I had to miss some of TechEd until I arrive Today (Tuesday) at lunch. Even with the much improved Virtual TechEd, CommNet, and pending DVD’s; you still can’t help but feel like you’re missing TONS of information.
Trying to keep in touch with your coworkers onsite is still amazingly tough in 2007… Windows Mobile Phone batteries don’t even last through lunch with Communicator & Outlook running; and WiFi is still hit or miss (assuming like past years that it doesn’t reach the dining hall nor the front of the Breakout Sessions). Funny thing thou: if you’re using Communicator Mobile 2005 on your Windows Mobile phones, you can tell when breakout sessions get out, as everyone jumps back online after attempting to save battery during the session… which is a great opportunity to use the person-specific “Tagging” in Communicator, where you can mark someone (unbeknownst to them) so you’ll get the usual “online/offline” toast (pop-ups) but ONLY for the people you tag.
Here’s another TechEd Communicator tip: make a new group in the full client called “TechEd”, add your onsite coworkers, and it will sync up to Communicator Mobile (may have to sign off/on mobile). Now when in Mobile, highlight the group and blast an IM to the group name in just a few steps. May I recommend: “Lets meet at the Birds of a Feather session number 65 tonight at 7:45pm on Virtual Datacenter’s”… or in IM txt: “cu@BoF65@7:45”
So there is a huge blogging world at TechEd. I use it to keep up on Breakout Sessions I?m missing, fun stuff happening in the TechEd-o-sphere (youtube, flickr, etc) and get that general ?plugged in? feeling at the event.
Several ways I this are:
This year is different for me in that I won’t be there until Tuesday morning, so until then I’ll be glued to Virtual TechEd. Not sure if the presenters will be uploading their content to the Schedule Builder on the fly, but it would be cool if I can catch some PowerPoint’s before I get there.
Here I am beyond midnight again just starting my ‘homework’. It continues to amaze me my ability of self defeating procrastination. After hours spent on other things, some important, most not… I sit with a cold cup of Joe realizing I’ll likely hurry through tonight’s homework once again.
You see, I’ve not been one to talk about it too much… what I’ve been focused on for two years. Mostly due to assumptions that others don’t care (hey that’s a good blog title) but also because I want to let the evidence of my actions reflect my work rather than my talk. Here on the most-public-of-all-public-places I’ve also been sensitive that some of the coursework I am studying under is copyrighted and can’t be of much public discussion.
Most, if any of my friends and family do not realize the amount of effort my wife and I have put into changing our life mindset, plans, and goals since 2003. We continue to increase our fever and effort in the simple task of changing our mind’s blueprint and actions to be that of a wealthy or rich person rather than our previous state of mind (the typical middle-classer).
As the books says it’s not been easy; and even just what we’ve done so far is hard enough to describe to someone that we don’t bother. We are doing things with our finances, our discipline, and our lives that no one we know is doing… which makes all this extremely hard. I know that we’re actually following the path of our virtual mentors such as Robert T. Kiyosaki, Dr. Dolf de Roos, Mark Fisher, and of course Mr. Williams; but with not one person to talk to who has done this ‘mindset transformation’ and become truly free, we feel like we’re clearing our own path through the Amazon.
So we have this no quit clause. Which at times has been all that keeps us pursuing our dream: to be independently wealthy within five years so that we won’t have to work for a living wage and become truly free, so that each day can be lived exactly how we choose it to be.
Since I didn’t document any expectations three years ago I’m not sure that I expected this journey to be different then it is. Yet today, as I sit here finishing this post in an attempt to document my emotions (I’m much more a typer then a writer… one of my weaknesses I’m fighting) I realize that I’m not moving fast enough toward the goal. As much as we accomplish weekly, I still feel as if I have never truly challenged myself.
It’s amazing how hard it is to find a simple yet digital way to share gift wish lists with family and friends in the 21st century. I’ve had some form of a personal wish list publicly online since around 2002 I believe. It’s always been at this url which I’ve communicated so consistently throughout the years that people are getting the hint that they don’t even need to ask… they just go, click, buy.
But the app behind that list has changed nearly every year because the web app either goes out of business or my sheer frustration with it’s limits has me going somewhere else. All this seems so simple to do, and you would think ad revenue (Ads by Google, duh) would generate at least some income for the hosting party… but I guess not. My current one is hosted on giftTagging.com, which is a nice web2.0 (AJAX, community features, tagging) made by a UK web app company called this side up.
Only a few features separate this site from the perfect wishlist site. If someone made one from scratch this would be my required features list:
- Simple item entry of title, description, quantity, price, multiple URL’s (for multiple stores), picture url, tagging, multiple lists, priv/pub lists.
- viewable from a WAP browser so you can quickly lookup what they want while you are out and about.
- Subscribe to other’s wishlists and get a daily update of changes
- public view shows your guests which items are bought, and let them enter in a date in which the item will auto-fall off your list (the day after you receive the gift usually) so there is no post-holiday list cleanup.
- A JavaScript link to ‘wish list this page’ which will pull in the URL, page title, and a description (If the page is tagged correctly) for you, saving you some work.
- A setting on each item for ‘need/want rating’
- Save one of your ‘views’ as the guest view, such as saving a view of “items from least $$ to most”.
- A nice AJAX interface with multiple item editing.
So far giftTagging.com is the best I’ve seen.
I was planning to wait a few more weeks until I won a weight-off with coworkers to buy my Nano. One reason was to rid myself of my painful 20GB Samsung YH-95 which is only 1.5 years old and now has a 2-hour battery life (with no replacement option). I think I’m the last person on earth to admit Apple knows what it’s doing with MP3 players and every other player I’ve bought has been junk very quickly. I should point out this my first Apple product, something tells me it’s not my last.
So I got a Nano over an iPod with Video due to it’s size/weight and workout-ability. I’ve been thinking about the Nike+ (Nike Plus) system for months and picked it up as well (I already had a pair of Nike+ Air Equalon’s). I thought it would interesting to start getting some stats on my ever increasing runs as I get back into health after a 6-year break. So far the results are nothing short of awesome. Nikeplus.com couldn’t be cooler, with a slick Flash interface and seemly endless ways to look at your data of your runs, compete with others, and set goals for yourself in a fun and visual way.
I thought at first it might be a bit of a gimac (the site, not the sensor) but was blown away by the people using it. Notice this interesting stat:
Wow, yea um I think just a few people use it. An interesting idea that I didn’t think about is that because the whole system (shoe sensor to iPod to iTunes to nikeplus.com) has a built in integrity to it, allowing it to be a much better online experience then “yea I ran 5 miles last night”… people are able to actually compete on the site in various ways (distance, speed, calories, etc.) with a reasonable amount of belief that others aren’t making it up. CNBC (which I originally saw this product debuted on) claimed “this could really change the way people run”.
Anyway, one run down and I’m digging it. Oh, and the sexy/confident female chiming up every so often (or push of a button) doesn’t hurt either. I hope they do nothing but make this system better over time. 5 years from now the Nano could have a built in GPS (oh but it would also have to be smaller/lighter/brighter/etc) and you could slap your runs on a map. That would be a bit more accurate then the auto-calibrated distance system in the shoe sensor.
