Visibility Blog

As many of you know, Visibility moved to a new space last November. What you may not know is how special and unique our new corporate headquarters space is.

 Pictured Above: A Look Inside Our New Corporate HQ

For those of you from the Boston area, happy Marathon Monday! For those of you not from Boston, today is the day of the Boston Marathon. It is a day of remembrance as we remember those who were lost and injured during the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.  It is also a day of pride and celebration throughout the city of Boston as we line the streets to cheer on the runners.

So what do ERP implementations and marathons have in common? More than you might think!

I recently returned from a trip to Singapore and used Qatar’s new Airbus service from Boston through Doha.  Long distance travel to business centers like Singapore is becoming much easier.  

With a 12 hour flight from Boston to Doha, Qatar followed by a connecting leg of 7 more hours you can be in Singapore the next day.   The service offers comfortable new Airbus service with extra legroom, wifi, and in seat movies and television, these flights are a great option when traveling for business in Southeast Asia or the Middle East. 

In the wake of what is being called the deadliest mass shooting in US history at a gay nightclub in Orlando, democrats and republicans are reacting with typical vigor.  And in typical fashion both sides of the aisle have their talking points and both sides seem on the surface to be extreme.

“Better gun control is needed” is the typical Democratic refrain.  “We are at war with radical Islamic terrorists” headlines the Republican response.

Recent controversy on whether Facebook is favoring a left-leaning bent in its “trending topics” section has spurred discussions about the overall impact and dominance of what once was thought of as a purely social site.

Over 1.6 billion users are now on Facebook on a daily basis. What used to be a social world of likes and friends, and family photos, has suddenly become the world’s leading major news source. Breaking news stories about Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, ISIS, and Tom Brady’s deflate-gate appeal have made Facebook the place to go for information, above even CNN or FoxNews.

Often in business we get caught up in what is going on in our little corner of the world.  New features for an ERP product, employee benefits, new customer deals, success in existing client implementations.  We like to say our vision is to “Delight Every Customer”.

But I am often reminded to keep things in perspective.  And today I want to brag about one of my daughters.   Michelle is a United States Peace Corps volunteer.  She has been stationed in Cameroon, Africa for the past two years.  She lives in remote jungle village called Dimako in the Eastern Region located about 30 minutes from the border with the Central African Republic.

As different as two of the leading candidates are, in what has become a literal dogfight of a race, with protesters on each side squaring off in Chicago and at other planned rallies, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders seem to agree on at least one concept:  American jobs are being lost by bad trade deals.  And Mexico and China are the main beneficiaries.

Both candidates vow to do something about this problem with manufacturing in America and vow to bring the jobs back.  Both are talking about ripping up or totally revamping these agreements (NAFTA for Mexico and special trade consideration agreements for China).  Both want to cut into what has become a $500 billion trade deficit in goods, and tax goods coming from those countries.  Make on-shoring back to America a trend that can fuel the economy with new jobs – particularly in manufacturing.

Recently a friend showed me a picture of a subway in Boston that he and I used to ride to high school every day.  Every single person in the photo had their head downward, focused on their phone.  Nobody was having ad hoc conversations or watching for the elderly lady who needed an open seat.  Nobody was smiling or saying hello to the person sitting next to them.

Indeed the phone seems to have replaced human interaction.  I watched a family at dinner at a restaurant recently and every single person in the family was texting on their phone.  Nobody was talking to each other.

I just returned from a week in Cameroon, Africa visiting my daughter Michelle, who serves in the US Peace Corps.  She has been helping educate people in French in the jungle in East Cameroon on HIV – how it is transmitted, testing, and for those who contract it, how to fill out all of the paperwork required for medications.  Somewhere around 15% of the population in that country has HIV.

I was struck by the whole culture and how radically different from the US and western world it is.  So many things we take for granted here are rare or not even possible in Cameroon.  Clean water, trash removal, flushing toilets, ice, milk, electricity, Internet access, are but a few.

After booking our annual 2016 customer conference for the Disney Swan Hotel next April, the topic of where to hold our big event night was the next item on the agenda.

Magic Kingdom?  Hollywood Studios?  Animal Kingdom?  Epcot?