Cameron Test Bootstrap: January 2016

More Tips on Hosting Great Conferences

Last month, I shared several observations I had from attending some really well-run conventions. While that covered many of the basic fundamentals, there were definitely several bells and whistles that make even good conferences better, so I thought I would do a follow-up on some additional highlights that left quite an impression on me.

Mobile Apps

Does your convention have a mobile app? Gartner's do. The Gartner Events app gives you access to the agenda for the convention you are attending and lets you build a personalized itinerary along with information about the speakers and mobile versions of the presentations. It also serves as a marketing point in that users can see details about all of Gartner's upcoming conferences and their venues and even register for the event.

Downloadable Presentations

The last two conferences I attended made all of the presentations available to the attendees as downloads. By doing so, they removed some (not all) of the incessant camera phones snapping pictures of the slides on the screens and allowed the audience to focus on engaging with the speaker rather than getting copies of the slides. Downloadable presentations also allow attendees to share and distribute the content back at their offices and continue to carry the message, which helps them, but also provides for more awareness of the conference and the quality of content.

Video

Video interrupted several of the drab slide presentations to add pizzazz and flash to what could otherwise bore the audience to sleep. Whether injecting commercials to prove a point or even live conversations with other individuals overseas, live moving content on the screen helped keep the audience engaged.

Breakout Sessions

Whether set up as semi-private roundtables or just exclusive presentations, breakout sessions can offer an additional opportunity for some of the attendees to interact with the presenters. Offering a limited availability to the breakout sessions available by pre-registration creates a sense of exclusivity and elite membership that ups the value of the conference and create small and productive sessions.

Interactive Polls

One of the most unique things I witnessed at my last conference was an interactive poll where the speaker asked questions of the audience and displayed the results live in real-time on the screen as part of the presentation. This could likely be incorporated into the app at some point, but this one utilized a web application that fed results to the speaker. However it technically gets incorporated, the results impressed as the speaker was able to utilize to shape her content live and on the fly.

Have you attended any really good conferences? What features set them over the top? Shoot me an email or Tweet and let me know. Have a great Monday!

Revising the Resume

I've seen my fair share of "New Year, New You" posts going around Facebook and Twitter the past couple of weeks. In some ways, that's great, because it means that many of you are rocking those resolutions and working towards self-improvement. Along with those resolutions, though, January offers a natural reflection point where you can give your resume a quick face lift. Take an hour or so this January and make a few edits to your resume (and maybe your LinkedIn profile to match).

Adding the Successes

The start of the year is the perfect time to add in the accomplishments of the prior year to the resume. Make sure your major career gains of the last 365 days are captured from a work accomplishment perspective as well as notable training or events that you attended during the past year. Updating on an annual basis keeps your updates close enough to the actual events that you can describe them in detail. Use results-focused words and phrasing to emphasize the outcome of your work rather than just the tasks you accomplished.

Trim the Fat

Once you've added your new accomplishments, you might need to reduce the overall size of the resume a bit to make room for the new additions. Go through prior years' work and previous roles and trim out anything that does not lend itself towards the types of work you want to do. I recommend keeping two records, though: one complete resume that you just keep adding to year after year, and one slimmed down version tailored towards a specific skillset that you want to emphasize. If you decide in the future to emphasize a different set of talents on your slim resume, you can just edit down the full one with a different intent.

Work the Top Fives

You might keep this one in a separate file, but jot down the top five things you got done for your career in the past year. Then write down the top five things you want to do in the year ahead. These items should focus on your development, rather than typical resume accomplishments that center around value you provided to the company. Save the file in a safe place where you can access it next year and do a comparison.

Check Your Keywords

What keywords stand out in your resume? Technical skills? Management? Experience? Results? Many of the online application software packages that employers use today do extensive keyword matching with job postings to determine whether or not your resume says you fit the position. Make sure to incorporate several of the key words for your target occupation (or your current role if you love it) in the body of the resume. If you don't know what keywords would be used, do a search for job openings for your position (or the position you want). Write down the top fifteen keywords that appear across the different job postings and try to work ten or more into your resume (where they fit appropriately).

Phone a Friend

If you go shopping your resume around for edits, you might get some confused looks from your friends, who will assume you are looking actively for a job. They will likely think the same if you make a ton of edits to your LinkedIn profile (you can turn off LinkedIn notifications before you make the edits, though, if you want to avoid scrutiny). But if you have one or two close friends to whom you can explain that you are just making some updates, bounce your draft off of them to see what they think. A spouse, family member, orfriend from outside the workplace can offer some objective feedback as well. See if you need to work their responses back into the resume. It helps to have multiple points of view and only change things that more than one person comments on or that someone has a major problem with.

Tie a String Around Your Finger

It's great that you got this year's round of edits done, but what about next year's? Once you have saved (and maybe printed) a copy of your resume, set yourself a reliable reminder to go through the same exercise next year. Whether you open your Google Calendar or set something in your phone, don't catch yourself in a few years without keeping the resume up to date and needing to play catch up on over a year's worth of activity.

I'd love to hear what else you think you need to keep current on the resume or tips. Drop me a line and let me know how.

Celebrate Martin Luther King Day

Today, I urge you to take some time and think of the legacy that Dr. King left this nation. Sometimes, I think we are in a much better place today, and sometimes, I think we may have regressed.

All people are wonderful. All people deserve respect.

Thank you, Dr. King, for opening our eyes and taking a stand.

Apologies for missing the post last week (I was traveling for work), and I will have a post for you tomorrow to kick off this week.

2015 Year in Review

Reflecting on 2015 in the rearview mirror

Wow 2015 disappeared quickly, didn't it? It seems like it was just a few days ago that I decided to kick off the blog and try to get 250 posts under my belt. The number came just from thinking I might try to write every weekday for a year, giving myself a couple of weeks off. As the year went by, I realized that the post-a-day was quite a challenge for me (some weeks) and an inbox flooder for some of you.

2015 was a year that definitely had some challenges for me, but as the year ended, I thought I would take a look at what great things did happen, though, as I started this fun journey with all of you. So here are a few highlights for you.

Started the blog.
March 23 of last year was my first post, basically just outlining the plan and what I wanted to do. Still, we're less than one year in and I've learned quite a bit.
Set up Facebook.
I already had a personal Facebook account, but I did manage to set up (and get a few followers on) a Facebook page tied to the blog here.
Grew to 1864 Twitter Followers.
I don't have the best records about when I started trying to grow my Twitter followers, but I think I had around 200 or so. 1864 is quite an improvement. In December, I had over 15,900 Tweet impressions, as opposed to 1,259 in January.
Outlined two books.
Writing them may take time, and I may or may not scrap one of the ideas, but that's further along than I have been since I started down the non-fiction path. Some of the Stealing Scrum blog posts may make a modified appearance in one of the books.
Wrote a few blog posts.
Actually in 2015, I published 165 blog posts. I expect that number to actually decrease in 2016, as I try to consistently publish a couple every week, but to create a steady trend.
Started some traditions.
I hope this year in review thing becomes a tradition. I also did a fun 48-plus hours of tweets with my favorite Christmas songs, which I did once before in 2013 but much less structured.
Automated some stuff.
I haven't fully utilized as much as I could from an automation perspective, which is something to make adjustments to in the new year, but between Buffer and Hootsuite and scheduling blog posts, I have managed to get some automation in the pipeline.
Connected with great people.
Over the year, I've actually traded emails with some great bloggers, created conversations with some friends that read the blog and chat or email with me about it, and engaged on Twitter with people of all different strata. I've also got a few really great subscribers to the email list (if you aren't on it, you should be, of course) with whom I have managed to trade some thoughts on various topics.

When I list it out like that, there's definitely been some great progress over the past year, but there is more to come. 2016 offers promise and hope, not just for me but for you. Let me know what you've got going on and if I can help, I'd love to.

For me in the next year, I certainly want to do more of the same (more blog posts, more audience and followers, etc.), but also some new things (finish the book, get a speaking engagement or two lined up, etc.). What about you?

Setting the Perfect Resolutions

Planning on setting some resolutions for yourself this year? Hey, it's January 1, so now's the time if you are going to get to that activity. But how can you make these resolutions stick? According to this Forbes article and the University of Scranton, only 8% of people make their New Year's goals. As you sit down to plan ahead for the year (or review the plans you made this week), try some of these tactics.

Focus

Don't set one hundred resolutions. Just like my productivity journey recommendations, I would say try to cap yourself at five resolutions. If you set more than five goals for the year, chances are that you water down the focus and enthusiasm that you can put forward towards any one particular objective. Additionally, setting too many goals means you are less likely (just statistically) to complete them all. Once you recognize that you will fail at one of your goals, you may lose heart in chasing the others, causing a domino effect. Picking four or five clear goals avoids that overstretch.

Diversify

While the total numbers of resolutions you make should be small, spread them across different areas of your life. Don't set five physical fitness goals. Instead, pick several different goals to enhance different areas of your life. Some of them can overlap, for sure, but separating goals helps to make them more achievable because goals in different areas will require different commitments and different timing. Stumped on what types of goals to set? You could set goals in any of these areas:

Career or Business
Finances
Physical Fitness
Family
Spiritual
Personal Hobbies
Experiences
Travel
Anything else

Set a Vision

Determine what accomplishing that goal means to you. If you chose a goal to lose twenty pounds, visualize why you find that goal important. You could feel better about yourself, you could have more energy, or just to look better. Whatever the reason (and it doesn't even matter if the reason is completely selfish), take time to understand your motivations for your goals. Knowing your reasons why behind your resolutions become fuel for accomplishing them.

Create a Plan

Start with between two and four big steps that you need to accomplish the goal. If you want to own your own chicken farm, perhaps your big steps would be learning about the process, obtaining equipment and chickens, and turning a profit from the business. Whatever your giant goal, just try to break it up a little so it is not so massive. Decide which step you will attack first, and then break that one up even further. Need to learn about chickens before you go buying them? Need to understand the cost of a coop? Break that step into smaller steps and then decide which step you can start by Monday, January 4 (or sooner). Start there.

Schedule Checkpoints

Open your calendar, whether Google, Outlook, or iCal, and insert event reminders to check in on your goal progress every couple of months. I would also set separate checkpoints for each resolution. This will encourage you to try to focus on one effort for a brief time before the checkpoint, even if you have procrastinated to that point. Try to indicate what you think is reasonable to accomplish by that checkpoint in the calendar event so you can compare your expectations with reality.

Write Everything Down

Whether you want to type up a list or whip out the calligraphy pen, write your goals down. This advice often appears, and yet I bet if I asked you where your goals were written down, you would not be able to show me. This Dominican University Research study showed that writing down goals (and sharing them) made individuals substantially (33%) more likely to achieve them. So write them down. Even if it doesn't help in itself, you will need the goals written to refer back to at checkpoints.

Share Your Resolutions

Post them in your cubicle and let your teammates know about them. Tweet them. Post them to your blog. Share them with your friends on Facebook. However you share them, and the Internet makes it incredibly easier to share, letting others know about your goals allows you to have accountability partners, those that will check in with you on the progress of your goals. When you are accountable to others, your ability to cheat without repurcussions goes down. Having someone to check in with you makes you feel like you need to accomplish the goals not just for your sake but for theirs.

Good Luck!

If you have a solid plan, you don't need my wishes for luck, but I do hope that you achieve everything you set out to in the new year. 2015 had its set of ups and downs. While I am certain 2016 will be the same, I wish you many more ups than downs in the year ahead. Happy New Year!