Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Become a Champion!

[Using the Power of IT]

I concluded in the survey analysis post that large group of IT Professionals are just IT-Aware, or IT-Literate. They are far from using the power of IT for their own benefit. Here is a list of things you can do to upgrade yourself from being IT-Aware to IT-Champ. 

Start using internet: For every mundane activity you do you might get a better tool on the internet. No I am not talking about brushing, excercising and sex. I am suggesting activities like 
 + Managing your expenses and savings, fancy name - Personal Finance.  
 + Managing your Tasks - Todo lists, reminders, birthday calenders etc. 
 + Managing your Documents: Resume, monthly paychecks and other documents in free online repositories. Manage your clients, contacts, relationships, discussions and  meetings. 
 + Manage you time: Learn using a GTD (Getting Things Done) tool and get things done.  

Cultivate eHabits: Keep yourself up-to-date. Subscribe a few blog feeds from topics/technologies of your choice, area of work or area of interest. If you are not sure about this, want to know good blogs, ask me in comments. 

Be virtually social: Join different networking forums for different requirements. 
 + Join orkut/facebook and connect with friends. 
 + Keep publishing your status and Ideas at Twitter
 + Join LinkedIn and Ecademy for professional networking. 

And then there are many others focussed on your need or area of interest. Find out and Network with relevant people. Join relevant forums. Ask questions, answer other’s queries, Start discussions, participate in ongoing ones. 

Start sharing: Keep a blog where you can share your ideas, suggestions, complaints or general rants. You can choose blog, blogger, wordpress or typepad. 

An extremely nice way to integrate all these and get them on one page is iGoogle. 

So I have stated 18 links out of which atleast 10 links should be essentially a part of your life soon. There is so much of free technical power to leverage. No decently intelligent professional should waste such an opportunity.  Start today, become a champion.  

PS: Yes, I use all of them. And No, none of them is paying me. 
Posted by Ujjwal Trivedi at 15:53:00 | Permalink | No Comments »

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Google yourself!

Write your name on Google, hit search. What do you get? Are you able to find yourself in the crowd of millions. 

 

Why should you care about being Googlable? 

 - If you want to add value to your resume, be an employee worth a big package.
 - If you have high aims and want to start something of your own.
 - If you are not completely satisfied with your occupation and are looking to do something you’d really love to do.
 - If you want to reach out to hundreds(just being modest) of people with your ideas or suggestions or skills. 

I have already suggested a few techniques of getting listed on google in my series on self-branding. There are lot many more tips coming. Stay hungry, Stay wise.
Posted by Ujjwal Trivedi at 12:17:22 | Permalink | No Comments »

Thursday, May 7, 2009

IT Literacy among IT pros : Survey results

My skies are overcasted with Web 2.0 buzz. Open source technologies, Free to use software products, free services, free and easy Knowledge sharing, being up-to-date on bleeding edge technologies is all so much a part of my life now. I just created an iGoogle gadget for my blog readers and wanted everyone to know. Now, there were two things I did not know for sure. 
  1. Who reads my blog regularily? - No subscription facility :-(
  2. Who uses iGoogle?  
Now since I could ask nobody, I set out to find it by myself. I created a survey. The aim was to gauge the awareness of the power of IT among those who, I believe, should know about it. And also, to know who uses iGoogle and might be interested in using my gadget. I surveyed 50 people from accross the globe, who are in IT or IT-enabled businesses. 90% of them are working professionals (aged 20-30) - software engineers, consultants, post graduate students, Managers, CEOs and business owners. These are people in my network, who I believe, should be using the power of IT pretty well. Fortunately or unfortunately the results were shocking (at least to me). 


Here are a few stats :
  • Only around 29% people use Web2.0 products. Around 42% dont even know what they are. 
  • While 66% people use Internet for Blogging, Social/Professional Networking, 46% think online Social/Professional networking is not worth anything. 
  • 84% people are away from goodies like RSS and Podcasting, 42% never even heard about them. Only 14% are using free and powerful GTD tools and services available on the web. Infact 68% dont even know what GTD is. And that’s precisely why they should subscribe to ujjwalstreet journal.     


Conclusion:
  • A majority of population is still living in dark ages, a computerized dark age. 
  • There is a lot of scope to market new web 2.0, GTD products, RSS based services. But the marketers have to first take up revolutionary awareness programs before they can successfully tap this market. 
  • A majority of young, talented professionals need to be told about using professional networking to hedge against recession.
BTW I was a little disappointed to know that only 36% users use iGoogle all the time. Anyways it was a great eye opener for me. Are your experiences any different?
Posted by Ujjwal Trivedi at 15:20:02 | Permalink | Comments (2)