Courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele, a photo of the “Sure / Safe / Easy” humane poultry killer. Its usage is depicted on the box:
I’m reminded of the “Head Crusher” character from The Kids in the Hall:
(P.S.: Someone please tell me they got the joke in the title of this entry…)
If you look at the Tucows Jobs page for Toronto, you’ll notice that we have a number of job openings. If you’re a blogger, you might take note of the one titled Marketing Manager, Communications, which has the description “Establish Tucows as a thought leader in the Internet services industry/community”.
It seems pretty plain until you follow the link to the full job description for that position. The first items in the “Key Responsibilities” list is Chief Blogger.
You might ask “Well, isn’t that what Joey is?”. I’ve been told that even some people within the company asked that exact question. The answer is “no”. I just happen to be the company’s highest-profile blogger. My job as Tech Evangelist certainly includes blogging, but it’s blogging primarily in the service of making sure that developers and techies out there know what services Tucows offers and how to best make use of them, and to act as a goodwill ambassador to the tech community. I sometimes do some non-technical blogging and podcasting on the company’s behalf, but that’s because I’ve got the blogging rep and the podcasting know-how.
The Tech Evangelist job keeps me busy as it is — much of what I write has to be backed up by actual working examples, which means that I’m not only writing, but also setting up services either manually or by writing code. The Chief Blogger — whomever he or she may be — will have to blog about the company from a “higher altitude” and write to a larger audience. He or she will have to address more than just the techies, but our customers, partners, investors, press and the public at large. That’s a much wider scope than mine.
This is an unusual position where blogging is going to be more than just a “nice-to-have”; it’s practically a requirement. If you’re looking to fill this position, you really should be an experienced blogger; in fact, you need to provide the URL of your blog with your cover letter. In the interview, you’ll be expected be able to demonstrate an understanding of the blogosphere and what works and doesn’t work in it.
In addition to the blogging, the other responsibilities are:
Whoever gets this job will report directly to Ken Schafer, the VP of Marketing (and my boss). We’re not big on micromanagement here; you’ll be given wide latitude to determine how you want to go about your job as long as you meet the goals. This is not a job for people who are content to take orders and then meet the minimum requirement; it’s for someone who given a set of goals will take the initiative and formulate their own action plan.
If you’d like to know more about the responsibilities and requirements for the position, go see the full job description.
If this job sounds interesting to you, email your resume and cover letter to:
and refer to
[Exe-2006-08-11-257] Marketing Manager, Communications
in the subject line.
If you’ve got any questions about this job, feel free to ask in the comments or email me.
…otherwise, I’d have remembered that Tucows’ CEO Elliot Noss was doing a presentation today at the Red Chip Small-Cap Investor Conference, which takes place in New York City today and tomorrow. I did manage to catch the latter two-thirds of his presentaion (which was simulcast on the ‘net), in which he explained Tucows’ business and customer base as well as the challenges and opportunities in our industry.
For those of you with a little investing money burning a hole in their pockets, you might find this slide of interest:
Elliot’s a good presenter, and I’ve made a note to myself I should wrangle him to do a screencast of this presentation for posting in my work blog, Tucows Farm.
Found this photo this morning under the title You might need to be a level six cleric to resurrect a ford focus.jpg. I added a caption to it and posted it below:
For those of you who have Blogware-based blogs and are looking to make a little extra money with Google’s AdSense, I’ve written the first two articles in a series titled Blogging for Dollars.
You can find the articles at:
Former Boss Ross is riding for a good cause:
Last year, I wrote a blog post that looked an awful lot like this one.
The result?
With your collective help, we raised over $8500 for a great charity (www.tourforkids.com) that has the sole mission of brightening the lives of children with cancer.
Of course, I’m asking again this year, but this time, I need more help to put me over the top and beat the $10,000 goal that I’ve set for us.
In less than 24 hours, I will be undertaking a cycling journey of over 800km (roughly 500 miles) in support of the Cancer Camps for Children charity (http://www.tourforkids.com). This charity raises funds for an extraordinary organization that helps children with cancer, and their families, build confidence, courage and friendships by making it possible for them to attend summer camp.
How many kids can you afford to help send to camp this year?
If you’d like to make a donation, you can:
Tour for Kids
c/o Ross Rader
96 Mowat
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M6K 3M1
Tour For Kids
5230 Dundas St.
P.O. Box 40528
Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada
M9B 6K8
For more details, see Ross’ blog entry.
Sad Bear 1 by nedroid. Click to see the original.
Over at the site A Pointless Waste of Time, there’s a great essay by David Wong titled 7 Reasons Why the 21st Century is Making Us Miserable. Go read it, because I’ll talk about it later.
Sad Bear 2 by nedroid. Click to see the original.
For those of you who want a quick roundup of those seven reasons, here they are:
Sad Bear 3 by nedroid. Click to see the original.
Go read the essay (’cause it’s a worthwhile read and I’ll talk about it later), and feel free to discuss in the comments.