TRIBECA FLASHPOINT ACADEMY WELCOMES THE WALLENDAS

Endless possibilities at Geneca

Endless possibilities at Geneca

SANDRA GUY

Mark Hattas sees his success developing a custom-software company as an opportunity to explore the kinds of touchy, feely stuff that many businesspeople try mightily to avoid, even in the midst of Easter and Passover — self-forgiveness, living in abundance and pursuing one’s purpose in life.

He discovered his search for something greater when he felt he was riding a roller coaster of emotions as he ran his business, Geneca, based in Oakbrook Terrace. The company’s name, with the emphasis on the first syllable, is a variation on the name of the sister of CEO Joel Basgall, Jenica, who was adopted from Romania when she was a baby. It is meant to signify endless possibilities in new directions.

The company, which makes custom software and software products for businesses such as FTD, Inc. florists’ network, Redbox movie and videogame rental company and a division of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, has grown from two employees 14 years ago to more than 100 today.

The company’s growth, reaching about $20 million in 2011 revenues and slightly more than $20 million in 2010 revenues, ranked it among the 50 fastest-growing companies in the Chicago area in 2010.

From the start, Hattas, a 39-year-old father of five who started the company at age 26, felt unsettled.

He started keeping a daily journal, at first periodically and then, 11 years ago, on a regular basis.

“One day I realized, ‘When everything is about me, it gets worse. In my lows, I would turn to prayer. I would get guidance. In the highs, I would turn everything over to my own ego and take ownership and responsibility for my own success,” he said.

Hattas’ theme, which he is working to publish as a book, reflects people’s struggles with self acceptance.

“Our fears are reinforced by self-doubt, self-hostility and beliefs that we’re not good enough or that society won’t let someone like me accomplish something remarkable,” he said.

Hattas is open that his transformation was also because he accepted that a higher power is in control.

“Life didn’t just get easy, but I was able to consciously turn things over to a higher power and not think the good was of me,” he said. “I got to a point where everything was of God, and I turned everything over, and that’s when things really took off.”

At the same time, Hattas was leading a reinvention of his company’s business processes, using the same idea of transformation.

He and a team of experts identified “best practices” aimed at achieving predictable, winning results, based on the philosophies of Bob Zimmerman, who Hattas hired as Geneca’s chief technology officer.

The first step, which might seem obvious, is to create a common vision, or alignment. Yet businesses rarely get a team together to talk about what they’re trying to achieve and how, exactly, to achieve it.

Zimmerman said one of the stumbling blocks is the human tendency for a boss to unexpectedly ask an employee to do the initial task in three weeks instead of the original four.

“The employee is now 25 percent over scheduled and over budget, and he hasn’t even started,” Zimmerman said.

The second step, commitment, requires making upfront, clear agreements on when projects can be completed, with the ideal being that the team will bet their paychecks on meeting the deadline.

The third step, visibility, is openly agreeing on the point at which a project is in so much trouble, it won’t be completed on time.

Then there’s a more elusive factor.

“The best practices are half of the equation. The other half is the culture,” Hattas said.

“We need people who are willing to make and honor commitments,” he said.

That may seem like another no-brainer, but Hattas said the IT industry is known for hedging its bets, since it’s an imperfect science.

So asking people to be held accountable and make and honor commitments is a leap.

Yet Geneca’s clients who benefit from the company’s ability to execute projects as promised have started adopting the practices themselves.

“We are not a training company, but we prefer to co-source our development teams” so that the client company can use the software for its best utility and value, he said.

Meanwhile, Hattas is exploring his next opportunity. He wants to give the world clean water and is fascinated by clean energy alternatives and medicines based on DNA mapping that target a person’s individual health problems.

“For me, it’s creating global collaboration to foster smart, intelligent innovation.”

Howard A. Tullman, president and CEO of Tribeca Flashpoint Academy, a two-year, digital-media arts college in the Loop, seconded the need for entrepreneurs to gain consensus, but he sees a bigger goal, too.

Tullman spoke as he accepted the University of Illinois-Chicago’s 2012 Chicago Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award.

“In this life, you’ll each have a chance, a moment, an opportunity to make something special and spectacular and to make a difference — if you have the courage of your convictions, the confidence in your abilities and if you’re willing to make and stick to the hard choices that inevitably arise.”

Interview with Microsoft's Adam Hecktman

Interview with Adam Hecktman





APRIL 4, 2012 BY BILL O'CONNOR


Adam Hecktman, Director, Microsoft Technology Center

Using social media to foster broad, interactive dialog:

A chat with Microsoft’s Adam Hecktman

By Hsuan-min Chou, hsuan@jumpbean.com

Adam Hecktman, a native Chicagoan, leads Microsoft’s Midwest region as Director of Technology where he builds relationships with the city’s Fortune 500 companies.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Mr. Hecktman consulted at Andersen Consulting as a rank-and-file employee. Mr. Hecktman’s next assignment at Andersen was two years in Grand Rapids, Mich., while Microsoft was ready to send him to Hawaii for a sales meeting. An easy decision, no doubt!

Mr. Hecktman is active in the non-profit industry, sitting on the advisory boards of Chicago Children’s Museum and Northwestern University’s Family Institute. Despite his busy schedule, Mr. Hecktman was able to answer a few questions regarding his engagement with ITKAN/SPR and how he uses social media at Microsoft.

Tell me about yourself, and your role at Microsoft?

Adam Hecktman: I am a lifelong Chicagoan. Chicago and Technology are my two passions. I love them both. So my role as the Director of the Microsoft Technology Center Chicago is kind of tailor-made for me. I have been with Microsoft for almost 20 years. I’m one of the few people I know of that can say with conviction that every day at work has been a fantastic day!

What led you to become involved with ITKAN/SPR?

AH: I was involved with SPR before ITKAN. Microsoft has a close, long-standing relationship with one of the SPR companies (MPS Partners). It was through that, years ago, that I met Pat Maher. Pat runs another SPR company (nAblement) and is also the leader of ITKAN.

Pat has had a very powerful impact on my way of thinking about a lot of things. One of those things is the potential that people with disabilities bring to the workforce table. And a second is the obstacles that they must overcome to participate in that workforce.

Having now been part of ITKAN, I have made friendships with some very talented people that any company would be lucky to have on their staff.

Why are you so invested/interested in social media, and in what types of social media do you engage? Blog, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn? How do they help you?

AH: I am invested in social media, and yes, I use Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn regularly. However, I might not be your typical social media user.

I mean I do love user-generated content, and I love how that informs broad interactive dialogue. But the social media that I use regularly are the social networking tools internal to my own company, Microsoft. Let me give you two examples:

We have an internal feed that we call OfficeTalk. It is micro-blogging internal to the company. Think of it like you would an internal Twitter. I am not using it so much to broadcast news or topics. I am using it for what I think is a higher purpose—to recognize broadly people’s accomplishments. Whenever I see someone who has done something to make other’s great, I post a little note on OfficeTalk. That way, potentially everyone in the company can see this person’s accomplishments.

In that same vein, we have a tool called Kudos. This is a peer-recognition service that allows you to thank people at Microsoft, and track who has recognized you for something. Since it is a cloud service, it is available to me when I am on or off the corporate network. Oh, and it sends a message to your manager so that you are recognized up the chain. :^)

This is how I get value from social media. I know that everyone has their own reasons for using it or not using it; this is mine.

How have you used social media, and what has been your greatest challenge?

AH: My greatest challenge is understanding how to filter social media tools in the most efficient way possible. Tools like TweetDeck help. But the content you see is only as good as the content people post.

What has been your strategy for creating visibility to yourself? For Microsoft? For ITKAN?

AH: I like to think that everything I do helps me represent Microsoft and the organizations I work with like ITKAN.

So it can be as broad as discussing a technology on the TV news, or as narrow as a discussion with someone I met on the El [Chicago’s elevated train system]. It all reflects on you, your company, and your organizations. Beyond that, I really do not have a strategy for creating visibility for myself.

Tell us about some of the people you’ve met while working in social media.

AH: There are some people who have really mastered the art of generating great content in social media. One of my favorites is Dr. Mark Drapeau, who edits the site http://Publicyte.com .

This is a social media play that takes a theme of public interest and riffs on it. He has a great term for it: Civic Innovation. Recent themes have been around connectivity, and the public interest and policy surrounding it. Other themes have included cybersecurity, etc.

Probably the master of social media in Chicago is Howard Tullman. Howard runs Tribeca Flashpoint Academy, which is a fantastic two year digital media school right here in the Loop. It is a very forward-thinking, push-the-envelope kind of school that is building the next generation of digital media talent.


But the driving force behind it is really Howard himself. What makes him such an icon in this space is the way he can take a story, and combine so many different types of social media to surround it. He is one of the people in the city that I admire most.

Where do you see your involvement with ITKAN going?

AH: That is a good question. Right now, I support them by providing them with a space to meet, access to interesting and (hopefully) helpful speakers, and of course my personal friendship. I’m really happy with that involvement.

But what I want to see is more people recognizing the potential that each of these members possess. The company that recognizes that—to the point where they engage with one of the members on a career level—is going to be a far better company for it.

What do you so when you’re not involved in social media?

AH: My job is not really social media. It is really about running the Microsoft Technology Center so that we can work with our customers and help them envision solutions that meet their business needs.

I love my job and I put my heart into it. And when I am not having fun with my colleagues, partners, and customers… I am spending time with my family and enjoying this fabulous city we call home.

Thank you again, Adam, for agreeing to answer some questions for the ITKAN blog.

You’re welcome, Hsuan.

TRIBECA DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION AWARDS - HONOREES NAMED

TRIBECA FLASHPOINT ACADEMY HOSTS FLIPPED CLASSROOM CONFERENCE

TRIBECA FLASHPOINT MEDIA ARTS ACADEMY "SADERMANIA" FILM ON FOX-TV

WATCH THE VIDEO:

Sadermania from HOWARD TULLMAN on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/39858856

NEW TRIBECA FLASHPOINT MEDIA ARTS ACADEMY "TRAILER" VIDEO

TRIBECA FLASHPOINT ACADEMY CEO HOWARD A. TULLMAN SPEAKING AT MARKETING HACKATHON IN CHICAGO

TRIBECA FLASHPOINT ACADEMY SUPPORTS GOOGLE ART PROJECT AT ART INSTITUTE

Google Art Project launches Tuesday at Art Institute of Chicago

BY Wailin Wong, Chicago Tribune reporter



6:00 a.m. CDT, April 3, 2012

Imagine pulling up a stool next to the lonely diners of Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" or dipping your fingers in the basin of "The Child's Bath" by Mary Cassatt.

These familiar images, along with the sunbathers of George Seurat's "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" and the somber figures of Grant Wood's "American Gothic," are among the 32,000 works of art that Google is releasing in digital format today.

The technology giant partnered with 151 institutions worldwide on the Google Art Project, an online platform for virtually viewing artwork and museum galleries. The company selected the Art Institute of Chicago as the initiative's North American launch site and will be hosting museum directors from across the country at a private event Tuesday morning.



Participating institutions, from the White House to the Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) in Bogota, Colombia, selected works from their vast collections to contribute to the Google Art Project. Of this group, 46 museums had their galleries photographed using Google Street View technology, which compiles a 360-degree panorama to create a virtual-tour experience in a high-definition format called gigapixel. Some of the works in Google's online collection are also rendered in gigapixels.


"The gigapixel imagery of 'La Grande Jatte' was truly mind-boggling," said Sam Quigley, vice president for collections management, imaging and information technology at the Art Institute. "They took something like 702 images, little pieces of the painting, by photographic technique and stitched together a big mosaic so you'll be able to zoom incredibly close and see the individual points of paint that the artist used to create that work. It's really quite something. That's a technology leadership role that really only a few corporations like Google could provide."

Many art museums already have digital images on their websites. The Art Institute has about 52,000, Quigley said. But Google is providing superior technology and the heft of a well-known brand whose broad mission is to "organize the world's information" and make it accessible. The Mountainview, Calif.-based company has applied this mandate to everything from books to recipes to government data.


"The diversity of the institutions is key," said Piotr Adamczyk, head of data for the Google Art Project. "It's about finding partners that are eager to put their content online."

The art initiative grew out of a group of Google employees' "20 percent time," a company policy that encourages workers to tinker on personal pursuits one day a week. The project was launched in February 2011 with 1,000 works from 17 museums. It enables users to save their favorites in personal collections and share them with friends via social media tools such as Google+and Facebook.


Adamczyk, a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, previously served as the Metropolitan Museum of Art's liaison to Google for the first round. He had been the New York institution's resident "data nerd," helping curators mount special exhibitions such as last year's Alexander McQueen retrospective.


Adamczyk and Quigley said they expect online visibility of museums' art collections to encourage, rather than cannibalize, offline visitor traffic.


"Everyone worries that when we publish something, (people) won't want to come to the museum," Quigley said. "It's the opposite. The more we put works of art in public venues, it seems to have a positive impact on people coming to see the real thing."


Google also reached out to local schools, hoping the art database could be a useful teaching tool. Aurora University's Institute for Collaboration plans to incorporate the Google Art Project into the after-school and summer programs run by its Mathematics and Science Education Center for middle schoolers.

"It will prove to be an amazing example of what we want to have in terms of integrated discipline," said Sherry Eagle, executive director of the institute. "Science and math don't stand alone. They stand with the humanities."


The Google Art Project does have some conspicuous absences. None of the Art Institute's Matisse or Picasso pieces made it into the database. Participating museums were responsible for securing intellectual property rights for each work they wanted to contribute to the online collection, and not every copyright holder gave permission.

Backers of the project, however, said they expect it to grow. Adamczyk said taking the collection from 1,000 pieces to 32,000 took just a year of work by a London-based team of four Google employees.


"That kind of growth is something I haven't seen in the academic or museum worlds," he said.