shaking the dust off [oneself]

It’s a new year. What better time than now for a cliché self-reflective. Cliché or not, its something I need to do. The marking of a new year is just a milestone like any other. Its a blatant reminder that we need to take a moment pause look back where we’ve been, where we are, and make sure we’re headed where we want to go. I used to be move reflective (note the parallelism in reflecting on reflection..I hope that doesn’t break the space-time continuum) . Here it goes…

 

The Past

Social

I wanted to improve my social skills. Be more extroverted. This is something I’ve been working on since Dec ‘06. This goal is one of the main reasons I decided to pursue my MBA and even jumped on the social networking bandwagon. I even wrote a blog post back in April about it. I had a follow up post (a part 2) that sadly never made it out of draft.

I feel I’ve made really good progress on this front. Moving to DC was a great choice for me as a person. There is just an amazing abundance of social outings, gatherings and people to interact with.

Activities

I joined a kickball league to meet new people. It was a mixed experience. I didn’t end up making many friends from that, but it was absolutely surreal to be kicking a red rubber ball yards away from the Washington Monument. I blame the lack of friends mainly on the way the team was formed. We had 6 or 8 people (I forget) on our own and a sweet name (Kick Ballers), but that wasn’t enough for a full team. We ended up being placed with another group that had less people than us. That kind of killed moral for us as we lost our name and felt like it wasn’t our team. Part of that was just unlucky as the folks we were teamed up with. I might try it again next year if we have enough people for our own team.

I had good intentions on taking advantage of the DC meetup’s, but haven’t had time.  After kickball I thought it’d be fun to participate in a Ultimate Frisbee “league”. The one I found plays on Saturdays, which I’ve since devoted toward being in class.

Social Events

I’ve meet a bunch of really great people in my MBA Cohort. I’ve made it a point to attend all the related social outings. We just need to find some more social things to do together.

Online Social

I’ve tried to take advantage of online social tools. I could do better. I’m on Facebook, but I don’t interact much there. I mainly use it as an aggregation spot for all my various online social tools. That was somewhat a conscious decision, so its not all bad. I do use it to see what’s going on with people and so they can do the same with me. I use twitter. Its fun. I don’t interact like I should. I can’t say I’ve done much interaction with people on twitter. Its fair to say I use it similarly as Facebook.

Learning

Blogs

I certainly don’t read all the insane amount of blogs that I used to. At one time I was reading over 1,000 posts a day. Its one of those things that I had to let go of when time became constrained. I mainly just a handful read DC related blogs and get to the technical ones when I have a chance. I now get a fair amount of my news by following twitter related news sources.

Books

I did pretty good reading [non-technical] books.  I started keeping track of the books on GoodReads. My to-read list has grown and I should make some goals to keep reading.

Photography

I’ve done mediocre here. I’ve bought a couple books on exposure and aperture in hopes of becoming more proficient. I did take a couple photowalking trips and did upload some results flickr, but clearly I’d like to get better and do more. I don’t bring my camera around enough and I need to stop breaking it (my wide angle doesn’t focus like it should). 

Technical

As far as hard-core nerd learning outside of work, I’ve backed off quite a bit. I need to make sure my technical skills stay current. I have learned a great deal more about core networking as part of my new/current job, so I can say that I have done some learning this year. When the year started I had planned on developing some applications for my blackberry (like a really cool one for notifying you when you had to leave to catch the Metro), writing some cool apps in Silverlight or making some applications in SharePoint.

Experience

So far the most progress was made in the experience department. This is best in bulleted form.

Notable experiences

• Running past all the landmarks on the National Mall
• Random walking adventures through DC’s neighborhoods (Capital Hill, Adam’s Morgan, West End)
• Finding to dining places and experiences (sushi and Ethiopian food)
• Walking past the Whitehouse
• Traveling to NYC
• Caught a documentary at MoMA
• Morning run in Central Park
• My brother’s wedding in Maine
• Participating in the Great Lakes Relay
• Being in DC on election night
• Trips to Museums and such
  • National Aquarium in Baltimore
  • Museum of Natural History (a couple times)
  • National Gallery of Art

Health

Physical

I’ve been able to take good physical care of myself. (my WiiFit age is equal to my actual age). I love being able to run outside in the “winter”. Something I was not able to do (err. not willing to do back in Michigan). I ran the equivalent of a marathon in the Great Lakes Relay. I’m looking forward to doing that again next year as it was just a blast. I also ran my first 10K at the Marine Corps Marathon. I finished with a time of 41’05” (6’36”/mile pace) which ended up being 48th place overall (out of 5,000 registered runners)

Mental

I’ve seen the most improvement here. Not to talk ill of Michigan, but the environment there was very negative. That takes a toll on someone who tries to be positive.  I’ve noticed I just don’t dwell on the small stuff any more. I’ve learned to let go of things. Simply, that I cannot control everything. Or I suppose more accurately, you don’t need to control everything. I feel like I work just as much (or possible more) as I did in Michigan, but I get more done. Probably because I’m around people who are more positive and don’t look to block good ideas that aren’t their own.

I’ve been able to learn a lot from my brother and sister-in-law and their friends on openness and goodness. A trend I hope to continue.

 

I think that’s a fair recap on my progress for 2008. There’s been forward and backward progress. Some planned, some not. Next I just have to lay out the plan moving forward…The Future

+1 for Comcast Customer Service

http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9938146-2.html

I saw this post and just had to write up about it. It totally reminds me of what is talked about in the Cluetrain Manifesto. Here you have a guy who’s working for Comcast who’s out there watching blogs and twitter just trying to help people when he sees them voicing frustration. I didn’t get the impression he’s doing it based on a Comcast initiative or anything. I wonder if they know he’s doing it or not. It seems to be the classic example of why companies need to trust their employees and let them interact with customers. (yes, this guy is a customer service manager, but still). In a time when Comcast is getting railed for purposely blocking/slowing P2P traffic, kicking “highly-active” users off and tossing around the idea of enforcing a monthly download cap, having someone out there trying to win back some points for Comcast. Pretty sure we’ve all had to deal with Comcast and been less than smitten with the customer care.

 

What was equally interesting was the number of other companies listed as having active staff out there watching social network sites for people having issue with their company. Looks like leadership at these companies read the Cluetrain Manifesto. People are having conversations on the net. You can’t control them. So its best to join in and get things fixed.

 

+1 Comcast. I’ll cut you some slack next time you put me on hold for 30mins. And give that guy a bonus for making you look better.

 

 

Technorati Tags: comcast,cluetrain manifesto,business

being social.

Inspired the latest book I read, Linked, I few weeks ago [more like a month ago, after how long it took me to get this post written] I decided to take the plunge into the plethora of social sites/networks out there.

 

Facebook

About 6 months ago I started actually using Facebook as my first real foray into participating in social networks (treading slowly). The purpose of Facebook for me was introduce myself into the social, reestablish communication with people of present and past. One of the most enticing properties of Facebook is that it was built based on what I would term, identity realism. An alluring (and comforting) tenet of the Internet is the ability to exist in one of three ways; anonymous, alternate persona or self. Facebook compels people to participate with their self identity giving the network a sense of realness.

But lets face it, there’s a lot of problems with trying to portray the real you. Extending your personal self with previous mechanisms on the Internet it typically boring (i.e. “My cat’s breath smells like cat food”) or filtered to fit the identity they want to portray.

Facebook was able to create a social network of realness by creating mechanisms to document what people are doing, not just what they are saying. This allowed Facebook to become a content producer without requiring people produce content (which all gets neatly packed up into one’s personal news feed). Become a friend with someone, that action is content. Write a message on someone’s wall or tell the world what you’re doing through a status update, that’s content. Heck even dumb things like throw a zombie or fight the ninja/pirate battle, that’s content And its real. The open application developer platform allowed people to develop more apps (some less purposeful than other) to further contribute to content creation. And a lot of these apps allow you to bring content from other Internet sources into your Facebook profile, which helps further add to the content to your real. Facebook apps somewhat solve the problem of aggregating all these disparate social network and applications into a holistic unified “me” that is your identity realism.

 

Flickr

Shortly after feeling a level of comfortableness with Facebook, I decided to join Flickr.  As a hobby I started getting into Digital Photography a couple years ago.  As a present to myself (I forget for what) I picked up a Nikon D50. The challenge I outlaid for myself was to attempt capture the beauty in everyday things (I was mainly into macro photography at that time). Since then I’ve taken many pictures (very few, if any, that are any good) and they sat on my hard drive on my computer pretty much never looked at. Flickr gave my photos a chance to be seen (assuming that’s a good thing). Why Flickr and not some other photo hosting site? Flickr is a community of professional and amateur photographers. Its a place were these people go to view and contribute pictures. I’ve personally spent a good many hours just looking at the different photos people have taken and posted. As a way to learn and challenge myself to become a better [amateur] photographer. Although I’ve been posting pictures to my own Flickr page, the real value is participating in groups. Not just becoming members, but sharing photos with them. Flickr groups are the networking hubs. Groups are the way you increase the visibility of your photos. Accompanying the higher visibility is the increased responsibility of sharing quality. I find I’ll upload some pictures that are “okay”, but I try to only share the ones i really like with a group. being that I want to share more, I’m pressured to learn more and try and shoot better photos.

Additionally, Flickr has open APIs which you can use to write your own applications to interact with photos posted. Although I haven’t done any development yet, I really really want to (probably with silverlight).

 

WordPress

There’s a lot of information on the Internet for one to consume. But consuming isn’t a value adding activity. going back to the Linked, its the hubs that are the key pieces of any network. The way to become a hub is to produce content. As part of my personal goal of being more extroverted and creating a personal brand, i decided i should start blogging as a way to share things i know. A way to participate in the conversation (ala ClueTrain manifesto). At first I tried Microsoft’s Live Spaces. It was…not good. The look and feel was not good. I gave WordPress a try and I love it.  They have a lot of themes that look good and I can write posts to it using Windows Live Writer (which is just awesome in its own right)

So far, I’ve found the hardest part of blogging is the actual act of blogging. Its pretty time consuming. I think this is why a lot of the other social sites I’m using get more activity. Its a fine line between writing something so your participating and writing something to contribute value. At first I was annoyed at myself for “not blogging enough”. But I realized that if I’m not writing something that contributes something of value, its probably best that I’m not. There are a lot of things I’d like to share, but a blog isn’t necessarily the best way to share them (like re-posting links to other blog posts). The key to a blog isn’t just about writing things, but having it scoped to a particular topic (find a voice they say). Which is something I haven’t done well. You need to find a topic so you can build an audience. I need to work on that.

 

Twitter

I think one of the features of Facebook that everyone really honed in on is the status update. Short action statements about what your doing. The fact that all status messages start with “Steve is” and they give you a little text box forced people into having tiny quick updates. That’s basically what twitter does. You follow friends, post your own updates, they follow you. quick and easy. I can update from my phone (via text message or mobile browser), a web page or any of the plethora of apps that have been written using their open API.

I really like twitter because I’m able to capture and share what i’m doing, how i’m feeling quickly. I can go back and look at my “tweets” and really get a sense for how my days/weeks/months have been. So its sort of a nice way of keeping a journal or log of what’s going on without any real reflection.

Likewise its a great way to keep up to date with others. Its nice because it speeds up conversations and interactions with others when talking over other mediums. Instead of asking someone how their day was, i can see that they tweeted about being something and ask them about it. For example, a tweet of “stressed because of all the work I have to do”, I can ask them if they need any help or want a break.

www.twitter.com/geeksteve

 

Technorati Tags: twitter,facebook,wordpress,social networks

Walk Score

http://www.walkscore.com/

Came across this site last night. Normally I’d just post a link to a site to my tumblr page, but this one seemed extra cool to me. Probably because I’m looking for a place in DC, so walking distance really matters, but I’m not a doctor.

Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. Check out how Walk Score doesn’t work.

I tried it out a for a few addresses (my house, my old work, my current work, the White House) and it seems to do a pretty solid job.

Highly recommend bookmaking it (using del.icio.us if you’re into that). I did.

Technorati Tags: maps,walking,mashup,googlemaps

The First 90 Days

The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels by Michael Watkins.

My newfound commute to and fro work has granted me the wonderful gift of having plenty of time to read. ;-p I picked up this book after seeing that J.D. Meier recommend it (http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/2008/01/17/success-strategies.aspx) just around the time that I was looking to transition to my new job. Overall the book is pretty good. Akin to the situational leadership approach, Watkins breaks the environmental situation into four core types (STaRS), each requiring a different approach. Each chapter ends with a quick list of questions that try to get you to think about the your situation in regards to the topic of that chapter. If there was on thing I didn’t like is that it was too easy to read. I found myself reading through the chapters without stopping to reflect and really process the material and concepts. I think this is a common problem with these declarative leadership/business type books.

The big takeaways for me (in the context of starting a new job in a new organization) were

• Accomplish as much as you can early on. But make sure those quick wins are aligned with your long term goal.
• Focus in on what you can do early on. There probably is a lot that needs fixing, don’t spread yourself too thin.
• Figure out the best way to communicate with your new boss. You need to make sure you keep them in the loop/in the know. That’s really hard to do if you don’t use the medium they are most confortable with.
• Related to the item above, negotiate success. Make sure you clear up expectations on what and how you will be judged on with your boss. For me (in the geek context), this was a really good point. Back at UofM I was really working to automate IT solutions and get vision/scope defined for projects. It would be a bad assumption to go into this new job thinking I would be evaluated against how well I achieved those things (and some related others). If documentation isn’t important at this new place, and I spend a lot of time writing up/pre-planning, even though the end result is the system deployed it might seem like it “took to long” to my new boss.
• Take 100% responsibility for making the relationship work [with your boss]

On interesting thing about the book (admitting it could just be biased from my point of view) is that although the book was intended for “new leaders at all levels”, it seemed like the major focus of the book was about how to deal with the people above you. The implied hidden subtext seems to be that leadership is the ability to get things done despite the powers from above.

Technorati Tags: Business,Books,Leadership

The Cluetrain Manifesto

I’ve been delayed on getting some more posts up (I think I’m still meeting my original goal however). I had like four new blog topics that I started writing about. Unfortunately I wrote them offline on my old personal computer which is now packed up and 510 miles away from me back in Michigan.

In the meantime I’m working on finishing up the last couple chapters of The Cluetrain Manifesto which is an amazing book I started reading over the holiday break but didn’t quite finish. There are a great many ideas this book has either inspired me to talk about or given me ways to articulate ideas of my own. Despite its ambiguous title and its implied category of a “business book”, I highly recommend it for anyone who’s fulfills the following criteria a) has had a job b) has ever participated on the Internet. its truly revolutionary and an amazing read for reflection. It was written in 2000. After eight years of social evolution, the concepts that are discussed are much more than just radical observations of the time, but now so truisms for survival.

I recommended this book to some of my colleagues just before leaving UofM. I hope that it spreads. That it can help be part of the catalyst of change for the institution that desperately needs it. There were so many great area’s of potential at UofM, but sadly many went unrealized. I think a lot of it has to do with the institution being complacent with “business as usual”, ignoring that the rest of the world is changing around it. The Cluetrain Manifesto speaks directly to these misconceptions, which is why the book really resonated with me. I felt I did my best to move improve as many areas as I could.

Despite my somewhat negative tangent, The Cluetrain Manifesto is [in my opinion] a positive and uplifting book that energizes the mind. It is a quick read, after you get through the first couple chapters (I found myself stopping every couple paragraphs in the beginning thinking about what I had just read). Once you get past that it goes real quick and is definitely worth the time invested.

Decision Making

A situation came up today that I ended up going over my approach to decision making/critical thinking. Since I wrote it up once, I figure I should turn it into a blog post. The context for this was whether to pursue purchasing a home or not.

People are event driven. Events illicit responses. Most people don’t notice the event (or under play it) and typically focus in on the solution/response first. i.e. I need to buy a house”.

Whenever I do anything, the first thing I figure out is what is causing me to want to do that?

So what is the event? What is the event that is triggering my response to seek out the purchase of a house?

• My current living situation is cramped and far away form where I work, so I need to get a bigger place (response)
• Or I think the housing marking in this area is going to “pop” (event), so I need to get into something now (response)?
• Or I’m sick of “losing” money on rent (event), so I need to buy a place (response)
• Or I’d like a place that I can call my own, and work on it
• Or something else.

Note: these are all good potential reasons for buying a house. I purposely laid all these out because they are all good reasons, but there really is only one event that is currently causing this motivation to buy a house. For example, you may have been sick of losing money by renting before, but what caused you to want to act on it now? It might have nothing to do with “loosing money on renting”. The trigger might be something different all together.

The primary activity is to find the event, otherwise you’ll get overwhelmed in reasons. This is why a list of pro’s and con’s isn’t very effective for evaluations. It really doesn’t help get anywhere, since the longer you stare at that list, the more items you’ll add to the list, and the more you’ll just end up going for what your gut reaction was in the first place.

Once you have the event, you can start a good evaluation.

The precursor to this evaluation is; Does this event really need a response? Basically you need to challenge the assumptions. Sticking with the “losing money” event, we need to look ask, Are you really “losing” money by renting?

Sometimes events are self-created based on assumptions that might not be true. (Are you really “losing” money by renting?)

[Changing gears a little, I used my recent choice to change jobs as an example]

This is what I went through when thinking about accepting the job.

For example:

• Better pay is nice, but was it the event that made me tell my friend that I was interested. No. I was certainly satisfied with my current pay. I’d certainly take more money, but pay was not the factor for looking elsewhere. If it was just about money, there were other options I could look at while staying at UM (or in the state).
• Career advancement is nice, but was it the event that made me tell my friend I was interested. No. I knew I wouldn’t get that here, but I was already working on my MBA. Etc, etc.
• Opportunity to make a bigger impact on the world. I do feel that my ability to achieve that is certainly stifled here, but arguable there are better ways for me to achieve that (like starting my own company).

So, if I was on a path that I was satisfied with, why in the world would I seek this opportunity out?

When I was first told about the job, the part that I latched on to was that it was out in DC. Now there are all sorts  of reasons for me to want to work out in DC. However, at the root of it, I wanted out of Michigan because I wanted to start over (a change).

It was only when I got to that core event that I could start to evaluate whether I should take the opportunity. [As you might see, all those other reasons, everything outside of the core, are just manifestations of the burden of  past success.]

Only once I had isolated it down to that, was I able to make progress towards a decision (evaluation).

Whenever I evaluate anything (i.e. just about everything I do, large and small) I ask myself 3 questions contrasted against the event/problem I’m trying to solve.

1. What’s it worth (not only financial value, potential capability/ability)
2. What the cost (again, not only financial, but opportunity cost, but rule out sunk costs)
3. Am I willing to pay (reconcile the difference between the two)

After doing all that I am able to determine yay or nay.

…Hopefully that made sense. Part of the reason I’m blogging things like this is so that I can become a more effective communicator. Cheers to that.

Technorati Tags: Guidance,Leadership,Decision Making

When Fitness Means Life or Death

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/when-fitness-means-life-or-death/

That’s the premise of a new reality show from Discovery Health that premieres tonight [1/11/08]. Called “Fit to Live,” it’s based on Dr. Pamela Peeke’s book of the same name and raises the question of whether you have the strength, endurance and agility to escape a natural disaster, flee a burning building or pull your family from a wrecked car.

Fitness isn’t about working out at the gym or running a marathon, notes Dr. Peeke, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland and chief medical correspondent for Discovery Health Television. Fitness is important for coping with life’s emergencies, big and small, whether it’s running to make an airport connection or fleeing a burning building.

What an intriguing perspective on health and fitness. Its not really a secret to those that know me my feelings toward the weight related state of most Americans. That being said, I do try and avoid getting into those sticky discussions (or excuses) people have for why we are so garrulously overweight. What I think I like about this perspective that its casts unhealthy living in a more of a selfish light. Why is it that we don’t see the fitness related health of others as a source of concern for the longevity of our own existence? If I can’t count on you to save my life, or worse yet you hamper my ability to save my life because you get winded going down a flight of stairs, shouldn’t I be motivated to speak up against you eating an entire pizza?

I was watching a television show a couple years back when (20/20 or something like that) where they were pointing out the how obesity is socially acceptable whereas smoking is not. Where people would volunteer advice to someone they saw smoking that they should quit. Restating to the smoker what they had surely heard a hundred times before; how bad smoking is for them, all the repercussions of smoking. All while their other obese friend to their left continued gorging themselves. What was interesting about that was the way people  justified their lack of  active social concern for the health of the obese person over a smoker. The primary motivator for individuals saying something to a smoker seemed to be second hand smoke. So the concern for others really seemed to be ones concern for their self. People didn’t see how someone  else overeating would negatively affect them. Of course most people aren’t economists (at heart or profession). Food and nutrition being resources of finite amounts, individuals consuming excessively certainly does affect others. In fact the Wall Street Journal published an article about How Much Water Goes Into a Burger [and accompanying blog entry].

A fast-food quarter-pounder costs $3, and 1,300 gallons of water. That’s how much it takes, per burger, to hydrate the cow, grow its food and process its carcass, according to the Web sites of the National Park Service, the U.S. Geological Survey and a bottled-water trade group. By contrast, a loaf of bread uses up 150 gallons, and milk requires just 65.

Certainly this statistic is probably intended to fuel the “green” discussion, but I think it also helps qualify what we all give up so that someone can eat more than their “share”. If  we saw that the fast-food burger was more than $3 that someone pays for it, would we be more socially outraged bearing witness to people eating a half-dozen at a time.

If we [socially] weren’t willing the say something based on the economic costs (resource scarcity) or the financial costs (increased health care costs) is there hope on we’d say anything because of potential survival costs?

I guess that will somewhat depend on what the viewership is for the show…

Technorati Tags: Fitness,Health,Opinion

Uber-Geek

I’m 79% uber-geek.

not bad. room for improvement..which way though?

it’s time..

Its time to start establishing my net presence. “The net is a multiplier of intellectual capital.” and its time I become an active participant.
This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while now. its time to make the effort. I’ve been working on my extrovert skills over the past year. its gone well. I started participating on Facebook and post my pictures in Flickr. I see trying to actively blog as the next good step in this process.

new city… moving to washington dc
new job… starting a new job
new challenge.. out of my comfort zone  
new day… everyday i wake up 
new me…same me… just a little bit better. web2.0 -> geeksteve2.0 (how cliche)

I’m setting a goal. 5 posts a week for 5 contiguous weeks. I want to learn to tell a story on any of the myriad of topics of interest me that in a way that I can add value to the conversation.

here’s to the start of something..