Category: Science And Technology

Ireland’s labour market has been shaken up by recent tech layoffs and a post-pandemic reassessment of work. But University of Galway’s Dr Maeve O’Sullivan writes that this could create new opportunities.

Recent global tech sector layoffs have hit Ireland’s workforce hard. Prior to these job cuts, the Irish digital sector directly employed more than 270,000 people, as well as creating many more ancillary jobs.

Tech jobs pay an average annual salary of €74,000 in Ireland and cover 11pc of the country’s income tax revenues. While gross pay increased across all sectors in 2021 compared with pre-pandemic levels, tech salaries grew by an impressive 28pc, compared with 1pc for hospitality workers.

Equipped with superior spending power, these well-paid tech workers have also been better able to afford Ireland’s high rents and house prices – even during the recent housing, energy and cost-of-living crises. Although, these were arguably boosted by the growth of high-paying sectors such as science and technology in the first place.

These jobs often come from foreign firms. The last year broke records for foreign direct investment employment in Ireland. Multinationals employed more than 300,000 workers, with information and communication firms accounting for 116,192 of those jobs.

Much of this is activity concentrated in ‘Europe’s Silicon Valley’, the Dublin docklands area that hosts major offices for many of the world’s largest tech companies including Google’s parent Alphabet, Apple, Meta, Microsoft’s LinkedIn, Stripe and Twitter.

But with just 10 firms accounting for 36pc of all the tax paid in the country, Ireland’s economic vulnerability in the face of a global recession and the current tech downturn has caused some concern.

Before these job cuts, however, continued employment growth from multinational firms has left home-grown tech companies – and many other sectors – with record job vacancies. Indeed, the head of industry body Technology Ireland pointed out recently that indigenous firms have “found it challenging to hire at pace over the last two years”.

Ireland hit a record high for job vacancies right across the economy this year. This means there could be a silver lining to recent layoffs by global tech giants, particularly if locally based talent is freed up for indigenous tech firms.

It could also create opportunities for employees that are currently underrepresented in the workforce such as women and older people.

The great reshuffle

Almost half (45pc) of all Irish workers returning to employment post-pandemic changed jobs, with 69pc of those also changing economic sector.

This labour market upheaval is quite remarkable, pointing to a post-pandemic reassessment of why, how and where people work. Indeed, instead of the ‘great resignation’ experienced by other countries, Ireland has seen more of a ‘great reshuffle’.

And while some of these workers are leaving good jobs for great ones, others are leaving bad jobs for slightly better work or exiting the labour market completely. The competition for both top talent and low-skilled workers continues unabated.

This churn has also revealed a growing duality in the Irish labour market. Despite high remuneration packages for multinational and tech sector workers, recent OECD data shows that the problem of ‘low pay’ (earnings below two-thirds of the country’s median income) is much more acute in Ireland than in many developed countries.

At 18pc, Ireland has the highest rate of low pay among western EU states. This problem is more acute for migrant workers (almost one-fifth of Irish workers), women, younger and older workers.

Hospitality employees are among the lowest paid in society, typically earning one-third of tech workers’ salaries. Recent analysis shows that half of all hospitality workers in Ireland changed employer post-pandemic. Two-thirds of these workers moved to other sectors such as retail and administrative or support services.

Finding decent work

All of this indicates a change in workers’ idea of ‘decent work’ or a good job in places like Ireland.

While previous definitions typically included fair wages and employment benefits such as a pension and healthcare cover, recent research suggests workers are reassessing their jobs and demanding more flexible and better-quality jobs in which workers are appreciated, fairly compensated and properly supervised.

Elon Musk’s recent ultimatum requiring all Twitter employees to return to in-office work and commit to working in a “hardcore” fashion certainly appears to have backfired. When workers reacted with the departure of key personnel and litigation threats, Musk appeared to relax his outright ban on remote working.

But, despite the obvious advantages of hybrid working for both employers and workers, there is more potential for long-term career damage, unfair treatment and unequal access to opportunities for remote workers.

A recent global survey by consultancy firm Deloitte found that 58pc of female hybrid workers felt excluded from access to leaders and key meetings. Also, some research suggests less than 40pc of jobs can be performed remotely.

Where to next for Ireland?

Given the record levels of job vacancies in Ireland – even with recent foreign tech company job cuts – two untapped labour sources are right under our noses: women and older workers.

Faced with the majority of caring responsibilities, the exodus of women from the labour market during the pandemic was striking. In the first half of 2020 alone, more than 70,000 women left the Irish job market. This trend has since been partially reversed with a 59pc female labour force participation rate in 2022.

But women still face barriers to decent work including unpaid caring duties, interrupted work histories and being more likely to be underemployed or stuck in precarious or low-paid employment.

People in the developed world are also living longer, more active lives. As a result, governments in many OECD countries are encouraging continued participation in paid work.

But this is challenging for employers and employees. Result’s from Ireland’s first Longitudinal Study on Ageing shows workers approaching pension age tend to work fewer hours or part-time. Workplace ageism also remains a barrier to work for this section of the population – while many firms employ older workers, few recruit them.

The world is reeling from recent tech job losses and the global recession. But Ireland is well positioned to respond to these challenges if it can address its labour market inequality.

By Dr Maeve O’Sullivan

Dr Maeve O’Sullivan is assistant professor in human resource management and decent work at the University of Galway. Her work focuses on the business, policy and wider societal implication of precarious employment, and the need to prioritise decent work and greater workplace equality, diversity and inclusion.

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You’ve likely heard of gula aren or gula melaka, but have you heard of gula apong?

If you haven’t, you’re not alone. Siblings Ellyna, Emylia, and Eirwan Merican had never heard of it until they chanced upon it in Kuching, Sarawak in 2019.

At a bus stop shop, they experienced gula apong ice cream and boba the first time, discovering its unique taste and versatility.

While gula melaka is made from the sap of palm trees, gula apong is specifically made from nipa palm trees that grow abundantly in mangrove forests along Sarawak’s coast.

Furthermore, its coastal origins mean that gula apong carries a salty flavour.  

Inspired, the trio started selling gula apong ice cream back in West Malaysia. According to Ellyna, the neighbourhood parlour was such a hit even at the height of the pandemic that the siblings realised they could take it further to accomplish their lifelong dream of opening their own cafe.

With Ellyna’s background as a corporate event marketer, Emylia as an auditor, and Eirwan as a business, banking, and finance university student, none of them had any experience in F&B.

“We were all just doing our own thing back then,” Ellyna said. “Each of us acquired some form of entrepreneurship experience at different stages of our lives—selling a myriad of products from clothes, to homemade kefir, to books, to gadgets, to skin care products.”

Despite not having F&B experience, each of them brings their own skillset to the table. Emylia focuses on the finance and operational side, while Eirwan deals with technical matters and business development. Meanwhile, Ellyna focuses on the “people” side of things.  

Their parents also chip in as expert advisors, overseeing their work and cheering them on.

“Running this business as a family has its set of challenges,” Ellyna admitted. “But little did we notice, this business has bonded us even more as a family than before.”

Apong-ifying everything

In the beginning, the siblings’ plan was to sell only ice cream, and perhaps a selection of French pastries and cakes.

However, after several rounds of market surveys, the three realised how “crazy over coffee” people are.

“We wouldn’t have known this reality until we asked around for opinions,” Ellyna said. “I personally was never a fan of coffee. I’ve always preferred tea over coffee.”

But regardless of personal preference, she saw the value in expanding their reach to serve those coffee enthusiasts.

Fortunately, her sister, Emylia, used to work as a barista at Starbucks and knew a thing or two about espresso-based drinks. Through courses, they learnt about the origins of beans, used espresso machines, and picked up the skill of latte art.

“We sought help from a local roastery to help us devise our gula apong-based drinks,” Ellyna explained. “Soon after, Oh Apong’s iconic drink, the Apong Coffee Latte, was born.”

And while they were at it, they thought they might as well cater to non-coffee drinkers too. They explored a variety of beverages and eventually looked into other cakes and pastries.

“Instead of focusing on ice cream, we aim to be a gula apong speciality store that serves a variety of gula apong delicacies including speciality coffee, cookies, granola, choux au craquelin, mini bundt cake, and kaya spread,” Ellyna said.

According to Ellyna, many of these menu items have either yet to be invented or popularised, thus giving Oh Apong the first-mover advantage and an edge above other apong brands.

This includes brands like Mokti’s and Q Ice Cream. While each has its forte, Oh Apong’s is its variety of offerings. But when it comes down to the ice cream, Ellyna shared that Oh Apong has its own ice cream powder recipe, so customers won’t find the same formulation elsewhere.  

“Not all our dishes incorporate gula apong at the moment, but it’s in the pipeline,” the co-founder said. “It’s transitioning from just serving pastries and cakes to accompany our gula apong coffee and ice cream to progressively adding more gula apong food items that best define Oh Apong.”

Championing apong

Although apong isn’t as popular in West Malaysia, it’s extensively used over in East Malaysia. Beyond desserts like cendol and cakes, Ellyna shared that it’s even used for chicken wings.

“It’s a must-have ingredient in every Sarawakian household,” she shared. “While it’s being widely used in East Malaysia, the knowledge of its benefits has not fully penetrated West Malaysia I guess.”

Another explanation, she suggested, could be that West Malaysians are already too comfortable with gula melaka. Plus, gula apong is pricier on the peninsula due to the shipping costs.

“But I’m starting to see a significant shift in today’s more inquisitive generation,” Ellyna pointed out.

The process of harvesting gula apong is a time-consuming and risky practice as local farmers need to search swampy marshlands for suitable nipa palms and nurture them. Dangers include snakes, crocodiles, and even wild monkey encounters, according to Ellyna.

Oh Apong works with partners in Sarawak who deal directly with the farmers. A key issue the siblings faced as they started out was their lack of understanding of the gula apong ecosystem.

“We had to fly to Sarawak just to restock our gula apong, buying from various roadside vendors because our supplier could not secure the stock come the monsoon season,” Ellyna said.

“We learnt the hard way that the supply of gula apong during the monsoon season (when the water level rises) becomes extremely scarce, so the prices of gula apong went through the roof!”

Another factor challenging supply is overfarming of the nipa tree palms. Developments, erosion, and pests are also factors of depletion.

On the bright side, according to Ellyna, Sarawak’s government and the Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority (FAMA) aim to strengthen the potential of gula apong to enter a wider market.

Through their gula apong purchases, the team aims to elevate the traditional Sarawakian artisanal product. They also hope to improve the livelihoods of the local community of gula apong makers and collectors by providing a sustainable income to them.

“It’s our way of celebrating our local unsung heroes, in good times and tough times alike,” Ellyna said.

A sweet outlook

Today, Oh Apong has a few varying concepts with its outlets, ranging from a café to kiosks.

The siblings plan to expand this way so that each outlet aptly serves its purpose, suitable to the location where it operates.

“We did not want to expand too rapidly as maintaining the quality of our products and service has always been our utmost priority,” Ellyna shared.

Beyond pushing for Oh Apong to do well, Ellyna and her siblings seem to care about the entire apong industry at large, sharing that they’d like to see the ingredient on the global food stage one day.

To do this, they’d need to look into licensing and subsequently franchising the brand, though lots of cautious planning will take place before that.

Other than expansion, Oh Apong is planning to also introduce gula apong-based merchandise that includes nectar, cookies, granola, and kaya in the near future.

The co-founder shared that they’ve recently visited a pineapple farm in Kajang, Saudagar Nanas. Ellyna had taken notice of the “quaint little shop” within the farm that sells everything pineapple from fresh fruit to pineapple-based coffee and snacks.

“I imagined what if a similar concept is applied to nipa palm?” she wondered. “Selling gula apong dishes and merchandise, with guided tours to demonstrate the process of traditionally harvesting, processing, cooking, and packing gula apong. It’s gonna be a hit for sure!”

“Not to mention, this will be a huge step in preserving this disappearing trade for future generations.”

• Learn more about Oh Apong here.
• Read other articles we’ve written about Malaysian startups here.

Featured Image Credit: Oh Apong

Coffee Briefings are timely deliveries of the latest ITWC headlines, interviews, and podcasts. Today’s Coffee Briefing is delivered by IT World Canada’s editorial team!

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What’s new this week

Google for Startups Accelerator Canada applications now open

Applications are now open for the fourth Google for Startups Accelerator Canada, which launches in March 2023. The accelerator brings Google’s programs, products, people, and technology to Canadian startups that are leveraging machine learning and AI through their work. 

The accelerator provides mentorships and technical project support, as well as workshops focused on product design, customer acquisition, and leadership development for founders.

Google will select up to 12 Seed to Series A tech startups based in Canada. Participating companies will receive technical training and high-level strategic development opportunities with its machine learning, people, product, and growth labs.

Applications are open until Feb. 1, 2023 with the accelerator kicking off in March 2023. 

For more information and the application link, click here. 

SAP holiday shopping data reveals shoppers’ willingness to spend

Holiday shopping has begun, and SAP reports that SAP Commerce Cloud powered over US$8.3 billion in digital commerce gross merchandise value (GMV) for Cyber Week with their retail customers, seeing a 22.3 per cent increase in average order value (AOV) year over year (YOY)

For Black Friday, overall site traffic for SAP Commerce Cloud customers increased 23 per cent versus last year. And on Cyber Monday, overall site traffic increased 53 per cent.

In addition to site traffic, retail customers leveraging SAP Commerce Cloud saw Black Friday conversion rates of 3.4 times that of 2021.

Based on SAP’s data, shoppers are looking for the best deals they can find. Black Friday traffic for retailers running SAP Commerce Cloud that executed sales events was 33 per cent higher YOY, versus a 16 per cent increase for the total data set. On Cyber Monday, overall site traffic increased 53 per cent, 40 per cent more than the daily average. 

BMO and Extend partner for virtual card distribution 

BMO and virtual card and spend management platform provider Extend are partnering to announce the addition of a set of payment functionality to BMO Corporate Cards. Through its existing relationship with Mastercard, BMO Commercial Bank clients across North America can now use Extend’s mobile and desktop app to create, send, and manage virtual cards for simplified payment and reconciliation processes.

BMO is the first organization to work with Extend in Canada and will make Extend solutions available to all corporate card clients across North America. 

Extend’s platform offers BMO clients the ability to control vendor payments, manage receipts and recurring expenses, as well as subscriptions. BMO clients can also set spending limits and create, modify, send, and cancel virtual cards in real-time.

“Our Corporate Card clients want to keep their spending secure and controlled, while reducing costs,” said Derek Vernon, head of product management and enterprise payments modernization, BMO Commercial Bank. “The Extend for BMO app solves this critical need with the power of virtual cards that retain all the benefits our clients already enjoy with their Corporate Card program while helping them make real financial progress.”

This agreement builds on the bank’s recently announced partnerships with FISPAN and Xero.

Two Montreal teams winners at the global IBM Call for Code competition

At an awards ceremony at the United Nations in New York last week, IBM honoured winners of its annual global Call for Code competition, which included Canadian teams that placed third and fourth.

Call for Code lets innovators around the globe help speed up sustainable development and fight climate change through technology solutions powered by open source software.

The finalists from Canada were two Montreal-based companies. The third place winner was Nearbuy, a shopping assistant designed by a team of Morgan Stanley developers that integrates with existing online shopping sites and automatically notifies users if similar items can be found locally. Nearbuy was awarded US$25,000. 

ESSPERA, a machine learning application from SIA Innovations that helps farmers choose the best seeds to plant for the next harvest, taking into account both published seed trial data and local weather forecasts, won fourth place and was awarded US$10,000. 

More to explore 

Google urges developers to build more secure software

Since the compromise of the SolarWinds Orion update mechanism two years ago this month, governments and the IT industry have made strides in trying to reduce the attack surface of applications.

Toronto Pwn2Own hacking contest awards over $980,000 to bug hunters

Security researchers picked up US$989,750 in prizes for demonstrating 63 unique zero day vulnerabilities in consumer and small office products during the four-day Toronto edition of the Pwn2Own hacking contest.

Rackspace outage crashes share price; Silent teleport steals data from financial institutions; Open source Cryptonite “accidentally” destroys data. This Week in Ransomware – Sunday, Dec 11, 2022

On Dec. 2, Rackspace experienced an outage for its Hosted Exchange environment. The company blamed a “security incident.” A status update issued by the company noted, “We proactively shut down the environment to avoid any further issues while we continue work to restore service.”

Ad-free search platform launches in Canada

Search engine Neeva launches today in Canada to provide users with a tracking-free and ad-free alternative to search platform Google.

Government of Canada to invest $30 million in AI in robots

The federal Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, François-Philippe Champagne, recently announced an investment of $30 million in Sanctuary Cognitive Systems Corporation, a Vancouver company specializing in AI and robotics.

A happy holiday gift guide – part 1

Tis the season for worrying about what to buy for friends, colleagues, and loved ones – and what we would like to find under the tree for ourselves. So in honour of the season, we offer the first of our weekly gift guides that we hope will spark inspiration.

Happy holiday gift guide: Part Two

It’s that time of year again. The holiday season is approaching quickly and gift buying is probably taking over your mind. If you’re stumped on what to buy and need some inspiration, take a look at part 2 of our holiday gift guide!

Technicity West: Innovative economies are built on four key pillars

Creating an innovative economy can only happen if four key pillars are adopted that will allow municipal growth to happen in new ways, the city manager of Lethbridge, Alta. said this week.

Climate Neutral wins the top prize in WEtech Alliance’s ScaleUP Accelerator

Cleantech company Climate Neutral, which develops digital tools to accelerate climate action, has been awarded the C$20,000 top prize from WEtech Alliance’s ScaleUP Accelerator program.

Aeris to acquire IoT business from Ericsson

Ericsson has signed an agreement for the transfer of its IoT Accelerator and Connected Vehicle Cloud businesses to San Jose based-Aeris Communications, a provider of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions.

Channel Bytes December 9, 2022 – Broadcom announces plans for VMware; CYREBRO appoints global channel sales VP; U.S. Pentagon blocks resellers; and more

Staying informed is a constant challenge. There’s so much to do, and so little time. But we have you covered. Grab a coffee and take five while you nibble on these tidbits.

Listen to the latest episode of Hashtag Trending

Maryland is the most recent state to ban TikTok in government agencies, Amazon accused of stealing delivery driver tips, and the EU sets a deadline for device manufacturers to switch to USB-C for their data and charging ports.

Listen to the latest episode of Cyber Security Today

This episode reports on the results from the Toronto Pwn2Own contest, a possible way to hack air-gapped computers, a report on improving the software security supply chain and more.

Listen to the latest episode of Hashtag Tendances (Hosted by Direction Informatique)

If you live in Quebec, or prefer to consume the latest technology news in French, our sister publication Direction Informatique has you covered. Follow them on Twitter as well.

What makes an organization a great place for technology professionals to work? Top salaries, benefits, and other perks are important, but so are opportunities to learn new skills, a flexible work environment, and a corporate culture that values diversity and teamwork.

Computerworld publisher Foundry surveyed large, midsize, and small organizations to discover the top employers for our 29th annual Best Places to Work in IT report. While in past years the survey has been offered only to US-based companies, this year we welcomed participation by organizations worldwide.

Read this special report to see which companies are the Best Places to Work in IT and what it is that makes them such desirable places to work. To read the report in PDF format, download it below.

Tech talent’s time to shine

Career opportunities for IT professionals have been unprecedented over the past year amid strong demand for top talent and new skills. Recent economic pressures and rising layoffs have softened the market somewhat, but many companies continue to seek much-needed skills in data science, software development, cybersecurity, and other IT areas. Whether it’s via compensation, training, career growth, or flexible work options, organizations that have doubled down on efforts to cultivate a highly skilled IT workforce to help advance digital business will be well positioned to ride out a sustained economic downturn or other disruptions that may lie ahead.

In particular, hybrid work arrangements are helping align the needs of companies and workers, opening opportunities for a more diverse and productive workforce. Companies have a geographically broader pool of talent from which to draw, and prospective hires have more freedom to seek employment opportunities beyond where they live.

This shift is critical, given how vital IT’s role in business has become. Across industries, pandemic-era pressures have accelerated digital transformation, fast-tracking technology investments and casting IT as a key business enabler. This has put pressure on leadership teams to keep top performers highly motivated and engaged.

“IT can no longer be viewed as just a function or department. We’re really the backbone and the operating system of the enterprise,” says Jo Abernathy, CIO at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, which earned the No. 1 large-company spot on Computerworld’s 2023 Best Places to Work in IT list. “Technology isn’t used just to run the business but to reimagine it.”

Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina

As companies become more digitally driven, there is greater appetite for IT creativity — another plus for career paths in tech. “IT is an amazing melting pot of many skill sets coming together in new ways and is constantly being reinvented,” says Debbie Peterson, senior vice president of People & Culture with MetroStar, a digital services and solutions company specializing in government that earned the No. 1 spot among small companies this year. “I think that leads to a lot more autonomy. You can be more creative. And because of that, inside of IT, you tend to see folks take on many more types of roles than they would in a different sector.”

With technology now being the epicenter of modern business, IT jobs and salaries are on the rise, according to this year’s Best Places to Work in IT survey. The number of IT employees is up 8% over the previous year overall and is notably higher at midsize companies, at 17%. Across the board, companies are adding full-time IT employees: Almost three-quarters (72%) of the respondents have expanded their IT ranks over the past three years, by 41% on average. The year ahead appears to be on a similar trajectory, with 72% of the respondents indicating that they plan to grow their IT organization, by 16% on average.

Raises for IT positions are the norm: On average, 92% of IT employees got a salary bump in 2022, with salary cuts and freezes nearly nonexistent.

Workplace flexibility is here to stay

Most of the survey respondents said the pandemic period has established flexible work as a legitimate option that doesn’t diminish enterprise productivity. As offices have reopened, many companies are embracing the hybrid work model: On average, 90% of IT professionals at responding organizations are working offsite at least part of the time, and most companies (83%) have established a formal policy on flexible work. More than half of the employers (57%) said they give individuals the ability to choose their work location (with approval from management or within certain parameters), and 42% said their employees have the freedom to choose where they want to work on any given day.

Many firms had already supported remote work options, giving them a head start on implementing collaboration tools and new work patterns when the pandemic began. That was the case at Cedars-Sinai, ranked No. 2 among large organizations for hybrid work. IT employees had been working a couple of days per week at home for some time, but once the hospital formalized its telework policy, in 2021, it furnished all hybrid and remote workers with laptops, desktops, multiple monitors, docking stations, and virtual desktop software so applications were readily accessible remotely. Box and OneDrive help promote file sharing and collaboration, and there are tools for project tracking and reporting as well as for receiving calls from employees’ work phone extensions. An IT onboarding committee was established to help new employees feel welcome and to aid in the transition to a virtual environment.

“Since we implemented the formal policy, IT employee engagement scores and comments have continued to positively reflect that employees are happy and productive working from home,” says Craig Kwiatkowski, senior vice president and CIO at Cedars-Sinai.

Some organizations are finding that hybrid models provide a better balance and greater advantages for professional development than fully remote models. Employees at regional broker-dealer Janney Montgomery Scott, the No. 5 midsize company, spend two or three days a week in the office, with one of those days serving as a collective “team day” for IT employees. CIO Robert Thielmann believes that significant knowledge transfer is lost when employees go fully remote, and having employees interact in person with Janney’s veteran IT managers and peers is key to the company’s success.

People learn by observing, Thielmann says — things like the art of negotiation, collaborative design, and leadership behavior in various climates. “Our managers operate like player-coaches. They impart a lot of knowledge and skills, but most importantly they impart work ethic,” he adds, likening Janney’s mentoring model to that of a teaching hospital.

To support a hybrid workplace, companies are not just amping up use of collaboration platforms and equipment to make it easier for employees to work better remotely. They are also investing in on-site facility improvements to make in-office work more attractive and to bring parity to the hybrid work experience.

At biotechnology firm Genentech, for example, conference rooms have been redesigned to provide better visibility during video calls and encourage equity during hybrid meetings. Neighborhood work environments, designed for groups, are available throughout its campus. The company has also made improvements to reservation systems for more efficient management of demand for on-site services and conference rooms, and it has installed IT vending machines to make it easy to acquire technology on the fly.

“We offer a hybrid work model but also believe in the importance of a vibrant campus life,” says Charles Castano, vice president, US Informatics, at Genentech, which earned the No. 2 large-company spot. Creative concepts such as “tech-free Tuesdays” and “whiteboard Wednesdays,” along with on-site events designed to drive connection and celebration, are among the company’s initiatives aimed at encouraging IT workers to come to the office without having a set agenda.

“They have an opportunity to collaborate, sit down, have lunch, and walk the campus,” he explains. “It’s those one-, five-, or 10-minute interactions that spur ideas and discussion about how IT can collaborate with the business.”

Nurturing and upskilling the workforce

Facing a skills gap in many critical technology areas, companies are making a push to nurture existing employees. This year’s Best Places to Work in IT survey results show that 38% of IT vacancies were filled internally in 2021, and companies are actively pursuing a variety of paths to boost employee engagement. In addition to hosting employee appreciation events and offering bonuses and other high-value items to top performers, companies put a significant focus on training and career development, including “stay interviews” with existing employees to help establish trust among team members and proactively resolve conflicts.

IT training budgets were flush this past year, with 62% of the survey respondents reporting increases in dollars spent, an indicator that upskilling employees and filling key skills gaps remain top priorities. The average IT employee is eligible for six days of in-person or remote training, the survey found, but three-quarters of the respondents said there is no set maximum. Popular training options include technical certifications, professional and career development, management and soft skills training, and business skills development.

Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), the No. 1 large organization for career development, offers a wide array of options to upskill its IT workforce, budgeting approximately $1.5 million annually for IT staff training. Employees can take advantage of educational assistance programs, which cover up to 24 credits per academic year for staff members earning a degree at any university. IT staffers pursuing a doctorate are eligible for up to 200 hours of annual education leave (in addition to their regular leave), which provides time for research and work on their dissertation. There are also rotational assignments, mentoring programs, and in-person and online training classes, among other options.

“One of the most important elements for the long-term health of APL is to create and sustain a culture of lifelong learning and discovery,” says Michael Misumi, APL’s CIO. “Our training programs build trust and engagement within the department, two tenets that are very important to the IT culture.”

At Avanade, a digital business and technology consultancy formed by Accenture and Microsoft, Microsoft certifications take precedence for all employees, not just those in IT. The No. 2 midsize firm on the Best Places list trains employees on basic technical skills as well as how to apply those skills specifically to advance the company’s internal business processes and agenda. “Investing in your employee base by reskilling is mission-critical, both for the employee and the company’s ability to support areas that are a priority where we’ve had trouble getting outside talent,” says Ron White, Avanade’s global CIO.

In addition to providing technical training, Avanade promotes IT leadership development through initiatives such as The Leader Within, a six-month virtual program aimed at women in tech, and Coaching@Avanade, which uses the BetterUp mobile platform to grow employee leadership and confidence.

Offering mentoring programs has become a popular way to upskill the existing IT workforce with practical business experience, a strategy cited by nearly three-quarters (71%) of the survey respondents. Blue Cross NC, for example, has instituted Blue Xchange, a six-month program that matches mentees seeking specific skills to an appropriate mentor; each pair participates in forums as well as individual sessions to boost knowledge in the areas of leadership, career development, business acumen, and communication. A second mentoring initiative, the Leadership and Diversity Development Experience Rotation (LADDER), connects minority IT leaders with IT professionals who are early in their careers to help nurture and develop a culturally diverse workplace.

Outside of training and career development, top employers have embraced numerous measures to keep IT employees connected and engaged. There are companywide hackathons and tech summits to boost creativity and innovation. Speaker events, fireside chats, and more intimate roundtables provide a venue for more conversational information sharing and problem-solving across professional as well as personal areas of interest. There are in-person recreational events designed to bring colleagues together to promote camaraderie and team building, as well as a variety of recognition programs to help IT workers feel appreciated.

A strong commitment to DEI initiatives

With diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) now considered foundational to business success, IT departments are actively trying to cultivate new talent pipelines to bring more diversity into what has remained a stubbornly white and male-dominated field. The lion’s share (92%) of companies on the 2023 Best Places to Work in IT list said they have a documented DEI strategy, and 96% have established some kind of DEI champion, through a formal role (61%), a team of employees dedicated to promoting workplace diversity (82%), or both.

Blue Cross NC, which tops this year’s list of large organizations in the diversity category, has taken several steps to increase racial and gender diversity, through initiatives such as its LADDER program; its involvement with Road to Hire, which focuses on helping underrepresented youth enter the tech field; and a partnership with the North Carolina Governor’s HBCU Internship Program. It has also established TechNOW (Network of Women), an employee network for women working in technology at Blue Cross NC that includes a mentoring program.

“Deliberate nurturing of talent is important,” says Abernathy. “It’s not just about creating mentors but what can be done to get more minorities in IT and, even more importantly, in leadership roles.”

This year’s winners are taking a variety of steps to promote DEI. Nearly all (98%) have created specific recruitment strategies to attract diverse employees through tactics such as leveraging diverse job boards or rewarding employees for diverse candidate referrals. Other popular efforts include celebrating employee differences (96%), offering diversity and inclusion training (93%), and creating employee resource groups based on common interests and goals (85%).

At Janney, a formal diversity and inclusion strategy includes workforce tactics such as blind recruiting, diverse candidate slates, and expanding geographic search areas, among other approaches. The efforts to grow the talent pool are paying off: Over 40% of Janney’s IT staff comprises women and minorities.

“Skills, motivation, and fit are the primary factors during recruitment,” says Thielmann. “By placing skills and experience as the paramount focus, diversity naturally follows and has been a huge benefit to our technology department.”

Janney Montgomery Scott

Despite such efforts, there is more work to be done across the industry. Computerworld’s survey found that, on average, 28% of IT workers and 28% of IT managers are women. Although those numbers show progress, they are still shy of many companies’ stated DEI targets. “The bottom line for employers is that you have to have more candidates in the pool in order to hire more women in the organization, and that’s not happening at a fast enough rate,” Abernathy says.

Genentech, with a mission to deliver better health outcomes for all patients, sees DEI as central to its charter. The company has created a chief diversity office; appointed a chief diversity officer reporting directly to the CEO; and set forth specific commitments, which include doubling the number of Black and Latinx employees among its leadership ranks and in its overall workforce. There are also more tactical efforts to support diverse hiring, such as seeking candidates from nontraditional talent pools and creating more-diverse interview panels.

“Cultivating an environment where all employees are actively included, feel comfortable showing up, and thrive as their authentic selves is essential to delivering groundbreaking science and innovation to all patients,” Castano says.

Building a positive and nurturing IT culture is not about making a singular department better. In today’s digital climate, a happier and more effective IT organization translates directly into more innovative and competitive business. As our Best Places to Work in IT winners demonstrate, organizations that are proactive in creating a supportive, engaging, and rewarding environment for IT teams will be well positioned to succeed, now and in the future. — Beth Stackpole

NEXT PAGE: 2023 Best Places to Work in IT rankings and more

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On the eastern end of the Greek island of Crete, archaeologist Dimitra Mylona steps out onto the dun-colored remains of the 3,500-year-old Minoan settlement of Palaikastro and considers the past. Not just the big-P past that is the fundament of her career but also the small-p past of her own route to truth through a discipline burdened by myth and speculation. For the past 30 years, Mylona has been testing and refining her methodology, sifting through sites to ever-finer degrees. And if there’s anything the past few decades have taught her, it’s that the closer you look at ancient Mediterranean civilizations, the more the fish rise to the surface.

Mylona is a zooarchaeologist—a specialist in the study of animal remains of ancient societies. Through the close observation of bones, shells, and other finds, zooarchaeologists try to re-create a picture of the way humans hunted, husbanded, ate, and more generally interacted with the animals around them. Traditionally, zooarchaeologists in the Mediterranean have focused on goat and sheep and other forms of terrestrial protein as the go-to meat sources for Greece and other Mediterranean countries. Back in 1991, as a new graduate student, Mylona thought no differently, imagining herself picking through the remains of livestock. But during one of her first digs, in the same Palaikastro she now surveys, the presence of an entirely different find captivated her—fish bones.

Working by the sea, Mylona and other students were excavating the dirt floors of Minoan houses more than 3,000 years old. To retrieve minuscule finds—carbonized seeds of plants, bits of wood charcoal, bones of birds, lizards, and fish—they sifted the soil by using water to float the smallest of objects to visibility. “One of the senior archaeologists called me over to look into the microscope,” she says. “I imagine she was hoping to find someone that would take an interest in something others had ignored.” In the scope was one of the many tiny fish bones that were found that day, probably belonging to a small comber or a wrasse. The senior archaeologist was right. Mylona gazed at the folds and crenulations of those fish vertebrae and mused: a story lurked. She learned during those early digs that archaeologists in Greece were just beginning to employ the much more fine-scale water flotation method to the soils of ancient sites, and as a result more and more fish remains were coming to light. The search for a fishier ancient world, Mylona thought, might be the way forward for her academic career.

Setting out to the University of Sheffield in England in the early 1990s for graduate work, Mylona immediately felt resistance to her newfound focus. Her graduate supervisor advised her against committing to a fish bone master’s degree, instead urging her to specialize in the analysis of mammal bones. Fish bones were a dead end, he maintained. To prove his point, he gave her a book published in 1985 by the historian Thomas Gallant, A Fisherman’s Tale: An Analysis of the Potential Productivity of Fishing in the Ancient World. The book claimed ancient Greek seas were too poor to support fisheries of significance. For decades, that perceived poorness became the accepted defining characteristic of the Mediterranean in academic circles. Because few rivers flow into the Mediterranean, the sea is considered nutrient-starved and described as containing little phytoplanktonic life—oligotrophic in scientific parlance. Without sufficient terrestrial nitrogen and phosphorous, phytoplankton—the very base of the marine food web—are sparse. Indeed, one of the reasons the Med, as researchers affectionately call the sea, shows its clear sapphire face to modern humanity is this paucity of plankton. This “containing little life” framework may be a case of what historical ecologists often refer to as presentism—the tendency to view the past through a present-day lens. Presentism or not, the acceptance of the narrative left Mylona perplexed: an entire theory was based on a narrow selection of evidence.

Back in the 1980s, Gallant and others were focused on ancient economies and building models to predict people’s dietary behaviors in the past. To Gallant, for example, the evidence suggested that given the relatively high population of the Greek coastlines, there was not enough fish to go around. Goat and sheep obviously filled the caloric deficit. “So any calculation based on the few fish bones that were handpicked in Greek excavations at the time made [fish] a very insufficient source of nutrition,” Mylona says.

Having come from a region in northern Greece where fish is an integral part of modern diets, Mylona felt something was askew with this methodology. Over the course of the next 10 years—while earning a master’s and a PhD at the universities of Sheffield, York, and Southampton, and shuttling back to a growing family on Crete—Mylona started assembling the tools she would need to prove the hypothesis of a fishier Mediterranean.

While field excavation is often the most iconic part of archaeology, the real decoding of the evidence usually comes to light in laboratories and offices far away from the site. And so, after we look over Palaikastro, Mylona takes me up along winding roads into the hills of the Lasithi region and eventually brings us to the headquarters of the organization that has supported Mylona’s fish investigations—the Institute for Aegean Prehistory. The institute’s Study Center for East Crete (SCEC), funded by the American philanthropist and archaeologist Malcolm Wiener, is perched atop a site with a sweeping view of the Dikti Mountains and has an architecture designed to recall the airy halls of the Minoan palaces. Once inside, Mylona leads me first past archaeologists and conservators patiently piecing together vast jigsaw puzzles of pottery, then past an illustrator pen-and-inking renderings of sculpture, and finally to her office.

“In order to know what you are looking at, you need first to establish a reference collection,” she says as she pulls out box after box of bones lining her office shelves. A reference collection is a kind of archive of skeletons that allows zooarchaeologists to compare excavated remains with the bones of present-day creatures. “In Greece in 1993, there was not a single reference collection for fish bones—none whatsoever,” Mylona says. “Zooarchaeology is not taught in Greek universities, so there are no university collections of fish skeletons.”

During what was the busiest decade of her life, she made regular trips to the central fish market in Crete’s second-largest city, Chania on the northwest coast, and to moored fishing boats wherever she found them. She bought all the species of fish she could locate. Then she buried them around her home in the north-central Cretan coastal town of Rethymno. After digging them up months later once bugs and microorganisms had eaten away skin and flesh, Mylona scoured, cleaned, and filed away the fish bones like books in a library. When she deemed her collection big enough, she returned to the bones gathered during her first digs and got down to the serious business of seeing what was what.

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Counting ancient fish to establish a baseline for classical fisheries may seem like a rather arcane, academic thing to do during a time of climate crisis and profound environmental disruption. But baselines are important. You cannot restore what you cannot remember. That said, the historical baseline that Mylona is heroically unearthing is elusive. Even gathering data on the modern baseline—what is in the sea today—is a neglected science. Ringed by 22 nations that have fished with ever-increasing relentlessness, the contemporary picture the scientific literature paints of the Med is grim indeed. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, in 2019, only 36.7 percent of the assessed stocks in the Mediterranean and Black Seas were fished within biologically sustainable levels. After the Aswan High Dam near the mouth of the Nile in Egypt was completed in 1970, nutrient flow into the Mediterranean Sea from the Nile Delta has been curtailed, shifting the nature of plankton blooms and perhaps the entirety of the marine food web. Many other dams throughout the region have done similar damage.

Invasive species have further plundered the sea. Since the Mediterranean and the Red Seas were connected by the Suez Canal in 1869 to eliminate an expensive shipping detour around the Horn of Africa, hundreds of alien species have flooded the Med, and the sea is now considered the most invaded on the planet. On top of alien species eating their way through the Med’s forage fish, some species, such as Lagocephalus sceleratus, are dangerously toxic, too.

All of these degradations to a once-productive marine food system are happening in part because, with the exception of small coastal communities, the rest of modern Europe no longer relies on the Med for its survival. If you were to believe the earlier work of other archaeologists, you could be persuaded that this was always the case. The sea may have birthed multiple civilizations, but that’s not how early archaeologists and historians, like Gallant, imagined the past; imagined being the operative word.

As we continue on our odyssey of eastern Crete, Mylona and I eventually find our way down to Mochlos, a one-time fishing village now turned tourist resort an hour’s drive west of Palaikastro—a place that inevitably leads one to compare past and present. We are looking down a steep escarpment out on the bluer-than-blue Aegean, an embayment of the Mediterranean running between Europe and Asia. Before us is a pair of massive stone fish tanks that have been lying at the seafront for more than 2,000 years. Romans created the pens during their occupation of Greece to support a fishing industry that brought in catches live and stored the most precious fish until they could be sold fresh to highly discerning, and rich, customers. Yet even with the investment in infrastructure made for the sake of seafood, Mylona told me, the fish were important to ancient societies even beyond their role on the plate.

“Fish are different,” she says. “Cattle, sheep, goats—these were all animals used for sacrifice in religious rituals. There was a methodology in how you approached their slaughter and treatment. In classical Greece of the fourth and fifth centuries BCE, and probably also earlier, they were ceremonially slaughtered and eaten. You find their remains on altars, on places of sacrifice, and everywhere within settlements.” But fish, she says, occupied a place in society more closely linked to the day-to-day, something that is only realized when archaeological evidence is put in context of “softer” remains like ancient literature.

“Fish were more secular,” Mylona explains. “Because fish participated in the vignettes of daily life, we find them a lot in the classical theatrical comedies. The fishmonger who is a cheater. Or the ignorant customer. Or the glutton who wants to buy all the fish in the market—a symbol of someone who is totally undemocratic. In comedy, fish are used to convey what is proper social behavior. Fish are the vehicle that transmits this idea.” Yet, as much as fish were relegated to the comedies, Mylona and her reference collection show fish were a very serious part of society.

To prove her point, Mylona takes me back to her laboratory at SCEC to show me how something as simple as using water to wash and sift through archaeological deposits reveals a different world. Once the large pieces are extracted and cataloged in a first pass, the “fines” are put into the water flotation separator. A series of meshes allows researchers to extract the tiniest of bones from dirt and rock. Finally, Mylona lays out these bits of bones and tweezes them apart, comparing them flake by flake to the bones in her reference collection.

“The thing is that most fish bones are small, especially in this part of the world. Small fish predominate,” she says. But even the larger fish, a grouper of seven kilograms, for instance, leave bones that may be no larger than two centimeters. “You can’t easily see them in the course of an excavation. If you do it out in the open, if the light is not right, and if you are really hot and tired, you may not see it.”

Despite the difficulty, Mylona has been persistent. And the result of all this tedious work was revelatory. At Palaikastro, where fish bones first entered her vision, the four large fish bones that were handpicked in one of SCEC’s buildings were complemented by 4,000 more when water flotation took place. When Greek archaeologists applied the same methodology to coastal sites in the Aegean and even in many inland locations, fish bones were uncovered by the hundreds or thousands in nearly every location. Fish were clearly an important part of the ancient Greek diet: a vast underestimation of the importance of the sea as a source of food had taken place.

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Does this persistent and pernicious misapprehension of the importance of fish in the Mediterranean’s past have ramifications for the modern inheritors of the Mediterranean Sea thousands of years later? To probe this question, Mylona turns to her friend Manos Koutrakis who also went down a fishy career path. But where Mylona’s fish are in the past, Koutrakis’s are rooted in the present.

Koutrakis makes his home in Kavala, in northern Greece, near the villages where both he and Mylona grew up. Kavala sits on the Thracian Sea, a region nourished by three large rivers and the outflow of the Black Sea. All this makes it the most productive body of water in the eastern Mediterranean. Koutrakis is the child of a fisherman who worked those waters for 60 years. He feels the pulse of fishing he did as a child, though today Koutrakis does so as a researcher, collecting Kavala data with his team in the Fisheries Research Institute for all the fisheries of northern Greece. Koutrakis routinely interacts with commercial fishermen, parsing through fish auctions and diving the Med regularly in his quest to keep tabs on the national fishery.

Koutrakis is the first to acknowledge there has been a decline in fish populations in the past 50 years. Whereas pre–Second World War small-scale local fishermen, similar to their ancient counterparts, mainly worked the Mediterranean, the post-war era has seen a superstructure of much larger vessels on top of the preexisting locals. This pressure has squeezed the artisanal sector to an ever-greater degree. The problem is that scientists—much like archaeologists pre-Mylona—lack baseline data on modern fisheries in Greece.

“The Hellenic Statistical Authority was not considering the catches of vessels under 20 horsepower until 2015,” Koutrakis says. “But most of the Greek artisanal vessels were probably exactly in this category.” Yes, larger vessels have also impinged on the artisanal sector, but that sector is still there and in business. Furthermore, it was only in 2016 when Greece created an online database to collect data with self-reporting of landings from vessels more than 12 meters in length.

The discounting of data from small-scale fishers means that managers in charge of placing limits in areas and during specific seasons for the most sensitive stocks are in part blinded. In fact, this is all part of what is often called the Mediterranean Exception. Whereas fisheries around the world are increasingly moving toward quota management systems that try to allocate the exact tonnage each fisher may take, management in the Med still relies on much less precise methods. Seasonal openings and closures and mesh sizes of nets are the main tools that managers have to work with. Koutrakis needs the equivalent of Mylona’s water flotation method for sifting the small bones of modern Greek fisheries, and he works toward that.

“The solution is to have good scientific data,” Koutrakis concludes. And slowly that data is being amassed. “Since 2017, EU regulations require more effort on the quality of data collected. Scientific working groups are putting in more effort in assessing more stocks in order to know where the problem is,” Koutrakis tells me. But is this enough? Will the gaps be filled too late? Will Mediterraneans lose what remains of their biological heritage before we have anything that resembles what they’re now only starting to understand is the historical baseline?

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Any talk of baselines in fisheries inevitably leads to the work of the fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly, a marine biologist at the University of British Columbia. Pauly famously coined the term shifting baselines back in 1995. The essential premise of the shifting baselines hypothesis is that each successive generation has a diminished view of what constitutes abundance. The memories of the Greek fisherman who might have caught 100 sea bream in an hour are lost to his great-grandson who thinks a 10-fish day is a great success. To understand the actual condition of the sea with respect to the historical baseline, I contact Pauly.

“I don’t accept this idea that the Mediterranean is a poor sea,” Pauly tells me. “This is what people always say—few rivers going into the sea to deliver the nutrients. But we know from Roman records that there was probably a significant population of gray whales in the sea. That these whales brought in nutrients from the wider Atlantic, and through their feces fertilized the sea,” Pauly says. What happened to these whales? “The Romans likely killed them all. Everywhere you look, we have evidence of a more abundant sea.” Sharks are not abundant in the Med, but that’s today. “We just did an analysis of film taken by the Austrian cinematographer Hans Hass in 1942. There are sharks everywhere.”

And what will happen if we never refine our understanding of the historical baseline and use it to set recovery goals for fish abundance and diversity?

“The thing is, you don’t need to have the fish to satisfy most people who visit the Mediterranean. You will have the clear, blue empty water. You will have the seaside developments, this ugly mess of concrete from which people will emerge to swim. You’ll have postcards and souvenirs,” Pauly says. “But you will have no fish. And no one will remember that they were ever there.”

This is, of course, the last thing Mylona wants to see in her home waters. And so, she will keep on cataloging and counting, making a bone-by-bone argument for the legacy of a more abundant Mediterranean. “The interest coming from the European Union is more and more focused on environmental issues,” she tells me. “This is our main problem and that’s where our funding will go. More and more we have to ask questions that are relevant for today. The biggest challenge for archaeologists today is to build bridges with marine biology and conservation, to find ways to use the archaeological and historical fisheries data in meaningful and useful ways.”

The hope and dream is a better memory of the past that will influence our behavior in the future—a baseline shifted back to something closer to the abundance we’ve lost.

Ugreen is known for its variety of device accessories. From USB Type-C chargers to dongles, hubs, and adapters. Ugreen has carried a selection of USB-C hubs and has now launched the 13-in-1 USB-C Docking Station.

Specifications

As the name suggests, the docking station boasts a broad collection of connectivity features, including 4K and 8K display output. In addition to the connectivity options, the Ugreen docking station flaunts compatibility with both Windows and Mac OS, including the M1-based MacBook models.

The Ugreen docking station’s port roster is as follows:

Some at home might realize that that adds up to twelve, not thirteen. And apparently, some at Ugreen would agree with you. The marketing materials for this product don’t seem to agree on whether this is a 12-in-1 or 13-in-1 product. As far as I can tell, it’s likely the SD card reader’s full and micro sizes that are causing this ambiguity. Or it might be the power input, which could be argued as a feature.

Regardless of how you look at it, though, the Ugreen docking station does take a single port on a laptop and break it out into thirteen pieces of functionality. For some laptops, that single port is all they have, even for charging. So, the ability to use that single port to expand into thirteen connectors is very valuable. The power button on top, though I’m not so sure about.

Ugreen Docking Station First Impressions

Ugreen sent two Nexode GaN USB-C chargers for review a few weeks ago, and I was very impressed with the aesthetic. The Ugreen docking station follows the same design language: a slick, smooth, and nearly seamless look, with the only edges appearing between perpendicular faces. In the case of the docking station, though, I feel it bears a slight resemblance to the Apple trash can Mac Pro apart from the more rectangular shape as opposed to the more cylindrical shape of the Mac Pro. Ugreen might not like the comparison of their product to anything trash-can-adjacent, but in this case, it’s surely a compliment.

The exterior of the docking station is a plastic and metal mix. The metal occupies a majority of the surface area, leaving the black/dark-grey plastic portions to act as the accents in the design. The result is a stylish and quality-looking device that looks professional and business-appropriate.

The Ugreen docking station feels well-made and has some weight to it. As with the Ugreen GaN chargers mentioned earlier, the quality of manufacturing shows in the attention to the seams and the tight tolerances between the various components. Highlighting this is the metal exterior wrapping completely around the docking station uninterrupted, without any seams.

The docking station is very compact. This is more of a subjective point, but I feel it might be a bit too small for something that is intended to be stationary. While it does have a surprising amount of mass to it, that mass is not quite enough to keep it still when cables are being disrupted. Adding to that issue is the tower-like aspect ratio leaving it prone to tipping when one of the higher-port cables is tugged or becomes taut. This, however, is a non-issue once cables are routed, managed, and settled.

Beyond the aesthetics and quality, I do believe there are some limitations with the connectivity that are worthy of mention. There are only three USB Type-A ports, more on that later. And, I think this is especially true for a product at this price point; the ethernet should be 2.5Gb/s at a minimum. 802.11ac, or Wifi 5, introduced wireless throughput that is on par with, and capable of exceeding, under certain conditions, the throughput of the de facto gigabit wired connectivity of commodity consumer electronics. A 2.5Gb ethernet IC is available for about $6 USD in single quantities, while 10Gb ethernet ICs can be found for a little over $30 USD in single quantities on Mouser, a popular electronics components supplier. A product whose design, marketing, and price point all speak premium should not be accompanied by the limitations of lower-cost products.

In the Box

The contents list for this product is underwhelming. The unboxing experience is straightforward and lacklustre, but this is a piece of productivity equipment; it’s not supposed to be flashy. That’s not the underwhelming part. There’s a 100W capable USB Type-C cable, which is to be expected. Arguably the most entertaining inclusion is the mini-CD that includes the driver. I haven’t seen one of those in a while.

But the most underwhelming, and disappointing, aspect of the unboxing is the lack of provided USB Type-C power adapter. This docking station sells for $329.99 USD (though, it’s currently on sale for $299.99 through some online retailers as of writing this). There are some that sell for half that price, albeit with varying connectivity, that come with a power adapter. Ugreen’s 100W USB Type-C charger sells for $80 USD. That brings the total to $409.99 USD for the Ugreen docking station experience in contrast to the (admittedly off-brand) experience that costs as little as $110 USD. But that’s a long-winded digression.

In summary, the box contents are:

• Ugreen Docking Station
• 100W Capable USB Type-C Cable (2m)
• Driver Installation Mini CD
• (Power Adapter Not Included)

Daily Driving the Ugreen Docking Station

I’ve had the USB Type-C docking station experience at my day job for a while now. It’s very convenient to have everything ready to go in a couple of seconds. I enjoyed it so much, actually, that I was set on having the same experience at home. Now, this inclination came about at the height of the pandemic-related supply chain issues and price hiking. In spite of all that, I found myself a white-label USB Type-C hub with USB-PD passthrough that was compatible with my work laptop. I didn’t have the USB Type-C power adapter yet (I got one a few months later), but that was fine given I didn’t need the DC barrel jack power adapter that came with my work-provided HP EliteBook because I had an HP docking station at the office. I was set, with a two-cable docking experience. It wasn’t perfect, but it was close.

That is all relevant because when I received the Ugreen docking station, I decided to go all in with it. I removed my dual monitor arm setup. I then routed the monitor HDMI and power, mouse, and keyboard cables down through the monitor arms’ mounting hole in my desk. They were run under the desk, routed back up through the cable grommet, and finally into the Ugreen docking station which sits only a few centimetres away from the grommet. The result is a desk that is almost entirely clear of cables. The only cables on the desk are the mouse and keyboard, which feed directly forward and disappear into the monitor arm base, and the USB Type-C cable that connects to the laptop. If I preferred, I could also leave the docking station below the desk surface

This, to me, is the docking station experience. The ability to connect to your monitors, whether that’s just one or many. To connect your mouse and keyboard and whatever collection of peripherals you might have. As well as making external storage and wired networking available. In addition to providing device power. All of this, not only with a single cable but, just as importantly, with all other cables hidden. The real docking station experience, in my opinion, is being able to forget that the other cables ever even existed at all.

To that end, the Ugreen docking station does the trick. It has its shortcomings. Namely the lack of USB Type-A ports, which is something that I can be rather opinionated about. This can be remedied with a USB hub, but that starts to defeat the purpose of the docking station at that point. The docking station should have everything a user requires. The Ugreen docking station suffices for me, but for someone that needs additional peripherals, like a quality microphone and web camera, they would quickly find themselves out of USB ports given that a wired mouse and keyboard consume two-thirds of the USB Type-A ports.

Hypotheticals aside, my time using the Ugreen docking station has actually been flawless (with the exception of a couple of times it fell over before I finished sorting my cables). My experience using it with two monitors has been without issue, even without the driver.

Ugreen Docking Station Conclusion

The Ugreen docking station is undoubtedly pricey, particularly when considering that the required power adapter is not included. At least for an individual user. Considering pandemic pricing has seen sub-$200 Thunderbolt docking stations rocket to price points over an incredible five times the MSRP, this might just be the new market water-level for office productivity equipment. It can also use some more USB ports and faster ethernet connectivity. Despite these shortcomings, it still boasts a bragworthy amount of connectivity.

If pricing isn’t the issue for you, though, and you’re looking for a stylish device to help you clean up your desk and achieve the docking station experience, then this is a product worth looking at.

This article was supported by Global Health Strategies.

Satellite imagery and deft negotiation are critical tools for polio vaccination teams working across the world’s conflict zones, writes Adeline Tchouakak

[DOUALA, CAMEROON] Conflict zones pose enormous challenges to those involved in polio surveillance and eradication, as security fears close off access routes and push populations underground.

Polio is a debilitating viral disease that mainly affects children under five, where one in every 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis, and up one in ten paralysed will die. Vaccination is the only way to stamp it out.

“There are special strategies that need to be adapted and they depend on the individual situation of each conflict zone,” says Oliver Rosenbauer, spokesperson for the poliomyelitis eradication program at WHO in Geneva.

For example, the 2002 civil war in Côte d’Ivoire gave health agencies just two groups to negotiate with, but in Syria the WHO had to spend time reaching out to several conflicting groups.

“Each time, we have to look at the specific situation not only in the affected country, but also in the sub-region, to find the best ways to access children,” says Rosenbauer.

Yet in all cases, health agencies need to work “through intermediators and negotiators—those trusted on both sides of the conflict”, explains Carol Pandak, director of the PolioPlus program at Rotary International, a network of decision makers working to improve living conditions around the world through, among other things, the fight against disease.

Organisations such as the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) work to maintain relationships with both sides of the conflict in order to ensure work is not disrupted.

This approach reaped benefits in Afghanistan when there was a transition in government. “The program had been working with anti-government elements and were able to sustain relationships after the regime change,” Pandak says.

During negotiations with warring factions, health workers underline the risks of polio and the benefits of vaccination.

“We have found that parents on both sides of a conflict want to protect their children from disease and perhaps death,” says Pandak.

“We appeal to their sense of wanting to protect their children and argue that health is apolitical.”

At the Alliance for International Medical Action (Alima), an organization specializing in medical action with vulnerable groups, health workers underline their neutrality to get access.

“We are able to deploy ourselves by making the various actors understand the independent, neutral, impartial nature of our intervention and by having a community anchor,” explains Soma Bahonan, head of mission of Alima in Cameroon.

The NGO operates in northern Cameroon, amid attacks by Boko Haram in the far north of the country, and a war with the English-speaking minority in the north west.

Health agencies say warring groups usually agree to temporary ceasefire agreements or conflict-free days to allow their staff to vaccinate the children. Children will then be taken out of risky areas to checkpoints in the markets and in refugee camps.

Yet sometimes, health worked are faced with blunt refusals from warring factions, with fighters fearing an enemy ploy.

It happened during the 2016 conflict with Boko Haram in Borno, in north eastern Nigeria.

“There were a lot of military movements and the situation changed from week to week,” Rosenbauer says.

“So we could only do vaccinations when people were leaving the area.”

Yet it is very often not the conflict itself that prevents vaccination, but managerial, logistical and administrative issues, he says.

When a population is being permanently displaced, it can be very difficult to find children to be vaccinated, and if health agencies can’t get a handle on the number of people involved, they can’t prepare the right number of vaccines, or make enough provision for the cold storage needed to keep doses fresh.

Help from above

To try to overcome these difficulties, health workers turn to geographic information system (GIS) software that uses satellite imagery to estimate the size and location of the population in inaccessible places, and to follow the progress of surveillance.

This allows for mapping that can identify and indicate the location of villages and children who have not yet been reached by vaccination.

In addition, these maps provide distance and proximity readings to ensure that all settlements and hamlets are visited by vaccination teams, and that the appropriate number of teams are deployed.

To try to overcome these difficulties, health workers turn to geographic information system (GIS) software that uses satellite imagery to estimate the size and location of the population in inaccessible places, and to follow the progress of surveillance.

This allows for mapping that can identify and indicate the location of villages and children who have not yet been reached by vaccination.

In addition, these maps provide distance and proximity readings to ensure that all settlements and hamlets are visited by vaccination teams, and that the appropriate number of teams are deployed.

*This article was edited on 13 December 2022 to update the photo captions. 

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa French desk.

This article was supported by Global Health Strategies (GHS), an organisation which uses advocacy, communications and policy analysis to improve health and wellbeing around the world.

H.E President Macky Sall, Chairperson of the African Union (AU) and President of the Republic of Senegal, will be hosting the Forum on Immunization and Polio Eradication in Africa on December 10, 2022, in Dakar, Senegal.

For many, it’s unthinkable to celebrate Christmas without a beautiful evergreen fir in the living room decorated with sparkling ornaments and wrapped presents. Like most Christmas traditions,  including the celebration of Christmas itself, the origin of the Christmas tree can be traced to pagan traditions. In fact, were it not for Queen Victoria (the most powerful monarch of her time) and a group of German soldiers in a temporary hospital in England, the decorated fir trees we love today might have remained an obscure custom that only a couple of Germanic and Slavic countries practiced.

Pagan origins of the Christmas tree

Although the Christmas tree is a relatively recent addition to the list of holiday traditions, it goes back several centuries, as do many other customs.

Long before Christianity appeared, people in the Northern Hemisphere used evergreen plants to decorate their homes, particularly the doors, to celebrate the Winter Solstice. On December 21 or December 22, the day is the shortest, and the night is the longest. Traditionally, this time of the year is seen as the return in strength of the sun god who had been weakened during winter — and the evergreen plants served as a reminder that the god would glow again and summer was to be expected.

The solstice was celebrated by the Egyptians who filled their homes with green palm rushes in honor of the god Ra, who had the head of a hawk and wore the sun as a crown. In Northern Europe, the Celts decorated their druid temples with evergreen boughs which signified everlasting life. Further up north, the Vikings thought evergreens were the plants of Balder, the god of light and peace. The ancient Romans marked the Winter Solstice with a feast called Saturnalia thrown in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture, and, like the Celts, decorated their homes and temples with evergreen boughs.

It’s worth mentioning at this point that Saturnalia was the most important celebration in Roman life. It was a week-long, rowdy celebration held from the 17th of December. It was so wordy, in fact, that at some point, no one could be prosecuted for injuring or killing people, raping, theft — anything usually against the law really. But although a lot of people blew off steam by taking advantage of the lawlessness, Saturnalia could also be a time for kindness. During Saturnalia, many Romans practiced merrymaking and the exchange of presents — another practice you may find familiar.

In the early days of Christianity, the birth of Jesus was set on the last day of Saturnalia by the first Christian Romans in power to approach pagans, even though some scholars assert Jesus was born nine months later, or a few years earlier, but that’s not a point. It was a clever political ploy, some say, which in time transformed Saturnalia from a frat party marathon into a meek celebration of the birth of Christ.

While a lot of ancient cultures used evergreens around Christmas time, historical records suggest that the Christmas tree tradition was started in the 16th century by Germans who decorated fir trees inside their homes. In some Christian cults, Adam and Eve were considered saints, and people celebrated them on Christmas Eve.

During the 16th century, the late Middle Ages, it was not rare to see huge plays being performed in open-air during Adam and Eve day, which told the story of creation. As part of the performance, the Garden of Eden was symbolized by a “paradise tree” hung with fruit. The clergy banned these practices from public life, considering them acts of heathenry. So, some collected evergreen branches or trees and brought them to their homes, in secret.

These evergreens were initially called ‘paradise trees’ and were often accompanied by wooden pyramids made of branches held together by rope. On these pyramids, some families would fasten and light candles, one for each family member. These were the precursors of modern Christmas tree lights and ornaments, along with edibles such as gingerbread and gold-covered apples.

Already, a link between trees and Christmas was becoming established. But another key religious figure played a role here.

Some say the first to light a candle atop a Christmas tree was Martin Luther. Legend has it, late one evening around Christmas time, Luther was walking home through the woods when he was struck by the innocent beauty of starlight shining through fir trees. Wanting to share this experience with his family, Martin Luther cut down a fir tree and took it home. He placed a small candle on the branches to symbolize the Christmas sky.

What’s certain is that by 1605, Christmas trees were a thing as, in that year, historical records suggest the inhabitants of Strasburg ‘set up fir trees in the parlours … and hang thereon roses cut out of many-coloured paper, apples, wafers, gold-foil, sweets, etc.’

During these early days of the Christmas tree, many statesmen and members of the clergy condemned their use as a celebration of Christ. Lutheran minister Johann von Dannhauer, for instance, complained that the symbol distracted people from the “true evergreen tree” — Jesus Christ. The English Puritans condemned a number of customs associated with Christmas, such as the use of the Yule log, holly, and mistletoe. Oliver Cromwell, the influential 17th-century British politician, preached against the “heathen traditions” of Christmas carols, decorated trees, and any joyful expression that desecrated “that sacred event.”

They were largely successful, and the Christmas tree remained a niched celebration. Until Queen Victoria came along.

The modern Christmas Tree

In 1846, Queen Victoria and her German husband Albert were sketched in the Illustrated London News standing with their children around a Christmas tree at Windsor Castle. German immigrants had brought the custom of Christmas trees to Britain with them in the early 1800s but the practice didn’t catch on with the locals.

But after Queen Victoria, an extremely popular monarch started celebrating Christmas with fir trees and presents hung on the branches as a favor to her husband, the layfolk immediately followed suit.

Across the ocean, in the 19th century, Christmas trees weren’t at all popular, though Dutch and German settlers introduced them. Americans were less susceptible to the Queen’s influence. However, it was American civic leaders, artists, and authors who played on the image of a happy middle-class family exchanging gifts around a tree in an effort to replace Christmas customs that were seen as decadent, like wassailing. This family-centered image was further amplified by a very popular poem written by Clement Moore in 1822 known as “Twas the Night Before Christmas”. The same poem conjured the modern picture of Santa Claus.

It took a long time before the Christmas tree became an integral part of American life during this faithful night. President Franklin Pierce (1804-1869) arranged to have the first Christmas tree in the White House, during the mid-1850s. President Calvin Coolidge (1885-1933) started the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony on the White House lawn in 1923.

Though traditionally not all Christian cultures adorned their homes with evergreens and presents, the influence exerted by the West and rising consumerism has turned the Christmas tree into a ubiquitous symbol. In fact, many people of other faiths have adopted the Christmas tree (See Japan for instance).

The Christmas tree has gone a long way from its humble, pagan origins, to the point that it’s become too popular for its own good. In the U.S. alone, 35 million Christmas trees are sold annually, joined by 10 million artificial trees, which are surprisingly worse from an environmental perspective. Annually, 300 million Christmas trees are grown in farms around the world to sustain a two-billion-dollar industry, but because these are often not enough, many firs are cut down from forests. This is why we recommend opting for more creative and sustainable alternatives to Christmas trees.