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In part 1 of this series, we talked about designing your personal image for success. While your personal image is hugely important, it’s only one piece of the puzzle. Your online image can make all the difference for getting the initial meeting.
After spending a few years in our careers, we start to our professional/career roadmap. For us techies, this is an easy process. After all, the natural progression for a great techie is simple:
Help Desk -> Network and Server Admin -> IT Manager -> IT Director -> CIO
While this progression seems logical, it’s not a simple continuation. Jumping from a Server Administrator to IT Manager is more like changing freeways than continuing on the same one. Read the rest of this entry »
Over the past couple weeks I’ve been introduced to a number of of technical people who are either looking for a job/contract or are looking to step up into their next role. Their timing is great – any recruiter will tell you that the market is picking up. You can also see it from the number of postings on my aggregated Vancouver Tech Job RSS (feel free to subscribe).
Each of the people I met have been technically skilled, but are not having the success they’d like in their hunt. They all have had one thing in common – while they’re skilled and amply employable, they haven’t spent any time focusing on their personal branding. Read the rest of this entry »
Over the past decade, I’ve reinvented myself and Knapp & Associates several times. With each reinvention, Knapp & Associates has been a vehicle for personal and professional development. Each time, the focus has remained the same: creating business value for its clients through technology.
For the past three years Knapp & Associates has offered strategic IT services. Our focus is simple – developing and implementing IT strategy by aligning with business strategy to increase productivity, optimize operations, and grow using technology. Read the rest of this entry »
Anyone who I’ve talked to about cloud services knows I’m a big fan of Office 365. One of its biggest adoption stumbling blocks is the lack of true Blackberry integration. We’ve been told “it’s coming” since the first beta (then “60 days after general release”), but have been stood up so far.
When I saw the announcement last week of an open beta for Blackberry Cloud Services for Office 365, I got a little excited. Several of my clients are anxiously awaiting this so they can retire old Exchange 2003 servers. Read the rest of this entry »
Our Topic
“Portfolio Management”
Graeme Byrne, enterprise project management and MS Project super-guru will discuss portfolio management and how it applies to your business. Read the rest of this entry »
We have some fantastic speakers lined up for the next few Vancouver Technology Leaders meetings. I’ve already lined up speakers for September, November, January and maybe even March’s events!
This month we’re focusing on strategic business analysis, a core skill for growing IT leaders. Andrew Kowalewski will be leading an interactive discussion on the evolution of a strategic business analyst. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s been a great summer, but with the coming of September, it’s time to get back to work! I’ve been busy in the background planning several things for the Vancouver Technology Leaders.
Event Management
Linkedin is terrible for managing events. I’m currently considering moving the group over to Meetup.com for their much more powerful event management interface. There’s a minor cost ($60/year) to use their system, but I think it will more than be worth it for simplicity. The downside is that people will need a meetup.com account to RSVP for events. Yes, yet ANOTHER account.
Linkedin would still be used for verification (a link to your linkedin profile would be required to join).
If anyone has comments or thoughts, please let me know!
On Tuesday Microsoft announced general availability of Office 365, their next-generation hosted services platform. The platform can include a range of services, including Exchange Server (email and calendaring), Sharepoint (collaboration), and Lync (instant messaging, voice and video conferencing). Larger plans include email archiving and even PC-to-phone through Lync. Read the rest of this entry »
Recently I was helping troubleshoot an odd issue for a client. During that process, I wanted to see the message headers for a meeting request I was sent.
I’m using Outlook 2010. I opened a calendar entry for a meeting, a looked for message headers. No obvious place for them. The little box beside in the Tags area of the toolbar is not there!
After searching around, I found another option. Under File tab, click the Properties button. Aha! A box for message headers. Which was empty. On every meeting request I’ve received. It seems that Outlook 2010 doesn’t save headers with the actual calendar entries.
All was not lost. In my deleted items I found the original meeting requests. Upon opening them and clicking the little box beside in the Tags area of the toolbar, I was able to find message headers. Geeky lesson learned.
