Nathanael Boehm: Web interface and interaction designer and developer in Canberra, Australia

Posted by Nathanael (admin) on May 9th, 2008 in general

After talking to Stephen Collins last week about recruitment and recruitment companies I’ve come to the same opinion that resumes are dead. I poked around with Resolio last year but that project seems to have been abandoned - the Resolio blog hasn’t been updated in a year. I had a recruitment company call me a few weeks back asking for an updating resume for their system.

No.

From now on, my profile on LinkedIn is going to be my primary resume and CV, list of experience, previous roles and references/recommendations. If you want to know what I’m doing now, what I’ve done and what I might be interested then you can go there. That is always up to date … rather than having multiple out-of-date versions of resumes floating around in half a dozen recruiter’s databases.

Additionally, you can verify my experience and standing in the web community via my blog, mentions in other people’s blogs and articles, media, cross-references, forum posts and social networks and contacts. Much more value there than a lifeless 3-page resume that’s obsolete within a month.

Sorry if you feel I’m forcing you to use a system that you haven’t adopted yet - and if you as a recruiter can’t make that change then there are other companies that I know of who have contacted me after having viewed my LinkedIn profile and other web presences who will happily take over from you and leave you behind in the dark ages.

I’m not saying I’ll never write or prepare a resume ever again - I’m sure there are going to be cases where I will have to go through an entire recruitment process for a role, which involves submitted a job application including response to selection criteria and a CV … I hope I don’t have to do that ever again, but I won’t rule it out.

Tags: cv, experience, HR, linkedin, recruitment, resume, skills, socialnetworks

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Posted by Nathanael (admin) on May 7th, 2008 in general

Facebook, MySpace and YouTube here at work are all blocked by the corporate firewall and were before I got here so it’s too late to bother questioning why that decision … plus I’m not so fussed as none of those are sites I particularly use and certainly not for any social networking that is of professional interest or work-related - I have Twitter, LinkedIn and others for that. But I know that some people and corporations have made great use of Facebook as a workplace collaboration tools such as Westpac, mentioned in Sue Bushnell’s article Enterprise 2.0 - What is it good for? published on CIO.com.au.

However after reading that article and thinking about why IT departments block access to these sites I thought of a validity test for these decisions to determine whether the IT department is over-stepping its boundaries into HR and corporate communications or otherwise infringing on personal rights that really aren’t within its jurisdiction or mandate.

I have an Asus Eee PC and a Vodafone 3G/HSDPA USB modem that I take everywhere, including to work - which permits me to access any site including Facebook, Twitter etc as well as do what I want such as write blog posts from work like I’m doing right now.

So the rule to test whether an IT department’s decision to block access to websites and web services is valid and appropriate on the grounds of the areas of responsibility of the IT department - such as security - goes like this:

Any ruling made by a corporate or government IT department should apply only to that physical network and not be at all relevant to activities off the corporate or government network.

In addition, any ruling should be genuine, supportable by evidence.

This means if a corporate or government IT department want to block Facebook on basis of “security” then there must be a genuine, identifiable security risk. Organisations have performed security assessments of Facebook and found it is not necessary to block the entire site but only specific applications in Facebook in order to minimise the risk (see aforementioned article for case studies).

This also means if an IT department blocks access to social networking sites on the grounds of “it’s a waste of time” - well that seems to apply to any access to such sites during work time regardless of whether you access it through the workplace network or on your own laptop and wireless connection that you bring into work. Invoke the decision validity test and you realise that the IT department is stepping into areas of work productivity that its people are neither experienced in or mandated to make policy on. That is a HR issue.

And if HR were to make that ruling it may not necessarily result in an outcome that requires complete blanket blocking of access to these sites - and it would be a business decision not a technology one.

Tags: accesscontrol, firewall, informationtechnology, socialnetworking

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Posted by Nathanael (admin) on May 7th, 2008 in general

Just discovered this term “Shadow IT” in an article Enterprise 2.0 - What is it good for? by Sue Bushnell that Stephen Collins pointed me to this morning (he’s also quoted in the opening paragraphs). I wanted to share this quote by Stowe Boyd from the same article; made me laugh:

I was at a big energy conglomerate a few years ago to talk to the CIO. I started my presentation. When the first slide - which was about instant messaging - went up, he said: “That’s all very interesting but we don’t allow instant messaging here.”

I went in the hall, and I got the AV guy who had set up the projector to come in, and asked him: “So how many people in the building use IM?” He said: “Oh, 50 to 60 percent.”

Oops - someone is out of the loop!

Tags: enterprise2.0, im, socialcomputing

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Posted by Nathanael (admin) on May 5th, 2008 in general

We have this running joke at work about “watering” friendships - effectively the activity of maintaining a friendship with a person by frequent contact, regardless of how meaningful, frivolous, brief or length those conversations are.

Read a few posts about Twitter today - one by Stephen, one by Mark - and got me thinking about how I use Twitter. When I explain to people what Twitter is I usually put a “professional network” spin on it … and truly to me the professional aspect of it is more valuable to me and my work than the social side.

But the majority of my tweets would not fall into the “professional” category. Most of my tweets are not questions about how to implement a certain function in JavaScript, or the contact details for a person, organising meetings etc. Most of my tweets are merely social and sometimes nonsensical. Such as the Ceiling Cat discussions the other evening.

However - would I have as many followers as I have, and would people be as responsive to my enquiries … if I only ever tweeted professional and work-related questions? Or at most, assisted other people only with matters strictly professional in nature?

I’m pretty sure the answer is no.

Your network necessitates that element of social banter - without it your communication is sparse and dry … and uninteresting. Especially when some of my contacts I’ve only ever known through Twitter, without offline interaction such as at Web Directions conferences, WSG, CTUB, the office and so on.

Do you agree? Can it then be said that if Twitter were to be allowed or rather introduced into a workplace for professional networking purposes that non-work related communication is not entirely a waste of time as people are sometimes quick to label it? Unless of course it’s a closed Twitter loop for internal team use only - in that case it would be unnecessary to use it for socialising.

Tags: communication, mpesce, professional, socialnetworks, trib, twitter

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Posted by Nathanael (admin) on May 5th, 2008 in general

Arrived this afternoon:

Designed by local Canberra freelance designer Ben Cochrane (let me know if you want his contact details for design work) and printed by Hero Print.

I found Ben through a bunch of business cards that UC grad students design and print and the university then sends around to local businesses - and because I was a business last year I received a stack of cards … which I pulled out a couple of weeks ago, liked Ben’s card, asked if he could do some work - and 6 days later I had the concepts and then a day after that the final artwork which I uploaded and paid for online through Hero Print last Wednesday and the cards arrived today. I highly recommend both Ben for his quality work, service and efficiency/speed as well as Hero Print which I’ve used several times before … they’re very competent at what they do; I’ve never had any problems with them - they just make it happen and get their orders shipped very quickly. Printing of 250 double-sided laminated full colour cards cost me $91 and the cost of the design work by Ben was very reasonable.

I love the coffee stain - I know I went against the majority with the beige/coffee colour instead of the black background, but the coffee stain is so cool! You can’t really see it on the black concepts.

Tags: bencochrane, businesscards, cards, contact, design, graphicdesign, heroprint, information, interests, printing, professional

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