Self-Motivation: Key Skills for Healthy Habits

In today’s world, we’re hell-bent on having the right information, and knowing the right things – especially when it comes to our health, whether it’s mental, physical, our habits – we know what needs to be done, but we don’t do it – why? 

This is how Dr. Aleksandar Mitov – a Master of Public Health, studying the environmental effects on people, while also working with patients helping them change their habits and lifestyle – started his incredible presentation with us at IT Labs, and we were hooked from the get-go. 

Knowing things doesn’t matter if we don’t have the self-motivation to actualize them and turn them into reality – we won’t lead healthy lives and have healthy habits if we don’t work on them. Dr. Mitov dived deep into how we can motivate ourselves, as this is a skill that we can learn. 

Dr. Aleksandar Mitov

Public Health Specialist

The amazing presentation was in three parts:

Part I

What is Self-motivation, what isn’t, and why is it important? 

Part II

The Three Sources of Self-motivation

Part III

Deeper and Practical Aspects of Self-motivation


AMA Session - Everyone’s A Leader: The 5 Dimensions of Leadership

Perspectives on many things in life change the way we approach them. Just like an impactful art piece in a gallery, when we move around it, a change in perspective creates a different impact on the eye of the beholder. The same is true for leadership.

The perspective on leadership in this webinar comes from the Co-Active Leadership model. An enlightening and enabling multidimensional approach which supersedes the top-down, one-dimensional model – that IT Labs’ People Development Coach and Strategist, TC Gill feels plagues far too many companies to this day.

The topics covered in the webinar

What is Business Agility and Why is it Important?

The Different Perspectives and How They Affect Our Judgement and Efficiency

The Co-Active Model - Layout

Leadership in Practice : CTO Confessions


Business Reimagined: Insights from Industry Experts

Business Reimagined


Insights from Industry Experts

Being a leader and an expert is all about having the skills and the know-how to deliver value to people, share knowledge, and help others learn and grow.

Our ‘Business Reimagined’ sessions are designed by industry leaders – for industry leaders. To help them by bringing forth the issues of here and now while providing innovative approaches and methods to tackle them.

In the latest session on June 30th in London, we had John Abadom, TC Gill, Tino Samardjioski, and Alex Randall – all experts in their fields, shining a light on some of the biggest problems in home development, cybersecurity, and agile methodology – and how to solve them.

The agenda of the Business Reimagined seminar was as follows:

Limbering Up your Business - Organizational Yoga


Many things cause businesses to rigidify, thicken, and turn numb – some might even say fossilize. And none of these bode well for an organization, its people, and the customers they yearn to serve and delight. Inspired by the 100+ Techleaders that have been guests on the IT Labs CTO Confessions podcast and the growing business agility movement, TC Gill introduces the idea of organizational constraints, visualizes them, and looks at how we address flow in organizations with what you already have. A quick sharp glimpse at some concepts to spark some enlightenment, and maybe even some next step yoga moves to limber up your organization.


Security Challenges and Proper Handling


Cyber security risks have been evolving for every sector of the economy over the years, and the result is that no industry is now off-limits to threat actors. It’s no wonder that any organization or individual is liable to be the victim of cybercriminals. Many organizations still can’t recognize and protect against cybersecurity risks that evolved from the hybrid working model. We will introduce best security practices and tools to help identify and mitigate cybersecurity attacks.


Key Housing Technology Signpost


Housing associations in England spend up to £5.5bn+ on repair and maintenance costs yearly, which translates to an average of £1,579 per home. Housing associations needed to scale back repair and maintenance costs during the pandemic, creating a backlog they now need to catch up on and complete. Add this to the new regulations and demands, a new approach is necessary for the Housing Associations to satisfy requirements and remain compliant – or face penalties, claims, and suffer a loss of brand reputation. The solution? Data-driven enhancement of habitual dwellings.


Why Data is Critical to Improving the UK Social Housing Epidemic?


The social housing sector has a history of neglecting data, but data will shape the world around us and help solve some of the most significant issues we’re facing, as well as the ones that are yet to come. In this session, you’ll learn more about what data is needed to access ECO4 & SHDFw.2, how data can help create a more sustainable and efficient future, and how we can use data to solve the fuel poverty epidemic. 

The agenda of the Business Reimagined seminar was as follows:

Limbering Up your Business - Organizational Yoga


Many things cause businesses to rigidify, thicken, and turn numb – some might even say fossilize. And none of these bode well for an organization, its people, and the customers they yearn to serve and delight. Inspired by the 100+ Techleaders that have been guests on the IT Labs CTO Confessions podcast and the growing business agility movement, TC Gill introduces the idea of organizational constraints, visualizes them, and looks at how we address flow in organizations with what you already have. A quick sharp glimpse at some concepts to spark some enlightenment, and maybe even some next step yoga moves to limber up your organization.


Security Challenges and Proper Handling


Cyber security risks have been evolving for every sector of the economy over the years, and the result is that no industry is now off-limits to threat actors. It’s no wonder that any organization or individual is liable to be the victim of cybercriminals. Many organizations still can’t recognize and protect against cybersecurity risks that evolved from the hybrid working model. We will introduce best security practices and tools to help identify and mitigate cybersecurity attacks.


Key Housing Technology Signpost


Housing associations in England spend up to £5.5bn+ on repair and maintenance costs yearly, which translates to an average of £1,579 per home. Housing associations needed to scale back repair and maintenance costs during the pandemic, creating a backlog they now need to catch up on and complete. Add this to the new regulations and demands, a new approach is necessary for the Housing Associations to satisfy requirements and remain compliant – or face penalties, claims, and suffer a loss of brand reputation. The solution? Data-driven enhancement of habitual dwellings.


Why Data is Critical to Improving the UK Social Housing Epidemic?


The social housing sector has a history of neglecting data, but data will shape the world around us and help solve some of the most significant issues we’re facing, as well as the ones that are yet to come. In this session, you’ll learn more about what data is needed to access ECO4 & SHDFw.2, how data can help create a more sustainable and efficient future, and how we can use data to solve the fuel poverty epidemic. 


Corporate Security: Strong Security Principles Supported by Proper HW Setup

What’s the one thing that we can pinpoint as the driver of a business? Is it just one? What are the things that help companies grow, underpinning all their efforts and ensuring seamless flow?

Is it a good product? Good processes? Proper methods?

Well, it’s all of the above, but the one thing that ensures that everything goes well is security. Why? Because all businesses are susceptible to breaches – some more, some less – but it’s the one thing that if it happens, it can harm the clients, the employees, and make a business seem unreliable.
In order to reduce the risks of becoming a victim of breaches, data theft, fraud, and other types of cybercrime, it’s essential that security principles and protocols are put in place.

But how does one go about it? Our Senior Security Officer, Tino Samardjioski, and our Chief Innovation Officer, Blagoj Kjupev, held a hybrid webinar in which they dived into the topic, covering the basics as well as going into details on how you can protect your business by setting up strong security principles.

Below, you can see the full agenda on what is covered in the webinar:

Information Security vs Cyber Security

The similarities and differences between the two, why this distinction is important, and the effect it has. An intro to the CIA Triad.

Data Protection

The perspective on data from a security point of view.

Challenges and Risks in Corporate Security

Different working models come with their own benefits, but also risks, such as: BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), IoT, Remote Working, Visibility & Monitoring, Hybrid infrastructure.

Tools for Improving Cyber Security Hygiene

Some tools and policies that are essential for good cybersecurity hygiene such as asset discovery, MDM and MAM, Log management system (or SIEM), scanning for vulnerabilities, conditional access polices

Secure System Architecture and Engineering Principles

The process of adopting and implementing secure architecture principles and a security-focused design review process, and the criteria on which they need to be based.

Overall Network Diagram and Secure Points

The reality of firewall security and how the basics that need to be covered to be properly protected.

Inside Standard Firewall

The structure and elements of a standard firewall.

Secure Boot Overview and Building Root of Trust

The chain of events and processes that ensure that a piece of hardware of software is secure.

Full Boot Sequence

An end-to-end description of the process of booting up the secure boot functions.


Rest Assured: A Crash Course Into Java's Library for testing RESTful Web Services with Sanja Paskova


Transformation, Culture, Flow and Leadership in the Digital Era

The Digital Era is one of unprecedented change, disruption, and uncertainty.

Organizations need to learn how to survive and thrive, thus enabling organizational growth and inspiring top performance – or risk fading into obscurity and out of the market.
So sustainable growth and resilience are achievable – companies are already doing it – but how?
Through adaptation. Adapting to the one constant in today’s era – change. Changing environments, changing conditions, and learning new ways to be efficient in them.
In this webinar, you can learn how culture, flow, and inspiring leadership can be the fundamental pillars on which one can build truly resilient and sustainable organizations – through the minds of two exciting fellas who boast their fair share of experience in the world of IT and entrepreneurship.
IT Labs’ TC Gill as a host and Bard Papegaaij from Cycle to Accelerate as a guest speaker will dive deep into the subject, elaborating through experience and examples from theory.


Webinar: AI at the Edge with Chris Cope and Andrew Hurd

Webinar #13: AI at the Edge with Chris Cope and Andrew Hurd from ‘Roedan’

The world of artificial intelligence is a never-ending fascination to all. This technological advance occurred in the 1950s and has been quietly gaining strength in software laboratories. There is no doubt about its potential impact on the future of virtually every industry and human being. Have you ever thought about how it might benefit everyday human life? Your life?

We here at IT Labs have decided to take a deep dive into an emerging subtopic in the field: AI at the Edge. This subfield is adding a new explosive dimension to the world of IoT. We love this subject’s potential, so much, we’ve invited some experts in the field to conduct a webinar for us on the subject with a real-life example of how it can be used now.

Chris Cope and Andrew Hurd from Roedan, a company specializing in embedded system design, demonstrated real-life use case and implementation. We dived into the intriguing world of Edge AI with our two guests, discussing the potential upsides of this technology (there are many) through a facial recognition system demonstration with a proof–of–concept implementation.

Topics covered in the session were:

• What is AI at the Edge?
• The financial savings
• The security benefits
• The future course of AI

The first 30 minutes was a presentation by Chris Cope and Andrew Hurd from ‘Roedan’, followed by a Q&A session where the guests joined the discussion.

Date: April 29th 2021

Our Guests: Chris Cope and Andrew Hurd


Webinar: GDPR Privacy and Security with Goran Chamurovski

Webinar: GDPR Privacy and Security – How to Fix the Broken Value Chain with Goran Chamurovski

As varied as tech leaders’ roles are, there’s one topical water that all are swimming in: Privacy and security. And those waters can be murky!

Not to worry, we’ve brought in security expert Goran Chamurovski to share his deeper-than-deep understanding of GDPR.

Key topics we’ll cover:
• How to reconcile security and privacy with the business benefit
• How GDPR intends to force this through the regulation
• How we can fix the broken value chain

The first 30 minutes is a presentation by Goran Chamurovski, followed by a Q&A session where the guests joined the discussion.

Date: February 11th 2021

Our Guest: Goran Chamurovski
LinkedIn


Webinar: 7 Vital Lessons I learned as a CTO with Felix Hovsepian

7 Vital Lessons I learned as a CTO – Some steps to make life easier as a tech leader (Life’s complicated enough)

Our guest Felix Hovsepian, a veteran CTO, shares some vital lessons garnered from his work as a tech leader. While these 7 vital tips are pure gold for new and aspiring CTOs, there is also much here for existing CTOs to chew on as well.

We will cover subjects such as AI & ML, with particular emphasis on the outcomes this newfangled technology can create. More importantly, we’ll discuss the risks surrounding new technology meeting the needs of humanity. The current risks around this technology are rarely futuristic (e.g., Terminator). Instead, we can be naively seduced by what seem to be benign technologies permeating all areas of our lives and societies, mistakenly concluding they will be harmless. Felix and podcast host TC explore the risks as tech leaders, discuss where caution is needed, and Felix provides tips to mitigate the dangers surrounding it.

Key takeaways from the Webinar are:

• A CTO is a leadership role, not a management role.
• Business is about people, be they within the organization or outside it.
• Commercial R&D is notoriously difficult, and not just related to technology — it requires a team with just the right mix of knowledge, experience, and interdisciplinary ability.
• Awareness of risks, particularly human-centric ones, when introducing new technologies (AI/ML)

The first 40 minutes are a presentation by Felix Hovsepian, followed by a Q&A session where the guests join the discussion.

Date of webinar: December 17th, 2020
Time: 08:00am PST |11:00am EST | 16:00 GMT |17:00 CET

Our Guest: Felix Hovsepian
LinkedIn


Webinar: DevOps - Resilient Transformation with Manoj Khanna

As a tech leader, you may get the feeling that DevOps has yet more to offer? Well, IT Labs Chief methodologists Manoj Khanna, an expert in this arena, has presented a Webinar, that can give you important insights on DevOps in the context of creating resilient transformation.

Key takeaways from the Webinar are:

• How to create resilient Transformation through DevOps?
• How to address the challenges of DevOps transformation?
• How to enable business success through DevOps?