The Fox School’s Institute for Business and Information Technology presents the Distinguished Speaker Series, featuring talks by leading professionals on essential business technology topics.
The Changing Nature of Work
Jack Hughes
Founder and Chairman
TopCoder, Inc.
February 10, 2011
About the event
The world of work is rapidly changing. The internet will have profound effects on how companies manage a highly diverse, mobile and gloabl workforce. Management models will undergo shifts to meet these new challenges and opportunities. Managers will need to develop new skill sets, measurement and motivation systems to engage these new models of work. Mr. Hughes will discuss these changes and their effects in the context of TopCoder–the world’s largest competitive software development community.
Biography
In November 2000, Jack Hughes founded TopCoder on the premise that talent and skill are the determinant factors in the quality and utility of software and software has become central to the global economy.
In both his own programming experience and as co-founder and chairman of Tallán Inc., a provider of web-enabled business solutions, Hughes recognized that while successful projects were driven by superior programming skills, the talent was unqualified and largely unrecognzied. TopCoder’s mission is to create objective ratings that place high value on the programming industry’s best and brightest, and build opportunity and community for programmers through ongoing programming tournaments and employer connections. Under Hughes’ tenure as chairman at Tallán Inc., the company was recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in North America four years in a row by consultancy firm Deloitte & Touche and by Inc. Magazine for its outstanding performance. In 2000, CMGI, Inc. acquired a majority ownership of the company.
Hughes holds a B.S. degree in computer science from Boston College. He is director and vice chair of the executive committee and chair of the strategy committee for the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation.
Attendance is free on a space available basis for qualified industry and academic professionals. For more information, please contact ibit@temple.edu.
Detmar W. Straub, Ph.D. has been appointed as the “Lenfest Distinguished Visiting Professor and Institute for Business and Information (IBIT) Senior Research Fellow” at the Fox School of Business at Temple University. Professor Straub is the first appointee in the prestigious ‘Distinguished Visiting Professor’ series, which recognizes internationally renowned scholars and engages them with the Fox School. As part of his appointment, Professor Straub will be spending several days every year interacting and working on research projects with Fox faculty and PhD students, offering PhD seminars on research methods, and presenting research projects in the School’s colloquium series. He will also consult the school on various administrative and research issues based on his capacity as the Director of Research and Doctoral Programs at Georgia State University and the Editor-in-Chief of the prestigious journal MIS Quarterly. Professor Straub will be visiting Fox on September 24, 2010 for a colloquium presentation at the Management Information Systems (MIS) department, followed by an induction ceremony.
