Tag: Ignite Your Career

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Scott Hanselman on This Week’s “Ignite Your Career” Webcast: “Selling Yourself – Are You Using All Your Resources?”

Photo of lit match: "Ignite Your Career Webcast Series"

Scott Hanselman

This Week’s Ignite Your Career

On this week’s edition of the Ignite Your Career webcast (it happens tomorrow, Thursday, September 24th – see below for details), we’ve got author, evangelist, developer, speaker and Principal Program Manager of Microsoft’s Developer Division Scott Hanselman to join our panel of experts to talk about making the most out of your developer or IT pro career.

This week’s panel discussion is titled Selling Yourself – Are You Using ALL Your Resources?. Here’s the abstract:

Expressing the right level of details on your personal and professional accomplishments can come in very handy when talking with your manager as well as a couple of levels up within your company. What’s your CV or Resume looking like these days? How’s your offline and online personal brand maintenance coming along? Are you doing yourself justice when someone asks you in the hallway "what have you been up to lately?" Now take this to the next level – would you be prepared if the unexpected happened and you were now out in the wild looking for a new job? We’ll be talking with industry experts who have successfully marketed themselves and helped others. We’ll also cover the other side of the coin by talking with HR professionals and recruiting experts to find out how they evaluate and choose candidates.

The line in the abstract that really gets me where I live is “Now take this to the next level – would you be prepared if the unexpected happened and you were now out in the wild looking for a new job?” Regular readers of my personal blogs, The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century and Global Nerdy will know that this is exactly what happened to me a year ago tomorrow. I know from personal experience that this sort of thing does happen and it’s best to be prepared.

Along with Scott, we’ll have these folks on the panel:

Andrew Dillane

Andrew Dillane, Group CIO for Randstad Canada. Andrew’s management experience in business and technology has focused on client-centered technology solutions. His leadership role in Sapphire Canada’s CONNECT™ technology solutions has resulted in the company being a two time recipient of a Canadian Information Productivity Award (CIPA). Andrew holds a BCOM from Ryerson University, is the National President for the CIO Association of Canada, serves on the Program Advisory Council for Ryerson University’s Information Technology Management (ITM) degree programs and is an expert member of the Canadian Coalition for Tomorrow’s ICT Skills. Andrew also serves on the Advisory Board for Kids Internet Safety Alliance (KINSA).

Nick Corcodilos

Nick Corcodilos. Nick is the host of Ask The Headhunter® and author of How to Work with Headhunters (2009). Nick is also the author of Ask The Headhunter: Reinventing The Interview to Win The Job (1997), the -selling interview guide on Amazon for 26 consecutive months. Nick started headhunting in 1979 in one of America’s most competitive job markets: California’s Silicon Valley. Using the methods described in his book and on the ATH blog, he has helped people win management and staff jobs in companies including IBM, GE, Hewlett-Packard and Merrill Lynch. Nick Corcodilos is president of North Bridge Group, Inc. He holds a Bachelors Degree (Phi Beta Kappa) from Rutgers College where he was a Henry Rutgers Scholar, and a Masters in Cognitive Psychology from Stanford University (where his academic bent was quickly corrupted by the Biz School and Silicon Valley).

Heather Hamilton Heather Hamilton, Global Competitive Programs Team, Microsoft. Heather manages Microsoft’s Global Competitive Programs Team responsible for competitive research and programs. In this role, she leads Microsoft’s efforts aimed at enabling global research centers to monitor the competitive talent landscape and leverage opportunities to recruit the best technical talent through deliverables such as competitive intelligence, training and opportunistic recruiting programs. Aside from managing a talented team of staffing professionals, Heather is probably best known as a blogger. She is a requested speaker on topics related to candidate outreach and community building and her blog, One Louder, has resulted in significant press interest including The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Fast Company.

When, Where and How Do I Catch This Webcast?

The live webcast takes place tomorrow, Thursday, September 24th, from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m. Eastern (that’s 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Pacific). To listen to this live webcast, register here. You’ll need a Windows Live ID to register, which you can get for free.

If you have a question for the panel, you can submit it to this email address.

If you can’t catch the live webcast at its scheduled time, it will be recorded and you’ll be able to access it in the Archived Webcasts section of the Ignite Your Career site at a later date.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Ignite Your Career Webcast: “Internal or External Training?” – Thursday, September 17th

in-and-out_training

The second installment of the Ignite Your Career webcasts takes place tomorrow, Thursday, September 17th, from 12:00 noon to 1 p.m. Eastern (9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. Pacific). This will be the second of four Ignite Your Career webcasts taking place this month, and this week’s topic will be Internal or External Training – Know Your Options. Here’s the abstract:

Maintaining your technical and personal skill sets are critical to being successful in the job you already have and anything you might be looking to progress into. Unfortunately, the option of external training might not be available to you at this point in time. How can you take advantage of internal resources like job shadowing, mentoring, internal courses, study groups as well as external training activities when available? How can you pitch setting up new training options to your team and managers? Looking externally – what about valuable online free offerings, professional associations and community events? This session will bring information together to equip you with the knowledge and resources required to get the ball rolling.

The panel of industry experts speaking at this webcast will be:

Ignite Your Career is presented by Microsoft Canada and is about helping you make the most out of your career and make the best career choices. As such, it’s “platform neutral” – whether you develop on .NET, the iPhone or Ruby on Rails, the topics covered in Ignite Your Career apply to you.

It doesn’t cost a thing to catch an Ignite Your Career webcast. Simply register at the Ignite Your Career site.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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The “Ignite Your Career” Webcasts Start Tomorrow!

ignite_your_career

What is Ignite Your Career?

Ignite Your Career is Microsoft Canada’s webcast series on making the most out of your high-tech career. Hosted by my co-worker Rick Claus (Senior IT Pro Advisor) and Shane Schick (Editor-in-Chief of IT World Canada), it’s a series who goal is to provide you with information to help you make the best decisions for your high-tech career and answers to your questions. For the next four Thursdays starting tomorrow, Rick and Shane will take to seasoned pros from the IT industry about various topics, ranging from where the industry seems to be heading to maintaining your skills portfolio to “marketing yourself” to becoming a better leader.  

You could call Ignite Your Career “platform-neutral”, as the topics covered apply to all developers and IT pros, whether or not they work with Microsoft tools and technologies. If you have a career as a developer or an IT pro, or a mix of the two, or if you manage developers and IT pros, this webcast is for you!

What’s the First Webcast About?

Tomorrow’s webcast, the first in the series, is titled Industry Insights and Trends. Here’s the abstract:

In this webcast, we are revisiting one of the most popular topics we’ve had on the ongoing Ignite Your Career webcast series to kick of this season. Industry Insights and Trends. The nature of Technology is one of continual change; a fact of life for professionals in the ICT Industry. As a result, you need to be on top of what is happening in the industry in order to position yourself and your organization to benefit from these trends. This panel discussion will arm you with the information you need from experts in the ICT industry in order to stay on top of your game.

The panel for this webcast will consist of Richard Campbell (host of .NET Rocks!), Jay Payette, Lorie Baddock and Lee Jacobs.

For this webcast, we’re offering a choice of time slots:

  • Session 1: Thursday, September 10, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. Eastern (9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. Pacific) [register]
  • Session 2: Thursday, September 10, 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. Eastern (12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. Pacific) [register]

For more details or to register, see the Ignite Your Career site.

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Ignite Your Career: Women in IT Panel Discussion

This article originally appeared in Canadian Developer Connection.

This Week’s Webcast: Women in IT

Ignite Your CareerAnd at long last, we’ve arrived at the sixth of the six-episode Ignite Your Career webcast series. This webcast, which takes place this Tuesday, April 7th at 12:00 noon Eastern, has the title Women in IT Panel Discussion.

Here’s the abstract:

Come and join your peers and a panel of leaders from across the country to discuss issues relating to women in the Canadian ICT industry. This panel discussion will help answer your questions and provide you with insight on the challenges and opportunities faced by women in the ICT industry.

The panelists are:

elisabeth_vanderveldt Elisabeth Vanderveldt
Elisabeth is co-founder of multi-award winning Conamex International, a Microsoft Gold Certified Excellence partner. An international board member of IAMCP Elisabeth is also the global chair Community and Corporate Citizenship and is the founder of the international Women in Leadership and Technology group.

betty_johnson Betty Johnson
Betty has been working in technical support for 10 years and is a Microsoft certified professional. She works at Métis Nation of Alberta as their Desktop Support Analyst with responsibilities in managing networks and servers. She started off as a nutritionist but proved a point that women in any age group can make a great impact in IT.

caterina_sanders Caterina Sanders
As Director, User Experience, Caterina acts on behalf of end-users to make certain that Habañero solutions exceed their needs and expectations. Drawing on her wide variety of business and technical experience, Caterina manages the user experience team, provides UE leadership for all projects, and conducts project business analysis and project management.

shann_mcgrail Shann McGrail
Shann McGrail is a Business Director reporting to the President of Microsoft Canada. In this role, she is responsible for readiness, communication and business execution for the Canadian subsidiary. Shann has worked in the technology industry for the past 18 years.

As with all the other Ignite Your Career webcasts, this one isn’t tied to any particular vendor or technology, Yes, this webcast is presented by Microsoft and CIPS, but whether you never touch Microsoft tech or tools or use the entire Microsoft stack, we think you’ll find a lot of useful career-building information in Ignite Your Career.

Don’t forget: it costs nothing to catch an Ignite Your Career webcast. It’s free of charge; all you have to do is register to listen to the Women in IT Panel Discussion with your Windows Live ID (which you can also get for free).

Listen to Previous Ignite Your Career Webcasts on Demand

If you missed any of our earlier Ignite Your Career webcasts or want to hear any of them again, you’re in luck. We’ve got them archived, and you can listen to them – free of charge, of course – with your Windows Live ID. The previous webcasts are:

  • Industry Insights and Trends
    The nature of technology is one of continual change; a fact of life for professionals in the ICT industry. As a result, you need to be on top of what is happening in the industry in order to position yourself and your organization to benefit from these trends. This panel discussion will arm you with the information you need from experts in the ICT industry in order to stay on top of your game.
    Speakers: Joel Semeniuk, Jeff Kempiners, Jay Payette and Paul Swinwood.
  • Discovering Your Trusted Resources
    Building a set of information sources and connecting with the community at-large are critical to your success in the ICT industry. This session brings successful community, technology, and information leaders together to share their experiences in discovering these resources. Our experts will help you learn how to identify credible sources and find the right tools, links and techniques to keep you up to date in a world of constant change.
    Speakers: Michael J. Sikorsky, Richard Campbell, and John Bristowe.
  • How to Establish and Maintain a Healthy Work/Life Balance
    With mobile technologies and our always-on culture, it’s imperative to establish and maintain a balance between work and life. If your only time to manage change in your environment is after hours, how can you maintain a healthy balance without burning out? How do you manage change so that you can develop your career and spend time with loved ones? This panel discussion will connect you to individuals who strive to establish and maintain this balance.
    Speakers: Mack Male, Cameron McKay, Paul Gossen, Mark Blevis.
  • How to Become a Great Leader
    Being a great manager does not by default also mean you are a great leader. For some people, being a leader comes intuitively, for others it is something that requires both self awareness and leading by example. This session will focus on what a panel of Managers/Leaders has done in order to further their development of leader qualities. Topics in this area are wide ranging and based on webcast participation will include such as goal setting, importance of goal alignment, motivation techniques, nurturing trust, developing listening skills and coaching team members. Be sure to listen in and join the conversation with this panel of experts for what should be a very interesting wrap up to the Manager series.
    Speakers: Stuart Crawford, Dana Epp, Barry Gervin, Greg Lane.
  • Building, Managing and Strengthening Your Team
    One measure of success for a Manager is the result your team is capable of achieving. How to build a productive team while working with the resources at your disposal can be a challenge at times. Amongst other things, you need to overcome previous history, identify team dynamics and foster a productive work environment. This session will bring together real world managers who have found the right balance for their teams and share their insight on what worked for them. Listen in and ask them questions about what they have done to create a healthy and productive team environment.
    Speakers: Kevin Brice, Steven “Doc” List, Vicki Mains, Peter John McFarlane, Shaun Walker.
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Ignite Your Career #4: “How to Become a Great Leader”

Inspirational poster: "Captain James T. Kirk: I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am."

This Week’s Webcast

How to Become a Great Leader is the topic of this week’s Ignite Your Career, Microsoft Canada’s and CIPS’ webcast series aimed at helping you further develop your career with opinions and advice from experts in Canada’s tech industry. Here’s the abstract for the webcast:

Being a great manager does not by default also mean you are a great leader. For some people, being a leader comes intuitively, for others it is something that requires both self awareness and leading by example. This session will focus on what a panel of Managers/Leaders has done in order to further their development of leader qualities. Topics in this area are wide ranging and based on webcast participation will include such as goal setting, importance of goal alignment, motivation techniques, nurturing trust, developing listening skills and coaching team members. Be sure to listen in and join the conversation with this panel of experts for what should be a very interesting wrap up to the Manager series.

The panelists for this webcast are:

stuart_crawford Stuart Crawford shares his experiences and serves the Calgary Small Business community in his role as the Vice President of Business Development for Bulletproof InfoTech, a leading Microsoft Small Business Partner with offices in Red Deer and Calgary.

barry_gervin Barry Gervin is a founding Partner of ObjectSharp. As a Principal Consultant, Barry provides technical leadership to his valued clients, staff, and the development community. Barry currently serves as a Microsoft Regional Director in Southern Ontario and has received the Microsoft MVP Award for Solutions Architecture for the past 3 years.

dana_epp Dana Epp researches software security and focuses on strong authentication and identity assurance solutions at Scorpion Software Corp. As a computer security software architect, Dana has spent the last 15 years focusing on software development with a particular emphasis on security engineering.

greg_lane Greg Lane is the current Chair of the Canadian Council of Information Technology Professionals (CCITP) of the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS). Greg is currently employed with Avanade as the Director Business Development Public Service for Canada.

The webcast will take place this Tuesday, March 24th, from 12:00 noon (Eastern) to 1:00 p.m.. Ignite Your Career webcasts are free of charge – all you have to do is register to listen using your Windows Live ID (which is also free).

Ignite Your Career isn’t about any specific technology or vendor; it’s about maximizing your potential at work and helping you come up with a career plan. No matter what platform or tools you work with, we’re sure that you’ll find this webcast series informative and helpful.

Previous Webcasts

All Ignite Your Career webcasts are recorded and archived so you can listen to them on demand. As with the live webcasts, there’s no charge to listen to them; you just have to register with a Windows Live ID.

The webcasts we’ve had so far in this series are:

  • Industry Insights and Trends
    The nature of technology is one of continual change; a fact of life for professionals in the ICT industry. As a result, you need to be on top of what is happening in the industry in order to position yourself and your organization to benefit from these trends. This panel discussion will arm you with the information you need from experts in the ICT industry in order to stay on top of your game.
    Speakers: Joel Semeniuk, Jeff Kempiners, Jay Payette and Paul Swinwood.
  • Discovering Your Trusted Resources
    Building a set of information sources and connecting with the community at-large are critical to your success in the ICT industry. This session brings successful community, technology, and information leaders together to share their experiences in discovering these resources. Our experts will help you learn how to identify credible sources and find the right tools, links and techniques to keep you up to date in a world of constant change.
    Speakers: Michael J. Sikorsky, Richard Campbell, and John Bristowe.
  • How to Establish and Maintain a Healthy Work/Life Balance
    With mobile technologies and our always-on culture, it’s imperative to establish and maintain a balance between work and life. If your only time to manage change in your environment is after hours, how can you maintain a healthy balance without burning out? How do you manage change so that you can develop your career and spend time with loved ones? This panel discussion will connect you to individuals who strive to establish and maintain this balance.
    Speakers: Mack Male, Cameron McKay, Paul Gossen, Mark Blevis
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Ignite Your Career #3: “How to Establish and Maintain a Healthy Work/Life Balance”

This article originally appeared in Canadian Developer Connection.

A balancing rock in the desert

This Week’s Topic

This week’s topic for Ignite Your Career – our webcast series featuring experts from the Canadian tech industry and aimed at supporting your career development – is one that’s on a lot of people’s minds: How to Establish and Maintain a Healthy Work/Life Balance. Here’s the abstract:

With mobile technologies and our always-on culture, it’s imperative to establish and maintain a balance between work and life. If your only time to manage change in your environment is after hours, how can you maintain a healthy balance without burning out? How do you manage change so that you can develop your career and spend time with loved ones? This panel discussion will connect you to individuals who strive to establish and maintain this balance.

This webcast’s panelists are:

Mack Male

Mack Male
Mack is a software developer, entrepreneur, and social media guy. During the day he works for Questionmark Computing. Most of the rest of the time, he’s keeping up-to-date on the latest trends and technologies, and loves sharing what he learns with others. Mack is particularly passionate about his hometown, Edmonton, and does his best to expose everything it has to offer.

Cameron McKay

Cameron McKay
Cameron works for McKesson Canada, one of the largest Healthcare companies in the world as the Team Leader of the Infrastructure and Support Services Group in Toronto. An expert in Virtualization and Green IT, Cameron enjoys sharing his knowledge with the IT community through speaking engagements, blogs, and webcasts.

Paul Gossen

Paul Gossen
After 30 years as a successful serial entrepreneur and business leadership innovator Paul Gossen is well known for his credibility and high impact results in corporate coaching, team productivity and organizational transformation

 

Mark Blevis

Mark Blevis
Mark Blevis is an energetic public speaker, social media strategist, community leader, independent media producer and self-proclaimed Content Paleontologist. He is considered a thought-leader on social media and its potential and is regularly interviewed on radio and television.

Catching This Webcast

This webcast will first be broadcast this Tuesday, March 17th at 12:00 p.m. Eastern time (9:00 a.m. Pacific) and will be an hour long. It costs nothing to catch an Ignite Your Career webcast – all you have to do is register online with your Windows Live ID (which is also free).

Ignite Your Career is about maximizing your potential at work and helping you come up with a career plan in these difficult economic times. It’s not tied to any technology or vendor, so no matter what platform or tools you work with, we’re sure that you’ll find this webcast series informative and helpful.

Previous Ignite Your Career Webcasts

In case your missed the other two webcasts in this series, worry not – we’ve got them archived! Once again, they’re free to listen to – all you have to do is register online with your Windows Live ID.

The webcasts we’ve had so far in this series are:

  • Industry Insights and Trends
    The nature of technology is one of continual change; a fact of life for professionals in the ICT industry. As a result, you need to be on top of what is happening in the industry in order to position yourself and your organization to benefit from these trends. This panel discussion will arm you with the information you need from experts in the ICT industry in order to stay on top of your game.
    Speakers: Joel Semeniuk, Jeff Kempiners, Jay Payette and Paul Swinwood.
  • Discovering Your Trusted Resources
    Building a set of information sources and connecting with the community at-large are critical to your success in the ICT industry. This session brings successful community, technology, and information leaders together to share their experiences in discovering these resources. Our experts will help you learn how to identify credible sources and find the right tools, links and techniques to keep you up to date in a world of constant change.
    Speakers: Michael J. Sikorsky, Richard Campbell, and John Bristowe.

[Creative Commons photo by "Cpt. Spock".]

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Ignite Your Career #2: Discovering Your Trusted Resources

This article originally appeared in Canadian Developer Connection.

Ignite Your Career Webcast Series, in partnership with CIPS This past Tuesday marked our first Ignite Your Career 2009 webcast, Industry Insights and Trends. In the webcast, our panel of experts shared their opinions of where the opportunities in tech are and what technologies were on the rise. It went quite well, and the folks at the office tell me that it was one of the best-“attended” webcasts that Microsoft Canada has ever had. If you missed it, don’t fret – we’ll be posting a recording of the webcast soon!

This Tuesday, we’ll have the second Ignite Your Career webcast, titled Discovering Your Trusted Resources. By “trusted resource”, we mean something or someone you turn to for information, advice or assistance. No matter what line of work you’re in, it always pays to have some trusted resources handy.

Here’s the abstract for the webcast:

Building a set of information sources and connecting with the community at-large are critical to your success in the ICT industry. This session brings successful community, technology, and information leaders together to share their experiences in discovering these resources. Our experts will help you learn how to identify credible sources and find the right tools, links and techniques to keep you up to date in a world of constant change.

The speakers are:


michael_sikorsky

Michael J. Sikorsky
Michael has been called an "Internet Revolutionary" by Profit magazine, and a "CEO to watch" by CNN Money. In addition to speaking at conferences throughout the world, he has also spoken at Harvard Business School, MIT, and Stanford.
 

richard_campbell

Richard Campbell
Richard Campbell is one of the co-founders of Strangeloop Networks and today serves as product evangelist. Richard has more than 30 years of high-tech experience and is both a Microsoft Regional Director and Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP).

As I’ve said before, Ignite Your Career is about your career and “skills portfolio”. It’s not Microsoft-specific – in fact, it isn’t specific to any kind of technology or vendor. If you work in tech and want to work on a plan for making it through these difficult economic times, Ignite Your Career is here for you!

Best of all, registration is free! Sign up for this Tuesday’s webcast, Discovering Your Trusted Resources, with your Windows Live ID. And remember, after this Tuesday, we’ll still have four more Ignite Your Career webcasts, with a new topic hosted by different experts each week.

To find out more about this series, check out the Ignite Your Career site.