BarCamp 4: Lunch was good

I ran over to Togo's with Andy Smith to pick up the sandwiches, a nice opportunity to talk with him and get a bit more information on Flock. Beau Lebens, who I worked with on the Blogger API PHP code so long ago, came down just before I left and we finally met after so many emails, IMs and phone calls. Taller than I expected, he's in the blue shirt at the back of this photo Scott Beale took. Much schmoozing with Ho Jon, Beau and Alex Russell, a developer at JotSpot. Alex had some good information on changes at JotSpot's functionality and pricing. The WhumpMeister himself, Bill Humphries, showed up around then too.

Around 2:20 Chris Messina put up the anticipated Flock demo. Looks good to me. Visually appealing with a nice understanding of how to surface two-way web functionality. Key early features are:

• built-in social bookmarking, including groups and watchlists, which they call breadcrumbs;
• a blog authoring widget that uses ATOM to communicate with pretty much any blog tool; and,
• history search that works against your search history and breadcrumbs.

As part of the blog authoring piece Flock built a component called the Shelf, a scratchpad to which you can drag fragments as you surf and then pull into the rich text editor field. It's intelligent so if you highlight and drag a bit of hyperlinked text or a photo to the Shelf it gets as much information as possible--the hyperlink as well as the text, for instance, or the Flickr URL for the photo if you grabbed it from that site.

At 3:00 I sat in on an AJAX performance session lead by Jonathan Boutelle. I really didn't learn much but that's more from my low level of technical exposure to AJAX. Others probably had a better experience. I was also having physical difficulty sitting on the floor with my legs crossed and LittleSteven on my lap so standing up and walking out felt good.

Waiting for the next session back in the big room where I got a chair at the center table (yay!), Chris did another Flock demo. I got another nugget, that the blog authoring widget can handle any arbitrary number of blogs that you have.

At 4:00 Riana Pfefferkorn lead a session on search engine marketing, mainly for Google where she used to work. Covered some of the history and practice of AdWords, a few common misunderstandings (such as click fraud tactics like trying to blow your competitors budget don't really work), recent changes and things that do work.

Beau also took a chunk of the session to talk about his experience working with Yahoo's paid search inclusion. He has a more positive view of it than many other techies might but that's due to his greater familiarity with the real world implementation rather than coming from a, um, highminded philosophical perspective.

5:00 was Tom Conrad talking about his company Pandora and its Music Genome Project. MGP is the result of having hundreds of professional musicians scoring songs (mainly rock and now getting into Latin) on several hundred parameters, time consuming painful work but the musicians did get paid for their time. Originally they licensed the technology to, for instance, Amazon for use as "if you like this, you'll probably like that" recommendation engine but that business model wasn't working.

So now they're coming out with a proprietary music service. Based on the analytical scores Pandora will let users (once it launches, closed beta is on now) specify one or more artists and/or songs to create personal radio stations. Streaming, not download, and because they've set up under the DCMA statutory licensing provision has to follow certain rules. Nice UI for the client app, using OpenLaszlo, and the songs served will frequently surprise listeners by reaching into the Long Tail.

BarCamp 3: Yes, it's Saturday morning

Got a later start this morning than expected but a bunch of new people showed up and we did another round of introductions. I had a chance to say hello to Scott Beale of Laughing Squid and signed up to show RawSugar in 20 minutes--assuming anyone shows in the room. Some people did sleep here though I bugged out after midnight and enjoyed the comfort of my own bed.

[Footie note: Liverpool won today, 1-0 over Sunderland, yay three points but I think they need to get in gear pretty soon to avoid another fifth place finish.]

Riana is leading a session on user-contributed content sites, commercial and not. "You want to filter the canon of the ages down to bumper stickers?" Riana asked one guy who said he didn't want to read through huge amounts of free content (Project Gutenberg, for instance) to find the two bits useful for him.

[KegBot!]

A PM from PGP is making the point that this is once again making new from old: letters to the editor, radio talk show callers --> aggregated/hosted blog content. Possibly the business model is filtering; people will pay for Jon Stewart's filtering, MSM editorial factchecking and balance.

Group photo, with me sitting on the floor right in the middle of the shot. Discussion went around in wider and narrower circles with the center generally being how money factors in.

BarCamp2: Boogaloo

We're in a bit of a lull here. Microformats is the next session at 11, a joint presentation with Tantek Celik up at Foo Camp; wonder how they're gonna do that, possibly through BreezeCentral. Wireless security is apparently a joke, which Jake Appelbaum demonstrated a few moments ago. I'm trying out Jiwire's SpotLock to see if I can improve LittleSteven's profile.

A few people from Flock are here and promise a big demo tomorrow. I did get a bit of a scoop from Chris Messina, if you can call it that, which is that Flock is a distribution of Firefox in the same way that Knoppix is a distribution of Linux. Could be pretty cool--Andy Smith is using it on the projector though not technically demoing it.

Very hot in here. Not in the Nelly sense. My contacts aren't handling it well.

11:30: I took the contacts out, it was just too much for me. I'm sitting with Erica Douglass, CEO of Simpli Hosting and also ex-Sun, listening to the Ryan King and Kevin Marks cover the history, architecture and practicalness of microformats (photo of Kevin and Ryan). Robert, Erica has a TabletPC too, a Toshiba!

Here at BarCamp

BarCamp just did a round of introductions and now people are sorting out some sessions for tonight and other logistics. Pretty sizable group though definitely going to be stragglers or people not showing until tomorrow. At least 40-50 so far, more virtually through IRC.

Mike Price from mobido.com is talking about his service. Allows ad hoc groups to exchange pictures and communicatons without exposing personal information (anonymizes everybody), mainly through camphones.

8:00: Ross Mayfield is talking/leading discussion about how we can capture the event for others/posterity and also link in people from FooCamp and virtual participants. How to enhance communication inside the sessions as well. He's showing the site SocialText set up for the Tsunami Help group (in the wake of last December's Indian Ocean disaster)

Hey Scoble, I see someone writing on a TabletPC across the room.

Ross: There is no clapping at BarCamp!

8:40: Niall Kennedy is starting a session on Blogging For Profit. Ads? Content for ads, ads for content? Different types of ads: text/CPC (Google, Yahoo), affiliate/CPL (Amazon, porn, eBay), CPL++ (mortgage, travel, jobs), salary++ (personal fame/fortune, new job/promotion). Different motivations for each, different presentation.

Salary, CPL can be monetized through RSS, ads not so much. Also, blog for hire (blogging as a job, weblogs.com, gawker) and personal merchandise are revenue sources suggested by kevinkurioso of ok-cancel.com.

What is the appropriate level of disclosure when money is in play? Level of trust is important to establish. Ads on the site is implied disclosure but other instances may require explicit mention--talking about a product for a fee, or about competitors. (Slouching towards Xanadu...)

Since new media is disrupting ad spending, should advertisers look for new ways to get better content? Example: Getting better cameras to photobloggers. Measurement of traffic, especially inbound, is a key statistic. Look at previous new media, like pamphlets back in Franklin's time, same outburst and then flowed into a more sensible/mature space.

Here's a capture of me from the webcam for posterity. In the white shirt, head over the laptop. Talking of meta... Here's the Flickr photostream including Niall Kennedy's shot of me, and the Buzznet stream.

In terms of the salary++ stream, Ryan King told of how he got his gig at Technorati because people there noticed his blog posts on microformats. Leading to a discussion of people posting their reviews to Amazon versus on their own blogs. The network effect of Amazon makes the reviews more appealing to readers while microformats like hReview may allow similar aggregation while retaining the content locally.

When does someone cross the line between making content for internal reasons rather than because it may offer cash/reward. Many good stories about people making meaningful amounts off their blog but like most other things it's a small number capturing most of the cash.

BarCamp on Technorati

Check out my sweetie's first decoupage!

Bar Camp: I'll be there, will you?

No Sense Worrying

Welcome to the wonderful world of personal publishing, Miss Muller! NoSenseWorrying is a new blog from Yankee fanatic/season ticketholder, fellow SpoFite and design goddess Jennifer Muller. Goddam, as we call her on the 'Fi, also helped with some advice on the still in progress redesign of this site.

Over at interesting new Flickr for videos site YouTube, from 1989 John Cleese's eulogy for Graham Chapman followed by Eric Idle leading a poignant performance of Always Look on the Bright Side. Those Pythons, what a funny bunch of fuckers.

Small world indeed

There is another Bill Lazar in Mountain View, he's lived here longer than me, but today was the first time in over eight years that I got a phone call intended for him. Unfortunately the caller got my voicemail and though her message was to cancel an appointment she didn't leave a callback number. Oh well.

Tonight's movie: Cidade de Deus (City of God)

Foreign films are rarely nominated for Oscars--outside of the Best Foreign Film category, of course--so if I say that Cidade de Deus was nominated for four last year and yet not in that category you'll have some idea of the quality and controversy of the film. When I finished watching my soul felt dirty, that after 130 minutes of nearly unrelenting grim violence pushing the delete button on the Tivo remote felt good.

The problem, though, is that City of God tells a true story. The movie's name comes from a housing project in Rio de Janeiro that the government threw up in the mid-'60s. People displaced from elsewhere or simply unable to afford a home were installed into shacks that had no hot water and, at least at first, only sometimes electricity. Few of the youngsters had any hope of finding an honest way out but the depths to which many sank are beyond the pale of civilization. Think of the stories of invaders raping and pillaging in olden days, then update it to the our times, add drugs, pistols and semi-automatics and, oh yeah, leave out the invaders part since these monsters were bred at home.

As the story begins three boys who don't seem more than 14 or 15, the Tender Trio, are making a few cruzeiros ripping off gas delivery trucks. Two of them have younger brothers hanging around, plus another neighbor boy of the same age. The narrator, essentially, is named Busca-Pe (Rocket), one of the brothers. He's got no taste for crime despite finding himself driven to try it later on but the other two youngsters certainly do.

One night the neighbor boy suggests the Trio move up in class by ripping off a whorehouse a couple of miles away. Though brought along, they leave Li'l Dice outside to watch for cops. As a way to alert the bandidos he's given a pistol but the temptation, the siren call to act, is too great and he fires off a round. The olders boys hear it and rush out; not around they assume the police pinched him, or worse, and flee in one of the john's cars.

Li'l Dice has, in fact, gone inside and, well, director Fernando Meirelles leaves the showing of that for later. More bad things happen and soon all the Tender Trio are out of the picture. But not our boy with the cold eyes. He's active, and learning, realizing his rightful place is running the drug concession in the ghetto. On his 18th birthday Li'l Dice and Benny (the other younger brother) literally eliminate all the other top dealers except one, Carrot, who's befriended Benny.

Rocket, meanwhile, is trying to find a way out that doesn't involve being on either end of a gun barrel and latches on to photography. This puts him at the center of the inevitable battle between Li'l Ze and Carrot. I doubt more bullets were fired on D-Day than seemed to be splattering everywhere, from any boy big enough to lift a pistol, in the war between the dealers.

Having written all this, I still understand how Meirelles was nominated for Best Director and other nods came for Editing and Cinematography (the fourth, for adapted screenplay, I'm not as clear on mostly because I had to read the dialog as subtitles). This film is political art of the highest order. The descent into barbarity--boys barely out of diapers are in one scene making a list of who they should kill next because, well, they said something offensive--is portrayed as the natural result of grinding poverty, corruption and indifference. Yet it's portrayed stunningly, with the color and vitality most Westerners associate with Brazil.

An amazing film yet more horrifying than anything made by Wes Craven of John Carpenter. When City of God finished Vivian asked me how it was. I told her I was glad to have seen it butjust as glad she hadn't.

absolutely recommended

Some job hunting resources and advice

[another bit]

A brief list I compiled for a friend the other day, left here for future reference and such. All advice is based on my experience, comes with no warranty, and is not intended to be exhaustive or authoritative--your mileage may vary. The first section, on resumes, is pretty much applicable anywhere in the US while the second part, which discusses some specific physical and web-based groups, is somewhat more specific to Santa Clara County in the San Francisco/San Jose area.

But First: Network!

I've noticed that people are using LinkedIn successfully as way to connect with someone already working at companies to which they'd like to apply. If you decide to use it, feel free to send me a connection request assuming you have my email address. Depending on your geography and social group, one of the other social networking sites like Ryze and Tribe might be more suitable. Probably a good idea to join at least one and see if you can use it.

For sure see if any of the companies you used to work at have an alumni group. Two of my companies, Sun and NetDynamics, have good ones--the main activity is an email/web group, we use Yahoo! Groups for both--and they can be really helpful for keeping in contact with people who can give you references, refer you to friends at other companies or be the entry point to their current employer. Occasional cocktail parties or similar events offer opportunities to socialize, expand and solidify the relationships.

Resumes

Use one, preferably most/all of the big job posting sites (Monster, HotJobs, CareerBuilder and the like) plus Craig's List. Here are a few tips:

• Make your resume public/visible. Forgetting to do this seems to be a frequent mistake.
  
• Use common job titles for your positions despite what name your previous employer used, otherwise you won't be included in recruiter search results.
  
• Don't include more than the last 10 or so years of employment and similarly don't include graduation dates if they're more than 15 years in the past. Don't lie, just remember the purpose of a resume is to get you past the first level screen.
  
• Go over your resume three times to catch any typos, especially if you have to use a site's own fill in the blank (after blank after blank) forms--then get a friend or two to doublecheck it.
• Make a trivial change every few days (add or delete a period, for example) because the search results are ordered so the most reccently resumes are shown first and, as understood from your own experience with search engines, nobody looks that deep in the list. Be near the top or be invisible!

Additionally, put your resume online, on a website of your own. If you don't have your own personal website you can use one of the free hosting services but my preference is to spend a few dollars and get one so you have better control as well as avoiding the inevitable advertising. Get a domain name that is, or includes, your name if possible because that improves the odds IMO that a recruiter will call you after Googling for some skill set.

Second choice for me, first if you don't want to spend any money, is Google's Blogger/Blog*Spot where you can post your resume as a blog entry. If you have more than one targeted type of job you should have a version of the resume for each and therefore a separate resume blog for each. Here are a few tips for setting up the blog if you choose to go this way:

1. Use one of the simple, clean template designs like Snapshot Sable or Rounders; there may be other good templates available from other sources but those two are my preferences of the set available on Blogger.
2. Use a very simple title, such as Your Name's Resume, and use your elevator pitch as the description. On both of the recommended templates your description is shown just under the title.
3. Use the Blogger profile. Enter your real name and location and post a good headshot photo of yourself (but get a friend to verify your choice).
4. Make your first post a list of links to the job sites where your resume is posted--to the pages with your resume, not the home page of the other site. Google indexes almost all Blogger blogs, I think, and this way it will find the instances of your resume.
5. Make your second post a very cleanly formatted version of your resume--while the Blogger editing tool, which I've written this post in, is very nice the developers still haven't worked out all the small gotchas. Especially with lists, bulleted or numbered.
   
6. Don't make a third post. This will leave your resume at the top of the page.
7. Just like with the job boards, come back every couple of days and make a tiny change because this will make the page fresh to Google and other search engines. By tiny I mean add or remove a period or comma but if you think of a better word now and then to describe one of your past responsibilities use it.
   

Networking and local support groups

Some groups can really help make your search faster and more effective. The ones I used were here in the Mountain View/Santa Clara County area but most places in the US will have similar versions. If not, start one!

ProMatch requires a sizable time commitment but I got more out than I put in. It's the local (South Bay) chapter of CA EDD's Experience Unlimited program. In this chapter (can't speak for the others around the state) you join a team responsible for either one sequence of classes, such as interviewing, resume building, or networking, or for an operational aspect of the group; the instructional material is provided by ProMatch although teams occasionally decide to update it.

You also take classes, attend a couple of meetings and workshops, and network. In fact the group is a terrific networking resource because instead of just posting emails you get lots of face time with the other members. Joining a success team is a must!

CSIX is mostly an email channel, with good job postings and connection requests, though to join you need to attend one regular Tuesday lunch (always at a Chinese restaurant in Cupertino, $8 for the food). After that you can just get the email list, attend the occasional lunch if there's a good speaker and you can be more active too as they have many domain-specific SIGs. the founder, Hamid Saadat, has done terrific work in building this to a large (I think more than 2,000 member as of August '05), useful organization.

KIT-list: "The KIT (Keep In Touch) List is an email job posting service where employers and recruiters advertise permanent or consulting job opportunities to over 35,000 high-quality professionals." Excellent source of job postings though I suggest setting up an inbox filter to put these automatically into a separate filter due to the volume--I just checked and so far the main (non-technical) list has 366 messages already in the first few days of August! There's also a separate mailing list for technical jobs with similar activity levels.

C2kjobs is another email useful local list.

Appendix: A bit insight on job hunting on the net from Bill Vick giving a recruiter's point of view:

If I'm looking at the right group (SanFranRecruiters on Yahoo) then the 211 members whom share HR/Recruiting job leads, best practices, and local recruiting information are skewed towards the middle market with an emphasis on IT, Technology and HR and a mix of consulting an contract placement. That being the case I can see why the poll results are a little different than what I am hearing from 3rd party recruiters who work with the middle and upper level jobs. Dice is a great place for technologist and both Monster and Career Builder are dominated by corporate recruiters and HR who are advertising, not recruting. For pro active Recruiters or HeadHunters sites like The Ladders, Execunet, Netshare and LinkedIn are the place to be if your into posting jobs.

Most of the executive jobs are not posted. Keep in mind that fully 60% of jobs are gained through networking or referrals the remaining 40% is split between the internet, publications and recruiters. Based on who you talk to, recruiters, search firms or agencies only place between 4% and 10% of all jobs last year. I keep hearing wonderful things about the results being made daily by Recruiters or HeadHunters using networks like Linkedin. I know it has made me money.

As with any such messages posted and passed around through the web, please take this with a grain of salt. Consider it one more bit of research to put into the mix.