Corrections or additions?
These stories by Peter J. Mladineo and Barbara Fox were published
in U.S. 1 Newspaper
on April 29, 1998. All rights reserved.
Survival Guide II
Top Of PageSpreading the Y2K Word
Major players like Bellcorp and AT&T are helping get
computers into schools (see story above) and they also want to help
small and medium size businesses cope with the potential infection
from the “Millennium Bug,” the computer date problems that
may occur when the calendar turns from December 31, 1999 to January
1, 2000.
“We are finding that too many businesses, especially small and
local government,” says Grace Polhemus, “either believe
that the millennium bug is hype — that people are making this
into a big deal because they want to make money — or don’t have
a detailed knowledge and understanding of what this is all about,
which has prevented them from doing the planning and funding.”
Polhemus heads Technology New Jersey, based at the Carnegie Center
(https://www.technologynj.org, 609-419-4444). Her organization
has formed Task Force 2000 to bring the public and private sectors
together to deal with the Y2K crisis. She is planning a conference
on Thursday, June 11, at the East Brunswick Hilton. “Businesses
such as Prudential, IBM, and Bellcore, will be there talking to small
or medium businesses about what this crisis is all about —
experiences,
best practices, and case studies,” says Polhemus.
“After the conference the vendors will be putting on workshops
and seminars every month, so that the companies and governments will
no longer be in the dark. They will have the information and resources
needed to develop a successful conversion plan,” she says.
Polhemus lists 30 companies as members of the task force. They include
such international computer firms as AT&T, Bellcore, Computer
Associates,
Digital Equipment Corp., IBM Global Services, and Sun Microsystems.
Then there are the law firms: Reed Smith Shaw & McClay and Greenbaum,
Rowe, Smith et al. Year 2K computer firms expected to give seminars
include HexaWare Technologies on Independence Way, Transformation
Systems on Emmons Drive, and Visionet Systems on Route 1 South.
“The competitiveness and very survival of New Jersey businesses
are threatened,” says Polhemus. “The severity of the Y2K
crisis
will depend largely on how quickly government and businesses become
aware of the risks and act accordingly.”
Representatives from the Princeton and Newark chapter
of the Service Corps of Retired Executives will judge the Awards for
Excellence Program sponsored by the New Jersey Business and Industry
Association. The judging, to be held at the Palmer Inn on Wednesday,
June 24, will include such categories as Enterprise, Outstanding
Employer,
Public Service, and Environmental Quality.
Small business owners who have a problem or simply need a sounding
board can schedule no-charge confidential consulting sessions with
members of SCORE, a volunteer arm of the United States Small Business
Administration. Sessions are held Tuesdays and Thursdays at the
Princeton
Chamber and on Wednesday in Jamesburg. Call 609-520-1776 for an
appointment.
B>Union Camp Employee Community Service Program
donated $450 to Big Brothers Big Sisters of Mercer County. The program
allows employees to get work release time to visit a child during
the school day, at the school, once a week. Mentors and Big Sisters
and Brothers include Paul Watson, George Eischen, Dan Seiter,
Jacquelin
Schonewolf, John Catino Jr., and Tracy Pullene. Call 609-888-2227.
J. Houston Witherspoon of St. Louis funded theconstructionof 50 apartments for single, older students on Emmons Drive. Theywill be dedicated on Monday, April 27, at 11 a.m. Call 609-497-7760.The Opticians Association of America, through itseducationfoundation, has given a $10,000 refraction lane to Raritan ValleyCommunity College’s ophthalmics department.The Provident has donated $10,000 to the Battleship NewJersey Foundation to be used to bring the ship from the Puget SoundNavy Yard and fit it out as an education museum in Bayonne, at theformer Navy terminal, soon to be a $2 billioncommercial/residential/entertainmentcenter.Publisher Harold McGraw Jr. (Princeton University Classof 1940) has donated $5 million to endow a center for innovativeteachingand effective learning, with an electronic classroom and a multimediaresource lab.The American Cancer Society raised nearly $100,000 tofund cancer research at its “Blown Away” gala on February21. The sponsors of the event include the Medical Center at Princeton,the Princeton Medical Group, Princeton Radiology Associates, RomaFederal Savings Bank, Thomas Edison State College, the TuchmanFoundation,American Cyanamid, and Maurice T. Perilli.The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation gave $200,000 toCarrierFoundation. The three-year grant is part of the RWJF’s New Jerseyhealth initiatives program. Carrier was one of four applicants forthe prize. The money will be used so Carrier can develop a uniquetype of after-care program for high school students in recovery fromsubstance abuse.The New York Community Trust gave Rider University a$31,000grant to complete the cataloging and preservation of its Louis A.Leslie collection of shorthand materials. Its 15,000 samples showa slice of life before the advent of the printed word, and takesshorthandspecimens from around the world and history. It includes whole booksinscribed in shorthand by authors Sir Isaac Pitman and John RobertGregg. The collection also has letters from Civil War soldiers tomagazine editors and sweethearts, as well as shorthand editions ofthe Bible.Bell Atlantic-New Jersey gave Westminster Choir Collegea $50,000 grant to enhance its on-campus technology. The funds willhelp to underwrite a new arts and science computer lab that contain24 multimedia workstations with access to the ‘Net.Princeton University gave $100,000 to the Princeton ArtsCouncil’s $3.5 million renovated building at the corner of WitherspoonStreet and Paul Robeson Place. The building is being redesigned byMichael Graves, and is scheduled for groundbreaking in spring of 1999.The Prudential Foundation gave a grant of $35,000 toPushcartPlayers in support of its arts in education mentoring program, whichteaches theater to youths in three Newark schools. Prudential alsogave a $25,000 grant to the Shoestring Players, which will allow tenNewark elementary schools to participate in Shoestring’s storytellingresidency program.HiTOPS received a $12,000 grant from the HorizonFoundationand a $10,000 grant from the NYMEX Foundation to assist the work ofits teen council, which provides education workshops for area teenson sex-related topics, such as pregnancy prevention and homophobia.Ernst & Young paid for setting up a model accountingofficeat Rider University. The Ernst & Young Resource Center, on the thirdfloor of Sweigart Hall, has six Dell Pentium computers, recessed undertransparent tabletops, thus blending modern technology with aprofessionaltax reference library — the Research Institute of America taxservice, an Internet product that can be more up to date than monthlyversions of CD-ROMs.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
