iuvo Technologies recently started a special internal team, called the “iuvo Betterment Committee”, dedicated to making us an even better place to work. This group is focused inward to find ways to improve how our members work and play but also outward on ways we can better serve the community, as giving back is extremely important to our culture. I've had the pleasure over the last few months of acting as the spear of that outreach.
The team decided it would be a great use of iuvo Technologies’ collective technical knowledge and comprehensive view of technology trends across all industries to develop a series of community focused educational events, the design of which was left to me! Excited for the opportunity I polled friends, family and clients to find out what would be the most useful information to cover if they had an hour to spend with an IT professional. The end result was an interactive presentation about online safety geared to everyone, personally and professionally.
We started the series of events by presenting at several libraries in the metro west Boston area. These events were open to everyone in the community with a personal and/or professional interest in online safety and security. We had excellent interactions with attendees from all backgrounds who came armed with questions and anecdotes to share. It was truly a collaborative and engaging experience. Everyone left knowing more than when they came about the perils, pitfalls and benefits of online citizenship (myself included)!
In the midst of these events, we were pleasantly surprised to be contacted by the administration of the Nashoba Valley Technical High School. They informed us they had a day of curriculum planned to discuss online safety with speakers from community leaders, the town police etc. They asked if we would come and present our material to their students to which we answered an emphatic “yes”! After a few tweaks to my presentation I took the stage and spoke to 180 freshmen about the appropriate use of social media and how to avoid common online scams. I was very happy that despite me being one of the last presenters of the day, the students were involved and interactive throughout.
I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to give back to the communities near where I work and live and also to work for a company that values doing so. I'd like to take a moment to thank Cristina, our Manager of Marketing, for heading up the iuvo Technologies team responsible for making this happen and of course to everyone that came out to participate in my talks. iuvo Technologies will surely be doing something like this again so if you have ideas for the next series of community education events, please contact us to let us know.
I hope to see you again soon!
My presentation from this fall education series can be found here.