AutoGov

Holidays Bring You Chaos and Peace

This week my nephew Hayden Covert has joined us in holiday office coverage.  Here are some of his thoughts in his own words:

So, it is literally three days after Christmas and it is so quiet here.  Cherish and my Aunt Rose are the only ones here.  Everybody else, for instance, Gregg, Taylor, Randy and Brenda are all off for New Year's and it's reasonable and understandable but it just makes the place quiet and and super different. 

Now I am here, helping out my Aunt Rose with her blogs.

 - Hayden Covert is a fourth grader at St. Austin's Catholic School in Austin Texas.  He is 9 years old and loves soccer, reading and writing and his IPad.

Believe

"Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind." Mary Ellen Chase

Forty-five years ago on Christmas Eve, I stood by a fish pond outside our home in a small community in the Philippines.

I believed in the Christmas story. Christ was born that night in Bethlehem almost 2,000 years ago.  I believed the light from our Christmas tree symbolized the light of Christ.

I believed in both Santa Claus and the spirit of giving.  The big guy was coming to my new house tonight, slide down the chimney and leave me some stuff. Not wanting him to be hungry on this long journey, I left him cookies.

Looking at the stars that night 5,000 miles from my home, I asked my Dad about the Christmas star. He told me that the star was a miracle that told the world that his Son was born that night. I believed my Dad. And why not, he was trained to navigate by the stars in case he ever got lost.
Every year since then, I go out to look at the stars on Christmas Eve. I think of my Dad. He found his way home 11 years ago. I think of the stars that have shown me the way when I've been lost. Lord knows I have been lost in darkness more than a few times. And I think of the greatest miracle of all, the one I learned about 45 years ago tonight.  

I still believe.

Merry Christmas from all of us to all of you!

Inspector General Introduces Provider Compliance Training Videos

Daniel R. Levinson, Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, introduces OIG's compliance training videos and audio podcasts. This series will have 11 videos and audio podcasts that are part of the award-winning Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT) Provider Compliance Training initiative. The videos cover a variety of healthcare fraud laws, common abuses, and what to do when a compliance issue arises. These presentations will be posted on the OIG website at the start of each week for the months of December, January, and February. These videos are part of the OIG’s Provider Compliance Training initiative.  AutoGov will post these videos as a series.

The Generosity Experiment

Once again, we find ourselves at the end of the year.  December seems to be the best time to take a snap shot of life, business, relationships, etc. and see how far you have come or grown throughout the year.

AutoGov and its employees have been blessed by having wonderful clients, a great business platform, and each other to work with on a daily basis.

We would like to not only take a “snap shot” of our life but focus on passing the blessings along. “The Generosity Experiment” by Sasha Dichter is a prime example of moving forward with generosity and remembering that life isn’t just about us.

Sasha Dichter: The Generosity Experiment from NextGen:Charity on Vimeo.

AutoGov Films: Joe the Caseworker

We are happy to finally announce that our long running "Joe the Caseworker" video has finally made its way to YouTube. Please watch and share our first of many video's to come.

Please don't forget to subscribe to our new YouTube Channel to get the latest:

Inches

So it's coming on Christmas,  And AutoGov faces the end of 2011 with a curious blend of optimism and realism.  I've blogged before about how well this company and my team have faced the small business challenges of the economic downturn -- with tenacity, belief and humor.  I am proud to be on their team.

And that got me thinking about the past year and the pivotal AutoGov moments.  One day in particular stands out.  It was July 1 and we had a team meeting.  A friend of mine had suggested that I watch the Any Given Sunday Inches Speech that Al Pacino gives in a locker room - for inspiration in talking with my team.  I rolled my eyes.  More sports! 

Even I was moved.  Pacino says "... in football, in life, the inches we need are everywhere around us."

I kicked the meeting off with talk of inches - that our company would live or die by the inches.  That July day, just before Independence Day in Austin Texas, we were joined by family members of our staff.  They jumped into our team discussion.  My questions were "what motivates you?"  What kind of a team do you want to be a part of?"  Youth led us in wisdom as the 13-year old son of our founder, a baseball player to his bones responded "to play with people who try, to believe in my team, to get to the finish line with them." After that, everyone joined in and it was one of the best meetings I've ever been a part of in all my working years. 

Here's our list of what motivates us,   Give me these inches any day.

Effort, Faith, Belief, Respect, Trust, Service, Passion

Take a minute and listen to Al.  It's worth it "one inch at a time."

Data Mining: The Tool of the Information Age

In this Stanford produced webinar, you will learn how to explore, analyze, and leverage data sets of any scale in this 60-minute webinar with Google's Search Scientist and Stanford Instructor Dr. Rajan Patel.  The content is a little technical but offers insight into the science behind dating mining and the reasons why data mining and analytics are the tools of the information age.