IEM Blog

When you think about getting ready for a job interview you want to be sure you have covered all your bases…but what about your professional presentation? Well, a good blog will go a long way towards giving you the professionalism you need, but be careful, because a bad blog can wreck it for you.According to Allen Johnson of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, “No one has to have a blog…It can be purposeful if it’s professional, well thought out and intelligent,” he said. “But it’s a different thing if you just ramble without a strategic plan. You’re opening yourself up to disaster.”

Read more here.

Let’s go on a trip to Mars! Well, let’s not—but say we did.

In his article “Viewpoint: Explore Mars with robots”, John Merchant talks about a new concept called “telepresence” that will allow people to travel to Mars, and other distance planets, through an electronic medium. Merchant describes “Telepresence [as] an emerging technology that could enable humans to function in, and experience, a distant space environment such as Mars as effectively, for all practical purposes, as actually going there – but without going there!”  I assume astronauts will be the “humans” that do this exploration by telepresence, but his article doesn’t seem to specify who exactly will be “tele-present”

Who knows? Twenty years from now it could be IT professionals that go to the moon. Can’t you see that in a 3rd grade classroom: “And what do you want to be when you grow up Billy?” “I want to be an IT Professional so I can send a computer to Mars”.

The theory is that this new technology will open doors to NASA and allow space exploration to reach new heights. But the situation begs the question: If we’ve gone to new heights virtually, have we actually reached them or just taken fancy pictures?

Anyway, read the article, it is quite interesting. My only problem with it is, well, am I the only person that saw “Surrogates”? Travel by telepresence? What’s next, mechanical body doubles? Maybe. Read here and find out more.

In a world of staggering economies and grandiose bailout plans, it seems IT professionals are hot commodities. David Miller, of Certification Magazine,writes, “Everyone knows that 2009 was challenging for workers…But not everything is doom and gloom. Research…suggests that bright spots do exist for IT professionals…While starting salaries for most positions within IT will stay at current levels or dip slightly, some will see modest gains in 2010. Networking- and security-related jobs, in particular, remain in demand.”

Continues Here

Dale Callahan, IEM Director at UAB and author of “Discovering the Entrepreneur in You“, is bringing you his

8 Easy Steps for Starting Your Own Business.

The first “Lunch and Learn” session is coming up

January 22

(yes, there will be free food, so be sure and sign up if you want to eat!)

The session will focus on reaching out to people who are interested in starting their own business and answering several questions about how to begin a business of your own.

These “Lunch and Learn” sessions are designed to give you a chance to talk with successful business owners and ask all those burning questions in the back of your mind.

Not sure if your idea is a good one?

Not sure how to begin your business?

Or maybe you aren’t sure how to fund your business venture?

All of these questions and more can be asked and answered in 8 easy steps with Dale Callahan’s Lunch and Learn sessions.

Click Here to find out more and Sign Up Today.

(can’t make Jan 22? That’s ok–there are more sessions available. Click Here to view more options.)

We spend a lot of time on this blog talking about enhancing your productivity, becoming a better player in the business world, starting businesses, entrepreneurship, and many other business-related topics to help you become more effective wherever you are in your career.

With this article, however, mainly we want to ask you a question. Can a startup company overthrow the most-anticipated techno-item from a well established and successful staple company?

Well, Notion Ink—a start up company from India—-is trying to do just that. Just as Apple is getting ready to release their much anticipated touchscreen tablet, Notion Ink is poised to showcase their own version of a touchscreen tablet at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show coming up in 3 days in Las Vegas. And their seemingly great idea has several other startups trying the same thing. Who will come out ahead? You decide.

Read about it here.

Check out this book. Its about how puddin-headed the manager/management education system is today. I tried to write something snazzy here to make you read it but his website’s blurb is so good, I’m gonna let it fly solo on this one:

“A hard look at the soft practice of managing and management development.

Henry Mintzberg believes that both management and management education are deeply troubled, but that neither can be changed without changing the other.

Mintzberg asserts that conventional MBA classrooms overemphasize the science of management while ignoring its art and denigrating its craft, leaving a distorted impression of its practice. We need to get back to a more engaging style of management, to build stronger organizations, not bloated share prices. This calls for another approach to management education, whereby practicing mangers learn from their own experience. We need to build the art and the craft back into management education, and into management itself.

Mintzberg examines what is wrong with our current system. Conventional MBA programs are mostly for young people with little or no experience. These are the wrong people. Programs to train them emphasize analysis and technique. These are the wrong ways. They leave graduates with the false impression that they have been trained as managers, which has had a corrupting effect on the practice of management as well as on our organizations and societies. These are the wrong consequences.

Mintzberg describes a very different approach to management education, which encourages practicing mangers to learn from their own experience. No one can create a manager in a classroom. But existing managers can significantly improve their practice in a thoughtful classroom that makes use of that experience.”

This blurb comes to you from http://www.henrymintzberg.com/mangnotmba.htm

We have heard this old add-age our entire lives, about how what you do matters more than what you say. Funny how so many people throughout history have done so much talking about not-talking.

Benjamin Franklin called it “Well done is better than well said.”

Peter Marshall thought is sounded best as “Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned”

Even the venerable Ernest Hemingway got in his version of the tell-tale proverb when he cautioned us to “Never mistake motion for action”

But what are we saying when we use these action-laden expressions? Well, we are saying plainly that the biggest business bragger is nothing compared to the silent business do-er.

I mean, think about it: the only reason I’m able to quote those people up there and have you CARE what they said is because they lived a life where what they DID mattered to you. You know them for some particular action(s) that they took, and only after that action is accomplished do you take time to listen to what they say.

Hmm…sound like an interesting business model? Well it should.

In his article “Big Thinkers”, Atticus Rominger takes us on a journey into the world of today’s big business innovators, showing us not only where we’d be without modern innovations, but also introduces us to what is possible when great thinkers DO before they speak.

Apparently, before the lighting of the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center, NBC Union workers had to threaten to strike just to gain fair negotiations in an already under-way contract discussion that had been going on for at least a year.  The talks were going to allow NBC to choose non-union employees to do  tasks such as lighting a Christmas Tree, so long as it was not their primary function. Entrepreneur.com quotes Ed McEwan—the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET-CWA) Local 11 president as saying,  “This would protect NBC’s flexibility by letting non-union employees do technical work, provided it doesn’t become their primary job,” said McEwan. “This is an enlightened way forward for both the company and the union. It provides job security for our members and flexibility for NBC as the TV industry continues to rapidly change.” However, the NBC powers that be, didn’t see it that way. Read about how a Grinch-y stance on fairness almost cost the world an iconic part of Christmas. Now, which party is in the right, you will have to decide, but the article makes an interesting read.

Just because you’ve been doing something doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it.

So ingrained into our social mindset is the idea of a person being tied to their career forever that we have even started defining ourselves and our friends by their job.

You’re at a dinner party and someone asks “Who is that in corner?”

“Oh, Steve? Yeh, he’s the doctor. And the lady standing next to him, that’s Mary, she’s the project manager over at such and forth a company.”

So are we to assume then that if Steve decides he doesn’t want to be a doctor anymore and instead becomes a freelance journalist, are his friends going to have a massive brain freeze and no longer recognize his face? I doubt it.We know other people don’t have their identity in their 9-5, so why don’t we act like it when comes to our own careers?

So you’ve tried one career. Maybe you liked it, maybe you didn’t, but regardless you are now on a threshold looking at trying something new. Is it possible? Sure it is.

Changing careers—at any time in your life— is not as hard as you think and you might even enjoy it.

Check out this article on the 7 easy steps towards changing your career.

Christmas time. We celebrate, we decorate, we eat  lots, and lots, of food, visit family…..the list goes on.

But also at Christmas time, many, many business rack in their most lucrative profit of the year. From presents to party dresses, the business industry booms this time of year.

I bet when you hang the Christmas lights this year you might not be thinking “gee, I should do this for a living”—or maybe you are? Well, here’s a website that talks about taking Christmas decorating and making it your own business. See what you think:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/businessideas/845.html