In some ways, Gladys Gradillas days are the same as they were two months ago, before COVID-19 shut down San Antonio. As the director for Communities in Schools, a national dropout prevention organization, in the South San Antonio Independent School District shes hearing many of the same needs shes been hearing for decades. Food. Hygiene products. Academic help. Social and emotional support.

Only now, Gradilla said, coronavirus has schools locked down, supply chains stretched thin, and families sheltering behind closed doors, and all of those things are harder to get. Harder to deliver.

Needs have multiplied over the months as well.Early in the shutdown, she and her team spend a lot of time helping parents troubleshoot the basics of access as their kids tried to log on for virtual classrooms and online assignments. Communities in Schools staff have taken their help on the road, printing out instructional packets provided by the district and delivering them to families, along with basic home goods. Some staff drove from store to store in search of the scariest items milk, eggs, and toilet paper using the time and gas they know their clients cannot afford to. Those early issues are starting to calm (the toilet paper is back in the aisles, and kids are getting the hang of online learning) but the economic impact of social distancing is taking its place as weeks without income turn into months. Kids need more, and staff still cant deliver help in person.

Myrna Barrera, Communities In Schools AmeriCorps member, puts together school supply packages for students and families as kids transitioned to distance learning. Barrera works alongside CIS site coordinator Eloisa Zamora at Mary Hull Elementary School in San Antonios Northside Independent School District. (Communities in Schools)

For 40 years, Communities in Schools has used a case management approach to confront the numerous road blocks keeping vulnerable students from graduation. Hunger, homelessness, depression, and needs as unique as the 1.62 million students the organization serves yearly in roughly 2,500 schools across the country. Until this March, all of these services were provided from a common hub: the school.

School became a constant for their students, said Lauren Gerraty, Communities in Schools San Antonios chief program and innovation officer, a solace and a safe space.

We know that two-thirds of academic issues have to do with outside-of-school factors, Gerraty said, Now kids are outside of school 100 percent of the time.

In Washington state, a very early hot spot in the pandemic, Communities in Schools State Director Susan Richards is facing challenges similar to those in San Antonio and other struggling communities where CIS has a presence.

It has amplified every need that was there, Richard said, but it has created some new needs and concerns.

With the outbreak so advanced in her state, she had to pull back staff from the in-person services they so desperately want to deliver, she said, We cannot do everything for every student because this circumstance is beyond our control.

Communities in Schools staff are more dependent than ever on the partners that help them get food, mental health resources, and other support to families. They are playing their part, in turn, by offering support to others beyond their direct caseload, Richards said. Family members and neighbors have needs too, and by meeting those when they can, she knows they are creating a more stable environment for the students in that system.

Serenity Escobar, a Communities in Schools licensed professional counselor, offers telehealth counseling from her home office to teen parents, who are adapting to distance learning while also caring for their own young children at home. Escobar partners with San Antonio ISDs Metro Health program. (Communities in Schools)

The pandemic is making clear what her organization has always believed, Richards explained, that we are connected by the systems we share. Inequality in the health, economic, justice, and education systems directly affects the well-being of students. Shes comforted that the organizations new CEO, Rey Saldaa, shares that understanding as he leads the organization through an unprecedented period.

In times of crisis, those systems do not support us all equally, Saldaa said. As the pressure of the outbreak bears down on communities, he explained, we start spotlighting what inequity really looks like.

Being away from the regular routine has changed almost everything about operations, Saldaa explained, but not about the needs. They just have to meet them in more volatile scenarios. Weve always been primary caregivers he said. Now, were EMTs.

With school buildings locked, Communities in Schools had to find a way to address the growing needs, and bring that solace and that safe space to students at home. Phone calls, Zoom groups, pen pal letters, even movie watching apps have become means of connection for site coordinators and the students they serve. Students who, Richards said, are hungry for connection in this uncertain and isolating time.

Connection also gives staff a chance to check on new concerns that may be arising for their students. They knew they couldnt take for granted that home was a safe placephysically or emotionally.

During the first week of school closures, the Communities in Schools San Antonio staff spent most of their time trying to get their equipment transferred from schools to home, Google phone lines set up, and internet security systems in place. They had never before been allowed to take sensitive student data home with them. New protocols had to be put in place.

Staff also had to learn how to establish reliable records via telephone in case child protective services had to be called at any point. They had to learn national guidelines for telecounseling, since Communities in Schools San Antonio provides direct clinical counseling services through its own Project Access team. (Most sites broker the services, connecting students to outside providers, who handle the compliance issues.)

Staff are in constant contact with child protective services, homeless shelters, and receiving agencies for children who are taken from their homes. When those systems reach capacity, staff explained, that will change their options for how to respond to kids who are in danger.

As they began to make the calls and connect with students, it became clear that while the (case management) model is solid, the need was going to escalate quickly, said Gerraty, the San Antonio chief program officer.

Every child and adult in the house became part of the Communities in Schools network, she said, because thats what it takes to ensure a safe home for students.

For example, in homes where grandparents are caregivers, Gerraty said, Communities in Schools staff started delivering groceries to help protect those most susceptible to the virus.

While the phone calls were going out, she said, their own phones were ringing. San Antonios service industries were hit hard and early. Economic pressure from job losses was starting to be felt at home.

Thats likely to get worse, staff agreed, as the recession lengthens.

Melanie Awtry, a case manager with Communities in Schools San Antonio, is also making sure staff are prepared for some of the stories they will hear as the crisis deepens. They need to be ready to process stories of trauma, with a realistic understanding of what they can and cannot do to help. In addition to varying shelter in place orders, staff have their own families to care for, and their own health to consider if they want to be able to help kids for the duration of the emergency, she said.

The national organization, which has an annual budget of $200 million, will also need to tend to its financial health to keep services flowing.

Funders have been remarkably flexible, Gerraty said, allowing Communities in Schools to pivot funding to meet new and expanding needs. Many have deferred reporting requirements so that the whole staff can focus on the needs at hand, not paperwork.

The pandemic and resulting economic collapse has also led many to increase their giving, or release crisis funds.

Were almost in this honeymoon period where a lot of money is coming in, Richards said, because people have the feeling that were all in the same boat.

It may feel like that today, she said, but what about tomorrow? The San Antonio chapter is currently trying to raise $25,000 to ensure its financial health in the near future, after canceling its yearly All in For Kids fundraiser, according to data tracking nonprofit SA2020, which has been keeping a dashboard of nonprofit financial needs during the pandemic.

As testing and fatality rates grow, its become clearer that underlying health conditions, lack of health care, crowded living arrangements, and on-the-job exposure for working-class and low-income neighborhoods and communities of color are making them more vulnerable to coronavirus infection, and more likely to suffer complications.

Experts are even more sure about which communities will be most impacted by a recession. With some 36.5 million Americans filing for unemployment since mid-March, many in low-wage positions, the forecast is bleak, and Communities in Schools is preparing for the worst, as best they can, Saldaa said.

While he has had to conduct his entire first few months of work from his home office in San Antonio, Saldaa has reached out to city-specific staff to lead webinars on how their organizations weathered the trauma, homelessness, and economic strain that followed 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the Great Recession.

They are learning from each crisis, he said, but they all agree, This is completely different from everything weve seen before.

Lead Image: Siblings Brandon and Addyson, who both attend Carvajal Elementary School in the San Antonio Independent School District, show off a H-E-B grocery store gift card that Communities in Schools provided to families in need. Many couldnt get to local food pantries because they lacked transportation or could not leave other family members to wait in line for hours. (Communities in Schools)

Originally posted here:
When COVID-19 and Economic Fallout Put Millions of Kids in Unsafe Places, Communities in Schools Went in After Them. - The 74

Women are highly underrepresented in the field of cybersecurity. In 2017, womens share in the U.S. cybersecurity field was 14%, compared to 48% in the general workforce.

The problem is more acute outside the U.S. In 2018, women accounted for 10% of the cybersecurity workforce in the Asia-Pacific region, 9% in Africa, 8% in Latin America, 7% in Europe and 5% in the Middle East.

Women are even less well represented in the upper echelons of security leadership. Only 1% of female internet security workers are in senior management positions.

I study online crime and security issues facing consumers, organizations and nations. In my research, I have found that internet security requires strategies beyond technical solutions. Womens representation is important because women tend to offer viewpoints and perspectives that are different from mens, and these underrepresented perspectives are critical in addressing cyber risks.

The low representation of women in internet security is linked to the broader problem of their low representation in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. Only 30% of scientists and engineers in the U.S. are women.

The societal view is that internet security is a job that men do, though there is nothing inherent in gender that predisposes men to be more interested in or more adept at cybersecurity. In addition, the industry mistakenly gives potential employees the impression that only technical skills matter in cybersecurity, which can give women the impression that the field is overly technical or even boring.

Women are also generally not presented with opportunities in information technology fields. In a survey of women pursuing careers outside of IT fields, 69% indicated that the main reason they didnt pursue opportunities in IT was because they were unaware of them.

Organizations often fail to try to recruit women to work in cybersecurity. According to a survey conducted by IT security company Tessian, only about half of the respondents said that their organizations were doing enough to recruit women into cybersecurity roles.

Gender bias in job ads further discourages women from applying. Online cybersecurity job ads often lack gender-neutral language.

Boosting womens involvement in information security makes both security and business sense. Female leaders in this area tend to prioritize important areas that males often overlook. This is partly due to their backgrounds. Forty-four percent of women in information security fields have degrees in business and social sciences, compared to 30% of men.

Female internet security professionals put a higher priority on internal training and education in security and risk management. Women are also stronger advocates for online training, which is a flexible, low-cost way of increasing employees awareness of security issues.

Female internet security professionals are also adept at selecting partner organizations to develop secure software. Women tend to pay more attention to partner organizations qualifications and personnel, and they assess partners ability to meet contractual obligations. They also prefer partners that are willing to perform independent security tests.

Increasing womens participation in cybersecurity is a business issue as well as a gender issue. According to an Ernst & Young report, by 2028 women will control 75% of discretionary consumer spending worldwide. Security considerations like encryption, fraud detection and biometrics are becoming important in consumers buying decisions. Product designs require a trade-off between cybersecurity and usability. Female cybersecurity professionals can make better-informed decisions about such trade-offs for products that are targeted at female customers.

Attracting more women to cybersecurity requires governments, nonprofit organizations, professional and trade associations and the private sector to work together. Public-private partnership projects could help solve the problem in the long run.

One example is Israels Shift community, previously known as the CyberGirlz program, which is jointly financed by the countrys Defense Ministry, the Rashi Foundation and Start-Up Nation Central. It identifies high school girls with aptitude, desire and natural curiosity to learn IT and and helps them develop those skills.

The girls participate in hackathons and training programs, and get advice, guidance and support from female mentors. Some of the mentors are from elite technology units of the countrys military. The participants learn hacking skills, network analysis and the Python programming language. They also practice simulating cyber-attacks to find potential vulnerabilities. By 2018, about 2,000 girls participated in the CyberGirlz Club and the CyberGirlz Community.

In 2017, cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks teamed up with the Girl Scouts of the USA to develop cybersecurity badges. The goal is to foster cybersecurity knowledge and develop interest in the profession. The curriculum includes the basics of computer networks, cyberattacks and online safety.

Professional associations can also foster interest in cybersecurity and help women develop relevant knowledge. For example, Women in Cybersecurity of Spain has started a mentoring program that supports female cybersecurity professionals early in their careers.

Some industry groups have collaborated with big companies. In 2018, Microsoft India and the Data Security Council of India launched the CyberShikshaa program in order to create a pool of skilled female cybersecurity professionals.

Some technology companies have launched programs to foster womens interest in and confidence to pursue internet security careers. One example is IBM Securitys Women in Security Excelling program, formed in 2015.

Attracting more women to the cybersecurity field requires a range of efforts. Cybersecurity job ads should be written so that female professionals feel welcome to apply. Recruitment efforts should focus on academic institutions with high female enrollment. Corporations should ensure that female employees see cybersecurity as a good option for internal career changes. And governments should work with the private sector and academic institutions to get young girls interested in cybersecurity.

Increasing womens participation in cybersecurity is good for women, good for business and good for society.

[Insight, in your inbox each day. You can get it with The Conversations email newsletter.]

Originally posted here:
The lack of women in cybersecurity leaves the online world at greater risk - The Conversation US

The greatest question facing the financial markets is what the economy here and abroad will look like until we get to the other side - meaning a vaccine protecting us from COVID-19.

While we remain confident that there will be many therapeutics and much more testing by the fall, we still believe that the recovery will be an elongated U resulting in many companies, big and small, remaining under severe pressure, with some even filing bankruptcy, which would create another set of problems for the markets.

Clearly the unemployment rate will remain incredibly high throughout the next 18+ months maintaining pressure on The Fed to continue to inject more liquidity into the financial markets and the government to introduce several new phases of support, including more stimulus checks to help individuals and companies make it to the other side.

These actions support moving out on the risk curve owning financial assets. The economy will not return to any semblance of normal until we are all vaccinated which takes us into 2022 at the earliest. We want to emphasize that this is a pandemic that is impacting our economy, not a financial problem. Our banking system is strong. This too shall pass.

Other areas of concern for the markets will be our relationship with China which is frayed and the upcoming Presidential election in the fall. The financial markets will face a continual tug of war between incredible liquidity, a weak economy, potential problems with China, and the election.

We continue to focus on the winners in the new normal and recommend avoiding all companies in need of government assistance as demand for their products/services have fallen off a cliff and won't return anything close to normal levels until 2021/22 at the earliest. Many won't make it!

We are concerned that many states are not adhering to government guidelines maintaining social distancing and requiring people to wear masks. We need to open, but let it be done judiciously. We are watching China to see what guidelines they are using. They are utilizing contact tracing, temperature checks, thermal imagining, face masks, and social distancing. China's economy is gradually improving as evidenced by a 3.8% gain in factory output in April. While consumer spending remained depressed in April, it did improve sequentially from March and will continue to get better in the months ahead. China's growth this year is reliant on domestic demand as exports will remain weak due to a total lack of demand abroad. We need to follow the same script as China as we open but that may be difficult in a democracy protecting individual freedoms.

The most important event of the week was Powell's speech last Wednesday where he mentioned that the U.S economy could remain mired in a recession if Congress and the White House did not provide more aid to address the effects of the virus. He mentioned that the recovery is dependent on how long it will take treatments to rise, whether the end of social distancing will spur new outbreaks, and when consumer and business confidence will return. He went on to say that answers to these questions will go a long way toward setting the timing and pace of the economic recovery. He concluded that the Fed will bring all its power to bear on stabilizing the economy and financial markets. He does not want negative rates and believes that fiscal support, while costly, is needed to avoid further economic damage. We concur on all counts

While we have many concerns, we remain confident that we will have enough testing by the fall, several therapeutics by mid-summer, and a vaccine within 18 months. All good news! We can move forward now opening up if the number of cases keeps falling and we adhere to the rules as any large outbreak would clearly push the economy back down. The bottom line is that the economy is bottoming but the effects of the coronavirus will linger for a long time until we are all vaccinated. S & P profits are not likely to reach a new high until the end of 2022, if then, but on the other hand, interest rates will remain unusually low.

We believe that the markets are within a trading range as the Fed will continue to provide all the liquidity needed to support the economy and financial markets providing wind to our back for profitable investing in the winners. Our investments remain concentrated in those companies whose business models are built around the internet as well as tied to growth in the cloud, data centers, and 5G. Consumer and business mindsets are changed forever. Chuck Robbins, head of Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO), mentioned on their earnings' call that corporations are racing to expand their internet/security capabilities which is an investable trend for many years. Yes, we are there.

Individuals are doing the same buying smart devices and adding web accounts like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN). Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) mentioned that they are unable to get a sufficient number of laptops for their employees working at home. On the other hand, there are so many industries/companies that will struggle until demand moves above 80% utilization which may not be for several years. Just avoid them.

While it is early, we have started to think about the other side. We do not think that there will be any reversal in fiscal and monetary policies until the economy is on firm footing which takes us out to sometime in 2022 at the earliest, regardless of who wins the Presidency. During the interim period, we expect all hands-on board to keep our economy, businesses, and individuals afloat. There is a possibility of a tax bill down the road that is revenue neutral raising taxes on the wealthy giving all the benefits to the lower/middle class. We do not expect corporate taxes to go up and there may even be additional corporate tax benefits to move plants here from abroad, especially in healthcare.

We are concerned about our relationship with China. We are believers in globalization but also recognize the need to protect IP and deal on a level playing field. This, not the time to have a trade conflict with our largest trading partner. Hopefully, cooler heads prevail.

The bottom line is that this is a market of stocks, not a stock market. We see a two-tier market where the number of winners is limited to companies that will improve their earnings over the next few years. While we have focused on the internet beneficiaries, we also believe that healthcare and some defensive consumer names will outperform for another year or so until the economy is more broadly expanding. We decided to exit our one financial investment as we see low-interest rates and narrow spreads extending for at least another year which will penalize profitability. We also sold our one industrial, a great company, as we see earnings pressure for at least another year. Listen to as many earnings calls as possible and avoid any company with financial risk.

We do not own any bonds, are flat the dollar, have no commodity positions, and do not have any ownership in private equity funds.

Let's be careful as we open up, maintain social distancing, do contact tracing, wear masks, and stay healthy.

Our weekly webinar will be held on Monday, May 18th at 8:30 am EST. Remember to review all the facts; pause, reflect, and consider mindset shifts; turn off cable news; do independent research and Invest Accordingly!

Original post

Editor's Note: The summary bullets for this article were chosen by Seeking Alpha editors.

More here:
Break On Through To The Other Side - Seeking Alpha

By Ehi Braimah

The novel coronavirus, COVID-19, is still on the war path, ravaging the land and killing people. However, we are consoled by the fact that whatever has a beginning will surely have an end and the human race will continue to endure from generation to generation. In challenging times, empathy matters; we have to remain resilient, hopeful, confident, optimistic and thoughtful about the future. The global economy has been severely impacted by COVID-19 and we must therefore adapt our normal lives to the significant changes taking place. What does the foreseeable future look like? We cannot tell but English Naturalist, Charles Darwin (1809 1882), famous for his Theory of Evolution, said, Those who survive are not the strongest or the most intelligent, but the most adaptable to change.

Every global crisis ushers in a new cultural moment which we must adapt to on the one hand, and embrace the challenges and opportunities on the other. As we go along and navigate these unchartered waters, Susan Kobasa, a psychologist writing in http://www.mindtools.com, reminds us that we must be resilient and never give up. She explains the importance of resilience as our ability to adapt and bounce back when things dont go as planned. Kobasa also highlighted the three characteristics of resilience as challenge (resilient people view difficulty as a challenge, not a paralysing event); commitment (resilient people are committed to their lives and goals) and personal control (resilient people focus on only the things they have control over). COVID-19 will impact our businesses in ways we never imagined but we can empower ourselves by adapting to the new reality and do even greater things.

Talking about changes, our world has also been disrupted by rapidly changing digital technologies in more ways than one and the three biggest enablers are the internet, smart phones and social media. The good news is that these changing technologies continually make our lives better. The largest accommodation provider in the world is AirBnB but it owns no real estate. Who would have thought, some years back, that you can actually share an apartment with strangers? Facebook is the most popular media in the world and yet it provides no content; Alibaba is the most valuable retailer but it has no inventory; Instagram does not sell cameras but we are happy to upload our photographs and share our stories thereby making it the most valuable photo company in the world. Now, we can book rides from our smart phones, making UBER, which owns no vehicle, the biggest taxi company in the world. Most car owners now prefer cab hailing services because it is actually cheaper when you consider the wear and tear on your car and cost of petrol. It is the same story with Netflix, the largest growing TV network that does not lay cables. What would life be like today without access to the internet or without these global tech brands? To be honest, it will be miserable. Theres so much happening on the World Wide Web with endless possibilities. We are gradually being introduced to the internet of things (IoT), augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G technologies.

Technology is placing useful information at our finger tips every blessed day. Computers are becoming increasingly faster, more portable and high-powered than ever before. See how Facebook has brought families and friends together with over 2.5 billion users, taking socialization to a new level. Practically everything well almost everything is done on the internet including online banking and online newspapering; businesses and schools have also migrated to the digital space. If youre travelling, you can book your ticket and make hotel reservation from any device, especially your smart phone. Any business, commercial and non-commercial organisation ignoring the internet does so at its own peril. With just a click of the button, searching the internet has been made easy with Google, the number one search engine brand in the world. According to Walter Landor (1913 1995), a pioneer of branding and consumer research techniques widely used to this day, Products are made in the factory but brands are created in the mind. Al Ries, one of the worlds best known marketing strategists, agrees that successful brands such as Facebook, UBER, Netflix, AirBnB, Alibaba, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Google are created in the mind through strategic positioning principles.

Like most businesses, Google also struggled when the company started. In his best-selling book, Burn the Business Plan, Carl Schramm, a university professor and entrepreneur, wrote this about Google: Just as in the big company environment, every startup has to constantly and continuously improve its products if it hopes to survive. Google provides a good example. At first, it foundered in a sea of search engine companies. Many observers didnt give it a chance in the face of Excite, Webcrawler, Altavista, Infoseek, and Yahoo. (Other than Yahoo, do you recognise those names?) It was not until Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, hired a professional CEO, Eric Schmidt, who in turn recruited Hal Varian, that the company found a way to make money. As an economics professor at Berkeley, Varian had developed the algorithms that enabled Google to devise targeted advertising. That business competence allowed it to rapidly rise to dominate the search industry.

In a world turned upside down by COVID-19, the global pandemic has taught us that remote learning and working are possible by deploying the relevant tech tools such as Zoom video conferencing, a cloud based service, during the forced lockdown. Recently, President Muhammadu Buhari joined advocates of remote working around the world when he participated in an extra-ordinary ECOWAS meeting in Abuja through a video conference to review the impact of the deadly coronavirus on the region. From my personal experience, remote learning is no longer a distant possibility; it is right here with us. Over a 30 months period, I took part in online classes for my MBA programme at the University of Roehampton, London. It was a very intense and rigorous schedule with short breaks between course modules. The only time we travelled to London was for the graduation ceremony.

Since the lockdown began, remote meetings have become the order of the day. We now conduct our weekly Rotary meetings using the Zoom video conference application which allows messages to be shared while the meeting is on; hands can be raised if you wish to speak by using the hand icon provided and microphones can be muted to allow for uninterrupted conversations. At a strategy session recently where we reviewed the impact of COVID-19 on businesses in Nigeria, there was a debate on our readiness to adopt remote working as a way of life. Toju Ogbe, a Nigerian communications strategist based in the UK, was one of the participants and he does not think remote working will become our new reality in the immediate aftermath of COVID-19 because of our peculiar challenges.

Ogbe said, Nigeria is still significantly unprepared for large scale adoption of remote learning and working. For instance, if you consider the proportion of schools especially public schools that do not have the capacity to offer remote learning, you will see that we are yet to scratch the surface. I would imagine it is the same in the work place, and the issue is less about our choice and more about our readiness. The public and private sector organisations should collaborate and develop a framework with timelines for remote learning and working capabilities. However, in the UK and other advanced countries, remote working is not a new thing because the available infrastructure supports online studies and working from home.

Debo Adebayo, a management consultant and facilitator of the session, disagreed with Ogbe because, according to him, he worked on a regular basis remotely for some clients before COVID-19. The key to remote working is to have a clear cut contract with you client and effective performance management system, Adebayo advised. Remote learning and working will become our new reality from the lock down experience. As a way of reducing cost, most organisations will encourage remote working, he added. Yemi Adeboye, former Corporate Relations Manager of Unilever Nigeria PLC, observed that there are costs associated with working from home. To be able to study or work remotely, you need space, laptop, electricity supply and internet access. Who bears these costs, especially expensive data and diesel or petrol for your generator because of erratic power supply? Adeboye asked. These costs can be factored into invoices submitted to clients by consultants; however, where employees are concerned, the organisation they work for should absorb the costs based on the terms and conditions for working from home.

Participants were in agreement that the challenges posed by low speed internet, expensive data and poor electricity supply are constraints that should be addressed by the relevant organisations as we embrace remote learning and working. In a congested city such as Lagos, where you can be held up in traffic for over three hours on your way to attend a meeting, remote meetings may be the solution to save time and other resources. For some organisations, remote working may not be applicable because of the need to protect sensitive proprietary tools and information. In such scenarios, you can only work from within the company premises by logging into a remote serve, and once you step out, you are logged out.

Ogbe also observed that working from home requires total commitment and adjustment of our thinking, orientation and mindset. If you agree with your employer that you will work for six hours from home on a particular day, please for Gods sake, make sure you work for six hours, he admonished, with a strong accent on integrity because our word should be our bond. The issue of internet security also came up during the strategy session especially now that Zoom meetings are becoming popular. The ICT expert among us, Fred Chukwuemeka Agbata Jnr., presenter of Tech Trends on Channels TV and Regional Director of Founder Institute, noted that hackers are on the prowl every minute of the day and cautioned that we must take our personal security on the internet very seriously. We have since discovered that social media accounts and even chats as well as voice/video calls on WhatsApp are not safe. Do not click on any suspicious link or open a spam email; instead, delete immediately or you can copy and paste the link on a new web browser so that your devices and information are not compromised. Nigeria can create massive opportunities for digital business if only we can establish our own local data centres and empower the ICT professionals.

Group meetings/conferences are also conducted using Facebook, Instagram and Twitter applications. WhatsApp is a popular medium of communication with chat, voice and video capabilities for local/international calls free of charge. Meetings also take place in WhatsApp groups, and in some cases, WhatsApp forums are created to achieve different objectives. By the way, Facebook is the owner of Instagram and WhatsApp Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion 18 months after it was launched, and subsequently bought WhatsApp when it was five years for $19 billion.

Remote working is flexible because you can be in control of your time. In fact, it was agreed during the session that employees are likely to be more productive when they work from home as long as a good performance management framework is in place as Adebayo noted. As we prepare for the post quarantine era, remote learning and working will still come across as a form of culture shock; a practice we are not generally used to but the more we embrace tech tools and their applications, the more we are likely to adopt the range of benefits in spite of the limitations of irregular electricity supply, expensive data and internet disruptions. The rest of the world is moving ahead in the digital space and we cannot afford to be left behind.

*Braimah is a public relations and marketing strategist based in Lagos

Excerpt from:
Embracing Remote Learning and Working after COVID-19 as our New Reality - THISDAY Newspapers