From the category archives:

Work

“Better Living Through Blogging”: The Slide Deck

May 11, 2009

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.
Here’s the presentation I did at WordCamp Toronto 2009 this weekend, Better Living Through Blogging, in which I talk about how taking up blogging has paid off in all sorts of ways, from relationships to career to even saving my bacon.

Some Notes About the Deck
You’ve probably suffered through presentations [...]

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Career-Limiting Move

May 3, 2009

When using your company-assigned laptop to make presentations, remember to disable your pornographically-themed screensaver (and yes, the video below is not safe for work):

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A Wall Street Trader Tells All

April 30, 2009

The Independent has a great article by former Wall Streeter Philipp Meyer titled American Excess: A Wall Street Trader Tells All. I’ve included some snippets from the article below, but you really should read the whole thing.

I didn’t fit the typical profile of a trader. I was an English major working on a novel [...]

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Why the Office Oddball is Good for Business

April 22, 2009

Photo by David Crow. Click to see the source.
A number of people who know me were concerned that I’d be a poor fit at Microsoft, but I’ve always used the “square peg in a round hole” thing as my “secret sauce”. The research cited in the Time magazine article Why the Office Oddball is [...]

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My Half-a-versary

April 20, 2009

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

That’s half-a-versary as in the celebration of something that took place half a year ago. It’s been half a year since I joined this organization:

…and I have to tell you, it’s been quite good.
The two things I value most about my job as Developer Evangelist for The [...]

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The Main Reason I’m Re-Learning How to Develop on Microsoft Tech…

March 26, 2009

…is that I’m hoping to master this:

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The Temptation to Loaf

March 26, 2009

This article originally appeared in Global Nerdy.
There’s a small TV set in my home office that I sometime turn on – usually to one of the cable news channels — as “background noise”, which I sometimes find helpful when I’m trying to get work done.
Today, I’m on the road in London, Ontario with Microsoft’s EnergizeIT [...]

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Toronto’s Challenges, if it Tries to Become More Seattle- or Silicon Valley-esque

June 5, 2008

[This article was also posted on Global Nerdy.]
Scenes from the Valley’s El Camino Real (left) and Seattle’s Pioneer Square (right).
Here’s some food for thought. Ahmed Hassan very recently wrote a comment in response to an article of mine, Ideas to Steal from Silicon Valley and Seattle, and it’s worth promoting to its own article, so [...]

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“The Adventures of Johnny Bunko” — A Manga Career Guide

May 9, 2008

[This was also posted to Global Nerdy.]
Local tech evangelist David Crow points to The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need. Unlike What Color is Your Parachute? or Who Moved My Cheese?, Johnny Bunko is in manga form — that’s right, it’s a Japanese-style comic book.
An unusual book needs an [...]

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Are You Sure You Want to be in San Francisco?

April 22, 2008

Over at Signal vs. Noise, 37signals’ blog, David Heinemeier Hansson asks Are you sure you want to be in San Francisco? Here`s an excerpt:

If your idea for a web business is more along the lines of the mundane “product * price = profit” (3P) variety, I think the culture of San Francisco and that famous [...]

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Why I Took the Job Title “Nerd Wrangler”

April 17, 2008

Nerrrrrrrrrrrrrds!
When I accepted the position of b5media’s technical project manager, Jeremy Wright said “come up with a less-formal sounding title”. I did a little Googling and figured that I could “own” the term “Nerd Wrangler”. It’s happened — I pretty much own the first page of results for the search term “nerd wrangler”, with and [...]

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Scenes from the Office

March 19, 2008

My first week with b5media was my best first week on the job ever. On my very first day, I boarded a plane and flew to Austin to attend the South by Southwest Interactive conference, one of the biggest events in our industry. For a week, I attended interesting sessions, met new coworkers and colleagues, [...]

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The Final Countdown, Again

March 5, 2008

Didn’t I just do this?
Once again, it’s my last day at the job, which means I’m cranking that classic of 80’s hair metal: The Final Countdown by Sweden’s gift to rock, Europe.
It’s become a bit of an end-of-job tradition for me that started back at OpenCola, the dot-com that Cory Doctorow co-founded and for [...]

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The New Job: Nerd Wrangler at b5media

March 3, 2008

I figured I’d start off the working week with a big announcement: I’ve landed a new gig. As of this Thursday, March 6th, I’m going to be working at b5media, a network of 320 blogs that gets a total of over 10 million unique visits every month.
Depending on whom you ask, my new job title [...]

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How to Work the Room

January 23, 2008

Over at FoundRead, Larry Chiang has some advice that you might find useful if you’re following Scoble’s advice for people who’ve just been laid off (particularly the parts about networking and attending business events). His piece is titled How to Work the Room.
Here’s a condensed version:

Be more of a host and less of a guest. [...]

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