Insights&Inspiration

Inspired by this week’s “From the Couch” via @cjdsie

I thought I had my career path figured out. I loved sports and physical fitness, so of course I would go into Kinesiology.

But then again I really do love working with kids (I always have been very maternal) – I’ll study early child development.

Oh but actually I’m really good at working with middle school kids, especially  teaching them math – ok so I’ll be a middle school math teacher.

Thats what I stuck with until the second semester of my senior year, but yet again my interests began to morph.  This time in a whole different way.

I nannied for a wonderful family since the beginning of my Sophomore year of college, and over time the mother and I developed a great friendship. A lot of our core values and beliefs were very similar which made helping raise her children very natural, giving us a very strong bond.

I recall at one point, she sat me down and asked me if I really just want to be a teacher. I replied confidently that its what I’m good at and what I love. She left the door open to continue the conversation at another time if I ever changed my mind. So I did begin to ponder it a little bit.  I began to realize that there were various reasons why maybe I shouldn’t settle down to teach just yet.  She seemed to have confidence in me, believed that I was capable of much more.  It inspired me to believe in myself as well.

And so began a mentorship that would vastly alter my career goals, and it was the best thing that could have ever happened to me – both personally and professionally. Really it all started with the fact that we both had very similar core values and beliefs and the fact that I recognized she had a lot of knowledge that I could greatly benefit from learning.

I starting paying attention to everything she did, everything she shared and taught me. I took some advertising and marketing classes, and landed my first job out of college as an online marketing coordinator (of course the glowing reference from the successful advertising professional  didn’t hurt).

From there I moved on to account service at an ad agency, and finally shifted over to digital project manager for the digital department of the agency. I feel like I have finally found my niche, applying all of my best assets and my passion for the work. None of this would have come to fruition had I not recognized the knowledge that this woman had to share with me and dove in full boar.

She and I have maintained our relationship, and she always provides great insight for me to this day. I have developed a few other contacts through her that I greatly value, and I notice that the people I connect most with professionally these days are the people that have similar core values, beliefs and knowledge I can benefit from.  I realize that the more of these kinds of people I meet and remain in contact with, the more valuable I become as an employee because of the vast knowledge I acquire, and the happier I am as an employee as well as an individual because I have a strong base of people whom I can turn to for knowledge and advice.

I know that this relationship is one of a kind, as all relationships are, but as the saying goes, “sometimes its better to be lucky than good”.  Meeting this woman was pure luck, but allowing that relationship to flourish and have the impact on my professional – and by osmosis – personal life was a conscious choice. A better saying for this might be “luck is where preparation meets opportunity”.  It was happenstance that we met, but preparation and opportunity that allowed me to recognize the potential and further build that relationship.

We choose who we surround ourselves with and I am aware of this now more than ever. Each time we open ourselves up to meeting people of like mind and interests who have knowledge we can benefit from, we are feasibly opening ourselves up to a relationship that could have limitless impact on our lives.

I have also learned to be open to people who don’t have similar core values or beliefs, as long as they have a lot of beneficial knowledge to offer me – but these relationships I have to be careful to keep professional, as allowing them to impact me personally is likely to cause more harm than good.

There is a WordPress Plugin for EVERYTHING!

Every time I stumble across something I want to add or do to my site, I Google it – and low and behold, i discover a WP Plugin that takes care of it.. what a beautiful thing.

Yesterday I tweeted that I was having a love/hate relationship with WordPress because I somehow broke a site I was working on – but now that I have fixed it (by deleting everything and starting over…) and I have discovered some cool new plugins – yes, we’re back to love :)

Kinda scary though – I mean if any dummy can build a cool site thanks to awesome plugins, will people like me soon become dime a dozen because knowing how to actually do these things is no longer necessary?

Well I will keep self-educating anyway. Hopefully I can just stay ahead of the curve. Its becoming quite the race these days though!

When I heard the announcement of Google Wave, I was particularly excited. Not only because I trust that anything coming from Google will be just what the doctor ordered, but also because I have become interested in researching project management and collaboration tools that can fit today’s needs – and specifically my needs.

A Little Background

For those of you who are not familiar, you can read about Google Wave here.

Google Wave is Google’s latest project, and began with this question: “what might email look like if it were invented today?”.   So they reinvented email in the form of Google Wave, and it has become a communications platform encapsulating various communications technologies – a platform on which groups of people can share, collaborate, socialize, and interact. And developers are currently working on APIs that will further enhance the service.

So Once Wave Takes Hold…

Emerging as a tool that brings together all of the communication technologies that we have become so fond of – namely email, IM, and social media, it got me thinking:

• What will Google Wave’s impact be on the communications platforms we have been become so used to using to date – email, IM, and more recently, the various social media platforms that are so widely used today.
• Will Google Wave take over the online communication universe in the way that it took over the internet? Or do companies now know better to where they will recognize the threat and immediately begin to develop similar technologies that will enable them to compete with Google Wave? Will the result render all “old” communication mediums – email, IM and social networking platforms – useless?
• Will the Waves be publicly searchable, to where the keywords in the conversations can be tracked and measured? In that case, if we begin to use Google Wave in place of email, that means our emails will also now be trackable and measurable, and possibly public. This is certainly a new concept.
• So I then wonder, will we just become accustomed to everything we ever electronically write being public, except for possibly the select few conversations we choose to make private?
• And what will come of sites like Facebook and Twitter? Will they be able to maintain their unique position in the social media landscape, or will Google Wave’s capabilities become so powerful and versatile that it will render sites like these useless as well?

In Summation…

The thinking behind Google Wave is brilliant – how would we design email if it were invented today. Answer: incorporate all of forms of online communication that we currently use separately for various different reasons, and instead create a one-stop shop for collaborating, socializing, communicating and sharing.  Simple and brilliants.

I’m excited for what Google Wave will bring – and I don’t know how Google intends on handling this Pandora’s Box it may be opening – but am very curious to see how it all unfolds.

Post and share your thoughts on the topic!