Entries Tagged 'Life' ↓

If you’re active in social media, blogging, twittering, meeting and connecting with people across the world and across your workplace in new and exciting ways, you’re probably used to making your voice heard.  You’re probably getting used to the fact that real work gets done in these back channels.  But tomorrow in the US is about the front channels.

I’m not here to endorse a candidate.  I’m here to endorse the process of voting.  Regardless of how you feel about the presidential race, there are real issues being decided in hundreds of local elections across the country tomorrow.  Sometimes issues like these are decided by a handful of votes.  Staying home because you’re apathetic about the president, or because you know your vote won’t change your state’s “color” on the CNN map Tuesday night is a mistake.

Even if “your” candidate or cause loses tomorrow, you’ve taken a step to being more involved.  You’re not just watching from the sidelines, you’re participating.  There’s a reason we’re all active here online — and those reasons apply just as much in person as they do here with the ones and zeroes.

So come in to work an hour late, leave an hour early, whatever, and get to the polls.

Here’s an Internet culture test: how long after someone posts a comment about a particular TV show will someone else respond with “I don’t even own a TV“?  It happens more often than you’d think — on the Ars Technica openforum it happened often enough that it evolved into a meme/joke — someone would ask for advice on fixing their Toyota and someone would jokingly say “I don’t even own a car.”  How should I cut my hair?  “I don’t even have hair!”  And so on.

This is just one symptom of something you see all over the place.  Start a discussion about what version of Windows to buy, and you’ll get people telling you to install Linux (that link was the second google hit for “which version of windows to buy”).  They could well be right, but that’s not what you came to talk about, is it?
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As long as I’ve had access to the technology, I’ve been online and interacting with people from around the world.  Back in the late 80s, it was bulletin boards running FidoNet and WWIV.  As the technology changed, so did the communities, but it has always been about the people.  It’s no different now, and in fact it’s more obvious now than it ever has been, as your sites and tools naturally remind you that the nodes in your network are all individuals.  Whether it’s twitter followers, LinkedIn connections, or Facebook friends, you’re dealing with people nonstop.

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I remembered Blog Action Day too late to have a polished post ready at 8 AM today, but after reading Steve Todd’s post on the subject I felt I really needed to get something written before the day closed out.

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One of the more interesting moments in my transition from developer to manager was when, in a training class, an honest instructor said, “If you don’t want to see office politics, you shouldn’t become a manager.”  I always thought I wasn’t one for office politics, but I was beginning to get dragged into them as an individual contributor, so I realized it was a non-issue for me.

But I’m not here to talk about that kind of office politics.  I’m here to talk about politics in the office.  Well, politics, religion, and whether you prefer waffles to pancakes.  You know, the hard questions.  I recently saw a discussion sparked by an employee who felt “harassed” by having unpopular political views criticized by others at the workplace.
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Every person who meets me has an image of who I am.  And in every relationship, there are things I choose to open up and things I choose to keep closed.  You can call the controls I exert here “filters” or “lenses” but they are an explicit attempt by me to influence the person you see when you interact with me.  As these relationships transition into the digital realm, similar filtering is bound to take place.  I’ve written before about maintaining separate identities in different online circles, but that’s not the truth.

The truth is that your identity is distributed among those circles.  Your “self” is fragmented and strewn about your digital footprint.

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On Friday I was thrilled to find out that an old colleague of mine, Steve Todd, was honored as one of EMC’s Distinguished Engineers.  I worked with Steve when I was fresh out of college, building Navisphere out of twigs and rocks (well, it seems like it was that long ago).
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I wish I had a picture to accompany this post — me, sitting on a chair, in front of a green screen, with high tech A/V equipment all around me, and bright lights shining in my eyes.  Me, nervous, blabbing off topic.  How did I get into that mess?
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When I started this blog, with my real name and occupational information prominently displayed, I received quite a few concerned comments from friends, family, and colleagues. In general their issues boiled down to this: why expose yourself to this? Why put yourself out there, increasing the risk of someone using the information you have out there against you in the future?

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In my continuing effort to add to the cluttered world of sports analogies in business conversations, today’s post covers a rather sensitive topic to this Tom Brady fan.  You want your quarterback to get sacked once in a while.
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