Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms

Shield Bearer Counseling Centers

I'm pleased to announce that I am joining Shield Bearer Counseling Centers as a volunteer member of the Board of Directors.  This is a great way for me to give back to the community in a way that I can use my skills to help others  (don't worry I'm not one of the counselers).

"Shield Bearer Counseling Centers exists to assist people who are struggling with individual, marital and family problems. Shield Bearer offers highly trained and educated counselors who can provide the kind of confidentiality and specialized treatment plan that can help get people started in the right direction."

Shield Bearer offers counseling by therapists licensed in the state of Texas but more importantly they are people that care about helping other people.  As a 501c3 nonprofit charitable organization they turn no one away; services are offered on a sliding scale based on ability to pay.  Shield Bearer currently sees people who struggle with:

• Sexual Abuse
• Depression
• Marital infidelity
• Anxiety
• Adolescent issues
• Parenting challenges
• Trauma
• Anger Management

In addition, Shield Bearer provides several community and school based programs.  This past Spring, over 650 high school students completed the Date Rape and Dating Violence Prevention Programs.  Schools of Poverty receive the Strong Fathers Strong Families increasing student academic performance, school safety and parent involvement.  Conflict resolution and community building are also available to businesses, teams and community organizations. 

Shield-Bearer is an approved referral source for Cy-Fair Independent School District, the third largest ISD in the state of Texas. Shield Bearer is an approved training site for graduate counseling students including Master’s level students from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. 

If you are in the Houston area and know someone needing any of these excellent services, please contact Shield Bearer.

Shield Bearer Counseling Center (www.fightingforhearts.org)
12345 Jones Road, Suite 285
Houston, Texas, U.S.A. 77070
281-894-7222 (SBCC)

Going To "The Show" at Forbes.com

When baseball players move up from the minor leagues to the majors they refer to it as "going to the Bigs" or "going to The Show".  It's pretty exciting stuff.  And now in blogging terms I know the feeling.  I've been asked to be a regular contributor on technology issues to Forbes.com.  Thisis the online extension of Forbes business magazine, a leading business journal and is as they say the "HOME PAGE FOR THE WORLD'S BUSINESS LEADERS".  Right now it looks like I'll be contributing posts every other week although this may change. My first one is scheduled for Monday, June 2nd.  With over 20 million (yes, I said million) unique visit per month to their site this is fantastic exposure.  If just a tiny fraction of this read my posts it should make for some lively and interesting discussion.  I'm really excited about this opportunity.

The posts I write for Forbes. com will also be posted on this site.  As always, I encourage you to participate in the discussion either at Beyond Blinking Lights & Acronyms or at Forbes. com.  I'll include a statement at the end of the posts along with the Forbes.com logo on the posts that appear in both locations.

Interviewed On Dice.com About Business Analysts Raising Their Profile

Back in April, Sonia Lelii from Dice.com, a recruiting and career development website for technology and engineering professionals, interviewed me as part of her story, Business Analysts Raise Their Profile in their Technology Today section.  Lelii also interviewed recruiter Christa Baker for her perspective.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten about this until Monday's post on hiring business analysts reminded me.

The article talks in detail about the need for people who can communicate between IT and business groups and what types of background and  skills they need.  Take a look, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• Hiring the Right / Wrong IT People to Achieve Alignment
• Jonathon Babcock's post Business Analyst Job Description
• Let's Get Down to Business
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• Or the posts in the Business Analysts / Analysis category

Photos on Flickr

I've been using photos from Flickr with my postings for some time now.  A lot of people have been nice enough to post their photos there and have allowed me to use them through Creative Commons licensing.  So I thought it would be appropriate to start posting some of my photos to share with others.  Take a look if you're interested.

Oops

I'd like to thank Daintree Peters for his comment in my last post and for pointing out that my blog did not appear properly in the Firefox browser.  Apparently the typo in my coding did not affect Internet Explorer but did affect Firefox. I try to make your reading experience enjoyable and I'm sure it wasn't for those that use Firefox.  I have corrected this error.  My apologies for making things inconvenient.

Again thank you Daintree for pointing this out and giving me the opportunity to correct it.

Mike

"oops..funny socks i have!" photo by PrASanGaM

Clean Out Your Inbox Week

In early December I wrote "Getting Control Of Your Email - Break The Addiction" and I mentioned Marsha Egan's list of tell-tale signs to see if you are addicted to email and her book, "12 Steps to Curing Your Email E-Ddiction".  Egan's company is focused on working with individuals and companies to make the most of email and to regain lost productivity.

As part of this, Egan has proclaimed January 28 - February 1 as Clean Out Your Inbox Week.  As she states in her press release announcing this:

Every January, we set personal goals and attempt to make a fresh start and begin the New Year with our best foot forward in both our personal and professional lives. In the spirit of this fresh start, email productivity expert Marsha Egan is challenging businesses everywhere to take control of their email overwhelm by participating in “Clean Out Your Inbox Week.” 

Whether you use Egan's kit (commercial product) or just try to do it yourself the idea of cleaning out your inbox certainly sounds like a good way to start the year.

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• Break the BlackBerry and Laptop Addiction
• Making Your Email More Effective; A Lesson From Lincoln
• 99 Email Security, Netiquette and Productivity Tips
• Or the posts in the "PCs & Email" category

"Inbox" photo by Mike Schaffner (looks like I've got some cleanup work to do)

Thanksgiving 2.0

Today is Thanksgiving day here in the U.S.  It is a day we stuff ourselves with turkey, spend time with friends and family, watch football and fall asleep on the couch.  It is most importantly a day we take pause to think about how fortunate we are and to give thanks for what we have received.

So I'd like to take this opportunity to say thanks to all of the readers and commenters of my blog.  I truly appreciate your support, friendship and especially your participation.

Happy Thanksgiving!

"Thanksgiving 2.0" by mringlein

Blog Birthday: Has It Really Been A Year?

Wow! Has it really been a year?  Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms is having its first birthday.  When I first started this, I had a list of about 15 topics to get me going and was hoping I'd be able to come up with enough new ones to keep the blog going.  Fortunately I'm now at 170 so I'm hopeful I'll be able to make a go of it.

I originally started this as a way to "brand" myself during a job search.  However, it has grown to more than just a branding effort.  So much so that I've kept it going even after I landed a new job.  Looking at what's happened this past year:

• 13,000 site visits
• visitors from 6 of the 7 continents (I wasn't watching too closely, who knows maybe I actually got Antarctica)
• 1/3 of my visitors are from outside of the United States from over 75 countries
• 130  - 150 subscribers by RSS and email
• I broke into the Technorati top 100,000 ranking (although I've since slipped some) but out of 70+ million blogs tracked thats pretty good
• recognized as one of the top IT/CIO blogs in Smart Enterprise magazine
• recognized as an SOB by Liz Strauss
• recognized as a "You Get It" winner by Jason Alba
• developed a more robust network that has led to requests for me to do book reviews and a recent interview in the Wall Street Journal

Compared to the big blogs this is nothing.  Some of them can get as many visitors in a day as I get in a year.  Although I may not be the largest and most popular blog around it has far exceeded my wildest expectations.  I couldn't be happier.  It's been a wild and fun ride.  I've learned a lot, met some great people and we've had some pretty good conversations.  I'd rather have that than the big rankings.  I look forward to the next year.

Thanks to Kent for convincing me to start this blog and to Jason and Dan for convincing me that Kent was right.  And most of all thanks to my readers for making it worthwhile.

While I look to the 2nd year I'd love to get some feedback.  What would you like to hear more of?  less of?  Can we talk?

Taking A Break

I'll be gone for a few days so there only be one new posts this week (on Thursday). 

"Ah. . .Vacation" photo by Jason Rowland

How Am I Doing?

Ed Koch the mayor of New York City from 1979 to 1989 is renowned for walking around NYC and cheerfully asking everyone "How Am I Doing?" Actually, it was closer to "How'm I doin'?" but it's hard to type with a New York accent. Koch was ahead of his time since what he was doing was a version of a Gemba Walk.  The whole point of his question was to engage his constituents to find out what was important to them and to see how he measured up against their needs and expectations. What an excellent idea! Sometimes all you have to do to find out what people are thinking is ask.  It really can be that simple.

This is a great tool to use at work with our key stakeholders, customers and employees. This can also work at home although I'd advise against referring to your family members as key stakeholders or customers and don't even think of using 'employees'.  You may not like what you hear but at least once you know about an issue you can address it.  After all, you can't address a concern that you don't know about.  I think it can also apply to blogging.  And so dear readers I ask,

"How am I doing?"

Please leave a comment with your name or anonymously, good or bad. Tell me what you like or dislike, what you'd like to see more in my blog or less of. Let me know what's on your mind.  I can't promise that I'll be able to do anything in response but I can promise I'll listen.

Join The Conversation - I've Added A Comments RSS Feed

Comments are the best part of writing these articles.  It is a conversation, an exchange of ideas, a different perspective.  It's great fun and I always learn something from them.  It's not unusual that the comments are more thought provoking than the original posting.  By way of example, one of the posts for this upcoming week is based upon a comment from one of my readers.  They added some new insights, something I had never thought of before and I truly appreciate their sharing their wisdom.  I hope all of you will continue to comment as we continue on our journey.

To make it easier to follow the conversation as new comments are added I added 2 ways to automatically receive new comments.

• The first method is an RSS feed.  It will provide a separate feed of the comments to your reader similar to the postings feed.  This feed is separate from the postings feed and you need to subscribe separately.
• The second method is an email subscription.  New comments will be emailed once per day (if there any comments that day) between 3PM and 5PM  US Central time.  This is also a separate subscription from the posting email subscription.

The subscription links are in the left column just below the subscription links for the postings.  I hope that you find this new tool useful.

Houston Networking Get Together March 6, Y'All Come

Dan Sweet from FRACAT (Free Resume and Career Toolbox) is arranging a second networking meeting the evening of March 6th.  The last one was a great success.

I'll be making a very informal and hopefully very interactive presentation on what goes on "behind the curtain" when an employer uses Monster to search for resumes. 

I hope you'll stop by.  Check the FRACAT blog for details on time and place on March 6.

[Update 3/3/07 : Dan has the details on time and place posted on the FRACAT blog.]

Changes To My Site, A Little Weekend Remodeling

This weekend I'm implementing 3 changes to my site to hopefully improve its readability and usefulness to you.

The first change is with the category of posts.  In looking at the various categories I noticed that they were overly broad and therefore of limited help when searching for posts of particular interest.  Therefore, I've added new categories and refined others.  I'm now in the process of going back to all my old posts and updating their category classification as needed.

While making the category change I'm also implementing the second change.  Where appropriate I'm adding a list of related posts and/or a category suggestion at the end of each post.  Hopefully this will help guide you to other posts that you might be interested in.  An example of this is at the end of this post.

I'll be making these changes throughout the weekend starting with the most recent posts.  Hopefully, I'll make it through all of them but as weekend remodeling jobs have a tendency to do, it could be sometime next week before I'm through.  Please bear with me.

The third change I'm happy to say is complete.  This involved a cosmetic change in the way my responses to your comments appear to highlight that I value your comments and do respond to them.

If you have any other suggestions for improvements I'd love to hear them.  I'm always looking for ways to improve.

Here is that example of  how I'll be listing related posts.

If  this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• Looking Ahead and Happy New Year
• Or the posts in the "News and Announcements" category

Okay, Okay, I Get It.

I get it.  I really do.  Uh, at least Jason Alba thinks I do.  Personally, I think I've got a lot to learn yet.  Jason was kind enough to name me his February "You Get It" award winner.  This award is for "people who “get it” - that is, use technology (yes, heavy on the bloggers) to quantify their breadth, depth and passions." Take a look at list of past winners (located at the end of the left-hand column of JibberJobber) all of whom have excellent blogs.  Yikes! I've got a lot of catch-up to do.

Jason described why I won in his Monday post and followed this with an interview of me in today's post.  Jason, thank you for the kind words, the encouragement and the award.

While your at JibberJobber take a look at the free JibberJobber software.  It is a career management toolset that helps you to manage your campaign by pulling everything you need to manage the campaign; your contacts, your documents, your expenses, your schedule etc. all in one place.  Having tried to do it with multiple tools this simplifies the process thereby freeing you up to focus on the important items not the process management. 

If  this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• I'm An SOB And I Can Prove It!
• Or the posts in the "Branding and Marketing" category

A Great Time At The Woodlands

I had a great time today at the Fellowship of The Woodlands Job Support Ministry meeting.  Kelly Harrison and Bonnie Monych asked me to speak about online branding and blogging as part of the job search process.  There was a group of about 20 people and I enjoyed it immensely.  Thank you Kelly and Bonnie.  I would also like to thank all of the people that came out.  Thank you for your interest and participation.

While there I learned that Bonnie, a.k.a.  "Doctor Bonnie" will be on Employment Radio with Rick Gillis (...and Pam Kelly, Too!) on February 18th.  It should be a fantastic show.  Both are great people and extremely knowledgeable about the employment process.  Tune in if you possibly can.  I believe the details are:

“Everything Employment-On The Radio!”
Sundays 4-6PM (Central US Time) on the Biz Radio Network
1320 AM Houston & 1360 AM Dallas/Fort Worth

You can check  on Rick's site next week to verify the details.  If you aren't fortunate to live in Texas you can also listen live on the web or listen to a podcast which Rick posts shortly after the broadcast.

If  this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• Or the posts in the "Branding and Marketing" category

Meet Me At The Woodlands

The good folks at the Fellowship of The Woodlands Job Support Ministry have asked me to come talk to them about online branding and your job search.  If your in the area and interested in this please stop by.  I'd love to meet you and I'm sure that Kelly Harrison who runs the Job Support Ministry along with "Doctor" Bonnie Monych would love to meet you.

Here are the details:

When: Saturday, February 10, 2007
Time: 4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Where: Fellowship of The Woodlands, Main Building, visit the East / Left Side of the Building.
Fellowship of The Woodlands
One Fellowship Drive
The Woodlands, Texas 77384
Directions

I hope to see you there.

I'm An SOB And I Can Prove It!

A lot of people have called me an SOB before but Liz Strauss is  the first one to do so while providing supporting documentation!  Liz has named me an official SOB - Successful and Outstanding Blogger that is.

So exactly what IS a Successful and Outstanding Blogger?  Every week Liz extends this honor to bloggers for ". . . extending the conversation into the blogosphere–making the community larger, the dialogue bigger, all of us smarter, better and our businesses stronger. "   Coming from someone who has done so much to improve the quality of the conversation in the blogosphere this is quite an honor.

Check out Liz's site for the entire SOB Hall of Fame which includes some simply excellent blogs.  There are 3 pages:  A through H (that's where I am), I through Q, and R through Z.  Plus there is a A to Z directory.

Liz, thank you so much for the honor.

Looking Ahead and Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

As we start this New Year I wish you health, happiness and joy in all that you do.  Take time to look back and appreciate what you've accomplished and look ahead with eager anticipation to what the future may hold for you.

As New Year's Day is a time of fresh beginnings I thought I'd start out the year by re-formatting the look of my blog.  Hopefully this style will make it easier to read and navigate. 

I'd also like to take this opportunity to again extend an invitation to you to add your comments or suggestions. It is meant to be an interactive discussion so I'd love to hear from you.

The IT Executive's Evolution Means Business

Just a quick reminder - Tom Oser's panel discussion that I had earlier mentioned is coming up on December 7th at the New York Institute of Technology.  If you are in the area you might want to drop in.  It should be interesting.  Click on the "continue" link to see the full details.