Are you starting your career as a developer? If you're getting started, you may find it difficult to stand out from the IT crowd. Writing code won't be the hardest thing: it'll be managing your career.
In this session, we'll discuss some ways on how to improve your visibility by showcasing your past experiences, enhancing your current goals, and how to raise your "personal stock." We'll also examine how companies are starting to look at individuals during the hiring process and how you can gain an unfair advantage.
At the end of the session, you'll have enough material and ideas to immediately make an impact on the developer community and your career.
Jeff Van Fleet and John Townsend - Transition from Testing to Leadership.pdfQA or the Highway
This presentation discusses transitioning from testing roles to leadership roles. It provides an overview of common career paths from manual tester to positions like test lead, test automation engineer, test manager, and quality assurance analyst. It encourages attendees to learn, apply, and share knowledge; look for opportunities to contribute and suggest improvements; and work with their manager to create a development plan. The presentation emphasizes that leadership opportunities exist in everyday work and recommends books on leadership and culture improvement.
An introduction to the most popular social media tools today: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, local search, and online review sites. Learn what you use each one for to promote your business.
The document discusses social selling best practices on LinkedIn. It recommends researching prospects, participating in groups, and building a network to raise your visibility and create sales opportunities. It emphasizes using your LinkedIn profile and status updates to promote your brand, network, company, and industry news in order to establish yourself as a trusted advisor. Maintaining relationships and elevating your reputation online are key aspects of social selling.
The document discusses the balance between style and substance in visual design. It provides examples of designs that are either too focused on style over substance or vice versa. Effective design considers the needs and expectations of the intended users across different platforms and devices. Both style and content are important, but the priority should be meeting users' needs in an intuitive, credible way rather than just following current trends or the designer's vision.
What To Do When You Can't Do Anything - SEO Soft Skills - Clarity '14Keith Goode
In addition to needing to be analytics junkies, excel pros, and technical wizards, SEOs need to have another skill to get their business requirements implemented - soft skills. In this presentation, given at #Clarity14 on September 25, 2014, in Austin, Texas, Keith Goode discusses how to change your perspective after having lost funding or resources.
SEO Soft Skills
What to do when you can’t do anything
Disclaimer Notice
Protection: The ideas and statements in this presentation do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Dell Inc. but are based on my personal experience in the SEO Industry.
The Challenge
Beyond Technical, Beyond Content
External Challenges
The Continual Evolution of SEO
What was acceptable is now unacceptable
Unnatural Link Building
Keyword Stuffing
Flat Content
Inauthentic Social Participation
The SEO’s list of effective activities are being eroded
Reacting to These Challenges
Choose Your Response Wisely
You can cry about it
You can spend hours, days, weeks, and months commiserating with your fellow cryba-, err, SEOs
Or, you can accept that all roles evolve, and yours is no different
All Roles Evolve
In Ancient Rome, a trip to the barber was a daily habit, just as a trip to the public baths
In the Middle Ages, a barber’s responsibilities included:
Surgery
Dentistry
Leeching
Bleeding
Enemas O_o
A Modern Example of an Evolving Role
Internal Challenges
The Other Part of Your Job Description
Budgets, Resources and Priorities
The larger the organization, the larger the pie, but …
Competition for pieces of the pie increase
You can’t always get what you want…
It’s not personal
It’s not malicious
Reacting to These Challenges
Choose Your Response Wisely
You can cry about it
You can spend hours, days, weeks, and months commiserating with your fellow cryba-, err, employees
Or…
You can look for opportunities outside of the standard approach
SEO Job Description – Is something Missing?
I Hate to use the Phrase “Back in My Day…,” but…
Back in my day…
Soft skills were a must
Ability to collaborate was seen as fundamental
The Solution
Use those Soft Skills
Democratization of SEO
SEO embedded into the fabric of your organization
Brown Bag Lunches
Training Programs
Search Certification
The people you train can advocate for you
Build Alliances, Gain Advocates
The Guide to Kickstarter and CrowdfundingDashBurst
Have you ever had a dream you’ve always wanted to work on but couldn’t ever dedicate enough time to do it? Kickstarter is a great crowdfunding site that can help turn your favorite hobby into a profession. So how can you create a successful Kickstarter campaign for your next big project?
http://dashburst.com/infographic/how-to-create-a-successful-kickstarter/
Jeff Van Fleet and John Townsend - Transition from Testing to Leadership.pdfQA or the Highway
This presentation discusses transitioning from testing roles to leadership roles. It provides an overview of common career paths from manual tester to positions like test lead, test automation engineer, test manager, and quality assurance analyst. It encourages attendees to learn, apply, and share knowledge; look for opportunities to contribute and suggest improvements; and work with their manager to create a development plan. The presentation emphasizes that leadership opportunities exist in everyday work and recommends books on leadership and culture improvement.
An introduction to the most popular social media tools today: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, local search, and online review sites. Learn what you use each one for to promote your business.
The document discusses social selling best practices on LinkedIn. It recommends researching prospects, participating in groups, and building a network to raise your visibility and create sales opportunities. It emphasizes using your LinkedIn profile and status updates to promote your brand, network, company, and industry news in order to establish yourself as a trusted advisor. Maintaining relationships and elevating your reputation online are key aspects of social selling.
The document discusses the balance between style and substance in visual design. It provides examples of designs that are either too focused on style over substance or vice versa. Effective design considers the needs and expectations of the intended users across different platforms and devices. Both style and content are important, but the priority should be meeting users' needs in an intuitive, credible way rather than just following current trends or the designer's vision.
What To Do When You Can't Do Anything - SEO Soft Skills - Clarity '14Keith Goode
In addition to needing to be analytics junkies, excel pros, and technical wizards, SEOs need to have another skill to get their business requirements implemented - soft skills. In this presentation, given at #Clarity14 on September 25, 2014, in Austin, Texas, Keith Goode discusses how to change your perspective after having lost funding or resources.
SEO Soft Skills
What to do when you can’t do anything
Disclaimer Notice
Protection: The ideas and statements in this presentation do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Dell Inc. but are based on my personal experience in the SEO Industry.
The Challenge
Beyond Technical, Beyond Content
External Challenges
The Continual Evolution of SEO
What was acceptable is now unacceptable
Unnatural Link Building
Keyword Stuffing
Flat Content
Inauthentic Social Participation
The SEO’s list of effective activities are being eroded
Reacting to These Challenges
Choose Your Response Wisely
You can cry about it
You can spend hours, days, weeks, and months commiserating with your fellow cryba-, err, SEOs
Or, you can accept that all roles evolve, and yours is no different
All Roles Evolve
In Ancient Rome, a trip to the barber was a daily habit, just as a trip to the public baths
In the Middle Ages, a barber’s responsibilities included:
Surgery
Dentistry
Leeching
Bleeding
Enemas O_o
A Modern Example of an Evolving Role
Internal Challenges
The Other Part of Your Job Description
Budgets, Resources and Priorities
The larger the organization, the larger the pie, but …
Competition for pieces of the pie increase
You can’t always get what you want…
It’s not personal
It’s not malicious
Reacting to These Challenges
Choose Your Response Wisely
You can cry about it
You can spend hours, days, weeks, and months commiserating with your fellow cryba-, err, employees
Or…
You can look for opportunities outside of the standard approach
SEO Job Description – Is something Missing?
I Hate to use the Phrase “Back in My Day…,” but…
Back in my day…
Soft skills were a must
Ability to collaborate was seen as fundamental
The Solution
Use those Soft Skills
Democratization of SEO
SEO embedded into the fabric of your organization
Brown Bag Lunches
Training Programs
Search Certification
The people you train can advocate for you
Build Alliances, Gain Advocates
The Guide to Kickstarter and CrowdfundingDashBurst
Have you ever had a dream you’ve always wanted to work on but couldn’t ever dedicate enough time to do it? Kickstarter is a great crowdfunding site that can help turn your favorite hobby into a profession. So how can you create a successful Kickstarter campaign for your next big project?
http://dashburst.com/infographic/how-to-create-a-successful-kickstarter/
This document provides guidance on using LinkedIn effectively. It begins with an introduction to LinkedIn, discussing how it can be used to build social capital through weak ties and open professional networks. It then outlines common individual ("me") uses like job searching, marketing and knowledge absorption, as well as relationship-focused ("them") uses like connecting networks and providing recommendations. Finally, it proposes tactics for users at different levels, from basic profile creation to more advanced strategies like targeted relationship building and knowledge dissemination. The overall message is that LinkedIn is a tool for finding and sustaining business relationships by broadening one's network before it is needed.
Best of Both Worlds: How SendGrid's Founder and CEO Work Together to Combine ...SendGrid
Isaac Saldana got started in 2009 with the intention of making email easier for developers and soon found himself running a fast growing company. Faced with all the challenges of running a business, SendGrid’s founder decided to hire a CEO from the outside to run the company so he could continue to focus on the technical challenges of building a great product. Join SendGrid founder Isaac Saldana and CEO Jim Franklin October 31st, 1:30 PM EST as they break down how they found success by making the technical and business sides of the company work together.
CAI - HOA Facebook & Reputation ManagementCharityHisle
This is a modified version of the presentation delivered on August 25th at the CAI of Georgia Tradeshow. Some content, images and slides have been removed.
Rapid Learning Cycles (RLC) is an Agile framework for contexts of high-cost-of-change / high-uncertainty (such as hardware, business development, services, etc). It allows for faster innovation by reducing long feedback loops and promoting knowledge exploration. Next Agents is an affiliate of RLC for the Nordics.
Adobe Express for Nonprofits_TechSoup_1.pdfTechSoup
In this webinar, members learned how to use Adobe Express to do basic design, tips and tricks for social media marketing, and a saw a live demo of how you can do all of this in Adobe Express.
This document discusses 7 tactics for using SlideShare content to dominate a topic: 1) Use visuals like infographics once you go visual, 2) Be the authority on your topic by creating presentations, 3) Use visuals as headlines to grab attention, 4) Optimize SEO for each presentation, 5) Integrate presentations across multiple channels, 6) Repurpose content into new formats, 7) Include presentations as part of every content marketing campaign. Visual content on SlideShare is shown to get more views than text-based content.
Developing Smart Doers Into Smart LeadersBlessingWhite
Slides from Diana Zarnoch's webcast held on Oct 29, 2009 on Leading Technical Professionals: Description
Successful businesses rely on the expertise of highly skilled employees who can be independent, rebellious, intellectually agile and insular. Typically, these smart employees move into leadership roles because of their technical expertise, not their business savvy or people skills. Many fail.
Diana Zarnoch will reveal six characteristics that make expert employees more challenging to lead and present lessons learned in helping new leaders coach and inspire their expert teams to succeed instead of micro-managing them out the door!
The document contains summaries from multiple presentations at the Think Visibility 2013 conference on topics related to search engine optimization (SEO). It discusses strategies for link building, content creation, social media marketing, and using rich snippets to enhance search engine results page (SERP) listings. The speakers provide tips on staying ahead of algorithm changes, diversifying linking practices, focusing on quality over quantity, and using structured data to stand out in search results.
Pyramid Discussion: DevOps Adoption in Large, Slow OrganizationsGene Gotimer
Notes from Pyramid Discussion: DevOps Adoption in Large, Slow Organizations at Agile + DevOps West 2019.
Are you in a large, plodding enterprise that's beginning, in the midst of, or considering a move toward DevOps? Unsure how or even if it will work, but know you have to make a move anyway? Do you want to hear from your peers about how they've managed so far? A pyramid discussion starts as a series of one-on-one conversations between the participants. After each pair hashes out their thoughts with each other, they join another couple to refine their points and hear pros and cons. After a while, those four join with four more, and so on until there is only one discussion, with everyone sharing and discussing. All attendees will get a chance to have their ideas and experiences heard while building on the thoughts and experiences of others. Even if you aren't ready to take over the discussion in a room of peers, you can proceed through the pyramid of smaller debates to get answers to your questions and hear how others are bringing DevOps to a large, slow organization.
The document discusses various topics related to web development such as responsive design, HTML5, and open source software. It questions whether responsive design is truly about screen size or more about context. It also argues that CSS alone cannot account for all the factors like bandwidth, purpose, and context that are needed for responsive design. The document suggests that responsive design requires more than just CSS and needs an information architecture approach. It also discusses issues with images in responsive design and argues that responsive design may lead to bloated mobile pages if not implemented carefully. The document questions whether open source software is truly "free" and whether people have unrealistic expectations about ongoing support and updates without cost. Overall it advocates for a more balanced view of various web technologies and
The document discusses various topics related to web development such as responsive design, HTML5, and open source software. It questions whether responsive design is truly about screen size or more about context. It also argues that CSS alone cannot account for all the factors like bandwidth, purpose, and context that are needed for responsive design. The document suggests that open source software is often expected to be free when in reality development costs money. It advocates that people's time has value and should not be expected for free.
This is the presentaion by Koka Sexton on the use of LinkedIn for Social Selling. The topics covered were personal branding, resume to reputaton and ways to leverage LinkedIn to maintain your relationships.
The document discusses luck, happiness, and building a career. It examines whether Bill Gates was just lucky to be in the right place at the right time or if he was able to perceive and act on opportunities. It also outlines the American Psychological Association's definition of happiness, which includes autonomy, competence, relatedness, and self-esteem. The key aspects of happiness are feeling in control, being able to learn and improve skills through feedback, connecting with others, and having confidence without comparing yourself.
Software Developer Career Unplugged - GeeCon 2013Wojciech Seliga
This is my quite subjective take on various less technical aspects of a software developer career. I delivered this presentation and GeeCon 2013 (video hopefully coming soon) and quite compressed/abridged version at InfoSHARE.
Remarkable Content for AMA New Orleans, Nov 2014David Shephard
From Audit to Revenue – Content Marketing Tips, Tricks & Ideas Discovered, Created and Stolen
The one repeated demand, common to us all, is the cry for more content. More content will solve all ills, right? Sales needs this, customer service wants that, marketing needs more of something else. Balderdash – more web pages or more product data sheets are not the answer. Content marketing is not about volume, it is about having the right content, at the right time, in front of the right audience and connecting with that audience and driving a satisfactory result for you and them. In this presentation we’ll look at what is working for organizations like yours; the tips, tricks and ideas that have changed approaches to content development, tactics, execution and ultimately driven success. From the nitty-gritty of a content audit to what marketers consider effective today, we packed a lot into this American Marketing Association New Orleans lunch on November 20th 2014.
The document discusses the Compass project at Viasat, which aims to improve knowledge sharing and collaboration across the global satellite internet company. It summarizes that knowledge at Viasat is currently tribal and navigation is challenging, leading to the development of Compass to act as a single place to find answers, optimize productivity, and foster an inclusive culture. Compass utilizes a graph database and aims to provide personalized search, recommendations, and social features to connect employees.
Dave Voutila, Sr. Solutions Engineer, Neo4j
Recommendation systems have advanced in recent years, but organizations still grapple with heterogeneous, sparse or insufficient data, as well as problems such as repeated patterns (echo chamber effect). These issues can cause bottlenecks for generating highly-personalized recommendations. At the individual level, personalized recommendations are becoming increasingly relevant to businesses with a large product portfolio and customer base. They are essential for businesses to improve customer satisfaction, resulting in increased revenues, expanded product portfolios, and loyal customers.
Kevinjohn Gallagher's: Emperors new clothes (WordUp Glasgow 2012)kevinjohngallagher
The document discusses responsive design and some of its limitations. It argues that responsive design is really about adapting to mobile rather than different contexts. While the goals of responsive design are good, it cannot truly account for all contexts and instead relies on screen size as a proxy. This leads to problems with things like images. The document concludes that responsive design alone is not enough and that information architecture must also be considered to properly adapt a site for different contexts beyond just screen size.
Joyce M Sullivan, Founder & CEO of SocMediaFin, Inc. shares her "Five Questions - The Story of You", "Reflections - What Matters to You?" and "The Three Circle Exercise" to guide those evaluating what their next move may be in their careers.
This document provides guidance on using LinkedIn effectively. It begins with an introduction to LinkedIn, discussing how it can be used to build social capital through weak ties and open professional networks. It then outlines common individual ("me") uses like job searching, marketing and knowledge absorption, as well as relationship-focused ("them") uses like connecting networks and providing recommendations. Finally, it proposes tactics for users at different levels, from basic profile creation to more advanced strategies like targeted relationship building and knowledge dissemination. The overall message is that LinkedIn is a tool for finding and sustaining business relationships by broadening one's network before it is needed.
Best of Both Worlds: How SendGrid's Founder and CEO Work Together to Combine ...SendGrid
Isaac Saldana got started in 2009 with the intention of making email easier for developers and soon found himself running a fast growing company. Faced with all the challenges of running a business, SendGrid’s founder decided to hire a CEO from the outside to run the company so he could continue to focus on the technical challenges of building a great product. Join SendGrid founder Isaac Saldana and CEO Jim Franklin October 31st, 1:30 PM EST as they break down how they found success by making the technical and business sides of the company work together.
CAI - HOA Facebook & Reputation ManagementCharityHisle
This is a modified version of the presentation delivered on August 25th at the CAI of Georgia Tradeshow. Some content, images and slides have been removed.
Rapid Learning Cycles (RLC) is an Agile framework for contexts of high-cost-of-change / high-uncertainty (such as hardware, business development, services, etc). It allows for faster innovation by reducing long feedback loops and promoting knowledge exploration. Next Agents is an affiliate of RLC for the Nordics.
Adobe Express for Nonprofits_TechSoup_1.pdfTechSoup
In this webinar, members learned how to use Adobe Express to do basic design, tips and tricks for social media marketing, and a saw a live demo of how you can do all of this in Adobe Express.
This document discusses 7 tactics for using SlideShare content to dominate a topic: 1) Use visuals like infographics once you go visual, 2) Be the authority on your topic by creating presentations, 3) Use visuals as headlines to grab attention, 4) Optimize SEO for each presentation, 5) Integrate presentations across multiple channels, 6) Repurpose content into new formats, 7) Include presentations as part of every content marketing campaign. Visual content on SlideShare is shown to get more views than text-based content.
Developing Smart Doers Into Smart LeadersBlessingWhite
Slides from Diana Zarnoch's webcast held on Oct 29, 2009 on Leading Technical Professionals: Description
Successful businesses rely on the expertise of highly skilled employees who can be independent, rebellious, intellectually agile and insular. Typically, these smart employees move into leadership roles because of their technical expertise, not their business savvy or people skills. Many fail.
Diana Zarnoch will reveal six characteristics that make expert employees more challenging to lead and present lessons learned in helping new leaders coach and inspire their expert teams to succeed instead of micro-managing them out the door!
The document contains summaries from multiple presentations at the Think Visibility 2013 conference on topics related to search engine optimization (SEO). It discusses strategies for link building, content creation, social media marketing, and using rich snippets to enhance search engine results page (SERP) listings. The speakers provide tips on staying ahead of algorithm changes, diversifying linking practices, focusing on quality over quantity, and using structured data to stand out in search results.
Pyramid Discussion: DevOps Adoption in Large, Slow OrganizationsGene Gotimer
Notes from Pyramid Discussion: DevOps Adoption in Large, Slow Organizations at Agile + DevOps West 2019.
Are you in a large, plodding enterprise that's beginning, in the midst of, or considering a move toward DevOps? Unsure how or even if it will work, but know you have to make a move anyway? Do you want to hear from your peers about how they've managed so far? A pyramid discussion starts as a series of one-on-one conversations between the participants. After each pair hashes out their thoughts with each other, they join another couple to refine their points and hear pros and cons. After a while, those four join with four more, and so on until there is only one discussion, with everyone sharing and discussing. All attendees will get a chance to have their ideas and experiences heard while building on the thoughts and experiences of others. Even if you aren't ready to take over the discussion in a room of peers, you can proceed through the pyramid of smaller debates to get answers to your questions and hear how others are bringing DevOps to a large, slow organization.
The document discusses various topics related to web development such as responsive design, HTML5, and open source software. It questions whether responsive design is truly about screen size or more about context. It also argues that CSS alone cannot account for all the factors like bandwidth, purpose, and context that are needed for responsive design. The document suggests that responsive design requires more than just CSS and needs an information architecture approach. It also discusses issues with images in responsive design and argues that responsive design may lead to bloated mobile pages if not implemented carefully. The document questions whether open source software is truly "free" and whether people have unrealistic expectations about ongoing support and updates without cost. Overall it advocates for a more balanced view of various web technologies and
The document discusses various topics related to web development such as responsive design, HTML5, and open source software. It questions whether responsive design is truly about screen size or more about context. It also argues that CSS alone cannot account for all the factors like bandwidth, purpose, and context that are needed for responsive design. The document suggests that open source software is often expected to be free when in reality development costs money. It advocates that people's time has value and should not be expected for free.
This is the presentaion by Koka Sexton on the use of LinkedIn for Social Selling. The topics covered were personal branding, resume to reputaton and ways to leverage LinkedIn to maintain your relationships.
The document discusses luck, happiness, and building a career. It examines whether Bill Gates was just lucky to be in the right place at the right time or if he was able to perceive and act on opportunities. It also outlines the American Psychological Association's definition of happiness, which includes autonomy, competence, relatedness, and self-esteem. The key aspects of happiness are feeling in control, being able to learn and improve skills through feedback, connecting with others, and having confidence without comparing yourself.
Software Developer Career Unplugged - GeeCon 2013Wojciech Seliga
This is my quite subjective take on various less technical aspects of a software developer career. I delivered this presentation and GeeCon 2013 (video hopefully coming soon) and quite compressed/abridged version at InfoSHARE.
Remarkable Content for AMA New Orleans, Nov 2014David Shephard
From Audit to Revenue – Content Marketing Tips, Tricks & Ideas Discovered, Created and Stolen
The one repeated demand, common to us all, is the cry for more content. More content will solve all ills, right? Sales needs this, customer service wants that, marketing needs more of something else. Balderdash – more web pages or more product data sheets are not the answer. Content marketing is not about volume, it is about having the right content, at the right time, in front of the right audience and connecting with that audience and driving a satisfactory result for you and them. In this presentation we’ll look at what is working for organizations like yours; the tips, tricks and ideas that have changed approaches to content development, tactics, execution and ultimately driven success. From the nitty-gritty of a content audit to what marketers consider effective today, we packed a lot into this American Marketing Association New Orleans lunch on November 20th 2014.
The document discusses the Compass project at Viasat, which aims to improve knowledge sharing and collaboration across the global satellite internet company. It summarizes that knowledge at Viasat is currently tribal and navigation is challenging, leading to the development of Compass to act as a single place to find answers, optimize productivity, and foster an inclusive culture. Compass utilizes a graph database and aims to provide personalized search, recommendations, and social features to connect employees.
Dave Voutila, Sr. Solutions Engineer, Neo4j
Recommendation systems have advanced in recent years, but organizations still grapple with heterogeneous, sparse or insufficient data, as well as problems such as repeated patterns (echo chamber effect). These issues can cause bottlenecks for generating highly-personalized recommendations. At the individual level, personalized recommendations are becoming increasingly relevant to businesses with a large product portfolio and customer base. They are essential for businesses to improve customer satisfaction, resulting in increased revenues, expanded product portfolios, and loyal customers.
Kevinjohn Gallagher's: Emperors new clothes (WordUp Glasgow 2012)kevinjohngallagher
The document discusses responsive design and some of its limitations. It argues that responsive design is really about adapting to mobile rather than different contexts. While the goals of responsive design are good, it cannot truly account for all contexts and instead relies on screen size as a proxy. This leads to problems with things like images. The document concludes that responsive design alone is not enough and that information architecture must also be considered to properly adapt a site for different contexts beyond just screen size.
Joyce M Sullivan, Founder & CEO of SocMediaFin, Inc. shares her "Five Questions - The Story of You", "Reflections - What Matters to You?" and "The Three Circle Exercise" to guide those evaluating what their next move may be in their careers.
Success is often not achievable without facing and overcoming obstacles along the way. To reach our goals and achieve success, it is important to understand and resolve the obstacles that come in our way.
In this article, we will discuss the various obstacles that hinder success, strategies to overcome them, and examples of individuals who have successfully surmounted their obstacles.
Learnings from Successful Jobs SearchersBruce Bennett
Are you interested to know what actions help in a job search? This webinar is the summary of several individuals who discussed their job search journey for others to follow. You will learn there are common actions that helped them succeed in their quest for gainful employment.
A Guide to a Winning Interview June 2024Bruce Bennett
This webinar is an in-depth review of the interview process. Preparation is a key element to acing an interview. Learn the best approaches from the initial phone screen to the face-to-face meeting with the hiring manager. You will hear great answers to several standard questions, including the dreaded “Tell Me About Yourself”.
In the intricate tapestry of life, connections serve as the vibrant threads that weave together opportunities, experiences, and growth. Whether in personal or professional spheres, the ability to forge meaningful connections opens doors to a multitude of possibilities, propelling individuals toward success and fulfillment.
Eirini is an HR professional with strong passion for technology and semiconductors industry in particular. She started her career as a software recruiter in 2012, and developed an interest for business development, talent enablement and innovation which later got her setting up the concept of Software Community Management in ASML, and to Developer Relations today. She holds a bachelor degree in Lifelong Learning and an MBA specialised in Strategic Human Resources Management. She is a world citizen, having grown up in Greece, she studied and kickstarted her career in The Netherlands and can currently be found in Santa Clara, CA.
We recently hosted the much-anticipated Community Skill Builders Workshop during our June online meeting. This event was a culmination of six months of listening to your feedback and crafting solutions to better support your PMI journey. Here’s a look back at what happened and the exciting developments that emerged from our collaborative efforts.
A Gathering of Minds
We were thrilled to see a diverse group of attendees, including local certified PMI trainers and both new and experienced members eager to contribute their perspectives. The workshop was structured into three dynamic discussion sessions, each led by our dedicated membership advocates.
Key Takeaways and Future Directions
The insights and feedback gathered from these discussions were invaluable. Here are some of the key takeaways and the steps we are taking to address them:
• Enhanced Resource Accessibility: We are working on a new, user-friendly resource page that will make it easier for members to access training materials and real-world application guides.
• Structured Mentorship Program: Plans are underway to launch a mentorship program that will connect members with experienced professionals for guidance and support.
• Increased Networking Opportunities: Expect to see more frequent and varied networking events, both virtual and in-person, to help you build connections and foster a sense of community.
Moving Forward
We are committed to turning your feedback into actionable solutions that enhance your PMI journey. This workshop was just the beginning. By actively participating and sharing your experiences, you have helped shape the future of our Chapter’s offerings.
Thank you to everyone who attended and contributed to the success of the Community Skill Builders Workshop. Your engagement and enthusiasm are what make our Chapter strong and vibrant. Stay tuned for updates on the new initiatives and opportunities to get involved. Together, we are building a community that supports and empowers each other on our PMI journeys.
Stay connected, stay engaged, and let’s continue to grow together!
About PMI Silver Spring Chapter
We are a branch of the Project Management Institute. We offer a platform for project management professionals in Silver Spring, MD, and the DC/Baltimore metro area. Monthly meetings facilitate networking, knowledge sharing, and professional development. For more, visit pmissc.org.
Ok, let’s get started…
First off..Thanks for choosing this talk. This is actually my very first presentation I’ve ever done.
So I also want to remind everyone about the Law of Two Feet. This is a session for beginning developers. So If you’re slowly dozing off because we just had lunch or found a different session, by all means, get up and head to the next session. I won’t be upset…I may cry a little bit, but I’ll be fine.
So who am I?
My name is Jonathan Danylko, most call me JD and I’ve been a Principal Software engineer for Insight for 3 years, 4 in May.
I’m originally from Erie, PA and I’ve been a developer since I got my Commodore VIC-20 when I was 11.
When I got my first corporate job in Erie, I turned into a Web Developer in 1994.
In 1999, I got a job opportunity in Columbus, OH and moved my family down there. I’ve been living there ever since.
Enough about me…let’s talk about how to stand out from other developers.
So what exactly are companies looking for?
Have you ever seen those ridiculous ads for an entry level person?
Someone who knows JavaScript…
Oh, they have some old school PERL applications…
And finally…what you were originally hired for…C#.
Notice I didn’t add VB?
So what can make you marketable?
Technology Skills – the reason I say technology skills is because of this one story (actually, two).True Story: A candidate who was on a remote call and kept leaning over to get answers asked by the interviewer.True Story: Person A was interviewed remotely, passed, and accepted the position. Person B who wasn’t even interviewed walked in the front door on the first day trying to impersonate Person A.
Adaptability – Eager to learn; receptive to new opportunities; trend-flexibleTrue Story: One reader emailed me and asked ‘In your experience, have you ever been frustrated/stuck/demotivated while learning a new technology or language? All.The.Time.
Problem-solving skills – While it’s good to have the programming skills, it’s even better to take your learning further with SOLID principles and Design Patterns.True Story: I was chatting with a developer who was in the industry for a number of years (13) and an older gentleman and I asked them what kind of design pattern do they use the most? They asked what’s a design pattern.
Passionate – If you are the type of person who is eating dinner and you drop your fork unexpectedly because you JUST figured out how to fix a bug, you might be a developer.
The fox uses many strategies to try to catch the hedgehog. It sneaks, pounces, races, and plays dead. And yet, every time, it walks away defeated, its tender nose pricked by spines. The fox never learns that the hedgehog knows how to do one big thing perfectly: defend itself.
A Philosopher named Isaiah Berlin took this parable and applied it to the modern world in his 1953 essay, "The Hedgehog and the Fox." Berlin divided people into two groups: foxes and hedgehogs. He argued that the foxes pursue many goals and interests at the same time. As a result, their thinking is scattered and unfocused, and ultimately they achieve very little. Hedgehogs, however, simplify the world and focus on a single, overarching vision, which they then achieve.
Collins argued that organizations will more likely succeed if they can identify the one thing that they do best – their "Hedgehog Concept.“
My point here is while a company may be looking for someone with a ton of skills (a fox), sometimes it's best to be an expert in maybe 1 or 2 topics and dig into everything dealing with those 1 or two topics. Always know two skills
Smart companies advertise a job with “recommended, but not required” or “optional” next to the skill which could be a learning opportunity.
While Mr. Collins looked at this concept from an organizational level, I feel it's best to look at it from a personal level. Determine if you are a hedgehog or a fox.
The best thing you can do when trying to advance your career is to build a website for a client..
LonelyPlanet.com
LonelyPlanet.com
1. “but JD, I don’t know…this seems like a lot of work.” This is your job. Creating a simple blog could be done in a weekend.
If you are a web developer, we are now in the age of being able to build whatever you can think of.
2. What happens when Twitter DOES go under? We already had Google+ take a nose dive! This assures your friends will always know where you are.
3. Ability to expand your site. You have a lot of contacts on LinkedIn, create a job board. You want to write a book? Create a section of PDF downloads of content you wrote.
4. This is your homebase. Your base of operations. YOUR website! The idea is to have a centralized location for everything <say a person’s name in the audience>. BOB wrote this fabulous post and you need to see it!
5. When an employer asks you, what did you use? WordPress? Orchard? No, I built it myself…complete with unit tests, containers, and DevOps pipeline.
Now that your site is up, let’s talk about the elephant in the room…Blogging
It’s always good to blog.
A blog is essentially an online journal you are sharing with the world. If you did something extraordinary, write about it and share it. You’d be surprised how many people may be looking for the same thing.
Don’t talk about what happened at the bar last night (unless you had a beer during Codemash triggering a programming eureka moment)
Try to set a schedule of when your content will appear for your readers.
Guest posting on another blog can do wonders and you’d be surprised what it leads to (Story about C# Advent leading to a book)
It may be scary, but trust me…it’s worth it. Just be yourself and hit Publish. Take the leap and ask what can I share with experts?
Started blogging, guest posted on other sites, received an invitation to guest post on the C# Advent Calendar back in 2017, been posting every year, and this year, a publisher saw my guest post on the Calendar and I was asked if I would be interested in writing a book. So now I’m writing a book.
Who knows what this is? Look familiar to anyone?
Remember how I said companies are always looking for problem solvers? I’ll touch on that in a bit, but let me explain code katas.
That was a refactoring Code Kata called the Gilded Rose.
It shows you a simple “sawtooth-if” and you have to refactor it.
.
.
EVERYONE has a different way of solving these exercises so everyone’s solution may be different. Code katas keep you writing code and thinking of different ways to solve problems.
Why are code katas important to advance your career?
True Story: A person in New Zealand emailed me and asked me to look at a code sample a company gave him to solve.
I looked at the code and started to laugh. It was the Supermarket Checkout code kata.
The whole idea of a code kata is to think for yourself and try to solve it based on your experience.
Some companies are beginning to use code katas during the interview process.
Another way to advance your career is to compete against other coders online and become a top coder among your peers.
Competing is fun to see what other devs come up with as a solution to easy problems.
Why?
It’s always good to have a badge referring to you as a top developer on a site.
There have been times when someone left the company and made a mess of code when they left. Ever heard of “Security Through Obscurity?” They thought if they wrote code no one would understand, they would keep their job. WRONG!
Sometimes it’s good to be an evil scientist.
If you have a personal project only you use in private, this is a great candidate for learning new technologies and bounce new ideas off the wall.
Two examples:
My personal project was originally written in Classic ASP in 1998. Then ASP.NET C#/WebForms. Then ASP.NET MVC. Then ASP.NET Core. Now, ASP.NET 6.
To build off of that, Scott Hanselman gave a GREAT session on SignalR at Codemash about 8 years ago (I think) and I immediately went back to my room and started experimenting with it in my own project.
Once it’s working, guess what you did?...wrote a blog post about the experience/things you learned/share with your readers.
Another great way to advance your career is to contribute or create an open-source project.
It exposes you to new code techniques and utilize the language in different ways.
There are so many open-source projects out there running in production, it’s crazy.
They say that there aren’t any more original ideas because they’re all taken.
If you feel like your project isn’t good enough, just remember this…Google wanted to enter the search engine industry in 1998. Search engines already existed at the time, but they figured out a way to make it better through algorithms. Patented. Algorithms. (Page Rank).
Creating an open-source project for the community is a great opportunity for most.
What could be better than putting an open-source project on your resume that 15 Fortune 500 companies are using on a daily basis?
In the long run, it’s all about the community.
(at the end)
Do you notice anything about this list?
I’m not referring to any language in this list.
I’m not referring to C#, Rust, JavaScript…nothing.
Yes, Companies are interested in what technical skills you bring to the table, but they are also interested in how you apply those skills OUTSIDE of work as well.
*I* do not have a life.
Remember how I mentioned passion and loving what you do?
This is a PARTIAL list of things you can do.
This is mostly career advice and can pertain to any one of you in this room.
You can do one of these items or all of them. Your choice.
You hold the key to becoming awesome. It’s just a matter of your ambition level.
With that, I look forward to using your open-source project on GitHub!
Thank you!
What are other things people have done to help their careers?
Show your personal website (if you have enough time)