After signing up earlier today with Tag Cloud, I begun playing around with other collections. It is addictive
The bloggers from ANZ DPE
Microsoft Bloggers on BLOGS.MSDN.COM
All feeds that I am subscribed to
Robert Scoble's Main Feed and Link Blog
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Last week the whole team came together for a bunch of meetings in Sydney. In one session we traded stories on tactics and techniques we used to get our job done. I shared with the team what I do to keep a watch on the blogosphere.
Just like Scoble, I use tools such as Feedster, Pubsub and Technorati to scan feeds looking for keywords, and I subscribe to a few of these searchs. I use Newsgator Outlook Edition as my RSS reader, which gives me the power of Outlook to create search folders and allow me to look at aggregated/summarised views of all the feeds.
So, for example i have a few "ego feeds" PubSub: Frank Arrigo, Feedster: Frank Arrigo, Technorati: Frank Arrigo
I also use some of the feed aggregation tools, as I previously mentioned in an earlier post
So, there you have it - some simple tools to see what's happening. Time to go monitor my ego feed again.
[ Currently Playing : Every Breath You Take - The Police - Every Breath You Take: The Classics (04:15) ]
There's a lot of buzz around folksonomy and social tagging services, such as we see in Flickr or del.icio.us, and a lot of terrific applications are appearing around this
One cool app I have stumbled upon is Tag Cloud, which is an an automated Folksonomy tool. TagCloud searches any number of RSS feeds you specify, extracts keywords from the content and lists them according to prevalence within the RSS feeds. Clicking on the tag's link will display a list of all the article abstracts associated with that keyword.
So, I signup up and created a Tag Cloud for the Aussie .NET Blogger list,
as well as a Tag Cloud from all my blogs.
Interesting....
[ Currently Playing : Put Your Head on My Shoulder - Michael Bublé - Michael Bublé (04:28) ]
Chuck has posted the current agenda for TechEd Australia. Thanks Dude!
So, spread the word. It's going to be big
If you are going, don't forget to proudly show your flair and register at Teched Bloggers
Technorati Tag: TechEdAU
[ Currently Playing : Fever - Michael Bublé - Michael Bublé (03:52) ]
During this time of year Microsoft goes through the annual review process. Other Microsoft managers have written their thoughts on this process - Microsoft's 3.0 (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Curve), Microsoft Stack Ranking is not Good Management & The Silly Season
Personally I find the overall process pretty fair, as people are pretty honest when it comes to their performance (at least the folks who have worked for me have been) and we don't seem to disagree much about the overall rating much. I think It may be because I have a pretty open line of communication with my team (which is critical since over half my team members are interstate so regular communication is really critical to get the job done), which means any performance issues don't come as a surprise to any of us.
However, the one area I struggle with constantly is the stack ranking process. To me it's like asking which of my children do I love the most - my first born, the smart one, the talented one, the funny one, the one who is good at xbox, my only daughter, my youngest. It's not easy, I can tell you. I get harder if the dilema was centered around me having to save the life of children - you know the conundrum, a lifeboat with room for only 5 and there are 6 of use. Who do I choose?? Me jumping out isn't an option. What a dilema. This is why my wife doesn't want to go out on boats with all the kids.
But I digress.
Intellectually I know it's a combination about past performance, ability, potential, passion, as well as the comparing each person to their peers, but emotionally (and let's face it I am an emotional person), I struggle with this. It gets even harder when the management team gets together and has to go through a similar exercise with the larger team. I find that top performers and bottom performers are pretty easy to identify. But being able to sort out those in the middle, is what I find so challenging. In the end, I think we did an okay job and I am pretty sure we'll have some people who are disappointed and others who are pleasantly surprised.
I just hope no one tries to hunt me down with the Office Bow of Death following the reviews
[ Currently Playing : The More I See You - Michael Bublé - It's Time [Bonus Tracks] (03:48) ]
During the MEDC event in Sydney, I was one of the judges for the Image Cup finals. The winning team was Team Doug, with ‘Colle’, which makes it easy to create and share flash cards, provides automated and intelligent training and allows for collaboration in distributed and close-proximity environments for learning a foreign language.
Doug got some coverage last week in the local newspaper, which was good to see!
Why do I mention this now? Well, I forgot to blog about it earlier, even though Doug and his former teammate Richard did, and since Scoble is talking about Imagine Cup winners, I thought it appropriate to add our wonderful news to the blogosphere too. Did I mention Doug was a member of the team which represented Australia at the Imagine Cup final last year too?
[ Currently Playing : Sway [Ralphi's Dark Rhumba Dub] - Michael Bublé - Spider-Man Theme (08:46) ]
There's been a few posts regarding open consulting positions at Microsoft Australia, based in Sydney and Canberra - Matt and Mick have led the charge with the call. Prospective applicants would need to "demonstrate strong consulting experience and biztalk skills, as well as strong development skills".
Looking at the careers site, there are a number of other open roles, such as Principal Consultant - Developer, Enterprise Strategy Consultant, Product Technology Specialist to name a few
This begs the question - are all the good people happily employed, or is the talent pool getting smaller? And we all know what is happening to local MVPs
[ Currently Playing : Can't Get You Out of My Head - Kylie Minogue - Ultimate Kylie Disc 2 (03:51) ]