Peer Power Blog

Hurricane Sandy is starting to wind down and while there has been much damage, it seems most of the HTG members on the east coast have been spared for the most part.  I sent out personal emails to our affected members, and received responses from over 40 of them yesterday.  The good news is that while there are definitely some challenges with power and water and other inconveniences, overall the companies seem to be on their way to recovery.  The feedback was positive and spirits were generally very good.  A few were closed due to lack of power, or in some cases no phone service or Internet access.  But in general it appears our members were spared to a large degree,... Continue reading

By Zack Schuler President/CEO Cal Net Technology Group I am of the opinion that no matter what faith you hold, your faith will teach you that taking care of the less fortunate is an essential element of obedience.  Even if you have no faith, in your heart you likely realize that taking care of the less fortunate is “a good thing.”  That said, there are many different ways and forms of taking care of the less fortunate.  There are ways that foster sustainability such as working with a fatherless child, and teaching him something that he will use for the rest of his life.  Helping others to help themselves, has both been an American tradition (at least until recently), and has been taught b... Continue reading

I spent three days last week in Joplin Missouri helping HTS and HTG8 member John Motazedi deal with the aftermath of a disastrous tornado.  I took a team of 10 others from HTS/HTG Harlan and were joined by HTG members from across the country – some face to face – some doing remote work – but all helping in the response efforts.  I learned some important lessons from the few days in the middle of the chaos.  Take a look at some of the things I discovered: You need to be your first DR/BC client You can't help anyone if you don't have your own house in order.  Before you can respond to other's needs, you need to be able to recover your own business.  Often we forget just how limited we will b... Continue reading

The Participation  To Be Qualified for assistance an HTG member needs to: ·         Be a member in good standing with Heartland Tech Groups or be employed by a company in good standing ·         Have a personal life and legacy plan completed and posted to the HTG portal ·         Have a company disaster recovery and business continuity plan completed and posted to the HTG portal ·         Be a contributing member to Hands That Give  The Process ·         Each member must have a disaster recovery plan and personal legacy plan in process or completed ·         A request is made to the Hands That Give board of directors via phone or  email with declaration form ·         Unaffected mem... Continue reading

The Big Moment It happened while at the CompTIA event in San Antonio in the fall of 2010 when Lester Keizer from Xilocore asked that we might sit down and visit.  He shared that there was something he wanted to talk about with me that might be a fit for HTG.  We met and as we shared our hearts that day to help people and give freely of what we had – it was obvious that we were on the same page talking about the same dream.  And so Hands That Give was born.  Lester committed a resource we didn’t have, and hadn’t even gotten around to understanding we would need, in Mike Semel who is a trained disaster recovery specialist and works for his company.  Lester and Mike have been instrumental in ... Continue reading