#dms software

[sunsmarttech]

Enhancing Efficiency with SunSmart Global's Document Management Software

Manual Document Handling: Problem: Manual handling of documents is time-consuming and prone to errors, leading to inefficiencies and increased operational costs. Solution: Our DMS automates document workflows, reducing manual intervention and minimizing errors.

Document Loss and Misplacement: Problem: Physical documents are susceptible to being lost or misplaced, disrupting business processes and leading to data loss. Solution: SunSmart Global's DMS provides a secure digital repository, ensuring all documents are stored safely and easily retrieved.

Compliance and Security: Problem: Ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and maintaining data security can be challenging and resource-intensive. Solution: Our DMS offers robust security features and compliance management tools to help businesses adhere to regulatory standards and protect sensitive information.

Inefficient Document Retrieval: Problem: Finding specific documents quickly can be difficult, especially when dealing with large volumes of files. Solution: The advanced search functionality of our DMS allows for quick and efficient document retrieval, saving time and improving productivity

Version Control Issues: Problem: Keeping track of different document versions can lead to confusion and inconsistencies. Solution: SunSmart Global's DMS includes version control features that ensure users are always working with the most up-to-date document, reducing errors and enhancing collaboration.

Space and Storage Constraints: Problem: Physical storage of documents requires significant space and resources, which can be costly and inefficient. Solution: By digitizing documents, our DMS eliminates the need for physical storage, freeing up valuable office space and reducing costs.

Contact Us: · Whatsapp: https://wa.link/g2d5fw · Mail: sales@sunsmart.co.in · Website: https://www.sunsmart.co.in/ Follow us: · Twitter -  https://x.com/SunsmartT · Instagram -https://www.instagram.com/sunsmartglobal/ · Linkedin -  https://www.linkedin.com/feed/ · Facebook -  https://www.facebook.com/

[scrsoft]

What is an APQP Checklist?

An Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) checklist is a vital tool used in various industries to ensure the systematic development of products and processes. It serves as a comprehensive guide to managing quality throughout the product lifecycle, from initial design to production and beyond.

Importance of APQP in Quality Management

APQP plays a crucial role in maintaining product quality and customer satisfaction. By following a structured approach outlined in the checklist, organizations can:

Ensure Product Quality: APQP helps in identifying potential risks and quality issues early in the product development stage, allowing for timely mitigation measures.

Reduce Defects and Rework: Through thorough planning and risk assessment, APQP aims to minimize defects and rework, thereby reducing overall production costs.

Understanding the APQP Checklist

An APQP checklist is a document that outlines the necessary steps and requirements for implementing APQP processes effectively. It typically includes:

Definition: A clear definition of APQP and its objectives.

Components of the Checklist: Sections covering various aspects such as planning, design, process validation, and production.

Benefits of Using an APQP Checklist

The utilization of an APQP checklist offers several benefits, including:

Streamlining Processes: By following a structured approach, organizations can streamline their product development and manufacturing processes.

Enhancing Communication: The checklist facilitates effective communication among cross-functional teams, ensuring everyone is aligned with project requirements.

Facilitating Risk Management: APQP checklist helps in identifying and mitigating risks early in the product lifecycle, reducing the likelihood of costly failures.

How to Develop an Effective APQP Checklist

Developing an effective APQP checklist involves several key steps:

Gathering Relevant Information: Collecting necessary data and information related to product requirements, customer expectations, and regulatory standards.

Involving Cross-Functional Teams: Engaging representatives from various departments to ensure comprehensive input and buy-in.

Establishing Clear Criteria and Metrics: Defining specific criteria and metrics for evaluating product quality and process performance.

Implementing the APQP Checklist in Different Industries

APQP principles can be applied across various industries, including:

Automotive Sector: APQP is widely used in the automotive industry to ensure the quality and safety of vehicles.

Aerospace Industry: Aerospace companies utilize APQP to meet stringent regulatory requirements and ensure the reliability of aircraft components.

Healthcare Sector: In healthcare, APQP helps in developing safe and effective medical devices and pharmaceutical products.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Using APQP Checklist

While APQP checklist offers numerous benefits, organizations must avoid common pitfalls such as:

Lack of Stakeholder Involvement: Failure to involve key stakeholders from different departments can lead to oversight and suboptimal outcomes.

Failure to Update the Checklist Regularly: An outdated checklist may not reflect current industry standards or regulatory requirements, compromising its effectiveness.

Ignoring Feedback and Improvement Opportunities: Organizations should actively seek feedback from users and stakeholders to identify areas for improvement and refinement.

Examples of APQP Checklist Templates

There are various APQP checklist templates available, ranging from basic to advanced, tailored to specific industry requirements.

Basic Checklist Template: Includes essential steps and requirements for implementing APQP processes.

Advanced Checklist Template: Incorporates additional features such as risk assessment matrices and validation protocols.

Tips for Maximizing the Effectiveness of APQP Checklist

To derive maximum benefit from APQP checklist, organizations should:

Provide Adequate Training: Ensure that employees are trained in APQP principles and understand how to use the checklist effectively.

Regular Audits and Reviews: Conduct periodic audits and reviews to assess compliance with APQP processes and identify areas for improvement.

Continuous Improvement Initiatives: Encourage a culture of continuous improvement, where feedback is solicited, and lessons learned are applied to enhance processes.

Case Studies: Successful Implementation of APQP Checklist

Several organizations have successfully implemented APQP checklist, resulting in improved product quality and customer satisfaction.

Future Trends in APQP Checklist Development

As technology advances and industry requirements evolve, APQP checklist development is expected to incorporate:

Integration with Digital Tools: Increasing integration with digital tools and software platforms to streamline APQP processes and enhance collaboration.

Emphasis on Sustainability: Incorporating sustainability criteria and metrics into APQP checklist to address growing environmental concerns.

Conclusion

In conclusion, an APQP checklist is a valuable tool for organizations seeking to ensure product quality, minimize risks, and enhance customer satisfaction. By following a structured approach outlined in the checklist, businesses can streamline their product development processes and stay competitive in today's dynamic market.

FAQs

What is the role of APQP in quality management?

APQP plays a crucial role in maintaining product quality by identifying potential risks and quality issues early in the product development stage.

How can organizations develop an effective APQP checklist?

Developing an effective APQP checklist involves steps such as gathering relevant information, involving cross-functional teams, and establishing clear criteria and metrics.

In which industries is APQP commonly used?

APQP principles can be applied across various industries, including automotive, aerospace, and healthcare sectors.

What are some common mistakes to avoid when using an APQP checklist?

Common mistakes include lack of stakeholder involvement, failure to update the checklist regularly, and ignoring feedback and improvement opportunities.

How can organizations maximize the effectiveness of APQP checklist?

Organizations can maximize effectiveness by providing adequate training, conducting regular audits and reviews, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

[esour]

A Document Management System (DMS) is a software solution that helps organizations store, manage, track, and control access to their electronic documents. The primary goal of a DMS is to facilitate efficient document collaboration, version control, and secure document storage. Here are key features and functionalities typically associated with Document Management Systems:

Document Storage and Organization

Version Control

Access Control and Permissions

Search and Retrieval

Compliance and Records Management

Mobile Access

[dkettchen]

you know english infiltrating other languages due to the internet has become a problem when even the french are doing it

[intechsystems]

Dealer Management System (DMS) - Intech Systems

Dealer Management System - Learn about the features of DMS and how Dealer Management System Software helps businesses succeed.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The reason you can’t buy a car is the same reason that your health insurer let hackers dox you

On July 14, I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! On July 20, I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

In 2017, Equifax suffered the worst data-breach in world history, leaking the deep, nonconsensual dossiers it had compiled on 148m Americans and 15m Britons, (and 19k Canadians) into the world, to form an immortal, undeletable reservoir of kompromat and premade identity-theft kits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Equifax_data_breach

Equifax knew the breach was coming. It wasn't just that their top execs liquidated their stock in Equifax before the announcement of the breach – it was also that they ignored years of increasingly urgent warnings from IT staff about the problems with their server security.

Things didn't improve after the breach. Indeed, the 2017 Equifax breach was the starting gun for a string of more breaches, because Equifax's servers didn't just have one fubared system – it was composed of pure, refined fubar. After one group of hackers breached the main Equifax system, other groups breached other Equifax systems, over and over, and over:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/equifax-password-username-admin-lawsuit-201118316.html

Doesn't this remind you of Boeing? It reminds me of Boeing. The spectacular 737 Max failures in 2018 weren't the end of the scandal. They weren't even the scandal's start – they were the tipping point, the moment in which a long history of lethally defective planes "breached" from the world of aviation wonks and into the wider public consciousness:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_737

Just like with Equifax, the 737 Max disasters tipped Boeing into a string of increasingly grim catastrophes. Each fresh disaster landed with the grim inevitability of your general contractor texting you that he's just opened up your ceiling and discovered that all your joists had rotted out – and that he won't be able to deal with that until he deals with the termites he found last week, and that they'll have to wait until he gets to the cracks in the foundation slab from the week before, and that those will have to wait until he gets to the asbestos he just discovered in the walls.

Drip, drip, drip, as you realize that the most expensive thing you own – which is also the thing you had hoped to shelter for the rest of your life – isn't even a teardown, it's just a pure liability. Even if you razed the structure, you couldn't start over, because the soil is full of PCBs. It's not a toxic asset, because it's not an asset. It's just toxic.

Equifax isn't just a company: it's infrastructure. It started out as an engine for racial, political and sexual discrimination, paying snoops to collect gossip from nosy neighbors, which was assembled into vast warehouses full of binders that told bank officers which loan applicants should be denied for being queer, or leftists, or, you know, Black:

https://jacobin.com/2017/09/equifax-retail-credit-company-discrimination-loans

This witch-hunts-as-a-service morphed into an official part of the economy, the backbone of the credit industry, with a license to secretly destroy your life with haphazardly assembled "facts" about your life that you had the most minimal, grudging right to appeal (or even see). Turns out there are a lot of customers for this kind of service, and the capital markets showered Equifax with the cash needed to buy almost all of its rivals, in mergers that were waved through by a generation of Reaganomics-sedated antitrust regulators.

There's a direct line from that acquisition spree to the Equifax breach(es). First of all, companies like Equifax were early adopters of technology. They're a database company, so they were the crash-test dummies for ever generation of database. These bug-riddled, heavily patched systems were overlaid with subsequent layers of new tech, with new defects to be patched and then overlaid with the next generation.

These systems are intrinsically fragile, because things fall apart at the seams, and these systems are all seams. They are tech-debt personified. Now, every kind of enterprise will eventually reach this state if it keeps going long enough, but the early digitizers are the bow-wave of that coming infopocalypse, both because they got there first and because the bottom tiers of their systems are composed of layers of punchcards and COBOL, crumbling under the geological stresses of seventy years of subsequent technology.

The single best account of this phenomenon is the British Library's postmortem of their ransomware attack, which is also in the running for "best hard-eyed assessment of how fucked things are":

https://www.bl.uk/home/british-library-cyber-incident-review-8-march-2024.pdf

There's a reason libraries, cities, insurance companies, and other giant institutions keep getting breached: they started accumulating tech debt before anyone else, so they've got more asbestos in the walls, more sagging joists, more foundation cracks and more termites.

That was the starting point for Equifax – a company with a massive tech debt that it would struggle to pay down under the most ideal circumstances.

Then, Equifax deliberately made this situation infinitely worse through a series of mergers in which it bought dozens of other companies that all had their own version of this problem, and duct-taped their failing, fucked up IT systems to its own. The more seams an IT system has, the more brittle and insecure it is. Equifax deliberately added so many seams that you need to be able to visualized additional spatial dimensions to grasp them – they had fractal seams.

But wait, there's more! The reason to merge with your competitors is to create a monopoly position, and the value of a monopoly position is that it makes a company too big to fail, which makes it too big to jail, which makes it too big to care. Each Equifax acquisition took a piece off the game board, making it that much harder to replace Equifax if it fucked up. That, in turn, made it harder to punish Equifax if it fucked up. And that meant that Equifax didn't have to care if it fucked up.

Which is why the increasingly desperate pleas for more resources to shore up Equifax's crumbling IT and security infrastructure went unheeded. Top management could see that they were steaming directly into an iceberg, but they also knew that they had a guaranteed spot on the lifeboats, and that someone else would be responsible for fishing the dead passengers out of the sea. Why turn the wheel?

That's what happened to Boeing, too: the company acquired new layers of technical complexity by merging with rivals (principally McDonnell-Douglas), and then starved the departments that would have to deal with that complexity because it was being managed by execs whose driving passion was to run a company that was too big to care. Those execs then added more complexity by chasing lower costs by firing unionized, competent, senior staff and replacing them with untrained scabs in jurisdictions chosen for their lax labor and environmental enforcement regimes.

(The biggest difference was that Boeing once had a useful, high-quality product, whereas Equifax started off as an irredeemably terrible, if efficient, discrimination machine, and grew to become an equally terrible, but also ferociously incompetent, enterprise.)

This is the American story of the past four decades: accumulate tech debt, merge to monopoly, exponentially compound your tech debt by combining barely functional IT systems. Every corporate behemoth is locked in a race between the eventual discovery of its irreparable structural defects and its ability to become so enmeshed in our lives that we have to assume the costs of fixing those defects. It's a contest between "too rotten to stand" and "too big to care."

Remember last February, when we all discovered that there was a company called Change Healthcare, and that they were key to processing virtually every prescription filled in America? Remember how we discovered this? Change was hacked, went down, ransomed, and no one could fill a scrip in America for more than a week, until they paid the hackers $22m in Bitcoin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Change_Healthcare_ransomware_attack

How did we end up with Change Healthcare as the linchpin of the entire American prescription system? Well, first Unitedhealthcare became the largest health insurer in America by buying all its competitors in a series of mergers that comatose antitrust regulators failed to block. Then it combined all those other companies' IT systems into a cosmic-scale dog's breakfast that barely ran. Then it bought Change and used its monopoly power to ensure that every Rx ran through Change's servers, which were part of that asbestos-filled, termite-infested, crack-foundationed, sag-joisted teardown. Then, it got hacked.

United's execs are the kind of execs on a relentless quest to be too big to care, and so they don't care. Which is why their they had to subsequently announce that they had suffered a breach that turned the complete medical histories of one third of Americans into immortal Darknet kompromat that is – even now – being combined with breach data from Equifax and force-fed to the slaves in Cambodia and Laos's pig-butchering factories:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/01/politics/data-stolen-healthcare-hack/index.html

Those slaves are beaten, tortured, and punitively raped in compounds to force them to drain the life's savings of everyone in Canada, Australia, Singapore, the UK and Europe. Remember that they are downstream of the forseeable, inevitable IT failures of companies that set out to be too big to care that this was going to happen.

Failures like Ticketmaster's, which flushed 500 million users' personal information into the identity-theft mills just last month. Ticketmaster, you'll recall, grew to its current scale through (you guessed it), a series of mergers en route to "too big to care" status, that resulted in its IT systems being combined with those of Ticketron, Live Nation, and dozens of others:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/business/ticketmaster-hack-data-breach.html

But enough about that. Let's go car-shopping!

Good luck with that. There's a company you've never heard. It's called CDK Global. They provide "dealer management software." They are a monopolist. They got that way after being bought by a private equity fund called Brookfield. You can't complete a car purchase without their systems, and their systems have been hacked. No one can buy a car:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/business/cdk-global-cyber-attack-update/index.html

Writing for his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller tells the all-too-familiar story of how CDK Global filled the walls of the nation's auto-dealers with the IT equivalent of termites and asbestos, and lays the blame where it belongs: with a legal and economics establishment that wanted it this way:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/a-supreme-court-justice-is-why-you

The CDK story follows the Equifax/Boeing/Change Healthcare/Ticketmaster pattern, but with an important difference. As CDK was amassing its monopoly power, one of its execs, Dan McCray, told a competitor, Authenticom founder Steve Cottrell that if he didn't sell to CDK that he would "fucking destroy" Authenticom by illegally colluding with the number two dealer management company Reynolds.

Rather than selling out, Cottrell blew the whistle, using Cottrell's own words to convince a district court that CDK had violated antitrust law. The court agreed, and ordered CDK and Reynolds – who controlled 90% of the market – to continue to allow Authenticom to participate in the DMS market.

Dealers cheered this on: CDK/Reynolds had been steadily hiking prices, while ingesting dealer data and using it to gouge the dealers on additional services, while denying dealers access to their own data. The services that Authenticom provided for $35/month cost $735/month from CDK/Reynolds (they justified this price hike by saying they needed the additional funds to cover the costs of increased information security!).

CDK/Reynolds appealed the judgment to the 7th Circuit, where a panel of economists weighed in. As Stoller writes, this panel included monopoly's most notorious (and well-compensated) cheerleader, Frank Easterbrook, and the "legendary" Democrat Diane Wood. They argued for CDK/Reynolds, demanding that the court release them from their obligations to share the market with Authenticom:

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-7th-circuit/1879150.html

The 7th Circuit bought the argument, overturning the lower court and paving the way for the CDK/Reynolds monopoly, which is how we ended up with one company's objectively shitty IT systems interwoven into the sale of every car, which meant that when Russian hackers looked at that crosseyed, it split wide open, allowing them to halt auto sales nationwide. What happens next is a near-certainty: CDK will pay a multimillion dollar ransom, and the hackers will reward them by breaching the personal details of everyone who's ever bought a car, and the slaves in Cambodian pig-butchering compounds will get a fresh supply of kompromat.

But on the plus side, the need to pay these huge ransoms is key to ensuring liquidity in the cryptocurrency markets, because ransoms are now the only nondiscretionary liability that can only be settled in crypto:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

When the 7th Circuit set up every American car owner to be pig-butchered, they cited one of the most important cases in antitrust history: the 2004 unanimous Supreme Court decision in Verizon v Trinko:

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2003/02-682

Trinko was a case about whether antitrust law could force Verizon, a telcoms monopolist, to share its lines with competitors, something it had been ordered to do and then cheated on. The decision was written by Antonin Scalia, and without it, Big Tech would never have been able to form. Scalia and Trinko gave us the modern, too-big-to-care versions of Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft and the other tech baronies.

In his Trinko opinion, Scalia said that "possessing monopoly power" and "charging monopoly prices" was "not unlawful" – rather, it was "an important element of the free-market system." Scalia – writing on behalf of a unanimous court! – said that fighting monopolists "may lessen the incentive for the monopolist…to invest in those economically beneficial facilities."

In other words, in order to prevent monopolists from being too big to care, we have to let them have monopolies. No wonder Trinko is the Zelig of shitty antitrust rulings, from the decision to dismiss the antitrust case against Facebook and Apple's defense in its own ongoing case:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/073_2021.06.28_mtd_order_memo.pdf

Trinko is the origin node of too big to care. It's the reason that our whole economy is now composed of "infrastructure" that is made of splitting seams, asbestos, termites and dry rot. It's the reason that the entire automotive sector became dependent on companies like Reynolds, whose billionaire owner intentionally and illegally destroyed evidence of his company's crimes, before going on to commit the largest tax fraud in American history:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/billionaire-robert-brockman-accused-of-biggest-tax-fraud-in-u-s-history-dies-at-81-11660226505

Trinko begs companies to become too big to care. It ensures that they will exponentially increase their IT debt while becoming structurally important to whole swathes of the US economy. It guarantees that they will underinvest in IT security. It is the soil in which pig butchering grew.

It's why you can't buy a car.

Now, I am fond of quoting Stein's Law at moments like this: "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop." As Stoller writes, after two decades of unchallenged rule, Trinko is looking awfully shaky. It was substantially narrowed in 2023 by the 10th Circuit, which had been briefed by Biden's antitrust division:

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/22-1164/22-1164-2023-08-21.html

And the cases of 2024 have something going for them that Trinko lacked in 2004: evidence of what a fucking disaster Trinko is. The wrongness of Trinko is so increasingly undeniable that there's a chance it will be overturned.

But it won't go down easy. As Stoller writes, Trinko didn't emerge from a vacuum: the economic theories that underpinned it come from some of the heroes of orthodox economics, like Joseph Schumpeter, who is positively worshipped. Schumpeter was antitrust's OG hater, who wrote extensively that antitrust law didn't need to exist because any harmful monopoly would be overturned by an inevitable market process dictated by iron laws of economics.

Schumpeter wrote that monopolies could only be sustained by "alertness and energy" – that there would never be a monopoly so secure that its owner became too big to care. But he went further, insisting that the promise of attaining a monopoly was key to investment in great new things, because monopolists had the economic power that let them plan and execute great feats of innovation.

The idea that monopolies are benevolent dictators has pervaded our economic tale for decades. Even today, critics who deplore Facebook and Google do so on the basis that they do not wield their power wisely (say, to stamp out harassment or disinformation). When confronted with the possibility of breaking up these companies or replacing them with smaller platforms, those critics recoil, insisting that without Big Tech's scale, no one will ever have the power to accomplish their goals:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

But they misunderstand the relationship between corporate power and corporate conduct. The reason corporations accumulate power is so that they can be insulated from the consequences of the harms they wreak upon the rest of us. They don't inflict those harms out of sadism: rather, they do so in order to externalize the costs of running a good system, reaping the profits of scale while we pay its costs.

The only reason to accumulate corporate power is to grow too big to care. Any corporation that amasses enough power that it need not care about us will not care about it. You can't fix Facebook by replacing Zuck with a good unelected social media czar with total power over billions of peoples' lives. We need to abolish Zuck, not fix Zuck.

Zuck is not exceptional: there were a million sociopaths whom investors would have funded to monopolistic dominance if he had balked. A monopoly like Facebook has a Zuck-shaped hole at the top of its org chart, and only someone Zuck-shaped will ever fit through that hole.

Our whole economy is now composed of companies with sociopath-shaped holes at the tops of their org chart. The reason these companies can only be run by sociopaths is the same reason that they have become infrastructure that is crumbling due to sociopathic neglect. The reckless disregard for the risk of combining companies is the source of the market power these companies accumulated, and the market power let them neglect their systems to the point of collapse.

This is the system that Schumpeter, and Easterbrook, and Wood, and Scalia – and the entire Supreme Court of 2004 – set out to make. The fact that you can't buy a car is a feature, not a bug. The pig-butcherers, wallowing in an ocean of breach data, are a feature, not a bug. The point of the system was what it did: create unimaginable wealth for a tiny cohort of the worst people on Earth without regard to the collapse this would provoke, or the plight of those of us trapped and suffocating in the rubble.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/28/dealer-management-software/#antonin-scalia-stole-your-car

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[intechsystems]

https://intech-systems.com/blog/dealer-management-system-dms/

[ticklerjay]

why has this app been so ass lately?

[prettyboykatsuki-moved]

: ̗̀➛ MY HEART, YOUR SONG by @aimfor-theheart

“Kaeya,” you say his name like a melody, “are you the jealous type?”  For a heartbeat, he almost feels harpooned, caught, suddenly struck in place. It’s frightening to be picked apart so effortlessly, with that smile on your face. Earnest. Horribly lovely.  What a strange creature you are, he marvels.  But then he laughs and lies, “not particularly.” 

hello hello!! thank you to the beloved cielo for giving me permission and creative liberty to make a poster for one of their fics. if you are a kaeya fucker with any interest in the arts (or just a kaeya fucker in general. hes so sexy here) u will enjoy it immensely!!! i definitely did!!!

mutuals if u follow my side and r interested in these please let me know, i would like to do more of them if possible.

[pinkfey]

i just got a wave of anxiety realizing i still have selfies on here ☹️

[aurosoulart]

Hey, sorry if this is bad(?), but I was wondering if you had any advice for getting into the xr world/career. I think I've seen you mention the topic (encouraging others to join the field?) at least once, but I don't know how to even get started. Thank you for your time!

(If you could answer this not publicly I would appreciate it, but it's fine if you do, or like, if you don't answer at all)

not a bad thing to ask at all! I've actually been in the middle of writing a guide about this for some time that I will.... hopefully finish sometime soon ghskgh.

I hope you don't mind me posting this publicly - I ended up writing a short novel and figure it might be useful to others who are curious as well! anyways, the advice I give to people with a background in illustration is to start out with a Quest 2 headset. they retail at $300 new, but you can get them used via eBay, Craigslist, FB Marketplace or someplace like that for around $200 or under. the Quest 2 works without needing to be plugged into a PC, though you will probably want to buy a more ergonomic head-strap to make it more comfortable. (the head strap that Meta sells is overpriced, but this third-party one is really good) if you're interested in working with augmented reality (the type of work I do!) and have the ability to save up some extra money, I'd recommend waiting for the release of the Quest 3, which will launch this fall and cost $500. totally not a requirement at all to start learning, though.

other than that, I'd recommend starting out with free art programs like Open Brush and Gravity Sketch to familiarize yourself with creating in-headset. both of these programs have a large amount of tutorial videos up on YouTube - as well as an active community of other artists who are all generally very friendly and eager to help people learn. VR Art Live and The Spatial Canvas's Discord servers are the communities I'm part of. :)

after that, it all just comes down to posting your new artwork online to as many platforms as you can mentally handle (this is the hardest part for me, ghsghs), and also looking at paid XR artist programs/gigs. Mozilla Hubs, Horizon Worlds, and Figmin XR (that's me!) all have some creator opportunities where they pay people to create things on their platform.

you can also find work doing XR concept art, art performances, and I've even seen grant programs for XR artists from art galleries. these things are harder to find, but if you make a LinkedIn page and a modest portfolio of your XR art, chances are high that you'll get some eyes on it.

it's ridiculously easy to be a big fish in a small pond right now if you have any kind of skills with these programs. I will say that there does seem to be a push towards people who can create things that are interactive and can be shared with others (like AR Snapchat/TikTok/Instagram filters, experiences created and published to platforms like Mozilla Hubs, Figmin XR, etc.), so that's something to keep in mind while learning - but not something that should stop you!

going from 2D illustration to creating things in 3D space is a whirlwind of learning new skills that can often feel overwhelming, but the most important thing is that it should feel fun and enjoyable to you. I started out by just listening to music while painting in Tilt Brush (Tilt Brush was the original version of Open Brush, before Google made it open-source) and creating whatever felt the most fun in the moment. everything else just came from natural curiosity and connecting with other artists in the space.

lastly... I have no technical (coding, traditional 3D modeling) skills. I am a 2x college dropout with chronic mental illness, and prior to my current employment I was never able to hold a job for longer than 3 months. and yet....... this new industry has changed my life completely, and at 29 years old I finally feel like I have a purpose. I'm somehow a software developer now, without needing to know anything about software development. that's wild!!!

this is why I'm so excited for the future. if this brand-new technology (still in its infancy! viewed as frightening by so many!!) was able to help me in such a radical way... what will that mean for even more people discovering it as it becomes more accessible?

I don't know the answer to that yet... but I do know how wonderful it is to see people learning about all of this for the first time. helping with that alone is more than enough for me 💖

[sunsmarttech]

Document management system that stores and manages electronic documents. Modern document management systems contain a range of features, including as integrations, co-editing capacities, and social tools, that expedite the entire process of storing and sharing knowledge. These systems are created with utility in mind.

[izar-tarazed]

Toying around with Dungeon Alchemist and I tried to make what I imagine Izar's room at the Roundtable Hold to be like.

While we don't see anybody's personal quarters apart from Fia's in game, my headcanon is that they very much exist and the permanent residents of the Hold each get one. Izar was assigned hers after presenting her first Great Rune and suddenly having a small space entirely of her own was huge for her, and step by step, she made it a place that feels like home.

Of course there's a desk, usually all but covered with one of her star maps and stacks of notes and sketches. She mostly prefers to work at the Roundtable proper because the Grace there grants better lighting, but she still uses her own desk a lot.

There's always a teapot, too. She retrieved that armillary sphere from the Caria Manor and treasures it almost as much as her beloved telescope. (It was broken when she found it, and fixing and assembling it anew took a long time.) Also, her backpack is usually sitting next to the door, all ready to set out again.

A simple bed with a somewhat improvised nightstand, plus a storage chest. There's always a book on the nightstand, even though Izar will often either just fall into bed all exhausted, or spend the night working on her maps.

Obviously most books at the Roundtable Hold are found in Sir Gideon's study, but Izar has gathered her fair share of books, too, so unsurprisingly she has a bookshelf of her own. (Some of those are loans from Raya Lucaria, but she'll return them... eventually.)

While Izar's room doesn't have a real fireplace like others at the Hold, it does have the luxury of a small stove that provides warmth... and boiling water. The shelf nearby mostly holds ingredients for tea: dried herba leaves, but also the spiced tea she regularly purchases from the nomadic merchants.

(However, she still has to head down into the kitchens if she wants coffee.)

And last, a washstand with a mirror and a simple washbowl, another small luxury.