December 6, 2024 - This week’s notables

Join us for live music in the barn on Saturday!

Upcoming Events

Mark your calendar and join us at Longview Farm for the following upcoming events! We're excited to welcome you—just make sure to set your GPS to 143 Cedar Ln. Glenmoore, PA 19343 (avoid Cedar Ridge Ln) for the best route straight to the fun!

📆 Saturday, December 7 – Join us for our Midshow Reception & Live Music event! The gallery is filled with many wonderful artworks from 30+ local artists. Come out to browse, shop, drink hot cider, and enjoy music by IDRA. IDRA is a newly established, 4-piece band specializing in unique songwriting, freeform improvisation and spiritual lift-off. Combining elements of rock, jazz & psychedelic trance, IDRA offers a unique experience in the jam band field.🍁🌲🎁

📆 Now through December 28 – Join us for the 1st Annual Holiday Exhibit at Longview Gallery. This cozy, market-style exhibition is a partnership between The Longview Gallery and local arts organizations who have selected several artists to showcase their work in this exhibit. Come in, look around, and purchase holiday gifts for loved ones!

📆 Extended Open Gallery Hours – In order to provide additional hours for guests to shop from our Holiday Exhibit, Longview Gallery will be open to the public for visitation every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 3 to 6 p.m., and Sunday from 12 to 3 p.m. now through the end of the year.

Infrastructure & Support  

In this week's meeting, we covered several important updates. INW has secured approval to resell Verizon mobility services as a Digital Agent! This new partnership allows us to provide and sell key Verizon services, including Business 5G, wireless activations, and Verizon FiOS. We are excited to offer these resources to meet various customer needs.

We also discussed ongoing compliance issues with Weave, a third-party communication platform for small businesses, recently implemented by one of our clients. Although Weave offers some beneficial features, our experience with their customer service has been less than satisfactory. Since the implementation, Weave has started enforcing the new 10 DLC federal regulation, which requires specific language for organizations collecting mobile numbers. The approval process for our client has been a multi-week ordeal with Weave, involving numerous rejections and extensive back-and-forth communications, compounded by changing requirements and conflicting guidance. This has resulted in significant costs for our client, who has had to hire multiple web design companies for the necessary changes and spend several hours on the phone with Weave Support. It appears Weave has acknowledged the internal issues with this process and has extended the deadline to comply with the federal regulation, ensuring our client does not lose a crucial messaging feature. We are hopeful for a swift resolution, as we continue to work with Weave's management to address the remaining discrepancies.

Additionally, we are preparing to undertake several new NIST 800-171 assessments. As part of this effort, we are updating our tools to align with the parameters of the Revision 3 release, which streamlines and modernizes the cybersecurity guidelines.

Devices 

In recent weeks, we successfully deployed another round of HP laptops, replacing aging inventory for one of our customers. We outfitted these laptops with a comprehensive 3-year warranty and 3-year subscription for WatchGuard EPDR next generation anti-virus. So far, the devices have been well received and hand-off to the end users was a smooth process.

We also had our first experience supporting an overseas laptop purchase and on-boarding. Minus a few minor complications along the way related to local commerce regulations, we were able to on-board the new employee with a fully configured and operable workstation.

Finally, in this week's Devices meeting, we discussed the anticipated impacts of upcoming tariffs on the cost of technology equipment such as PCs, laptops, printers, MFDs, and communication devices - basically any electronic. These tariffs are expected to significantly increase the prices of these essential items, which will undoubtedly impact business for the next several years.

To avoid inflated prices, we encourage everyone to consider their technology needs for the next few years and plan purchases ahead of the tariffs. By doing so, you can ensure that you have the necessary equipment without facing the financial burden of higher costs.

For more information on the upcoming tariffs and their potential impact, you can read this article: Laptop, smartphone, and game console prices could soar after the election.

Let's stay ahead of the curve and make informed decisions to manage our technology needs effectively.

Operations & Growth

In our recent meeting, we talked about the ongoing efforts to document and simplify the Microsoft subscription billing process for INW. The documentation is being carefully recorded step-by-step to ensure it is clear and complete. Once finished, it will be available for training purposes. In the meantime, the focus remains on reconciling payments, which is crucial as we near the end of the year. This involves reviewing customer lists, posting payments, and reaching out to customers with outstanding invoices to verify their payment status.

We also discussed the efficiency of the biweekly services billing process, which has proven to be faster and easier than we anticipated. We are considering automating the email process for sending invoices to further streamline operations. Additionally, the importance of submitting expense reports was highlighted, with plans for a brief demonstration to ensure everyone is familiar with the process. Lastly, updates on the home solutions ad campaign were provided, including the need to explore additional advertising platforms and possibly adding a phone number to the ad to increase engagement with our audience.

Earlier this week, we shared our excitement about becoming a Verizon Digital Agent. To make it even more exciting, we discovered that we are the first Digital Agent in this program with Verizon and have the first account number to prove it! This may not seem like a significant milestone, but we are thrilled to be pioneers!

Information Radiation

In our recent meeting, we discussed several important topics, including a significant wireless user data breach. The data breach, which affects many phone carriers, involves attackers gaining access to network data, including call details and locations. This ongoing threat highlights the severity of the breach and the need for continued vigilance. For more details on this breach, you can read the article: Chinese hackers stole Americans’ phone data from 8 telecoms, U.S. officials say.

This week we're also getting ready for Longview Gallery's Holiday Exhibit mid-show reception on Saturday! We're excited to have live music from IDRA, “IDRA is a newly established, 4-piece band specializing in unique songwriting, freeform improvisation and spiritual lift-off. Combining elements of rock, jazz & psychedelic trance, IDRA offers a unique experience in the jam band field.”

In other exciting Longview news, our logo and branding was officially launched to the public! Check out the insta post from our incredible Creative Team. Well done 👏

Hope your week was excellent, and if you're free on Saturday, we hope to see you on the Farm!