my wider resume

... you're looking at it.

It's the entire collection of material I've been posting here. It's not mere writing, it shows a way of thinking (consistent?) that a standard resume won't show. Anyone working with me or who I am working for can expect I'd want to implement the ideas outlined here during the partnership, so they'll be well informed when choosing if they want such a partnership. It's a solid step to openness.

It's my contributions to software in general: code snippets, reviews, technical HOWTO-s, quality assurance, coding for fun and contribution to OSS, and they are all linked to from here, each with its own story.

And it's fueled by contributing. There are still many other ways of contributing that I can think of: writing a full blown article for an IT magazine, registering as a speaker to a software conference, giving a speech at your local university, creating and maintaining a product or website.

Is this worth the effort? Probably not if it's an effort and there is no fun in it. But if it _is_ fun, then this is a step forward for you who want to play in a higher league.

You could be invited to join a company and not apply to join one, you could have a discussion partner and not an interviewer in front of you, it could be a dialog like We heard about you and appreciate your work versus an interview like Please tell us about yourself and your last 5 professional years; then it would continue with We are perfectly aware that someone with your capabilities can help us ... compared with We'll continue with a short list of 10 questions.

Now, tell me, is it worth the effort?

your career

This read is an interesting way to start your morning ... made me think.

If you stopped doing it at a certain moment, or had never done it, start (re)investing in your career. Investing needs efficiency, and efficiency brings time into equation. Your time is limited, so be picky about what you keep in your list of blogs. Focusing on ticking as many New blog read boxes as possible is not a metric to base your career development on.

So stick to good blogs.

me and my blog

Run my blog through Typealizer and you'll get

Do some research on the personality types and you'll stumble upon these pages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISTP_(personality_type), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator.

Reflect a bit and you'll see you've learned something new today.

Feel Happy!

have you changed your mind?

If you want to build a reputation, and you're using a blog to help you, then you'd better post things that you have some strong opinions on. You don't want to magnificently build a case over time just to ruin it with one single later post.

If this still happens, you can always blame it on time ... things changed, ... you got smarter.

good blogs

We are talking every day of specialization as a mean of making our work more efficient, still I am always appreciating non-programming skills like GUI design and marketing (just to name a few) in programmers. If you accept this idea, then this post is for you.

If you also accept the idea that the blogs you read are an extremely valuable source of such information, here are a few advices for you to arrive at just that critical mass of blogs in your reading list, realize that the ROI here should be good content in little time.

Set a threshold of how much reading you'll do every day, it might be 20 or 30 minutes. Do not allow blog reading to take up more than that, getting things done is more important.

If there are no blogs on your reading list, you should know at least one name that sounds like making a big difference in the industry. Look up his/her blog and start from there. Other colleagues in the company that have the hacker reputation could help with a few URLs.

Read regularly and yes, make exceptions, you don't have to do it every day.

Find a decent RSS reader to aggregate your blogs. They come in 2 flavors: as a desktop or a web application. You'll only know what suits you after a few months of reading. I switched to Google Reader now for the main reason that it has a centralized database that keeps older posts in the history, no longer available through the current RSS feeds.

Look for blogs that have these characteristics:

They are inspiring. They don't let you forget that you do this job for fun also and not only to make a living.

They make your brain do unthinkable connections between old stuff and the new stuff that you are reading. They are filling in the gaps.

New ideas are born into your brain. It might be a new software you could write or how you could improve the development process of your team.

When you read them, time flies by. You are bothered by that Outlook popup reminder that you have a meeting in 15, 5, oops, you're late.

They contain links to other good blogs, book titles and good software, so your reading list grows.

They just feel smart - no need to comment on this.

your personal blog

There are 2 things a personal blog can do for you .... er ....actually only 1, cause the 2nd I thought about was to leave you how you are, i.e. unnoticed - which is not actually acting upon yourself.

The 1st one is to make your voice, opinions, ideas, comments, protests known. And if they are really good, depending on the audience, you'll be more marketable, you will gain respect from the community and (this is the thing I hope) the mere writing will teach you how to write well - you are no longer writing for yourself you see, but for a wider audience.

So there are a couple of things you need to figure out when you start a blog:

• the URL: despite what you are thinking, this is not important. It is the content that matters, so if you are looking for a smart name for the URL, stop, find one that is close enough to your name (and it is not stupid), and instead think of a smart name for your blog title

• blog title: it has to be short and smart, so if you are not a native English speaker (like myself), ask for a review from an English friend

• personal description: it has to say something meaningful about yourself and be ... smart

Once you've got these, the only thing missing is the content, which believe me is the most important. People won't find you by trying out various URLs, they will still continue to search the Internet on their favorite topics - good for you if your blog posts score high. And make sure that your name is displayed on every page (i.e. part of the content), so that people searching for your name have higher chances of seeing a link to your blog within the first search results.

The good thing is that if the content is bad it won't do yourself any harm (embarrassment not counted), it will only leave you in the dark. But you've been there already right?