Crowdfunding may well be about to get a lot of attention. As a concept, the idea of funding a business venture from the ground up through small investors is nothing new to credit unions. In fact, it could be argued that, in broad strokes, credit unions were the original crowdfunding model. Recently more credit unions have been trying to leverage the local business market. But in recent years, websites such as Kickstarter and crowdfundingbank.com have been gaining popularity, as well as a good deal of press for their efforts. And with the JOBS act, passed by Congress in a rare show of bipartisanship and signed into law this month, those sites and others like them are likely to attract droves of customers.
Ben Franklin once quipped, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." But even someone as prescient as Ben Franklin hadn't foreseen the advent of online tax preparation. He never imagined the prospect of e-filing on his computer, never imported financial statements electronically from his brokerage, or engaged in a live chat when he got stuck. But if Franklin were alive today, he'd likely extoll the importance of user experience design as applied to the 72,000 plus pages that comprise the United States tax code.
Are IT professionals falling behind? As a recent report from Foote Partners noted, pay among IT professionals has fallen during the recession, even as competition for talent has become more and more fierce. That's counter-intuitive. Falling pay would suggest an overabundance of qualified workers. So why is the right talent so hard to find? And if we're so pressed to find talent, why are we paying IT professional LESS?
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