The Jeff Skoll way: mixing technology [ebay], business [stanford univ. business school], and film production [participant media] into billions

If you have heard of Participant Media, then you may have read about Jeff Skoll. This film production company was founded by Jeff Skoll in 2004. Jeff Skoll graduated from Stanford University Business School, with an MBA at the Palo Alto campus. He found a way to make his MBA work for him, when he started working at Ebay with Pierre Omidyar and Margaret 'Meg' Whitman. As some of you know, Ebay started in the mid 1990s as a pure e-commerce auction website. Many netizens would peruse on Ebay to buy art, or to get other cool products through an internet auction. Ebay had their competitors too, including Amazon. Ebay would become one of the most popular auction companies, on the internet. Ebay stood for electronic (or echo) bay. Meg Whitman was the CEO of Ebay for 10 years, from 1998 to 2008. Pierre Omidyar is one of the main founders of Ebay. In the late summer of 1995, he and other coworkers decided to start Ebay as an electronic marketplace for sellers and buyers of various products. One of Pierre's coworkers was Jeff Skoll. With Jeff on board to help Pierre, it seemed that Ebay might only be a two man shop. Nope!! Jeff S. and Pierre O. decided that Meg Whitman was the right person to be the CEO. Meg W. became one of the few tech. female CEOs in Silicon Valley that steered the company in the right manner, through the recession in 2001 and the end of the .com [.dot com] boom in 2000-2002. Next, Meg decided that 2008 would be her last year with Ebay. But, it was ok for her to leave the internet juggernaut. Ebay had become a huge company with upwards of $5-$8 billion in sales. She would leave to start her new career as the CEO of Hewlett Packard, a huge computer reseller/software corporation. Let's go back to Jeff Skoll, as he is the main reason why I am writing this internet journalism story. Jeff Skoll has his name on the basc/mba emphasis [program] at university of toronto, which is his alma mater. The Rotman School of Management at university of toronto campus is one of the best colleges in Canada, thanks to the basc/mba program emphasis. Some of you may wonder why Participant Media means so much to me, and to the great Jeff Skoll. It is a film production company that helped Albert (Al) Gore, former VP of the US; to educate the world about Global Warming. Davis Guggenheim directed the movie, 'an Inconvenient Truth'; in 2006, and Al Gore helped the documentary further to win two Academy Awards in 2007. As for Jeff Skoll and participant media, there have been a few hits like 'Syriana;' 'Good Night, and Good luck;' plus 'North Country.' Syriana garnered an academy award for best supporting actor for George Clooney. Finally, let's circle back to Jeff Skoll. Participant Media has helped Jeff to branch out of tech. and business, to movie making which he loves to do. The other hits of Participant Media are 'Fast Food Nation' (2006), 'The World According to Sesame Street' (2006), Waiting for "Superman" (2010), 'Lincoln' (2012), and 'Spotlight (2015).' At the 2016 academy awards ceremony aka the oscars, Spotlight won the best picture academy award. In 2019, Green Book won the best picture award and they were helped by Participant Media. Finally, today's young internet entrepreneurs should look to Jeff Skoll and the future. Jeff may be in his fifties, but he has gained the knowledge of IT and business since the late 1990s. This era to today is almost 20 glorious years or more, of how the internet changed the lives of many netizens [portmanteau for network and citizens]. As this story written by G. Ripley comes to end, the readers should think of Jeff Skoll as one of the few tech. minds that will continue to teach humans how to improve their career; and work life. Remember that Meg Whitman; Pierre Omidyar; and Jeff Skoll are workers in the IT industry. Yet, they are philanthropists that care about the world becoming a better place for the next 100 years. Good bye to all my tech. and non-technology folks. You are the future, that helps an app. support analyst like myself to stay in this business driven world replete with new technologies that expand the internet and mankind.

Time to discuss bank mergers, transactions, etc. as SunTrust and BB&T are getting married!!

Today is another historic day in the banking/finance world. SunTrust and BB&T are merging in a $66 billion deal, which will form the 6th largest bank in the US. For the average reader, it may be time to ask 'where do I bank, and which bank is the biggest in America?' Or, maybe you don't have checking or savings account. Just joking! The top five banks in this country are: 1. JP Morgan-Chase; 2. Bank of America; 3. Wells Fargo; 4. Citi; 5. U.S. Bank. The new combination of SunTrust and BB&T will operate under a new name. BB&T stands for Branch Bank and Trust. The nouveau corporate headquarters will be in Charlotte, North Carolina. In addition, the southeastern financial institution will have significant operations in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and Atlanta. Together, BB&T and SunTrust will see the deal closing in late 2019. Of course, this beautiful financial marriage is pending regulatory approval. The merger marks the first major banking sector deal, since the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Bank of America is where Rahulio G. and G. Ripley want to spend their money. BofA knows how to handle the money of big ballers, you dig. BofA CEO Brian Moynihan said at the World Economic Forum (WEF)in Davos, Switzerland last month that it would take a round of US bank mergers to produce a new rival in financial banking. JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC), Citigroup (C), Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) brought in more than $120 billion combined in profit last year. Banks contend with rising technology costs, which is a problematic trend for financial tech. firms and huge financial institutions. JP Morgan has 50,000 employees working in IT, and this number is quite high for a well known global bank. Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan CEO; believes that there are too many banks already. His point is very valid, as banks were merging in the 2000s and other previous decades. The amount of mergers in the 2000s, 1990s; and previous ones is more than double this current decade. In closing, this SunTrust and BB&T deal should have a new name of BBSuntrust. That is a name which will not be picked, unless G. Ripley is CEO of the new banking firm. Enjoy the picture of SunTrust above. Keep spending that money, USA!!

Four separate sectors in Information technology and beyond

As an application support analyst, one can be quite familiar with the process of level 3 support. For g. Ripley, app. support analyst and systems analyst are my career paths. For the application support personality, one has to work with the cloud sector; business intelligence (BI); customer relationship management (crm); and enterprise resource planning (erp). To achieve maximum results and gain the most knowledge, G. Ripley wants to be an expert in all four sectors. Second, here are the top three companies in the cloud services/software area: 1. Amazon web services (AWS); 2. Microsoft Azure; 3. google cloud platform. Business Intelligence involves getting data through different tools to perform ETL (extract, transform, and load) process. Three well known companies along with their respective products in BI sector are Tableau desktop/online/support; Microsoft PowerBI; and Informatica powercenter. SAP BusinessObjects is another key player in the BI sector. After mastering the cloud and Business Intelligence, the next step includes familiarizing oneself with customer relationship management. Hence, the popular software companies and products are Salesforce enterprise/professional environment; and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. For ERP, the major players are SAP R3; Oracle ERP cloud; and Microsoft Dynamics AX. SAP is an acronym for Systems, Applications and Products. The company is based in Germany, and has one of its corporate headquarters there. While SAP; Microsoft; Oracle; Salesforce; and Google are big software rivals, consumers and companies tend to use their products regardless of the expensive costs. In this penultimate paragraph, there are other products that should be mentioned. One product is Google BigQuery, and it is an data warehouse analytics product in the cloud. When people talk about the cloud, it is a very broad subject. Let's break it down. The cloud will consist of Iaas, Paas, and Saas. Iaas is Infrastructure as a service; Paas is platform as a service; and Saas is software as a service. Lastly, the reader should recognize that there will be a lot of different IT acronyms used in today's tech. jargon. It is not a necessity to know all of them. Yet, it helps to know a majority of them. To survive in application support world, it is best to follow the trends in all of these four sectors in IT. Keep track of what is used, and what you use to support companies on the enterprise and cloud platforms. Goodbye to tech. land. Enjoy the picture above of the different modules of ERP business software. Bus. Intelligence and CRM are in the image, as they fit in the pie nicely.

2018 was a wild year for the stock market; STZ has diverse product portfolio :)

The stock market had a lousy 2018. All three stock markets (NYSE; nasdaq; and s&p 500) were down by more than 5%. Abiomed, Macy's, McCormick, and Zoetis plus other firms posted strong gains. What about the chip sector? Chip-maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) surged 73% in 2018. AMD is benefiting from increased demand for PCs. AMD's Ryzen chips have been taking market share from Intel. Second: in the auto world, auto parts retailers were also among the top performers in 2018. Advance Auto Parts (AAP) gained 55%, while O'Reilly Automotive (ORLY) gained 42%. In the online travel sector, TripAdvisor (TRIP) was the fourth best stock of the year. In the food and beverage world, Chipotle (CMG) gained 46% this year under new CEO Brian Niccol. Next up, let's talk about one of G. Ripley's favorite companies in the Spirits and Alcohol world. STZ is the stock symbol for Constellation Brands, and they are based in Western New York. This company owns different wines, beers like Corona; and they are invested in Cannabis. There is no smoke about that last snippet. The company is big into crown whiskey too, and their market cap is between $20-30 billion. Robert Mondavi and Kim Crawford are a few of their wine brands. In closing on STZ, keep drinking and absorbing their products because they may generate steady profits for 2019. Finally, is earnings season going to drag down the stock markets and the US economy? The earnings season starts in week of January 14; and it could be two full weeks of companies reporting 4th quarter earnings. The US economy will report their GDP numbers in the next 2-3 weeks. Hope Q4 GDP is above 1 or 2% growth. The rest of the world may be in recession, but US is chugging along at a health 2 to 2.5% growth rate for 2018. Good day from the financial R$G. Good night from g. ripley (greenleaf/ripley); and tonight's wine will be just like the picture above.

EU27 will be different without UK; Brexit may be 'the new norm' on March 29, 2019

Theresa May became Prime Minister of the UK, more than 2.5 years ago. In her tenure, the English people believe that the economy in Britain could worsen if Brexit takes place. Brexit is the portmanteau of Britain and exit. The fundamental question is 'does the British government vote to exit the European Union?'; and May must lead the 2nd biggest economy in Europe during the current tough times. The top five economies in Europe based on GDP Annual Growth rate are Germany (21%), United Kingdom (15%), France (15%), Italy (11%), and Spain (8%). Currently, there are 28 countries in the European Union. The region minus the United Kingdom is referred to as 'EU27.' Next, Britain may leave the EU on March 29, 2019. European Commissioner Guenther Oettinger sees a slim hope that Britain's parliament will vote in favor of the Brexit agreement in January 2019. Theresa May has struck a withdrawal agreement with Brussels, as European Parliament (plus European Commission) is in accord with the UK government on their exit strategy. As for the British economy, the unemployment level in the UK is at the lowest level in 4 decades. The economy in UK is at a stronger risk of going into recession in 2019. In addition, there could be three grim factors of property prices falling, unemployment doubling and inflation spiking if there's 'no Brexit deal.' These three uneasy possibilities could lead to a long recession in the UK region. Another major idea is 'does no Brexit deal mean that the European Union could go into recession in 2019?' The following economies in Europe: Greece and Italy; are in a recession already. The current leaders: Emmanuel Macron of France and Angela Merkel of Germany; are promoting European unity amid the Brexit chaos. The two leaders are trying to bolster each other's countries to make a new budget in the Eurozone work. In closing, the author of this post has constructed three paragraphs of writing based on factual information for the simple reader. This final paragraph is a summary and forward thoughts for the reader to assimilate. Let's say the UK leaves the European Union on March 29, 2019. It will be towards the end of the first quarter of 2019, an additional thought is 'will the other economies of Europe be in recession or are the sister countries of EU producing normal GDP growth?' The author is trying to not see the future, or the next quarter's gdp growth in all economies of the EU in FY2019. Enjoy the picture above of the flags of EU countries. Ciao!!

Movies in December 2018 and Golden Globes preview 2019, from Hollywood G.

Back in October 2018, Hollywood G. saw 'First Man' movie in a theater with a good friend. They both thought the movie was worthy of Academy Award buzz. Instead, the movie has been nominated for 2 golden globe awards. Claire Foy depicts Neil Armstrong's wife in the movie, has garnered an Golden globe nomination for her role. 'First Man' is about Neil Armstrong and his journey to being one of the first men on the moon, along with Buzz Aldrin. The movie is based on a true story, and Ryan Gosling did a stellar job as Neil Armstrong. Back in November 2018, Hollywood G. saw 'Widows' movie and 'Fantastic Beasts 2.' Neither one of these movies is nominated for a golden globe. Widows is based on the TV show, from 1983 and 1985 that was shot in Britain. The movie is starring Viola Davis, Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, and Robert Duvall. Other supporting actors/actresses are in the movie, and Academy Award winner Steve McQueen directed the heist thriller. Widows is a good flick, that is a mystery too. Fantastic Beasts and the crimes of Grindenwald is a good fantasy movie, starring Academy Award Winner Eddie Redmayne and multiple Academy Award nominee Johnny Depp. Two time academy award Nominee Jude Law; does a fine job in the movie also. In December 2018, Hollywood G. saw 'a star is born' and 'bohemian rhapsody' movies. 'A star is born' is directed by multiple Academy Award nominee Bradley Cooper; and he plays one of the main roles. Lady Gaga is the main female role, and she does a great job in her first major movie appearance. Both people have been nominated for golden globe awards. The 2018 movie is a remake of four other versions (1937 movie, 1954 musical, 1976 rock musical, and 2013 Bollywood romance). The 2018 movie has received five total golden globe nominations. Next, 'Bohemian rhapsody' was on the list. This movie has brought many people to see it, as it is the true story of Freddie Mercury and Queen. Rami Malek does an incredible job, of portraying Freddie Mercury aka Farrokh Bulsara. Mike Myers makes a cameo in the movie, and Tom Hollander is the cool Jim 'Miami' Beach; former manager of Queen. The film is based in Great Britain, and USA plus it is nominated for 2 golden globes. Lastly, Clint Eastwood directed 'the mule' and he plays the lead role. Bradley Cooper is the main enforcer, and Michael Pena is his assistant. Both of them find a way to arrest Clint, in the true story of Leonard Sharp. 'The Mule' is based on the true story of Leonard Sharp, and how he was arrested for helping the Sinaloa drug cartel. The movie is doing well in the box office, and Clint deserves an Academy Award nomination. The 88 year old Eastwood has won Oscars for 'Unforgiven' and 'Million Dollar baby' movies. 'Vice' is the next movie for Hollywood g. to see. This flick is about Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and other politicians in the George W. Bush presidency. The movie is mostly a biopic on Dick Cheney, the vice president of the US. Richard Cheney is played by Christian Bale; Amy Adams plays Lynne Cheney; dick's wife. Academy Award winner Sam Rockwell plays George W. Bush; Tyler Perry is Colin Powell; and academy award nominee Steve Carrell plays Donald Rumsfeld. This flick has received six nominations at the Golden Globes. The golden globes 2019 is called 'Hollywood's biggest party'; and it is the precursor to the academy awards 2019 (February 24, 2019). Enjoy the picture of 'The Beverly Hilton' hotel; in Beverly Hills, CA. This spot is the host of the Golden Globes 2019; on January 6, 2019. The legendary Hilton hotel is on Hollywood G.'s must see Hotel list.

New adventures of G. Ripley for the December

YO, this is Rahulio. I mix the flow with my buddy, Sohanny Punato. Sohanny Punato is the smooth Puget Sound grad, who likes to drink coors light. He came into scotts today. Scotts is short for scottsdale. Then, my homie Nalino told me that I need to write on the weblog today. Ok, the flows stop. Today, G. Ripley is back with a new story. After hitting twin peaks in north scotts, best buy was the next stop to make that PC transaction. A new laptop perhaps HP or Asus; would be my transaction. At this point, it is time for me to get rid of my current HP. HP is known for making waves with Meg Whitman, and Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. A little 411 for you, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard founded HP in 1939 in their own garage. Meg Whitman was the CEO of HP for a while, back in the 2000s decade. She made her money as Ceo of Ebay too, back in 1998-2001. She tried to run for governor of CA, but she lost in 2010. Meg Whitman is my segue for this moment in time. As 2018 ends, some of us buy technology. As my buddy in Beantown Ajay Greenleaf knows; people buy something huge before the year ends. Why do we make new year's resolutions anwyays? In this post, you learned how G. Ripley likes to spend money but the janata (public) must have learned something else too. I gave you the history of HP (hewlett packard), and I spoke about Boston too. Janata is a hindi word for public. The janata knows what we all say, but the janata has to accept it too. In 2019, will the US go through recession or will we see the impeachment of President Donald Trump? Maybe, the stock market will see Dow 30 K. I doubt the stock market (NYSE) hitting 30,000 is possible. The trump bump on nyse, nasdaq; is over. No joke. In these two major paragraphs, look at what you may have absorbed. Life is replete with suprises, and what the janata makes of it. Remember to be resilient. It is what we do as humans. Sixteen years ago, G. Ripley was in Palomino with Ajay Greenleaf. Palomino was a westwood, CA restaurant but it closed in 2017. The restaurant was a place that served great Italian food. Remember life is short. In my final 17 days, I have to make the transaction. Hope it is HP or ASUS or samsung, as my samsung galaxy s8 has been great product for me. I owned a samsung camera from 2010-2016, and a have a samsung tv too. Au revoir mes amis! Long live the Internet and the netizens (a portmanteau of network and citizens). Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!!! Netizens is a term that I learned in 1999, when G. Ripley lived in the NOVA (northern virginia).