January 17, 2025 - This week’s notables

Happy New Year from inWorks!

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, February 1 – Join us for a live music event during our Midshow Reception for Toward a Tender Place, by Hannah Zartman! Through motifs of community, connection, and queerness, Hannah develops heavily patterned work that incorporates imagery of the natural world and intricate surface design. In addition to creating multi-media, print-heavy pieces, Hannah's fiber work emphasizes repetition and color interactions.

📆 Sundays, 12 to 3 p.m. – Join us at the Longview Gallery every Sunday to view and shop from our current exhibition, Toward a Tender Place, by Hannah Zartman. Check out what we have coming up in 2025!

Infrastructure & Support  

During today's Infrastructure & Support meeting, multiple subjects were discussed. Notably, we are addressing a networking issue at one of our client locations. Last week, several of their ethernet-connected workstations, phones, and a printer went offline; however, other ethernet-connected devices and those on Wi-Fi remained connected. We suspect there is a problem with the network switches, and coincidentally, we have observed similar issues with two other clients recently. We plan to visit the site this week to further investigate and confirm if the switch is the source of the problem.

Additionally, we continue our efforts with an ongoing SharePoint migration project which involves custom app development using the PowerApps platform. On the migration side, we see an end in sight and have encountered minimal resistance along the way. The app presented an interesting bug last week, which appears to be a platform glitch rather than a bug in development. As of Friday, and during testing since, we've encountered no additional issues!

📢MICROSOFT FORMS USERS: Microsoft has introduced a new solution for synchronizing form responses to Excel, delivering improved reliability and performance. The old version will be phased out by January 13th, 2025. Upgrading to the new solution is essential to maintaining seamless data synchronization, ensuring compatibility with future updates and features, and benefiting from enhanced performance and reliability. Existing Excel workbooks will retain their current data but will not receive new responses unless updated.

Devices 

During our devices meeting this week, we compared the HP ProBook and HP ZBook as we prepare to equip a team member with a new laptop. The HP ProBook is tailored for small to medium-sized businesses, providing reliable performance and enterprise-level security at a budget-friendly price. On the other hand, HP ZBooks are mobile workstations crafted for professionals requiring high performance for tasks such as 3D rendering and video editing. After the discussion, it was clear that a well-equipped ProBook would suffice for our current needs.

We also deliberated on our plans to deploy a pair of WatchGuard Fireboxes for a client. In preparation, we will review the existing firewall configuration with a focus on DHCP and VOIP settings. This client relies on Teams phone for business calls and operates a busy network - we aim to ensure everything runs smoothly without issues.

Lastly, we should emphasize the importance of regularly restarting your PC. We have a client using a shared PC for Video Conferencing to connect with remote clients. Though not used daily, the shared device often faces issues with incoming audio and the microphone during use. Despite troubleshooting and replacing the suspected faulty conference bar, the issues persisted. After checking and confirming all settings were correctly configured, we noted the PC had not been restarted for 21 days, and critical updates were pending a restart. Once we installed the updates and rebooted the PC, the video system functioned correctly. While we can't guarantee this resolves the issue entirely, we recommended that the client start restarting the PC regularly. To begin, we suggested daily restarts for the rest of the week. If this resolves the audio problem, we will advise making it a permanent weekly task. This situation underscores the importance of rebooting your computer occasionally. Like humans, computers benefit from a fresh start.

Operations & Growth

In this week's Operations & Growth Lab meeting, the team provided updates on several areas. Firstly, we were contacted by a representative from ZetaDocs, the app we utilize with Business Central to submit expenses. Their company is expanding from the European market to include US territories, and the US representative reached out to gather our feedback on the service. We are pleased to report a problem-free and satisfactory experience in our use case.

We also discussed the ongoing Business Central clean-up project, which continues to progress successfully! This effort aims to give the company a robust foundation to support our growth initiatives planned for 2025 and beyond. Part of the discussion focused on planning for the upcoming funds from USDA NRCS for conservation work on Longview Farm. We anticipate hearing back from our contacts at the USDA field office soon to better understand our next steps for LVF land management.

Lastly, we are thrilled to welcome Sage to the team! Sage joins us as a Marketing Specialist for inWorks LLC and art|Works Initiative and will play a key role in revitalizing our marketing efforts and supporting our member artists.

Information Radiation

As we reflect on 2024 and look ahead to 2025, it's a timely reminder to not let the debris of the past cloud the progress of the future. We asked the question, “How do we take the accumulation of entropy from previous journeys and turn it into something syntropic and positive?”

This brought us to a discussion about the importance of learning from our experiences and continuously improving. We should strive to move away from entropy by finding tools and methods that work best for us and being open to changing direction if something isn't effective. This aligns with the idea of avoiding the sunk cost fallacy, reminding us that it's better to pivot away from inefficient tools rather than sticking with them just because we've invested time in them.

By embracing these principles, we can ensure that we are not only avoiding past pitfalls but also setting ourselves up for success in the new year. Let's commit to being adaptable, resourceful, and proactive in our approach, making thoughtful decisions that drive us forward.