Matthew Botos

Having spent all my money on a big lens and flash, I could only afford economy-class transportation for Catherine’s graduation.

Photos by Michael Botos, headline pun inspired by Prophotolife.

I noticed Cheri tagged her Myers-Briggs personality indicator on del.icio.us, prompting me to find my own and confirm that I’m just wired a certain way. Here are some bits of the INTJ - The Free-Thinker profile that struck home for me:

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In a reassuring sign that my current senior management understands a bit of Enterprise 2.0, our CEO launched an internal blog this week. So far the posts have been short, casually-written glimpses of what the CEO sees and most employees don’t. I think that goes a long way towards helping us peons understand the king’s strategy.

I was also pleased to see that comments are enabled without any moderation. It’s running on a vanilla install of WordPress, so comments are as anonymous as you choose to make them. Being a shameless self-promoter, I not only signed mine, but threw my LinkedIn profile in the URL field. No one else thought to do this, so my ingenuity actually earned me an introductory visit from the vice president of information technology, who I’ve worked under for almost 6 months. More than anything else, that proves how enterprise blogging breaks down barriers.

I was recently invited to join Naymz, a professional social networking site like LinkedIn, but with more emphasis on reputation. Going through the initial setup and looking around, several features caught my eye:

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The Wall Street Journal has some interesting things to say about The Next American Frontier:

The most compelling statistic of all? Half of all new college graduates now believe that self-employment is more secure than a full-time job. Today, 80% of the colleges and universities in the U.S. now offer courses on entrepreneurship; 60% of Gen Y business owners consider themselves to be serial entrepreneurs, according to Inc. magazine. Tellingly, 18 to 24-year-olds are starting companies at a faster rate than 35 to 44-year-olds. And 70% of todays high schoolers intend to start their own companies, according to a Gallup poll.

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This is so true, I should put it at the top of my resume:

Work Isn’t Their Whole World: Sure, they’re going to go to work, but it had better be fun. For Gen Y, work isn’t their identity. It’s just a place. Gen Y sees no reason why a company can’t be more accommodating, offering benefits like the ability to work from anywhere, flex-time, a culture that supports team communication, and a “fun” work environment. They’re also not going to blindly follow orders just because you’re the boss. Sometimes dubbed “Generation Why?” they need to “buy in” as to why something is being done. Old school bosses may find their questioning insubordinate behavior, but they would be best to just change their management techniques and adapt. Gen Y hasn’t known much unemployment and they’re not going to put up with being treated poorly just for sake of a paycheck.

From Why Gen Y Is Going to Change the Web - ReadWriteWeb.

I happened to click on a LinkedIn Company Profile today, and realized it provides metrics that most companies themselves don’t. These range from things that are hard to track (where do people go on to work afterwards), to ones human resources more closely guards (age and gender). Of course, these are just from the LinkedIn crowd; some companies aren’t as young or diverse as that subset appears. In any case, it’s one more source of information about employers, and potentially a gauge of how Web 2.0 and social network savvy a company is as a whole.

Amusing bit from Wil Wheaton:

While I was signing books, a girl about my age walked up to the table. She extended her hand and said, “Hi, Im Gina.” “Hi Gina,” I said. “Its nice to meet you.” “Im a blogger,” she said. “Oh? Cool” I said. “Whats your blog?” “Its called Lifehacker, and –”

It makes me wonder; if you could get your favorite bloggers in a room, would they get along? Would they have anything in common beyond your eclectic interest?

After test riding a singlespeed 29er last year, I knew one was my next bike, but it took until now to put one together. Since the price and weight points of off-the-shelf and bike store custom jobs weren’t what I wanted, the project became a custom build.

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