Six weeks after getting laid off, I went to my first Career Transition workshop. One of the first things we did was a 30-Second commercial about ourselves. I found myself struggling to find the words to describe my job for the past 2 years... It's hard to believe after giving countless tours, I completely forgot the script!
What is it I did again? No worries, after brainstorming a bit, it all came back like riding a bike. The workshop was really helpful, is was a relief to learn there is a plethora of resources, tools and sites to help people find a new job and career. Of course, one of the first things to do is the all important resume. Boy, do I love resumes, how do you put on 2-pages your entire professional career? What is my career objective? How has my past experiences equipped me for my next opportunity? In other words, what do I want to do? And why would someone want to hire me?
My entire working life, I have been conflicted between my social responsibility (doing something for the greater good) and surviving financially (the almighty dollar). Of course, it would be wonderful if I could apply my degrees of Sociology and Asian American Studies. The more I ponder what I want as a career, the more I think I would like to continue what I did for the past 2 years.
I find it fulfilling working with people and helping others. My last job was helping people connect with other people. Over half the company worked from home at least a couple days a week. My job was to gather feedback and find tools to enable them to work more effectively. Enable employees to work as efficiently with their peers in the office next door as their peers half-way across the world timezones away. We connect people through Social Networking tools and Collaborative Technology.
In my view, using Social Networking tools and Collaborative Technology is a win-win for both employers and employees. Employers save money from not traveling and therefore gain competitive advantage. Meeting planning and deliverable cycles would decrease due to travel schedules. Travel time and recovery time would be spent doing actual work. Employees would be connected more through tools like Instant Messenger (IM) that enable them to have immediate synchronous and unplanned meetings. Collaborative tools also allow non-synchronous meetings avoiding those awful 6am and midnight meetings to accommodate participants in different timezones. The planet also wins with less airplane travel and driving to meetings that could be done virtually through video conferencing.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Bay Bridge Closure woes, not for me, I work from home!
Bay Bridge likely closed through weekend
The Bay Bridge has been closed since Tuesday and there still isn't a definite time for reopening. It has been causing traffic jams all over the Bay Area. Even additional BART trains and ferries have not been able to alleviate the congestion. Instead of adding to the problem, I am working from home...
This brings back memories of the huge flood we had winter of '97. I remember the roads and bridges were flooded. At the time, I took Dumbarton Bridge to work. News reports indicated the right lanes were flooded over and closed. I carpooled at the time and we decided to take detours around the bridge instead of taking our chances in the traffic. I think everyone had the same idea. After trying to get to work unsuccessfully for hours, we decided to stop off for lunch at Noon. We were on the road in traffic for over 4 hours and not even close to our destination. We finally gave up and just went home. The entire day was wasted and unproductive. The only thing we got out of the day was lots of frustration!
If I had the tools back then that I have now, I could have stayed home and worked the entire day. The company and I would have been much happier :-)
The Bay Bridge has been closed since Tuesday and there still isn't a definite time for reopening. It has been causing traffic jams all over the Bay Area. Even additional BART trains and ferries have not been able to alleviate the congestion. Instead of adding to the problem, I am working from home...
This brings back memories of the huge flood we had winter of '97. I remember the roads and bridges were flooded. At the time, I took Dumbarton Bridge to work. News reports indicated the right lanes were flooded over and closed. I carpooled at the time and we decided to take detours around the bridge instead of taking our chances in the traffic. I think everyone had the same idea. After trying to get to work unsuccessfully for hours, we decided to stop off for lunch at Noon. We were on the road in traffic for over 4 hours and not even close to our destination. We finally gave up and just went home. The entire day was wasted and unproductive. The only thing we got out of the day was lots of frustration!
If I had the tools back then that I have now, I could have stayed home and worked the entire day. The company and I would have been much happier :-)
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Could telecommuting be a career mistake?
My colleague sent me this article "Could telecommuting be a mistake?" Working from home for the past 3 years, I was a little sensitive about the title, what will the article say about me? The author Anita Bruzzese made some interesting points I agree with and some I am not too sure about.
At Sun, about 60% of employees do not have assigned offices. It is definitely not for everyone due to personal preference or circumstances. But, for many, it is an ideal situation. The company can hire the most capable employees for their projects and do not have to relocate them close to the team. In today's global economy, most people are part of multiple teams and have team members in multiple locations. The work/life balance is also important and essential for many employees with families.
I know for me, when I worked in the office 5 days a week, I spent most of my time emailing and exchanging voicemails with people in different locations. Working on global applications, 90% of my customers, vendors and partners were not in the same state, much less the same country. With Collaborative Tools like Instant Messenger (IM), desktop video conferencing and data conferencing, we are always connected. I see and talk to my colleagues more now than ever.
My colleague and I used to work on the same campus in different buildings. We only saw each other once a week for staff meetings. Since we both started working from home, I see and talk to him every single day. We have a chat room open all the time and drop urls into the chat and ask questions to everyone, nobody in particular. We do not have to go down our phone directory calling people until we get an answer. We know when people are in a meeting or concentrating on heads down work.
Just the other day, we had a team meeting and before we logged off, I said "See you all tomorrow". My Director in Boston, MA did a double-take responding, "We are? Yes, I forgot, we will see each other tomorrow on video." It is so typical and normal for us to "see" each other on video, we take it for granted and do not even realize we are actually "seeing" each other! Seeing is no longer limited to the traditional in person or in real life anymore. Technology has changed our definition to include virtually on video or virtual reality like Second Life and Wonderland.
At Sun, about 60% of employees do not have assigned offices. It is definitely not for everyone due to personal preference or circumstances. But, for many, it is an ideal situation. The company can hire the most capable employees for their projects and do not have to relocate them close to the team. In today's global economy, most people are part of multiple teams and have team members in multiple locations. The work/life balance is also important and essential for many employees with families.
I know for me, when I worked in the office 5 days a week, I spent most of my time emailing and exchanging voicemails with people in different locations. Working on global applications, 90% of my customers, vendors and partners were not in the same state, much less the same country. With Collaborative Tools like Instant Messenger (IM), desktop video conferencing and data conferencing, we are always connected. I see and talk to my colleagues more now than ever.
My colleague and I used to work on the same campus in different buildings. We only saw each other once a week for staff meetings. Since we both started working from home, I see and talk to him every single day. We have a chat room open all the time and drop urls into the chat and ask questions to everyone, nobody in particular. We do not have to go down our phone directory calling people until we get an answer. We know when people are in a meeting or concentrating on heads down work.
Just the other day, we had a team meeting and before we logged off, I said "See you all tomorrow". My Director in Boston, MA did a double-take responding, "We are? Yes, I forgot, we will see each other tomorrow on video." It is so typical and normal for us to "see" each other on video, we take it for granted and do not even realize we are actually "seeing" each other! Seeing is no longer limited to the traditional in person or in real life anymore. Technology has changed our definition to include virtually on video or virtual reality like Second Life and Wonderland.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Real Life and Second Life Converging... (Oct 23)
It is common to hear stories where people have talked on the phone and emailed for years before meeting each other in person. Guess the next generation of the story is avatars meeting in virtual worlds for years ... Just seems strange because virtual worlds allow people to put a face to the name, just a different name and a different face!
If you are interested in Virtual Worlds and have not seen the awesome video put together by Greylin Fairweather (aka Robin Williams), check it out! It's on YouTube... Introduction to Virtual Worlds
MPK16 Replicated in Second Life (from Oct 12)
If you haven't had a chance to check out MPK16 next gen work environment in "real" life, there will be Guided Tours in Second Life tomorrow at 10am SLT/PT on Sun's Employee Island. If you need a Sun avatar, see http://dianaf.posterous.com/mpk16-in-the-virtual-world for detailed instructions.
MPK16 tours will be given Tuesdays at 10am for the next couple of weeks.
See you there!
MPK16 SLX Videos (from Sept 28)
See a list of Videos on our wiki. Please feel free to email any questions or comments to collaboration@sun.com
MPK16 next gen work environment (from Sept 17)
After touring the space to hundreds of people inside and outside of Sun, the consensus is; nobody has seen anything close to what we have done here anywhere else. Even our vendors are impressed with how we utilized their products. Our video collaboration partner actually said he couldn't think of any other place we could add video... Some visitors have seen similar furniture layouts before, but never with cutting-edge technology integrated into a collaborative work environment.
MPK16 next gen is not only a place to come to work, but a destination. Our work environment is a window to the world, literally -- via ambient video conferencing to other Sun offices and work from home employees. It is a truly collaborative environment where you can turn around and see/talk to someone physically 3-feet away from you or see/talk to someone 3-feet away from you on a TV and physically 3,000-miles away.
For more information on MPK16 next gen, visit our wiki or email us at collaboration@sun.com
Consolidating Blogs...
Sorry for the absence for anyone following my blog. I started another one on blogs.sun.com and did not publish to both automatically. So, I will manually post them here also. Thanks for your interest and hope you like my2cents...
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Staying Connected with Collaborative Tools
Recently someone asked me what applications and tools they should be using to collaborate. The majority of her team live in the Bay Area, but more and more the team is becoming dispersed. A couple team members are in Europe, one in the East Coast and one just moved to the Northwest. Some are not near an office so they work from home. The extended team and partners are even more dispersed as they support other groups and cannot be co-located with them.
My advice for the simplest and best introduction to Collaborative Tools is Instant Messenger (IM). It is free, easy to get started with and most people already have it. There are numerous Instant Messengers, so the first step is for the team to agree on which one to use. She is lucky because all badged employees already have an IM account. Since partners and customers may not use the same Instant Messenger network (Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Google Talk), use an application that can connect with different networks (Adium, Pidgin, iChat, Meebo).
Instant Messenger (IM) is actually the first Baseline Tool we recommend. Baseline Tools are Collaborative Tools that enable co-located and distributed teams to work together. The other Baseline Tools we think everyone should be using are: Shared Calendar, Profile (Social Network), Desktop Video and Data Collaboration. For more information, visit our Getting Started with Baseline Tools wiki
My advice for the simplest and best introduction to Collaborative Tools is Instant Messenger (IM). It is free, easy to get started with and most people already have it. There are numerous Instant Messengers, so the first step is for the team to agree on which one to use. She is lucky because all badged employees already have an IM account. Since partners and customers may not use the same Instant Messenger network (Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Google Talk), use an application that can connect with different networks (Adium, Pidgin, iChat, Meebo).
Instant Messenger (IM) is actually the first Baseline Tool we recommend. Baseline Tools are Collaborative Tools that enable co-located and distributed teams to work together. The other Baseline Tools we think everyone should be using are: Shared Calendar, Profile (Social Network), Desktop Video and Data Collaboration. For more information, visit our Getting Started with Baseline Tools wiki
Friday, September 4, 2009
Bluetooth multipoint testing (part 2)
After torturing myself and unsuspected friends and co-workers for the past 2 weeks, I still haven't found a reliable multipoint headset. There have been highs where we have been shocked at how well it works, YEAH! And then there are the lows where nothing works at all - frustration!
One piece of advice I learned the hard way, only pair one headset to your computer and phone at a time. I think my they are both mad at me for having 4 or 5 headsets paired at the same time ...
Here is a summary so far:
1) Jawbone Prime most success so far. My co-worker and I tested using Skype, iChat and iPhone. We were able to go back and forth between the computer and phone amazingly well. We didn't even have to hang up one before calling the other. A couple of times, we were even able to hear without any interruption. We had a Skype video call going, called iPhone and answered call through Prime and was able to hear instantly without hanging up the Skype call. Granted the audio quality isn't the best, but once the Skype call is hung up, the audio quality improves to normal phone quality. Without hanging up the iPhone, called iChat video, heard the ringing through the Prime, hit the Accept button and magically, it worked! Now there's true multipoint for computer and mobile phone =) Unfortunately, we haven't been able to get it to work consistently -- stay tuned!
2) Plantronics Discovery 975 kind of works. To be fair, they do say "Multipoint" technology pairs earpiece to two phones -- but worth a try because the case is AWESOME! Not only does it have a case for the headset, but it is also a battery boost (1 1/2 charge). Needless to say, I really want this one to work... and it does, kind of. Only hiccup, you have to hang up one before you can answer the other. I'm willing to give it another shot!
3) Jabra Halo kind of works. They say "Multiuse" connect to 2 devices at the same time. Although I called technical support and they say it only works for 2 phones, not a computer. But, I'm willing to give it a shot, because I like the headset in stereo. Of course, the Halo can't be used in a car. So, if successful, it will be good for people who use the phone in a stationary location often (can't say in the office, since people work at locations that aren't "offices"). This has been less successful, I actually turned on my iTunes instead of video conference! I gave it to my co-worker to test out. I think my computer's mad at me for pairing too many bluetooths...
One piece of advice I learned the hard way, only pair one headset to your computer and phone at a time. I think my they are both mad at me for having 4 or 5 headsets paired at the same time ...
Here is a summary so far:
1) Jawbone Prime most success so far. My co-worker and I tested using Skype, iChat and iPhone. We were able to go back and forth between the computer and phone amazingly well. We didn't even have to hang up one before calling the other. A couple of times, we were even able to hear without any interruption. We had a Skype video call going, called iPhone and answered call through Prime and was able to hear instantly without hanging up the Skype call. Granted the audio quality isn't the best, but once the Skype call is hung up, the audio quality improves to normal phone quality. Without hanging up the iPhone, called iChat video, heard the ringing through the Prime, hit the Accept button and magically, it worked! Now there's true multipoint for computer and mobile phone =) Unfortunately, we haven't been able to get it to work consistently -- stay tuned!
2) Plantronics Discovery 975 kind of works. To be fair, they do say "Multipoint" technology pairs earpiece to two phones -- but worth a try because the case is AWESOME! Not only does it have a case for the headset, but it is also a battery boost (1 1/2 charge). Needless to say, I really want this one to work... and it does, kind of. Only hiccup, you have to hang up one before you can answer the other. I'm willing to give it another shot!
3) Jabra Halo kind of works. They say "Multiuse" connect to 2 devices at the same time. Although I called technical support and they say it only works for 2 phones, not a computer. But, I'm willing to give it a shot, because I like the headset in stereo. Of course, the Halo can't be used in a car. So, if successful, it will be good for people who use the phone in a stationary location often (can't say in the office, since people work at locations that aren't "offices"). This has been less successful, I actually turned on my iTunes instead of video conference! I gave it to my co-worker to test out. I think my computer's mad at me for pairing too many bluetooths...
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Day in Review... Sept 2
Highlights from Wed, Sept 2, 09
9:00 am tour of MPK16 with Linden Labs -- one word, AWESOME! Chris and Amanda were great. And of course, they loved what we were doing =) Inevitably something goes wrong while doing a demo, Second Life was down so we couldn't demo MPK16 replicated in SL. Chris hopped on the computer and gave it a go to fix the issue. In the end, the SL developers were all over it and we were able to do our demo after all. We had about 12 people in MPK, physically and "virtually" (Second Life and HD Video). Amanda and Chris gave us great feedback and helpful links, blogs, YouTube videos to check out. We are now following Amanda on twitter @workinginworld... We're collaborating on a Case Study with Second Life, how cool is that?
11:30am Cloud Computing Social in MPK16 Break Area -- We had about 70 people in the next gen area! 40-50 people were expected, but with people traveling to the Bay Area for the All Hands, there was a full house, boy was the place buzzing! Even a Senior VP was spotted in a Breakaway in Studio Two eating pizza and having a quick discussion with a couple Directors. It was amazing how well the sound masking worked, even when the party was roaring in the Break Area, Labs folks were able to continue working with the usual noise level. The smell of the pizza now is another story. Pictures of the event are available on the Open Work wiki
9:00 am tour of MPK16 with Linden Labs -- one word, AWESOME! Chris and Amanda were great. And of course, they loved what we were doing =) Inevitably something goes wrong while doing a demo, Second Life was down so we couldn't demo MPK16 replicated in SL. Chris hopped on the computer and gave it a go to fix the issue. In the end, the SL developers were all over it and we were able to do our demo after all. We had about 12 people in MPK, physically and "virtually" (Second Life and HD Video). Amanda and Chris gave us great feedback and helpful links, blogs, YouTube videos to check out. We are now following Amanda on twitter @workinginworld... We're collaborating on a Case Study with Second Life, how cool is that?
11:30am Cloud Computing Social in MPK16 Break Area -- We had about 70 people in the next gen area! 40-50 people were expected, but with people traveling to the Bay Area for the All Hands, there was a full house, boy was the place buzzing! Even a Senior VP was spotted in a Breakaway in Studio Two eating pizza and having a quick discussion with a couple Directors. It was amazing how well the sound masking worked, even when the party was roaring in the Break Area, Labs folks were able to continue working with the usual noise level. The smell of the pizza now is another story. Pictures of the event are available on the Open Work wiki
Monday, August 24, 2009
Bluetooth headsets w/multipoint
What did I do this weekend? I went to the electronics store and did my best impression of a techie... I asked the friendly sales rep advice for bluetooth headsets with multipoint functionality and he promptly talked me into buying three (3) headsets - Yikes! After spending some time playing with them yesterday, I'm beginning to think "multipoint" means pairing a bluetooth headset to multiple devices, but not at the same time. I have to turn one off before connecting to another, at least when it comes connecting a computer and a phone. They do claim to multipoint with multiple "phones" and "devices". I guess that doesn't imply I can multipoint with a computer and a phone. Should read in-between the lines at what is not said, rather than what is said. I'll get a sanity check from my co-workers this week so stay tuned.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Can't believe I just created a blog!
After years of people bugging me, I finally succumbed to pressure and created my own blog. So, ready or not, my ramblings will now be saved for posterity. Maybe then I won't have to remember if I told somebody something already. I can just point everyone to this freshly minted blog... happy reading!
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