Category: think

The Art Of Career Change | Taking notes

From the wonderful School Of Life

Five deliciously taunting lessons from Roman Krznaric on finding fulfilling work:

1. Confusion is perfectly normal

      • —changing career (and the prospect of doing so) is utterly confusing due to the paradox of choice plus we’re naturally rick adverse—we have to move beyond this

2. Beware of personality tests

      • —they simply don’t work

3. Be a wide achiever, not a high achiever

      • —nurture the many sides of who we are to be a portfolio worker or a serial specialist

4. Find where your values and talent meet

      • —therein lies in your vocation

5. Act first, reflect later

    • —make time for change. The ‘plan and implement model’ is backwards. Branching projects or temporary assignments.

How did you find the job that fulfils you?

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The State Of The Internet | It’s Messy

fbvsggl

Juicy graphs and tastier truths.

Love this:

Google is the best ad product in the history of the world because it’s like advertising at a store. Facebook, meanwhile, is like advertising at a party.

BOOM!

The above and other stuff like:

  • the commercial internet is 20 years old
  • smartphones overtook PC sales in 2011
  • new media stock has 3x more value than old media
  • games played online are up 20x in two years
  • 45billion apps will be downloaded by the end of the year

…is from the un-embeddable (they say it is but it creates an ad—oh the irony) The State Of The Internet slidedeck from Business Insider.

Go, trawl / remix.

image credit
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Strategies vs Culture | Influencing Excellence

culture quote drucker

Replacing strategy with culture.

The following lines were featured in an exit report for my previous role:

…this is less about strategies and more about culture. Create the habitat and the habit will follow.

Something I’ve been saying for a while about social media and more importantly, change (whether it be departmental, organisational, individual etc).

Then the above [quote in the image] came along and I had to go outside and get some air.

Allow it to sink in.

Take some time to realise its importance.

Then adopt and adapt, embrace and move on, richer.

Thank you Peter Drucker.

How do you create a better culture for your organisation / company / for yourself?

Image credit via Drucker Institute
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Rilke’s Desk

Rilke in the Hotel Biron, Paris

Totally intrigued by this image of my literary mentor, Rainer Maria Rilke.

The bare room.

The sturdy desk.

The overbearing chair.

And then there’s the look… away… reaching… not to notice the scene but more as a gesture to placate the task in which the mind is now dutifully attending—beauty builds in the pause before the creative act!

Related post: The Man Watching
Image credit
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Splash Media U And Pete Aspen | A Twitter Mystery

magnum pi

Digital investigator.

Mr Pete Aspen recently tweeted me the following question:

do you know if @splashmediau is a good place for a newbie to learn how to become a social media manger?

Now I always click into the profiles of those who have taken the time to tweet me (especially if I’m asked to give an opinion on something). I’ve heard of Splash Media in the past and thought Mr Aspen had tracked me down due to my very previous role as a social media manager.

After scrolling through every one of Mr Aspens 1,906 tweets (at the time of writing this afternoon), it became evident though that all he’s doing is asking the same question about social media training and certification programmes.

However, nearly 25% of all tweets (448) references @splashmediau.

Note the timestamps on the right hand side of the tweets below:

peteaspen automated

Nothing wrong in using timed tweets as to not overload your followers or even strategically ensure it’s when most of them are online, but something is not right here.

As an experiment I engaged Mr Aspen with a reply to try and gain a response:

peteaspen reply

I heard nothing back (as of yet).

There are two conclusions to be made, either:

  • Mr Aspen is using Twitter as a micro-advisory or research platform, tweeting on only one topic / question in an attempt to gain insights for what could be a myriad of reasons; or
  • Mr Aspen is a poor automated attempt by @splashmediau to highlight their services

If it is the former then surely @splashmediau (who would be seeing his tweets they are mentioned in) should be all over Mr Aspen to either demonstrate their services (as he’s an obvious customer) or kindly asking him to refrain from referencing them constantly because he’s certainly not helping their reputation.

If it is the latter… well, you make up your mind. Maybe there’s a third reason. What do you think is happening here my little Magnums?

By the way, Mr Aspen and @splashmediau, the floor is yours, feel free to comment below as well.

Image credit to magnum-mania

UPDATE (a few hours later): take a look at the first (right at the botom) and seventh followers of our friend Mr Aspen:
peteaspen followers

UPDATE (10.11.12): As you can from the comment and this tweet below, there has been a response:

pete aspen response

What do you guys think now?

Related post: BlackBox SocialMedia | Automated Communication
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Ulearn12 | The Rise Of The Tweetmailers

ulearn12 twitter report infographic

Infographic time (large (877kb) PDF version).

Just like Januarys Learning@School and last years Ulearn11, above is another attempt to graphically represent the data gained for Ulearn12 from Tweetreach reports and this RSS Twitter Search to Google Spreadsheet IFTTT recipe.

The figures speak for themselves and also illustrate how, at least in these events, NZ is gaining parity with the other conferences I’ve been involved with in the UK / North America, in adopting Twitter as a rich back-channel-compliment to the events activities (still a way to go to it being integrated fully which the above will no doubt accelerate).

Wonderful things to note are:

  • the amount of tweets which now include @ replies or mentions of other folks—a rise in literacy of how to craft a good tweet and the etiquette around referencing people
  • those tweets which feature hyperlinks—users sharing content or highlighting other relative items of interest on the web, quickly finding what the speaker was talking about (whether it be a new term or a new app), then adding that to the tweet. Delightful.
  • and what about those impressions…

Fantastic work.

Even though the venue had a few issues with the net connection on the first and second day this big increase in the numbers serves as a reminder how technology is in fact augmenting communication. Making it more immediate. More dynamic. More ‘sticky’.

This is the future of conferences / events: a multi-media-layered approach to the experience. Allowing those to share wider through their networks. Consideration given to content which is findable. Quotable. Emotive. Of value. Actionable. Stuff the conference organisers and delegates can ‘talk’ about before, during and after (not just during AND not just on Twitter (this is a metonym)).

What a way to end up my time with CORE Education.

Were you at Ulearn12? Did you tweet? What did you get out of the virtual and real combining? Let rip in the comments below.

Big thanks to Martin for assisting in crunching several spreadsheets together. For anyone using the IFTTT recipe BEWARE, it does not work fast enough to capture all the tweets at something like a conference.
Also featured on the Ulearn blog.
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