The Purpose of the SPM ResumeBlog:

• Learn to blog in a quick and painless way
  
  
• Get some experience blogging so that SPMers can speak intelligently if the issue comes up in an interview (web collaboration is hot now)
  
  
• Use the ResumeBlog blog as the "professional home" for the SPMer's bio or resume -- this is especially useful for the majority of members that do not have a web site. Even those who do have a website may also want to have a ResumeBlog (and a also regular blog) because it is free and much easier to maintain than a website. The format of a blog is quite different than that of a website so it is useful for posting on-going progress updates and opinions and ideas. The blog also easily allows the blogger to capture information from other bloggers value and give credit, and link to others.
  
  
• Provides additional mechanisms for a hiring mgr, recruiter etc. to find the SPM member on the web: a Google search on the member's name would bring up his/her ResumeBlog, a Google search on keywords that are in the member's ResumeBlog could bring up his/her ResumeBlog, once someone has brought up one SPM member's Resume blog he/she can traverse the links to other SPM members' ResumeBlogs, links to the ResumeBlogs will also be placed on the SPM website. Note that we do bios for the SPM Volunteers on the SPM website now, the ResumeBlog is a way of giving all members that service, without the overhead of a volunteer having to maintain the website.
  
  
• Most importantly, the ResumeBlog gives the SPM member enough experience blogging so that s/he he can contribute to the SPM Knowledge Center (which is also a blog). Originally I started the SPM KC first but quickly discovered there was not enough experience by most of the members of the SPM KC team in blogging so get any momentum. Once a member has created his/her ResumeBlog (or any type of blog), s/he will be in a great position to add his/her content to the SPM KC. The SPM Knowledge Center will not only be a source of information for software marketing subjects, but will also be a place for the SPM member to "show off' his/her work.

Since the ResumeBlog only takes 10 minutes to create, why not try it out for a few weeks and see if it provides value?

When doing new things on the web I've found that it is better to experiment than intellectualize, because you get new insights by doing that you can never have imagined.

Directions on how to create your ResumeBlog.

Rise of the Blogeoisie

The whole article is interesting -- a fresh look at the blogging world and the bloggers who inhabit it. Note how Google's PageRank reputation algorithm has been turned into a tool for the blogeoisie to exploit. Below are my favorite paragraphs but go to the link to read the whole article.

15 May 2003 - Spiked-Online


Blog eats blog


by Bill Thompson

NOTE: This is the "Cynthia's Condensed version of Bill Thompson's article". THIS IS NOT THE ENTIRE ARTICLE. Go to
www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DDA4.htm
to read the entire article.

"The O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference (ETCON) has established itself as the highlight of the geek calendar after only three years - the place where technology meets the street.

"Every talk, keynote, informal session, water-cooler conversation, party and failed sexual encounter was extensively covered, in real time, by bloggers who would rather write 'I am sitting here' than sit there, and note that 'the audience is not paying attention' rather than consider that they aren't paying attention either.

"Sadly, hours spent with my head down the wirelessly-enabled toilet that is today's blogosphere revealed only that these many and varied comments form such a complex tapestry of overlapping meanings, that they make the reports from embedded journalists in Iraq seem like models of clarity.

"Reading the blog coverage may not tell us much about what actually happened, but it does reveal something of interest. Within the blogosphere, we can identify some that belong to a new intellectual elite - a small influential group of people, who have managed to turn their self-publication obsession into a power base. It will come as no surprise that many of them either organised or spoke at the conference.

NOTE: This is the "Cynthia's Condensed version of Bill Thompson's article". THIS IS NOT THE ENTIRE ARTICLE. Go to
www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DDA4.htm
to read the entire article.

"Howard Rheingold, Tim O'Reilly, Clay Shirky, Doc Searls, Dave Winer and Ben Hammersley (no, I'm not going to promote them even more by linking to them) are all what Register reporter Andrew Orlowski calls 'the A-list bloggers', the people whose regular musings on their personal websites can shape debate and make reputations.

"If this was just a random collection of people with more time than sense - a self-referential group of average intellects sharing their views on the internet - then it would not be worrying. But these discussions do not take place in a vacuum. Despite the findings of the Pew Internet and America Life Project - that the number of regular visitors to even the highest-profile blog is too low to be statistically significant - blogs exert real influence over how many others think about the internet and its future.

"Fortunately for them, in the hyperlinked world it is not necessary to airbrush dissenters out of the group photograph. You can simply wait for Google's PageRank to promote the ideas the A-list find acceptable and linkworthy to the top of the page, while the websites of apostates disappear below the fold and out of history. Who needs a memory hole when the world's favourite search engine does the job so effectively?

"These people are not quite an aristocracy. Perhaps they are simply the blogeoisie (pronounced bloj-wah-zee), a dominant class in network society. Or it may be simpler to think of blogs as a feudal system, with respect and links acting as the chief currency. The peasants toil in the low-rank blogs, paying their tithe in LazyWeb projects to the lords of the link in return for an occasional mention from Hammersley or Searls."

NOTE: This is the "Cynthia's Condensed version of Bill Thompson's article". THIS IS NOT THE ENTIRE ARTICLE. Go to
www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DDA4.htm
to read the entire article.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

My term for what Bill Thomson calls the 'blogeoisie' and Andrew Orlowski calls 'the A-list bloggers', is the '20 guys blogging each other'. Less elegant but perhaps more descriptive.

Garden photos.

Bloggers add Babble to Google

Google hogged by blogs
Spiked Journal
July 15, 2003
by Sandy Starr
'Google works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting websites to determine which other sites offer content of value.'

Best paragraphs are here but the whole article is good.

PageRank is a wonderful innovation, which has been of considerable benefit to web users over the past few years, regardless of what Google's more irrational critics say. The ideal behind PageRank, of combining a faith in the judgement of others with a desire to make high-quality content easily and publicly available, is a laudable one. But this ideal has been shot down by blogs.

The self-obsessed nature of many blogs, the incestuous relationships between them, the frenetic rate at which they are updated, and their obsessive use of links, have distorted the snapshots of the web that Google gives us. Blog culture has made links and idle comment into ends in themselves, irrespective of the merit or relevance of the content being linked to or commented upon. It is this failing of blogs, not any failing of PageRank, that has meant that the assumptions which made PageRank work so effectively are no longer tenable.

I sent an email to the author:

Dear Sandy Starr,

Great article. I wrote a brief note about this on May 27, 2003 and sent it to several lists that I belong to.

I got a huge amount of responses that were so interesting that I put up a web page with them.

I also wrote a note about this topic to your colleague Martyn Perks on July, 6, 2002, and I posted it in my blog: http://typaldos.blogspot.com/.


Dear Martyn,

I read with interest your article about the panel discussion. Your last comment is excellent: "It is unfortunate that the more we grasp of the potential of technology to solve problems, the more technology geeks want to play social engineers."

I see much of what is being done and called social software right now as "20 guys blogging each other". The technology industry is well-known to be exclusionist, elitist, and women-unfriendly, but the frenzy these 20 guys have worked themselves up to, and gotten to the head of the class thru blogging each other, is unprecedented.


-- Cynthia

I'm so busy working on my other blogs that I don't have time to update my main blog.

We've kicked off three new projects in SPM.

SPM-Bio-Blog Project
Goal is that every SPM member has their bio on the web (using a blog). Here are the instructions. My Bio-Blog.

SPM Knowledge Center
SPM Knowledge Center eGroup
SPM Knowledge Center Prototype

New Software Guilds

-----Original Message-----
From: Cynthia Typaldos [mailto:cynthia@typaldos.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 10:15 AM
To: SW Prod Mkting eGroup
Subject: [spmjobs] !! new SW eGroups !!


Hi everyone,

We (SPM management/volunteers) are opening up new egroups covering the entire software industry to complement SPM (which is focused on software marketing and business development).

Our not-so-modest goal is to capture all of the job postings for software industry professionals.

The software industry includes internet, embedded software, software that is part of a hardware offering, social software, web-based software, networking software, telecom software, enterprise software, application software, etc.

Here is the list of the software job functions that will have each have its own focused egroup:
marketing and business development (i.e. SPM)

• sales
  
• engineering
  
• QA, technical writing, project management
  
• finance & venture capital
  
• human resources
  
• system administration
  
• customer support
  
• international
  
• entrepreneur
  
• legal
  
• everything else (kitchen sink)
  

We are looking for entrepreneurial leaders to head up each of these new egroups and build a small team to run them. We (SPM) will train the egroup leader and provide the management tools. We will together form a software industry professional keiretsu.

Please forward this note to people you believe would be interested in being one of "professional guild" leaders. While these "professional guilds" will be not-for-profit organizations, we believe there is a tremendous opportunity to challenge the big job boards (e.g. Monster.com, HotJobs) and turn these endeavors into member-owned organizations that put our careers under our control. Our goal is that these professional guilds are the tool for white collar professionals to manage their own destiny and maximize our independence from employers and recruiters.

To apply to be the leader of one of these new software professional guilds, please respond as follows:

Send an email to the appropriate egroup below

• softwaresalesprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwareengineeringprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwareqatechwritingprojectmgmtprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwarefinanceprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwarehrprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwaresysadminprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwarecustomersupportprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwareinternationalprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwareentrepreneurprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwarelegalprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwarekitchensinkprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  

Provide relevant information about why you want to do this and why you will be successful. Since I don't beleive in resumes, please use other tools (e.g. your personal website, googlization factor, short bio, etc.) to validate your claim.

• Be prepared to commit 20 hours a week getting the new professional guild launched, then as you build a small team, you will be able to scale back to 10-15 hours/week.
  
• Be prepared to be an aggressive leader and spokesperson for your professional guild in meetings with company executive management, recruiters, reporters, investors, and government officials.
  
• We are international and virtual, so your location is NOT important.
  

We welcome all general feedback, suggestions, comments, etc. You can email me directly or send to the SPM Management Team at spmdirectors2@yahoogroups.com.

Thanks very much.

Cynthia

Here's an article about a panel discussion in the U.K. where the panel members presented their views on how social software will manipulate people into being better citizens.


Article17 June 2003, Spiked Online magazine
Computing Communities
by Martyn Perks

Here are the last two paragraphs:

The beef of the social software evangelists, perhaps, is democracy itself - because they refuse to trust individuals to make the right choices. All we are left with, then, is a belief in participation for its own sake, devoid of any content or realised goal. How could anyone hope such a model will change society for the better?

It is unfortunate that the more we grasp of the potential of technology to solve problems, the more technology geeks want to play social engineers.

I just sent this email to Martyn Perks:


Dear Martyn,

I read with interest your article about the panel discussion. Your last comment is excellent: "It is unfortunate that the more we grasp of the potential of technology to solve problems, the more technology geeks want to play social engineers."

I see much of what is being done and called social software right now as "20 guys blogging each other". The technology industry is well-known to be exclusionist, elitist, and women-unfriendly, but the frenzy these 20 guys have worked themselves up to, and gotten to the head of the class thru blogging each other, is unprecedented.

I would appreciate it you would look at a couple things on my website www.typaldos.com: The "12 Principles of Civilization" which are based solely on sociological principles, and my presention titled "The Future of Professional Guilds".

The the latter presentation I rate a number of the social networking websites against the 12 Principles and they come up woefully inadequate.

The internet is just another tool for us to use, not a tool to change or manipulate us. It is powerful, as are the alphabet and the telephone, but it will not change our basic behaviors and instincts which have served us well for millions of years.

By the way, the very top Principle (they are formed in a pyramid) is Purpose.

Sunflowers and California Fuscia photos taken with my $40 StyleCam Blink Digital Camera:


StyleCam Blink Camera

I posted this to the SOCNET list:

Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2003 2:50 PM
To: SOCNET
Subject: more on Networking as a Business

Several of us gathered up a list of all the the sites/software that are attempting to commercialize on networking. I thought the rest of you might also be interested in the list. No doubt there is already one, or more likely, many lists of these sites/sw in someone's blog. It's hard to do anything original anymore :-)

List generated by input from Doug Rush, Sean Murphy, Debi Jones and myself. I will also post this on my blog http://typaldos.blogspot.com.

websites:
www.ryze.com
www.friendster.com
http://www.livejournal.com
www.ecademy.com
www.meetup.com
www.classmates.com
www.reunion.com
www.Huminity.com
www.Ringo.com
www.PayDemocracy.com
www.linkedin.com

software:
www0Degrees.com
www.Spoke.com
the one that is being done at Stanford but I can't remember the name
www.Accolo.com
www.Plaxo.com (contact update sw, but headed in the same direction)
www.GoodContacts.com (contact update sw, but headed in the same direction)
www.Accucard.com (contact update sw, but headed in the same direction)

I am planning on launching a site myself as soon as I have some seed funding. It would be quite different than the existing sites/software in that it uses networking as a tool to accomplish a purpose, rather than just being a networking tool all by its lonesome. Some of these sites are the equivalent of trying to turn a communication tool into a purpose, which is the equivalent of having a network built around the phone system. The phone is a tool for all kinds of purposeful activities, but not a goal in and of itself.

On my website I have a presentation on "The Future of Professional Guilds" and I welcome any feedback. Also, there are a few slides which compare many of the sites/software listed below against each other and against my "12 Principles of Civilization" http://www.typaldos.com/12principles.htm.

"The Future of Professional Guilds" presentation can be found by going to this webpage and selecting it from the table:
http://www.typaldos.com/events.htm
or by going directly to
The presentation.

The slides that do the comparisons are slides 37-40.

I'm considering setting up another blog, for personal blogging. Of course, how personal can it be since it's public and anyone can read it! The biggest downside is that I will then have two blogs to maintain, rather than just one, and just the one is a pain in the ***. Once I get into the rhythm of publishing on this blog, I will reconsider having two blogs. I define "rhythm of blogging" is making at least two posts/week.

When I re-read my blog (and I'm probably the only person that reads it at all!) I keep finding grammatical errors. I can't decide if I should fix them or not. If I become a perfectionist about blogging then the time-sink of maintaining it will become unreasonable.

SPM Knowledge Sharing eGroup formed to create the SPM Knowledge Center

Here's some news about SPM (Software Product Marketing eGroup). We have formed a sub-egroup called SPM Knowledge Sharing to figure out the requirements, and then mechanism, to allow all SPM members to post their works: presentations, whitepapers, working documents, etc. The goal is to share knowledge amongst each other, and also give the now nearly 4,000 SPM members a public place to publish their best works. By doing so the member's Googlization factor will increase. I currently publish my works on my website Typaldos.com but creating and maintaining a website is even more trouble than blogging. So many SPM members don't have a website. Of course, they can start a blog too, and we will be encouraging that, but a directory where all the quality (I hope) works of SPM members can be found would raise the visibility of all members, and of SPM. We are going to call it the SPM Knowledge Center. Anyone is welcome to join the SPM Knowledge Sharing eGroup as long as you are also a member of SPM itself. Since it is free to become a member of SPM, that isn't much of a barrier, but it helps to weed out the riff-raff. To join SPM go to to the SPM website and follow the links for "job seekers".

Right now we are working on the requirements for the Knowledge Sharing technology. Here's what I have posted to the egroup as a straw person
___________________________________________________________

From: "Cynthia Typaldos"
Date: Wed Jul 2, 2003 12:07 pm
Subject: SPM Knowledge Sharing Group Kickoff

Hi Everyone,

25 people have signed up for the SPM Knowledge Sharing eGroup. [note - there are now 29 people.]

To kick things off, I have included my original email about the purpose of this endeavor below. Please re-read it to refresh your memory.

The first topic we will discuss is the REQUIREMENTS of the SPM Knowledge Center. I will create a straw proposal right now, and let's have a dialogue. I plan to post the highlights of our discussion on my blog at http://typaldos.blogspot.com.

BASIC REQUIREMENTS OF THE SPM KNOWLEDGE CENTER - REV 1
no central authority (e.g. no bottlenecks)
peer review for contribution reputation (does NOT have to be very sophisticated)
member can update/replace/remove/manage all of his/her contributions easily
and without needing help from anyone else
must start with a good structure
search capability
members receive full credit for their contribution(s)
uses free or sponsored software/website tools

Goal is to agree on the requirements by Friday July 11th. Then we will discuss possible implementations.

To read the rest of this email please go to the message in the egroup. Anyone can read the messages but only members can post.
___________________________________________________________