are simply out there, looking for information on software engineers and trying to tell a customer how good they might be. Im sure many of them are looking for freelance opportunities and probably majority of them are l ooking for full time opportunities. But we dont differentiate between the two.Martin: Because I would imagine, if you distinguish between the two, then you can say that theres some kind of trigger or analytics behind that. Okay, that theres an 80 % chance that person would be willing to switch his job.Sheeroy: Right. I think we probably can if we have enough data that we probably could analyze it and be able to say, we think this person is more interested in a full time opportunity or this person is more interested in, you know some kind of part time or consulting. We dont do that. Thats an interesting idea. Something that our customers really havent brought up to us. And thats one of the things we really rely on quite a bit is, our customers.Very early on in the company, we made a decision to invest very heavily on what is today called Customer Success. Where 4 or 3 years ago, people refer it as customer service, we call it customer success from the start. The whole idea was not ju st so that we are making sure that our customers are successful in using our product but also, it builds a deep relationship so we truly understand, get feedback on the product. And thats really important to us.Martin: Theres one very interesting algorithm that you are using. Can you tell us a little bit more how this matching into supply and demand works.Sheeroy: I mean, its number one out of many algorithms over here. We started off very simple. In the first iteration of the algorithm really was all about just trying to tell our customers of how good some of them might be.The first iteration, that Luca built, was purely based on analyzing a software engineers open source code. So we would actually download the entire code repository that we would find, we parse it so we knew what programming languages they were using, how many lines of codes that were written, and then we would run analytics, basic analytics from the quality of the code, how extensive was the code, how well docume nted it is, etc. And based on those analytics, build issues of algorithms which would say, heres how good we think this software engineer is. It is heck of a lot more sophisticated today, 3 years later.So the software contribution is on the component of what we do, as I said, we also analyze activity and the level of activity on things like Stack Exchange, which is QA site. Then we start looking also at things, where the other developers that this individual is working with. So sometimes they collaborate on open source projects. Or maybe they are answering questions, or going back and forth with another developer, who is also very highly rated. Now, its like birds of feather flock together, so people of similar types tend to work together. So, if you are collaborating or working with really high engineers, chances are youre pretty too. Thats an additional insight we can grasp.And then it has gotten even more sophisticated because as we develop a very large database of what I called fact based software engineers. So now we can based on looking at quality of code or based on looking at their QA activity, etc., we can say that, in fact this software engineer is really very capable. But we can also start looking at matching people biographical backgrounds with the quality that  we think they are. So over time, weve also been able to get insights into Okay if we see a correlation on Im giving an example, I am not saying this is true, but an example maybe that anyone who worked at a certain company during the late 1990s as a software engineer, the chances are We see correlation that a lot of engineers there at that time were very high quality. So chances are, if we know nothing about you, all that we know is that you worked at that company in the late 1990s, now we can start making prediction that likelihood is reasonable that youre probably a pretty good software engineer. So analytics and as I said, there are many, many algorithms out here and the overall quality of the analytics and the complexity of the analytics, has gone up quite a bit over the course of the last 3 years.Martin: When you were a very young startup understanding your customer needs etc, its very important and you also said that the customer success is very important for you. How did you try to understand what the customers really want in the early days?Sheeroy: You know, it is still a challenge, not just early days, because, and I think this is the conundrum, because customers are great at telling you what is wrong with your product, what they dont like. They are very great at telling you how to tweak a certain feature, about what they like to see. That is good.Martin: Evolutionary stepSheeroy: Evolution stuff, they are very good at that. What customers are not very good at is revolutionary stuff. Because a lot of times, they dont know what they dont really need. So its really interesting because of what we focus on a lot. This is a trap, I think a lot of companies and ent repreneurs get into it, which is you start focusing on the recommendations that the customers are making.We tend to focus more on the pain that the customer has: what is not working for them, what is the problem. And then, Luca, the product team is doing an awesome job, of analyzing all the things that are not going well for the customers to come up with a unique solution. We always ask ourselves: Can we address this need in a way that no one else has. Can we address them in a unique way that is going to be significantly better than what anyone else is doing? Thats the first place we go. If we cant do that, then the question  can we just get rid of the pain? But what we have found is, if you pay a lot of attention So what really comes down to all of this is being close to your customer and enough of your customer so you can see the patterns, where is the most pain.  Where are they most unhappy? And then being able to really look at ourselves Okay, is there a unique way in which we address that. So thats how we come up with the revolutionary solutions, and thats hard. That takes time.Martin: Would you describe the Gild business model more of a local market place or would you say its a more global market place where I can find and hire developers from another country?Sheeroy: Its global. Our database is 100% global. So thats number one, the database is totally global. You can search developers anywhere. In terms of how customers implement that obviously smaller companies are more regional. They are looking to hire potentially in 1 or 2 locations. And our larger customers are more global. Theyre looking to hire people anywhere. Now having said all that, I think there are such a shortage of software engineers, they are such in high demand, we are even seeing startups now looking for software engineers anywhere in the world. You know, we are such a great example, actually more than half of our engineers team are actually in Europe, in  Milan. So, were seeing even smaller startups, 50 people or so, having operations in multiple continents.Martin: When you started, what were the minimum features that you that you tried to develop in the product and ship to the market in order to understand what the needs are, so you can decide for a revenue model etc.Sheeroy: The minimum features when we first started was basically was search and results. That really was the minimal things we were trying to do, which is a reasonably easy interface by which you can say: Okay I am looking for an iOS engineer in  San Francisco  or the Bay area; and then being able to give them results that are relevant to that search and having analytics be good enough that they would make sense.I remember reviewing the first version of the product, it was really rough. The UI (user interface) was extremely rough, we made a lot of assumptions. But I do think among things we did well was, we immediately start taking it to market. We just started talking to tons and tons of prospe cts, showing it to them, getting their feedback and then about 3 months later, we actually started charging customers. Not because honestly that I thought the product was so great that we should be charging. But again, a startup is all about testing a hypothesis, right. First half of the hypothesis was, if we give this level of intelligence is anybody going to care? That was getting anybody to say, this is great, I really like it. So second half of the hypothesis was, has anyone willing to pay for it. Thats why we start charging for it. And within a couple of months we had actually. I think within 2 months were like 20+ paying customers. So like Okay, this is working, people are paying for it.Martin: How did you solve this hen egg problem? Because when you started, this is basically a type of market place which is connected by some kind of scoring algorithm. How did you create the first 1,000 or 2,000 of developers and their first 50 100 companies.Sheeroy: Its a great question, whi ch comes first, the hen or the egg. Actually, right before we started doing what were doing, the Gild Source business, the prior incarnation of our business actually was, we were building a website where software engineers could come and take coding challenges and puzzles and write code and we would analyze that code. So thats truly trying to build a market place. On the one hand, trying to get the software engineers, on the other hand trying to get customers and kind of have supply and demand. That is very challenging. It was actually an outflow from them, which is as we kind of work on there for months and months and we finally realized Gosh, we were trying to build a two sided market is very hard because just the value proposition for the software engineers wasnt compelling if there werent any employers. And for employers its not very compelling if you dont have at least tens of thousands of software engineers that they can search and choose from. That was a big problem.Thats how initially, Luca came up with the idea. He said. Well, lets address the supplier issue just by creating profiles for this software engineers by looking at their public activity. So in a way, we started creating an inventory of software engineers, so then we can then just focused on building out the customers side of it. The initial thought was we would go back and build a community of software engineers but as we continue to move down, we realized, we dont really need to do that. So thats how we got going.CORPORATE STRATEGYMartin: Sheeroy, lets talk about the corporate strategy. Youre currently have this kind of market for software developers. What are your thought on adding other verticals and whether you can also apply this kind of data driven decision process.Sheeroy: We started a company so that eventually we solve the problem of hiring any professions, not just software engineers. So that remains our mission over time. We want to provide this level of analytics and insight into any professional. Lots of challenges to it.Weve been thinking about this for a while, and we have a viewpoint on how we can eventually get there. Which is a secret, Im not going to share that. What Im thinking is on that. But no, we obviously have been thinking about that and well continue in the long term to execute towards that. So thats one answer.Second answer is, were building a company here for the long term. In the way we think about ourselves and talk about ourselves, we want to build a company, this type of problem were trying to solve its not going to get solved overnight. Its going to take some time. So were Okay with that. We are in no rush to just get there tomorrow. With that realization, we also have realized that, if you want to build a very large company, theres a saying if you want to build a monopoly, a broad monopoly, first you got to build a monopoly in a small market. Get that going, get that right, and then  you have the opportunity to build a monopoly in the greater market.So thats what were trying to do, were really trying to get it right in software engineering. And really understand what it takes to win and be successful there. Because once we have all the answers there then duplicating this to other professions would be a lot easier for us.Martin: In terms of competitive advantage, would you rather say that Gild has the advantage of having  a large network effects, or is it more that Gild scoring system is the key source?Sheeroy: I think our competitive advantage is our analytics. I mean no one else that Im aware of, no other competitor I mean competitors are doing very resourceful things, they are competitors who are aggregating profiles. So to your point earlier, Ill go on LinkedIn and scraping it, Ill go scrape Twitter, and Ill go scrape Facebook, and Ill try to give you an aggregated profile, and we do all that. But no one is doing is really the additional insight of really telling you how good some of us and why we really thin k this person is good and what they are good at. Why they are in high demand or not, or when they might be looking for a job. Those are analytics that no other competitors are providing. That remains our competitive advantage.Martin: Great!MARKET DEVELOPMENTMartin: Tell me about market development. Can you give us a brief overview of how you perceived the kind of market and the players in the market and what is currently happening over there?Sheeroy: So we play in kind of Recruiting HR market. Like most markets, its   fairly saturated, theres a lot of noise. Its a noise in market, which is a few are the head of HR, a few head of recruiting acquisition in a company. Chances are high, you probably get a 5-10 emails, voicemails a day telling you, Oh, I have this new amazing thing. A challenge for them, the challenge for us how do you actually get yourself above that noise level. Theres no easy answer to this. I mean I wish I could say, Heres the magic that we came up. But theres no eas y magical answer to this. It is a number of things.For us, what we did is number one, that I think is a little bit unique and different than I see some other startups doing. We do all the normal stuff you would expect us to do: we do contact marketing, we do lead generation, and we do lead nurturing and all that stuff.But I think some of the things that we did differently is, we focus on brand building very early on in the life cycle of the company. So, we were only in the market less than a year, when we were able to get a business cover page story on the New York Times on Gild. That was huge. Probably when I think back in my career like years and years and years from now, Im most likely will remember that Sunday morning, getting the New York Times and right there on the cover. I mean, that doesnt happen very often. That was a good nine months of effort on our part. We had to cultivate a relationship with the New York Times, we had to stay on them, we had to give them really meanin gful story that they could write about. It took a lot of effort, a lot of time, and a lot of money, I guess in some ways. I got to get to invest in PR, as an example. A lot of startups dont believe in that stuff and I understand why they say that. But I think in our case, thats one example of many different things that weve done that have allowed us to stand up above everyone else. And as you know, Id say, I think, one of the things that has distinguish us and hopefully will continue to distinguish us, is our efforts and our emphasis on brand building, which is a long term payoffs. It doesnt payoff short term.Martin: Okay.ADVICE TO ENTREPRENEURS FROM SHEEROY DESAIMartin: For our readers, we always try to share some knowledge, so they make less errors when they start their companies. What would be your advice when starting a company? Maybe you can also talk about when starting a market place.Sheeroy: Starting a company, a couple of things I could probably go on for a while. Just imag ine a couple of things.One of the things that I said earlier, which is dont be afraid to put your product into market early. I think one of the mistakes, entrepreneurs make is that they want to put out a highly polished product and get it right. The fact that matters, you wont get it right, you just wont. Because you dont know, you dont know what the market really wants. So dont worry too much about that, get a product on the market and then get real feedback. So thats the first thing I would say. Thats a process of constantly iterating until you achieved product market fit. Stay really focused on that. So, thats not a unique advice that Im giving, lots of people do that. But its harder than what people think it is.The other thing is, and maybe this is a little more what I see here in the Valley. So Im trying to give some slightly different advice. Theres a lot of   focus on fundraising. Of course, especially if you are going to be a SaaS startup or something like that, theres a lot of investment you need to make, and the revenue is kind of trickle in slowly. So, believe me from first hand, I totally understand that financing has a key role. But I do think theres a tendency to get a little bit consumed by financing and worry a lot about evaluation and this and that. From all my experience, I can tell you, worry about the quality of the investor, someone whos going to be a long term partner. Someone you trust and youre going enjoy working with for 10 years because thats what youre signing up for. I think a lot of people get focused on evaluation and the amount they raise, and things like that. I kind of emphasized enough spend really time vetting the investor. If it is a VC firm, vet the partner. This is someone you really want to be talking to on a Sunday evening because thats going to happen. This is the person you want to be seeing at least once a month and this is going to happen because you got to spend a lot of time with this person. So thats the other pi ece of advice Id give.Market place is tough. I mean, what Id say is learn from us and learn from others whove done the same thing, which is youve got to  create a supply somewhere. I think the best way to get a market place going is to create that supply artificially.In our case, it was really aggregating and creating these profiles, which end up really being our business. Thats the funny thing, because we havent gone back to building a market place. But, I would say, try to figure out how to artificially create one side of the market and then go aggressively create the other side. The other side hopefully should be the side that pays, so you can start monetizing.Martin: From my understanding, a lot of people when trying to start a market place, they can start by artificially creating some kind of supply. Like some people, what I would call a good artificial supplier, which is real. And some others are trying putting fake profiles, which from my understanding, the majority of people are doing that. What would you recommend, I mean obviously, the artificial supplier would be supported but in most cases it wont work. Would it?Sheeroy: I think it depends on the market place. This is a question of what happens when the rubber actually hits the road, right? What do you actually do? There is no easy answer. I think each market place is a little bit different, but what I would say is, number one is be clear where you are going to generate your revenues from. That part you cant fake. What you got to make sure number one is what is going to be valuable value proposition. Get that value proposition right, then on the flip side, can you generate that artificially. There are many different ways to do it artificially, you dont have to have   a huge market. Say, I wanted to build a food delivery startup in  San Francisco. Think what I would worry about most is who is going to want the service and are they willing to pay for it. I could artificially put up hundred restaurant s, you can order from any of these restaurants, and the people start ordering, then I got to make sure maybe its me once the order comes in, is running to the restaurant and getting the food or I have some freelancers thats doing that for me. The other side doesnt need to know how you are satisfying the demand. So those are many ways in which you can create artificial supply without really, you dont have 1,000 restaurants. You dont have any agreement with 1,000 restaurants but the buying side doesnt need to know that.So those are the creative things about. So thats why I think market place is tough and I have a lot of admiration for people who pull off market places. Uber, for example has done great. Until you have a startup where you dealt with a market place problem, I dont think you understand, how logistically hard it is to pull something like that off.Martin: Sheeroy, thank you very much for your time. When you hire the next time one of your great employees, whether its a techi e or a finance guy, maybe you should be thinking more about data driven recruiting. Thank you very much!

Friday, May 22, 2020

Essay about Nursing Code of Ethics - 1368 Words

The nursing code of ethics has a very standard definition. It is the base on how nurses should guide themselves in conduct by making the right decision regarding ethical issues. According to the National Student Nurses Association â€Å"students of nursing have a responsibility to society in learning the academic theory and clinical skills needed to provide nursing care† (2003). In the clinical setting nurses have a lot of responsibilities while caring for an ill patient, they have the obligation to practice their profession with compassion, love, and respect the uniqueness of each patient, as nurses we are not supposed to deny care to a patient because of their economic status, their skin color, race, or the nature of health problems, we are†¦show more content†¦Code of Ethics in nursing it is important to make sure the staff and patients are being respected and treated with dignity. The study of ethics has lead to basic concept such as justice and fidelity, autonomy , beneficence and nonmaleficence. It is very important to understand these concepts, because they assist the nurse with making decisions during difficult situations (ANA, 2001, p 6). Justice and fidelity According to the literature justice refers to the obligation nurses must have with everyone to be fair, it is an approach to ethical decisions making based on objective rules and fidelity means that the nurse’s obligation is to be faithful to commitments made to self and others or loyalty to agreements accepted. This sense of responsibility to fidelity means to be trustful and keep a promise. Therefore, when taking care of a patient who is in a lot of pain and ask the nurse for his pain medication then the nurse promises to the patient that he or she will be back with his ordered medication within five minutes, then as a nurse duty he or she has to come back to the patient’s room within those five minutes, because he or she made the promise. It is an ethical principle that relates to fair treatment in light to what is owed to the patient. The concept individuals obligation is to be faithful to promises madeShow MoreRelatedThe Nursing Code Of Ethics Essay839 Words   |   4 Pagesall careers have a specific code and level of ethics which are incorporated into the daily responsibilities one is expected to perform in their chosen field. For the basis of this paper, I have chosen to write about the nursing code of ethics. Nursing has a professional code of ethics along with the level/employee behavior usually being currently attainable, meaning that the behavior expected is normally exhibited by individuals. (Manias 508). However, although nursing seems to require behavior thatRead MoreThe Nursing Code Of Ethics Essay1164 Words   |  5 PagesAs described in Black, ethics and morals are defining characteristics that guide nursing care. Each play a particular role in the efficacy of each nurse and the way he or she performs within the scope of practice. Morals are established as a rule of conduct in any situation provided and once a nurse is aware of one’s personal beliefs and values, safe and effective client care can be delivered through et hical decision making. Ethical decision making involves a critical analysis of actions beforeRead MoreCode of Ethics - Nursing1475 Words   |  6 Pagesmoral norms which nurses are expected to adhere to and embrace. In a nursing profession, daily decisions have real impact on other people’s lives. The responsibility of such decisions creates the need for nurses to have knowledge and skills that enable them to not only provide physical and psychological care, but also to critique and reflect on the standard of health care practices. For the nurses to do this, they must understand ethics and ways in which to utilize this knowledge in a constructive andRead MoreThe Nursing Code Of Ethics895 Words   |  4 PagesTypically, all careers have a specific code and level of ethics which are incorporated into the daily responsibilities one is expected to perform in their chosen field. For the basis of this paper, I have chosen to write about the nursing code of ethics. Nursing has a professional code along with the level/employee behavior usually being currently attainable, which means that the behavior expected is normally exhibited by individuals. (Manias 508). However, although nursing seems to require behavior thatRead MoreCode of Ethics - Nursing1478 Words   |  6 Pagesmoral norms which nurses are expected to adhere to and embrace. In a nursing profession, daily decisions have real impact on other people’s lives. The responsibility of such decisions creates the need for nurses to have knowledge and skills that enable them to not only provide physical and psychological care, but also to critique and reflect on the standard of health care practices. For the nurses to do this, they must understand ethics and ways in which to utilize this knowledge in a constructive andRead MoreCodes of Ethics in Nursing3690 Words   |  15 PagesCODE OF ETHICS IN NURSING * The fundamental responsibility of the nurse is fourfold: to promote health, to prevent illness, to restore health and to alleviate suffering. * The need for nursing is universal. Inherent in nursing is respect for life, dignity and the rights of man. It is unrestricted by consideration of nationality, race, creed, color, age sex, politics, or social status. * Nurses render health services to the individual, the family and the community and coordinate theirRead MoreForensic Nursing Codes Of Ethics1382 Words   |  6 PagesThe profession of nursing has many vast specialties. Although every specialty, including forensic nursing, has its unique population and scope of practice, every field of nursing can and should utilize the Codes of Ethics from the American Nurses Association. The 2015 Code â€Å"addresses individual as well as collective nursing intentions and actions; it requires each nurse to demonstrate ethical competence in professional life† (ANA, 2015, p. 7). This code can be broken down into nine provisions whichRead MoreNursing Code of Ethics Essay1052 Words   |  5 PagesNursing Code of Ethics Introduction Butts and Rich (1-26) point out that effective nursing requires both broad knowledge and a set of well developed abilities and skills. The required tasks, are many and varied and in order to do them properly, care must be taken to respect each patients rights and sensitivities. This is why, according to the authors, nursing care must be guided by a code of ethics. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview and discussion of the Code of EthicsRead MoreNursing Code Of Ethics Essay1253 Words   |  6 PagesIntroduction Nursing code of ethics was developed as a guide in carrying out nursing responsibilities in a matter consistent with quality in nursing care and the ethical obligations of the profession (ANA, 2015). The term ethics refers to the study of philosophical ideas of right and wrong behavior (Olin, 2012). There is a total of nine provisions however, throughout this paper I will discuss provisions one through four and express how I plan to utilize these provisions as a new RN. These provisionsRead MoreThe Guide to the Code of Ethics for Nursing2525 Words   |  10 PagesGuide to the Code of Ethics for Nursing and address the following objectives. 1. Explain the relationship between Codes of Ethics and Professional Identity? The Code of Ethics and the Professional Identity assume a dependent relationship. Without one the other could not stand alone. When we search for the professional identity of a career we also look at how they were established and what boundaries do they follow. In nursing, as stated by the American Nurses Association â€Å"a code of ethics stands as

Sunday, May 10, 2020

Top Reasons to Use PHP on Your Website

Now that you are comfortable using HTML on your website, it is time to tackle PHP, a programming language  you can use to enhance your HTML website.  Why use PHP? Here are some great reasons. Friendly With HTML Anyone who already has a website and is familiar with HTML can easily make the step to PHP. In fact, PHP and HTML are interchangeable within the page. You can put PHP outside the HTML or inside. While PHP adds new features to your site, the basic appearance is still all created with HTML. Read more about using PHP with HTML. Interactive Features PHP allows you to interact with your visitors in ways HTML alone cant. You can use it to design simple email forms or elaborate shopping carts that save past orders and recommend similar products. It can also deliver interactive forums and private messaging systems.   Easy to Learn PHP is a lot easier to get started with than you might think. By learning just a few simple functions, you are able to do a lot of things with your website. Once you know the basics, check out the  wealth of scripts available on the internet that you only need to tweak slightly to fit your needs.   Top-Notch Online Documentation The PHP documentation is the best on the web. Hands down. Every function and method call is documented, and most have tons of examples you can study, along with comments from other users.   Plenty of Blogs There are a lot of great PHP blogs on the internet. Whether you need a question answered or want to rub elbows with PHP expert programmers, there are blogs for you.   Low Cost and Open Source PHP is available online absolutely free. It is accepted globally so you can use it on all website development and design tasks. Compatible With Databases With an extension or abstraction layer, PHP supports a wide range of databases including MySql. It Just Works PHP solves problems easier and faster than almost anything else out there. It is user-friendly, cross-platform and easy to learn. How many more reasons do you need to try PHP on your website? Just  start learning PHP.

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Problems In A Product Life Cycle Environmental Sciences Essay Free Essays

string(151) " a really short life rhythm, and moreover they are made of rough oil, which causes environmental jobs, as most PET bottles are destined for landfills\." Global alteration has an impact on clime, demographical and socio-ecological alteration worldwide, and humanity has an influence on planetary alteration. As a consequence of natural catastrophes, eventually climate arguments came up which drew public attending. These arguments showed that something demands to be done. We will write a custom essay sample on Problems In A Product Life Cycle Environmental Sciences Essay or any similar topic only for you Order Now ( Tan, 2008 ) The industries can seek to bring forth environmentally friendly merchandises, extend the merchandise life rhythm, and make a solution for the end-of-life stage of a merchandise. This chapter demonstrates the job of the merchandise life rhythm and gives an penetration into the transmutation. The industrial revolution set up a additive theoretical account of material watercourses, a system that takes merchandises and throws them off. Toxic stuffs trickle into the nature systems. Furthermore, the waste burning locally generates energy, nevertheless, besides this much more energy is required for new stuff production. ( Hennings, et al. , 2008 ) The whole procedure is named an open-loop supply concatenation. By and large talking, it maps the way from the stuffs to the providers to the terminal consumer. There is no reversal rate from the consumer. There is no return of stuff. The company does non offer any return or recycling system. However, consumers use the merchandise and so at the terminal of the merchandise life rhythm, they throw it off. ( Lebreton, 2007 ) Another possibility is to donate the old apparels to charitable organisations which resell the old apparels to commercial retail merchants in the 3rd universe or in east Europe. In Germany the biggest fabric aggregation is â€Å" Deutsche Rote Kreuz † with 40,000 dozenss collected each twelvemonth. ( Weissinger, 1999 ) In Switzerland there are four large fabric aggregation houses: Texaid, Contex AG, Solitex and Satex. Texaid is the biggest 1 in Switzerland ; it recollects 17,000 dozenss of old fabrics per twelvemonth. The company ‘s grosss go to relief organisations. The gathered fabrics are classified in different quality categories and removed from waste. ( Truninger, 2005 ) The reselling of these apparels ignited a large treatment, as the pattern destroys local concerns which produce traditional apparels. The effects are that the local fabric industry nearby wholly collapsed, and reorganisation is non possible anymore. Some states have imposed import prohibitions. ( W eissinger, 1999 ) This complex job is good documented in the movie â€Å" oburoni wawu – dice Kleider der toten Weissen, † which deals with the inquiry of who needs old apparels and how the concern of old apparels works. The movie shows the way the old apparels take and what happens to them when they arrive in the preset state. ( Strobusch A ; Terpinc, 1995 ) A farther option is the Climatex Lifecycle. This procedure is an innovation from the endeavor Rohner. Out of old fabrics, they produce felt, which is used to mulch and to cover the vegetable spot. As a consequence, the landfill is less to a great extent loaded and the old fabrics have a concluding responsibility. ( Weissinger, 1999 ) As it can be seen from the illustration of Rohner Textiles, end product went up 30 % and was accompanied by a drastic lessening in cost after they launched the new sustainability scheme. The Rohner illustration shows the positive consequence for a concern if they launch a closed-loop recycling scheme. ( IEHN, n.d. ) There is a new innovation to recycle polyester curtain. Teijin is a recycling company which specializes in polyester recycling. Today the company is a Recycling Network. Under the mark ‘ECOLOG, ‘ are all companies committed to bring forthing fabrics in mono-material polyester. ‘ECOLOG ‘ fabrics can be recycled easy, as there are no assorted fibres and it can be made easy into a new stuff. ( Outdoortrends, n.d. ) The last possibility in fabric recycling is down recycling. This procedure has been done for old ages now because the rate of return of polyester fabrics was really low. In this instance the recycling companies downcyceld the merchandises to knobs. ( Weissinger, 1999 ) To offer recycled merchandises and the usage of recycled stuffs is an environmentally friendly facet of assorted companies. Nowadays the positive environmental impact of merchandises gives a company a competitory border ; it is a must, non merely an option. Companies secure themselves a great hereafter with a strong sustainability scheme. The â€Å" C footmark † of companies is set to diminish, as they are under force per unit area from different stakeholders, like non-governmental organisations, consumers and authorities, to make so. This force per unit area on companies encourages them to cut down their C footmark with different commissariats like green merchandises, sustainable procedures and societal duty plans ( CSR ) . However, good communicating and labeling towards consumers is indispensable, to allow them cognize about the green attempts made by the company. ( Jo, 2010 ) Focus on Outdoor Industry Harmonizing to the study of Luscombe ( 2010 ) , 59 % of participants buy the purchased point for functional usage and for general every twenty-four hours usage. Merely 3 % bargain it for mundane usage. There is a displacement from utilizing out-of-door merchandises in the athleticss sector towards mundane life usage. The study of EOG shows that quality has the highest impact on the purchasing determination, followed by the trade name name. The 3rd factor impacting the determination is the monetary value. This ranking is for Germany. In Switzerland, the ranking is similar. Quality is the victor, followed by comfort, so the proficient characteristics, and last is the monetary value. Recyclability of the merchandise influences the purchasing determination for 62 % of Germans ; whereas merely 60 % of people are interested in purchasing merchandises made of recycled stuff. In the Swiss study, 67 % are influenced by the recyclability of the merchandise in the purchasing determination and 6 4 % bargain recycled stuff. ( Luscombe, 2010 ) Nowadays, there is a broad scope of reclaimable stuff. It is possible to recycle polyester, polymeric amide and polyurethane. There are two different recycling methods: stuff recycling and chemical recycling. The undermentioned four possibilities are often used in the industry. ( ISOPA, 2001 ) PET-Recycling ( Material recycling ) PET-Recycling became more widespread, as the environmental considerations gain importance. PET bottles have a really short life rhythm, and moreover they are made of rough oil, which causes environmental jobs, as most PET bottles are destined for landfills. You read "Problems In A Product Life Cycle Environmental Sciences Essay" in category "Essay examples" As a consequence, a recycling procedure to recycle the valuable primary resources is a perfect thought. The recycling procedure is non really hard with PET bottles. The stuff to be recycled is ‘polyethylene terephthalate ‘ . ( Evans, 2010 ) A short recycling procedure description: Colored bottles need to be sorted out. Just crystalline bottles can be used for this procedure. The selected PET bottles have to be cleaned and dried and crushed. These crushed pieces will be heated. Through this warming procedure, the crushed pieces are melted and a crimping machine gives the ensuing polyester narrations their texture. The polyester narrations need to dried. The quality control has to be passed. ( Evans, 2010 ) This procedure can be performed one time. If there is a jacket made out of this PET recycled narration, the used jacket, which is non functional any longer, ends in a landfill. Nevertheless, some natural stuff has already been saved thanks to PET recycling. In the following paragraph are some illustrations about the measure of PET bottles needed to do certain points. ( Heimann, 2010 ) â€Å" With 20 PET bottles, a ski jacket can be produced. A jumper needs about 63 PET bottles and a sleeping bag is made of 83 PET bottles. † These are facts found on the bright hub home page ( Evans, 2010 ) . There is besides a negative facet to PET recycling. Since PET can merely be recycled one time, 360A ° recycling is non possible. On the other manus, PET recycling is cheaper than polyester recycling, which is explained in the following point. ( Heimann, 2010 ) Polyester Recycling ( chemical recycling ) A Nipponese company has developed the first polyester recycling system named ECO CIRCLE. This is a closed-loop recycling for polyester points. Old polyester merchandises, which are made out of 100 % polyester, can be chemically converted into new polyester natural stuff. ( Teijin, 2009 ) Products which are reclaimable in this manner have the undermentioned label on them: Figure 6: ECO CIRCLE Logo ( Beginning: hypertext transfer protocol: //www.ecocircle.jp/en/index.htm ) Fleece coats are easy to recycle as they are 100 % polyester. Other coats are frequently a combination of different stuffs. The status for recycling is that the merchandise has 100 % screening truth. The polyester recycling procedure is similar to PET-recycling, but there are some differences as this is a type of chemical recycling. Collected polyester merchandises are broken down into little pieces. Granulated stuff is made. The colouring is removed from the pellets. This procedure requires high energy and important clip. Through chemical intervention, new polyester natural stuff is created. New â€Å" Eco Circle † fibres are created to bring forth reclaimable merchandises. ( Teijin-Fibers, n.d. ) There are different merchandises made by this closed-loop recycling procedure: underwear, T-shirts, jackets, baseball mitts and so on. Swany produced the first closed-loop reclaimable baseball mitt. The list would ne’er stop, as there is an limitless possibility to bring forth pro-ducts with 100 % polyester. ( Teijin, 2009 ) This procedure is criticized, as the fibres are produced utilizing crude oil. Critics say that these fibres should non be produced any longer given the turning trouble with crude oil supplies. However the outdoor industry is acute on utilizing polyester fibres, as this fabric is high quality and stopping points long clip. Figure 7: CO2 Reduction There is less ecological harm with this recycling procedure than with the production of new fibres, as per an analysis conducted by the Suedwind Institute ( n. d. ) . This fact is besides apparent in this Figures 10. 77 % less CO2 is released utilizing the recycling procedure than is released bring forthing new natural stuff from crude oil. ( Beginning: hypertext transfer protocol: //www.patagonia.com/pdf/en_US/common_threads_whitepaper.pdf ) This closed-loop polyester recycling reduces the dependence on rough oil, produces less pollution as there is less godforsaken burning and progresses the reuse of old polyester apparels. ( Patagonia, 2009 ) Nylon/Polyamide Recycling ( chemical recycling ) Old fishing cyberspace and rugs can be used for nylon recycling. This recycling procedure is similar to the polyester recycling, but polyamide recycling is more cost- and time-intensive, as the procedure is more sophisticated. The recycled narrations are largely, but non wholly, used for back packs or for bags. The quality is non affected by the recycling procedure. ( Klattermusen, n.d ) The statute law in some states will perchance forbid the disposal of rugs in landfills. With this action, the client will be forced to recycle old rug, but this statute law has non yet passed. However there is a committedness by different companies which supply industrial rugs to take part in a nylon recycling plan. Furthermore there are different roll uping points for old rug in each state. ( Greener-Industry, n.d. ) There are some illustrations of companies which already offer a recycling plan: Klattermusen Since March 2009 Klattermusen offers a new recycling and recovery system, â€Å" rECOver. † Each point which is reclaimable has a sedimentation of one, five, 10 or 20 Euros. If the client brings these merchandises back to the shop, they get the sedimentation back. Each merchandise has an note of the sum of the sedimentation. Another portion of the plan is that used and patched merchandises are donated to a public trust. This recycling plan consists of the following reclaimable stuffs: nylon, polyester, polypropene and metal. It is one of the lone outdoor companies which recycles nylon and polypropene, as it is hard to retrieve these two substances and every bit good as dearly-won. ( Klattermusen, n.d. ) Goretex In 1993 Gore launched a undertaking named â€Å" Gore Balance Project, † which received the European Outdoor Award for Innovation. It was the first possibility to recycle in the dress industry. The purpose of this plan was to recycle fabric laminate, but the clients were non ready at that clip to take part in the undertaking. As a consequence of the low engagement degrees, Gore had to halt this recycling undertaking. Gore company coined the term â€Å" balanced-project. † Old Goretex-coats will be deconstructed into their belongingss and reused. ( Gore, 2007 ) VAUDE /Sympatex This company is a rival to Goretex. They invented a 100 % reclaimable membrane which is made of O, C and H. These constituents are easy reclaimable, like PET bottles. Additionally there is no fluorcarbon used, and they have the bluesign standard enfranchisement. The bluesign strandard will be explained in Chapter 3.5.2. VAUDE is the official spouse of Sympatex. They produced a new out-of-door aggregation under the slogan â€Å" Reduce, Re-use, Recycle. † The aggregation is high quality, therefore long-lasting, and it made of 100 % reclaimable polyester. Fjallraven In 2012 the first reclaimable coats will be sold. ( Fjalleraven, 2010 ) The company has three different constituents in their recycling plan, â€Å" ECOSHELL. † First, fluorocarbon is non used any longer in the coats. This chemical substance was used in the membrane for impregnation. It is a really effectual substance, but on the other manus it has several negative effects. One point is the substance is found in the nutrient concatenation, secondly, the decomposition clip is over 30 old ages and last but non least it is really hard to recycle. That ‘s why they now use a new substance which is natural. It is a new process invented by Rudolfgroup. The name of the new substance is BIONIC. Second the company is cognizant of the planetary heating, which is besides affected through the recycling plan. â€Å" That ‘s why they support an environmentally friendly aureate criterion undertaking, they have non-polluting energy production every bit good they cut down the depen dence on fossil fuels † ( Fjalleraven, n. d. ) . Last but non least, they employ the â€Å" Eco Circle † recycling system for polyester. The combination of all three points are indispensable to the company, as all influence the environment. ( Fjalleraven, n. vitamin D. ) Figure 8: Recycling Program of Patagonia Patagonia Inc. ( Beginning: hypertext transfer protocol: //www.patagonia.com/web/eu/popup/common_threads/index.jsp ) In 1993 Patagonia produced SynchillaA ® jackets from sodium carbonate bottles. In 2005 the â€Å" Common Threads Garment Recycling Program † was launched. This take-back plan collects old polyester merchandises to recycle into new narration. Customers have two different possibilities to take part in the recycling plan of Patagonia. One would be to return the points to the shop – frequently they have a box there – and the 2nd possibility is to direct it straight by station to Patagonia. They collect all the garments and direct them by ship to Japan, where the recycling procedure happens. ( Patagonia, n. d. ) â€Å" Wear it out ; drop it off ; we recycle it ; it lives onaˆÂ ¦ † is the claim of Patagonia ‘s recycling system, as it can be seen in Figure 11. Recycling Companies Teijin The whole company has different sections. The biggest portion is the scope of man-made fibres. Teijin is the lone company that provides a recycling plan in polyester. These recycled polyester fibres can be used for fabrics in the car, outdoor and dress industries. â€Å" Eco Circle † was launched in 2002. This recycling plan is environmentally friendly. Nowadays 200 companies are involved in â€Å" Eco Circle. † The tendency is that different states such as the U.S. , China, Europe and Japan have a higher environmental consciousness than all immature clients, which increases the reclaimable market. ( Shrestha, 2009 ) Polartec This company produces utmost conditions protection fabrics, insularity beds and lightweight wicking base beds. Polartec is used in many countries, like the Marine Corps, Navy, Army and Air Force, every bit good as in the out-of-door industry. Thankss to coaction with companies which offer recycled narration, the recycled merchandise line has risen from less than 1 % to over 30 % in over four old ages. This fact leads besides to a decrease in emanation and energy ingestion. Since 2010 they have partnered with Unifi, as they produce ‘Repreve ‘ narration which is made out of recycled PET bottles. Polartec is confident that with this partnership the recycled merchandise line will turn steadily. ( Polartec, 2010 ) Unifi It is a company which produces multi-filament polyester and nylon textured narrations. These man-made fibres are non merely produced from natural stuff but besides from PET. This fibre is on the market with the name ‘Repreve. ‘ They produce polyester fibres every bit good as nylon fibres. The nylon fibres are made out of consumer fibre waste, whereas the polyester fibres are made out of both consumer fibre waste and consumer plastic waste like PET-bottles. In a lb of ‘Repreve ‘ narration, there are 27 processed PET bottles. These sustainable and recycled fibres are chiefly used by the dress industry, but they are besides used in the furniture and auto industries. A partnership between Polartec and Unifi shows the tendency in the outdoor industry to utilize ecological narration. ( Repreve, 2008 ) Recycling Ecologically Worthwhile? The contention environing recycling is large. On the cyberspace there are different forums where this issue is being discussed. In this chapter merely some statements out of assorted web logs, web sites and interviews held at the OutDoor Freidrichshafen will be highlighted. Maverick ( n.d. ) is convinced that presents planetary heating, natural instability and H2O deficits are scare tactics. This fact, that the universe is stoping, needs to be stopped, through recycling. This is a crutch, because people who recylcle believe they are profiting the environment, but the recycling procedure itself consumes a batch of energy and causes sometimes more pollution than natural stuffs, harmonizing to Maverick. Maverick ( n.d. ) describes the crutch as follows: â€Å" In a mode similar to medieval Christians purchasing indulgences from priests to be forgiven for their wickednesss without really making anything, recycling may be something we believe to be right and effectual merely because we ‘ve been told it is. † The consequence should be, that people reuse merchandises and alter their consumer behaviour. ( Maverick, n.d. ) Furthermore, a web log from May ( 2007 ) describes the PET recycling as an unuseful pattern. First of wholly, a batch of C is emitted anyhow, as the bottles need to be shipped to China and the new apparels back. Second the apparels made out of the old PET bottels are non recycable any longer and will stop in a landfill. The apparels are at that place for over 24,000 old ages until they are smoldered. About the transportation cost, Heimann ( personal communicating, July 17, 2010 ) comments that presents, Europeans are so addicted to Asia and to America, that the ships are geting anyhow. These ships have to return to the state of beginning, and it makes no pots to make so without lading. ( Heimann, 2010 ) The company Teijin conducted a research survey about the energy ingestion in a closed-loop recycling system with polyester. The consequence indicates that with the resources saved, energy and CO2 emanation is besides reduced. This computation is made by mensurating the CO2 emanation and energy needed for the recycling procedure, every bit good as that emitted and needed by the production with natural stuffs. To have new polyester, rough oil is needed. To bore rough oil, far more energy is needed than the sum recycling requires. The consequences are shown in the figures below. Figure 9: Decrease of CO2 Emission thanks to Recycling ( Beginning: Leaflet Teijin, Japan † ECOCIRCLE † ) The laminitis of the â€Å" Red, White and Green † Blog, Jennifer Grayson, is convinced about the positive facets of the recycling procedure. In 2005, recycling saved an one-year norm usage of energy of 9 million families. This has a direct impact on planetary heating. There is another positive point which concerns employment. The recycling and remanufacturing sectors account for about one million occupations. ( Grayson, 2009 ) The outdoor industry has been criticized for the environmental harm the concern causes, every bit good as for the bad on the job conditions. However the industry has made an attempt to antagonize these negative facets by cut downing their C footmark and by using societal policies every bit good as back uping environmentally friendly undertakings. Some illustrations of eco-conscious methods to accomplish betterment are shown. ( Jo, 2010 ) 1. CSR Corporate societal duty ( CSR ) is an of import manner for a company to demo its duty towards the societal and ecological environment. A competitory border is received by utilizing CSR as a scheme to separate between trade names. ( Jo, 2010 ) 2. Life Cycle Analysis The entire impact on environment has to be understood if the company is interested in bring forthing green merchandises. This impact can be analyzed thanks to the cost construction. This is possible through analysing the life rhythm of a merchandise. All has to be considered, the natural stuff, fabrication, the distribution, every bit good as the usage of the merchandise and last but non least, its disposal. With each measure of the procedure, costs are associated. ( Ciambrone, 1997 ) A cost illustration is shown by Ciambrone ( 1997, pp.1 ) : Design costs Stocking/handling costs User/operating costs Disposal costs Fabrication costs Shipping/transportation costs Reuse/recycle costs Compliance/licensing costs Reducing the cost besides reduces the environmental impact. A company should seek to cut down the life rhythm costs of their merchandises. ( Ciambrone, 1997 ) 3. Ecological Footprint It is a mensurating tool to sort merchandises and services, a company, an organisation, industry sectors, single life styles, vicinities, metropoliss, parts or states. In an LCA, the ecological footmark is ever calculated. What impact a merchandise or a company has on the environment and on the society will be measured. An analysis of the merchandise or the company will be done. There are different standards, such as recyclability, emanation used to bring forth the merchandise and resources used. All factors are evaluated and a computation shows the consequence. The thought behind this is that clients have the possibility to compare the merchandises or companies based on their environmental friendliness. ( Global-Footprint-Network, 2010 ) Goverments and consumers play a active function in forcing frontward the demand for an ecological footmark. ( Jo, 2010 ) 4. Bluesign Certificate To cut down the environmental footmark of the fabric industry, the bluesign criterion was created. Each fabric and yarn maker can use for the certification, but to measure up, it needs to run into the high criterion defined by bluesign. Each company is analyzed exactly. The points evaluated by bluesign ( 2010 ) are the undermentioned: Resources productiveness Consumerism Sewage H2O Discharged air Job safety ( p. 24 ) Retailers and clients can acquire a good orientation about assorted companies thanks to this alone criterion from bluesign. ( bluesign, 2010 ) In the hereafter, companies have to take the duty for cut downing their C footmark. Additionally if the credibleness has to be steady, companies have to be crystalline with their sustainability steps. ( Jo, 2010 ) Drumhead From the recycling position, a rethinking is besides taking topographic point. Closed-loop supply concatenation are needed in all industries. The open-loop supply concatenation does non hold a long life any longer. The best scenario would be if merchandises are used and reused until the merchandise loses its map, at which point it should be recycled. This manner, the merchandise does non complete as waste at the end-of-life stage but has a possibility to last in another merchandise ( downcycling ) or as the same merchandise ( upcycling ) . These procedures help to protect the environment. How to cite Problems In A Product Life Cycle Environmental Sciences Essay, Essay examples

Wednesday, April 29, 2020

The Colour Purple Essay Example For Students

The Colour Purple Essay A Lesson Well LearnedThe Color PurpleAlice Walker, POCKET BOOKS/WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS, 1982. The intensively descriptive novel, The Color Purple is about Celie, a woman born in the early 1900’s, unselfishly surviving the social injustices of those times. As the novel unfolds, Celie experiences so much sorrow, that she is forced to grow up quickly and learn to appreciate the little that life has to offer her. As new people enter her life, she is encouraged to look at life differently and she discovers that she too can have a chance to laugh and love. The themes Alice Walker tries to convey are the reoccuring themes of learning, love and happiness. Understanding the themes allowed me to find the novel fulfilling, well thought out and suitable for young adults, for throughout Celie’s life, she connected with several people who touched heart and showed her the meaning of joy. During her life, she had three strong teachers: Nettie, Sophia and Shug Avery. We will write a custom essay on The Colour Purple specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now Celie’s first joy was definitely Nettie, her younger sister. From early childhood, they shared the same fears and hope. Nettie taught Celie how to hope from a very young age. This was Celie’s first step to happiness. One instance was Nettie’s persistance in teaching Celie how to read. Nettie constantly pushed her to keep trying and always left her with a positive attitude. â€Å"Celie, you smart too.†, Nettie would tell her, and slowly but surely, Celie did learn to read. Nettie shared her intelligence but could not improve Celie’s soft-spoken and weak personality. Sofia, Celie’s step daughter in law, on the other hand was a very strong woman, both physically and mentally. She had a naturally overbearing personality from the first time her character was introduced. Her self-confidence and certainty not only helped her improve the sexist ways of her time, but made Celie realize that she too, could gain control and change the horrible way she was treated by her husband. A prime example of a time where she inspired Celie was when Celie was in the field and Harpo, her step-son, had asked her how he could change his relationship with Sophia so that he could order her around. Celie’s only response was â€Å"beat her† because that was the only thing that happened in her relationship with her husband. When Sophia found out that Celie had told him to do that, she approached Celie and told her that she had worked all her life for respect and that when she finally had it, Celie had to try and turn things around. This was when Celie di scovered that she could help change the sexist ways of her husband, but once again, her weak personality kept her from doing so. The person who impacted Celie’s life the most was the eccentric Shug Avery. She was a famous singer who happened to appear in Celie’s life at the perfect time. Shug helped Celie tie all her learned lessons together to complete the circle. Shug taught Celie that she shouldn’t let life happen to her, but that she should make life happen. Celie loved Shug’s freedom and wanted independence of her own. Shug helped Celie take charge of her own destiny. Shug had a very positive influence on Celie and her influence made Celie turn her entire life around. Celie left her husband and started a brand new life full of happiness. The Color Purple is a spirited novel full of well-learned lessons. It holds the keys to the happiness of a black woman of the early 1900’s. Celie was taught to hope, to have self respect, and to control her life. This book gives us a better understanding of our perception of life and love by first showing us misery, and then happiness. .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd , .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd .postImageUrl , .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd , .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd:hover , .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd:visited , .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd:active { border:0!important; } .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd:active , .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u10eb80aae18b825440b851af6e28dfbd:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Macbeth 13 EssayBibliographyAlice Walker, POCKET BOOKS/WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS, 1982. 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