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Community involvement and collaboration is crucial for success on so many levels - from education and training to developing and expanding business opportunities. The good thing is that none of us are in it alone. And in the nonprofit community, there is an ecosystem of services and resources for the work we’re all doing that supports and invigorates us.

By working together, we’re able to address more issues in the community on local and national levels. Here at i.c.stars, we understand that collaboration is key, and we want to celebrate some of the great organizations that are affecting change on a massive scale. So today we’re highlighting Year Up.

Top Ten Countdown: Reasons We Love Year Up

10. Opportunity Divide:
Year Up does a magnificent job of really talking about the divide of opportunity in our country. You could call it the haves and the have-nots. You could call it the intellectual divide, but to be clear, it’s not about smarts, it’s about access to intellectual capital. Year Up labels it the “opportunity divide.” It’s a large chasm between the upper and middle classes and everybody else. Year Up addresses the issue of obtaining jobs in corporate America by teaching very marketable skills that help close the opportunity divide.

Building solutions and problems solving may sound the same but there is a significant difference. They are both important responses to challenges but one is more in the moment and the other is about sustainability. In workforce development, solving a problem would be getting people into jobs. Building solutions would be to develop social financial and intellectual capital so that our alumni are change agents in the community using technology process and systems thinking to build real solutions in business and at home.

Metrics, metrics, metrics. As I look back on the whirlwind of a year that was 2013, I like to reflect on the momentous importance of metrics in our content marketing operations. We’ve been running this program for more than two years now, and we always knew that metrics were going to play a huge role. In 2013, we all spent a lot of energy trying different ways to find metrics, create dashboards and devise a way to handle answering simple questions like:

*What is the health of any given account?
*What is the health of our operation?
*When can we hire more people?
*How we are growing?

i.c.stars is an environment that is electric with new ideas and high energy. As the interns prepare hit the market with all their skills and excitement, and the i.c.stars Social Enterprise brainstorms how to best stay ahead of the curve with their social media services, it’s hard to be complacent. As a member of the development team at i.c.stars, it’s exciting to be a part of putting together the agenda for i.c.stars 2014 events.

You may remember my series on “(T)hugs for Change,” as part of that series I recently sat down for a candid conversation with Roy Singham, CEO and founder of Thoughtworks. Roy is one of those people - another inspirational “t(hug),” whose dedication and energy permeates every room he walks into, making his passion contagious. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about what Roy believes is needed to make true change happen in the tech community, with the hope that it will be the catalyst to social change worldwide. This is part one of three. I would like to express my gratitude to Roy for his generous gift of Thought leadership.

Gratitude doesn’t stop at the realization that people have made a difference in your life. It’s being able to express that to them in a way that goes beyond a simple thank you - a way that is authentic, genuine, and attempts to give back as much as the person has given you.

Gratitude is the grace in which we acknowledge nourishment.

This year, TechBash will look a little different than it has in previous years. The important things will stay the same - the great networking opportunities, hob-nobbing with the i.c.stars community, and of course, the open bar. However, this year the CIOs will be coming out to socialize and support i.c.stars as celebrities!

The event will kick off with a “Step and Repeat” just after check-in. For those of you who haven’t been on the red carpet recently, step and repeat is the setup where photographers are lined up behind a red rope to get a shot of the celebrities walking down the red carpet. Practice your winning smile, and be ready to be caught by the paparazzi as you walk the red carpet into the event! Photos will be available after the event upon request, and select shots will be featured on the i.cstars website.

Education in America and around the world seems to be the subject of many discussions. In Chicago education is politics and politicians are supposed to champion for the communities they serve.

We’ve all been there: a meeting with your manager turns sour. He asks you about the status of something you haven’t thought through, or why certain things aren’t working out, or how you could have let something turn out the way it did. And then it starts. Shaky Chin Syndrome. You can’t help it. You feel blindsided by the questions, you feel inadequate in your performance, your frustration with the progress of your projects boils over and your chin betrays you. You don’t want to cry in front of your manager, but your chin begins to shake as you try to keep your composure. Before you know it, the tears start to fall.

This morning the i.c.stars interns left River North and headed to Oakbrook Terrace to participate in a Mock Interview session with IT staffing and solutions firm- Disys.