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applied tips : april 2008

celebrating three years

Celebrating Three Years
By the Numbers
25,080 Unique visits to www.appliedoffice.net
5,642 Miles traveled supporting clients
2,527 Applied Tips newsletter subscribers
1230 Employees trained by Applied Office
750 Cans of Mountain Dew consumed*
707 Hours spent training
145 Service hours pro bono
56 Trips to Taco Bell
16 Hours of free public training
4 Websites launched
3 Years in business
* Estimated

That's right. Although I've been training for a long, long time, it was three years ago that Applied Office was created.  Since then I've had the pleasure of meeting many wonderful people and helping many organizations be more effective with the software they use every day.

With each passing year, training increasingly becomes the primary service at Applied Office.  I clocked a total of 707 hours of classroom time (that's nearly 60 hours each month)

And believe it or not, the introduction of Microsoft Office 2007 didn't do much to spur that significant jump.  There were two clients in particular who specifically asked for help with Office 2007:

I was thrilled to oblige.  I love the new features and interface of Office 2007 - especially how much easier it is to format a document in Word.  Showing others Office 2007, and how easy it is, is a lot of fun for me.

I'm thankful to have earned Comcast's and Lodi Memorial Hospital's business again this year, as they have always been a pleasure to work with.  And my services through Los Rios Community College have led me to meet many wonderful people at CalSTRS.

There was one training project that certainly stood out in this last year.  The University of the Pacific planned a massive upgrade from GroupWise to Outlook 2003 starting last summer and I was thrilled to be selected to train their employees on all three campuses.  What a wonderful group of talented people!  View the case study here.

I didn't have as much time for creative projects last year, but I did squeeze a few in.  It's always fun to get my mind off training and put the other side of the brain to use.  Here's a few websites I've finished this year:

I also got plenty of work done in Microsoft Access over the last couple of months.  Three organizations in particular came to me with a variety of needs that were best accomplished through custom Access databases:

In other news, Applied Office was awarded CMAS status by the State of California allowing it to bid on training projects without the usual fuss required for state contracts.

And finally, if you happen to be Linked In, please take a moment to link my profile to yours.

Looking Forward

More and more organizations this year will upgrade from Office 2003 to Office 2007.  The benefits are just too great to pass up, and it will be a natural move as machines are replaced as part of their natural life-cycle.  Thus, there will be more demand to help users learn the new features and interface.

Applied Office will soon likely be making a major investment soon: purchasing a dozen laptops so that I can provide hands-on training to those clients who do not have their own lab. With them, we'll be able to turn your office conference room into a lab and make on-site training even more efficient. If this sounds like something that interests you, please let me know.

And until then, I'll be using labs that I find to offer hands-on classes like the ones I just scheduled with University of the Pacific.  If you missed the announcement, check out what Upcoming Classes are scheduled for May and June of this year and be sure to sign up.

 

Thanks for reading and allowing me a moment to reflect on the last twelve months and think about what is to come.  If you have any feedback or suggestions, I would love to hear from you.  And to all of my clients, friends, students, and vendors, thank you again for another successful year. 

Sincerely,

-David Diskin