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No, not me. I don’t enjoy being always on. May be it’s simply that I think slow and I need time to think.

So many people ask me why I am not on Twitter. Fortunately or unfortunately, I am not even on an Instant Messenger so it’s a long way to go before I get there.

But sometimes I wonder about justifications of people who are addicted to a service like Twitter. Nobody talks about the cost of being interrupted all the time.

I don’t have anything with Twitter or any service similar to that. I can’t handle constant interruptions for now. That’s just me. If you are comfortable with ongoing interruptions, more power to you. However, please don’t rave about the benefits without addressing the cost part of the equation.

My $.02 of course.

Yesterday I was speaking a conference and one of the topics I was going to address was “Networking”.

During the informal get-together, several people approached me and exchanged cards. Three of them though gave their card and quickly explained what they do and ran away to give their cards to someone else. They didn’t seem to be really interested in who I was or whether I was interested in receiving their cards.

“Pushworking” is a term I coined for the practice of simply pushing your way to announce something whether the other person is interested or not.

Too many people engage in the art of pushworking while assuming that they are engaged in networking. If you are one of them, you lose twice. First, you won’t really get the benefit of networking and second, you may leave an impression with the other person that you are not someone that should take seriously.

The metric for networking is not the quantity of cards that you collect or give out but the assessments you create in other people that “you can be a positive possibility in their futures”

Stop Pushworking and Start Networking!

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Note 1: For links to the other 185 entries in the “Distinguish yourself” series, please visit my Squidoo lens on the same topic:
Squidoo Lens: Distinguish yourself

Note 2: The first 25 entries in the series have been packaged in a ChangeThis manifesto that was published on September 07, 2005. You can download that manifesto here:
ChangeThis Manifesto: 25 Ways to Distinguish Yourself

Note 3: My latest manifesto on ChangeThis was published on August 8, 2007. Today it is ranked #41. I am overwhelmed by the support for this. Thank you. Here is the link:
ChangeThis Manifesto: Making the Most of Your Time: Going Beyond To-Do Lists

One way to boost your “social networking” ego will be to connect to the same people on multiple social networks and add the numbers all up. Just don’t tell anyone that you are “double counting” or “triple counting”

Once you have had all the fun, you can create your own social network with the same friends via Ning

Enjoy!

Software Professionals or otherwise, we are always responding to requests based on our understanding of the request. If you get the request wrong, then…

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Requirements Analysis

Little Tommy asked Mom – “Where did I come from?”. Mom struggled for twenty minutes to explain things around sex. Tommy responded with a blank face - “This is a bit confusing. Johnny told me he is from Columbus, Ohio and I wanted to know where I came from…”

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Note1: Concept courtesy of Stuart Scott from Guinnen MacRath

Note2: A mini saga is a story in exactly 50 words.

Note 3: For the other 23 mini-sagas in the series, please visit
my collection of mini sagas

Then why are you not getting them?

One simple reason may be that there is a delta between

your commitment to the goals

AND

your commitment to pay the price that is required to get to those goals

John had received a new shirt as a gift from his wife. While he was stepping out of his office with the new shirt, it got stuck somewhere and was torn.

John didn’t know how to break this news with his wife Mary. After thinking about it a bit he called her and said “Honey, I have some good news and some bad news. Which one do you want to hear first?”

Mary asked for the bad news first and John said - “The new shirt you gave me fell on the floor and it is torn now”

Mary asked “Don’t worry about it. We can get another shirt. What’s the good news?”

John said “I was inside the shirt and I didn’t get hurt”

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For the rest of the posts in this series, please visit:
Squidoo: Smile Please

Mukundan from Vestal Corp sent me a link to the World Clock. It is just not a clock related to time - but covers other parameters such as Earth Temperature, Births, Deaths, HIV Infections, Oil Pumped etc.

Here is the link:

World Clock

Disclaimer: Information about the source of information that is helping power this clock is not available. So don’t know whether to fully believe it or not.

Over the weekend, three of my close friends forwarded a New York Times story on Blogging. The title of the story says it all. Here is the link:

In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop

At first I thought there was a message in there for me. I cross-checked and found that it was only because the story made some references to some of the topics covered in my next book.

Writer Matt Richtel references how blog fatigue may have been the cause of death for two prominent bloggers Russell Shaw and Marc Orchant. Matt also interviews other celebrity bloggers like Matt Buchanan, Om Malik and Michael Arrington. All the bloggers (all of these people are super-smart without a doubt) interviewed corroborated with the story and helped conclude that “Blogging fatigue can be serious”

At a very high-level, any addiction is dangerous. Too much of anything is bad. That I agree. However, the generalization across the board may be stretching it a bit.

One way to categorize blogs is based on two factors:
1) shelf-life of the content
2) importance of the content

What Matt is referring to is one type of blogs that have content that is “higher on the importance and time sensitivity” and “lower on the shelf-life”. This is a category I call “vertical news”. Bloggers in this category are celebrity journalists in a vertical space. In this case, all of them happen to be in the technology space. They have to be on the run all the time because all the rules that apply to journalism apply here but without the resources that are available to big name news bureaus. Obviously there is a lot of stress in the business.

The other types of bloggers have the stress but nothing of the order of what you see in this category.

Have a great week ahead.

This concept is courtesy of my insightful friend Ravi Char of Musings on Information Security. Thank you Ravi.

There is a saying “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression“. While this still holds good, I think time has come to update the saying to one or more of the following:

1. Without a good zeroth impression, you may not even get a chance to make a first impression

2. A stellar first impression rescue you from a stupid zeroth impression

So what is a zeroth impression?

Zeroth Impression is an assessment people can make of you without even talking to you. How can they do that? Simply by researching and listening to the gossip on and off the web. To start with, one can simply search on your name on one or more of the following:
1. Google
2. Facebook
3. LinkedIn
4. Technorati
5. Google Blogsearch
6. Squidoo

and find out “what you said” or “what has been said about you” (especially from people that the reader trusts) in the past. Combine this with what people are saying about you offline, one can make a reasonable assessment about “who you are” and that is your Zeroth Impression.

Whether you want it or not, you now have a responsibility to pay attention to your Zeroth impression. If you are doing bad in this department, you may already by losing opportunities to make your first impression. If you do get lucky and make a first impression, remember that people are already watching you with a lens that has been formed based on your Zeroth Impression.

Cut it whatever way you like - you don’t have a choice but to pay attention to your Zeroth Impression.

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Note 1: For links to the other 184 entries in the “Distinguish yourself” series, please visit my Squidoo lens on the same topic:
Squidoo Lens: Distinguish yourself

Note 2: The first 25 entries in the series have been packaged in a ChangeThis manifesto that was published on September 07, 2005. You can download that manifesto here:
ChangeThis Manifesto: 25 Ways to Distinguish Yourself

Note 3: My latest manifesto on ChangeThis was published on August 8, 2007. Today it is ranked #44. I am overwhelmed by the support for this. Thank you. Here is the link:
ChangeThis Manifesto: Making the Most of Your Time: Going Beyond To-Do Lists

Generating sustainable competitive advantage is hard and it gets harder if your strategy to generate competitive advantage is to mimic the competition.

I was speaking to Rick Hubbard of Serena Software this morning and his quote (in the context of chasing “best practices”) aptly explains this.

Rick says - “The pill that cured your neighbour may be the pill that might kill you”

Every person and every organization is different. You can copy the actions but you may not be able to copy the results by simplying copying the actions.

If your strategy is to mimic - at best (and if you are lucky) you will catch up with your competition!