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Vangroovy Scenery

Hello from Vangroovy! I’m at the Vancouver Convention Center to speak at the Microsoft Techdays Canada conference.

Here’s the Centre, as shown on the web site and postcards. It does look like this in the summer:

Fog-free picture of the Vancouver Convention Center

Here are the photos I took looking out onto the ocean from the Centre this morning:

Vancouver fog

Vancouver fog

Vancouver fog

My hotel is across the street from the Centre, so I didn’t wear a coat today. The doorman looked a bit worried when I passed him, but I said “Don’t worry. Next to last week’s weather in Toronto, this is tropical.”

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In Transit

Vancouver Convention Centre

Flying to Vancouver today to speak at TechDays Vancouver tomorrow. If you’re in the ‘hood and want to catch up and talk tech, accordions or whatnot, drop me a line!

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Super-Productive Monitor Setup

If two monitors boost your productivity, imagine what this setup could do for you…

Multiple monitors setup for a training desk

[This photo originally appeared in Forex Chronicles.]

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TechDays 2008: One More Leg!

Microsoft Tech Days Canada 2008 logo

This article was originally published in Canadian Developer Connection.

Although we’re already into the start of 2009’s third full week, TechDays Canada 2008 has one more stop to make: Vancouver Convention Centre, in the city I like to refer to as “Vangroovy”, on Wednesday, January 21st and Thursday, January 22nd.

This is the final leg of our cross-country tour in which people from Microsoft as well as developers and IT pros who build using Microsoft technologies share their knowledge of how to best make use of the Microsoft tools and tech available today. The conference is split into five information-rich tracks:

  • Windows development
  • Web development
  • Virtualization
  • Data management
  • Infrastructure

TechDays provides all sort of opportunities: to learn a little more about the Microsoft platform and toolset, the chance to meet up with us and have your say, the chance to network with your peers and of course, the chance to take home the coveted Techie Crunch “cereal box”, which comes fortified with about a thousand bucks’ worth of stuff, including:

Box of "Techie Crunch"

Photo by Mack D. Male. Click it to see its Flickr page.

There’s still time to sign up for TechDays if you’re planning on being in Vancouver on Wednesday and Thursday. For more details, visit the TechDays Canada site.

(And don’t forget, if you want to catch up with us, let us know! My contact details are in this entry.)

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“R2Decaf” T-Shirt

Blue and grey "R2Decaf" t-shirts

As of this writing, you’ve got just over 10 hours to get the R2Decaf T-shirt before it’s gone forever tonight (January 19) at midnight. It sells for a mere USD$9 at TeeFury.

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danah boyd’s Dissertation and My “Cheat Sheet” for it

Danah Boyd giving her "My Friends, Myspace" presentation at the Berkman Center in the summer of 2007 If you were born in the 1990s, you fall into the “youth” demographic and are considered to be part of the “Generation Y” or “Millennial” generation (a classification applied to people born in the 80s and 90s). Chances are that you don’t remember a world without commonplace desktop computers, the world wide web and mobile phones – lucky you!

You’re also the generation that Microsoft Research’s danah boyd has been observing for the past couple of years. She’s been studying how youth use social networks, or “networked publics”, as she likes to refer to them. She completed her Ph.D. last year and in fulfillment of her promise, she posted her dissertation on her blog this past weekend. It’s titled Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics.

Teens use social media and social networking software to do these things:

  • To present themselves to the world
  • To interact with their peers
  • To understand and navigate through adult society

If you want to understand how and why teens’ use of technology to do these things, danah’s dissertation is your must-read document.

Be warned that a dissertation isn’t a blog entry or magazine article; Taken Out of Context spans a whopping 406 pages. Although it’s quite comprehensible to someone not versed in sociology or ethnography, it’s still a lot to read. You might find my notes from her My Friends, MySpace presentation that I took back in the summer of 2007 a reasonable overview – perhaps even a “cheat sheet” — for her dissertation.

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“Why They Quit Google”, the Quick Version

The big TechCrunch article of the day is about a private discussion group in which Google’s HR department asked former employees to post messages explaining reasons why they left the company. TechCrunch published posts from the thread; in case you didn’t feel like reading them all, I took a tally of the complaints in the thread and gathered them up in the table and chart below. Enjoy!

Complaint Count
Unhappy with the hiring process, especially how long it took 10
Low relative pay, benefits or relocation package 9
Management: either micro or not at all 8
Workaholic culture 3
Lost in the shuffle 3

 

why_they_left_google