It’s “Hump Day” in my final week at Microsoft, and in honour of these last days, I’m posting a different version of Europe’s classic ‘80s hair-rock hit, The Final Countdown, on each day. Hump Day calls for a hump-tastic cover of the song, and there isn’t a more hump-tastic one than this classic version by Deep Sunshine. You will not be able to un-hear it once heard.
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
I may be leaving Microsoft’s Canada’s DPE (Developer and Platform Evangelism) team at the end of this week, but at the same time, we’ve got a great new addition to the team: Susan Ibach (she’s @HockeyGeekGirl on Twitter)! If you were at the TechDays conference in the past couple of years, you’ve probably seen her speak in one of the developer tracks, and if you were at TechEd New Orleans last year, you might have seen her infamous certification rap performed live.
Her gift is teaching. She’s been a Microsoft certified trainer for about a decade, she’s helped run hands-on labs at various Microsoft conferences, from PDC to the internal TechReady conference, she’s helped been heavily involved with our “Train the Trainer” events, explained the value of getting your Microsoft certification to countless devs and IT Pros and took part in the IT Grand Prix.
You can find out more about her in her inaugural post on Canadian Developer Connection. Welcome to the team, Susan!
This is my final week in my biggest, most influential, broadest-reaching job to date, and in its honour, I’m marking my last days with a different version of Europe’s classic ‘80s hair-rock hit, The Final Countdown. Today’s rendition: an orchestral version led by three cellos performed by an orchestra from Liepaja, Latvia, still with the head-bangin’.
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
If you’re curious about NUIs – that’s Natural User Intefaces – and if you’re going to be in the area of the University of Toronto’s downtown campus, you’ll probably going to want to check out this TorCHI session: Best Practices in Interface Design and Applying Them to Microsoft Surface. Here’s the abstract:
See how Natural User Interfaces such as Microsoft Surface and gesture-based UI’s such as Kinect are being applied in the real world. This session will outline many of the “dos and don’ts” when designing for these new paradigms. More importantly, we will also discuss what techniques and behaviors can be applied to help a good HCI designer become a great one.
The session will be presented by James Horgan, Creative Director, Sales and Strategy at Infusion. James studied industrial design at Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design in London, UK and has been an award-winning industrial and interaction designer for many of the world’s premier brands. James has had the good fortune to design everything from hearing aids for children to the world’s first Microsoft Partner Surface application, using a unique combination of visual, functional, and architectural skills.
Here are the details for the session:
The news is all over online – perhaps you saw the PC World article or the official Microsoft announcement – Office 365 is out as a public beta and ready for you to take it for a spin! It’s the successor to BPOS, Business Productivity Online Suite and gives you productivity goodies such as:
Here’s a diagram that gives you the 10,000-foot view of what Office 365 can do for you (click to get the full-size version):
If you’d like to get the public beta of Office 365, office365.ca is the place to go! You’ll find out more about the various packages available for business, from small businesses who want to get stuff done but don’t have the IT department or infrastructure, up to the biggest enterprises looking to integrate Office 365 with their own infrastructure for that special you-got-your-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter IT goodness.
There’s also the Office 365 Blog and the Office 365 Technical Blog, which show you how to best take advantage of Office 365 tools as well as performing advanced tasks and troubleshooting issues. If you’re the competitive type, there’s the Ready for Work contest where you can win $50,000, a one-year subscription to Office 365 for your business and more – and all you have to do is share your Office 365 success story on our Facebook group.
Mathew Ingram’s been putting the word out that GigaOm – the technology blog started by Om Malik – is looking for a news editor. If you’ve got the knack for running a virtual newsroom and coordinating the activities of bloggers who are scattered all over the globe, this could be the job for you!
SOMA: Your work neighbourhood, should you get hired.
Here are the details, as they appear on their LinkedIn jobs page:
Job Description
SOMA/Financial District (San Francisco Bay Area)
GigaOm is looking to hire a News Editor to manage the edit flow for the team. This person will work on east coast time and will be the main assigning editor for hitting news stories. Working very closely with the Managing Editor, the NE needs to stay on top of everything happening in the (virtual) newsroom and focus everyone toward the same goals. It is a fast-paced, collaborative online newsroom, and the NE duties change every day but they include:
- Manage the editorial team’s day to day work, including assignments based on current news, scheduling, editorial guidance, and final edit on stories before they go live;
- Manage story budgets;
- Maintain the balance of news and long feature pieces on the sites;
- Work with editors to align and direct news and feature coverage across all channels, crossposting materials as much as possible;
- Community management including tweeting and general interaction with the community, as well as approving comments on GOM;
- Assign, review and edit guest columns for weekend and holiday content;
- Coordinate event and breaking news coverage as the point;
- Regularly review the online stats and work to shift focus to increase traffic;
- Bring in and review new freelancers and story ideas.
This position is full-time with full health, dental & vision benefits, vacation and sick time, and a competitive salary. There is room in the SF office but someone working remotely on the East Coast could also successfully fill this position.
Everyone at GigaOM is busy doing their thing, so the hiring process for this position is being managed externally. Please submit your resume, cover letter and relevant clips or links to Emma Logan via LinkedIn or email emmalogan.hr (at) gmail (dot) com; direct applications to GigaOM may get lost in the shuffle.
Desired Skills & Experience
The ideal person will be/have:
- Passionate about technology and the changing media landscape;
- A head for news;
- An engaged management style with experience handling a remote team environment;
- Google Analytics or other stat evaluation software experience a must;
- Hard-core organizational skills;
- Relevant experience at a comparable online company;
- Engaged, eager, optimistic, realistic, and flexible;
- The ability to juggle, negotiate, charm, and let water roll off your back.
Creative Commons photo courtesy of Sri Dhanush.
I’m helping out with BarCamp Minneapolis, a.k.a. MinneBar, which takes place on May 7th. The event takes place at Best Buy’s headquarters out in Richfield, and we out-of-towner helper-outers are staying downtown. If you know any good and reasonably-priced hotels in an interesting but not sketchy part of downtown, please let me know in the comments or drop me an email!
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.