Plain and Simple Tech Talk

Entries in Learning (3)

Thursday

Jan212010

Keeping Up To Date - How To Adjust to Challenging Times

Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 9:50AM

I read an article today from The Economist entitled "The Trap: The Curse of Long-Term Unemployment Will Bedevil the Economy". There are some very true and fascinating comments in this article which have been stated over and over again by other experts.

In today's workplace there are many observations about the changing landscape such as this one from Vocii which demonstrates how some CEOs are adjusting to the times. Yet for many professionals these concepts used by executives are elusive. One of the core principles I have attempted to pass along to other colleagues has been the concept of keeping current and competitive with ones skills. This is what CEOs and executives do, this is what all working professionals should do. This is especially true of technical professionals.

Technology changes rapidly creating a great number of challenges and opportunities at the same time. It creates more of a level playing field though it has it's extremes. Often times I come across numerous technical professionals that spend all their time working job searches and resume changes, yet totally ignoring the fact that their skills may in fact need ot be honed as well. Admittedly looking for the next opportunity is very important as is having a very good resume demonstrating your value. However, in the end you need to possess the skills that organizations want. Most have very good skills but need some refinement. Others need to learn whole new skill sets.

In my experience keeping abreast of technology is part of a technical professionals career. Admittedly indepth knowledge on the detailed technology may not be as pressing depending on your exact role, but one cannot be even a CTO or CIO without some passing knowledge of the latest approaches. I run into many technical professionals with very deep knowledge in a few skills or such a broad aptitude with little capability of applying modern solutions to significant problems.

I often use my own approach in keeping skills current as a means to inspire others. I mentor several startups in their business models and technical executions. I also mentor numerous working professionals by helping them deliver innovative solutions into their areas of responsibility which allows them to gain new skills while leveraging existing knowledge areas. I also help many technical implementers by assisting in their deployments, solutions or even at times their next generation solutions. All of these efforts allow me to stay in touch with various aspects of my industry that interest me, assist various levels of businesses to accomplish strategic goals, learn new, exciting and innovative ways to look at problems and solve them, and help with hands-on technology that I consider fun and intriguing.

Also in a prior post, I mentioned building my own personal technical environment with which to explore new technologies, build up my own knowledge, and not apply my own concepts to problems that may be of benefit to myself in my career but to others as well.

I look at things in terms of investments such as say learning Java. It is a pretty simple proposition to purchase a book, load the most popular software components such as the JVM, Maven, Eclipse, etc. and learn some of the concepts. Even purchasing a copy of VMware can help professionals gain a better understanding of virtualization. Using virtualized environments to help demonstrate how to spin up/spin down resources helps others to see practical benefits, considerations and how to apply that to their own environments. Ultimately what I attempt to do is motivate and inspire other professionals to do more with resources available to them. To think on their own and to grow on their own. Ultimately being able to rely on yourself, being active and focused, and learning new skills is a requirement in today's hyper-competitive landscape.

Altan Khendup |

Learning Something New

Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 8:26PM

For a good portion of my career I have been blessed in that I have always found something new and interesting that piqued my interest long enough to learn it whether it be new programming languages, operating systems, complex systems, databases, business management, project management, leading groups, or following inspirational leaders.

I like learning. The other part of it is I like learning in order to look at things differently. A change of perspective if you will. I have always found that if you can see issues from various viewpoints you can get a better appreciation of how to best tackle something. Also another great thing in the learning process is teaching others. Nothing challenges your understanding and position on a topic than a student. They question, prod, push. That sort of relationship grows both the student and the mentor where hopefully the student outgrows the mentor and becomes one.

Practically speaking learning has helped me transition from one paying job to another even in difficult times. In many instances experience and knowledge is not necessarily always about what you know or heck even how well you know it. In my experience, it is a mixture of knowing what you can do and how your experience can help others which can make all the difference. If you can find the right connection or strike the right balance it can lead to very fulfilling and rewarding pursuits.

For example I recently had the privilege of applying my technical expertise to a personal pursuit related to a lifelong passion with Buddhist religion and Mongolian history by creating a small application that allowed people to share their notes and insights on how to learn English. I wrote it by myself. Created the hosting services. Found a nice little provider. Alot of the internationalization work was challenging especially since I had not really done that but was a lot of fun. In the end even as I take the occasional support calls, it was a very fun and wonderful effort. The thanks and gratitude of total strangers whom admire my accomplishments has been worth more than any positive performance appraisal from any company. Also for the project I deliberately chose technologies and approaches I was not familiar with. Why? Because I wanted to be challenged and learn something that I felt passionate about. That combination is what drives me I have discovered.

Learning is a key ability in technical professionals. It is what allows them to keep apace of this ever changing industry. Yet is the drive to make things better whether it is to improve a single line of code, deliver a really nice GUI, or to automate a process that sparks the passion technology professionals. And when you are enjoying yourself in what you are doing it shows and is apparent to everyone around you.

Altan Khendup |

Getting Creative at work with Tech

Wednesday, May 6, 2009 at 6:34PM

In my opinion everyone should be looking at how to make things better. Whether it be in their personal life or their professional life. There are always interesting things to do and fun challenges to tackle.

The question for many technology professionals invariably is where to start? I mostly advise going after the most annoying problems first where feasible. For example let's say you have lots of documents that others want to use. Can you convert them to wikis? How about making them searchable via a search engine? Turn them into training materials? You could also look at storing them into a small distributed database like Hadoop, where you could store and retrieve them. For a technology professional there are lots of opportunities to experiment with some of the latest approaches and make practical prototypes from them.

Admittedly there are other more simple solutions like deleting them, moving them over to someone else, etc. Document management may not be your cup of tea. However it is the thought that counts. There are lots of other opportunities as well.

This does sound like making work when you do not have to. However there is a very pragmatic side to this form of learning. Your future. Technologies come and go, rise and fall over the years. What is a solid practice today will fade for a time perhaps to be resurrected once again. However as a professional technologist you have to be prepared to adapt with these changes over the course of your career. The lifecycle of technology adoption is far more rapid now than it ever has. What used to be 10 year cycles have been compressed to only a fraction of that time.

Being creative with how you tackle problems gives you the chance to not only learn something new and keep your skills sharp, but it also helps make your learning practical by keeping it to something you are familiar with.

Start small, do something you care about, and that you can manage. But start. In tough economic times such as these, very few companies are going to spend the necessary money to send you to expensive courses to bring your skills up to par.

Altan Khendup |