Well, I can’t say that I’m sorry to have seen 2009 go. Personally and professionally, it was one hell of a rough year. On the other hand, it did bring with it some changes that — despite fighting pretty voraciously at first — have ultimately proven to be profoundly valuable. The biggest and most obvious being the beginning of my formal entrepreneurial journey.

The year also saw several other things of note in my life:

• Making a new home in Texas. This is one that I can’t say I ever predicted. Of all the places I ever envisioned myself living, Texas was never once on the list. But the reality is that both my husband and I love it here, which only surprises the people who have never been to Austin.
• My husband has found a professional passion of his own (to be formally announced soon), after spending years merely tolerating work as an evil necessity. This has been magnificent for me to watch, and it’s been a truly great experience for both of us.
• I have started to redefine what type of lifestyle I truly want, and am now setting about how to create a business that supports that. Major lifestyle factors (such as remaining childfree) are baked-in parts of my life already, but other things — like being location independent and spending at least six months per year traveling — are part of my long-term goal, but until recently have not been part of my active, focused plan for our immediate future.
• I have spent the past several months working on redefining my relationship with time. This is a major source of conflict between me and my husband (and always has been), and so as he works to develop a higher sensitivity to and awareness of time, I am doing my part by trying to relax a bit and not be such a time Nazi. Small things like not nagging him when we are running late (and just accepting it), not wearing my watch every day, and eliminating daily use of an alarm clock are all things that I am attempting to help change how uptight I’ve become about time over the past decade.
• I got to attend my first SXSW and met my favorite blogger in person.
• Acknowledging that the satisfaction I used to get out of being a project manager is gone, and that it’s time for a new career. And while I do not doubt that project management will continue to be a part of whatever the my next career is, it no longer fuels and satisfies me the way it used to, so it can’t be the end-all/be-all anymore. More importantly, whatever my new career is going to be, it’s something I haven’t necessarily figured out yet. I’m working with a few different entrepreneurs here in Austin on some different opportunities, some of which have some very interesting potential. And I am optimistic that at least one of them could crack open and provide me the opportunity I am looking for.
• I have a newfound optimism about the economy, the socio-tech landscape and my place in it. I love writing The Entrepreneur Evangelist for WorkingPoint, because it gives me the opportunity to talk about the things I really care about while helping to promote a product that is part of a larger macro-economic shift that I not only believe in, but that I also find really exciting.
• I have recognized that my personal entrepreneurial journey has several more steps to go through. My husband has been strongly focused on trying to make sure we work on our business, while I’ve been busy working in our business. Much as I recognize that a dollars-for-hours trade is still essentially a J-O-B, I have also come to realize that I’m not entirely to a point yet where I can emotionally or psychologically move past that. I am looking for opportunities to do that over time, but for right now, that model is what I know that I know how to do successfully, and it’s my security blanket in an entirely otherwise insecure world. I’m working on it, and I’ve come a long way over this past year, but I’ve got more work to do to make the next few steps that are in front of me.
• Out of sheer financial necessity, I have learned to cook with beans (which is something I never, ever used to do), figure out how to live and eat on an insanely small weekly grocery budget, get creative about comparison shopping and making money stretch farther than I’ve ever previously even tried to manage… and finally come to the conclusion that as much as I hate all of that, I’d rather do that than go back to being someone’s employee.
• I have discovered that blogging for someone else makes it nearly impossible for me to keep up with my blog the way that I want to. So, I will start sharing my Entrepreneur Evangelist posts here as well. However, I do request that if you would like to comment on them that you do so on the original on the WorkingPoint site.

So, while it is most certainly not the year I had envisioned, it’s been a truly transformative one.

Finally, in tribute to the new year, I have changed the name of my blog. While I had enjoyed The Pragmatic Contextualist, to me that had very strong project management connotations. My brief experiment with The Pragmatic Entrepreneur never quite seemed to fit. And so now I have stripped out everything else, and just adopted “The Pragmatist.” We’ll see if that one sticks.

Related posts:

1. Tis the Season to be Independent In Deck the Halls with Pink Slips I discuss the...
2. Grumble, Bumble, Facebook Trouble I was reading an article this weekend, on Entrepreneur.com, and...
3. The Entrepreneurial Evangelist I have recently started writing a blog series as part...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This week marks the one year anniversary of our departure from New York and our arrival in Texas, so I guess that makes it as good a time as any for a pre-dawn ramble.

23 things that make life in Austin particularly awesome

1. 312 days of sunshine per year. Coldest month of the year is January, with an “average” temp of 58 degrees. I swear. Totally awesome.
2. Friendliest, chattiest, most open and laid back people ever. E-V-E-R.
3. The entrepreneurial community.  Off the charts amazing.  Truly transformative opportunities and experiences for us — both individually and collectively.
4. The Alamo Drafthouse. Food and alcohol served to you during your movie. Nothing cooler.  If you doubt it, ask Leonard Nimoy.
5. Amy’s Ice Cream.  The first time we went, they had both Guinness and Chipotle flavors. Yes, of ice cream.  Damn, they were good.
6. Mexican food. And TexMex.  Everywhere.  All the time.  And they don’t skimp on the picante.
7. Breakfast tacos. They are all over the place. Coffee shops, Mexican restaurants, fast food. If you want to start a heated debate, publicly declare that your favorite place has “the best” ones in town, and watch the fur fly.
8. Stars. Thousands and thousands of them, all visible every night when we take Zeka for a walk.
9. South by Southwest. Two weeks of a mix of the most unusual combination of people to make one hell of a fun party and deductible business expense.
10. Keep Austin Weird. I swear, that’s the local motto. Alternate lifestyle, uber-liberal, tree-hugging, vegan, hippie, artist-types EVERYWHERE. Just like home.
11. The herd of goats in the field on the way to the grocery store.  I swear, there are goats. This blows Charles’ New Yorker mind every single time he sees them.
12. The Whole Foods HQ. We call the store The Mother Ship.  Not kidding. Walk around there at lunchtime eating samples and you don’t actually have to buy anything. You won’t be able to resist, though. There are something like 8 different ‘restaurant’ stations inside — not counting the drink-only ones.
13. BBQ.  And not just the BBQ itself, but even the meat they sell in the grocery store that is FOR BBQ.  BBQ is a Holy Institution here.
14. Dog-friendly in the extreme. Oh, so happy to be in a canine-friendly town. Dog parks, dog Meetups, etc.
15. Independent businesses — especially coffee shops and bookstores.  Move over Starbucks, this place is the home of the independent coffee shop. (And, unlike the mammoth from Seattle, the independent’s all have free wifi.)
16. Pervasive WiFi. City of Austin’s goal is to have a free public wifi net that covers the heart of the city within the next year.  It’s already largely there.
17. Festivals.  They have a Hot Sauce Festival.  They have a dog-centric festival called Woofstock.  They have ACL.  They have the Pecan Street Festival.  These people understand the value of outdoor shopping, combined with eating and entertainment.
18. Cupcakes.  I can’t explain it, but this town has an obsession with cupcakes. There are more cupcake bakeries here than anywhere I’ve ever seen.
19. Outdoor dining. Just about every restaurant has a patio, and thanks to an amazing climate, you can eat outside almost all year around.
20. Local businesswomen.  I don’t know what it is — if it’s the water, the economy or the easy access to lethal weaponry, but this place breeds some of the most incredible, creative, talented, successful and amazingly interesting businesswomen I’ve ever met. Amazing forces of nature, every single one of them.
21. South Congress Ave., affectionately known as SoCo.  Think of it as Telegraph Ave. or Haight Ashbury, but more affordable and cleaner. With the biggest cowboy boot store you’ve ever seen. And an enormous costume shop called “Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds.”
22. Business casual. Outside of the politicians or those in the immediate vicinity of the capital, this town has an allergy to business suits.
23. Austin is The Live Music Capital. Everywhere you go, there is a band.  Everywhere.  All kinds. Constant music. So cool.

6 things that make life in Austin better than life in New York or California

1. Cost of living.  Seriously. 2X the space we had in NY or than I had in my house in Petaluma, and 20% less rent.
2. No state or municipal income tax. It makes quite the staggering difference on a paycheck. I didn’t believe it until I saw it. HUGE difference.
3. An organized, collaborative entrepreneurial community specifically to support startups. Especially tech startups.
4. It’s a college town.  While UT gets all the attention, there are four other colleges here, too.  It makes for a fascinating influence on the culture.
5. In our building — right downstairs — we have a coffee shop/bar, nail salon, dry cleaner, dentist, Subway and an AWESOME Greek restaurant.
6. Go into any bar and ask how much a drink costs. If you’ve ever ordered a drink in Manhattan, the bartender’s answer will make your jaw drop.  Charles still hasn’t recovered from the check for his first beer.

7 things unique about life in Austin/Texas

1. UT football. Truly inexplicable. If you take soccer in Italy, add beer and a lot of sunshine, you might come close. Maybe.
2. The number of transplanted New Yorkers and Californians.  No kidding.  California license plates are most common after Texas. And every professional or networking event if full of people who came here from the Bay Area or New York.
3. Churches the size of shopping malls. As they say, “Everything is bigger in Texas.” They weren’t kidding.
4. Republicans in Austin.  Almost as rare as Republicans in Manhattan or San Francisco.  I’m literally shocked anytime I encounter one. They are like rattlesnakes or scorpions: you know this is Texas, and so they are inevitable, and yet it’s still always a surprise when you encounter one.
5. No one is a native. People come to Austin expecting to stay for a couple of years.  And then they fall in love with it and never leave. This is the MOST common story we hear from transplants.
6. I saw a sign on the back of a pickup one day that said, “Wild Hog Removal Service” (+ phone number). I swear, I have no comment to go with that. It still stuns me.
7. Even at nearly a million people, Austin is still a small town in many ways.  Once you get plugged into a few specific social or networking circles, everyone knows everyone else and you run into the same people all the time.

9 things about Austin that require some adjustment

1. No Trader Joe’s.  This is probably the only true daily hardship about life in Austin.  Damn, I miss Trader Joe’s.
2. No ocean.  Lake Travis is beautiful, and as much as I look forward to the day when we can live there, it’s not the ocean. (Then again, NY doesn’t have a real ocean, either. :-p)
3. Long-distances to friends and family.  Sappy, but true.
4. The “average” age of Austin residents is 27.  We are OLD by comparison.  This fact is painful some days.
5. 70+ days of 105 degree weather this summer.  Happily, that was abnormal and even people used to this climate found it excessively brutal.
6. Epic hail. March’s hail storm (completely) destroyed so many cars that we now always use our covered spot. Some cars looked like they’d been hit with a shotgun blast. Charles got pelted with hail stones the size of marbles trying to close the patio door when it started.
7. Thunder and lightening.  Personally, I love it.  Zeka, on the other hand, does not.  My biggest concern is the heart attack I fear she will eventually give herself over it if she doesn’t start getting used to it soon.
8. Cannot buy alcohol before noon on a Sunday. This is only really an issue because I do the week’s shopping on Sunday morning, and I always put wine in my cart and they always take it from me at the checkstand. You’d think I’d learn.  I keep trying, though, as if they are suddenly going to come to their sense and realize that is a stupid law.
9. Armadillos. No idea why, but they are quite popular… particularly given that they are ugly, nasty and actually have leprosy. Go figure.

Related posts:

1. A Pragmatic New Year Well, I can’t say that I’m sorry to have seen...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The second annual Interactive Austin Conference has wrapped up, and in true social media fashion, there is no shortage of online accounts of the day’s activities (with more to be coming over the next few days, no doubt).

Online already are keynote coverage posts by Ricci Neer, for each Dion Hinchcliffe, Sam Lawrence and whurley. (Additional coverage of the first and second breakout sessions can be found on Ricci’s blog as well.)

Even better, though, is the video coverage of keynotes, thanks to Video Innovations.

Dion Hinchcliffe – How Social Media Can Enhance Enterprise Profitability

Dion Hinchcliffe – IA09 Keynote

Regular Broadband – 1 Mbps

Sam Lawrence – 20 Practical Ways to Use Social Software to Drive Profitability

Sam Lawrence – IA09 Keynote

Regular Broadband – 1 Mbps

whurley – Future Technology Trends

whurley – IA09 Keynote

Regular Broadband – 1 Mbps

Related posts:

1. Grumble, Bumble, Facebook Trouble I was reading an article this weekend, on Entrepreneur.com, and...
2. The Entrepreneurial Evangelist I have recently started writing a blog series as part...
3. Building a Word-of-Mouth Process In the American Express OPEN Forum article, Effective Word-of-Mouth is...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This week was the second annual Interactive Austin Conference. Focusing on the value of social media for business, AI09 convened a broad spectrum of experts, locals and practitioners to share, debate, network and learn about how to take advantage of social media for the benefit of business.

Keynotes

Starting off the day was industry leading strategist and Social Computing Journal Editor-in-Chief Dion Hinchcliffe. In a talk on one of this season’s hottest topics: How Social Media Can Enhance Enterprise Profitability. Covering both internal organizational and external, customer-facing examples, Hinchcliffe’s examples set the tone for the ubiquitous message of the day: social media is a set of tools. Their value is found in the behaviors and interaction of the people using them, not the technologies themselves.

Keynotes by Sam Lawrence and “whurley” followed, with common messages. (See SCJ’s coverage of Sam Lawrence’s Keynote.) In a talk comprised of crowdsourced topics, whurley covered everything from the long-term value of LinkedIn, Twitter and Friendfeed, to data portability, semantic web and HTML5 with predictions and expectations regarding what’s coming and what’s on the brink of going.

Sessions and Lessons

Session topics covered a range of topics from the Obama Campaign’s use of social media and Interactive Government, to social media marketing and community management, to how to bring the vibrant and diverse set of interactive communities in Austin together into a cohesive, collaborate “scene.”

In “Designing the Experience,” panelists discussed everything from Information Architecture and multi-variant testing, to de-mystifying complex and intimidating processes such as filing taxes or small business accounting via good user design.

Another session entitled “The Human Cloud” provided panelists with an opportunity to debate both human and technical aspects of “cloud computing” — ranging from the value of the term itself to the role of face-to-face interactions in “cloud-based” relationships. While no consensus was reached about either the human or technical aspects of “the cloud,” one thing was clear: everyone has different expectations, understandings and visions for what constitutes “the human cloud” and how much value it can ultimately provide.

As part of “Communication Trends that Matter Most in Social Media,” industry specialists from Dell and Southwest Airlines discussed everything from public relations, internal communications and organizational change. Lessons ranged from “talk like a real human being” to “you need a change agent who isn’t afraid of losing their job to break down walls.”

And the consensus among panelists is that companies who want to leverage social media can’t just look to one company that is doing something well. Instead, we need to look at several companies that are each doing one thing well. Cherry-pick different approaches and solutions to craft an over-all strategy to fit your organization.

Case Study: Southwest’s Rapping Flight Attendant

A social media phenomenon (heading to Jay Leno tomorrow night) that occurred via social media (YouTube) and which was only shared via social media (Twitter).

Goals and Plans

During “Experience City,” panelists kicked off “The Austin Interactive Initiative,” designed to harness the power of Austin’s youthful, energetic creative scene for the purposes of cultivating a cohesive community around the local interactive market.

All in all, Interactive Austin has been a tremendous opportunity for Austinites to connect, network and exchange ideas, while working towards a more unified sense of community. Even with tight budgets and elevated productivity demands, attendance is good, and the local participants in the various interactive spaces have come together for a day of collaboration and communication — precisely the two qualities most often associated with social media.

Related posts:

1. Grumble, Bumble, Facebook Trouble I was reading an article this weekend, on Entrepreneur.com, and...
2. Building a Word-of-Mouth Process In the American Express OPEN Forum article, Effective Word-of-Mouth is...
3. A List of Lists for Entrepreneurs As if year-end wrap up lists weren’t enough fun by...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Interactive Austin is now over, and it was an interesting and eventful day — particularly for those of us who are local and did a decent job of spending the day doing some good networking.

I don’t have a huge amount to write about it, because others have done a far better job, so here are some places you can look if you want to see how the day unfolded: Ricci Neer did live blogging (and considerable follow-up), and captured much of the day, including my panel on Designing the User Experience.

For even more fun, you can check out the video of our panel on Designing the Experience.

IA09 Breakout Session – Designing the Experience

Regular Broadband – 1 Mbps

Related posts:

1. VIDEO – Web Content for Entrepreneurs Here is the recent video I did with Jonas Lamis...
2. VIDEO – Say No to SEO Jonas and I continue our discussion regarding content strategy for...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

At Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, we recorded a short video on the happenings in the Enterprise 2.0 space, the activity at the event, and the upcoming local event (local to me, anyway) here in Austin at the end of the month: Interactive Austin 09.

The video is posted and, as always, while I have a general dislike of watching myself on film (and a realization that when I don’t actively smile, I have quite the dour look on my face), it is still the single most valuable tool I know of for understanding how you carry yourself.

Related posts:

1. The Entrepreneurial Evangelist I have recently started writing a blog series as part...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Not working is easily ten times more stressful than working — unless, of course, money is not a concern in your life. Unemployment or underemployment is difficult to manage on multiple levels, because — just to name a few examples — it has such a huge impact across all spectrums of your life:

• Financial stability

• Self-esteem
• Relationships
• Plans/Expectations
• Routine Daily Habits

For workaholics with a track record of success, the ego hit is often the most difficult — particularly once the pressures of the new financial reality start impacting everything from eating and entertaining habits (thanks to cost) to feelings of isolation (not being in an office every day) to canceling plans that you would not ordinarily consider canceling because they are no longer affordable. It fast becomes clear that we are used to taking a certain income level for granted — and it is hard not to chaffe under the restrictions of a radically cut-back lifestyle.

And, of course, all of that strains relationships: spouses fight about lights left on and what is a realistic grocery budget; friends and family inquiring about ‘how the hunt is going’ is inadvertant salt in the wound and so it becomes easier to avoid them than to rehash the agony; social and professional networks are inundated with pleas for help from talented, unemployed people who are a loss for options.

And those who were laid off have an advantage, because they can collect Unemployment Insurance. If you’re unemployed because your business plans have fallen apart, or because a job you had lined up fell through after you quit your last one, then (depending on what state you live in) you could well be completely S.O.L.

So what are the tricks for surviving unhappy unemployment that don’t result in death, divorce or a seat in an AA meeting? Obviously those depend on how you handle acute stress personally, but I’ve discovered that some of my great work qualities make managing my own stress particularly difficult, so this is the list of nine things that I’ve learned to do to manage my unemployment-related anxiety.

Stress Eating – Find an Alternative

I’m a stress eater. Bad stress eater. I can go through insane volumes of food without ever realizing it. And, worse yet, thanks to my gastric by-pass back in 2003, over-eating makes me sicker much more quickly than most normal people. (To say nothing of re-gaining the weight I was supposed to have lost permanently.) Stress eating is a huge problem for me.

My “alternative”? Ice. Annoying to others and bad for my teeth, yes. But I swear, it’s actually a huge help when it comes to consuming hollow calories or large volumes of food that end up making me ill. Be careful about chewing on it if it’s too hard, but if you have an oral fixation and a compulsive eating habit, finding something to fill the void is key. For me, ice works. Even if it drives my husband up the wall.

Email Stalking – Move Away From the Computer

This is a hard one for information workers who are used to spending all day in front of a computer. Checking your email every 30 seconds is not going to make a job offer show up any faster. And you’ll just drive yourself nuts while you wait. Even worse, over time, the tone of your emails will start sounding more and more hysterical and desperate — and that’s not going to help you at all. Find other things to work on, and stop hovering over your email. Even if you are still working on your computer, close your email client/browser and only allow yourself to check it on a schedule. Nothing says “desperate” like when you respond to a recruiter within 15 seconds of them hitting the “Send” button.

Physical Impacts the Psychological – Get Up and Move

Tony Robbins has this one down: physical movement absolutely impacts your state of mind. And while it is good practice to get up and move around even when you are working in an office like you are used to, it is even more important if you’re concerned with your mental stamina and keeping an upbeat attitude.

Other impacts to your physical space that can help: I replaced my hard, uncomfortable dining room chair with a very inexpensive yoga ball (Note: the size you’d need to use as a chair is much bigger than what you’d need to use for actual yoga — go for the largest size as a chair, even if you’re a shorty like me). This makes a huge difference on the posture and physical awareness (balance) that helps prevent getting sucked into a digital abyss without realizing it. (And, for as goofy as it sounds, there is something very playful and light-hearted about sitting on a yoga ball; both my husband and I have found it causes us random moments of amusement, which help keep both of our moods elevated.)

My husband often finds that going for a walk is helpful. Because I don’t enjoy walking all that much in the first place, this doesn’t typically help me and, in fact, I find that the warm weather in Austin usually makes a mid-day walk very draining; though a walk in the evening after things have cooled down can sometimes help. On the other hand, happily, our apartment complex has both a gym and a swimming pool. Both of these things do make me feel better. So find something that works, and then do it.

And in the bizarre and inexplicable category: there is a yoga pose that, for some strange reason, has been making me feel better recently (‘bizarre and inexplicable’ because I am not a yoga person; I think I’ve attended one yoga class in my entire life). I go into the bedroom, where it is semi-dark and cool, and I get in the Cat Flow pose on the bed for a few minutes. This elongates my spine and stretches out the tense muscles in my neck and shoulders tremendously. And doing it in a cool, dark room also helps me insulate myself a bit to breath deeply and regroup. I have no earthly idea why that particular pose makes me feel better when there are plenty of others that could also do the trick, but it does, so I go with it.

Don’t Just Network – Socialize

Yes, networking is always important — never moreso than when job hunting — but online networking like Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, JobFox, Naymz and Facebook are only going to do you so much good. If you are like us, and new in town, go to Meetup.com and find an actual physical, social event and go. Talk to people. Interact. Pick up a new (cheap!) hobby. Just get out of the house before you can’t stand the sight of it anymore, and interact with people. Go to one or two for business-related topics and go to one or two for personal enjoyment. Shop around until you find one with people you like, and then make a habit of going.

My husband and I attended several before we found one that we ended up really liking: we watch totally over-the-top, campy, cheesy sci fi movies with a bunch of other people and laugh hysterically all night. No matter how beaten up we have ever felt clear up until we walked in the door at the Meetup, by the end of the night it has never once failed to be the highlight of our week. Who knows? If you aren’t careful, you might even make some new friends.

Even better, go find something you care about and volunteer some time. It doesn’t have to be a lot, just mix it up a bit. And doing something worth feeling good about is always the best way to counter-act feeling bad about how life is going. On top of which, it helps fill in gaps on your resume and do some networking with people you wouldn’t necessarily have thought to tap before. You never know how valuable that can be.

Iron Out Your Personal Support Network – Talk to Them!

This one is one of the hardest for me, because both my husband and I are home all day now. Even if we are both working on something in different rooms, we are both still around. As someone who needs a lot of space, this is something that is often likely to make me irrationally cranky. And the couple of times that I have come close-but-no-cigar to a job or landing a client and I felt acute despair, the most important thing to do is to get it off my chest.

Sometimes when I start to unravel, I’ll do it to my husband. But since we’re in the same boat, and since he likes to ‘fix’ things (which I can’t stand, even when things are going well: I need to vent so that I can fix my own mess, not have him tell me what I need to do), and since there are times when I need some space from him, I have to rely on other people. Fortunately I have some wonderful friends. Unfortunately, as someone who created this situation herself, I often feel so distressed (and stupid) for having been responsible for putting us in this situation, that I don’t feel like I have a right to whine or vent. And maybe I don’t, but there are two things to remember:

1. Trying to keep that feeling bottled up doesn’t work. And if I don’t get it off my chest, it will bleed into my attempts at productive conversations with recruiters and prospective employers/clients.

2. They are my friends and they love me. And while I am sure the thought, “I told you so!” runs through each of their heads on a regular basis, the fact is that when they realize that I’m truly upset, they are all gracious enough to avoid saying it. (They’ll wait a year and say it over drinks or dinner, which is fine with me!)

Just watch it: whining hysterianics are trying even for the best sports. Don’t abuse your friends by flipping out and expecting them to help put Humpty Dumpty back together over and over again. Carry your own water, just reach out to your friends when the load is extra heavy and you need a bit of a boost.

Stay in Control of Your Time – Live by a Schedule

This is a hard one in our house, because I am a morning person and my husband is a night person. And if I’m not careful, I’ll find myself sucked into the gravitational force of his schedule. Next thing I know, I’m up until 4:00 a.m. and sleeping away the day. Bad, bad, bad. You can’t interact with your network (online or otherwise), you can’t make follow-up calls, and you can’t be available for impromtu appointments if you are sleeping during the day and awake all night. That is how you miss opportunities. Unless you are trying to compensate for a time zone differential, beware of this.

The other thing that is really hard about being at home all day is the whole get-up-and-get-ready-for-the-day routine. It is far too easy to sleep a little bit late, roll out of bed, grab a cup of coffee and just get online. Beware this trap. Just like getting up and moving helps your state of mind, so does getting dressed. Mary Kay Cosmetics teaches their sales force to never get on the phone with a client until they are dressed and ready to face the day. While this may sound trivial, there is plenty of supporting evidence to validate their point: when you look professional, you feel professional, you sound professional and people are more likely to think of you as professional.

And all of that is even before we get into the whole area of video conferencing, surprise visitors, impromptu meetings or urgent errands. Get up and get ready for your day like you would if you were going to work. It’ll make the transition back to a normal schedule easier when it happens. And it’ll help your state of mind from wandering too far.

Another reason to get up and get dressed: it helps avoid weight gain. Studies have shown that people who get in the habit of wearing loose, baggy, comfortable clothes will put on weight quickly and without realizing it, specifically because they are not getting any reminders about their size from how well their clothes do or don’t fit. You don’t need to sit around your house in a suit, but if you are wearing sweats or your bathrobe all day, you are in danger of packing on weight without realizing it. But if you’re putting on work pants and shirts every day, you’ll discover pretty quickly if your waistline is expanding. And the last thing you need is to try to get dressed for an interview one day, only to discover that you can’t fit into your work clothes.

Don’t Limit Your Options – Re-evaluate Your Priorities and Goals

When I was in California in late March, I had dinner with a wonderful friend I hadn’t seen in ages. Last summer she was laid off, and she was having no luck on the job hunt. The stress was mounting, because even with unemployment, she and her husband were having to tap into their savings at about $1k/month in order to cover the most basic living expenses. Taking out a second mortgage on their house was the only way to keep them afloat for a while longer, though the impending expiration of both her Unemployment Insurance and COBRA loomed large.

This is a woman with whom I worked for years. We actually co-managed a massive project together once upon a time. We’d stay at the office until 11:00 p.m. working like maniacs, go home exhausted and come back the next morning to start over again. She is a ridiculously hard worker who, like me, always found herself being tossed into the deep end of the pool to forge a new role, to fix something that was broken, or to tackle a problem whose resolution was a total mystery.

And if she hadn’t been laid off, that would still be her habit. However, now that she has been laid off, she’s realized something important: her children are about to enter middle school. All of a sudden they are busier, need more time and attention, and have more activities in which she would like to participate. So suddenly what was unthinkable a few years ago — that she could want a “job” instead of a “career position” — is now, in fact, entirely true.

My transition is not entirely different. Over the past few years, my shift has been more and more on business process improvement and change management. But my default job hunting focus is always as a technical project manager. That’s my “safe job.” Aside from the fact that I can do it in my sleep, it’s also something that I do so well that it’s an ego boost (which is especially appealing after my ego has taken a beating from being unemployed). But is that my automatic first choice for a job? Probably not.

Personal branding is hard work if you are trying to change direction. My friend is often viewed skeptically when she applies for positions as an office manager for a small company or some other role that is better able to leave her family life intact. People assume that she’s only looking for something short-term and that she’ll leave as soon as she finds something better. She actually has to strip down her resume so that her work history doesn’t look as impressive or robust, so that it doesn’t scare off prospective employers.

My old friend and co-worker, the brilliantly talented Josh Ross, recently asked me what it is that I want to be doing. I told him that part of my problem is in marketing myself, because I’ve been angling for a change. The trouble is, I’ve still got an attraction to what I’ve always done in the past and I’ve had a great deal of difficulty forging a new personal marketing strategy that walks the line between both without making me sound desperate and scattered.

One of the reasons that I so thoroughly love startups is because I can do both: a little of what I know and a little of what I have to learn. But either way, no matter how stressful a time unemployment is, think about what you want. (Penelope Trunk discusses this a lot, too.) It may be that the first job back has to be what you’ve always done, but if you approach it with a plan to get where you want to be, it’ll give you focus and motivation that you probably didn’t have before.

Brush Up on the Basics – Read, Write and, well, Web

The one advantage you have when not working that most of us never seem to have while we are is time. Time to read, time to write, time to pick up a new skill. If I were a developer, I’d be taking this time to learn Ruby on Rails, because it’s a very hot, in-demand development language and could make a huge difference in my employability. As a project manager, in January I started studying to take my PMP Exam (though, unfortunately, the exam is too expensive to actually take until I get a job).

Beyond that, spend some time reading — whether it’s business books that you’ve always wanted to read, online magazines that cater to your industry or blogs of people who are doing interesting work. Whatever it is, read it. Consider it your between-jobs-homework to absorb as much information as possible. And then, if you can, write about it. Not everyone is up for the work involved in having their own blog, but if you have something to say, odds are you can find someone who has a blog (or, better yet, different someones) and would be happy to have you guest blog on their site. (This, by the way, is also helpful for personal branding.)

Control is an Illusion – Show Humility and Gratitude

Finally, as a die hard control freak, the hardest thing for me is when I feel entirely out of control. And while, intellectually, I recognize that control really is an illusion in most ways, that illusion has always been my security blanket. Being in a situation I didn’t predict and that I can’t fix immediately or entirely by myself is one great big, honkin’ ass lesson in humility. Truth be told, I needed that and it’s not lost on me.

Beyond that, though, it is also clear that I have plenty to be grateful for: the afore mentioned friends and family, the unconditional adoration of the cutest pooch in the world, and a husband who — despite having plenty of reasons to say it — has never once said “I told you so” either. Each of them has put up with the crashing and burning of my hubris (which isn’t always graceful), and they have all resisted the temptation to point out that it was only a matter of time before I made a risky gamble and lost my shirt to the house.

And, if that isn’t enough, then I console myself with knowing that I live in a beautiful city that spends most of the winter hovering around 80 degrees, where the people are friendly, and where our savings has lasted three to four times longer than it would have if we’d stayed in New York City — where I didn’t want to live anymore, anyway. (And where my old job was being shipped off to Orlando, where I would have found myself in an even bigger employment vacuum and trapped with even fewer options than I have now.)

The last thing I am is a Polyanna. But the fact is that I do have plenty to be grateful for, and even if I don’t say it regularly, I am still aware of it.

So, that’s it. My Nine Unemployment Survival Tips. What have you found that works for you?

Related posts:

1. It’s Not a Career Path, It’s a Career Highway As a career management advocate turned Entrepreneur Evangelist, I recently...
2. Tis the Season to be Independent In Deck the Halls with Pink Slips I discuss the...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I’ve been very fortunate recently: in my role as Managing Editor of Social Computing Journal (formerly Social Computing Magazine), I’ve been able to attend a number of conferences that I would not have previously been able to find the time or money to attend.

In quick succession, I have attended PubCon South, SXSWi and Web 2.0 Expo. And each of those conferences have provided me with great opportunities to attend talks given by people whose work I follow (to one extent or another):

• At PubCon I heard Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Lee Odden, Wayne Sutton, Matt Cutts and more.

• At SXSWi I got to see just about all of those, plus Penelope Trunk, Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, Charlene Li, Tony Hsieh, Chris Anderson and Gary Vaynerchuk.
• At Web 2.0 Expo, I got to see some of those same ones again, plus Peter Kim, Jeremiah Owyang, Stowe Boyd, Dion Hinchcliffe and more.

There were some stark and compelling take-aways for me as I reflect back on the past month and all of the conference activity:

The Social Media and Enterprise 2.0 space is an echo chamber.

There are a handful of smart people who keep saying the same thing over and over again to the same people. And, unless you just enjoy attending talks for the sake of attending talks, once you’ve seen them once, you can probably skip them at the next conference. I had really hoped that the people I saw at more than one conference would have something new to say; and not once was that the case, which was disappointing. While I understand that they do not assume there will be many people who follow conferences around all over the country (other than media), in an overly-blogged world, recycled presentations will fast become audience killers. This is something that professional speakers — especially in the tech/media space — are going to have to start recognizing and managing appropriately.

The people I was most looking forward to seeing are never the ones I ultimately find the most interesting.

Case in point: I did not even realize that Louis Gray was on a panel at SXSW, and yet his material has probably been the single most valuable of everything I got (on a personal, practical, daily level). Chris Anderson, Matt Cutts and Tony Hsieh also fall into the ‘not quite on my radar’ category. Each one of them I saw by virtue of fortunate circumstance, and each one of them proved to be a great highlight I never expected. The converse is also true: in almost all cases, the people I was most looking forward to seeing were the ones who ended up being the most disappointing — and always for reasons of style more than content.

Some people are just better in writing and should give up the delusion that they make good speakers.

As someone who has been online since 1996, I learned a long time ago that the ways in which someone presents themselves online is rarely a true reflection of their real life personality. And, in almost all cases, real life is the disappointment. This may be even more true now that more and more people are getting online and using “personal branding” as an opportunity to establish a bit of an online alter ego that is just smarter, funnier, more clever and more interesting than they are in real life. But before you get up in front of an audience, do a personal inventory to see if that’s the case. Because I saw far too many people speaking in public who were either disappointingly annoying or abrasive or, worse yet, simply boring.

The “Social Media Celebrity” phenomenon is gaining momentum and proving to be a bit nauseating.

I freely admit, I am not a celebrity hawk. In fact, when it comes to pop culture, I deliberately practice Tim Ferriss’ “low information diet” technique. It took me months after the rest of the world started talking about it for me to have any idea who the Octomom was, and even then, it was only because my husband was recapping her insanity one night while we were walking the dog — and I was trapped, with no way to escape. In my youth I used to enjoy a bit of it, but after a few years as a fan geek, I got it out of my system.

And now, watching the celebrity that has erupted around different individuals in the social media space — especially the big ones like Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Robert Scoble, Charlene Li, etc. — is something I find a bit unnerving. Watching the fan reactions to many of these industry leaders at the conferences was a bit like watching the cast of Star Trek walk on-stage at a Sci Fi Convention. It was never clearer to me the extent to which this new space is a complete convergence of business and entertainment. Because, while I may be there because this is my business and these are business leaders whose insights I am looking to learn from, other people are there as fans. And we’re all mixed in as part of the same crowd, which is a very unusual — and not altogether pleasant — dynamic.

All in all, it has been an interesting conference season. Interactive Austin is coming up in a few weeks, which is another small local one that I am particularly looking forward to (and speaking at). Whether or not I attend Enterprise 2.0 in Boston in June remains to be seen, though I would be very interested to see first-hand how some of this plays out in an enterprise-specific environment.

So, which was the best of the conferences from the past month? Since Pubcon was so small, it’s probably not a fair comparison. (And, in all honesty, the size of PubCon made it an incredibly intimate experience, which was great; and because it was affordable and local to Austin, it was absolutely the best local networking event I have attended since arriving in town last fall.)

Which just leaves the two big ones: SXSWi vs. Web 2.0 Expo.

No comparison. SXSWi was the better experience. Higher energy level. Higher attendance level (at least it felt that way). Higher activity level. A broader spectrum of topics, speakers, activities, etc. And I can say that, even though I didn’t attend a single party. (Socially, I took more advantage of Web 2.0 Expo, since it was my first visit home to SF in a year, and saw a ton of friends.)

What about you? Any interesting insights from conference season so far?

My Conference Season 2009 Posts:

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

If there is always one part of the early interview process that is a sticky wicket it is the, “What were you making at your last job?” question. This is a question that, particularly as someone who recently moved from NYC to Austin, Texas, is a problem to answer.

The bigger problem is having this question posed before there is clarity around the role in question. I have done Director-level work, Manager-level work and individual contributor work — in different types of organizations, under different types of circumstances. And some of them are more demanding roles than others (and, frankly, the Director-level stuff isn’t always the most demanding). The price needs to be based on the demands of the role.

But if I have no information about the role, then how can I have any idea what price I think is reasonable? I don’t know if the role is internal, or client-facing; I don’t know if the role has any direct reports, or is a traditional PM in a matrixed environment; etc. And, worse yet, the recruiter doing the screening didn’t have the answers to those questions (which is a whole different problem that I won’t go into at the moment).

Now, I understand that, for most people, there is a basic financial need that has to be met, and discussing a role that pays less than that is a waste of everyone’s time. And, as a time-sensitive person, the last thing I want to do is waste time – my own, or anyone else’s. But if my answer is, “I don’t know enough about the role” and “My priority at the moment is not salary, but is in getting back to a collaborative work environment” then pressing me and threatening me with not being able to proceed without a number is doing everyone a disservice.

Even worse, after telling me that they wouldn’t be able to proceed without me giving them a number of some kind (at which point I was sorely tempted to say, “Ok, then I guess we can’t proceed.”), she said, “Certainly there is some number that is not worth leaving your home office without?” Since I had just told her that the whole reason I was looking for a conventional employment arrangement instead of more client work was specifically because I do not like working from home, I find that question to have entirely missed the point.

At the moment, I’d be willing to seriously consider working at Starbucks or Barnes and Noble just to get out of the house. I can’t stand working from home. If I wanted to continue doing this, I’d find more client work — which, frankly, would probably be easier than finding a traditional ‘job’ if that’s what I wanted. So for her to ask me that as a means of getting a number out of me was actually a bit preposterous.

For as tiring as it was, there were some things about last week in California that were particularly wonderful — and one of the greatest things was visiting with some of the most brilliant people I know, all of whom I’ve worked with in the past. And whether it’s Kari (Director of Ecommerce at Design Within Reach) or John (mentor and former boss) or Josh (VP at O’Reilly) or any the other dozen or so people I saw, the one thing that was so clear to me is how ridiculous the ‘interview’ process is when it comes to ascertaining the value that a potential hire brings to a new role in a new organization. A ‘screening’ call like the one I just had cannot capture a fraction of what is valuable about any of these people. Or of me, either, frankly.

John told me last week that he refuses to look at resumes anymore, because he cares about the person — their attitude, their work style, their energy, etc. It’s about the person. And he finds a resume to be a distracting and often mis-representational distillation of their experience that gives very little indication of the value they bring to their role.

Unfortunately, unless you have such a great network that every role you get comes from people who already know you, we haven’t come up with a better way to weed out — even at a high level — people who are “close” versus people who are “nowhere near” what we are looking for.

Even more unfortunate, though, is that it’s still all just marketing. And whether it’s an employment candidate or a Big Mac, the real thing rarely ends up looking like the ad.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

There is a strange phenomenon that Californians, New Yorkers and Texans have in common with each other that they rarely have in common with people from most other parts of the country: a sort of territorial, geo-centric affiliation.

New Yorkers are routinely criticized by everyone else as being arrogant and thinking that New York is the center of the universe — a notion that New Yorkers rarely dispute.

Californians are often guilty of being just as arrogant as New Yorkers, and possess just as strong a sense of entitlement that they hail from a part of the world that prides itself on being a step removed from the unwashed masses.

And the phrase “Don’t mess with Texas” didn’t come from no where. Texas is the state that is still most likely to publicly identify with their state affiliation before their national one. Though, again, that is not uncommon in either Californians or New Yorkers, either — they just aren’t always as in-your-face about it as Texans are.

There is a tremendous irony to the fact that these three states are the ones in which I have lived.

One of the things that is most common with residents of these three states — and I read a study about this several years ago that I wish I could remember where to find — that, when traveling abroad, people from these three states identify with their state before their country. When asked from where they hail, Americans from the other 47 states will typically answer, “The US.” While natives of NY, CA or TX will give a knee-jerk answer that is state-specific.

This has been weighing on my mind a lot this week. This is my first visit “home” — to California — in over a year. I have been more profoundly homesick in the past couple of months in Austin than I have since I left CA for NY back in 2005. I deliberately planned my trip to allow for the time I needed to see as many of my friends as possible, because I missed them so much.

And, as always, the visits have been wonderful. But something strange has happened, and I couldn’t put my finger on it until today as I was looking out the window of the Moscone Center from the conference: this is not my home anymore.

For most people, this is probably a “duh!” moment. And more than a few people are having a hard time understanding why I am so completely rocked by this – to the point of tears. But what I notice in the reactions of my friends is that those who think of themselves as died-in-the-wool natives, are the ones who not only understand why this is upsetting to me, but it’s also upsetting to them as well.

So the question really is, what has changed? Why is it that years after I’ve moved away suddenly “home” is no longer “home,” even though it was for ages — even when I was living farther away from it than I am now?

I honestly don’t have a good answer for that. Part of it may be the sense of distance I have with my friends. Our visits were great, but the volume of material to catch up on was — in every case — so huge that we didn’t come close to covering everything. And life goes on — they are all in very different places, have different friends, different homes, different partners, different jobs, etc. than they did when I left. Just like I do. But I’m disconnected from them all at least enough that spending time catching up made me realize that I’m farther away from them than I’d let myself believe.

And even worse, as I look around beautiful downtown San Francisco — a city that, in the bright sunlight, is infinitely more beautiful than any other city in the country (despite what New Yorkers like to think :-p) — I realize that Dorothy may have been right when she said there was “no place like home,” but so was Thomas Wolf: “You Can’t Go Home Again.”

I find this profoundly sad. Overwhelmingly so, as a matter of fact. I can’t explain what has changed and I am pretty sure it’s got less to do with moving to Texas than it just does with having been gone for just long enough. But I can’t truly articulate it — either for myself or for the people I love who find it just as alarming as I do. But it is much like my epiphany back in November 2004 that I needed to leave. It wasn’t something I could explain, and I completely understood why it was so confusing to my friends and family, but it was just something that I knew in my gut.

So then where the hell is home? Tiffany pointed out that home is probably where Charles and Zeka are. And, while that makes sense, that’s not the same thing. They are portable. Home was home because it was stable and permanent and unmoving; and the Bay Area, in particular, was home because of the deep-seeded influence it had on my perception of the world and where I saw myself relative to it. My family is more fluid, but I count on them to be. I don’t want them to be static, but I counted on my sense of home to be. And now it’s not.

I am not sure how to incorporate that into how I view my tendency to float around — after all, the thing that made it easy for me to bounce from place to place was the sense that home would always be home. That was truly why I could pick up and go from city to city, because none of them needed to be “home” if I had that waiting for me in California — whenever I decided to come back to it. Without that, I am honestly not sure what that means to my vagabond inclinations. And I’m finding the whole thing very unsettling.

Related posts:

1. One Year in Texas This week marks the one year anniversary of our departure...
2. Trick Questions Some questions are just a trick. The interview process is...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.