The domain links to the blog again, yay! GoDaddy had an error with my account and the A-record was not changing properly. But I’m back now. Lots of things are happening, SIFECalgary.com is having some great events, classes are in full swing and I’m job hunting. Here is a picture from my summer in New York.
I am currently in my final year of school, finishing classes at the end of April. It has been an exciting journey that has seen many ups and downs. Going into my final year, I knew I had to bring up my GPA if I wanted to ever wanted to think about graduate school in the future. I’m glad to say that my marks are reflecting my extra effort and I’m on track to reach my goal.
Graduating not only signals the end of classes but entrance into the ‘real world’. In preparation I have begun applying to some post graduate opportunities. There are a lot of different positions out there of which more then a few would interest me. My only goal for this part of my life is to ensure I find something I am passionate about. Success follows passion, there is no doubt about that.
Facebook recently launched a new user interface for their web portal. The initial reception was not very good, with most users disliking it. Things went so far that a developer created an app to get users opinions with 95% responding that they did not like the design. With such negativity its hard to believe that this could represent a dramatic shift in the social network scene.
Twitter has been a tear recently, with nearly 1000% growth over the last 12 months. Breaking into the mainstream has been really tough for twitter, but it is finally seeing success.
One of the main problems with growing so fast, is that twitter has attracted a lot of attention from marketers, trying to sell a product or promote their drug (not always a bad thing). With an advertising model, attracting this crowd can be great for a company, as in the case of google. But without that income stream these marketers just seem to take up space. This gives twitter a bit of an ‘artificial’ feeling. For example on my personal twitter account, I have just about 300 followers but I probably only know about 50 of them at most.
This brings us to the facebook advantage. On my facebook account I know everybody I have listed as a friend, thats 100%. When I ‘tweet’ on facebook I have a nearly a 100% response rate from my friends and I probably average 2-3 responses per update. Unless you have thousands upon thousands of followers, this very unlikely to happen on twitter. This change in design has altered my behavior to stop using twitter and instead switched to use facebook. By offering me the opportunity to connect with my friends via tweets and not just everybody on the internet, facebook is converting me back to their platform.
Although people may not like the new update is much, since it makes facebook harder to use for its original purpose. It is making it a lot easier to connect and share thoughts with people online, likely their new goal. So unless twitter knows how to utilize their legions of marketers they should be scared.
Although I could graduate in the spring semester this year, I have decided to to pursue a summer internship with a tech (preferably silicon valley) or finance company. I have applied to some Apple, Google, VMware, IBM and Sun Microsystems positions. These companies have proven track records and have products that I believe in. Microsoft could be a good company but it would really need to be a position that lets me make a difference, I don’t want to be some lackey for a company with such an identity problem same goes for Yahoo.
I applied to positions directly at each of those companies and I also posted my resume to internshipin.com, the site seems to be a good database/aggregator and I have to support a startup that is so useful.
My current boss also has a lot of connections that I will be utilizing to help find a summer position. He has admitted that he will not have enough work for me during the summer and will help me find a job. Its really just comparing the best opportunities and deciding what I want to do. I may also ask my dad about some positions, since he is a financial advisor and will likely know some people in fund management (an area that interests me).
Here are my predictions for 2009, focusing on the tech world of course. Since I don’t recall being wrong before (though my selective memory might have something to do with that), I think we can all expect a predictable 09, stemming from this list.
Thank you for reading my list, I hope you enjoy it.
BONUS PREDICTION:
Linux finally goes mainstream…. haha no it doesn’t. (Thanks to 1938media.com for this one)
2008 is coming to an end, looking back I felt I learned a lot but it was not a year of giant progress (which will change for 2009). Things I did accomplish were, in no particular order:
2008 seemed to be a year of meeting a lot of great and helpful people. In 2009 I plan to continue meeting amazing people but there is also some other big things in the work. Here are some of my goals:
Now that I’ve shown you my goals, go out and set yours. Lets make 2009 a great year!
I thought this would be a good post with new years coming up
There was once a study of students at Yale, students were asked if they set goals. 97% of the participants said no with the other 3% saying yes. A number of years later the people conducting the study went and interviewed all the students again. The 3% that did set goals had a combined net worth greater then the other 97% combined!* A large statistical discrepancy such as this is rather hard to argue against.
Now what if it was that easy? What if you could literally set goals and become wealthier then the majority of the population? Set a goal and success will come, a pretty nice law if you ask me. It is like the saying “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”, what if this was fact and you could just have an apple a day and be healthy your whole life.
Can you really justify not setting a goal, when clearly is has been a common factor between so many successful people? Well you shouldn’t, goal setting does not take up a lot of time and is not very difficult, though a lot of people do not do it properly.
When defining a goal it is very important to follow these guidelines:
If you follow this process you will start to see a positive change in your life. So good luck and don’t forget the sky is the limit (unless your an astronaut ;))
*I only read this study and have no actual backing for it, despite its lack of proof the story still has a positive message so I’m leaving it up
Great list of marketing articles for startups -
This is a great list of marketing articles for getting you startup up to speed.
[video]
How tasty does that look?