Category: Computer Geekiness

JWU Presentation

Published on by Andy Affleck1 Comment

Last week, I gave a one hour (or so) presentation on Project Management at Johnson and Wales University. I was invited to speak by Bridge Technical Solutions. I spoke about my own career trajectory and how I ended up in Project Management and what being a PM is like out in the real world. I called the talk “Stories from the Trenches” and focused on three large projects I had worked on among the many in my career and what lessons can be learned from them. I also spoke about my strong belief that it is the responsibility of a PM to always be honest with their clients and to have a strong core of integrity in everything he or she does. I was very pleased when one of the students attending thanked me specifically for that sentiment.

Bridge’s blog about my talk can be found here: BRIDGE Coordinates Speaker at Local University to Give Students a Taste of Real World Experience « Bridge Technical Solutions’ Blog

I am debating putting the deck online. I am just not sure that the bullets are as useful or as compelling as the actual talking itself.

Blogging & Social Networking… Too Many Tools!

Published on by Andy Affleck

I am having social network fatigue. First, there are the long-form posting sites — my main blog, Posterous and Tumblr (though the latter may be argued as a short-form site too). Then there’s the quick snippet land of Facebook and Twitter. Then there’s the GPS-aware side of things like Foursquare, Loopt, MyTown, and Yelp! (I have since given up on Gowalla and Brightkite as not being particularly interesting to me).

The GPS group are getting a long form post from me soon enough as I have been evaluating them with an eye towards a blog post for some time now. At least that’s how I justify to my wife my continued use of them…

What I’m trying to figure out now is how I should talk to the world without having to worry about where I am writing. I am not a power blogger. I don’t really feel the need to blast 20 posts a day out there and I am not trying to set myself up as an expert in any particular field to make my site a destination for those in that field and resume fodder. I could just do things in my WordPress site and have my Posterous and Tumblr sites auto-carry the posts or at least links back to them and have links auto-posted to Twitter and Facebook. But I also like the ultra-simplicity offered by Tumblr and Posterous. It is just easier to pull a post together.

And then there’s the fact that I like posting pictures from my iPhone (not so much text — while I don’t hate the iPhone keyboard, I am just not interested in trying to type a lot on it) and I feel that it is much easier to go directly to Facebook or Tumblr than it is my WP site (yes, I have the app, I still find it a longer process than these other methods).

Maybe my problem is that I can’t commit to just one program and stick to that. I like so much of each of them that I want the freedom to use all of them whenever I feel like it.

I wonder what the rest of the world does. Where do you post and where do you ignore? How important is it to you to get your stuff out to as many sites as possible versus using just one and trusting that your audience (friends, family, whoever) can and will find it?