Living the Core Values

Posted on 09 Mar 12 by vanessa | Permalink 0

I would consider myself pretty well-versed in the job-applicationing process. It takes a lot of time. I’m not just looking for any job–I want a great fit. For each position I look at, I want to understand the business, the mission of the company. What services do they provide? What’s the value to the user/customer that sets them apart from their competitors–what is the most compelling aspect of their offerings? I try to figure that out so I can identify and espouse upon it in my cover letter.

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The99Percent recently interviewed Willy Franzen of OneDayOneJob.com where he talks of his recommended strategies for how to pick the right companies, not just the positions, to apply to. One particular thing that resonated with me was his statement that job-seekers “spend months or even years applying to jobs and they are the same candidate that they were when they started the process.” That is, integral to your job-searching and applying process, which is certainly a waiting-game most of the time, work on gaining new skills or honing existing ones. *Always be getting better* is how I might put it. The hard part is how to balance the focus for that with the researching and applying parts. I have found that you just have to do it. The balance will figure itself out. When you’re not seeing progress on the getting-a-job-front, at least you’re seeing progress on the learning-new-stuff front. And that in itself helps build confidence for great things now, and great things to come. The two biggest resources I’ve been utilizing lately are Codecademy and CodeSchool. My public profiles to show my progress are here (codecademy/codeyear) and here (codeschool). My latest accomplishments include refreshing on my HTML knowledge (and learning new stuff!) and learning CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery. I “Tried Ruby” on CodeSchool in December, and one of my next courses with them is an introduction to Ruby on Rails. I’m super excited. (:

Now to address the title of this post: Living the Core Values. One of the more recent online applications for a company included some “creative thinking questions” after the standard form fare. I really enjoy it when I see something that makes a company stand out during this part of the process. In particular, the inclusion of these questions really shows (1) how important their core values are to them; (2) how important it is to find potential employees who also share them; and (3) inherit to the inclusion of the questions, they are demonstrating accountability to valuing and practicing said core values. Getting to answer these questions showed me that they appreciate and value self awareness, which is a very important aspect of my life. I feel confident that this company would be a good fit for me. The paraphrased application question follows, along with how I answered them. There was a text box for each core value: Open, Engaged, Innovative, and Accountable.

“Our core values help us live our mission, to make [our company] a better place for our Customers to do business and our Colleagues to work. How are you living these values every day?”

  • Open - I make a concerted effort to live my live from a point of openness. I have been practicing Mindfulness for a few years now and have experienced the open space it allows for creativity to flow freely without the burden of the proud or neurotic ego’s jamming the air with its own agenda. With those thoughts quelled, I can live freely and openly in the *Present*, allowing of possibilities from a place of non-judgment, non-reactivity, and non-attachment. I also employ techniques from Marshall B. Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication (NVC) book on how to empathically communicate with others.
  • Engaged - I read about technology, startups, psychology, human behavior, effective communication techniques, design, and others’ insights on these things. I share that information with others in effort to engage with others in the conversation or participation of that material.
  • Innovative - Out of my interests in startups (the R&D of business!), I signed up for Twitter and organically grew sources of information to read and share.  From there I’ve found out about new startups and beta tests –so I’ll sign up for those so I can provide feedback about the user experience both for the fun of it and as a networking opportunity.
  • Accountable - Inherent to the network of people I have built, friends and colleagues know what I am up to. I make a point to surround myself with people who want to see good in my life who also value that same sentiment I share for them.  Ultimately I am accountable to myself–to upholding my personal mission to live my life according to the two things that bring me joy in this world: (1) learning about anything and everything, particularly technology and people; and (2) sharing that information with others in whatever form or means I can to help them. One of the ways I do that is through sharing information online through Twitter, which doubles as a public record of accountability.

 

 

article commentary, awareness, business, entrepreneurship, leadership, start-ups

Health of the Talent is Health of the (Small) Business

Posted on 27 Jul 11 by vanessa | Permalink 0

This alternative take on the untimely death of young British performer Amy Winehouse definitely makes an interesting point, one which really hit me hard. I agree with the author that artists and performers really are like small businesses, with particular emphasis on the fact that they are both the “talent” and the “product”. This distinction is important because for other types of small businesses, you’re the talent that develops the final product. But in both cases, if you are not taking care of your health, you will not be able to perform effectively in your small business. Sure, if you’re not self-employed but a member of a small-business, you might be able to lean on other team members for a spell. (Hey, we all get sick!) But if you are the leader of that organization, you certainly have different standards to hold yourself to in the long-run, or you risk losing your talent.

This is just too great a final recommendation from the article, “You need to train for it. Moreover you need to maintain your own health and fitness first because if you are at the core of the business. You are the brand. Start eating healthily, stop scrimping on sleep and start going to the gym.”

business, entrepreneurship, Fitness, Health, leadership, start-ups, women

Free Work

Posted on 06 Jun 11 by vanessa | Permalink 0
nomNom*Blackberries*NomNom

First flush of blackberries in my garden, 1Jun11. And yes, I totally ate some of the darker ones after this picture. (:

Over the weekend I attended the 1st SD Mobile App Hackathon to meet people and see what was going on. I got to talk to some very awesome people, and I’m very glad I went! (:

And while sharing my experiences with one of my good friends, he linked me to this TEDxCMU talk, Charlie Hoen on “A New Way to Work”. The speaker shares a bit about himself to motivate recession-proofing your career by offering “free work” as a new way to launch your career out of college. He outlines six steps to offer your “high demand and difficult to learn” marketable skills as “free work” for a period of time in order to establish rapport with essentially anyone, in order to build connections and transition to paid work at a later time. Hoen closes his presentation with a question that I think is important to ask at various points in your life, to help put things in perspective, “What’s the worse that could happen?”

I would personally like to add that in order to throw out the proverbial life-checkboxes Hoen mentions, one must develop a strong sense of becoming “comfortable being uncomfortable”. This skill took me a while to develop during this past year, but it is invaluable and truly freeing. Throw out the ideas of how you think your life is going to be, because there really is no guarantee for that. I’ve talked with a handful of people who when faced with the realization that the path they had their hearts set on was not going to materialize for very real reasons (e.g. serious injury to leg during elite military service training, which would prevent one from becoming a member of said team), suddenly found themselves with a crisis of conscience so to speak. You find yourself groundless and scrambling for some footing. It’s uneasy and uncomfortable. What’s great about times like this is that you can use them as a source of developing strength. And from there may stem becoming comfortable being uncomfortable.

business, entrepreneurship, mobile applications, Presentations, start-ups

The Mobile Education: Online Courses, Study Aides, and Mobile Applications

Posted on 23 May 11 by vanessa | Permalink 0

Article: Apps make college easier to access from USAToday.com 13May11

This article covers a few online universities that have started offering access to and interactivity with their content via mobile apps (rather than just a desktop computer with an internet connection) for those students who want access while “on the go.”  Educational mobile application software can also be used as a supplement to (or in lieu of, e.g. frog dissection) in-course material. The article finishes with a critique of one university’s materials. I agree that not all material could directly translate to the mobile platform with a smaller screen, etc. There are certain things (in this case, reading of the “classics”) that probably are not best consumed via tiny screen. I see the benefit of using as a review tool or study aide, though.

Article: Mobile apps make it easier to go green from USAToday.com 12May11

This article covers a handful of mobile apps developed to educate and increase the awareness of “how green” your life is: The Green Genie, GoodGuide, Green Fuel, MeterRead, Light Bulb Finder, Green Outlet, Green Gas Saver, Find Green, Green Me, Green Charging, Get me Green. Some of these are “interactive” to help you change your own habits or observe things in your environment, while others are tips/hints on how to “go green.” I like the quote from one of the developers regarding making learning fun by adding “game” elements.

Article:  Brainscape‘s (start-up) digital flashcards app, from Mashable.

Rather than simply mimicking the functionality tangible paper flashcards, the creator of Brainscape did a study with 10 college students to inform the user interface design and how the user would interact with the digital flashcards. Brainscape also allows users to make their own flashcards with their technology.

Article: Top 8 Android Apps for Education, from Mashable 12May11

A review of education apps available for Android from a few different fields, complete with screenshots: Celeste (astronomy); Algebra Tutor (math); CueBrain (language learning); Wikipedia (encyclopedia); MapMaster (geography); Sight Read Music Quiz 4 Piano (music); Flash Card Maker Pro (study aid); and Kindle for Android (e-reader).

Article: Four Ways Mobile Tech is Improving Education, from Mashable 4May11

A review and discussion of four ways that mobile technologies could enhance or augment education in the future.

  • Inquiry-based learning: “… faculty [at Abilene Christian University] refer to as “mobile-enhanced inquiry-based learning” — combining mobile phones and a learning theory that teaches through experimentation and questioning.”
  • Flipping the classroom:students watch a recorded lecture at an earlier time, which reserves course meeting time for interacting with students.
  • Reinventing the textbook: “The result thus far is BioBook [Macosko, Wake Forest University], a device-agnostic, peer-written, node-driven text. In other words, it’s like Wikipedia on steroids.” I like that this part of the article references the book “How People Learn“, which I own and have been reading. This idea of a “device-agnostic” and “node-driven” is very interesting!
  • Teaching hard-to-reach communities: In developing countries, people are more apt to have mobile technologies connected to the Internet rather than a standalone device that is connected via broadband.

Bridgepoint Education is a San Diego based company that owns Ashford University and University of the Rockies, with accredited programs that offer online education access.

I got a spam email to my university account today from StudyBlue, which announced their free note card and flash card applications (they offer more than that though). It has both free and premium account access options.

Android, article commentary, awareness, business, education, iPhone, mobile applications, start-ups, sustainability

Articles on the Lack of Women in Science and Startups

Posted on 20 May 11 by vanessa | Permalink 0

Where are all the Women Scientists? article from newscientist.com by Becky Oskin

I found this article interesting for a few reasons. It references some studies and surveys that have been done to show not just the numbers of women in sciences at school but also reasons for why they don’t stay in the field after graduating. The “subtle every day instances of bias” that she references are certainly still out there. And it can be hard for them to stand out to you (as a woman) unless you’re consciously aware that they could happen. This reminds me of the play I saw a couple of weeks ago, Truth Values: One Girl’s Romp Through MIT’s Male Math Maze written and performed by Gioia De Cari. This was an excellent play, and a lot of the issues that came up for Gioia during graduate school I could certainly relate to.

YC Co-Founder Jessica Livingston On The Dearth Of Women In Tech (And Some Steps To Fix It)

Jessica Livingston is a co-founder of Y-Combinator, a venture fund that provides seed funding for startups. This article links to Jessica’s own article on the topic, but includes some of her comments. Some of the reasons she has identified why women aren’t in startups: (1) not realizing it as a potential avenue of employment (i.e. no awareness or consideration as a possibility); (2) it’s hard to find a co-founder, especially if you don’t have the tech background (how do you pick a good programmer/CTO); and (3) there’s just not enough women in startups to begin with. One of the things she’s doing about it? With her (awesome) startup Grubwithus, she set up a calendar of grubbings to meet with other women with an entrepreneurial streak (in the Bay Area). I wonder if this would catch on for San Diego?? (:

article commentary, business, entrepreneurship, leadership, start-ups, Ubicomp, women

Reflections on “Why Working at a Startup Company Rocks!”

Posted on 18 May 11 by vanessa | Permalink 0

The posting from JPuopolo: Why Working at a Startup Company Rocks!

  • “In startups you rarely get bored doing the same thing. … In both work and leisure time, I like variety, and that is the beauty of startups – you never have a shortage of new things to take on.” I totally agree about liking and enjoying variety in work and leisure time. The “problem” with my variety of hobbies is that the tools and materials take up space. :P
  • “In the summer, business casual is truly business casual.” T-shirts and comfy pants are way more comfortable for sitting at a computer during the day (or night) coding. It was the defacto uniform in undergrad after all, for the computer labs and basements.
  • “Startups are filled with high energy people who love what they do. You need high-energy people in that type of environment because in order to hit crazy deadlines or do something that never has been done you need people who kick ass. … making jokes with obscure references or quotes anything helps to keep the move alive. You need to use that energy to get through crazy hours. Coffee from your local coffee bar will only get you so far.” The making jokes part… also what helped get me through undergrad and grad school courses.  Seriously, all that hard work, you need to break out in to song and dance every once in a while, just to lighten things up a bit, find humor in the hardwork part… even though the hardwork is part of the rush, it’s still… hard work.
  • “Who doesn’t love whiteboards” Exactly! That’s why in the CSE graduate student lounge Chez Bob at UC San Diego, there is the great curved whiteboard wall.
article commentary, business, entrepreneurship, leadership, start-ups

Personal Analytics

Posted on 17 May 11 by vanessa | Permalink 0

What is “personal analytics”? It involves keeping track of numbers and information on yourself. Perhaps later you may make some decision based on those numbers by analyzing the information and examining the trends. I see this as a very special subset of “life logging,” where one records everything in their life for later review.  There are tons of tools already out there to help out with the tracking, the logging, the visualizations… But it’s not just limited to quantifiable items to track (weight, measurements, food), but perhaps hobby items to share with others (knitting, crafts).  Here are a few to whet your appetite:

  • Me-trics Personal Analytics has a beta version out. Look at your own behavior, compare it to others’. After consulting the FAQs, you can see that it’s free.
  • Personalanalytics.org is resource created by a Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) lab members to serve as a hub of information related to the topic. Under the Lab section, you can find a number of peer-reviewed research articles published by the group. On the Home page are a few examples of tools, while there are nearly 200 tools from around the web listed under Tools. Wow. (:
  • A few of the ones I use: Fitbit, MyFitnessPal, Ravelry, Goodreads, Mint. All of these feature free memberships, while some might offer a step-up membership for a fee. With the exception of Mint, all feature some “social” aspect where you can interact with your friends and view their activity (projects uploaded, books finished, etc.).
  • TLCTrakker I found advertised in the back of the May 2011 issue of Whole Living magazine. Membership required.
  • Expensify Keep track of your expenses and receipts while traveling–for your personal interest or for business reasons. Import expenses from your CC or bank statement, snap a picture of your receipts for storage and tie-in to the expense report line, does the map’n'mileage for your motorized land vehicle trips—-then—export in a variety of ways: report, accounting programs like QuickBooks, a generic spreadsheet template, or even their Google App. Oh yeah, do it with your iPhone, Android, or BusinessPhones, too. And if you’re the boss who signed up your company, you can view the “analytics” part to compare expenses between employees. That’s hot! (:
business, FitBit, Fitness, Health, personal analytics, Wearable Computing

Article [Mashable]: 14 Tips for Hiring the Perfect CTO

Posted on 12 May 11 by vanessa | Permalink 0

“14 Tips for Hiring the Perfect CTO” is a really insightful article over at Mashable, written by Scott Gerber. He interviewed a number of “successful young entrepreneurs” on what new start-ups should be looking for in a CTO. This is good stuff to consider for hiring just about anyone, really.

What are the highlights? Here’s my commentary.

  • Major communication skills (being able to talk to  business folks, developers, and customers alike)
  • a passion for technology, “look for curiosity, confidence, fearlessness and an ability to take ownership of failures”
  • owning up to your responsibility for the company’s success and/or failures at the end of the day (you are the technical lead after all);
  • big-picture thinking (the tech vision should align with business vision);
  • creativity coupled with those programming skills (I’ve definitely used the phrase “geek cred” before, haha, reminds me of this: “But you can’t be any geek off the street… you gotta be handy with the steel, if you know what I mean, earn your keep.” -from the movie Young Guns, but also Warren G – Regulate featuring Nate Dogg )
  • Seriously, Number 7 “The Spare Time Test” — that one pretty much nails it. *cough cough* (:
  • Character and integrity — those are such big considerations for anyone you’d hire, really. I see character as “who you present yourself to be to others, where your responses and actions come from (your moral code)”, whereas integrity is “standing on your own feet, owning up to your actions/responsibilities/feelings after the fact”
  • Organization, Execution: Hrm, so “organization” is supposed to come from the “ability to handle the development team”? That’s more about people skills and the team of folks trusting the leader and their vision (having earned their respect or admiration) than cracking a whip, no?  Leadership is about the elocution of your vision such that it inspires others to rally.
  • Previous experience with start-ups: There certainly are many start-ups out there with start-up veterans. So how do those of us just starting out get in to positions of leadership? That’s my question.
  • Cultural fit: does the person’s personality and management styles fit with the rest of the group?
  • The school pedigree: it’s true, that bias is out there.
  • “Will not stop until a solution is found”: isn’t that part of having a passion for the technology or the vision?
  • And the message from the 14th one is reflected in a few of the others. Big picture thinking (product as the result, not mired always in the details of the code), lead/inspire developers…
article commentary, business, entrepreneurship, leadership

Fitbit gets some mainstream press, sends me an email about it

Posted on 30 Apr 11 by vanessa | Permalink 0

So I’ve had my Fitbit for a little over a year now, and I love it. (: When I first found out about it, I was so excited to have my own wearable computing ubicompy low-power fitness-health-inspired souped up pedometer (that doesn’t require the purchase of batteries!!).

I’d been using an Omron HJ-720ITC pedometer for a few years prior, since I liked that I could hook it up to my computer and download the up-to-40 days of stored information to Omron’s health software (that also allows you to export the information into an Excel file). After more than a year or two on the first model, I did have to replace it since it stopped keeping steps accurately (even after changing out the battery). I used my second Omron pedometer for a number of months before my FitBit finally arrived last year (I had been on a waiting list for a few months!).

So over the past year I’ve gotten to see Fitbit update their software offerings on their user website. I love that they provide access to all the basic data captured by the device for free. I must admit I haven’t taken full advantage of everything on the Dashboard or Tracker. I did have a go at logging activities and using their food diary. And since joining they’ve added options to journal about your mood and allergies, complete with a little free space to type out any other personal analytics information. I think it’s really neat that they’ve also added sections to track your Heart Rate, Blood Pressure, and Glucose levels (it’s only natural to extend the logging of that information, no?).

Last January, I started a food diary and exercise log on MyFitnessPal (MFP). My sister joined because they had an iPhone App; she invited me to join so we could do the social-support thing. Logging all of that information definitely kept me motivated and on-task with my health goals. And because they had been around a while, their database of food entries was *much* more extensive than the fledgling version over at Fitbit. But… perhaps that has changed… aesthetically speaking, Fitbit has the win for the Web 2.0 look and UI design.

So back to the title of this entry: Fitbit sent me an email yesterday showing how they were featured on the Martha Stewart show last month. The other news item in the email highlighted improvements to their activity tracking online and recommended a gander at their blog. After doing some scrolling and poking around there are a few awesome things I have discovered to my favorite ubicompy-flower-showing Fitbit:

  • Data Export added to their Premium subscription (which at $50/year is much cheaper than some of the other options I’ve seen out there… that’s $4.16 a month, cheaper than a Neflix subscription!). I love that the company comments on their Premium account main page that “Your data belongs to you. Fitbit will always offer a free account.” Not only is that good business practice, but their ideological stance is in agreement with the internet nerd ethic I’ve “grown up with”.
  • The Fitbit Public API is out there in Beta. Kudos to you Fitbit for encouraging 3rd-party and user development of applications. You are embracing the creativity outside your organization in order to encourage the spread of the use of your product. I know I’m excited about it, as one of your existing users… who also happens to have the skills and interest to come up with something. (:
  • Fitbit has a mobile site now for your smart phones and other devices. This makes logging and tracking on-the-go a bit easier since the UI will adapt to your device.
Embedded Systems, FitBit, Fitness, Health, personal analytics, Programming, Ubicomp, Wearable Computing

The Netduino and .NET Micro Framework

Posted on 30 Apr 11 by vanessa | Permalink 0

Hobbyist embedded systems development platforms are awesome, no? How about one brought to you by Secret Labs LLC released last year based on the .NET Micro Framework, an Open Source .NET platform?

It is the Netduino, and the hope is to encourage both developers already accustomed to desktop .NET programming and newcomers to embedded system development an experience that is “easier, faster, and less expensive by giving embedded developers access to the modern technologies and tools used by desktop application developers.” [wikipedia: .NET Micro Framework]  The board itself is “pin-compatible” with the Arduino shields available, but you might have to install some drivers to get some of them working with your Netduino.

Arduino, Embedded Systems, netduino, Programming, Ubicomp