Every year, roughly 5% of U.S. homeowners gaze forlornly up at their aging and weathered shingles, sigh, and take the financial plunge to get a new roof.Martin DeBono, President of GAF Energy, sees this as a potential watershed moment for homeowners, in which each can make a decision:They can simply replace their roofs.Or they can convert them into investments that generate electricity and income.

Do I simply replace the roof, or make an investment?

DeBono has been in the solar industry for some time, most recently with SunPower heading up the global residential and channel businesses before joining GAF Energy (a subsidiary of Standard Industries, the biggest roofing manufacturer in the world).He has seen the sector evolve and while he is confident that the solar industry will continue to see improved efficiencies and module cost reductions, he says thats not where the action is these days.The solar panels now constitute a relatively small portion of the entire installed cost stack,and its the opportunity to take out those other costs and offer better products where we find ourselves with an opportunity at GAF Energy.

A solar business based on transaction efficiencies

When DeBono got to GAF Energy, he stepped back to evaluate the business and its available assets, I realized, you guys are sitting on a gold mine.Lets go form a company to take advantage of the assets that Standard Industries has.The company was already a big investor in commercial-scale solar projects, so it was familiar with the industry the next step was to determine a go-to-market strategy in the residential space. DeBonos goal was to create what he calls the worlds first truly sustainable solar company, one that doesnt need to rely on tax credits or financial engineering - such as leases or purchase power agreements - to offer a compelling value proposition.

Instead, the approach taken was to leverage an event that was already inevitable a roof replacement and apply efficiencies, existing partnerships, and economies of scale to create a solar business built around that transaction.With this approach, GAF Energy felt it could substantially reduce soft costs, especially those related to sales and installation.

The company currently offers its solar product in nine states, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida, and California.In these markets, when channel partners are talking to prospects about a roof replacement, DeBono comments, They say heres the roofing estimate, but did you know it also qualifies for solar?The contractors explain the potential to transform the roof from a static asset into an income-generating asset.If the customer expresses interest, the roofing contractors pass the information along to GAF Energy for qualification, a size estimate, and a quote.

It doesnt unduly complicate the roof replacement sales conversation, DeBono says.If the customer proceeds, the same crew that installs the roof lays down the panels as well in one single and efficient transaction.The result is that, You can reduce sales cost, reduce labor costs, and you can present a cash offer that makes sense. The company focuses solely on the residential roof replacement market.DeBono characterizes the resulting savings as roughly 15-20% when compared with buying both items separately.It stays away from new homes that need roofs, for the simple reason that new housing is almost entirely a financed market.

Equipping its business channel partners

In order to effectively convey its value proposition to partners and customers, GAF Energy offers two days of sales training to its existing roofing contractors (with an optional third day).The company also provides sales consultants that can accompany the contractor on the home visits.

In addition, it offers on-the-roof training for contracting partners that perform the actual installations. Typically trainers will attend a specific crew first few installations, until that team is comfortable proceeding on its own.Its a simpler installation than most solar offerings, DeBono indicates, since we are not selling traditional rack-mounted solar.The solar is the roof in our case.The panel is not laid over shingles - it is the roof, and there is an underlying material.

The technology itself involves 360-watt panels that integrate with the roofing materials.GAF Energy can source from multiple suppliers, since the company is simply buying high quality solar laminate absent the frame.The product is warrantied for 25 years, with an additional 25 years for protection against leaks through a Golden Pledge option, available from GAF Energys top-tier contractors.

While not every GAF roofing contractor is interested, for many it offers an opportunity to grow their market while providing new skills to employees.DeBono comments that many roofing businesses are generational family-held enterprises with a new generation of roofing contractors that have grown up with an awareness of technology and of climate changefor sure, not every roofer is jumping in, nor do we expect that, but we are working with a set of select roofers that see the future.

While GAF Energy has been in business for less than a year, DeBono indicates that sales have been respectable, though he declines to offer a specific number.I will say this.Its been solid enough that we have doubled our number of employees. We are at 70 now.

Perhaps most interesting, the company has seen the best uptake in areas where traditional solar has not been widely offered, and competition is limited.DeBono compares states like Pennsylvania, Illinois and Florida with the market in California and its everyone gets in a three-quote dogfight, and indicates that the lesser-emphasized states are some of the healthier markets. The reason is we can go into homeowner in a place like Pennsylvania and offer a payback that makes sense in the context of a roof sale that dedicated solar providers cannot match.

Future market evolution

While energy storage is not in the current business model, DeBono expects that batteries will eventually be tied to a growing number of future solar installations, especially as battery costs continue to fall and storage technology improves.At the same time, GAF Energy doesnt always sell systems so large that they have to be able to either store power (or export to the grid under an existing net metering arrangement).If you are going to market selling shingles you dont need to give customer the biggest system possible, but you can size for exactly what they need.The best return may not always be with biggest system, he says.

DeBono articulates a vision for the future in which solar looks a lot more like a traditional roofing product.When you think about it, its like taking a flat screen TV and screwing it to the roof.By and large it hasnt changed in the last 20 years.He hopes that changes. If you were to ask what success looks like in the next 5 years, I would say you would have product that looks like traditional roofing product that can be installed in a market that takes advantage of the existing solar supply chain and roofing chain that results in higher attach rate.

DeBono sums up the potential this way,

Five years from now, what I view as success is if we can fundamentally change the way customers use solar and instead of getting regular roofs, they choose to get a solar roof. We plan on innovating as much in the form factor as we have in the go-to-market model.

Continue reading here:
If Youre Already Replacing Your Roof, Why Not Turn It Into A Power Plant? - Forbes

New York (AFP)

In 2002, Andrew Kolodny, a resident in psychiatry, attended a training session on pain treatment in Philadelphia.

Seventeen years later, he still shakes his head over the surprising enthusiasm of the lecturer, an authority on the topic, for prescribing opioids.

"The message was that people are suffering because of an overblown fear, and the correct and compassionate way to treat pain is to prescribe aggressively," Kolodny recalled.

The lecturer, Thomas McLellan, had shown the class a short film examining the case of a man seeking relief from chronic back pain.

The patient had been prescribed a strong regimen of OxyContin, the pain medication produced by Purdue Pharma -- but he wanted more, complaining of crippling agony.

After the film, McClellan asked the doctors in the class for their diagnosis.

"For me and for most of the people in the room, the obvious diagnosis was that this patient became addicted to their medicine," said Kolodny, who is now the co-director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University's Heller School in Boston.

"The surprise was that the person teaching the class said it's not true addiction. It's a pseudo-addiction."

McLellan insisted the problem facing the seemingly addicted patient was that he was not getting enough drugs, Kolodny recalled.

At the time, the concept of "pseudo-addiction" was being advanced by Purdue Pharma and other laboratories to promote their opioid products.

OxyContin, an anti-pain medication similar to morphine, was introduced to the American market in 1996 with a campaign that swept aside years of caution on the use of opioids, previously reserved for the gravely ill because of their highly addictive nature.

The campaign featured deceptive marketing, controversial sales practices and endorsements from eminent physicians generously remunerated by Purdue Pharma.

But as a result of the singularly aggressive promotion of the prescription drug, both Purdue and the Sackler family, which owns the firm, now face more than 2,300 lawsuits in the United States.

They stand accused of having provoked the nationwide opioid crisis.

Opioids are blamed for more than 400,000 deaths by overdose since 1999, according to recently published data, and on average for more than 130 deaths a day.

Contacted by AFP, Purdue Pharma declined to comment.

- A green light -

The origins of OxyContin, which has generated more than $35 billion in sales for Purdue, date to 1990.

The laboratory, based in the northeastern US state of Connecticut, was looking for a successor to its popular analgesic MS Contin, a morphine-based medication prescribed mainly to cancer patients but which was facing growing competition from generic drugs.

Purdue developed a painkiller based on oxycodone, a semi-synthetic opioid first concocted in Germany in 1916, with effects comparable to those of MS Contin.

Opioids posed well-known risks of dependence, but the laboratory had an answer: the new drug's beneficial effects would last 12 hours, twice as long as similar medications, meaning a patient would take fewer pills and face reduced danger of addiction.

But even before it reached the market, tests showed that OxyContin's effects did not last as long as originally thought, the Los Angeles Times found in a 2016 investigation.

Still, in December 1995, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave Purdue a green light to market OxyContin for the treatment of moderate to severe pain, authorizing its use for a range of ailments, many less serious than cancer.

"At the time of approval, FDA believed the controlled-release formulation of OxyContin would result in less abuse potential, since the drug would be absorbed slowly and there would not be an immediate 'rush' or high," an agency spokesman told AFP.

The FDA's approval drew growing criticism after Curtis Wright, a doctor who led the agency committee that authorized OxyContin, left to take a senior position with Purdue in 1998.

Another troubling development: once the drug was being marketed and aggressively promoted, OxyContin generated a huge black market that Purdue, critics say, ignored or minimized for far too long.

Quantities of pills were procured -- stolen from pharmacies or obtained from unscrupulous doctors -- and ground into powder to be inhaled, which multiplied their euphoric effects, according to a confidential US Justice Department report cited by The New York Times in 2018.

The 80-milligram pills, the most common dose, sell for $65 to $80 on the black market, compared to $6 in pharmacies, according to several doctors questioned by AFP.

- An explosion in sales -

Despite the warning signals, Purdue continued to present OxyContin as being less addictive than other opioids.

The company's advertising budget surged from $187,500 in 1996 to $4 million in 2001, according to internal documents.

Purdue also built up a so-called "speakers' bureau" -- mainly physicians highly remunerated for attesting to the "miracle" qualities of OxyContin.

Sales exploded -- rocketing from $80 million in 1997 to $2.1 billion only four years later, internal documents showed.

Purdue also enlisted the help of the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) and the American Pain Society (APS), two respected professional organizations specializing in pain treatment, to support its campaign to destigmatize opioids.

Purdue helped finance both organizations, and several of their members worked as consultants for the laboratory.

Underscoring the close relationship, David Haddox, who headed an APS committee that endorsed the increased use of opiates, was hired by Purdue in 1999, where he remained until earlier this year.

Purdue's sales pitch to physicians was probably helped by the fact that pain treatment has long been a neglected branch of medicine, said Gregory Terman, director of the Acute Pain Service at the University of Washington and the APS president from 2015 to 2017.

"Until the opioid crisis, NIH (the National Institutes of Health) had never spent more than one percent of their budget on pain -- the most common reason people go to doctors -- let alone chronic pain, which troubles more than 100 million Americans," he said.

The APS, facing lawsuits over its promotion of opioids and unable to pay its lawyers, filed for bankruptcy in late June.

Primary care doctors "have little training in addiction or pain, and many of them believed the promises" made by Purdue, Stanford University psychiatry professor Keith Humphreys said.

- Legal problems mount -

In 2006, the medical world finally awoke to the dangers of OxyContin, jolted by an article by Leonard Paulozzi of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who reported that deaths linked to opioids had exploded by 91 percent from 1999 to 2002.

In 2007, for the first time, Purdue Pharma and three of its executives pleaded guilty, in Virginia, to having deceived physicians, patients and regulatory authorities about the risks posed by OxyContin of dependence or abuse. They agreed to pay $635 million in fines.

Yet when Purdue's legal problems grew in the United States and OxyContin sales fell in 2010, the company simply turned to its international subsidiary Mundipharma to promote sales in other parts of the world.

In Europe, where drug ads targeting the general public are banned, Mundipharma aired one in Spain in 2013 drawing attention to the problem of chronic pain and encouraging people to see a doctor and demand treatment.

Asked about that, a Mundipharma spokesperson said only: "We no longer have any such activity today."

The group has also financed seminars for physicians in other countries -- notably Brazil and China -- to promote opioids as effective pain treatment, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2016.

Joseph Pergolizzi, a Florida doctor who the newspaper said had lectured in 2016 at a Mundipharma-sponsored conference in Brazil, rejected any suggestion of deceptive marketing.

"I was invited to a cancer pain conference," he told AFP, adding that he had spoken about "severe cancer pain treatment and what the options are."

Pergolizzi said he had severed all ties to Mundipharma two years ago.

- Purdue files for bankruptcy -

Purdue has repeatedly stated that OxyContin is only one of several opioid medications on the market, and that it now fights actively against the abuse of such drugs.

It sought bankruptcy protection in mid-September and is now urging the states and cities suing it to agree to its transformation into a trust, with any future profits to be used to alleviate the harm caused by the opioid crisis.

The laboratory has said it is ready to make payments to the plaintiffs totaling $10 billion to $12 billion -- with $3 billion coming from the Sackler family -- if they drop all legal action.

But nearly 25 states, including New York, have rejected the proposal.

The offer from Purdue and the Sacklers falls far short of paying for "the death and destruction they inflicted on the American people," said New York Attorney General Letitia James.

2019 AFP

Read more:
How Purdue's aggressive sales of a painkiller blew up in its face - FRANCE 24

Die Flotten Oberkrainer is a Monheim, Germany act that plays the peppy oberkrainer folk-music from Slovenia.(Photo: Special to The News-Press)

The Chicken Dance is mandatory.

If youre a German band playing Cape Corals Oktoberfest this weekend, you have to play the wing-flapping, butt-wiggling song. No excuses. No exceptions.

Why? Oktoberfest audiences love it, thats why.

Its fun, says Tony Krenn, entertainment chairman for the popular annual event. We have to play it. I make the band play it every hour. Its a must.

The dance floor fills up. And everybody from 2 years old to 80 years old is participating.

Of course, theres more than just The Chicken Dance happening at Oktoberfest. Theres also German food, German vendors and German beer lots and lots of German beer.

The festival went through about 800 barrels of German and domestic beer last year, says Oktoberfest chairman Steve Eichner. Thats roughly 9,600-12,800 gallons poured over six days.

Eichner doesnt know the exact amount. Its just a lot of beer, thats all! he says and laughs.

So get ready to drink, dance and celebrate all things German. Heres everything you need to know about the 34th annual event:

A stein-hoisting contest at the 2017 Oktoberfest(Photo: Special to The News-Press)

Oktoberfest takes place over two weekends, starting Friday at the German American Social Club, 2101 S.W. Pine Island Road, Cape Coral.

Hours are 4 p.m. to midnight Friday, noon to midnight Saturday and noon to 9 p.m. Sunday through Oct. 27.

Tickets are $5 in advance, $6 at the gate, and free for ages 11 and younger. Parking is free.

You can buy tickets in advance at the German American Social Club, Trebing Tile in Cape Coral, European American Bakery in Fort Myers, Kallis German Butcher Shop in Port Charlotte and Geiers Sausage Kitchen in Sarasota.

This year's Miss Oktoberfest is FGCU graduate Ashley Jones, 22, of Estero.(Photo: Special to The News-Press)

Bring your waltzing and polka shoes! And get ready to Chicken Dance, too (theres even a contest).

This years fest includes 10 bands on two stages and a giant dance floor. Three of those bands come straight from Germany:

The German bands usually perform traditional music in the afternoon, Krenn says. Then they switch to more modern songs at night.

Other bands at Oktoberfest include Manni Daum Trio, The Hot Buttered Nuggets, Lee County Pipes & Drums, Deb & The Dynamics and the German American Social Clubs house band, Hafenkapelle.

Those bands play everything from German songs to blues rock to swing jazz and Americana.

We are a German American club, not just a German club, Krenn explains. So we bring in local stuff as well.

The 37-year-old Bavarian folk-dance group Andorfer Plattler from Passau, Germany(Photo: Special to The News-Press)

The social clubs party band gets its name from the German for harbor band. Their repertoire includes waltzes, marches, polkas, big-band tunes, pop and other good-time dance music.

The all-volunteer band started in 1983, and it's been playing Oktoberfests every year since then.

The 25 to 30 members play a variety of instruments, including trumpets, flugelhorns, tubas, clarinets, drums and alphorns those really long horns you see in Ricola TV commercials.

More: Here's where JLB has dined in 2019 in Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Naples, Bonita

Germans have been holding Oktoberfest festivals, in and out of Germany, since the tradition started in 1810 to celebrate the wedding of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria.

From there, the festival has evolved into a worldwide annual event known for German food, music and a good-time atmosphere.

Cape Corals German American Club has been holding itspublic event for 34 years. But it actually started as a private event for club members in 1964, Eichner says.

Now, Oktoberfest is the clubs biggest fundraiser of the year. About 35,000 people come every year to drink, eat, dance and party like Germans.

This is the biggie, Eichner says.

The money pays for the clubs operations, he says, but they also donate $20,000 to $30,000 every year to various charities, including Hope Hospice.

Lee County Pipes & Drums performs at Oktoberfest every year.(Photo: Special to The News-Press)

Let's face it: Sober people rarely get up for The Chicken Dance. A few Pilsner beers later, though, and you have a different story.

This year, organizers boast about 13 different beers on tap, Eichner says. Three are domestic: Miller Lite, Coors Light and Yuengling Lager.

The other 10 come from where else? Germany. That includes Warsteiner German Pilsner, Warsteiner Dunkel, limited-edition Warsteiner Oktoberfest (brewed solely for Oktoberfest events), Schofferhofer Grapefruit, Bitburger and Radeberger.

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Many visitors to the Cape festival will dress in traditional clothing such as lederhosen or dirndls tight-bodiced dresses that come in a variety of colors.

Many will also wear felt hats decorated with metal pins. That style is common in Germany, where people collect pins on their hats from the places they've been.

If you want to wear a piece of German heritage, you can buydirndls,lederhosen, pins and more fromthe approximately 50 vendors throughoutthe festival grounds.

Oktoberfest wouldn't be the same without the food, and there's plenty of that on hand. Traditional dishes served every year include potato pancakes and applesauce, saurbrauten barbecue, potato salad and schnitzel.

Then, of course, there are all those varieties of German sausage. Plus, for dessert, everything from Black Forest chocolate cake to apple strudel to plum streusel cake.

This year's Miss Oktoberfest is FGCU graduate Ashley Jones, 22, of Estero.(Photo: Special to The News-Press)

The Miss Oktoberfest pageant has been held since 1989. It helps promote the event and attract younger people to join the club, organizers say.

This years Miss Oktoberfest is Ashley Jones, an FGCU graduate with a degree in sales and marketing. After Oktoberfest, she'll movefrom Estero to Washington, D.C.,for a year-long sales training program through media company Bloomberg Industry Group.

Jones, 22, has been visiting the German American Social Club for about a year with a friend to dance and learn more about her German heritage. Her great-grandmother came from Germany, she says, and the family still makes her sauerbraten recipe.

Its important keeping up with tradition and culture, Jones says. Its cool for me to learn more about those traditions and values, knowing that thats part of my heritage.

She says she looks forward to walking around Oktoberfest in her sash and crown, meeting people, drinking beer and having fun. And yes, shell be dancing, too.

Ive got The Chicken Dance down! she says.

For more information about Oktoberfest, call 283-1400 or visit capecoraloktoberfest.com.

Connect with this reporter: Charles Runnells (News-Press) (Facebook), @charlesrunnells (Twitter), @crunnells1 (Instagram)

Read: 'Schooly McSchoolface' among name suggestions that didn't make the cut for Lee's next high school

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Cape Coral's Oktoberfest: The Chicken Dance, the beer and everything else you need to know - News-Press

Jobs are becoming more and more flexible, offering work from home options, flex-time and unlimited PTO! If you want to convince your employer to let you work from home, experts say these are some tactics you should use. Buzz60

Last month, Michael Richman, owner of Academy Awning in Montebello, California, waded gingerly into the modern world of flexible work schedules, allowing a 22-year-old designer to come in at odd hours so he could go back to college full time.

It didnt go well.

The designer wasnt available midday to answer questions from an East Coast customer and was hard-pressed to quickly address concerns raised by welders and other factory employees at the awning maker, which has 35 staffers. Richman also wondered how much the designerwas really working when he was alone in the office.

Michael Richman(Photo: Handout)

It was a disaster, Richman says. We have to have a somewhat regimented schedule. To have people coming and going at different times creates disruption.

Americas new flexible workplace is going throughsome growing pains.Many businesses are allowing variable hours as well as work-from-home options -- to attract employees in a tight labor market. But as adoption grows, a significant share are struggling to make it work. Consultants say thats because many companies havent put technology and other tools in place to ensure seamless communication and collaboration with co-workers and customers.

They havent integrated it as part of their overall strategy, says Cali Williams Yost, CEO of Flex + Strategy Group, which helps companies adopt flexible work arrangements. Were asking people to work differently but not telling them how to do it.

As a result, some companies are throwing up their hands and going back to traditional work policies while others are ironing out the kinks through trial and error. The gap among firms is underscored by widely varying measures of the portion of businesses with flexible hours. A spring survey by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 57% of organizations offer flexible schedules, up from 52% in 2015.

A separate poll by Flex + Strategy revealed that 98% of companies provide some form of fluctuating hours based on a broad definition that could include letting employees leave occasionally to pick up kids at school or go to the doctor. At the other extreme are businessesthat let workers choose their own hours.

Millennial seek a better work-life balance.(Photo: Moonlighting)

Meanwhile, a survey of 501 hiring managers by USA TODAY and LinkedInlate last month showed that to attract and retain employees, 44%have put in place new strategies to permit a more flexible schedule. In fact, thats their chief way of coping with unemployment thats at a 50-year low of 3.5% and spells fewer available workers. Thirty-eight percentof hiring managers are raising pay and twenty-six percent allow remote work.

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While the 44% share is noteworthy, its lower than the other measures because its likely capturing only employers that have adopted formal strategies to make flexible schedules work over the long term and are confident enough to tout the policy to job seekers, Yost says.

In late 2017, the vast majority of workers said they had some degree of work flexibility but just 42% said theyd been trained on how to manage it, down from 47% in 2015, according to a survey by Flex + Strategy.

Some companies dont formalize flexible work arrangements because they want to offerthem quietly to certain employees rather than across the board, says Sara Sutton, CEO of FlexJobs, which posts jobs for remote, part-time and freelance work and provides related consulting services. That, she says, causes jealousy. Others offer flexibility but still try to reach employees during off-hours.

SOURCE USA Today/LinkedIn survey of 502 U.S. hiring managers, 9/23-9/26(Photo: USA TODAY)

The shift to more flexible work set-ups has been driven by millennials, who could complete and submit their college assignments anytime, anywhere as a result of the prevalence of Wi-Fi, smartphones and email, Sutton says. They also yearn for a healthy work-life balance.

They grew up with this, she says.

Seventy-seven percent of employees consider flexible work a major consideration in their job searches, according to Zenefits, which provides human resource software. And 30% have left a job because it didnt provide flexible work options, a FlexJobs poll reveals.

Businesses are responding, largely because they have little choice in the hypercompetitive labor market, Yost says. Technology such as smartphones, cloud computing and work collaboration tools such as Slack also have paved the way. So has a work culture that often requires employees to answer emails late at night or on vacation. Companies can hardly ask workers to make such sacrifices without providing them more leeway to adjust their hours or location during the workday, Yost says.

Yet increased flexibility also boosts productivity, Yost says. Sixty percent of employees with workplace flexibility said they feel more productive and engaged and forty-five percentsay it increases their ability to work effectively with their team, according to the Flex + Strategy survey.

Why? The ability to shift hours to avoid rush-hour traffic, for example, increases efficiency. Some people are more productive late at night than mid-morning. And employees granted flexible hours are more loyal and motivated.

When you give people flexibility, they will give you more, Yost says.

Last year, Sara Martlage, 31, left a sales job at a freight company where she felt chained to a desk for a similar role at Scottsdale, Arizona-based Trainual, which provides employee training software, largely because the firm lets her adjust her schedule. While the official hours are 8 to 5, Martlage can come in later to attend a workout or yoga class, run errands midday and work from home as much as half the time.

Sara Martladge(Photo: Handout)

Its empowering to have authority over your schedule, she says. It makes me want to work harder, be available to take calls and answer email some nights and weekends to go above and beyond to keep my work integrity intact with the rest of my teammates.

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Chris Ronzio, CEO of Trainual, says he adopted flexible hours about two years ago, chiefly to attract workers. Four recent hires, he says, accepted job offers because of the policy. And it has freed him from keeping a detailed ledger of employees time.

Were putting more trust into our team, and measuring them more by the results they produce than by the hours they log, Ronzio says. The 19-employee firm has begun tracking monthly and quarterly sales figures more closely to ensure workers are meeting targets.

Other companies have hit some bumps along the way. GoBrandgo, a St. Louis marketing company, began letting employees set their own hours and work from anywhere about 10 years ago, says partner Brandon Dempsey. At first, he said, it bred resentment because each division had a different standard for flexible hours and no way to know when co-workers werent available.

Several years ago, he says, the company started an online calendar that employees fill out at the start of the week, letting colleagues know when theyre working and when theyre out, as well as project management software that tracks the status of every job. Employees must be available for client meetings every two weeks and work more closely in teams so they can answer a clients question if a co-worker is out.

Brandon Dempsey, an owner of GoBrandGo, with employees at firm's headquarters in St. Louis(Photo: Handout)

Everybody knows the rules of the game now, Dempsey says.

Staffers, he says, are more productive, in part because they can clock hours best suited to their circadian rhythms and not think about home while they're at work, and vice versa. "Be present wherever you are," he says.

Nicole Turner, 33, the creative director, routinely has put in five or six hours during the day at the office and then toiled at home from 7 PM to as late as 2 a.m.

Im more creative late at night, she says.

Now that she has a 2-year-old son, her hours are more normal, though she still sometimes takes off part of the day to care for himand makes up the time at night.

No ones looking over me and micromanaging me.

RED Group, a New Orleans-based maker of industrial control systems, began allowing somewhat variable schedules several years ago, and last month shifted to total flexibility, says company President Kyle Remont. Making the change possible were benchmarks for the cost and time of each project and software that shows precisely the percentage completed at any moment, as well as a video chat app.

The biggest positive is employee morale, Remont says.

A record number of millennials are quitting their jobs, because they dont want to be tied down, which essentially clears their schedule for more vacation time. Buzz60's Sean Dowling has more. Buzz60

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More employers offer flexible hours, but many grapple with how to make it succeed - USA TODAY

On Tuesday, Professor Willie Donnelly, President of Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT), officially opened Spearlines Waterford office in ArcLabs Research & Innovation Centre. At the opening, the tech company announced 24 new jobs and the expansion represents an investment of 2.9 million over two years.

Announcing Spearlines investment and job creation in Waterford, Mooncoin man, Liam Dunne, Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) at Spearline said: Today, I am delighted to announce that we are expanding our team here in Waterford by 24 new team members. Spearline has grown by over 600% in the past four years and we plan to continue investing in the local economy by creating employment into the future. I am one of 11 WIT graduates on the Spearline team; we have six Commercial Software Development graduates. I am honoured to represent Spearline in Waterford and to have the opportunity to grow our base - both in terms of international customers and team members," Liam said.

Liam is from Mooncoin in South Kilkenny where he has three children in Carrigeen NS. Liams wife Sharon is a primary school teacher in Ferrybank Boys NS. Two other people from Mooncoin parish are also working with Spearline with Richard McDonald a Business Development Manager from Clogga, Mooncoin and Kelly Russell from Carrigeen, Mooncoin who is Head of Sales Training.

Officially opening the Spearline office in Waterford, Professor Willie Donnelly, President at Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) said: The institute is delighted Spearline has chosen to open its global sales office in ArcLabs Research and Innovation centre on the West Campus. Spearline was founded by WIT graduates who have rapidly grown the company on the international stage. We wish them the best of luck in their future development and look forward to extending our partnership.

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Mooncoin Man charts success of company creating 24 jobs - Kilkenny People

CHICAGO When online education entered the scene more than two decades ago, its critics predicted it would dampen the quality of college instruction. Today,the sector has shed some of those concerns, with about one-third of students taking at least one course online.

Yet there's still room for improvement. Researchers have found that fully online programs and classes may contribute to equity gaps and lead to poorer outcomes for the least prepared students.

But there are some bright spots, according to speakers at Educause's annual conference in Chicago. Innovative models for online classroom instruction could be poised to help the sector live up to its goals of expanding college access and making learning possible anywhere.

Below, we share how several administrators are moving online education forward at their institutions.

At California State University Channel Islands, a midsize institution located about an hour's drive from Los Angeles, officials wanted to proactively teach students the skills needed to thrive in online classes. So in 2018, they rolled out a self-paced course called Learning Online 101.

The one-to-three-hour class allows students to practice using the technology required in online courses in a low-stakes environment while also teaching the importance of time management and a strong support network.

Officials also sprinkled throughout the course photos of the campus and video messages from the president, faculty and students to help online learners feel more connected with the community.

"The humanization of the course was really important," said Jill Leafstedt, the university's associate vice provost of innovation and faculty development. Students taking online classes "are working full time, they have families, they have caretaker responsibilities, so they're not on campus to create that connection."

About 1,000 students have taken the course so far. Of those, about half (54%) were first-generation students and more than two-thirds (68%) had taken an online class before. Nearly all of the students (92%) said the course "increased their confidence for learning online."

Next steps include studying whether the course impacts student performance and reduces the number of technical questions faculty receive, officials said.

California State University Channel Islands launched a course called Learning Online 101 in 2018.

More than a decade ago, the Association of American Colleges & Universities unveiled its list of high-impact educational practices such as study abroad, writing-intensive courses and undergraduate research which some studiessuggest boost student outcomes, especially for underserved populations.

Yet many of these practices are difficult, if not impossible, to carry over into an online environment. Take the high-impact practice of service-learning, which typically involves completing a field-based project for a community partner. Biology students, for instance, may plant trees with a local conservation group to reinforce their in-class instruction about biodiversity.

But Jaci Lindberg, director of digital learning at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, was determined to incorporate service-learning into her online gender and leadership class.

Her first few attempts involved requiring students to show up in-person to complete a service-learning project, such as helping organize a women's leadership conference. But the students were pushing back, with many saying they didn't have someone to watch their kids or couldn't take off work on the day of the project.

"The humanization of the course was really important. [Online students] are working full-time, they have families, they have caretaker responsibilities, so they're not on campus to create that connection."

Jill Leafstedt

Associate vice provost of innovation and faculty development, CSU Channel Islands

Lindberg knew she needed a different approach.

"I need to meet my students where they are," she said. "They're picking an online course for a reason so I started to think to myself, 'How can I grab a partner or opportunity that is also online for them but still allows them to have a pretty transformational experience?'"

Now, the course's required service-learning project is completely online, with students creating webpages that help build out an archive about leaders who have worked toward gender equality for their community partner, Girls Inc.

"No one has asked for an exception, and I feel like they've really leaned into the project," Lindberg said. "I got the transformation that I was really seeking for the students to have."

Thanks to the growing popularity of online learning, Harvard University's Extension School has seen a recent surge in students, with enrollment passing 30,000 in the 2017-18 academic year.

The school has responded to that growth by ramping up its online offerings Harvard's Division of Continuing Education is offering 840 online classes in 2019 but officials wanted to do more to build a community between campus-based and remote learners.

For many years, one of the school's only options was livestreaming in-person classes to distance students a workaround officials found insufficient.

"Ideally, if everything comes together in the right way, the technology can fade to the background and become somewhat of an afterthought."

Christian Franco

Manager of live interactive learning technology, Harvard University

"It was more like a passive window to the classroom," said Christian Franco, Harvard's manager of live interactive learning technology. "There's no feeling of community, there's no timely way to ask a question or be part of the session. Simply put, online students really didn't have a voice."

The solution? A new course format called HELIX, which lets students choose whether they want to participate in live classes online or in person. To do so, classes were outfitted with multiple cameras to capture the lecture and large televisions in the back and front of the room that display remote students on a split-screen (similar to the opening credits of the TV show "The Brady Bunch").

Moreover, teachers have a direct sight line to the television in the back of the room, so they can see remote learners raise their hands and call on them in the same manner they do in-person students. "Ideally, if everything comes together in the right way, the technology can fade to the background and become somewhat of an afterthought," Franco said.

See original here:
How colleges are bringing online students into the classroom - Education Dive

Traditionally, learning to become a professional cook required an investment of either lots of time or a fair chunk of money -- and sometimes both. One customary career path for aspiring chefs was a multi-year series of apprenticeships and career moves in order to learn on the job.

The other alternative, culinary school, was a quicker but usually more expensive option. The cost of two years at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York currently has a $90,000 price tag.

But as is the case with so much else in the 21st century, the internet is disrupting culinary education as both existing culinary schools and high-tech start-ups are offering culinary education online.

While the traditional leaders in culinary education have been cautious about moving into internet-based culinary education - doing so would, after all, potentially undermine their core business - a number of entrepreneurial ventures have been aggressively developing and promoting "virtual cooking schools" for amateurs and professionals alike.

The teaching strategy those newcomers have adopted involves learning experiences delivered via the Web in the form of video content demonstrating various cooking techniques. After viewing the relevant lesson, students then replicate a recipe or technique in whatever kitchen setting might be available to them.

The tricky aspect of culinary education online is evaluation and feedback. With no chef-instructor to observe, taste, and critique, most online cooking schools have to rely on student submissions of food "selfies" as a basis for providing feedback - if they provide any at all.

Rouxbe (rouxbe.com) claims to be the world's leading online culinary school, having served over 530,000 students. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Vancouver, B.C., the company offers individual and group training and has partnered with many companies in the food service and hospitality industry to deliver workplace instruction and training. Current clients include Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Whole Foods, and more.

The company promotes certificate-level programs geared to both professionals and amateur chefs and, earlier this month, introduced a course of study dealing with "plant-based" cookery. This new coursework involves five units, 22 lessons, and 138 different techniques delivered over the course of 30 hours. Topics coved in the plant-based curriculum include soups, dressings and marinades as well as using meat and dairy alternatives. There is even lesson content on "no-heat" cooking.

The Rouxbe website offers a sampling of the video materials on which their instructional programs are based. Those media clips can be viewed at rouxbe.com/tips-techniques.

Tucker's Restaurant in Southwick has announced they'll be hosting "Slowhand," a tribute performance featuring the music of Eric Clapton and Cream.

The event is planned for Friday, Nov. 1, with the dinner seating at 6 p.m. and a 7:30 p.m. showtime. Chef Michael Anderson will be serving a plated dinner menu of chicken francaise, vegetable, roasted red potatoes, and salad as well as a specialty dessert.

Tickets, which are $45 per person, can be ordered by online at musictributeproductions.com/upcoming-shows.

Tucker's Restaurant answers at (413) 569-0120.

If you missed this years Newport Mansions Wine & Food Festival or just want to get a jump on the next one, the festival promoters have announced that they are conducting a special advance sale of tickets for the 2020 Festival. Up until December 25, 2019, tickets for next years event, which will be held Sept. 17 through 20, will be available at 2019 prices.

More information is available at the Festival's web site, NewportMansionsWineAndFood.org, or by calling (401) 847-1000.

"Big and beefy" are among the requisite adjectives needed to describe October's featured sandwiches at Arby's locations.

For the rest of October the chain is featuring a beer-braised beef sandwich on a pretzel roll, a beer cheese triple stack that included roast beef, corned beef, and shredded beer-braised beef topped with melted beer cheese, fried onions, and beer mustard, and a double roast beef sandwich finished with the same array of condiments.

There's an Arby's Restaurant that operates at the Granby Road-Route 33 rotary in Chicopee.

Red Robin Gourmet Burgers and Brews restaurants are featuring two special burger creations this fall season, a French onion burger that's finished with Swiss cheese, fried onion straws, and a French onion spread all served on an onion roll.

The El Ranchero burger, another limited-time-only selection, gets dressed up with candied bacon, onion straws, and jalapeno ranch dressing.

New among the chain's snacks and sides are garlic parmesan pretzel bites served with aioli for dipping and Nashville-style hot boneless wings.

Red Robin operates eateries in Holyoke at Holyoke Crossing, on Boston Road in North Wilbraham, and in Enfield, CT at 15 Hazard Avenue.

On Nov. 2, Teresas Restaurant in Ware will be turning its Alfonso Banquet Room over to the No Shoes Nation Band as that musical group presents a tribute to Kenny Chesney, the country music singer and guitarist.

The dinner and show evening begins with a 5 p.m. cocktail hour. Dinner, which will be served at 6 p.m., is a six course, family style meal of Teresa's favorites. Showtime is scheduled for 8 p.m.

Tickets are $50 per person and include tax and gratuity; call (413) 967-7601 for reservations.

The Gill Tavern in Gill is planning a special dinner event for Nov. 5.

Menu details and the like aren't yet available, but the Tavern's announcement promises that the evening will be similar to other such Gill Tavern get-togethers. This most likely means a five-course menu featuring local fare, a selection of wines paired to complement each course, a 6:30 p.m. start time, and a price per person in the neighborhood of $50.

For more details check the Gill Tavern's web site at thegilltavern.com or call the establishment at (413) 863-9006.

LongHorn Steakhouse restaurants have brought back their Delmonico steak as part of their new "Steakhouse Cuts" menu. Portioned at 14 ounces, the Delmonico joins a 12-ounce New York Strip and the chain's signature Flo's Filet, a steak that is available in either six- or eight-ounce sizes.

To complement these steak options, LongHorn has also introduced Crispy Brussels Sprouts tossed in a smoky honey butter. Other favorite steakhouse sides at LongHorn include Steakhouse Mac & Cheese and char-grilled asparagus.

There are LongHorn Steakhouse restaurants on Riverdale Street in West Springfield and on Phoenix Avenue in Enfield, CT.

Master impersonators the Edward Twins will be appearing at the Munich Haus German Restaurant in Chicopee on October 31 and November 1. The dinner and show version of these performances begins at 6:30 p.m.; show time is planned for 8 p.m.

Dinner and show tickets are $65, while show-only admission is $45.

Both ticket options can be purchased online at TheEdwardsTwins.com.

The William Cullen Bryant Homestead in Cummington, in conjunction with Wheelhouse Catering of Amherst, is presenting a "Dinner in 1800's New England" on Saturday, Nov. 8 starting at 5 p.m.

The evening's special focus will be on the apple, an important crop in New England both then and now. Using some of Mrs. Bryant's own recipes, Wheelhouse Catering will be creating a meal such as the Bryant family themselves might have enjoyed more than a century ago.

Tickets are $95 and must be ordered by Oct. 31. Contact the Trustees of Reservations, which manages the Bryant Homestead, at (413) 200-7262 or email acaluori@thetrustees.org.

Hugh Robert is a faculty member in Holyoke Community Colleges hospitality and culinary arts program and has nearly 45 years of restaurant and educational experience. Please send items of interest to Off the Menu at the Republican, P.O. Box 1329, Springfield, MA 01101; Robert can also be reached at OffTheMenuGuy@aol.com.

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Off The Menu: Culinary education being offered online - MassLive.com

The view upon entering The Charter School of San Diego.

As I stepped out of the San Diego sunshine and into the school located in a storefront in a strip mall, I didnt know what to expect. Ive visited several schools located in storefronts over the years, but few that were also charters.

My jaw dropped. The facility was unlike any school I had been in before.

It was pristine, orderly, and inspiring. This was a place where anyone would want to worka professional adult or a studentin stark contrast to most school classrooms. It reminded me of a mix of an airy Apple Store and a coffee shop.

There was no classroom space per se, but instead the open floor plan was divided in subtle ways into a variety of well thought out types of spacesfrom those dedicated to individual work to other spaces for small-group and one-on-one work and from small breakout rooms for seminars to still other spaces tucked away for students to embark on virtual reality experiences, design for 3D printers, or do science labs.

Teachers had their offices upstairs. When they were downstairs, they were exclusively focused on the students.

The view of an Altus School from above where the teachers have their offices.

The school I was visiting was The Charter School of San Diego, which itself has a total of 14 different resource centers across San Diego. The school is one of seven Altus Schools in California.

The schools collectively serve roughly 8,000 students per year, 70% of whom are minority students, 70% of whom identify as socioeconomically disadvantaged and 20% of whom have disabilities. The schools largely outperform their district counterparts on various achievement measures. Fewer than 2% of students drop out, and the schools boast a 0% expulsion rate.

A 2015 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient, which is the nations highest Presidential honor for performance excellence through innovation, improvement and visionary leadership and had never been given to an individual school before, the Charter School of San Diego and the Altus team thrives on data and a commitment to setting and realizing its goals each yearand from my perspective, its one of the better kept secrets in education circles.

The educators in the school I learned have a strong commitment to personalizing learning for each student, as the children who arrive at its doorstep each arrive with a unique story and set of needs.

Unlike traditional schools, each student is assigned to one teacher who guides the student through all of her work. In similar fashion to Colorado College, a competency-based higher education institution, students focus on one to two classes at a time and complete each course within three to four weeksa concept that more traditional high schools should pilot in my opinion so that students can apply themselves more deeplyand which might pair nicely with flipping the school day.

Students do the work through a mixture of textbooks and online learning, and, similar to college, complete roughly 80% of their work at home and 20% inside the resource center. According to the school, each student develops a custom schedule with her teacher and family and will typically spend two to three days at a resource center each week for three to four hours a day.

My questions turned to curriculum. What did the school use? The answer was a mix of home-developed content and Edgenuity, among other tools.

My eyebrows raised at the mention of Edgenuity. Edgenuity is a well-known provider of online courseware and helped power some of the early darlings of the blended-learning world, such as Carpe Diem.

But the company has also come under scrutiny over the past year and a half as the media spotlight has shone unfavorably on districts credit recovery practices in boosting graduation rates. A common narrative in the media is of the student who had previously failed a course retaking it on Edgenuity only to magically complete it in mere minutes and recover the credit en route to graduation. Stories of students taking the exact same assessment with the same exact questions multiple times abound, as do stories of students simply looking up the answers on their cell phones, in an effort to achieve the score necessary to demonstrate mastery and move on to the next unit.

So, I asked the teacher giving me the tour, how did he know his students using Edgenuity were really doingand masteringthe work?

The answer is a series of redundancies that Altus Schools has put in place.

The teachers themselves are constantly checking to make sure students have done and actually understood the work. This isnt a school where students largely work independently with little interaction with teachers.

Altus also deploys objective assessments in Illuminate, which are separate from the assessments in Edgenuity and are taken on site in proctored settings.

And Altus also uses NWEAs benchmark assessments to keep a close eye on student growth throughout the year in English Language Arts and mathematics. If students were gaming the system, the teacher said, the teachers would know.

The Altus Schools are hardly a finished product. They seek to improve continuously, with current goals focused on increasing academic achievement in English and math, refining measures of evaluating English Language Learner progress and proficiency, improving and increasing supports, services and resources for student groups and working with its disadvantaged populations to close the achievement gap.

But I left the visit impressed. Of all my school visits in the past this year, this school stood out as a thoughtful and unique design in the landscape of schools seeking to tailor learning for each individuals distinct needs.

And I left wishing that all schools using online credit recovery would put the same thought into their systems of assessment that Altus has so that online learning wouldnt just be an escape valve to meet a narrow definition of success in terms of graduation rate, but instead an innovation poised to transform all of schooling by helping deliver the right learning experience each student needs at the right time.

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Spotlight On Altus Schools And An Antidote To Online Credit Recovery - Forbes

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Online Program Management in Higher Education Market 2019-2024: How the Market Will Witness Substantial Growth in the Upcoming years by Trending Key...

Before 1950, most Amish students attended public schools but left before eighth grade.

Ann Taylor, who was born Amish, remembers going to a public one-room school in Intercourse. The teacher, she says, would tell the non-Amish girls that they might attend college one day. But she told the Amish girls that they would not, and they needed to work hard now because they wouldnt be continuing on after the eighth grade.

Taylor says she didnt quite understand what that meant.

I remember thinking, Im going to do that (attend college), but I didnt know what it was. That was not a part of our world, she says.

She later left the church and went on to earn a doctorate in adult education at Temple University in Philadelphia.

The government changed the compulsory education laws in 1949 after World War II, requiring children to remain in school until age 16.

When Amish parents refused to send their children beyond the eighth grade, many were arrested. Over the course of five years, 125 parents in Leacock Township alone were jailed.

In February 1955, Pennsylvania Gov. George Leader engineered a compromise between the Amish and the governments compulsory education law. It required Amish students who had completed eighth grade to then attend an Amish vocational school three hours a week and keep a log of the work they did on their families farms.

The Feb. 8, 1955, edition of the former Intelligencer Journal included an editorial praising the decision. The editorial reads: It can be hoped that the solution will end, once and for all, the senseless prosecution of a fine hard-working group of our fellow countians and that they once again will be able to till the soil and conduct their homes in full agreement with the law of their land, the dictates of their conscience and most important of all, the tenets of their religious beliefs.

Not everyone liked the compromise.

Arthur P. Mylin, the county school superintendent from 1922 to 1958, told the Intelligencer Journal he thought the agreement was ridiculous, adding, This whole office is opposed to it.

While the conflict was resolved in Pennsylvania, it wasnt in other states with Amish populations. Ohio had similar problems. Tensions arose in Iowa in the mid-1960s, when school officials arrived at a private Amish school to convince students to get on a bus to go to a public school. The photo of the children fleeing the bus is a famous image.

The case finally came to a head in Wisconsin. There, three Amish students stopped attending a Wisconsin high school because of their parents religious beliefs.

The case went to trial (Jonas Yoder, one of the fathers, represented the parents) and the parents lost.

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William B. Ball, a lawyer from Harrisburg, took on the case and successfully argued it before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Wisconsin then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ball argued that sending Amish children to high school was a threat to their way of life, providing contradictory viewpoints and unnecessary skills. And besides, he argued, the Amish way of life was not threatening American society.

Ball claimed that by making the children to go to school, the United States was impeding upon the Amishs ability to practice their religion, therefore violating their First Amendment rights.

The court agreed, voting 7-0 (two justices took no part in the consideration or decision of the case) in favor of the Amish on May 15, 1972.

The Supreme Court held that state laws requiring children to attend school until they are 16 violate the constitutional rights of the Amish to free exercise of religion.

The decision specifically applied to Wisconsin, but it was written in terms broad enough to apply to all states that require attendance in public or private schools beyond the eighth grade.

Erika Riley was an intern at LNP this past summer.

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Steps that led to U.S. Supreme Court ruling that compulsory education law violated First Amendment rights of Amish - LancasterOnline