A year ago, Austin-based Convio launched a company blog: Connection Cafe. Unlike so many other company blogs, Convio decided to take a slightly different approach with the hope of gaining slightly different results. While many organizations opt for a CEO blog — particularly companies with in-demand CEO’s, like Convio’s Gene Austin — or a blog [ Read More ]
Representatives from Google, Microsoft and Amazon gathered for a panel at SXSW to discuss the value, the future and the changes in cloud computing.
After writing my post last week, Winners and Windmills, I asked my friend, the lovely and talented Tiffany Miley-Parks if she would be willing to write a follow-up piece that addresses what happens when “passion and skill” are not longer aligned with the “opportunity and circumstance” that make a work environment exciting. She graciously complied [ Read More ]
Accomplishment-oriented people often share a very common character trait: we hate to quit. More often than not, this is a combination of our own need to conquer whatever mountain we have set our sights on, and our belief that others are counting on us to succeed. In both cases, those assumptions are frequently over-estimated. Our [ Read More ]
Well, things have been crazy as I’ve been learning the ropes for my new roles: Principal & Co-Founder of The Indigo Heron Group, Inc. and Managing Editor of Social Computing Magazine. Lots to learn and lots to do, much of which has taken it’s toll on my blogging efforts. I’m working on some new time [ Read More ]
As the debate about the best approach to an economic stimulus package rages, I am reminded time and again of the conversations I’ve had throughout my career with non-IT executives when it comes to IT work. Coming from an IT background, of course, I have often found the conversations frustrating, unrealistic and short-sighted, which is [ Read More ]
As with most major life lessons, it has been many years of gradual recognition that have allowed me to finally begin to understand the full impact of growing up in a family-owned small business. As with most other major life events or conditions, the lessons I thought I was learning at the time often evolved [ Read More ]
Consider the following: The Soviet-style Economic Model: Profit-driven business cannot be trusted to do what is best for society at large, therefore all business should be owned by the state. State-owned businesses become a monopoly with no incentive to provide exceptional goods or services, or a reasonable rate. Taxpayers get screwed in order to subsidize [ Read More ]
The words every man dreads hearing from his wife: “Does this dress make me look fat?” I’ll skip past the endless stream of jokes that have arisen regarding this quintessential battle-of-the-sexes cliche, and cut to the chase: what are you looking for when you ask someone for feedback? And, just as importantly, what do you [ Read More ]
One of the questions I am most frequently asked is, “What do I need to do to make a career change into project management?” That question sometimes comes from people in similar or related fields, like IT Management, or from fields you might not normally expect, like teaching. Most often, though, this question is posed [ Read More ]
Throughout my career I have held roles with all kinds of titles, but in the end, at my core, I am a project manager. That is how I see myself and how I tend to identify, no matter what my formal title. And it’s for a very, very simple reason: there is one constant in [ Read More ]
How do you know when it’s time to leave your job? Is it just because something new/better came along? I would make the distinction between GOING to a new job and LEAVING an existing one. So what makes it time to leave? Each time I start getting “itchy feet,” as I call it, to make [ Read More ]