Career Management with LinkedIn

When I use the term career management, I use it in the sense of taking some control over your career instead of careering from job to job, allowing your job to control you. There will always be situations you can't control but your response to something like a layoff helps shape the kind of future that results.

If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. ~ Lewis Carroll

Even though I intend for this to be about using LinkedIn to manage your career, there are other tools out there too, no tool in the world will be of much service to you if you don't know what it is that you're trying to accomplish.

Here's one important key you'll get from me over and over again - just like you have to want to know what you want from your career in order to not waste your time on a job that doesn't suit you, you also have to know what you want from LinkedIn (or any other social media tool, or any other tool for that matter) so that you don't waste your time in the great black hole of the internet.

Personally, that not wasting time on the internet is a regular battle for me and one I don't always win, but that's how I know how important it is. The only way I know how to win that battle is to determine ahead of time which tasks will support reaching your goal and how much time to set aside for each task - "however long it takes" is usually not the best answer. Face it, there is always too much to do. Make the time allocation a matter of priorities and degree of confidence that time spent on the task will yield the results you're after and you'll probably be on target.

What is it, in general terms, that you want from LinkedIn? I happen to think that in addition to building your network,, it's good for increasing visibility within that network and also beyond it. Used properly, LinkedIn can be even better at establishing and improving credibility. You can also use LinkedIn as a great research tool when you've identified a certain kind of role and/or a have targeted a specific company. Use it for finding out more about companies and hiring managers, determining what skills are needed for certain roles, and figuring out what options are available out there.

So - you've identified your over-arching goal (and it's one you can control, right? If not, we need to talk coming up with a better goal) and determined that a certain amount of time on LinkedIn is likely to help you reach that goal. Here are some of my thoughts about how you can make the most of LinkedIn:

• First the obvious - scour LinkedIn for people you know and respect and who respect you back and get connected with them. I happen to be in the quality over quantity camp (ask yourself if a LinkedIn connection could be mutually beneficial), but you decide what works best for you. If you're just starting out, expect a certain addiction to the excitement that comes with finding new people to add to your network. If you've been on LinkedIn for a while, don't forget to incorporate finding new people who may have joined and inviting people you want to be in your network as part of your ongoing maintenance program.
  
  
• If you're still employed, build your network now, before you need it. If you're recently unemployed, start adding people while your skills are fresh on their minds. If you've been unemployed for a while, this is a great time to build up your network by letting people know what you've been up to. Just remember that even if you have lots of extra time on your hands, they still have a lot to do, so keep your requests short, simple, and to the point.
  
  
• Don't overlook the usefulness of becoming connected with friends and family, even if they don't work in the same industry as you. Frankly, you never know what they know. Similarly, don't limit yourself to regional contacts, even if your work is primarily regional. If someone from out of the area (so is knowledgeable and highly respected without being a direct competitor) can say good things about you, sometimes that is the very best recommendation available.
  
  
• Speaking of recommendations, make recommendations for people in your network and be sure to show your thoughtful and analytical side when you do. Not only are they more likely to say something nice about you in return, know that the recommendations that you make tend to say as much about you and your thought processes as they say about the person you're recommending.
  
  
• If you haven't started an ongoing maintenance program yet, do so now. Identify tasks (from this list of tips, if that helps) that you'll do on a regular basis - once a week, once a month, once a year, whatever makes sense - and then stick to that schedule as much as possible. If you fall off, just start back up again wherever you left off.
  
  
• Part of your maintenance program should include periodically re-vamping your Summary and/or your employment history. You can refine what you've written and make it better, or just change it out a bit to keep it fresh. Either way, your network is notified that you've made changes, so it puts your name out there in front of them again.
  
  
• If someone who is in a position to write favorably about your work hasn't made a recommendation yet, don't be shy about asking. The thought simply may not have occurred to them. Let them use their own words, but feel free to share what specific aspects of your work you'd like for them to comment on.
  
  
• You can share up to three URL's - choose wisely which ones to use to represent you. You can label each of them with more user- (and SEO-) friendly names by choosing 'Other' for the type of website.
  
  
• Consider using your LinkedIn status update and TinyURL or bit.ly or some similar URL-shortening service to share out useful information that is distributed to your network. This way you're being helpful and they're seeing your name again.
  
  
• Link your blog to LinkedIn and members of your network will be able to see your latest post(s) if they have that service turned on. If you have that service enabled yourself, it gives you something to use as a prompt to reach out and connect with the people in your network.
  
  
• Status updates are great for maintaining a passive connection with people but make sure you also use LinkedIn in an active way too. I find it easy to reach out and say hi to past co-workers via LinkedIn messaging on a regular basis or simply watching everyone else's status updates and blog posts for interesting news items on which I can comment.
  
  
• You can also become more actively engaged with your network by finding and joining alumni groups (both schools and workplaces) and other groups created around topic areas relevant to your job search and participating in discussions so that you get to know the other people in the group better and they get to know you. Be yourself, just remember to be your best self and you're likely to do well. Pay special attention to discussion topics where you can be of service to others. I nearly suggested 'where you can show off what you know' but frankly, that's just more likely to make you look like a blowhard. Stick with being in service to others and you'll be much better off.
  
  
• Use the Q&A function in LinkedIn to find additional ways you can be of service to others and look for opportunities to provide even more information (so long as it's relevant) than what was actually requested. The person needing help can rate your answer so it's worthwhile to be as helpful as possible.
  
  
• In all cases (Q&A, discussion groups, status updates, etc) remember to mind your manners. Treat it like a lunch meeting and ask yourself if you'd conduct yourself that way during either the formal or the informal portion of an in-person interview.
  
  
• Use LinkedIn to research skills needed to be successful in a role and/or to ask questions of people who can help educate you further in that respect. This is a great way to identify where you might need to update skills and/or education.
  
  
• Search on specialized terms to find out more about a particular kind of position or to find relevant job postings
  
  
• Use LinkedIn to find out more about a company (indirectly from the information available on LinkedIn or more directly from people you can contact that way) and/or a potential boss. Remember that network you've been growing? This is a great time to tap into it for information and (when the timing is right) for introductions.
  
  
• When researching companies, check to see which companies are related via common career paths. This can tell you a lot about the company, suggest additional opportunities and help you find more networking footholds. Compare job titles, check out top schools, and take note of the demographics information for more clues. If it's a company you'd like to consider approaching for work, check out the variety of job openings they have posted as well as the recent changes, new hires, and newsworthy updates that show up. Any of these can help you figure out a way in.
  
  
• Prepare for interviews by ensuring you're up-to-date on terminology and buzzwords, current thinking and concepts, and personnel movement within your industry. Use the discussion topics and Q&A section to keep your own knowledge and thinking fresh, regardless of whether you participate yourself. If you need some remedial help, you can keep it confidential by asking questions privately. You can search for people using a variety of parameters, including title, current and historic company associations, keywords for skills or experience, promotion time-frames, location, etc.
  
  
• Use your imagination to think of other ways of conducting research or engaging with people that might be beneficial to you. The sky is pretty well the limit.
  

No matter how you're using LinkedIn, it's a good idea to actively manage the process and take the position that you get what you give. You can show yourself to be helpful here too by sharing any of your own favorite LinkedIn tips and tricks. I'm also happy to answer questions that show up in the comments in the event I've left out any important suggestions or you need help creating the results you want.

What connection or disconnect do you see between how you show up and what results you see?

TV Cables and Communications Media

Reading Kneale Mann's piece on multi-media communication reminds me of hooking up a new television recently. There was the TV with all of its HDMI, component, S-video, RCA and USB connection ports. Then there were the various devices we wanted to be able to connect and a collection of various types of cables for each connection type. I found the process of hooking everything up to closely mirror my experience with differing modes of communication.

Not that I'm likely to pursue a doctorate anytime soon, but probably 25 years ago I decided that if I ever did, I would want to do my thesis on how mode of communication affects content and the quality or effectiveness of communicating and how content and/or communication intent does (or should) affect the mode chosen. My fascination with this hasn't wavered, so it's probably no surprise that trying to choose the right cables for the right devices would make me think of the choices we make in communication every day.

I'm a huge fan of Twitter these days, but certainly not for everything. This bit of musing is a good example of a thought I can't fully express in 140 characters or less. Others are not so quick to see the value or, if on the verge of being convinced, are certain it's only likely to create more work for themselves.

"I can't even keep up with my Inbox - I spend two hours a day trying to keep email under control!" whined another attendee of the Portland Lane Powell social media seminar for businesses that I sat in on earlier this summer. I say whined because this particular gentleman didn't seem particularly interested in arriving at a solution, but others certainly share his basic sentiment. My own feeling is that such people are looking at the problem wrong, and in so doing, are making it seem much bigger than it really is.

My basic assertion is that if we collectively choose the most appropriate mode of communication for the situation at hand and the specific players involved then we effectively reduce, rather than continue to increase the effort expended for communication purposes as more options come along. And this is where the TV cables seem relevant to me.

Although there are limits to how many of which kind of connections are possible, the television is happily agnostic - it is capable of receiving just about any type of input currently used today. On the other hand, the older satellite receiver I'd chosen to connect doesn't have so many choices, the DVD player has a different set of options and the Roku box handles just about every type of output imaginable. Add to the mix the older stereo with RCA as the only audio input option, and it made for an interesting puzzle.

Although there are multiple HDMI ports on the TV, I only had one HDMI cable and only one HDMI-capable device, so that choice was easy. From there, it wasn't tough to decide which device of those capable of using the component cable should get it and how best to apportion out the remaining S-video and RCA cables. Always though, it was a question of matching up device capabilities, ports, and availability of cable.

Basically we have to do the same thing with communication methods. Personally, I'm best with written thoughts. I can read them quickly when I'm the receiver and I can think about what I'm saying before I send it out. But email and Twitter aren't always available. And written communication may not be a preference for the person on the other end. Even when writing might be a functional option, it may not be the optimal mode of communication for the content itself. Just as most people still consider it gauche to break up via voicemail, I wouldn't care to learn of a close friend's death via Twitter when a phone call or even a more personal email might be possible.

Ideally, choosing the best communication medium for the job at hand increases the effectiveness of the communication while it reduces effort. If it feels like more work, someone is probably making less-than-optimal choices - or perhaps the best communication method for your particular need hasn't been invented yet.

As for me, I'm rather like the television - happily multi-modal for the most part even though I do have personal preferences. What are your preferences? And how do you apportion out your communication capabilities? It's worth thinking about. Once I'd paid attention to all of the connection capabilities with the television, I realized that it might be useful to track down one more HDMI cable. Taking careful inventory of your communication needs could yield similar insights. It all comes down to sorting out what's optimum for the players, the situation, and the job at hand.

What's the best way to share what you have to say?

Easy Money - Developer Focus Group Week of 11/3

Why should you consider the focus group below? My personal experience is that focus groups

• are almost always interesting - and are often fun
• provide insights around what's next from companies
• sometimes provide a forum for providing feedback that will actually be taken into account
• are occasionally worthwhile financially
• nearly always lead to more focus group opportunities

Extra exclamation marks aside, here is an interesting one aimed at Developers. Since I'm a very low-grade hack, I don't come anywhere near qualifying for this Gilmore Research focus group scheduled in Seattle for next week - but maybe you do...

Attention: Mobile Developers!

The Gilmore Research Group, a highly accredited marketing research company, is currently undertaking an especially interesting project which we hope you find fun and exciting! We are conducting an interesting study in our office the week of November 3rd, 2008

We are seeking Mobile Developer across various platforms for a developer study and if you qualify are participate you will be paid $225 for 1.5 hrs of your time!

If you are or know a mobile developer, we would like to hear from you!

All information is kept strictly confidential and we are in no way selling anything.
Data collected is for research purposes only.

In order to qualify, Please email the following answers. Based on your answers we will then give you a call.

1) Name:
Phone:
Best time to reach you:

2) What is the primary context you develop for?
Laptops/desktops 1
Cell phones 2
Handhelds (e.g., game boys, Palms) 3
Other (specify) 4

Again, Please email us your answers and based on your qualifications, we will call you.

If you have any questions about this please call 206-219-1942 and ask for the study about Mobile Development.

In advance, we thank you.
-The Gilmore Research Group

For further information about our organization, please visit our website at http://www.gilmore-research.com

If you qualify, I encourage you to contact them - they've always been pretty cool to work with in the past. And if you are accepted, post a comment about your experience (the parts you're allowed to share anyway) here for others to enjoy.

Have fun!

What do you want to know?

Healthy Lunching on the Eastside

Seattle Lunch 2.0 was an interesting event this month. For one thing, it was on the Eastside, which always seems easier somehow than crossing the Big Water even though technically it takes me as long to get to Crossroads area as it does to get downtown.

For another, Microsoft was a great host - way too much food and all of it good (geeks like good food) and pretty cool pedometers to boot, complete with USB cables for automatic data transfer to your computer. The pedometers and the lunch were courtesy of the Health Solutions Group which has their new HealthVault platform currently in beta, so we got to hear quite a bit about HealthVault and their plans in that space going forward.

People attending the Lunch 2.0 event had lots of questions - good ones too - and most of them centered around privacy. Listening to the answers, I didn't once hear the sort of 'trust us' comments that always put me on edge.

Instead, what I heard was how closely they'd worked with privacy advocacy groups to make sure they were taking the right approach. And when you work with stakeholders closely enough that they can feel satisfied that you've done all the right things (or done them as well as you can, anyway in some cases), then that's probably the best possible outcome.

Although lots of us were interested in the platform and what it can do, I'm not sure everyone was convinced. I tend to go back and forth on privacy myself anyway so I came away not exactly sure at first. But look at what we've done with debit cards and credit cards over the years. I remember when privacy advocates yelled about the dangers of those in the beginning. My father's tongue-in-cheek approach at the time was to take advantage of his position as an airline pilot to use them all over the world and hope to confuse anyone who might be paying attention. These days, we don't give it a second thought and in fact, many of us operate nearly cash-less.

So - while I do care about privacy myself and certainly care that Microsoft and their partner vendors are taking appropriate precautions in that area, I also take a long view of the risks vs. what I get out of it. I figure it's not unlike my approach to being a first-time mother of an infant - once I heard that mothers of two babies tended to not wash pacifiers nearly so rigorously the second time around and in fact, tended to let the dog lick off the big hunks by the time they got to three or four babies, I jumped straight to the less-than-hyperclean approach with my baby.

And just what do we get out of it with HealthVault? Well, I like being able to upload and track all my new pedometer data, especially since these new pedometers are ever so much more accurate than they used to be. The HealthVault interface itself leaves quite a bit to be desired but once I remembered that it's the platform and the other services are the real interface, I didn't mind that part so much.

Trying to find the right service was a bit of a scavenger hunt. I checked out all the HealthVault-compatible currently available, trying to fine one that made the most sense for my needs. I'm not trying to lose weight and I don't have a particular condition like diabetes where I'm trying to track specific information, although there are services that are relevant for people who are.

Neither am I old enough or sick enough to be taking multiple medications such that I'd benefit from tracking prescriptions and how they interact. And while reasonably active, I'm not training for a big athletic event these days so those services weren't quite what I was looking for either. I also wanted something a bit more comprehensive than a service designed primarily to make health information available to appropriate parties in case of an emergency (ICE).

In the end, I decided that what I really wanted was an all-around tool for managing day-to-day healthcare information and healthcare records once electronic information sharing with my doctor and pharmacist becomes a bigger part of my life. Being able to do that for all the members of my family was on my wishlist too. HealthyCircles appears to meet all those needs quite nicely and, as an added bonus, it's also free so I signed up for that service and started testing it out.

Nearly a week later, I'm starting to enjoy having data to review and have a plan in place for digitizing all my paper health records so that I can keep all that information in one place and more readily accessible. I'm thinking that will make that part of our lives considerably easier - that much more so thanks to digital filing.

At some point, I'll probably want more devices that work with HealthVault. I'll shift to a scale that allows me to directly import data and the same with our blood pressure monitor but manual data entry is probably good enough for now. We already have a HealthVault-friendly Polar heart monitor so I just need to get that set up.

Of course, as often happens in such situations, the more I play with this stuff, the more my imagination kicks in and the more I want to be able to do with it. I've already sent probably 4-5 suggestions to the HealthyCircles people so hopefully they're watching their inbox!

Noticing the issues I have seen as a consumer and having worked with hospitals as clients in the past, how ridulously silo'd information still is these days, the HealthVault platform is likely to be a game-changer. One of the services already offered is appropriately titled NoMoreClipboard. I mean, how stupid is it that I should have to fill out the exact same information from one time to the next - sometimes even on the same day if I happen to be visiting two different doctors in one fell swoop? That alone is bound to give us back some important chunks of time and that is certainly worth a lot right there.

There is so much more around the corner in this space. I'm looking forward to watching it unfold.

What helps keep you healthy?

iPod Mini Weirdness

I've been feeling like a person possessed lately, what with some of the projects I've been working on, trying to get caught up after my sister's visit to town, and getting (no-longer-quite-so) Small Person ready for school. But really, what's possessed at the moment is my iPod Mini.

I haven't the faintest clue what's up with it - all of a sudden it's on, making little clicking noises like someone is using it and trying to find a song or an album to play, and it won't even turn off anymore. Fortunately, I've got it plugged in so the battery won't drain completely but the most convenient spot for that puts it right near where I work at the computer, so I'm constantly hearing the clicking noises or noticing the backlight go on and off. Urg.

And no, it's not the alarm. Even if it was, I don't believe that would explain why I can't turn the darned thing off. So - when I feel like I have the time, I'll research the matter some more and hopefully will come up with some kind of workable solution. There is truth, though, to the notion that we often put off doing things until it becomes more painful to live with the problem than it is to address it. I am most definitely in that mode at the moment with the Mini.

If you have suggestions or just care to commiserate, feel free to comment.

What are you tolerating and what will it take for you to stop tolerating it?

Time - Learning or Wasted?

While I believe no time or experience is ever truly wasted, sometimes I totally get into the fun of solving the puzzle and sometimes I just want it solved.

Today, I'd really just like for PayPal buttons to integrate seamlessly into ASP.net pages. I don't really feel like putting a lot of effort into figuring out how to make that happen. I've already had as much fun as I feel like having learning that I'm not crazy - that there is no easy bridge between Here and There when it comes to PayPal and ASP.net.

Likewise, I anticipate that investing a bit more time into a related matter will result in discovering that Microsoft has broken their own rules. Apparently building a web site with Microsoft Expression Web is insufficient insurance against having code render badly in Microsoft Internet Explorer.

While FireFox is happy to render code from the Adrotator control referencing a non-existent ImageUrl by displaying the AlternateText instead (as the definition implies it should), Microsoft instead chooses to hack up a hairball, announce to the whole world there is no image to be had and not apply the desired formatting to the alternate text.

Sooner or later, I'll figure out how to make it all happy. I'd rather it be sooner than later. Most of the visitors to the Soaring Mountain website are still using IE so even though I'm pretty sure it's not my fault, it's still embarrassing to have it look that bad. To date, I've been happy enough just to tinker away with it every so often and the rest of the time hide my head in the sand, accessing my own website using Firefox exclusively and pretending there isn't a problem... but that's getting old. Now I just want it fixed.

Of course, if you know of any answers or solutions for either issue, I'm willing to consider suggestions. I'm a total hack at coding and I never pretend to be otherwise; my time is definitely better spent coaching.

How would you rather spend your time?

Runners and Technology

Sometimes the only thing that gets out is technology. For another couple of hours yet, we're not going anywhere. We've got the Seafair Marathon going out our door and with the half marathoners still coming up the "last killer hill" just to the south of us and the marathoners coming up the hill just to the north, there's really nowhere to go.

But you can see the pictures. This is the top three elite runners just joining up with the half marathon runners.

And meanwhile, at City Hall, the Eastside Amateur Radio Support group is participating in Field Day, the annual event where ham radio operators practice using technology to get the word out any way they can when nothing else is working.

So -I'll walk down to City Hall in a bit. That will still work. And in the meantime, we'll tune out with some reggae designed to make the last mile a little more fun for the runners. At least it's a nice gradual downhill from here!


How will you get out?

I Know What You're Watching

We watch far more television in our house that I care to admit or really have time for - the adults anyway. I usually blame it on the general interest that drew us to or grew from our time in television. Lately, I've been spending more and more time surfing or doing other work while watching and I've noticed an interesting convergence between television and the internet. I know what you're watching and last night, it was Kipling.

Maybe you've noticed this too. I know what you're watching because I have the Google Hot Trends gadget on my personalized search page (which, btw, I've finally further personalized with the Tornado theme) and when we all watch TV in the evening, we apparently all surf the web to look up stuff related to what we're watching. While all of you were looking up Rudyard Kipling, his son, Jack, and the poem, we were trying to figure out why Kim Cattrall was playing the wife and mother, Carrie. I won the bet that she was an American.

Whenever I find names on the 'hot sheet', invariably they're names of American Idol contestants the night that they got voted off or Simon said something particularly interesting about them. It was interesting to see so many of the top spots related to the Kipling movie, a public television offering that apparently received way more attention than I'd have guessed it might.

As much as TV rules at night, in the morning it's all current events. Last week it was the midwest earthquake and the New Madrid fault system. This morning, the Kiplings and My Boy Jack are old news and all but Rudyard himself have been pushed off the top ten by Bill Maher, the Boston Marathon (go Brian and Carol!), and what I can only guess is an early morning porn rush. Not sure what that was about - that one was strange.

It's this sort of convergence that makes me curious to see what the future will bring in terms of entertainment and information and blending the two. If you have comments or predictions, I'm interested. Go ahead and share your thoughts.


How does your thinking affect your actions?

The High Road and the Low Road

My world is full of technology. Everyone's is these days, for the most part. Sometimes there are some interesting juxtapositions between high tech and low tech aspects of my world. Today, in addition to self-checkout at grocery stores and hardware stores, you can also rent movies from a vending machine for a dollar a day, right there at the grocery store. How cool is that?

Last night, I rented Stranger Than Fiction from a DVD rental machine. All three of us loved the movie. Small Person laughed out loud as soon as he realized that Will Ferrell's character could hear the narrator, and everything about the film - from the graphics that showed how his brain saw the world, to the real end of the story - really worked. What really stuck with the junior member of the partnership, though, was the author's typewriter.

By the end of the movie, Small Person was expressing a wish for a typewriter that he could use, a manual one, no less. It turns out, that I have one - my high school graduation present from my parents. For some reason, he was interested in the typewriter being portable too and it turns out further that this is exactly what I have. Before we all had computers (let along laptops), my parents wanted me to have a portable typewriter so that I could be anywhere in the world and still write - letters, manuscripts, resumes, whatever.

And after all these years, I still have my old portable Olympia B-12 and it's in terrific shape though it hasn't exactly seen a lot of use lately. Even so, it works great and has some rather cool features - like an automated space bar, and a backspace key - that weren't so common on manual typewriters. Of course, manual typewriters - portable or otherwise - weren't exactly common either by the early 80's.

In any case, even with the ribbon pretty dried out because it's been ages since I've used or replaced it, Small Person happily sat down to type on it right away, coming up with some rather amusing stuff in the process. If you happen to run across a story about a wristwatch that's as unhappy about screaming as it is about having ended up lost and on Mars, in all likelihood it started here in this house.

His keyboarding skills are fine but the added pressure needed to get the keys to strike right was a bit tough for him. We figure it's good finger-strengthening exercise for the piano, though, and keep encouraging him to stay with standard fingering rather than lapsing into two-finger keyboarding.

So how strange is this - a digital native going back to visit the old country, seeing for himself why QWERTY keyboards are the way that they are and learning about platens, end-of-line bells, carriage returns and so forth and so on? Next session, I'll teach him about correcting mistakes in the world where backspacing doesn't equal deleting.

For now, I'm just letting him enjoy himself.

Meanwhile, I myself am playing on the computer with ActiveWords, after having heard about this pretty nifty little tool at a recent Seattle Lunch 2.0 free lunch/networking event for geeks. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about capturing keystrokes just yet, nor do I have good data yet on how much memory the application consumes. I can say, however, that the ease with which I can now launch some of my favorite applications makes it pretty slick to use and I know that's just the tip of the iceberg.

For instance - I have also worked out how to use ActiveWords to navigate to URL's I visit a lot. Right now, I'm navigating quite a bit to a couple of different Basecamp accounts, one for Startup Weekend Seattle, and another that we've set up for one of my closest friends who has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer.

What we decided was that all of the logistics around battling breast cancer - researching information, gathering the right health care professionals, strategizing and making plans, mobilizing all of the friends and family who are offering to be resources, and so forth - was just like managing the kinds of projects some of us do for work. And so now we have Project Boob Management, which makes me - for the time being anyway - the Project Boob Manager. Life takes odd turns.

As useful and interesting as high tech can be, I find it can also take over our lives in ways that are not so helpful. Now that we both have laptops, there are times when I realize that Tall Person and I are both in the living room together, navigating around in our own personal online worlds with little or no conversation between us. Something similar happens when we read sometimes too, but somehow it's different and even more disconnected when it's the computers. It's times like these that I see how important it is to strike a balance between high tech and low tech.

For those of you who who agree and are still striving for that kind of balance in your own lives, you might be interested in the Soul Tech workshop put on by Leif Hansen. If you missed out on tickets for Startup Weekend Seattle, it might be a great way to spend your Saturday afternoon this weekend. I wish there was a feasible way for me to be in both places at once, as it's a topic I feel strongly enough about to sometimes wish it was my workshop. Leif is good people though, and I'm glad he's getting such great attention for his work.

In the end, high tech that helps facilitate more human interaction - by making it easier to find each other and work together, or by saving time and reducing stress so that we have more time to spend with one another with fewer headaches - is probably some of the highest and best use of technology. Where it interferes with human interaction is probably a mistake, something I'm far more likely to think about the next time I go to the grocery store and am making the choice between using a check-stand with a real-live checker and going through the automated self-check.

Those automated movie vending machines are way cool though, just about any way you look at it. I have even noticed DVD kiosks in hospitals. I know from past experience that sometimes connecting over a good escapist-type movie can be a great way to recover from surgery or get through chemo if it's one of those times when no one really feels like talking that much.

I'll be sure to add that one to the Basecamp-supported Project Boob Management idea list.

And you should feel welcome to add a comment if you have questions, thoughts, ideas, around taking the high (tech) road vs. the low road.

How is technology helping or hindering what's important in life?

Geeks and Goals

Okay, how many geeks out there are willing to admit to using MS Project or Basecamp or some such professional application to track and manage their personal goals? Be honest!

If you thought you might want something that seems a little more, well... personal, you might want to check out Zeenami, the new Seattle-based website that's just been made available as a public beta. I always love trying new things if I think they might be helpful and I'm just starting to play around with it. Already I can see there are two areas in particular that my clients might appreciate.

One is the personal assessments area of the kind that I use regularly in my coaching. There's a life fulfillment survey and a sort of mini-Myers-Briggs that even provides the option of letting other people tell you what they notice about your personality. What you can do with these sure beats my own hacked-together Excel spreadsheet versions by a significant margin.

In fact, I might as well toss my home-grown tools altogether and let Zeenami take over. It's far more professional-looking than I'm ever going to take the time to make them. And you don't even have to register to access the assessments, which is nice.

The other area is the goal tracker templates, and to use those you do have to register. I still like Llamagraphics LifeBalance for managing my life overall, and I recognize that plenty of people simply want something to track their progress on a handful of goals. Zeenami can work great for that and I'm already starting to build some templates of my own to share with clients and others. I'll let you know when I've got something you can use.

Of course, I can hear some folks out there protesting any sort of tracking whatsoever. I know, it feels too much like micromanaging, sometimes. Think about it, though - we track progress and milestones for projects at work as a way of monitoring progress, making sure progress happens - and that it happens in alignment with the intended goal.

How is what we want out of life any different from that or less deserving?

I'm curious about whether you track goals or not and how well that works for you. Send me your opinions at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com and let me know what sorts of tools you favor for making sure (the right) things happen in your life.

What do I want to make happen in the next 90 days?

HIT Me

If you've been paying much attention to the news this past week, you know that Nevada is not just for gamblers and skiers. It's also a place popular with some aviation enthusiasts - and a place where some of them go missing, the latest of whom is apparently Steve Fossett.

I like to keep an eye on Slashdot. I don't read everything, but I do keep a lookout for things that interest me that I wouldn't find out about otherwise. Over the weekend I learned from a Slashdot article that the search for Steve Fossett has gone high-tech, using Amazon Mechanical Turk.

With experience flying (with even quite a few hours in a Bellanca Citabria 7GCBC) and an interest in technology as a meaningful solution, I decided this was an excellent opportunity to actually do some good and not just settle for slacktivism.

I know what an experienced pilot is likely to do in a variety of situations. I know what kinds of perils exist in the air. And I have a rough idea of what a crash site is likely to look like. So, I started reviewing HIT (Human Interface Tasks) photos myself.

At 10-20 seconds for a decent look at most and up to a minute or so for the more complex photos where I feel a need to cross-reference with Google Earth views of the data, I've been able to process more than a hundred already in just a couple short-ish sittings.

Of course, that's just a drop in the bucket compared to the more than 65,000 photos that showed up on the list when I first looked. With so many people working on it though, that number is coming down rapidly. Currently, it looks like it's dropped to just over 52,000. Wow, that's a lot of hands making light work!

The work helps keep some of the normal speculation at bay. There's only so much hangar flying that's useful in these situations. I've found that it helps deal with the ambiguity - if it could happen to someone good like that, it could happen to me - by finding reasons why it could have been pilot error. We all secretly hope to determine it was an error that we can learn how to avoid once we've inspected every last aspect of the scenario and decided how we would have handled it differently. Beyond that, it's just talk.

General public with little or no experience in aviation likes to jump to conclusions for entirely different reasons. "Aviators are risk-takers to be avoided" seems to be the theme I run across most frequently. These are the people most likely to blame an accident on the lack of a flight plan, which is ludicrous.

No matter how short a flight I intend, however, I always file a flight plan because while lack of one may not cause an accident, it sure makes it a heckuva lot easier to find you should you need to be found. Not filing a flight plan is a meaningless gamble that you'll arrive at your destination safely without need of outside intervention.

Given that it's way easy to file a flight plan, it seems worth the extra time to just let someone know where you're headed - and then also let them know if your plans change. Place your bet on the possibility that you could need the help rather than the probability that you won't. Gamblers do generally prefer long odds as the better payoff anyway, right?

So go ahead, satisfy your curiosity and help out with a few Fossett-seeking HIT photos. Then, if you still feel a need for some more hangar flying, feel free to comment or send your discussion-starters to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com and we'll hash out amongst ourselves what could have happened, what should have been done differently, or what we should be doing next. I'll be processing a few more HIT photos myself in the meantime.

What small and seemingly unnecessary steps could I take now to mitigate risks later?

Leggo My Lego!

So much interesting is going on right now that it's almost too much. Now that I'm back in town again, I've been joining the other folks in putting out some feelers for space for Startup Weekend Seattle (know of anyplace that'd work? we'd love to hear about it!) and it looks like I may be helping to re-write the curriculum and co-teach a unit on customer support for a UW certification program. We're making headway on those plans anyway and I'm excited about the prospects.

That's just for starters. There are plenty more irons in the fire too and on top of all that, there were so many articles of interest in the business section of the Seattle PI on Monday that I hardly know what to do with them all. The highlight for me was probably the article on Lego Serious Play. I've been interested in LSP since November, when I got to try it out for myself at the ICF Conference in St. Louis last fall.

In fact, I forwarded the article to Robert Rasmussen, figuring he'd appreciate knowing it made print here in Seattle. I'm glad I did; we've been talking about how to get me into one of the certification sessions and he mentioned that there's likely to be one in Vancouver, BC sometime this winter. I'm so there. I just have to make sure it doesn't conflict with Startup Weekend!

All I can say is with everything popping up at once, it's both scary and exciting - kind of like those thunderstorms Monday night which were way cool to watch by the way; it's just too bad that we had an obscured view - even our treehouse wouldn't have helped much in that regard. I'm just glad that Small Person is back to school so that he doesn't have to feel neglected as I start getting into all the cool new stuff happening.

Whether you're interested in Lego as a business performance tool or have ideas about space for Startup Weekend, I'm interested in what you have to say. You can send messages to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com and we'll build on that. It'll be fun, too - so long as you leave at least a few of the cool Lego pieces for me to use too.

How can I tap into fun and excitement to help get things done?

Is THIS Too Far?

Back when I was pregnant with Small Person, Tall Person and I had an experience that taught us a helpful lesson about parenting - it's also turned out to be somewhat useful for managing too. We were out walking at Bellevue Downtown Park and were treated to an amusing interaction between what appeared to be an older uncle or perhaps grandfather, and his two-year-old charge, Alex. We know that this particular small person was named Alex because as he started sprinting for the hinterlands, we could hear his caretaker call out, "Now, don't go too far, Alex! Don't go too far!"

Tall Person and I burst out laughing at the same time, watching the older gentleman try to chase down speedracer Alex, who clearly had no intention of stopping anytime soon. Our best guess at what was going through little Alex's mind? "And just how far is too far grandpa? Is this too far? Is this? How about now?"

We took that incident to heart and when our own small person started testing out his legs, our instruction to him was, "Stay where you can see me!" Our theory has been that, like with rear view mirrors, if you can see me, I can probably still see you.

Whether I'm parenting or managing, I try real hard to think about how to deliver instructions that make sense from the perspective of the person receiving them. It's not always easy but I get better results that way.

It seems I don't always take my own advice though. Today I was alerted to a problem on the the Survival Strategies for Techies blog that shows up when using Firefox. I'd probably have run across the unresponsive script errors myself if I'd been using Firefox more often but I get lazy sometimes and the truth is that as much as I like Firefox, I hadn't gotten around to loading it on my computer.

I've loaded it now though, and as best as I can tell, it seems I may have been skirting around the edge of too far with respect to all the cool toys and gadgets I've been loading onto the blog. The good news is that there seems to be a pretty simple fix (or workaround, depending on your perspective), just by modifying a Firefox setting. Whew, glad that's settled! Now, if I can only figure out what happened to the MadKast icons on the more recent posts. Maybe something else strayed too far somehow along the way.

If you've got better troubleshooting suggestions or recommendations, send them to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com so I can find the best fix possible. I like hearing stories about what's too far too.

How will I know when I've gone 'too far'?

Internet Off the Grid

For the past year or so, the thought has occurred to me that conditions could reach a point where energy is precious enough that we may be pushed out of urban centers to better situate ourselves to grow our own food or at least live closer to its production. That's not the only cause or justification, but you get the drift - people more spread out instead of more concentrated. People quite likely living off the grid.

And if that were to happen, the question I keep wondering is whether that would result in going back to an agrarian society or whether some other way of being might evolve.

I'm comfortable enough with the former, having grown up around wheat farming and having helped raise cattle myself. But I'm betting on the latter. There is so much of what so many of us do that is virtual anymore that if there were a way to stay virtually connected via the internet, despite the distances and the changes in availability of energy, then I'm sure we could rebuild a spread out, virtual society.

It's an interesting thought anyway and now it seems there really does exist the technology that could take the internet off the grid. Makes you think about where the new power centers are likely to be, doesn't it? Of course, with the combination of the decreased daylight and increased clouds and storms in the wintertime, the Seattle area would likely be open for business only in the summer months.

So - what's your most interesting and/or optimistic post-apocalyptic scenario assuming there are still computers and ways for them to stay connected over distances? I love science fiction "what-if's" so send yours to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com and let's riff on it a bit. You never know where it could lead.

Where do I want to be in twenty years? What's likely then? And what can I do today to make the two mesh?

Not in My Right Mind

I don't know about the rest of everyone, but sometimes writer's block turns into something more like writers' bottleneck. At such times, it would probably be helpful to just move onto the next topic instead of staying stuck. There's a message there somewhere. I'll figure it out & get back to you... well... sometime. In the meantime, given that I let myself stay stuck for so long, let me just point out that I'm thrilled to discover that a) some play can have a purpose and that b) there are really good, left-brained/analytical minded-appealing reasons for developing and engaging right brained thinking too. And some fun ways to go about it.

My father, a leftie, would probably be pointing out about now that given the link between brain dominance and opposite handedness, only the lefthanded are in their right minds. As bad a joke as that is, it's actually related to some of what I've been exploring lately more in-depth.

One of the perks of having a small person around the house is having ready access to Lego bricks - one of my all-time favorite toys - so I was pretty jazzed to learn not-so-recently-now (back in November, at the International Coach Federation conference) that there are some good justifications to playing with them that go beyond just having fun. The Lego Serious Play folks say you can actually unlock important information by playing with Lego pieces as a way of facilitating communication between the two halves of our brains - and yes, it does seem to work. At some point, I'm sure I'll get licensed to facilitate this process... I'm that interested in it. If you're interested in it too, be sure to let me know as it might influence how soon I get in to get this done.

Not only is the process fun, it's also based on sound brain theory, which means that it meets my definition of cool, being both neat AND useful. This engaging both halves of the brain to get at better answers is definitely in line with what I've been saying for years, even if it hasn't exactly been out loud. As far as I can tell, an analytical approach that is open to intuitive-based quantum leaps of thinking will always (and I tend to use absolutes rather lightly) be far more productive than either approach alone. This is what I call being logically creative. LSP not only helps make that process possible, the brain theory upon which it's based explains why it's so useful.

And now Dan Pink explains in hard terms why we should care to even look at a right-brained approach to matters when so many of us got where we are and achieved our greatest successes by focusing on one that is strictly left-brained analytical. With hard data that the most analytical mindset can appreciate, he explains in his book, A Whole New Mind , how and why that road is a dead end if it's the only road we travel. It's worth reading. And if it means nothing to you, then I'm guessing that what I do and how I do it probably means nothing to you either. No harm, no foul. When you're ready, we can talk.

I'm guessing though, that a lot of tech folks will get it if they stop long enough to really think about what's involved in their work. The ones who understand why it's important to be able to take ping pong, pool, or foosball breaks from time to time in the afternoon - because tech work is as creative as it is logical - will get it. Those who understand the need for logic laugh long and hard at the total lack of logic in, say, the Kids in the Hall sketch where the guy actually thinks he'll get the car started by washing the windshield. And who doesn't love a good laugh? The thing is, those who also understand the importance of the creative element will probably keep their jobs longer.

And if you accept the basic premise, then what? Figure out how to nurture and tap into that creativity, I guess. Playing with Lego bricks (with or without the Serious Play element) is one way. So is any creative endeavor, really... crafts or other artistic expression, music, you name it. The folks at Face the Music use writing and performing blues tunes to engage creativity toward a useful end, so do check them out if that's an appealing-sounding option.

I'm interested to hear your own observations about blending logic and creativity - send them to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com and let me know... do you believe they belong together, or are they separate pursuits?

How can you use creativity to expand the reach of logic?

~~.~~~.~~~~~.~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kimm Viebrock is an ICF-credentialed Associate Certified Coach who helps technology professionals and service-oriented technology groups develop and use their skills more effectively and increase their value within the larger organization, allowing them to do more, do it better and have more fun doing it. Kimm is devoted to finding the connectedness in life.

More on Toys

One of the people who picked up on the Trillian kick pointed out that it maintains a weblink history. This can prove very handy for capturing all the links that tend to fly back and forth. It also means there's no pressure to go visit every last site right this minute. Of course, given my own level of impulsivity, I probably will anyway. In fact, that's probably the single biggest reason why I hadn't really noticed before now.

For storing and managing links, I still prefer Backflip. I like their Daily Routine feature and the notion that I can visit my favorite sites without worrying which computer I'm using. Plus, the ones I visit most often float up onto a Top 10 list that I find very convenient. I'm curious, though, to know more about what everyone else uses - besides the Favorites or Bookmarks lists in their browsers, that is.

If Backflip counts as Something Old and Trillian as Something Blue, then the Something New must be Monday's announcement of the pending availability of the Treo 650.

Yes, it will have BlueTooth, just as everyone has been expecting, and it will have an MP3 Player too. I could care less about VersaMail, as I consider Sproqit to be way better, but then I admit to a certain amount of bias around that one. What I don't know is how much they plan to charge for this puppy - that bit of detail is noticeably absent from the marketing literature I received though I can't say I'm really all that surprised. It should drive down the cost of the unlocked 610's on ebay though.

Help me fill in the gaps by sharing what you know about prices, other technologies you prefer, functionality, etc. at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com. If you'd rather talk about functionality you wish was available, that's okay too.

What role does technology play in your life?

Toys

The recent posts on the new Google Desktop utility got some folks to thinking a bit about toys and other new things.

So far, I've been pleased with Trillian as a substitute for all the various forms of instant messaging I use; it does IRC too. The only other IM tool I still have on my system is MSNIM - apparently it's "integrated" too tightly at this point to remove; go figure. I just leave it logged off though and don't actually use it anymore now that I've got a "one-for-all" solution.

I also had Mooter pointed out to me as a new search tool. Having been a Lycos fan way back (was that the original? I forget; my memory is failing me), only gradually making my way through the other search utilities until Google became more popular, it's tough for me to say yet how I'll feel about Mooter and whether it will ever entirely replace Google for me... I will say it's a pretty interesting approach though.

Speaking of interesting approaches, how about the Can't Find It On Google site. Help each other find stuff you can't locate and (presumably) help out the search utilities improve their products at the same time. Cool, eh?

Then there's this Sproqit thing - way cool, true desktop access (in theory, for anything at all that you've got there; in practice, they're starting with the most important stuff - mail and files) from anywhere you can get to the internet from a Palm or Pocket PC device (other devices to follow, I'm sure but my favorite at the moment is the Treo). Now that they've got a release out, you may want to check it out for yourself.

What other toys do you know about that could help save the world? Send links or other info to techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com and let's talk about how you use this stuff to make your lives better.

How well do you use the resources available to you?

Cool Defined

What's your definition of cool? If it includes the notion that the thing or idea has to have some useful purpose in conjunction with the other factors that elevate its stature to the level of "cool" then we have at least one thing in common. Wanna know something cool - something you may have noticed already but might not have known you can put to good use?

Let's say you have a friend who buys a new car (okay, I realize for some folks, this may be a bit of a stretch, but hey, is it more or less of a stretch to imagine you have a friend or that YOU would be the one to buy a new car?). Done snorting your Mountain Dew? Good. Now let's say it's a car you hadn't noticed much previously on the street. Now you're seeing it everywhere!

You've had something like this happen, right? Not suprisingly (once you think about it, anyway, something I never did till recently), there's a name for this. It's called the Reticular Activating System (RAS) and it explains how what we see and hear and how we interpret that information is closely intertwined with what we think is important. It's related to a lot of other things too but the impact of our underlying thinking on the filtering system that determines what we are able to notice in our lives is the part that is truly cool.

Have you figured out how to use this knowledge yet?

If there is something you want, the trick to getting it is to program your RAS to recognize anything having to do with this new interest as "important" so that it will include it when selecting what information to pass along to your cerebral cortex. You can do this by talking about it to yourself and other people and you can also do it by writing it down. In fact, the more senses you can use and the more often you use them, the stronger the programming will be.

Try this - write out a goal that you have. Now say it out loud at least once a day; more is better. Chances are pretty good that if you do this enough, you'll start noticing a lot more conversations, web articles, TV shows, course offerings, books, etc. related to your goal than you ever have before. If you're like many people, you'll even start running across new opportunities related to your goal. Why does it seem like these things are suddenly appearing out of nowhere? Unless you are using Arthur C. Clarke's definition, it's not magic, it's just that your attention has been newly drawn to information and experiences that quite likely have always been there because of successful programming of your RAS.

If you want to see this brain functioning at work in a different way, try visiting www.tolerance.org, where you can take any of a series of tests designed by researchers at Yale and the University of Washington to measure unconscious bias using this same basic premise.

If you try this, I think it would be cool (interesting AND useful) to mention some of the results here, so let me know what your experience is by sending a message to techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com.

If it's true that our brains are hardwired to provide us with supporting evidence for whatever it is we believe, what will YOU choose to believe?