New phone for St Patrick's Day

First pic below!

I guess I'll get an iPhone?

Decision time is this Wednesday night, and I'm not sold on any one option.

I'm not in love with the idea of an iPhone yet, I tried one out for 5 or so minutes today. It worked fairly well, it's obviously fun to look at and the look/feel of the device itself is great. All well known and overly written about items.

I can see how the existing app structure/number will be useful, though I'm not inclined to pay for any apps as I'm rather "frugal". There are a ton of free one's, many that I know are good. But I can already feel the draw of some new fangled app, and that it'll be "only" $0.99.

For those with one, how does the touch keyboard work for you? I'm sure I'll get better at it with practice, but I'm a super fast typer with my Blackberry keyboard. This seems like it won't ever reach the same speed. 




The other option out there that I'd like is the Motorola Backflip as it is the only AT&T Android option. Reviews of it are so-so, and I'm not enthused to go with it. Several reviews indicate it might end up being a free phone very soon.



I guess I could look hard at the latest and greatest Blackberry? There just doesn't seem to be any major reason TO get one. 


iPhone picture - http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickyromero/ / CC BY-NC 2.0



Motorola Backflip - http://www.flickr.com/photos/bfishadow/ / CC BY 2.0

I will REALLY miss the Olympics, anyone else? Who is glad to see it go?

Every day and night, on TV (multiple channels no less) there were world class athletes hacking it out. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14171139@N08/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I will miss it.

I'm a sucker for the majority of the stories that NBC tells. I actually wish they had spent a month or so before the games letting me know more about who I was going to watch. They did an hour long "first timers" special, which was pretty cool. But why not more? Even if it had been an online only special I would have watched several hours worth on the personalities etc. And for us athletes, I could have taken several hours on who they train, why they train, where they train, who they train with, etc.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tyleringram/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

And I really would have liked more about the "support staff". The men and women who wax skis, sharpen skates, massage sore muscles, etc.

But I will be sad to see it go. Not thaaaat much longer until London, and having been to Sydney in 2000 I connect more readily with the summer concept, and I can't wait.

Dear Trip Advisor, you're idiots

Harsh words I know, but I feel that at the moment.

I appreciate that you need users to be registered with your site to provide a review, but why not let me know that up-front? Instead, I write an entire review, and THEN you make me sign up for your site.

Ok, I thought that was pretty stupid, but I'll deal. It's 2010, we all are registered for 20 sites we'll never actively participate in (I'm looking at you Friend Feed and Friendster ).

But, BUT, you really frosted my cookies when you offered me a FREE GUIDE from your site. 

What, that made me angry? How on Earth is this possible? Oh, because it was for the city I JUST VISITED! W-T-F? How is this going to help me? What do I do with this? Look at all the stuff I missed out on?

Instead, why not offer me a free guide to ANOTHER city? You know, somewhere I'd like to travel to in the FUTURE?

So there, I really stuck it to you, and I'm sure you're smarting. 

How to integrate with an existing project team

Breaking into an existing group, in whatever form (sports team, social clique, company, or consulting project team) can be a daunting task.


What is the NUMBER ONE tip?


Cliche, but being nice to others makes it easier for them to be nice to you.


So be very polite and nice, say hi to almost everyone. Introduce yourself, ask people polite questions about what they do and show an interest (your making them a friend/ally, and it helps you figure out who does what; you might even learn about office politics).

Learn the jargon and use it. If nothing else, you give the appearance of being an insider who knows what is going on. Done properly, this works well. If you use the language incorrectly, you look rather foolish (kind of like how Americans think Canadians and the British are "quaint" for the unique words they use like "water closet" and "telie"; secretly this is why "Harry Potter" was so successful, the accents). Jargon is important. And beyond implying you know what you are doing, it is a cue to those around you that you belong, you have a handle on the situation, and you understand the work being done. On my newest project I didn't know what a "walkerbox" was. This was a very basic term, and made me look bad to not know.

Offer a helping hand. This is helpful and endearing to your new teammates, and to you. For you it is worthwhile because you can quickly, make connections, and pick up on a lot of the cultural elements. You can help your teammates by offering them assistance with even menial tasks, demonstrate you're a team player, and help them advance what they are working on. "Learn by doing" right? Well here's how to do, learn, and have it all be in a low risk environment. Often times people won't even take you up on the offer, but you at least made it (and should do so in an authentic way). Those who do take the help, will typically give you less than critical tasks. Which is great. Semi-trivial tasks still fit into the overall flow of work. You can see what feeds into your little piece, and what relies on it.




Work hard. Put in an honest days work. Show an interest in what needs to be done. Let them know from day one that you are there to help out, and you aren't more dead weight.


Show an interest. Ask questions and be inquisitive. Ask for documents to read, background material, examples to learn from, templates to use, etc.


Help the next person. Take notes, write down what was helpful to you. If there is formal "new person" or "on-boarding" materials then discover what gaps there might be. If there is no guide, start creating an informal to help out.




What other tips or tricks might people have?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/subsetsum/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianturk/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

A simple way of fixing comments on blogs

I, like the majority of the blogging world, have found the existing comment framework to lacking. I think there is an extremely simple fix that would greatly enhance the value of comments. That is for there to be at least two types (no more than 4) of comments. The two best are:

1. Questions
2. Basic comments

And these two threads should be segmented, ideally side-by-side in dual threads (two vertical columns). The two types could be altered based on type of blog and content, the type of post, etc. But in reality, the gist of those two types cover 95% of the comments. 

Thoughts? Wouldn't comments below this post do well if on the left-hand side people were to ask questions and the right-hand side people wrote "Great idea!" or "You suck!".

O'Reilly's *Open Government: Transparency, Collaboration, and Participation in Practice*

After starting off with a preface and some other material, Open Government: Transparency, Collaboration, and Participation in Practice by O'Reilly press starts off with some severely wrong information:

"Imagine not having Google to quickly find information; no Facebook or LinkedIn to find new colleagues; no instant messaging to communicate with those colleagues once you found them. Imagine having to ask for permission every time you wanted to publish content online, instead of being able to do it quickly and easily with a wiki or weblog. This is the state of computing in the federal government."

Let's take those point by point, with particular emphasis on the Intelligence Community:

• "Imagine not having Google to quickly find information" - This ability exists within the federal government has this within each Department and/or Agency, especially within the Intelligence Community. You may not be able to search across all domains as easily as you can use the normal Google, which is a major detriment, but there is Google search. That real "Google" search is not federated is bad. However, you have to consider the rules and regulations of cross-domain and cross-organizational information release. There are reasons these things are limited and controlled. When information is TOO easily shared, it creates legitimate issues of safety. This isn't a business where a leaked detail can cost you money. These details can and will cost lives. The lives of your neighbors, my friends and your family.
• "no Facebook or LinkedIn to find new colleagues"  - Nothing actually called that, but using Intellipedia you can easily find people's profiles. It's a workaround, but it is pretty good in that space.

 

http://cdn.oreilly.com/oreilly/booksamplers/9780596804350-sampler.pdf

• "no instant messaging to communicate with those colleagues once you found them" - Again, always exists within each Department/Agency but not "federated". See below for my thoughts on this within large organizations. This comment is akin to complaining that I can't use the same platform within company A as company B. Well you can, it's called Gmail Chat, and you can use that from almost any unclassified government computer.
• "Imagine having to ask for permission every time you wanted to publish content online, instead of being able to do it quickly and easily with a wiki or weblog" -They absolutely have these options and tools within the IC, and they are HEAVILY used. The bonus of these in the IC is that there ISN'T the risk of improper disclosure. Remember, there's a reason you have to get permission to disclose information. It's because the lives of others are at risk. And there is an unclassified version of Intellipedia within the government.

In general, in what incredibly large organization where people have for decades upon decades been specifically kept apart can you find ready integration? 

When IBM acquired Rational several years ago (I was at IBM then), it took several months to get Rational on our IT baseline, on our email (the sucky Lotus Notes), and our IM program (Sametime, which isn't that bad). Now imagine IBM acquired them 30 years ago and was legally not allowed to integrate.

I'm sure the rest of the book is excellent, and I look forward to reading the portions of the free copy I have. But I find these comparisons tiring. There is NO comparison of business to US federal government.

Early on in the storm

Not the calm before the storm, but something like that.

Over a foot as of midnight, I'm scared what it'll be in the morning.

Posted via email from Christopher's posterous

How to write a great resume

A more interactive way to demonstrate how to write a great resume (using Prezi):

How to write a great resume on Prezi

Initial Prezi presentation image by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oliviercharavel/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Closing Prezi presentation image by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27620885@N02/ / CC BY 2.0