Tech Tip: Skype Bites: How to get Skype for Business into your Outlook and Calendar Ribbon
Lots of people email me, Jamie Holter, and say, “I can’t even get Skype on my computer! Your Skype bites are of no use to me!!” Well, here’s how to do it in 30 seconds.. well… 39 seconds.
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Employee discounts to Washington State Spring Fair
Employees can get discounts to the 2017 Washington State Spring Fair. Single gate tickets prices are: Adult $9.50 (usually $12), Student (Ages 6-18) $7.50 (usually $10), Kids (Ages 5 & under) ALWAYS FREE! The Spring Fair runs April 20-23 in Puyallup. To purchase tickets, visit thefair.com/corporate, click the “Buy Tickets” button, and enter access password king17. Discounted tickets are available through April 20 only at thefair.com/corporate. Learn more.
See all available discounts on the Employee Discount Program webpage.
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CPR classes available this spring
King County employees are welcome to sign up for available CPR classes. Dates for March-July classes are as follows:
Basic Heartsaver CPR/AED Training (Open to all King County employees), Register at http://kccpr.eventbrite.com
- Thursday, March 23, 2017- 11:30 a.m.- 2:30 pm, Chinook Bldg., Room 126
- Monday, April 12, 2017- 9am-12 pm, KC Elections, Renton
- Monday, April 12, 2017- 12:30-3:30, KC Elections, Renton
- Tuesday, May 23, 2017- 11:30-2:30, Chinook Bldg, Room 115
- Thursday, June 22, 2017- 10 a.m.-1:00 p.m., Chinook Bldg, Room 126
- Wednesday, July 26, 2017 11:30 a.m.- 2:30 p.m., Chinook Bldg, Room 126
Refresher Heartsaver CPR/AED Training (Open to all King county employees) Register at http://kccpr.eventbrite.com
- Thursday, March 23, 2017- 9 a.m.- 11:00 a.m. Chinook Bldg., Room 126
- Tuesday, May 23, 2017- 9 a.m.- 11:00 a.m., Chinook Bldg, Room 115
- Thursday, June 22, 2017-1:30 pm.-3:30 p.m, Chinook Bldg, Room 126
- Wednesday, July 26, 2017- 9:00 a.m.- 11 a.m., Chinook Bldg, room 126
BLS CPR (Healthcare Provider) Training (Open only to Public Health Certificated staff) Register at http://kcbls.eventbrite.com
- Tuesday, April 25, 2017- 1 p.m.- 4 p.m., Chinook Bldg., Room 126
- Monday, June 8, 2017- 11 a.m.- 2:00 p.m., Chinook Bldg, Room 115
- Thursday, July 13, 2017- 9:00 a.m.- 12:00 pm, Chinook Bldg, Room 126
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Nominations needed for Administrative Professionals Day, April 26
The Administrative Professionals Recognition Program is seeking nominations to recognize employees who embody the attributes of excellence and innovation. For information about eligibility and to nominate an employee before Wednesday, April 26, visit the Administrative Professionals Program website.
Also, save the date for the upcoming celebration to honor this year’s award recipients to be held Wednesday, April 26, 2017, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at King Street Center, 8th Floor Conference Center. If you would like more information about this event, contact Paige Myers at 206-477-4551 or paige.myers@kingcounty.gov.
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The story behind MV Sally Fox’s cribbage boards
Crossposted from the Captain’s Blog
Mike Sudduth, left, plays a game of cribbage with Richard Franklin, right, as another game of cribbage takes place at the table next to them aboard the MV Sally Fox. Sudduth donated the specially inscribed boards as a way to honor his friend, Sally Fox, who was an advocate for passenger-only ferry service to Vashon Island and the vessel’s namesake. King County photo by Ned Ahrens.
Regulars on King County Water Taxi’s Vashon Island route know them well: glossy wooden cribbage boards stationed at one of four seating areas in the lower passenger deck of the MV Sally Fox.
On almost every run, enthusiasts of the popular card-and-board game can be seen huddled around one of these game boards, studying their cards, positioning their pegs and hoping for a coveted hand of 29.
Seasoned cribbage players such as Mike Sudduth know the game’s lingo inside and out. After all, the Management Services Analyst for King County Metro and Vashon Island native started the island’s first sanctioned cribbage club in 2006.
Read more at the Captain’s Blog
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The changing face of Capital Project Management
Crossposted from Clean Water Stories
King County Wastewater Treatment Division (WTD) is facing the same workforce challenges that confront many clean water utilities across the United States. Hard working senior employees throughout our organization are retiring. We need to recruit new employees and help them onboard to a career protecting public health and our environment.
The passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 sparked the beginning of many wastewater careers. A costly and damaging fire on the Cuyahoga River in Ohio triggered an amendment of the 1948 Federal Water Pollution Control Act. The amendment, known as the Clean Water Act, included requirements and construction grants to build treatment facilities across the United States. Even after construction grants were phased out in 1987, wastewater systems continue to be expanded and upgraded to serve growing populations of people increasingly aware of environmental issues.
Many of WTD’s most experienced people- about 45% of our workforce- began their careers during the height of that infrastructure boom and are eligible for retirement within the next five years.
Read more at Clean Water Stories
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Leadership and activism: the King County logo honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Crossposted from Bytes and Boxes
As County employees, we hope to serve our communities in a way that is just, fair and inclusive of all of our residents. We proudly display the image of Dr. King on our websites, written materials and buildings. But Dr. King’s likeness was not always the County logo. So, how did we get here?
The King County Archives has a collection of records related to the events that led up to adoption of the current logo on March 12, 2007.
Originally, in 1853, King County was named after Vice President of the United States William Rufus DeVane King, a slave owner and supporter of the Fugitive Slave Act. For 134 years, King County carried his name until 1986 when Councilmen Ron Sims and Bruce Laing introduced proposed Motion 86-66 (adopted as Motion No. 6461) to the Council.
Read more at Bytes and Boxes
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Profiling amazing women working throughout King County: Eden Rogland Peak, KCIT IT Senior Applications Developer
This article is featured courtesy of Jamie Holter, Communications Manager, Department of Information Technology
Eden Rogland Peak, KCIT IT Senior Applications Developer
How did you get your start in IT? I spent a year after getting my Humanities B.A. working for AmeriCorps and at the end of my service I chose to use the education stipend I earned on computer classes at South Seattle College. At first it was just for fun but I was inspired by some great teachers and decided to go ahead and finish the Software Engineering program.
That led me to an internship for the college web team working on their main site online learning program. My supervisor there was a wonderful mentor and role model and she, and my former teachers, actively helped me in my job search for a full time position. I ended up at the University of Washington coding for a small research group. We had a team of three programmers, all women. The team lead quickly challenged me to move from asp classic to .NET. I learned a ton from her.
Do you bring a different perspective to IT? I’m not sure if my perspective is different, but my experience has been that collaboration is the key to success in IT. I would never have gotten this far or stayed in the field if I hadn’t been encouraged, found mentors, and been truly included in development teams. The myth of the lone coder is probably not productive for women or for men.
Do people treat you differently because you are a woman? I don’t think people intentionally treat me any differently. Sometimes I think women in IT can be underestimated. This can happen in assumptions about skill level and also what our role is on a team. I do think King County is ahead of most other organizations on encouraging diversity in hiring and in creating a respectful workplace culture. I feel lucky to work in a great group.
Do you have advice for young women considering a career in IT? Go for it! Don’t assume you have to have majored in a STEM field to go into programming. Don’t assume work-life balance will be impossible. Try out as many technologies as you can. Find a mentor. Don’t rule out IT as a career based on negative news reports about a few companies. There are a lot of different organizations out there and they’re all different. It’s about finding a good fit.
If you could go back in time, what do you wish you would have done? Worked for a startup in 1999- 2000 for the fun of it!
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King County Veterans Program’s burial assistance highlighted in Wall Street Journal
Shared from the DCHS Touching Base Newsletter
Did you know? In addition to helping veterans, military personnel and their families with financial assistance, employment, housing, counseling and other supports, the King County Veterans Program (KCVP) also helps pay for burial costs of veterans who die indigent.
Last year, KCVP was asked by KCPQ 13 to be a part of a story with Seattle’s Columbia Funeral Home about honoring our nation’s heroes both in life and in death.
The story aired in May of 2016 and highlighted KCVP’s role in helping fund services for the burial of indigent deceased veterans. Over the last five years, the KCVP Burial Assistance Program has worked with over 20 funeral homes to assist in over 150 burial/cremations of indigent veterans. The story caught the attention of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which ran a follow-up piece in January 2017: The Man Who Restores Veterans’ Lost Dignity.
The WSJ story centers on Columbia Funeral Home mortician James Lindley, a disabled Marine veteran who is coping with PTSD by ensuring that the unclaimed remains of indigent deceased veterans are receiving burials/cremations with dignity. As the story explains, James has found therapeutic value in his role as a navigator/mortician of indigent (and often unclaimed) veterans remains in King County. WSJ interviewed KCVP, which shared insight on the significance of honoring a burial assistance program and bringing dignity to these indigent veterans at the end of their lives.
The Wall Street Journal story covered the burial ceremony of four veterans as their unclaimed remains were laid to rest at Tahoma National Cemetery on Sept. 30, 2016. Four urns, each entombing the remains of a veteran from a different branch of the military (Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force) were transported from the King County Medical Examiner’s Office to Tahoma. As a symbol of honor, the branch of each deceased veteran was represented by a color guard, a flag folding protocol, and the firing of three volleys from honor guard rifles. Both KCVP and the King County Medical Examiner’s office received flags on behalf of the deceased veterans and the ceremony concluded with the playing of Taps. KCVP has encased the flag in a shadow box for display “in honor and memory” in their lobby at their Renton office.
To learn more about what DCHS is doing in our community, read the most recent issue of the Touching Base Newsletter(on SharePoint).
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Texas-bound employee volunteers with refugees and immigrants
Pictured: Megan Holmes appears here, second from left, with other volunteers.
Megan Holmes, a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, has roots in public service. Growing up, her parents worked with children who experienced trauma in Belfast, Northern Ireland and her mother traveled to the Soviet Union to work with teachers. Megan herself spent six months as a volunteer in Guatemala in 2005.
In her work with King County she pursues this passion every day as a senior social worker with the Child Care Health Program. Here she helps children develop the social and emotional skills needed to build positive relationships. Her role also takes her out to different childcare and preschool sites across the county, providing widely needed mental health support to teachers and children.
Working to improve the lives of families in her community has also expanded to include a faraway place called McAllen, Texas.
Every year, Megan volunteers to work with newly arrived refugees fleeing significant gang violence in their home countries of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. They have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and released to stay with family members while they await an opportunity to request asylum in the United States. When they are released, Central American refugees are brought to a respite center in McAllen, Texas where Megan and other volunteers greet them. Families are provided with a warm meal, shower, clean clothes, and a chance to call their families. This year, a crew from CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 visited the shelter. Watch the video here.
The incredibly powerful experience of working to provide safety and security for these families has brought her back to volunteer three years in a row. She can easily draw a line from her King County work to her volunteer experience.
“I think being a mental health clinician, part of what motivates me to volunteer with this is certainly the thoughts of the hardship and the trauma these folks are experiencing,” she said.
With a background in clinical psychology fine-tuned by working at Public Health for the last nine years, Megan uses her skills to help families and children escaping violence and poverty in Central America for a better life in the United States.
“The experience has certainly given me a much greater awareness of the challenges and needs faced by refugee and immigrant communities,” she said. “It’s given me a closer look at the difficulties they face by systems that may not support them.”
“It’s been eye opening in that way.”
The experience has also been rewarding in other ways. Megan admits working with individuals in such life-changing situations has made her more aware.
“It has also been a good lesson in humility,” she said. “Getting to know people who have had to leave their homes is both unimaginable and humbling.”
Megan expresses great pride in knowing that her employer is a welcoming place for immigrants and refugees and has shared her volunteer experience with others, hoping they too will get involved at any level. This now includes her volunteer-oriented parents.
“I was incredibly gratified to see from both the city and the county that we are an inclusive place, a place where we have such progressive thinkers,” she said. “And now even my mom has been with me to volunteer in Texas.”
To learn more about Megan’s work with refugees and immigrants, or to speak with her about the Child Care Health Program and its efforts in health promotion and disease prevention, contact her at Megan.Holmes@kingcounty.gov.
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