I’m usually not big on sharing things from my own life here, but some of these changes are reflected in my professional life as well, and I figure that writing about them here can save answering questions and minimize speculation. 2023 has been a year of big changes for me, and they are pretty much all self-inflicted (in a good way).
The first big change is that I moved to Florida. This has garnered some interesting reactions. From many it has been “You’ve moved to Florida, are you crazy?” noting politics and hurricanes as their primary reason. From others it’s been “Makes sense, given that half of your wardrobe consists of Disney T-Shirts, but still – politics? Hurricanes? Are you crazy?”.
So no, I’m not crazy. Yes, I live 15 minutes from Disneyworld. Surprise, the people here are very friendly. Hurricanes are about as scary as earthquakes. Downsizing to a smaller place and simpler lifestyle can be awesome. I found something really cool to do (see the third big change). And I lump politics and the world situation in a category that I try to pay as little attention to as possible to preserve my own sanity, because while I may not be crazy, the world arguably is.
The second big change is that I am no longer with Full Circle Insights, a company I founded 13 years ago. It was purchased last May by a Venture Equity group called Scaleworks. And while these facts may lead you to all kinds of speculations, the truth is quite boring. I was more than ready to move on (yes, it was my choice), and the new CEO and I worked together to have a nice smooth transition. Curiously enough, I’m still a Salesforce ISV partner through my own company, Desaware, with a free app on the AppExchange, so I’m not leaving the Salesforce world. I have too many friends there to want to do that 😊
The third big change (and part of the reason I choose Orlando in my destination when downsizing), is that I’ve spent the past 9 months as a regular volunteer at the most remarkable place – Give Kids the World Village (https://gktw.org). It’s an institution that hosts kids that are brought in by organizations such as “Make a Wish” whose wish is to visit Disney or Universal. It’s a remarkably happy place, and I encourage anyone reading this to add volunteering there to their next Orlando theme park visit. You can find out how to do that on their website.
It’s been a year since I made the decision to turn my life upside down. And while everything didn’t quite turn out the way I planned, overall, I consider the pivot to have been a success. I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing in 2024 to fill the extra time now that my time with Full Circle is over, but I’m not worried. I have a long list of possibilities to choose from.
I wish you all a happy new year, and one where all the changes that occur are those you hope for.
I’m pleased to announce publication my latest Pluralsight course “Leading Virtual Teams” – just in time for Pluralsight’s free April promotion.
Now I guess you’re wondering, why is this course different from the myriad of other articles on the subject?
From what I’ve seen, most treatments of virtual leadership are largely rehashes of standard leadership content with a few references to remote work tossed in. To me this makes little sense – a course on leading virtual teams should only cover those areas where things are different! Where skills need to be adapted or abandoned, and new skills learned.
This course starts by answering a basic question – how do virtual teams differ from non-virtual teams and what are the resulting challenges?
Then it addresses those challenges from two perspectives. First – how do they impact productivity – the work? As in – how do you know if remote team members are even working? How do you find out without becoming an obsessive micro-managing jerk? How do you gain visibility on what is going on, and how do you influence it?
Next, it addresses those challenges from a human perspective. How do you build culture in a distributed team? How do you create a sense of family, of loyalty, of trust? How do you ensure that they become a team, and not just a group of Zoom fatigued individuals chained to their desktops?
By the time you finish this course I think you’ll realize that not only is it possible to lead virtual teams – done properly these teams can have huge advantages over non-virtual teams both for team members and for the organization.
I invite you to check it out – especially now in April, when you can watch for free!
There are epic numbers of sites sharing charts and data about the COVID-19 pandemic. And there are endless posts offering advice and conclusions based on that data. But how do you get from the data to opinion? How do you decide which advice and conclusions are true and objective?
I’ve put together a.. let’s call it a sequel or supplement to my Pluralsight course “Objectivity in Data Visualization” that I hope will help people understand better how to interpret data, and evaluated interpretations of data and data visualizations relating to COVID-19. Enjoy!
I recently began a series of articles focusing on the issues of the day – primarily the COVID-19 Coronovirus, the economy, and their impacts now and going forward. I decided to publish on LinkedIn – it’s a nice publishing platform, and easy to use. I also have friends who work there 🙂
On one hand it feels a bit conceited to think that I have anything new, uniquely perceptive or meaningful to say on topics that are being covered relentlessly elsewhere in the media. But that’s OK – I think most of us are just looking for something we can do to deal with the uncertainty. Some people stock toilet paper. Some people stay home as much as possible. I write. (OK, I also have a bit extra toilet paper and stay home, but that’s not important). Whether my articles help others or not, I can only hope. But writing them and sharing them gives me a sense of doing something, so I will continue, and invite you to come along for the ride.
I’m a big advocate of just-in-time learning. I talk about it often – it’s one of the key principles in my Pluralsight course “Learning Technology in the Information Age“. And while I usually think of it in terms of software development, it clearly applies to all technology – including Information Technology. And I made good use of that principle over the past week or two.
I host a number of blogs – the main ones being this one, searchtheforce.com, advancedapex.com, and teenleadershipbook.com. I know there are plenty of blog hosting sites, but I do it old school – I run my own server (virtual, of course) and host my own WordPress multi-site installation. I’ve done this all along, partly out of habit, partly out of the desire to have complete control over the sites, and partly because I’ve always wanted to keep at least that level of IT within my skill-set. I think it’s good for developers to know something about the underlying systems their code is running on.
These blogs have been around for a long time. Most were running on a Windows 2012 server on WordPress 4. A couple of weeks ago I received a request to upgrade searchtheforce.com, which was running on Ubunto 14.04 with nginx to SSL, which I did (more on that in a minute). But it occurred to me the other blogs were living on borrowed time. Windows Server 2012 is a few years away from end of extended support. WordPress 5 was out, but the themes I was using weren’t compatible with it. The sites were not responsive for mobile users and they didn’t support SSL encryption. Clearly it was well past time for an update.
Whether it is “fake news”, biased media organizations, or manipulated social feeds, it is increasingly difficult to figure out what is true and objective. There are many people working constantly to expose and promote the truth, but it is also essential for everyone to have the ability to look critically at charts and data and figure out if, how and where they might be lying.
I’m pleased to announce my own small contribution to that effort. My new Pluralsight course “Objectivity in Data Visualization” will teach anyone how to become a smarter consumer of charts and data. You’ll learn how charts can lie. You’ll learn how data can be manipulated. And you’ll learn the subtle power of storytelling to distort facts, even if they are 100% true.
Using real world data and examples on some of today’s most controversial topics, after taking this course, you may never look at a chart the same way again.
Remember, anyone can get a free trial on Pluralsight – so there’s no excuse not to check it out 🙂
I’m pleased to announce the publication of my latest Pluralsight course: “Culture of Learning: Executive Briefing“.
I’ve authored a other courses related to learning such as – “Learning Technology in the Information Age” and “Keeping up with Technology“, but both of those are more targeted to individuals who are seeking a strategy for learning and keeping up.
In “Culture of Learning: Executive Briefing“, I take things to a higher level – looking at how to apply learning strategy to an entire team or organization by establishing a learning culture. This is critically important for organizations in addressing the technology gap – the difference between the technical skills and resources an organization has available, and the skills and resources that they actually need.
The Executive Briefing series on Pluralsight are short (30 minute) high level courses on specific topics – I think you’ll find it very much worth the time. Plus, it easily fits into a Pluralsight trial subscription 🙂
