The Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland held ‘mock interviews’ and I had the honor of being an interviewer. The students came eager to learn from this role-playing exercise. The ‘interviewers’ are seasoned individuals – most are Smith School Alumni – and well experienced in hiring superior candidates. My ‘interviews’ found theRead… Read more »
When speaking with a current job-seeker, she said “while I was working, the working world changed!” This seasoned individual is finding her specific experience is not of interest to employers in today’s job market. With a dozen years in responsible internal analyst roles, what arcane experience and skills are being ignored by potential employers? SheRead… Read more »
Initially, open source was an approach to developing software among coders, which was like Spanky, Darla, and the Our Gang kids “puttin’ on a show.” Everyone contributed what they had (sharing resources) and did what they knew (collaborate) – and the show was always a success. The open source approach is a philosophy, a culture,Read… Read more »
When in 6th grade, on the walk home with friends, we would stop at a local store and buy a soda (for 5¢) – I’d often think how nice it would be to have an ice cold bottle of water instead of the sweet soda. With the popularity of bottled water today, was mine anRead… Read more »
Makers is a future business fantasy by Cory Doctorow with the view of a society where traditional business structure has broken down and the economy is in the tank. Sound familiar – like what you read in today’s newspaper? Instead of relying on organizations to provide jobs, plan what to do and produce, and signRead… Read more »
We have an image of leaders – whether it is John Wayne leading a charge in combat, or JFK declaring to the world the USA will put a man on the moon by the end of that decade, or Steve Jobs radically changing established market segments like music, telecom, and computers with new technology. Traditionally,Read… Read more »
The last chapter of the book on our life has not been written yet. We may feel that it won’t be turning out as we had hoped or expected. While we were working – the world changed! The Internet has evolved and many roles which were staffed before are on-line now; Processes which had requiredRead… Read more »
Communication is an imprecise process – no matter how much effort and innovation we may put into choice of words, method of delivery, and focus on key points. Try as we will, the full transfer of knowledge from our mind to the listener happens only in the Vulcan Mind Meld. Typically a just a portionRead… Read more »
When we were all physically located in the same building collaboration was a collection of meetings to reach the stated goal. First to flesh out the details of the project – go from concept to specific, consensus from contributors, logistics & interim deadlines from participants, and collective review of it all. Meet and work togetherRead… Read more »
Years ago I was ‘invited’ to a weekly staff meeting at 8:00 AM Monday mornings. Eight people in a room for an hour – the equivalent of a person-day of time invested. Don’t get me wrong – the meeting had useful, even important content and we all heard it together (the donuts were fresh too).Read… Read more »