ResearchGoddess

The next date we’ll be co-working is Wednesday, May 13th. Check out the Jelly Cincinnati Wiki page - we’ll post updates there as well as having event registration available through Eventbrite.

Join other Cincinnati area telecommuters for a day of working in a collaborative environment. We’ll meet at Crossroads Community Church – the church graciously offers free wifi and coffee during the week for the local community. The idea here is to have folks who work in many different job functions working together in an open environment. The expectation is that creative juices will flow and new friendships will be forged. Hope to see you there!

Register to attend the Jelly Cincinnati Tweetup here.

When: Wednesday, May 13th
Where: Crossroads Community Church
3500 Madison Rd.
Cincinnati, OH 45209

Last month I was invited to do a guest lecture for Dr. Kaye Sweetser‘s PR Writing class at the University of Georgia. Dr. Sweetser, better known on Twitter as @kaye, and I became acquainted because of our common interests in PR and the Florida Gators. (we are both alums!) She asked me if I’d be interested in doing a virtual guest lecture on writing a good resume, utilizing Skype, and I jumped at the opportunity. The students were engaging and they spent some time following the presentation asking great questions about online presence, resume writing, and PR in general. Here are some of the highlights that Dr. Sweetser pulled together.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMQWHR1AkPA]

Today it seems like we are always talking about presence. Whether it’s improving our online presence, or simply having one, there is all sorts of chatter around being present and being engaged. But are we REALLY present? I think something is getting brushed to the side. Something that is really more important than having an online presence. And that’s having presence when you’re actually present. Sound confusing? It shouldn’t. What I’m talking about is being there when you’re with people. In person. Being present when you’re in the company of others.

Picture this: You’ve developed a great relationship with a professional colleague. Perhaps you discovered each other through a LinkedIn connection, or you followed each other on Twitter. You eventually find yourself at a party, or a networking event, or somewhere in a social setting together. (This, by the way, is one of my most important pieces of advice in developing relationships – taking online relationships offline at some point.) However, your colleague can’t stop checking their phone, or is constantly sending texts while you’re hanging out. Even though you know (or at least you think you know) that they’re probably important things, you can’t help but feel a little devalued. After all, this is right here, right now. Whatever is going on in their email/texts/etc. isn’t in person. Even if just a little bit, it makes you feel like your company is less important.

Everyone has been in this situation at some point in the last couple of years. And sadly, many of us (myself included) have CAUSED this situation as well. We can’t put our phones or PDAs away for even a couple of hours to spend in-person time with our professional colleagues, and often even our friends and family. This isn’t being present. And it’s negatively affecting our relationships.

A few months ago, I wrote a post called A Breakdown In Communication. To date, it’s one of the most frequently visited posts on my blog. This tells me that people are searching for information on better communication, and they recognize that this is a problem. After writing that post, I made a conscious decision to try to be more present in in-person situations. This meant:

• Turning my phone completely off during church (not just put it on vibrate)
• Keeping my phone in my purse when having dinner out with others
• Sometimes, even leaving my phone behind is the most appropriate action

I think I’ve done pretty good, though there have been times when I failed. For example, I recently went on a very long car trip with my best friend and her boyfriend. I sat in the backseat for the whole trip, and I spent a great deal of time checking email and texting on my iPhone. Present? Not really. Also, when a friend came to visit recently, I didn’t ignore phone calls and texts when they came in and I ended up feeling like I was being pretty rude, because my friend had traveled a long way to spend time with me.

There are of course times which will be exceptions, for example if you’re attending an event that was specifically designed for online networking – like our New Media Cincinnati monthly meetups. We are encouraged to live-tweet from these events. Of course, there are always going to be in-person opportunities at these types of events so it’s good to know when to put the phone away.

Making these personal adjustments has really opened my eyes to others around me, and it’s finally allowing me to understand how others must have felt when I did this to them. Not being able to resist checking that new text message that just came through. Or visiting friends, and then not resisting the urge to check and see what was going on with everyone else who wasn’t there. My friend Krista Neher has a great saying, “I never leave fun to find fun.” When you aren’t present when you’re present, this is the message you are sending to the person or group you’re with – “the text/email/call I’m getting might potentially be more ‘fun’ than what’s happening right now.” Ouch!

Please – if you’re with someone – physically there with them – have proper presence. Make them the most important person at that moment. Whatever is happening on your phone can certainly wait for an hour or two. Making people feel important is part of building relationships, anyhow. We have enough things in our lives to distract us these days – why not treasure the time we have together, face to face, instead of wasting it on something that most likely won’t even be important tomorrow.

Here’s an interesting tool that will help you to be more present - Mobilza: a Windows Mobile Phone application that automatically creates canned text messages to tell contacts you’re away.

Anyone want to develop an iPhone app version of this?

Today, I officially kiss my 20s good-bye as it’s my 30th birthday! This is a milestone birthday for a number of reasons. Of course, many believe that when you turn 30, your life really begins. Others say that you officially start getting old when you hit 30, and that’s when things start falling apart. But I believe those who’ve been telling me for the last several weeks that your 30s are the best time of your life.

About 7 years ago, I set a goal for myself to be completely debt-free by the time I hit 30. At that time, I had two student loans totaling about $20k and I had racked up about $15k in credit card debt. Am I debt-free yet? Nope – I missed this goal. However, I DID pay off all of my credit cards, paid off my car entirely, and I only have around $12k in student loans left to pay, which I should be done paying off by the time I hit 31.

Did I fail here? I don’t think so! Setting goals helps you stay focused in any given area of your life and gives you something to work toward. Most people don’t even hit their goals the first time around. But they’re better off than when they started.

Lesson learned: Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land amongst the stars!

This year for my birthday, all I wanted was to spend time with the people I call my friends. I’m having a party at a downtown Cincinnati martini club and some of my local friends and those within driving distance are coming to help me celebrate. At this point in my life, making memories with those I love is important. My mom had planned to come up this week, but at the very last minute she had to cancel because of some health issues that are not allowing her to travel. She was very upset about this and I felt bad that she was more worried about missing my birthday than she seemed to be about her health.

To give you a little background on my mom, she was diagnosed back in the 90s with a disease called fibromyalgia. In its simplest definition, fibromyalgia is described as chronic musculoskeletal pain, fatigue, and multiple tender points that occur in precise, localized areas, particularly in the neck, spine, shoulders, and hips. My mom was a special education teacher at the middle school level, and she was moving some boxes one summer preparing for the school year when she injured her back. Because it was a Workers’ Comp case, she was made to wait three months to have back surgery, resulting in complications that led to scar tissue developing around her incision area. She had to have a second back surgery, and shortly after that she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.

Fibromyalgia can be very mild or extremely severe. The form my mom was diagnosed with is more toward the severe side. Over the years she has had to wear a brace to deal with weak nerves in her foot, and she has to walk with canes now. She has had to take some really heavy-duty medications which dried up her salivary glands and caused several of her teeth to decay. She now has complete dentures, and she is only 61. Lots of other things have been affected, including her kidneys and her overall posture. It breaks my heart to see what this has done to her – a lady I used to have to run to keep up with.

This year, for my 30th birthday, I want to do something for the woman who brought me into the world. That’s why for every comment that is left on this post, I am going to donate $5 to the National Fibromyalgia Association.  The National Fibromyalgia Association supports research, medical education programs, patient education and support groups to help those dealing with the disease. I love both my mom and dad, and I know many of you are getting to, or have already gotten to, the point where your parents are starting to age quickly and it’s tough to watch them go through health challenges.

I’ll donate up to $500 (100 comments). As far as comments go, you can leave whatever you’d like, I would only ask that you don’t leave like 10 comments, and make it somewhat meaningful  

Thank you for helping me work toward another goal, and also to give my mom a gift on my birthday

2 years ago I submitted an entry into AIRS Xtreme Sourcing Games contest. I won Runner-Up for the contest and my prize was being able to take the classes to earn the CIR designation through AIRS. A couple of nights ago, I was chatting with my new boss, Chris Hoyt – aka The Recruiter Guy – and I shared this technique with him. He liked it, and I thought I’d go ahead and share the technique here!

This is a specialized search technique, as Koders.com is “the leading search engine for open source and other down-loadable code… Used by tens of thousands of developers each day.” So, this will work for those of you who are searching for software and/or web developers. Enjoy!

from 2007…

I use Koders.com to find software engineers and programmers. I use the string “*@gmail.com” or “*@yahoo.com” or substitute the @ for (at) (since a lot of programmers list their email address using (at) to avoid bots) and I select the programming language I desire (ex, C#). The reason for this is because programmers will often “stamp” their code with ownership by including their name and email address. I also use either 2006 or 2006..2007 to make sure the information returned is recent. Once email addresses are returned, I either run a web search based on the email address or I search for the name returned as the author. For example: 

And the results…

 ”*@gmail.com” 2006 run under the programming language of C# returned this in the results: 

 Mpeg4Properties.cs 

 /*************************************************************************** 

     copyright            : (C) 2006 by Dan Poage      dan.poage@gmail.com 

     copyright            : (C) 2006 by Brian Nickel   brian.nickel@gmail.com 

  ***************************************************************************/ 

 Language: C# 

 License: LGPL 

 (C) 2006 by Brian Nickel brian.nickel@gmail.com… 

 LOC: 67 

 Google : alexandrialibrary – Alexandria Media Library (project search) : …/trunk/src/Alexandria.TagLib/Mpeg4/Mpeg4Properties.cs 

After finding this information, I ran a search on the email address for Brian Nickel and came to his homepage on Arizona State University’s public site: 

Here, all of his email and instant messenger contact information is listed. I learned that he desires to design websites. I decided to click on his blog link and found this: 

 His most recent post was about 4 days ago, so he is active. I clicked on his About page and learned a little about Brian – his interests, the fact that he grew up close to ASU, etc. 

 I now have enough information to contact him and know a little about his skills.

**Hat-tip to Jim Stroud for showing me Koders in the first place…