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The end of each year provides an opportunity for reflection on the past and preparation for the future. 2009 was quite a year – filled with new challenges and opportunities. But through it all, lessons were learned as people began to navigate through a changed business environment. In our series of Blogs “2009 Reflections,” we will be sharing interviews with Five Star team members who tell what they learned in 2009 and what they are preparing for in 2010.

In this blog post we will be sharing our recent interview with Ben Rogers.

Ben Rogers
Director, Technology Solutions

What has ’09 taught you?
There are things Five Star does very well, and we’ve relied on those things in 2009. We are established in the training, design, and technology delivery field and ’09 has taught me that we can do those things well even in difficult times. At a personal level, I have also learned to be patient in determining when to learn and leverage new technology.

What is the one big lesson that you learned this year?
At Five Star, we really strive to refine and perfect our processes, our technical development skills, and our quality. We sometimes have had to realize that those things don’t always translate directly to customer service, so we really want to focus on our clients knowing that we are always responsive and that we put them first.

What is your biggest personal accomplishment?
Watching my team (the technology development team) come together to get through difficult projects.

What do you believe is Five Star’s biggest accomplishment this year?
Maintaining good relationships with existing clients and expanding our client base in a difficult economy.

What do you hope to learn in 2010?
How to balance time better; there are areas where I want to pursue learning new technology and I would like to balance that with spending more time with the team and helping them be more active in establishing and meeting their goals.

Final thoughts
This year was difficult, but we’ve come out of it as a stronger team. We learned encouraging things about who we are and what we can do.

The end of each year provides an opportunity for reflection on the past and preparation for the future. 2009 was quite a year – filled with new challenges and opportunities. But through it all, lessons were learned as people began to navigate through a changed business environment. In our series of Blogs “2009 Reflections,” we will be sharing interviews with Five Star team members who tell what they learned in 2009 and what they are preparing for in 2010.

In this blog post we will be sharing our recent interview with Lou Camerlengo.

Lou Camerlengo
President

What has ’09 taught you?
It has shown me that staff versatility and corporate agility continue to be important competencies.

What is the one big lesson that you learned this year?
The importance of continually communicating the status of business conditions with our team. Benchmarking our company’s progress on goals helps keep the team focused and motivated. You can never communicate too much.

What is your biggest personal accomplishment?
Getting settled and established in our new offices. It’s really helped our productivity and our ability to interact across all areas of the company.

What do you believe is Five Star’s biggest accomplishment this year?
Five Star’s marketing team did a really nice job of developing a comprehensive methodology and approach to external communications. We are consistently delivering value-added educational webinars, seminars, and newsletters as part of growing our brand as thought leaders.

How are you going to transfer what you learned in 2009 to 2010?
By focusing on professional development to enable our team to expand their skills within their discipline.

What do you hope to learn in 2010?
As a niche company, it’s vital to keep everyone engaged in new challenges and growth opportunities. I am going to focus on developing a more robust “leaders at every-level culture.”

Final thoughts
I am optimistic about 2010. I think we did a nice job this year of identifying and bringing on key new accounts and adding new levels of service to our existing clients.

The end of each year provides an opportunity for reflection on the past and preparation for the future. 2009 was quite a year – filled with new challenges and opportunities. But through it all, lessons were learned as people began to navigate through a changed business environment. In our series of Blogs “2009 Reflections,” we will be sharing interviews with Five Star team members who tell what they learned in 2009 and what they are preparing for in 2010.

In this blog post we will be sharing our recent interview with Rick Wagner.

Rick Wagner
Director, Client Services

What has ’09 taught you?
’09 has taught me that we are still finding new ways to apply technology to improve training and performance support. Advancements in video, social media, and online help systems have increased the opportunities to provide employees with the information they need in the format that works best for them.

What is the one big lesson that you learned this year?
In tough economic times the importance of strong relationships with clients, internal teams, and partners becomes that much more vital. The challenge of being even more efficient and finding new ways to achieve our clients’ goals has been hard work, but it has also been very rewarding.

What is your biggest personal accomplishment?
On a personal level, I am very excited that my youngest is now potty trained. Eleven years and four children later, there is no more diaper changing in the Wagner house!

Another big accomplishment was the development of an eCommerce site for the Western Pennsylvania Habitat for Humanity’s largest fundraiser. Five Star helped the Habitat for Humanity raise over $60,000!

What do you believe is Five Star’s biggest accomplishment this year?
From a Client Services standpoint; we were able to add new clients locally and nationally in a tough economic climate.

How are you going to transfer what you learned in 2009 to 2010?
I think 2009 challenged us to really be creative and to do more with less. I hope to continue to challenge myself, our internal team, and our clients to find new and better ways to solve problems. I am very optimistic about 2010!

What do you hope to learn in 2010?
I would like to explore tangible ways to help people perform better at their job and share information with others using social media and other technologies. I think we have only scratched the surface of applying these strategies to workplace performance.

Final thoughts
Is it really 2010 already?

I’m writing this post as a follow-up to the Adobe Captivate Font Rendering post from October because an issue was left unresolved. If the standard font formats are OpenType and TrueType, and even the Adobe Collection of fonts distributed with Adobe programs contains all OpenType fonts, where canyou find the PostScript fonts you need for Captivate projects?

Of course you could purchase them, but that’s not ideal. The price for the PostScript version of one of our client’s fonts is $500 because it’s packaged with the TrueType version (which we already have).

So I searched the Web for an open source converter and found FontForge. To install FontForge on a Windows OS you must also install cygwin. On a Mac you need to install the X11 server. Cygwin and the X11 server will make your machine look enough like a UNIX machine to run the program. This is a fine solution for a developer or technology-savvy person, but I know our Instructional Designers who use Captivate will certainly be intimidated and deterred by the process.

The best solution I found for converting any type of font to a PostScript format is FontLab‘s product TransType Pro, which costs $179. Unfortunately the demo download for TransType does not allow you to test the conversion of a font to PostScript. Although FontLab products come with a 60-day money-back guarantee, if you wish to test a conversion before making a purchase, you may use the demo download for FontLab Studio to convert 20 characters of your font set. You can then test the font in Captivate using only those 20 characters to see if the conversion will meet your standards.

The end of each year provides an opportunity for reflection on the past and preparation for the future. 2009 was quite a year – filled with new challenges and opportunities. But through it all, lessons were learned as people began to navigate through a changed business environment. In our series of Blogs “2009 Reflections,” we will be sharing interviews with Five Star team members who tell what they learned in 2009 and what they are preparing for in 2010.

In this blog post we will be sharing our recent interview with Cory Seaman.

Cory Seaman
Director, Research and Technology Services

What has ’09 taught you?
During the first half of the year we were not able to focus too heavily on what we’d hoped for the year—tackling technology challenges and developing new products for clients and for our own use. Recently I’ve spent a lot of time working with our development team on client projects because we’ve had some large, long-running projects and haven’t been able to take on new full-time resources. This has made me realize that you have to make the best of and remain fully engaged wherever circumstances take you.

What is the one big lesson that you learned this year?
Flexibility is one of the most difficult and one of the most critical attributes to demonstrate during times of economic difficulty. Adaptability has been exemplified by our staff; people have done a phenomenal job adjusting and making personal sacrifices where necessary They have reacted well to changing expectations when it’s been extremely hard to do so.

What is your biggest personal accomplishment?
Reaching the latest delivery milestones with the technology development team for a program launch. Since my role doesn’t frequently allow me to work full-time as a part of the development team, it was great to help out.

What do you believe is Five Star’s biggest accomplishment this year?
I think the fact that we’ve retained our footing and have come through some difficult choices in the face of adversity this year, combined with the fact that we continue to be one of Pennsylvania’s Best Places to Work is a testament to the excellence and perseverance of our company.

How are you going to transfer what you learned in 2009 to 2010?
There are a number of things I would like to improve within our network infrastructure, such as introducing Windows 7. I also learned a lot from a Microsoft Technology Conference that I would like to continue implementing in 2010, beginning with the consolidation of our web and application servers through virtualization. This will allow us to save energy, lower costs, and reduce our hardware footprint.

What do you hope to learn in 2010?
My hope has been to continue growing my research role and exposing Five Star to the new or existing technologies that we can best leverage as a company. I’m also anxious to find opportunities to create “shelf ready” projects and map out some new tools and technologies that we can offer to our clients.

Final thoughts
This is an interesting time because there are a lot of new tools available, but there are also a lot of tight belts in terms of budgets and financial resources that necessarily limit what we’re able to do. It’s also a challenge to balance client needs with our own at times. But with a better outlook on the horizon and a number of new avenues to pursue, it’s hard not to be excited about the year ahead.

The end of each year provides an opportunity for reflection on the past and preparation for the future. 2009 was quite a year – filled with new challenges and opportunities. But through it all, lessons were learned as people began to navigate through a changed business environment. In our series of Blogs “2009 Reflections,” we will be sharing interviews with Five Star team members who tell what they learned in 2009 and what they are preparing for in 2010.

In this blog post we will be sharing our recent interview with Angel Lehrian.

Angel Lehrian
Director, Human Resources

What has ’09 taught you?
There are ups and downs, but you have to persevere and move forward.

What is the one big lesson that you learned this year?
You have to take advantage of a down economy to build a connection with the talented people who are unemployed so that you can hire them when things pick up.

What is your biggest personal accomplishment?
Besides my two children, having Five Star recognized as one of the Best Places to Work in Western PA and being involved with the Five Star Cares program.

What do you believe is Five Star’s biggest accomplishment this year?
In a period of an economic downturn, we were still able to attract new clients and keep our existing clients happy. An internal accomplishment is Five Star’s receipt of the Best Places to Work award.

How are you going to transfer what you learned in 2009 to 2010?
It is important to learn from the past. I plan to use lessons learned over the last year to explore new, innovative ways to attract and retain employees.

What do you hope to learn in 2010?
I hope to learn more about the health care reform bill and how it will affect our employees.

Final thoughts
Five Star Cares is an exciting program and brings value to our community.  One of my goals is to increase involvement in it in 2010.

I have been trying to figure out the best way to display HTML text in dynamic text fields for ActionScript 3.0 projects over the past six months. The best solution for Five Star is one that keeps the file size small, is versatile enough to handle different fonts with ease and adapts to different projects with little or no customization.

The solution that has evolved is a function named DisplayText, which I have copied below. The comments explain how the function works and an example call is included.

If you try implementing this solution and find it useful, if you need help or would like to enhance it, please leave a comment below.

/**
 *  Takes a string of text that may have bold and italic tags.
 *  Displays string properly in an HTML TextField by replacing the bold and italic
 *  tags with font tags.
 *  Fonts should be linked in the library.
 *  Each version (regular, bold, italic) should have its own link.
 *  If 2 versions of the font (ex. regular and italic) have the same name
 *  in the Font Symbol Properties dialog Font menu you don't need specify the italic
 *  or bold version.
 *  Example Call:
 *   var s:String = "Hi, and welcome to <b>Lesson 1:</b><i>Topic 1</i>."
 *   DisplayText( display_txt, s, 13, "Franklin Gothic Book", "Franklin Gothic Demi" );
 * @param    tf                TextField to format
 * @param    s                 Text to place.
 * @param    size              Size of text display.
 * @param    defaultFont       Regular font.
 * @param    boldFont          Optional. Bold font.
 * @param    italicFont        Optional. Italic font.
 */
 function DisplayText ( tf:TextField,
                         s:String,
                         size:Number,
                         defaultFont:String,
                         boldFont:String = "",
                         italicFont:String = "") : void
 {
     tf.htmlText = true;              // Set this to allow HTML text to be set
     tf.embedFonts = true;            // Set embed fonts to true
     tf.text = s;                     // Assign text - but not as htmlText yet

     // If a bold font is specified, replace bold tags
     if ( boldFont != "")
     {
         var boldStart:RegExp = /<b>|<B>/gi;            //    Match opening bold tags
         var boldEnd:RegExp = /<\/b>|<\/B>/gi;         //    Match ending bold tags

         tf.text = tf.text.replace( boldStart , "<font face='" + boldFont + "'>" );
        tf.text = tf.text.replace( boldEnd , "</font>" );
     }

     // If a italic font is specified, replace italic tags
     if ( italicFont != "")
     {
         var italicStart:RegExp = /<i>|<i>/gi;          //    Match opening italic tags
         var italicEnd:RegExp = /<\/i>|<\/I>/gi;        //    Match ending italic tags

         tf.text = tf.text.replace( italicStart , "<font face='" + italicFont + "'>" );
         tf.text = tf.text.replace( italicEnd , "</font>" );
     }

     // Wrap the text in a tag defining default font face and size
     tf.text = "<FONT FACE='" + defaultFont + "' SIZE='" + size + "'>" +
                tf.text + "</FONT>";
     // Assign the text
     tf.htmlText = tf.text;
 }

Below is video from our recent webinar on “6 Best Practices for Gaining End-user Adoption of New Technology.” In this video Dave Colaizzi discusses the value of change management, change communications, training, and performance support in gaining end-user adoption of new technology.

Below is video from our recent webinar on “6 Best Practices for Gaining End-user Adoption of New Technology.” In this video Dave Colaizzi discusses strategies for setting clear expectations and measuring success in the process of rolling out new technology.

Below is video from our recent webinar on “6 Best Practices for Gaining End-user Adoption of New Technology.” In this video Dave Colaizzi discusses strategies for gaining end-user and stakeholder buy-in for new technology.