WorkChat History 2014

This page is for the 2014 archive of the weekly WorkChat discussion topics and links. See also WorkChat History 2013.


 * Friday December 19, 2014 #65 - Office decluttering and organizing
 * Book - Organizing from the Inside Out, Second Edition: The Foolproof System For Organizing Your Home, Your Office and Your Life

"blemish" is an understatement, disability example, criminal history example, societal perceptions, pov of the employer, pardons, U.S. vs other countries, background checks, perservering by getting different work for a while, legal rights
 * Friday December 5, 2014 #64 - Getting hired with a so-called blemish in your history (jail time, credit, long gap...) issues, rights, solutions
 * NOLO - Getting Hired With an Arrest or Conviction Record
 * FindLaw - Performing an Employee Background Check

The technical interview model, relevance of interviews to job performance, both sides of the equation - interviewing and being interviewed
 * Friday November 28, 2014 - No chat
 * Friday November 21, 2014 #63 - Job interviews
 * Model View Culture - Technical Interviews Are Bullshit

The importance and challenge of taking breaks, making time for excercise, and eating well while at work or traveling; prevalence of poor health in general; the conceptualization of health and illness in society; standing desks and furniture; sleep; excercise examples; managing serious/chronic conditions; showers at work; futurist concepts of extending life; make up; gender and expectations on appearance; smoking; treadmill desks; what will/can change at work; work dress codes and shoes; food at work; more on expectations - look good ot take care of yourself
 * Friday November 14, 2014 #62 - Health and work
 * Swopper stool
 * 7 Weeks to 100 Push-Ups Book
 * Put this on


 * Friday November 7, 2014 #61 Strategic decisions for prioritization in one's business
 * Friday October 31, 2014 #60 Humanizing work for both women and men
 * Psychology Today - Dudes Get Flex: It's caregiving, not gender, that matters most.
 * BizWomen - Why Anne-Marie Slaughter thinks the next phase of the ‘Women’s Movement’ must be a ‘Men’s Movement’ (Video)
 * Anne-Marie Slaughter - Can we all "have it all"? (TED transcript)
 * The Glass Hammer - Off Balance: Unequal Work-Life for Parents and Non-Parents?

Opening topic - Blurred lines & boundaries between "work" and "life": constraints that dictate when we work, where we work, and what we work on; results-based performance; efficiency and deadlines; flexibility; directly fee-earning hours vs supplemental or exploratory; roles and role preferences; also - health issues. End-user app development, consumer vs enterprise software, consumerization of IT, testing and UAT, SLAs, requirements for software, user needs, interoperability, organizational systems and change
 * Friday October 24 - no chat
 * Friday October 17, 2014 #59
 * Friday October 10, 2014 #58 Product lifecycle part 2
 * Lorin Hochstein - Simple Testing Can Prevent Most Critical Failures: An Analysis of Production Failures in Distributed Data-Intensive Systems
 * K. Neuwirth - User Interfaces as an act of communication


 * Friday October 3, 2014 #57 - Product lifecycle - from conception to delivery, and beyond
 * Wikipedia - Product lifecycle management
 * Bloomberg - Apple’s IPhone Software Snafu Has Links to Flawed Maps
 * Gizmodo - The New Apple: It Doesn't Just Work
 * Book - Software Product Lines: Practices and Patterns
 * The register - So long Lotus 1-2-3: IBM ceases support after over 30 years of code

Feedback on the advance topic trial for WorkChat, professional mentors and mentorship, schooling and career paths, augmented reality, porn
 * Friday September 26, 2014 #56 - No set topic
 * Skully helmet
 * Wikipedia - Augmented reality
 * YouTube Tron: Uprising - 'Becks Beginning' pt 1


 * Friday September 19, 2014 #55 - Working remotely - pros, cons, and best practices
 * Forbes - Working Remotely: Does The Research Prove It Won't Work For You?
 * Tech Cocktail - Why Remote Work Is Booming
 * Scott Hanselman - Being a Remote Worker Sucks - Long Live the Remote Worker
 * Fast Company - The Exact Amount Of Time You Should Work Every Day
 * Book - Remote: Office Not Required


 * Friday September 12, 2014 #54 - Productivity-at-work and productivity apps/systems
 * pamdavis.me - Productivity at Work
 * Screenhero
 * 99U - Setting Boundaries & Saying No… Nicely
 * QuicklyChat
 * Joel on Software
 * Book - Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
 * Yammer
 * zenhabits - 13 Things to Avoid When Changing Habits
 * Buffer blog


 * Friday September 5, 2014 #53 - Knowledge workers 1. what does this really mean anyway and 2. what are the implications?
 * Wikipedia - Knowledge worker
 * Harold Jarche - What matters in knowledge work
 * Bloomberg BusinessWeek - Every Worker Is a Knowledge Worker


 * Friday August 29, 2014 #52 - Are job hunting and hiring broken, and if so can they be fixed?
 * Philadelphia Business Journal - 5 reasons it’s hard to hire great people today
 * Forbes - Why You're Not Moving Forward In Your Job Search, And Why You Won't
 * Bloomberg Businessweek - What's the Real U.S. Unemployment Rate? We Have No Idea
 * Bloomberg Businessweek - It's Not a Skills Gap: U.S. Workers Are Overqualified, Undertrained
 * Gallup World - Little Improvement in Global Jobs Outlook
 * San Jose Mercury News - Wage gap grows between support staff at tech campuses and high-tech employees

Selecting topics in advance for the chat, techniques for task switching, is multi-tasking possible
 * Friday August 22, 2014 #51 - WorkChat 1 year anniversary
 * Poll- How should #WorkChat be run or changed going forward?
 * Dave Crenshaw - The Myth of Multitasking – Uncut Presentation
 * @pamdavis thread on an app for task blending and task switching

Tablets and laptops, "all-day" meetings Hosted by @oluseyi! / Animation software, FX MLB.TV, YNAB, industrial design, IoT (internet of things), sensor technology, Radio Shack Mountain Dew and other other caffeine choices, what do you do at work, defining product management, freelancing, the 4 day work week
 * Friday August 15, 2014 #50
 * Friday August 8, 2014 #49 - Special topic for #communityhackday: How would you use app.net to hack work and vice versa?
 * Friday August 1, 2014 #48
 * Friday July 25, 2014 #47
 * Friday July 18, 2014 #46
 * Product Management vs. Business Analysis – What’s the Difference?

What are you working on and multiple mini topics (meetings, innovation hothouse, passion projects, standing desks, work@home set ups, upcoming chats on adn, babies, kids, programming) A homemade scanner, 4th of July, fireworks Sleep and exercise
 * Friday July 11, 2014 #45
 * Friday July 4, 2014 #44
 * Friday June 27, 2014 #43
 * 3M Hearing Protection
 * YouTube - Faithless - Insomnia
 * It’s Hard to Get Off the Couch When You’re Unemployed
 * Using mobile phones and tablets before bed could be affecting your sleep
 * Stop forcing people to wear bike helmets
 * Herleman Konfigurator Bicycle

How is everyone, information security Hosted by @joeo10! Juggling compensated work/day job and side projects with commercial potential, work/life balance, wedding anniversary calendar dates, sit/stand workspaces, Tesla, office art, decluttering
 * Friday June 20, 2014 #42
 * Friday June 13, 2014 #41
 * Sitting Is Killing You Infographic; Photo - @oluseyi desk setup; App.net thread - @boingboing solar panels; Going the distance: driving the Tesla Model S in the real world; Fracture prints your photos in vivid color, directly to glass.; Despair, Inc. - Demotivators®, The World's Best Demotivational Posters

Vacations and vacations from work, connecting hobbies to work, vacations with kids, vacation ethic in the U.S., changing corporations
 * Friday June 6, 2014 #40
 * Presidio Graduate School - Sustainability MBA

Old computers, learning programming as a kid, the programmer's mindset, programmming today, CSS, desktop and mobile usage
 * Friday May 30, 2014 #39
 * YouTube - Kids react to old computers, @sgtstretch's reminiscences of his first computer, BASIC Computer Games by David Ahl, Hopscotch: Programming designed for everyone, SASS, Qt project


 * Friday May 23, 2014 #38
 * Effective interviewing of hires, how was your week?

Being a new-to-the team manager, learning and building confidence as a new consultant, podcast routines, rewards and recognition for hard working employees How to choose a career focus or specialty when you have more than one path, "what apps/tools do you personally use to stay productive and keep on top of tasks?" (Tools mentioned: "my iPad", Outlook, David Seah's Emergent Task Planner, "sketchnotes", OmniFocus, "GTD and Agile Results with OmniFocus", Gneo, Clear, DashPlus, Nozbe, Google Keep, Anylist, Evernote, "Apple's Reminders app", Fantastical, "Dispatch for email", LastPass, Remember The Milk, "pomodoro apps", Todoist, Tracks), productivity strategies, device preferences (tablet, phone) procrastination, distractions, and "getting back on task"
 * Friday May 16, 2014 #37
 * Friday May 9, 2014 #36
 * Getting Results the Agile Way, Agile Results, Patrick Rhone - The Dash/Plus System, Tangent Timer - @pamdavis, Tara Rodden Robinson - How to Get Started On Something You Really Don't Want to Do (But Have to Anyway), Not Just Another Notes App: Why You Should Use Google Keep

Role changes, managing a new team, career moves, bridging the gap btwn leaders and those doing the day-to-day work, process consultation Toxic workplaces, creating or changing work culture, discrimination at work Work meetings (bad ones and good ones, short vs. long, introvert vs extroverts and, team building techniques, stand ups, status check-ins...) Everyone has been extra busy lately, Patter, app.net broadcasts, Twitter How was your week, passing the time while flying, CV vs resume
 * Friday May 2, 2014 #35
 * Friday April 25, 2014 #34
 * Friday April 18, 2014 #33
 * Friday April 11, 2014 #32
 * Friday April 4, 2014 #31
 * HR MetaBUS project, Skymall song by Jonathon Coulton

Documentation (internal and customer-facing)
 * Friday March 28, 2014 #30
 * Christopher Lee sings "Name your Poison"

Networking events and conferences, attending them, finding events, LinkedIn groups, MeetUp How was your week, career fork decisions (1 biscuit vs. 2 biscuits), Stanford marshmallow experiment, delegating
 * Friday March 21, 2014 #29
 * Friday March 14, 2014 #28
 * Stanford marshmallow experiment on Wikipedia

Travel, traveling for work How do you create opportunities for future projects and paid work - by building your network or otherwise? How do you manage your contacts and leads? WorkChat anniversary, podcasts, technical writing, project management, job hunting, biz social media management, chat and IRC, Patter
 * Friday March 7, 2014 #27
 * Friday February 28, 2014 #26
 * Friday February 21, 2014 #25
 * Growing Up With Check Point - PhoneBoy.net, Job posting: Senior Manager, Customer Engagement, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform How You Lead - charleneli.com

Long meetings, sketchnoting, graphic facilitation, stylus/tablet, digital vs. handwriting, digital note-taking apps
 * Friday February 14, 2014 #24
 * Sketchnote Army, Sunni Brown Ted Talk, The Grove, 53 Paper, Penultimate, Livescribe, Boogie Board

The limits on email for collaboration and projects, alternatives to email, open floor plan offices, startups in Iran
 * Friday February 7, 2014 #23
 * Basecamp, Confluence, HipChat, Startup Weekend Mashhad, Startup Weekend Mashhad - main site, THE OPEN-OFFICE TRAP via The New Yorker

Performance appraisals/reviews, managing people, control and trust How was your week, conference and presentation stories, tips for presentations, what is organization psychology Procrastination, accountability, time tracking, sleep and performance, weekly work hours Dealing with criticism and pressure
 * Friday January 31, 2014 #22
 * Friday January 24, 2014 #21
 * Friday January 17, 2014 #20
 * Friday January 10, 2014 #19
 * Don’t pull a Michael Bay

Friendships/relationships in a work context, pros and cons of talking about work outside of work, taking breaks, meditation and exercise, introversion/extroversion as it relates to reducing stress, sleep
 * Friday January 3, 2014 #18
 * introvert or extrovert quiz