You are here: Home / 2009 / Archives for March 2009

Do you solve your problem or wait for someone else?

March 30, 2009 By 1 Comment

I think there are two kinds of people out there:

1. Those who find a problem and wait for someone else to find the solution, and
2. Those who discovers a problem and decide to fix it.

This is not necessarily something that people are born to do or that they choice to do. It might as well be a combination, or other factors that turn people into one of these kinds.

Someone might think that he/she can’t find a solution and therefore choice not to try. Someone else might have an idea but doesn’t know how to execute it?

Or perhaps you never even though about the fact that you could be the one solving the problem?

The reasons to not solve the problem yourself are many. If nothing else, it is usually easier to leave it up to someone else.

The people who do work to solve the problems what I view as entrepreneurs. To me being an entrepreneurs does not mean that you have to have started companies to organization. For me an entrepreneur is a problem solver.

There are different kinds of entrepreneurs, but according to me, all people who take initiative and make sure to find solutions are entrepreneurs. It might be as small as finding a piece of information that was almost impossible to find, and share it with someone else? Or as big as inventing something new?

An entrepreneur can never let a problem stay a problem, at least not without sharing it with someone else.

Who are you?

Filed Under: Career development Tagged With: , ,

Pick a path and stick with it!

March 29, 2009 By 2 Comments

I have been looking at different career alternatives recently as I am leaving my temporary position in Washington D.C. in the end of April. Thinking about the different opportunities I have, and how they might affect my career I began comparing it with marketing. It’s kind of like choosing your niche.

I can either focus on a very small segment and become an expert of it or I can choose to not take a niche and try to do everything. If I chose to become and expert I will work to become the first choice in my area and the one you ask for expertise. That might close a few doors but it might also open a lot of others. If I don’t choice a niche can be a somewhat good at a lot of things, but rarely the one that is needed for a specific task.

Thinking about it like this make me realise the difference, in my perspective it is more about what I do than where I do it. Thus in if I was a business I would rather focus on service than location.

I would not say that it is a bad thing to keep doors open when you are choosing your career, but if you do, you have to explain to yourself why you keep them open. Trying to apply for jobs in all different fields just because you are afraid that you wont get a job in your preferred category, might actually make things harder. Think about it, if you write 10 applications for the same kind of position, I think the last letter will be a lot better than the last of ten for different kind of jobs. You cannot be good at everything, so pick your path.

For me I have realised what I want to do, but don’t have a big preference on where to do it. Preferably I would stay in D.C. but as long as I am working with the things I like, I think I could work from anywhere around the world. You might not be that flexible, but have some desire to try a new position in you industry or work category, and that might be enough. You are sticking to what you know and are profiling yourself as got at that.

My guess is that this is mostly a problem for younger people with less experience. Since we don’t have a ton of experience in anything, it is easier for us to try to do something else just because there might be a possibility there even though it is not what we want to do. I don’t believe in that kind of thinking even though I am tempted to. Stick to what you want to do even in hard times and you will reach your goals!

Filed Under: Career development Tagged With: , ,

My peers are not on Twitter, so who are?

March 28, 2009 By 7 Comments

Yesterday, during a seminar with my fellow students in D.C, I was asked to explain what Twitter was. As chocking as it might seem most of my peers have heard about the site but neither of them had used it. To be honest I have not been a frequent user of Twitter myself until recently, but not because I did not knew what it what, but because I was Twittering so much for clients that I felt that I did not have time to Twitter for my self. That might sound ironic considering that it does not take to much time so send away a Tweet.

Anyway, I began by explaining that Twitter was a micro blog that allows you to post messages of 140 characters etc. Apparently, explaining what is was, and the technique with followers and following was not enough. The questions continued; what do you write about? Who do you follow? Why do you follow them? Why don’t you just use Facebook?

I was a bit overwhelmed by all questions, so I began by telling them that people use Twitter for different reasons. To me it is a way to share information about social media and my other interests, while receiving a constant information flow about the same subjects from others. I told them that I do follow many of my friends and colleagues. But it is also a great way to stay updated with information from industry leaders. People that can share a lot of knowledge from their experiences to others.

Though I have a very clear picture of why I use Twitter and have convinced many others to start using Twitter, many of my peers continued to be critical. Some of them feel a bit “old fashion” as they see Twitter primarily as a playground and not “real” work. That might be true, but as long as we share information and learn from our “playtime” why not take advantage from the benefits that Twitter gives us?

Perhaps I’m biased considering the fact that I work with Social Media and therefore of course most of the people in my industry is on Twitter. However, a few hours ago I had a conversation with my friend @HaileyBranson (of course I need to promote her on Twitter) a journalist for multiple newspapers around the country. She told me that many congress employees are following her on Twitter to stay updates with the news she share. She has also spread the word about the advantages of Twitter to her co-workers around the country whom are now also beginning to use Twitter as a communication tool. So after all, Twitter might be something for everyone.

This has made me thinking about who is online where and for what reason? My friends seem to think that Twitter is for teenagers that are bored while I mostly communicate with the opposite, older businesswomen and men with successful careers. How do we know before we try?

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

When do you say that you know something?

March 26, 2009 By 2 Comments

Ok, so the subject might have been a little vague, hopefully I will get my point clear.

When I am applying for a job and am writing my resume, I always think about my skills. Because that is what people what to know about, what can you do? At least that was the first thing I heard when I moved to Washington D.C.

Anyway, when I’m listing my skills, I often have a difficult time deciding if I can say that I really know something. What makes me know, that I have enough knowledge about something, that I can actually say that I know it?

To give you an example; I have been coding websites since I was in Junior High, I have never actually taken a class in it, and I cannot really put my hand on my exact skill frame. Basically I understand and can make changes to all web-code. However, I don’t know if enough by hart, so that I can code more advanced stuff from scratch. Does that mean that I know how to program websites? Can I put that on my resume? (Btw, I did not program this blog)

When I’m surfing the web and find very simple websites, I sometimes see if I can find out who made them. An individual usually does them, they have profiled themselves as a “web designer” and charge to make them. Without doubt, I know a lot more about programming than that. But so far, I have never written that on a resume. I would dare to say that I can code, even though I might be much better about is that many others. Because, I don’t know if I actually know it well enough?

This is just an example, and I am sure that everyone has there own experiences in the issue. But what do you do about them? I usually leave these types of skills out from the actual job application, so that I am sure that the job does not entail me doing it. If they during the interview ask me if I know web design, I can explain the situation.

What do you do? And what do you say? When do you know something?

Filed Under: Annelie's Musings Tagged With: ,

My missing piece in the virtual office

March 25, 2009 By 8 Comments

For those who don’t now this, my office environment is primarily virtual. We have a few meetings in the office every week, and we meet in person with all our local clients. But other than that, most of my time is spend from wherever I happened to be at the moment.

I love working like this, because it’s very flexible and I think that it’s more fun to work like this since many offices are so “grey.” If they weren’t, perhaps I would like that better. Anyway, using cloud computing tools and services such at Google docs, make a virtual environment very easy to work in. We share documents that we are developing together and I can instantly reach any of my co-workers by IM or Skype.

I think that we are communicating even more than if we would be in the office behind close door all the time. At least I feel weird about sending an IM to someone behind the next-door, and even more uncomfortable about the idea to open the closed door. While an IM to the other corner of the city is never weird!

This week, however, I have realised that there is one piece in our office environment that is missing. A good, quick share, visual design tool. We have been working with updating our website during the week, which has been a bit of a struggle with out a tool to show what we are thinking with the changes. You know the saying “A picture says more than a 1000 words.”

Even though we quite often work with developing visual identity we don’t have a tool where we, during a conference call, can easily draw a picture about what we are thinking, while we are talking.

I know that with Skype, you can share the screen and use whatever tool you have on your computer, but these tools are either to basic, or too advanced. Thus, we don’t have tool with an “intermediate” level of tools to quickly “paint the picture.”

Knowing today’s technology, I am sure there are a many great tools out there. So that is why I need your help to share what you are using to solve this issue?

Since we can use shared screen on Skype you don’t even have to work in a virtual office to help me with this.

Filed Under: Annelie's Musings Tagged With: ,

Why have LinkedIn and Facebook if the contacts will overlap?

March 22, 2009 By 11 Comments

Today I read a few posts about the interaction between Twitter and Facebook, now that Facebook have more of a Twitter look. Though I find the discussion interesting, I must say find the problem as significant as others do. Perhaps it’s because I personally never had my Twitter account connected to my Facebook one.

I find the use of Facebook versus LinkedIn much more confusing.

To me Facebook is a place where I can keep updated with old friends and people I meet from all over the world. It is the fun place where we post pictures from weekend activities and create an invitation to an event.

LinkedIn on the other hand is the social media I use to stay connected with old teachers and colleagues. It’s where I add new people that I met on different sorts of professional events. It is my professional phonebook.

Lately when I have meet people at different events that keeps adding me to their Facebook accounts. Surely, I would not ignore anyone to connect to me, but I just find it very confusing. Why do they need to connect to me on Facebook?

I know that some people have created two Facebook accounts, one personal and one professional. Surely, I could do that, but I don’t see the point since most of the functions of Facebook are so much better so use for interaction with personal friends. Versus the more professional features on LinkedIn..

In the same way as I would never create a LinkedIn account to connect to my private friends, I won’t create a Facebook account to connect to my professional contacts.

What do you think about this? Am I the only one who has a problem with this?

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

Scroll or no scroll?

March 21, 2009 By 2 Comments

When I first began programming websites, around the same time as a started heavily using internet, I was told that a front page should never have a scroll. At that time, I bought everything I was told about developing websites. Because my lack of knowledge did not really give me any reason, so distrust this comment. A few weeks ago the statement came up again, I had not though about it for years, and this time a found it a bit absurd.

Let us say that this comment was made about 10 years ago, when people did not have mindset templates on how a website works to the same extent as now. I could see why the comment was valid at that point. No one was forced to try to find something on a website, and of course, by no one I mean people who were still new to the internet. Today with the amount of blogs that are available out there, it is almost weird to open a webpage that does not require a scroll. The though “is that all?” almost comes to my mind thinking about it.

However, I have been online for over a decade. How do people who are just beginning to use the internet think about this? Because, yes, there still are many people out there, who are not using internet and might not even have a computer. If they finally takes the courage to buy a computer, logs on to their internet, find my webpage is so confused that they don’t know what to do. Perhaps it’s a long shot that it would happen. However, my way of using the internet has totally removed all perspective that I might have for how people who might not be frequent internet users interpret a website.

What do they think of a flash page? How do they find what they are searching for online when there is so much information in just one individual website? How do I find these people and ask them?

Filed Under: Web development Tagged With: , ,

Introducing AnnelieNaes.com

March 21, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Finally I have my own domain, in my own name, during the upcoming weeks, I will continue to update and refresh the look of AnnelieNaes.com. In the future, you will be able to read about social media, web 2.0, internet marketing and everything else that I find interesting. My goal is to publish one post every day, so give me some support!

Looking forward to seeing you around.

Filed Under: Annelie's Musings Tagged With: , ,