Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Meet Barb Paluszkiewicz: Toronto Mike'd #663

Episode Date: June 9, 2020

Mike chats with Barb Paluszkiewicz from CDN Technologies about what to expect when you return to the office.

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Your IT and cyber experts. I'm Mike from Toronto, mike.com and joining me from CDN technologies is a woman whose name is spelled exactly as it sounds. Barb Paluskiewicz. Thank you. That was fabulous. You know, it's all, thank you for having me on the show. Thank you for pronouncing my name correctly. When I got married, one of the reasons why I never changed it was because I was worried that I would just fit in and people that hesitated,

I wouldn't know it was my turn when they were calling me. No, wait, Paluskiewicz, that's Irish, right? Oh, very, very much so from the Polish side. And for fun here, would you spell it for us? I mean, that whole spells like it sounds, I love it, but my tongue's in my cheek when I say it. P-A-L-U-S-Z-K-I-E-W-I-C-Z. I actually have a copy of your book, IT Scams, on my desk. I'm pointing to it right now. You can see it. And I had to make sure you got it correct. Because how old were you when you nailed it? Like, do you know, like, were you like 18 years old when you finally got it right? Or how long? You know, I remember being in grade one and coming back to school after summer holidays and everybody has to like write their name on that little card for the teacher and you fold it in threes, like a triangle. Space I could deal with, but I remember thinking,

oh my God, I don't remember how to spell it. And my mom always would shorten it. She would say Paluski. So that I could sound out. So we had the P-A-L-U-S-K-I. So it was when I was six years old that I finally nailed it at the beginning of the year.

I had a tough time, but by the end, I got it. I was just thinking it's so much longer. My kids have to time, but by the end, I got it. Nice. I was just thinking, it's so much longer. My kids have to learn how to spell the name Boone. Okay. It's four characters. And I'm thinking, so my kids are, oh, how do you spell Boone? They're figuring it out pretty early. And meanwhile, Poluskiewicz is a whole different level of difficulty there, but good on you for finally getting in. That's fantastic. Thank you. When you brought it up, I remember my kids being little and thinking, oh my God, like I have to teach them how to spell my last name. And they would have all of these rhymes that they would know. And I just made it into the rhyme and they knew it, both of them. Like, you know, they knew how to they they knew they nailed it

right away and as you were saying it do you think i could remember the rhyme not for the life of me i'm gonna have to go back and ask them how old uh are your kids now oh 12 and 15 okay and uh they're i i know that cdn technologies is a little bit of a family affair. And correct me, I don't know. You'll have to tell me the legal, what's going on here. But are you married? Yes. I never assume anything anymore.

It's very cool to cohabitate and have families and not necessarily get married. Okay, so your husband works at CDN Technologies with you. Yes, we work together. It's very much of a division of responsibilities. I'm very happy for all the time that we were in marriage counseling. So to help us communicate better. No, I want to say that I'm joking, but I'm not because we did have to work hard on communicating. With work, we have two very different roles. He's in charge of the techs and all of the engineers, whereas on the other side of things, there's the sales and the marketing and the operations.

So that's where my strengths come into play. So we divide the responsibilities, but we each stay in our own swim lanes because of strength. So it works out to be pretty good. We both have a tech background, but from a different perspective. He was an engineer when he first started and I first started my career in sales. So it was a great conjunction that came together to help us move CDN technologies forward in a positive direction. Do you remember the old cartoon, Conjunction Junction, What's Your Function? Do you remember this? I just had this flashback and those were great. Okay. But let's shout them out. Okay. The egghead, the techie in the couplet there the coupling uh let's what's his name oh i've got jacob i've got christopher oh i met your husband how many husbands do you have barb and well it's the year 2020 it's polygamy uh in reverse i guess for women no um his name is jason oh gosh because I asked you, what's his name, I was going to shout out your husband. And then you started running down the list. I was like,

what's going on over there at CDN technologies. Okay. What happens is, is when I look out from my, from the corner office, when I look out, it's easy to see who's in the office, even though we're physical distancing, but we all have that glass into place. So I'm just like, okay, so who's on the team as to who's supporting me? So they're on the team. They're not necessarily in your matrimonial bed. That's only Jason that's in the bed. That is correct. Okay. Just get that right. All right. And Jason, so it sounds like a really, like that sounds like kind of like my marriage. I think marriages like that are always successful when the complementary skill sets, like you're not the same person. So it sounds like you're the person who's going to speak at a conference.

You're the person who's going to be on the radio. You're going to be talking on Toronto Mic'd. And your husband will be the guy behind the keyboard solving lots of complex issues and problems. Is that right? He's like if you were to cross George Clooney and Kevin Smith from The Warlock in Die Hard, like in the basement with all the monitors, like watching all the engineers going and so on and so forth i thought you're saying he because he has the looks of a george clooney but he has the nerd uh credentials of a kevin smith exactly yes very very much so and it's funny because our

personality types are very different like if you've um when we've done when we've had like trainers come in for our team and we do the Meyer-Briggs assessment or the disc profiling, we're on opposite ends of the spectrum, completely. One's extroverted, one's introverted. You know what? One's emotional, the other one isn't. It's very interesting. It's a great mix.

Right. one isn't like it's very uh one is like a great mix right one's like a logical and pragmatic and the other maybe more uh emotional and thinking more with their heart maybe but that does like you said that that that complementary uh skill set and that that complementary characteristics sometimes makes for a ideal union like one can kind of bring the other down when they're flying high and then that person's maybe the other can bring the person up when they're just like, like laying low. It's a good, it's a good match.

You and Jason. Yes. No complaints. No complaints. Okay. So I, I want to say welcome. This episode was long overdue,

but it seemed to all come together just as the pandemic. I don't know if you know this Barb, but we're in a global pandemic. Oh my goodness. Are we all in it together? Well, hey, let's say this way. Your offices are like, I would say it's Oakville, but it's like just a little bit west of Mississauga, right? You know, it's because of where our front door is faced is the reason why we have the Oakville address. Because to the left and to the right of us, the office buildings have a Mississauga address. We're right down the street from iFly, like Winston Churchill and 403.

You have the Silver City. We're right in that section behind there. We're right in that section behind there. So you're nearby. And the fact we're doing this on Zoom is sort of one of the effects of the global pandemic, which we're going to get into because there's a whole bunch of, you know, IT consequences from this social distancing order. That's been almost, I saw my calendar and it says almost three months of this. So the date that sticks out in my head head and probably this is the last day probably your kids were in school is march 13th 2020 which happened to be a uh it

happened to be a friday the 13th so i always remember the date uh that was helpful for me but uh that's like that's almost three months ago and that's sort of when everything the last day that was anything typical so we'll get into this I just want to say welcome to the family. Normally in June, we'd be all collecting on the patio of Great Lakes Brewery. We'd have some tasty Palma pasta food. We'd have some giveaways from stickeru.com. We definitely have fresh Great Lakes

because we'd be on their patio and we'd probably have some live music and we'd be recording a TMLX event. And it just sort of makes me sad that we have to wait to do this because you'd be there and we'd all be having a blast at a TMLX. So thanks for joining the family, even though it's a little bit of a little bit of a strange time here. We're happy to have you on board. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. It's a great place to be. I can't remember if it's Mel Brooks or Carl Reiner, but somebody said it was a great place to be. And I can't remember the answer was something like, well, at my age,

anywhere is a great place to be. I saw a nice billboard at this church and it's quite funny. It was, it's better to be six feet apart as opposed to six feet under. And I thought, oh, that's cute. That's a good point. And thankfully we have the technology. So to bring it back to tech here, like I was, thank goodness, this pandemic decided to wait like 1918, you know, before my time, that's a long time ago, but here we are in 2020

when we can do things like this. Like I can see you, we can converse and record and share of the world via Zoom. Like tech has come a long way. And I'm so grateful that if we were gonna have a social distancing order for months, that we had this kind of tech to keep in touch with friends, family and

clients and everything. So my big question right off the top is when the social social distancing order kind of came into effect and suddenly thousands of people who would typically go into an office to work were suddenly working from home. At CDN Technologies, what challenges did that shift to work from home present that you discovered or knew about from your work helping clients at CDN Technologies? Good question. If I were to go back and relive those days on March break, but after being day 84 in the pandemic, I have to give kudos to my team because everybody knew exactly what to do. Because when you work in IT, you're constantly thinking, what if this goes wrong? What if this goes wrong? What if this goes wrong? What if this goes wrong? Because you always have to make sure that you're providing great IT service so a

business is operational. So we had our business continuity plan in place here. And we just plowed. It was business as usual for us. We redeemed an essential service. We still came into the office. Our office is quite spacious, so everyone was still able to physically distance. And I was going on site and I was still meeting people before the actual lockdown came. They're just like, Barb, you can't shake hands. You got to do elbows. And I was like, elbows? Like, what's that? And then they like showed me and I was just like, I got to do the chicken dance. And pretty much that's what it was like, you know, for a couple of days. And so like just being socially aware. The biggest challenge that our tech team faced here was call volume because my philosophy is direct to tech 24-7, 365. None of our techs have voicemail. So when that phone rings, it better get picked up.

have voicemail. So when that phone rings, it better get picked up. So essentially, the phones were going all the time. And I have a board over here on a whiteboard because sometimes everybody can answer the phone. So when a call comes in, how do you answer it? Like, welcome, thank you for calling CDN Technologies. How can we help you it? Like, you know, like, welcome, thank you for calling CDN Technologies. How can we help you? Things like that. You don't say welcome, but it says you're welcome on top of the board here to help you out as kind of like a cheerboard. And because my son ended up being, what's the word, displaced from school, he couldn't go back. Essentially, I had to bring him into the office. When I brought him in the office and the call volume was coming into place, I'm just like, Owen, phone. And he's just like, what do I say? And I was just like,

it's right there. So you know what? He read the whiteboard and he went to it. He just got into it right away. So I'd have to say our biggest challenge was dealing with the call volume because it was kind of like getting. Well, that's what I was actually getting at. I'm great. It's great that you told us how CDN technology is adaptive. I was actually thinking more of like your clientele, like for example, like suddenly everybody who would normally go, I don't know, go downtown and go in an office or, or now suddenly they're told you're working from home. Like, was there a common thread of like, for example, people with like home, uh, networking issues that would kind of percolate to the, like, like, was there a certain new category

of issues that suddenly, uh, emerged because so many people were trying to figure out how can they do their daily work from home as opposed to the office? We had to set up a lot of VPNs. Right. So some of our an office will typically have like, you know, a couple of pre COVID, an office will typically have like two or three people working from home. So it became a bit different when all of a sudden you had a whole team working from home. So supporting the home user, some of them had company laptops, some of them didn't. And essentially making sure that whatever device that they were connecting with was secure. we did that. We enabled the security so that they could access their applications, whether they were cloud-based or whether they were running in-house and systems in their office, making sure that they were all secure. I'm laughing because for years I worked for software companies, B2B software companies. And you know, every B2B software company,

almost all of them has a sales team. I just imagine like because now during this covid pandemic i run my own show here so i didn't have this experience but i can just imagine some of those sales guys when they're told they have to connect at home to the vpn network like i just no forget about it like they're they need you like they're like i i gotta call i gotta call cdn technologies and then uh so i guess like when when that salesperson uh is realizes they have to connect their computer to the vpn in order to access some i don't know some some internal database or program or whatever that's like on the the work network or something like that like they they you you literally have techies, you said 24 seven

who could, you know, with the permission of the, uh, salesperson could take over the computer and help kind of, you can do it or show them how to do it. Like you literally have a hands-on approach there at CDN technologies. Yes. Because what happens is, is for our customers, we install what's known as our agent on each machine. And so you have our little contact us now right beside the time clock in the bottom right hand side of your monitor. And essentially, there's a little red dot there with a white Canadian, with a white Canada maple leaf there, and you click on it it and it's to connect with us right away to live chat. So it was, everyone's used to live chat to connect. So when people got stuck and they would just click on it on our end, everything is documented. So we already know who it is,

what company, what they have permissions to. And essentially we asked them for permission, to factor in, so to say, and just help them. So you've got smaller businesses can't afford to have an IT team in-house to help with stuff like that. So by outsourcing that to CDN Technologies, not only, you said 24-7 awesome instant support, but economically, it just makes sense to let the subject matter experts at CDN Technology take care of your team. Thank you. I agree. And it has to do with more about, I know that there are big companies. We've been doing this for a while now. So, you know, we've been able to establish relationships with like big companies, small companies, like all shapes and sizes. And sometimes the challenge is having the person on the other end know exactly what

it is that they're doing so that they can make it all safe and secure. It's very hard for one person to support 60 people in the office. So if there's a, I can't print, or Excel's not working right, you know what, those aren't clickety-click Barbara tricks to solve. Those take a little bit of time, but then you have all the patches and the securities and making sure your firewall isn't interfering with your antivirus and all the ports are closed, so on and so forth. That all has to be done. And you can't, I use the word MacGyver, you can't MacGyver those things, you can't have a Frankenstein of a network, because then that slows everything down.

So the biggest challenge in my industry is dealing with a guy, you know, dealing with a guy that knows stuff. Because what happens is, is there's only so many band-aids you can put on something and then everything explodes. And then what do you do? You need to find someone that can essentially figure out exactly what went wrong without breaking anything else further, things like that. Those same salespeople, and I don't mean to generalize with salespeople, there's a lot of very technically minded salespeople. And I know you're a former salesperson, so I'm not painting everyone with the same brush. But I do know that if there was a phishing email that was

going to go out and say, you know, click here, You've just won a $200 Costco gift card or something like that. I think I know some guys I used to work with and gals who would excitedly click that link to redeem that $200 Costco card they won for no particular reason. And that's the stuff that's dangerous, right? Oh, it's completely dangerous.

And yes, it does happen. So this is where you need to rely on a managed service provider, a company like ours, cdntechnologies.com. Because what happens is we have the tools in place so that if something gets clicked on, it keeps you safe. because you know what attacks are so there's there's so for lack of a better word beautiful and sophisticated you don't know you don't know until it's too late and everything is done online these days and you don't rob someone by going to the bank and stealing their money or by like assaulting them it's all done online by sending them a phishing email. It's known as business email compromise. So what happens is, I'm actually going to go back a little bit.

It's all done via phishing email. We can agree with that. But then if you take it one step deeper, there's business email compromise. And in a business email compromise, what happens is, is a user doesn't know that their email has been compromised. So someone is essentially watching everything that it is that they do. When you hear these people sending out invoices and paying $2 million, then that's a problem. And that's usually because their email was compromised.

They didn't know. I'm thinking of, and listeners will know this name, but I produce a podcast for Peter Gross. And I got a call. Firstly, I got a call yesterday because Peter uses this. Since COVID happened, he's been doing some of his own some of his own audio editing because he used to come over here and we used to do it but he's he's you know he's a used to work at 680 news like he knows a thing or two about editing but

what he doesn't know is where that file is after he saves it like I got a call yesterday like about the files disappeared it's saved somewhere I have no idea where it is I just think Peter needs CDN technologies. But I also thought of Peter because at some point, like maybe a year ago, I was getting emails from Peter's personal email address, which happens to be like a rogers.com address or something. And it was things like, hey, I'm out of the country right now but it's my nephew's birthday would you do me a big favor and go buy $200 in Apple iTunes gift cards for me I'll pay you back later

like things like that and my reply is Peter call me and then the reply to that would be something like like this is all true about a year ago I think I shared it on an episode at the time but then I

the reply back would be like oh I can't can't call right now. Please do this. I'm good for it. And I'll pay you back as soon as I can. Something like that. And it's like, wait a minute. It happens all the time. And when it does happen and it seems weird and off, we always tell people to call. Like, you know, you just go pick up the phone ask them text them that's the thing with um two-factor authentication is is you have to authenticate to a separate device not onto the machine people forget that part right yeah that's i mean i do that for like google and stuff and then you'll you'll get it you'll get a text and it'll be like enter this number that was just texted to you but you're right you've introduced a second uh channel if you will so

not everything's being done in the email because if someone takes over the email then suddenly they control you right like the email is is is everything once you got somebody's email yes because what happens is lots of times when people get into the system, when you've been breached, what they'll do is they'll create a rule on the server or they'll create a rule in their Office 365 account that if an email is received from WagePoint or from ADT.com or whatever, ADP, That's what I'm thinking of. Forward this email to this email address. So then the person doesn't even know that an email has been received. So let me walk you through this. So someone's email account is breached and they don't know. Okay. So they look and yeah, they're going to see things. But if you think about people's emails accounts, if you look at where all their

sent items are, if you look at what's in the trash, you're going to be able to find out like, you know, where they bank, where they live, you know, where their investments are, so on and so forth. Everybody has been part of a breach. Everyone's did the Marriott. Everyone's gone to Air Canada. We know what everyone's banked with BMO. Like, you know what? There's all these huge databases of breaches with emails. So let's just say that you work for you're an accounting person. Like you're, you're in charge of payroll.

If you're in charge of payroll and then you did a request for a password reset from wage point or ADP, once this is done, you're not going to see in your email account on your screen that a password has been requested, like a password reset, because it's automatically, automagically been forwarded to another email. Barb, you're scaring me. You're scaring me. Oh my gosh. Okay. So even though we need to talk about the return to the office checklist in a moment, I just want to spit out the phone number. So of course, everyone knows they can go to CDN Technologies right now and find the number there or contact you via that. But I know for a fact that you really like talking to people on the good old-fashioned telephone. So I just want to

make sure right now I get the office phone number where you can actually reach Barb Beluskiewicz and tell her how much you loved her appearance on Toronto Mike and talk to her about how CDN Technologies can help you or your business. So it's 905-542-9759. 905-542-9759. And if you're right now working out or you're driving or biking or something, just you can remember to go to cdntechnologies.com because the phone number is right there. But call Barb and have a chat with Barb because she's absolutely delightful. So Barb, the weather's turned.

I'm spending a lot more time outside. It's gorgeous out there today. I just did a bike ride. And now I'm starting to feel hopeful. And I'm hearing things are opening up here and there soon. Not that I would ever do this, but people are going to go out and get haircuts soon. Things are happening. And people are starting to return to the office.

And as people slowly return to the office, I know you have a very extensive checklist, like a returning to the office checklist. So before we run over some of the points on your checklist, if someone's at home and they want to play along with us right now, how can they get this checklist, which by the way, it has a name, the returning to the office after COVID-19 checklist for businesses, how could someone get that so they can play along at home? Oh, they can go to cdntechnologies.com forward slash reopening.

No hyphen in reopening, just slash reopening. So cdntechnologies.com slash reopening. And you can grab this, you know, this very extensive checklist. Now let's, we won't go through it in intensive detail, or this will be a six and a half hour podcast. But can you hit some of the high level hot points here on what, you know, what should we be concerned about as people do return to the office after the COVID-19 social distancing order? Well, I think that as people are returning there to the office, that what you need to consider is

that some people might be nervous, like, you know what, some people are wearing masks, some people are not and you need to be respectful. So prepare properly so that you can alleviate concerns for everyone so that they can focus on work and not the global health crisis. So I think everyone should know that when they go back to the office, it's going to be different than it was prior to COVID. So when you're going back to the office, perhaps you should have a return to the office task force or appoint person. And depending on the size of your organization, consider appointing someone or an entire team to assess and optimize the office for a return and to update everybody and to help communicate the changes and the updates to employees. having someone that can be a designate to communicate to the staff about returning to the office and making sure they understand what precautions that

the company has taken to keep everyone safe. So to do that, to establish a point person, maybe create a return to office schedule. Like some people may be working from home, so maybe you're going to be rotating. So to do that and let me see. While you're looking up for the next one, what I noticed because I recently visited, I don't have an office, but because I'm in it right now, but my wife's got an office downtown and I went there to pick up her computer glasses. There's some glasses where the glare of the computer doesn't hurt your eyes or something. And so I went there

and the first thing that struck me is like, if you're not on like the first, second, third or fourth floor and you need to take the elevator to get to your floor, you're going to have, there's going to have to be a lot of rules because I noticed the elevators at One Young Street, they have these maximum four people allowed in the elevator. Like if the elevator door opens

and there's four people in there, one in each corner, you're not allowed to get on that. So unless you want to spend half your day waiting to get up to the 23rd floor or something, yeah, there's going to have to be some staggering of hours or some rules in place. So what I've seen as well is that I'm giggling because I'm thinking, you know what, maybe, you know, the stairs is a good idea to help with that COVID-19 that people put on during quarantine. But what I've also seen is that, you know, the flow patterns that we have in the grocery stores and in shoppers, drug mart and everywhere you go, that's happening in offices as well. And those big sneeze shields. So if your wife was in a big office, so it has like essentially a cubicle farm in the middle of the floor, then now it's a little bit

higher. You see all those sneeze shields that they have like around the cashiers at Walmart and shoppers and things like that. So I think that that's going to be seen a lot in the office spaces. And then when people start going back to the office space, I think that there's also going to be a reclosure plan, kind of like in a hotel, like, you know, in case of emergency, you know, on the back of the door, like these are where the fire escapes is. I think that what's going to be posted is a reclosure plan, because what happens if someone gets diagnosed with COVID, then the office gets shut down. So what do you do if? So I think when it comes to being back into the office, everyone's going to be practicing their physical distancing, because it's going to be of the utmost importance and there's going to be changes to floor plans and conference rooms and elevators and there's going to be lots of signage going around to help ensure employees can abide by oh yeah and i bet you when it's uh you know how

you know offices love to have that birthday cake right and they all get together that's i don't know when the next time they're going to have that big communal birthday cake, uh, chopped up in the kitchen or whatever, but yeah, things will be different until the vaccine arrives, I suppose. I think those days are over. I was, uh, listening to my friend, Kevin O'Leary, and, uh, he was chatting about that, about the whole, uh, you know, the days where the lasagnas and the salads were like brought in those are over now it's individual portions and you know what like all you want to know about it being uh sanitary and like you know an individual um cutlery pieces all nice and wrapped up in plastic and so on you're right everybody gets their own personal pan pizza from now on at these board meetings that go,

you know, they trick you. I always find the gas. We're going to order pizza. But you just got tricked, not tricked, I suppose, because they bribed you a pizza. But yeah, you get your pizza, but you are now working through that lunch hour that you used to have to kind of chill out or go for a walk or, you know, think about other things. Now you're in the boardroom working. So, but you got a free slice of pizza or two. So, you know, anyway. That's so you can keep working.

That's the bribe, I think. All right. So yes, you're absolutely right. The, the people, things will change with the people, those big hugs you got from, you know, who those are evap, maybe the, that, that handshake that was, you know, that guy who would always squeeze a little bit too hard to show you what a man he was and would break your pinky, that's all gone now. So the people and the behavior with the people, all that's going to change. And then I see, I'm looking, because I'm looking at your great checklist for businesses here, and I see number two on your list is the office space. But this, I guess, this ties in with what you mentioned of that plexiglass, but I'll let you continue on the office space changes.

Yeah, the office space is going to change and then the technology at the office is going to change. So just to recap, the checklist talks about people, it talks about office space, it talks about technology, and there's office space, it talks about technology. And there's one more thing, and that's your customers. So when we go back, when we talk about technology, you know what, everybody got their lockdown orders, and then overnight, everything changed. So essentially, there was new technologies that were used. There was new hardware that was used. There was old hardware that was like, you know, reprovisioned. So now that things are getting back to normal or trying to, what's staying and what's going?

Because there are some tools that might have been implemented that you'd like to keep. And there are other things that you thought might have been important, not so much for and they can go. And then you also have to think about, okay, well, is my entire staff coming back to the office? Or is a certain percentage going to stay at home, I believe the stats are saying that, you know, 20% of businesses will now be like remote only, or like work from home, or 20% of your workforce will be like working from home. So what tech are they going to need to stay safe and to secure to do the job that you're paying them to do? So all of that needs to be evaluated. Because prior to this, we had the whole Windows seven upgrade happening. So there was lots of hardware being moved forward, and people were

updating their computers in the office. Then with COVID, there was an interruption in the supply chain. So even if you wanted to buy, you know, 40, 50, 20, 10 laptops for your staff so that they could work from home, you couldn't get them. Or if you could get them, the prices were absolutely insane, kind of like toilet paper. So essentially, what needs to be done is an audit of all the workstations and the technologies that you use to keep your business moving forward in a positive direction, cataloging it all, essentially reviewing what the plan is, if this happens again, what stays and what goes. So that's kind of what needs to be done from a technology perspective. And then lastly, from a customer's perspective, because we were all in this together. And you

know what, if there's any type of crises that you want to have, being a part of a global pandemic is the best one because we're all in it together. So this way you can say, hey, moving forward, how can our teams collaborate? This is what we've done. This is what has worked for us. You know what, I'm sharing this with you. So essentially pay it forward and keep everything moving forward. Check in with people like, you know, Hey, how's it going? Like go old

school, go like telephone, things like that. And Hey, maybe even like send a piece of paper in the mail. Or if it says, Hey, like, you know, just thinking of you like a little love note or something like that. Just things like that to stay in touch. That love note, you'd be careful of the love note. That's a slippery slope. So I won't name it. I'm going to say this as generally as possible. So, but I do know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who is really struggling with the lack of the social part of work disappearing overnight. And where some,

I noticed some people in personality types or certain characters can thrive in a work from home environment. I'm speaking of yours truly, but there are others who like, basically it's very, very difficult emotionally, psychologically to be suddenly only meeting via zoom and, and, emotionally, psychologically to be suddenly only meeting via Zoom and to lose that human interaction. So it is interesting that the work from home,

it really is not for everybody. So yeah, as people... No, no, no, it's not. I saw it from our customers calling in and when we were supporting them, it from our customers calling in and when we were supporting them, like, you know what, we were listening. And it was someone to talk to, it was a voice, it was someone to communicate with, and the relationship is there. So you begin to share. And I know for myself, when CDN Technologies first started, like our roots are in Streetsville, we were working out of our home and it was like a provisioned, like a whole work from home. And then what was to my advantage was that at that time, remote work wasn't really that popular. There was lots of going on site. So what happened was, is I'd be in the office scheduling calls, sales calls for myself. You know what? We'd have

tech calls scheduled for the tech. So everybody, we were kind of like rotating in and out of the house because our kids were little. So someone needed to be there. So it was doable. It was very doable. It's a whole, you know, at a always communicating division of responsibilities and, um, dividing up the labor to play to the person's strengths. Like there was a lot of that happening, but we were able to, to do that. Um, and we were able to do it successfully, but for other people, like to deal with it with everything, the stress of it all can get, um, nuts because what do you do?

People aren't focusing on work. They're focusing, am I going to have a job? How am I going to pay the bills? What am I going to do about the kids? You know what? They have their work life and they have their home life, and now everyone is home altogether. Some people don't have the space. When you're in downtown Toronto, the Liberty Village, those beautiful condos, 650 square feet. If you're lucky, Barb, if you're lucky.

Yeah, that's you're right. That's why I was I refrained from, you know, pointing, shaking my finger at those young people in Trinity Bellwoods a couple of weeks ago, because it's, you know, if that's the only space you have is that shoebox that you live in. If that's the only space you have is that shoebox that you live in, it's not a particularly healthy environment during a social distancing order. owner who had employees who need to work on a computer, on a network, I'm thinking I would be calling 905-542-9759 just to talk to you, Barb, about best practices and whether they could do something different or how you could help. Is that right? So right now, if you were to succinctly say who should be contacting you, who would you say should be contacting you? Anyone and everyone who has an office that has 10 computers or more, and you're trying to figure out how to navigate through this new normal or how to put everything back together. to put everything back together because chances are everything that was bugging you about IT prior to COVID, COVID is going to lead the technological advancement of your business.

And everybody uses technology to scale their business, to automate their business, to keep moving forward in a positive direction. So if you're there and you need help doing that, you know what, call. If you're an IT director and you just got slammed and overwhelmed because you just have your people to tech ratios are off, then you know what, call. We can help you. We have tools. tools we have people we have processes that we've perfected over the last 30 years that we're we're happy to share we've got young guys we've got old guys and what they all have is a love of technology whether it's new or old so they know how everything works and that's what we do is we make sure your computers work and that they're user-friendly and that your technology

is hassle-free the objective is to bring you our mission is to bring you like technology peace like like peace of mind so you don't have to worry about it all the time you don't have to worry about being breached you don't have to focus on your core business and growing your core business don't get mogged down in the weeds of like keeping the the network safe and cleaning up harry's the malware on harry's machine that's going to infect the entire network like yeah let let the let the pros at cdn technology fix that and worry about that yes i agree by the way i want to let people know because if they're listening to our voices right now they're clearly comfortable with this wonderful new broadcast medium we call podcasts.

You, Barb Paluskiewicz, you host a podcast. The podcast is called, and I need to spell it, just like your last name. It's all in the spelling. But No Tech Talk. But No is spelled K-N-O-W. So No Tech Talk. So tell us a little bit about your podcast and why people should subscribe. that are out there that are used to keep a small and medium-sized business safe today from cyber attacks and data breaches and humans accidentally making mistakes when they click on things that

they're not supposed to. That's, I think, a nice, easy way to sum it all up. No Tech Talk is a great podcast hosted by Barb Paluskiewicz. Barb, as you've learned over this last 45 minutes, is a wonderful person. You could literally call her right now, 905-542-9759. Learn how CDN technologies can help you and your business. But most importantly, thank her for helping to fuel the real talk on Toronto Mike. Barb, thanks so much for doing this. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Mike.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It's great seeing and talking to you. And that brings us to the end of our 663rd show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Now, on Twitter, you can follow, I would recommend following CDN Technologies

because even though there is a Barb Paluskiewicz account, Barb doesn't update it as often as I'd like, but that's a whole offline conversation we'll have. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Sticker U is at Sticker U. The Keitner Group are at The Keitner Group.

CDN Technologies, as I mentioned, are at CDN Technologies. And Garbage Day are at GarbageDay.com slash Toronto Mike. Garbage Day ends the guesswork related to the collection of wasted recycling. And subscribers don't need to worry about missing a collection or figuring out what bin to put to the collection of wasted recycling and subscribers don't need to worry about missing a collection or figuring out what bin to put to the curb again go to garbage day.com slash toronto mike see you all next week This podcast has been produced by TMDS and accelerated by Rome Phone. Rome Phone brings you the most reliable virtual phone service to run your business and protect your home number from unwanted calls.

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