It is with great hesitation that I point out that boc is on Stand Out Jobs. I can’t stand hearing myself on the phone little on seeing my mug in a video. In our defense, we had no script, came up with the concept almost on the spot, and only had 1 take.

Stand Out Jobs is a new startup founded by Austin Hill and friends. They’ve charged themselves with “changing the face of recruiting”.

“Don’t forget, if someone tells you they have the answer, they probably don’t understand the question.”, C.K. Prahalad.

Well it’s done. As someone says somewhere, DemoCampGuelph1 is in the can! I’m clearly biased but I’d say it was a success. I met some new folks and had some pints so personally I achieved my only goals. In the end we managed to fit in six demos after a late start:

• Mark Roseman: CourseForum
• Chris Iwanowski, “speaker’s corner” kiosk application we just developed for Guelph Museums.
• Simon Clark
• Holden Karau
• Kevin Thomason, aideRSS, Filtering/managing your RSS feeds – basically, taming the RSS beast
• Colin Smith, Adobe.

Highlights

• Great venue. You can’t go wrong with 1/2 price burgers.
• Great gear. Once Colin showed up and got his pimped out gear out. The downside is we’re hooked on the good stuff now.
• As Holden would say, awesome set of demos.
• Somehow managing to have David Crow not only bring up Apollo but ask Colin from Adobe about it.

Need to work on

• The host, or MC, was a dud.
• Better structure and timing of the demos to ensure everyone gets similar showing.
• Maybe nametags next time? I had bought some but forget to put them out.
• More heckling and casual banter. It was great to have David Crow there to stir the pot and show us how it’s meant to go. We need to keep working on this and get the interactivity up but for first timers I think we did alright. I think part of this is just getting to know each other so we’re as comfortable saying “piss-poor effort” as David.

Thanks once again to everyone who showed up and helped make this work. Now get signed up to our google group and help us start planning #2!

Along similar lines as my email usage post, I’ve returned to the way I previously used IM. That is, explicitly turn it on when I need to have a conversation. I used to always tell people, don’t rely on my IM status as an indicator of whether I’m ‘online’ and my usage reinforced that.

Unfortunately, my usage of the past year or more has been the opposite, which means over the short term people will assume I’m not ‘online’ much.

Does this make me less available? In my opinion no as my phone is still here on my desk and I’m still answering it. It does, however, place more burden on callers to triage. Not having IM open all the time places that same burden on me. Where I often wouldn’t hesitate to IM someone about a topic, I’ll now hold off, solve it myself, or pick up the phone and have a quick conversation.

In the end I’m not phoning people as much as I used to IM them. That means I’m doing a better job of triaging on my side and therefore interrupting people less. I’m being interrupted less, I’m interrupting others less, and when those interruptions happen they tend to come to resolutions faster as we’re on the phone talking instead of hacking away in IM. The main reason I use IM, even when on the phone, is to send http links to people I’m talking with. IM is better at that than the phone.

Of course I’m sure some of the people I phone all day long may state otherwise.

I only saw this related post now, I swear.

Wow, at first I thought this was interesting in that David was taking a job with Microsoft. The post IS interesting but the comments contain the real meat, including drifting into a comparison of Microsoft to a certain supremacist group. Congrats on the new gig David and for once again generating some amazing dialogue.

PS: I have to admit I keep checking to see if it’s April first. David Crow….Microsoft…..it’d make a great April fools prank.

There’s some video and a write up here if you’re asking that question.

I’m in Toronto today and stopped into a Chapters hoping to grab a copy of Vonnegut’s God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater. I asked for assistance as there were literally none on the shelf. The chapters guy checked the computer which said there should be some. He wandered off and returned to tell me that all copies are behind the information desk as they’ve become hot items for theft. Huh? How does that work?

So if you’re in chapters and can’t find your Vonnegut fix on the shelf, make sure you ask. I’m still confused.

In an interview today I was shocked to hear Heather Mallick say “when Kurt Vonnegut died…”. I had no clue and if you’re in the same boat, it’s true. Kurt Vonnegut passed away last week on April 11th, 2007.

Ever since I read my first Vonnegut I’ve had an affliction. Whenever I look for a book to read, I have to force myself to take a break and read something other than Vonnegut. I have yet to read all his books, if you’re interested, two of my personal favourites are Sirens of Titan  and Bluebeard.
So it goes.

“A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.” Fred Allen