Thank You

Shayne Tadlas. Manager

IT Helpdesk

American Traffic Solutions

1330 West Southern Avenue, Suite 101

Tempe, Arizona 85282

Dear, Shayne,

I would like to thank American Traffic Solutions for the opportunity to work for their organization. This has been a great time for me and the company. I was here when they were growing from a “mom and pop shop” into a company. I’m glad that I could help and contribute to the growth of the company. It has been hard, serious and fun to work here. I have met many people and some I will continue to keep in contact with after I leave here.

American Traffic Solutions deals with the safety of people in many cities. I have made contact and work with people in different states. I have worked with other ATS employees that work all over the nation. I have worked with courts, county workers and Police Departments nationwide. This has been a great experience for me. I learned how to be more professional and how to work with people of different ethnicities. I learned how to work the policies that are set forth. All and all I had a great time and I appreciate all that the company has offered.

Thanks,

Damon Hutchinson

Intern, American traffic solutions

Reaching My Goals

One of the things that I wanted was how state, county and federal governments all work together. I learned how state and county work together. This was very important to learn in my career in public policy. One thing that I learned companies with stockholders are a lot more frantic, and have knee jerk reactions to situations. This is a little concerning because in order for companies to grow they needs stability. I learned how local, county and state agencies work with one another. Sometimes they have their own rules and sometimes they have laws that govern them all.

I learned how to work with other ethnic groups. I have worked with Native Americans, Asians and Indians. I learning how to be more culturally diverse when I am working with people. Being culturally diverse helps, you work with all different types of people. I did not learn all the things that I wanted to learn but, I did learn most of them which will help me in my career. The reason why is because we had a few different projects were switching around and taking on so we could not spend a lot of time on one subject. I wish all the people in this class good luck and well wishes in your future. This has been a great time in my life and I will always remember it.

Professional Development NFBPA

On Friday, March 13, 2015 while most of the kids were on spring break, I was at the at a professional development seminar. The National Forum for Black Public Administrators (NFBPA). The NFBPA seminar has been happening for a 15 years in Arizona. The hold this every year for black public administrators. This was held at the desert willow conference room in South Phoenix, Arizona. They were many public administrators from around Arizona attended this seminar. They started the introduction with breakfast and meet. Then we went into the main conference rooms where the was a round table discussion with prominent black public administrators from around the valley. DR. Spencer Isom city manager of El Mirage and Milton Dohoney assistant city manager of Phoenix headed up the panel.

They spoke about pressing issues and situations that sometimes come about with their job. They also spoke about the experiences of past and present jobs. This was exciting to see actual Public administrators talk about their and jobs. They the different Workshops started after a quick break. The workshops included topics like how to communicate up and down the organization getting results without authority and expanding your influence. The workshops gave good information, but then it was time for lunch. During lunch, they presented people with scholarships and other awards. 

We then broke off into the workshops again for another hour. Then we had the keynote speaker Regina Williams-Gates she is a very accomplished public administrator. She has been a city manager for various cities around the nation. She spoke of her life and her experiences in her life with public administration. This was a great time for all and making friends in the field and networking with peers. 

Yet Another IProduct!

Apple just came out with their apple phone. This is another installment by Apple who has been playing catch up since Steve Jobs died. The apple Phone seems like over kill to me. Apple already has iMac, iPhone, iPad and iPad mini. This is just another tool to keep you locked into the web texting and updating and viewing Facebook, Instagram, and twitter. Apple is trying to turn people into cyborgs with all this technology all over the body. The funny thing is that there has been smart watches out for three or four years now. All of the major cell phone providers have one. Apple tried to make seem like this was a brand new innovation here. Apple is falling behind the pack instead of leading the pack but somehow is still on top of the heap.

Weather Roller Coaster

The weather this year has been up and down. It’s cold one day and the next its hot. This has been increasing over the years. I remember when it was cold it was cold and when it was hot it was hot. This roller coaster ride of weather makes you think about global warming. It seems like it might be true. Everywhere in the US, it’s a roller coaster of warmer temperatures in the winter time, and longer than normal summers. I’m not a scientist, but I know one thing, the world is getting warmer and warmer every year and we need to do something about it.

Company Strength

My organization is a small Business that has grown in size. The major strength is that we are a small company. This allows us to be more honest with each other. In big companies, everything is by the book. There is no intimacy with co-workers. This is the best thing about the company I work for. If I were in charge I would having a training department that trained everyone in the company. There are changes that go on here that need in-depth training and it’s not given. This aspect has set company deadlines back a few times since I have been here. This is not good for the company and could hurt the company at some point.

Movies

The movies are the only thing that has not had any racial issues in recent years. The movies can make you laugh, cry and cheer with people you do not know and will probably will never see again. The were movies used as a source of news during WWI and WWII. The movies informed and entertained in the early days.

Now the movies are in competition with the internet. “Bootleg” movies have cut into the profits of movies. Television has also cut into the movie watching. Many stars are now turning to T.V. The movie industry needs to find a way for people to fall in love with movies again. We need to see the magic in movies. The popcorn, candy and drinks sitting dark theater with surround sound there is nothing like it.

Community Service

Our company gets out in the community and represent for our company a lot we go to public events and help out the community. We just completed heart walk to help raise money to help cure heart disease. We raised a couple thousand for the cause. We try to get our name out in the public because being a red light company tend to frown on us.

Any cause that have to do with the heart and lungs we are involved because we have had a couple people died from both in our company. We always make time to give back to these causes because they have made a big impact in the company’s life. Our company vehicle is about safety, but we also try getting out and serving the community.

Really??

As businesses where they are becoming companies, they have to manifest themselves into a corporation. In order to do this you have to have policies in place to help the structure of the organization be strong. Corporations and businesses have rules and policies in place. When you break these policies or rules then you are reprimanded, this is common knowledge in the business world. However, how can you be reprimanded for somewhere there is no rule or policy in place?

It baffles me that businesses can even have something to say to anyone without having any rules. Businesses that have investors are run to please the investors. The company owners no longer run the company the investors do. When you have investors, you need to rules and policies in place for the investing interest. You can be “Duck Company” (looking calm on the surface and frantically moving around inside the company). This is the main reason why I changed my career to public administration. Because I am very tired of working for investors.

Whos Your Top Five?

In the Black community we have our favorite rappers. They range from hardcore to crossover. In the black community, we have debates in “the hood” over our top five rappers of all time. These debates have gone on so long they had a spin off movie about it. Over the span of thirty years, there has been a lot of rappers,  some only had one hit and some spanned a decade. Some rapper has spanned the test of time and stayed relevant.

Whether you like beets, the rap or both a top five are the rappers that made an impact in your life. “Six in the morning police at my door fresh addias sqeakin cross the bathroom for”. The immortal words of Ice-T from his 6 in the morning song resonates with a lot of fab 40’s as a powerful lyrics that transcends time. “rrraaahhh rrraaahhh like a dungeon dragon” is another memorable lyric from the Busta Rhymes of Leaders of the New School the group he was with at the time. The memories of these lyrics and other like them is what creates a favorite rapper so I ask you who’s your top five?

1.      Ice Cube

2.      DJ Quik

3.      Nas

4.      Jay-Z

5.      Busta Rhymes

Leadership

In my internship, we all have opportunities for leadership. We analyze helpdesk tickets that come in. When we get a ticket that we think is a severe were we think that operations will be impacted we can call a outage in this we call the appropriate people to get the problems taken care of. Any of us can take ownership of these tickets and the others are to fall into a subordinate role to help. We all share leadership and subordinate roles every day.

We have a supervisor and a manager that use the laissez faire style of leadership. We can take care of ourselves and we are all self-starters. This can sometimes cause conflicts because sometimes we need more leadership or instruction. As a team, we are all able to lead when need be to get our goals accomplished.

Family First

I am a husband and a father. I work full time and go to school full time with all these things going on its important to put family first. I grew up in a house where my father and mother were busy. They never did anything with the family. My father was involved in the community and he was loved in our community. My mother helped run a flower business with her best friend. When she wasn’t doing that she was helping my father with youth football.

I understand the importance of being in the community. I like helping out in the community when I can but when you do that it cost you something. In my upbringing with my parents, being busy there was never time for family. My father only took us on one vacation to California, which was the best vacation ever. I vowed to not be like my father with my family so, I try to have us go out to a restaurant once a week and we eat dinner as a family as much as we can. We have a Sunday night, game night where we play a board game on Sunday night after dinner. I try to take time off when my family is off so we can spend time together. I try to be involved with my daughter to let her know I love her. I put family first because we are all we got for the rest of our lives.

Interview with Dr. Lavern Diggs

I would like to be a City manager. This occupation is a powerful one in which you are over all city policies and projects in the city. The position has a lot of power you are not in the spotlight, how many city managers do you know? City managers work with city council, city, and state government on a daily basis. I was tasked with finding a person in the position I want to be in and interview them about the position. I so happen to find a person that had held the position right here at ASU.

Dr. Lavern Diggs is a faculty associate for ASU that has held the position of assistant city manager for the City of Norfolk. Norfolk is a small naval town in Virginia. I sought out Dr. Diggs to interview her for the position she held. We had communicated through email then on the phone until we were able to get an interview. I was excited because Dr. Diggs has vast amounts of experience. She was not only an assistant city manager, but she also worked as she also served as the Director of Human Resources and Organizational Development for the City of Glendale, Arizona.

I started the interview with the question of what was her main responsibilities as an assistant city manager for the city of Norfolk? She responded that her responsibilities included, she directed the administration of an entire city from the supervision of management employees to interact with citizens. She also ensured that each municipal department operates effectively and Develop strategies to meet strategic goals and oversee the projects through to completion. She also Participated in the creation of the city budget and allocate funding for the upcoming year. I then asked her how she choose her career? She stated she realized early in her career that she wanted to be involved with making a difference in the local community and that making a difference does not necessarily happen through the elected officials.  It is the education, skill and ability of the city management staff responsible for the implementation, and oversight of the policies and programs decided by the elected officials. Dr. Diggs stated that you need to have at least have a master’s degree and have taken some leadership courses as a perquisite for a city manager position. When asked about trends she noticed in her the city manager field. Dr. Diggs elaborated that she noticed Shared Services was a new trend, shared services is state and local governments collaborating to combine technologies or solutions.  This concept would help contribute to the overall financial cost. Dr. Diggs stated many state and local officials have begun to explore new collaborative relationships with neighboring public sector entities. I thanked her for her time and ended the interview.

Dr. Diggs is a trailblazer in the Public Administration field that has a lot of experience and I was glad she could share with me.

Youth and Careers

Back in the day, the kids wanted to be firefighters, police officers and the President. Kids liked animals, liked making things, and had imagination. Women grew up and wanted to housewives, teachers or secretaries. If they had bad luck or fell on hard times then they would end up being a stripper, adult model or porn actor.

The times have indeed changed, now kids girls want to be “booty models” or porn actor. The boys are not any better they all want to be “rappers”, ball players or musicians. They want to be a socialite. “I want to tell them a socialite is occupational benefit!” The kids do not want to work hard for anything that is why all these online universities are popping up. They do not want to do algebra, English and economics. They want to get in and get out and move on to the next thing, but, the jobs they are getting is paying them anything. They end up in debt with a career that they will never get ahead or advance in their career. They have gotten rid of A.I.M.S. Testing so now, they might be able to get back to getting them prepared for college. If they are able to make it to a four-year university, they might find a worthwhile career.

“Broke Neck Zombies”

In the film”Minority Report” Tom Cruise’s character comes upon a blind drug dealer that gave him some advice. “In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king”. His is how I feel sometimes. When I go to class everyone is looking down feverishly texting or scrolling. They look up for just a second to as  a guide of where they are walking. No one is smiling or have personal conversations. Zombies, broke neck zombies wandering around campus.

I wonder do they ever see the beauty of their surroundings. I go to the downtown campus. It is truly beautiful the scenic scenes of a university with the metropolitan sprawl in the background. I take a look down 3^Rd Street and see the high rises and the urban landscape and think “wow” this is the best school ever. I have been to other colleges. I have been to the University of Virginia, Norfolk State, Old Dominion, Hampton University and Grand Canyon university. All of them have their beauty, but Arizona State is the best. These kids will never see the beauty in their school trying to live 160 characters at a time.

Career Services

I was not able to make to a career services event yet but I went to the site and it is really set up for students. They have a lot of good things on there. The first page draws you in. It had the students graduating and it has another pic of a young lady shaking a man’s hand at a job fair. They have a tabs for students, employer, alumni, faculty& staff and even families.  On the front page you can drop you resume. I thought this was cool.

On the student page they have a list of career fairs and events. They have events most of the events are in the morning which doesn’t help if you have a full time job. They have events several times a week. I will try to make of these events before this class is over and report on it

What a Day

My day begins at 3:25am with my alarm going off on my phone. I roll over and hit the snooze. After hitting snooze again I wake and hop in the shower. I get dressed and take my “stay right “pills which consist of multi vitamin, fish oil pill and two vitamin D pills. I then sit down to watch some news whatever I can catch. I leave my house and asses the weather. Once I have done whether I need a coat or not I hop in my car and I’m off to work.

When im at work I don’t really take breaks but when I do, I “brake” I get away from my work area and sometimes outside the building to take in some fresh air. I do my work day and leave I don’t hang around to “chit chat”. I go home and workout, then I sneak peek at my assignments due. I hop back in my car and go pick my daughter up from school. I help my daughter with her homework. I cook dinner for her and my wife. My wife comes home about 5:30pm. We eat dinner and watch some T.V. while doing homework. Then I talk to my wife about the day’s events and I lie down and watch T.V. until I am ready for bed. I turn out the lights and go to bed.

Just Another Day

My day shift starts at 5:00am. I login to my computer and I log in to the ATS ticket software and email. I look for any high priority tickets and emails. If I don’t find any I start processing tickets by our standard, which 10/30. This method has us answering a ticket or email in 10 minutes and has it assigned in 30 minutes. We also do “FIFO” which is first in first out. At my job we also answer the phones. When someone calls in we get their first and last name or username to assess if they are a client or user. We trouble shoot their issue and keep track of all we are doing in our ticketing system. Our troubleshooting is based on contract we have with the client. Some clients have contracts that we can install and make changes to the computer.

We also have a departmental task that we have to work on. These entire tasks are to make our department more efficient. 4DX (4 Disciplines of Execution) this is how we keep track of our task and we have a meeting every week about them. When we have spare time this is what we work on. This is a regular day at the office for me at American Traffic Solutions.

Balance

When you set out to do something or you set your sights on a goal you go for it. In the pursuit of your goal you have to balance that the life in which you and with the goals you are trying to achieve. This most cases it is easy, especially with young people. Young adults have a very easy time in pursuit of their goals.

What is the balance many people here and wonder what it is? Balance is the action of trying to meet one’s or things needs and accomplishing tasks. This can be construed as easy, but when you have a house, wife, kids and house. When you throw in a full schedule with school this can get daunting to meet all these deadlines and have the task done.

Many people do not prioritize their day. In order to accomplish tasks and get to do things you want to, you have scheduled and priorities. This helps you stay on course throughout the day. People can easily lose focus or be swayed away from what they need to do every. Controlling the balance can be made a little bit easier mapping out your day and prioritizing your day.

Struggle

I have often worked the day or middle shift since I have been working. The day shift is 9am to 5pm. The middle shift is 12pm to 9pm. These shifts fit my “night owl” personality. I have recently changed shifts to a morning shift.

 This shift is 5am to 2pm. This shift is a different one than what I am used to. The morning shift is more flexible with the rest of my day. I have more time to get homework done and pick up my daughter from school. I can make doctors appointments. The downside is I can be up late. I was used to going to bed about midnight or so and still be able to get six to seven hours of sleep. Now I have to go to sleep by 8:30 or 9 at night. This is a struggle for me because I feel now that there is not enough time in the day. There are days that I have to miss things like working out or just having time for myself.

American Traffic Solutions

I am interning for American Traffic Solutions. They are a red light company. They install and maintain sensors that are triggered by speed, red lights or bus lane. They have cameras in Chicago, Texas, Florida, Washington, California and Canada. We also process the violations for some cities and print out the notices and send them to the violators.

American Traffic Solutions work with courts and police departments also with the distribution of our own software. We maintain, develop, and troubleshoot our own program. This program is called Axsis this software takes the images from the camera and puts it into our program so that it can be processed. “Violation Processors” then check the violations to see if it is an actual violation based on federal and state laws. Once that is done it is either sent to the police station So that a police officer can sign off on it or be sent to our printing facility so that a notice of the violation can be sent off. We have offices in New York and Chicago. Our headquarters are here in Tempe, AZ.
What I will be doing for them is doing troubleshooting of our software for clients of courts and police departments. I will doing this in compliance with the contract guidelines set by the client. I will also help load software for the cameras.

Introduction

My name is Damon Hutchinson. I am a veteran I spent ten years in the navy. In the navy I was taught about computers and this is what I have been doing for the past 15 years. I have done computer networking in the military and the state level. I am changing my career in the public service sector because my I saw my father help in his community any way that he could. I also have a knack for helping people. I am also a husband and a father of two girls.

The objective that I hope to learn from my intern is to learn how state, county and federal laws work together. This is an important to my major because is how it all works together. Another objective is to learn leadership and organization. This is the foundation of public organizations and private organizations. The last objective that I would like to achieve is how to work with different ethnic groups in a professional setting. I know that in public service you will work with diverse groups of people in my career so this will help me in working with different groups of people.