Category Archive

Over the past few years, I’ve watched and been a part of several social networks. My favourite (currently only) is twitter.  I have developed lots of friendships over the years, some entirely online, and some I’ve made online and continued in real life.

What I’ve seen before, but I’m noticing more and more is something I like to call spamship. What this is is a person making a cursory link between themselves and yourselves on a social network.  The better ones at it make an attempt at a conversation, but there are enough out there who are just setting up profiles to gather “connections”.  The worst ones are those who think that the number of friends on a network somehow signifies either popularity or value or expertise.  It’s rubbish.

An added extra that has emerged is distributed spamship which is even more annoying.  Someone “friends” you on one social network, and then “imports” their friendships from that network into another network.  What happens if you’re on both networks? You’re automatically joined to them there too.

It makes the idea of friendship less and less useful and more and more annoying. It is friendship spamming and it’s something that I don’t like. The only beneficiary is the person who is doing the spamming as you end up with pointless connections that have zero value to you elsewhere.

I like the idea that twitter uses of followership. Where you choose to follow a person, and they can follow you, if they want. There is no need to reciprocate if you don’t want to. Twitter puts me in control of my own friends and means that I don’t have to follow anyone I see as a spammer that chooses to follow me.

What will emerge in the future is that followership is going to become a much better guide to expertise, popularity or value than the number of friends a person has.  I know this isn’t new, but it is going to emerge.

We need to organise our lives around something. The internet allows us to have massively connected networks but we just can’t cope for long periods with so many relationships. We will have to focus our time and energies on certain niches and networks whilst staying aware of the outside world.

Spamship will decline as networks mature.  We will need to be more in control of our networks than we are currently, but there will always be a need for openness and collaboration, and we shouldn’t stop people who wish to watch/follow from doing so. We’re all open for collaboration.

I’ve just been through 2 interviews for contract roles in the past week. They are more senior contract roles than I have gone for before as I believe my skills and experience warrant going for those roles, and it seems that I am at a disadvantage.

The disadvantage? That I’ve run my own business for 5+ years.  (Note: I stopped doing that specific business when I had 2 clients fail to pay at once.  Took one to court and won, the other I almost took to court, and they paid up).

Why is running your own business a problem?

Well, it seems that if I’m going for a “Project Manager” (PM) role, then there is an expectation that you will have on your CV “Project Manager”.  I have “Owner/Manager” for my own business on my CV.  I really don’t like lying on my CV.

So for some reason, in the brain of the interviewers I’ve come across recently, that somehow means that my “skills” are not specifically for that role, e.g. Project Management.  I would argue that I’ve run a business (that survived for more than a few months!) and that means I must have PM skills to do that, and that I’ve cut my teeth in much more challenging situations. I can point to specific experience of managing various projects and what I’ve done in certain situations as well, but these don’t necessarily correspond to what they want.

One of the issues seems to come down to not being able to point to specific experiences that correspond to the interviewers situation. Case in point in the last interview was discussing booking engines.  Now the company requires someone to project manage a booking engine development from requirements through to deployment. Now, I have experience of doing the above process with simple websites, social networking sites, content managed websites, intranet productivity tools, project tracking systems, XML databases, multiple integrated systems… and I could go on. But because I haven’t specifically done a “booking engine” (at least, not in the type of way that they want) then somehow I am unaware of what is involved in that process and that marks me down.

Another issue that has come to light is my apparent ability to remember processes (yes that’s ability to remember).  I have been told in each of the last 2 interviews that I have explained very good processes for doing different tasks for the role.  In one interview I was told that they could have easily got the processes I was putting forwards out of a book - and as they’d asked me to produce a hypothetical approach document, surely that’s a good thing! Apparently not. I get the impression that they asked me questions and expected answers based on my experience and not on hypotheticals.  If that’s what you wanted, then ask for that.

The problem is, that when you’ve spent time being a business owner, you build skills up at very many different levels. The PM role, for example, is a big part of owning a business.  So is sales, account/client management, financial (invoicing etc) and legal. If I go for an interview, I expect an interviewer to at least understand that I have well-rounded skills beyond just what I’m interviewing for.  The fact that I may or may not know all the buzzwords for a specific role does not disqualify my other experience.

I have a suspicion that I’m not actually going to be content in what I do until I’ve got another new business to get my teeth into.  My skills appear suited for entrepreneurship and startup and not for climbing any corporate ladder.  Not that I wouldn’t take a job if offered (starting a business is not easy), just that it’s difficult to see what I would be happy doing.

I know this is a rant. Maybe it’s just that I’ve come across 2 poor interviewers, but the people that know me, know what I am capable of, and that understanding can never come across in an interview. Maybe interviewers should take more notice of overall business experience and less notice of the buzzwords they are waiting to hear.

I think I’m becoming a twitter addict.  I just added a load of people to follow from WhoShouldIFollow? and I’m probably going to be figuring all the more out after that.

I really enjoy twitter. I’ve probably spent too much time on it, and this blog is probably going to make me twitter more, then blog more etc.

I find out stuff first mostly on twitter now. It’s odd, but I’m far more likely to click on links from people on twitter than anywhere else.

Ah well, time to stop blogging again!  Trying to keep them shorter for more commentability.

A twitter conversation between me and (mostly) Prokofy Neva

paul: thinking: You are a product of the communities you inhabit

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet hell no, not me : )

garethj: @pjnet Communities are defined by the people that inhabit them

paul: @garethj communities self-perpetuate types of people

paul: @Prokofy those communities may require you to be belligerent and annoying to others in the community - it’s a “type”

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet does it make you feel innovative and clever to typecast people?

paul: @Prokofy - you’re arguing my point about communities in http://www.mixedrealities.com/?p=189…

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet I simply don’t believe in prescribing Social Darwinism for others, imagining up little deterministic scenarios for “communities”

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet most of the time, there isn’t even any such thing as a “community.”

paul: @Prokofy you are the kind of person that encourages people to find out about stuff

paul: @Prokofy not sure what you’re getting at - I think you’re confusing my thoughts with something else

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet no, I’m responding directly to your your tweets. You said people r defined by communities. I say, no, they aren’t & they don’t exist.

paul: @Prokofy communities don’t exist? People are defined by the communities they inhabit - it’s a choice which communities we join

paul: @Prokofy even an anarchist is part of a community no?

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet no? I realize that’s just awfully clever, gosh, you are a product of what you rebel against but no, I’m not a social Darwinist they pretend that they create, empower, link, blah blah “communities”. They don’t. It’s a vast fiction -fake friends list isn’t a community.

paul: thinking that lots of people can’t see the other part of this twittering about

paul: @Prokofy you choose what you believe - you choose what you follow - i haven’t mentioned social darwinism at all

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet I absolutely refute any such determinist and all-encompassing notion of human nature, as “dictated by its community”

paul: @Prokofy I’m not just talking about online though - in fact, the thought came from thinking about offline communities

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet this is one of the deep, deep, corporativist, nay, fascistic fallies of Beth Noveck and Clay Shirky’s group fetishizing and groupism

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet they would have you defined online as always and everywhere “in a group” that grooms and conforms you to norms. No thanks!

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet no, you just practice it : )

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet no, that’s just your doctrine. People aren’t defined merely or even especially by communities. Many other factors are at play.

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet it’s a basic tenet of the Western liberal idea that the individual is unique and free and not subject to these restrictions

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet but I do realize that you simply don’t believe this; you may not even understand it.

paul: @Prokofy blog your thinking and I’ll comment

Prokofy Neva: @pjnet I just did : )

paul: thinking that it’s far easier to be rude and unsociable if you’re an avatar and hiding your true identity

paul: @prokofy We don’t live in isolation. We all live in communities. All different. All individual. Soc. Darwinism is about conformism - th …

paul: @prokofy link to the blog post? Haven’t yet seen it

paul: pjnet enjoying being challenged by @prokofy

I just found this a bit weird. It was an off-the-cuff thought that I was musing over, and the conversation got hijacked and rude very fast.

The conversation was interesting though. There’s a wikipedia page on Social Darwinism.

I do think however that we are changed by the communities we interact with. It’s all about which communities we choose to be a part of.  They can be big or small, and can have big or small influences. But you can’t be a part of a community without being changed in some way by it.

Wishing I’d gone to the TechCrunch UK meetup in London today.

Looks like a lot of people went, and lots of people with new ideas who want to get their ideas out there.

Mike Butcher posted loads of stuff online, and I just would have loved to have gone. I don’t seem to spend enough time around those kinds of people.  And they all seem to have VCs stuffed in their pockets somewhere…?

Ah well, next time.

I’ve realised that I have a lot to say, and that I’m useless at keeping to 140 characters. So I’ve decided to start blogging instead of just twittering.

I’m hoping it’s going to facilitate more discussion and conversation than my twitter’s do.  We’ll see!

Watch this space.