Steve’s Update 4/20/2015

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Hello everyone, got a lot going on! So let’s begin!

First of all the Newsletter?  I decided to make it display my RSS feed in a nice newsletter format.  That way I’m not updating a standard format, I can keep everyone informed, and people in the newsletter get my other fun posts – plus it’s easier to maintain.  Sign up if you haven’t!

Next up is my speaking schedule- I just added three events (though the PMI one I should have done earlier)

Kraken-Con  April 26th, 2015

I’ll be at this fantastic, twice-a-year convention with two panels.

  • Epic Resume Go! – My Resume Panel For Creative People panel, I’ll discuss how you can make writing a resume into a fun creative exercise.  Or a tolerable one.
  • How To Make Japanese Curry – Kraken-Con last year was the premiere of this panel, and now it’s back and improved!  I’ll discuss the history of Japanese Curry, the basic recipes, the many variants, and of course my own healthy version!

PMI Silicon Valley May 13th, 2015

  • Leveraging LinkedIn To Get Yourself Noticed – My new panel on how to use LinkedIn, with a focus on getting people’s attention and going beyond LinkedIn 101!

Fanime – May 24th, 2015!

I’ll be doing one panel at this enormous convention – and I recommend coming by no matter what as this event is amazing!

  • Fan To Pro – My classic panel on using hobbies in your careers, I’ll discuss just how a fannish interest can take you farther – and in ways you haven’t thought of.

 

Now after all THAT . . .

My next book plan is in order.  I’m going to look into doing a book on Project Management Techniques – but as opposed to long, drudging outlines, it’ll be more bite-sized knowledge.  I’ll know more in a few weeks, so stay tuned.

 

That’s it for now.  Let me know how you’re doing!

 
Respectfully,

– Steven Savage
http://www.musehack.com/
http://www.informotron.com/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/

Using LinkedIn – Steve’s Take, Part 1

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LinkedInLogo

Let’s talk LinkedIn.

Of course by “Talk LinkedIn” I should note I want to talk about how to actually use it in a way that’s useful.  There’s a lot of LinkedIn 101 advice out there to the point where the advanced stuff – and the useful stuff – gets kind of lost.  I want to give you ideas about really getting things done and going farther.

And to do that?  We have to ask what LinkedIn IS in the first place.

What LinkedIn Is (What Did You Expect)

I’ve heard people say LinkedIn is a resume, or a community, or Facebook for careerists, or whatever.  Metaphors are important as they give you an idea of how to approach a tool.  So we need a metaphor for what LinkedIn is.

It’s a software suite.

LinkedIn is is a series of career tools that are linked together.  It’s a software suite for your job, providing a variety of tools that work together in a assorted ways – and often sharing the same data.

Now that that metaphor in mind, let’s look at the different things the suite does and how you can put them to use.

LinkedIn Function #1: A Resume Partner

First up, LinkedIn is not a substitute for you resume.  Yes, there’s often the dream it will be, but it’s not there yet and I doubt it ever will be.  Resumes and LinkedIn have different goals:

  • Resumes are personal narratives, that can come in many formats, may be customized for various goals, and provide a chance for personal expression.
  • LinkedIn provides a single, very complete format to put a lot of career data in searchable form, online, in one spot.  It is quite literally a profile and is bounded by the styles and structure of LinkedIn’s design.

LinkedIn is best thought of as a parter to your resume and your resume process.  They can reflect each other and support each other, but they’re not replacements for each other.

Here’s what you can do:

Use LinkedIn as a Guide – LinkedIn’s profile requires you to fill out an enormous amount of questions.  These can give you ideas of what may go in your resume.  As LinkedIn adds more categories, you may get more ideas of what should or shouldn’t go in your resume.

Personal Story: Many times when people were recommending me they’d also mention skills I never thought of including on my resume.  I also never thought of listing my work in museums until LinkedIn asked me about my non-job work – and that comes up in interviews.

Use It As A Warehouse – Not everything relevant to your career is going to go on your resume.  However LinkedIN has room for everything, from languages to your complete employment history.  Take advantage of that – both to keep records, but also as you have a place to show things off that aren’t on your resume.

Personal Story: When you’ve been a career as long as I have you don’t list everything on your resume.  Between LinkedIn and my own records I can pretty much show anyone where I worked for nearly 20 years.  It also gives a far more detailed history than I could include in a regular resume.

Fill It Out.  Fill It All Out – LinkedIn Will encourage you to fill out your profile completely and that’s important because they not only have space for everything.  You never know what people will find important, but the folks at LinkedIn have given it some thought.

Personal Story: I’d never considered putting my publications on my resume until I saw entries at LinkedIn and realized even tangentially related works are important to your career.

Use LinkedIn To Build A Resume – Now again I don’t think one is the replacement for another.  But there’s actually a tool to turn your profile into a resume, ad that may be a good place to start in making your own.

Save Time In The Job Search Process – More and more job search websites let you upload your LinkedIN profile instead of just a resume.  Because the LinkedIn profiles are easier to get data from, it’s a more effective, less error-prone – and thus less time-consuming process.  Get the profile right so you can take advantage of this.

LinkedIn’s Profiles work in tandem with your resume and your career image to make both better.

LinkedIn Function #2: An Outpost on the Web

Everyone needs a place to hang their metaphorical hat on the web.  Many people get personal websites – but that’s not for everyone.  Not everyone has the time or inclination to run one – or need one.

When it comes to having a single place people can go to get the “career you,” LinkedIn has you covered.

A Custom URL: If you want, LinkedIn can provide you a custom URL that people can use to easily access your profile.  For some people just having that on your resume and business cards may be all you need – or it’s a great thing to have while you struggle with HTML.  Just edit your profile and  you can edit the URL!

A Substitute Landing Page: But maybe you don’t want to use your LinkedIn URL as your “main” page – but you also haven’t build one.  SImply you can buy a domain than redirect it to your linkedin profile.  YOu’ve just made your profile your home page  Besides you can always redirect the URL later.

A Portfolio: Portfolios matter to many people, not just visual artists.  Documents, presentations, writing samples, graphs, and more may be useful to show off your skills.  LinkedIn actually provides you various Portfolio tools you can use to fill it out – https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/34325/ft/eng

A Routing Station: Your LinkedIn profile is a place where you can link to other blogs websites, and projects.  FIll this in because that way people can easily find them and evaluate what you do.  In fact . . .

Personal Story: I put all my sites on my LinkedIn profile to show the breadth of what I do.  It might also result in some book sales if I’m lucky.

A Place To Link Back To: Make sure your other websites, projects, and portfolios point back to LinkedIn.  This forms a set of relations among your online presences so people can keep finding out more about you.

Personal Story: I actually put my LinkedIn profile in as many social media profiles as possible because it’s such a useful and popular site.

A Social Media Aggregator: You can have your blog entries and social media appear in you LinkedIn feed.  Now you’ll want to be careful with that, but as long as you’re conscious of it, then you make it easier for people visiting LinkedIn to see you and know you.

Until Next Time

So that’s my roundup of tips for now!  Tune in Next week as we explore some more.

Respectfully,

– Steven Savage
http://www.musehack.com/
http://www.informotron.com/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/

Recipe: Eight Cup Curry

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So before I go into detail about this recipe, let me give it to you first.  Essentially I repurposed a recipe to make a general curry, it needs work, but it’s a start.

So here you go:

Ingredients:

  • 1 large tomato, diced (about a cup)
  • 1 Tablespoon crushed garlic (about 3 cloves)
  • 2 Tbsp curry powder (S&B Curry)
  • 1/8 tsp ground black pepper
  • 1/8 tsp ground red pepper
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 Tbsp lime juice
  • 4 cups assorted diced non-starchy vegetables
  • 4 cups assorted frozen or cooked legumes
  • Around 1/2 cup of water
  • Cilantro if needed.

Instructions:

  1. Place tomato and garlic in pot, with just enough water to cover the bottom.  On high heat stir and mash until it forms a paste, adding water if needed.  The goal is to keep just enough water to make it into a paste but not dry-fry it.  This takes around 5 minutes.
  2. Add any vegetables or frozen vegetables that need cooking to soften like carrots or peppers or cauliflower (some frozen vegetables are cooked then frozen so pay attention).  Add a bit more water, enough to have the bottom of the pot covered.  Bring to a boil, then simmer, covered, stirring every few minutes until they start to soften.
  3. Add legumes and any vegetables that don’t need to be cooked, just defrosted, mix thoroughly.
  4. Add spices and stir thoroughly.
  5. Cook until heated through.
  6. Serve alone or with a grain, with cilantro if desired.

So this is a repurposed version of a green pea and yam curry I had that was very simple but tasty, so I wondered if it could be remade to a general curry.  If I could get a general curry recipe that’d let me use most anything I had, it’d be very useful and tweakable.  It also would create a general recipe that would let me, or anyone else, use whatever was lying around, or use a few frozen vegetables grabbed at a store.

The name comes from the fact it’s designed to use eight cups of food – half legumes, half other vegetables.  The original recipe worked that way too.

How did it come out?  Decent.  It was a bit too hot (an issue with the original recipe) and sour, but still quite good – one of those things that I can critique while still noting it’s good.  At the core of it is a solid curry powder and simple ingredients, which works.  I was put in mind of a kind of curry at a good buffet – you might not be thrilled if it came as a prepared meal, but it’d be acceptable in that situation.

I think I can make it work with a few changes – something sweet (an apple or raisins in the sauce), perhaps a bit less lime juice, maybe cut the red pepper.

One thing that stood out in this meal is what the mix did – I had four different vegetables (carrot, red pepper, cauliflower, green beans) and two legumes (green peas and black eye peas), plus I served it on barley (my preferred grain).  Every bite was a mix of flavors, each chew revealed more – all wrapped in strong sauce.  Once I get this right, this is going to be a great meal.

Also note it’s rather balanced.  Combine this with a grain and fruit for desert and you’ve got just about every kind of vegan nutrition there is.  Or eat two servings for a full meal.

Not a vegan or vegetarian?  I think substituting 1-2 cups of meat for an equivalent amount of vegetables may work.  Not sure beef would work on this – chicken or turkey is probably best.

I’m going to keep working on this one.  Done right I get something that’s fast, shareable, and good – and because it’s based on proportions I can scale it up easily (even if that’d technically be sixteen cup curry or twenty-four cup curry).  A great way to make a lot of meals at once or a lazy way to stock the freezer for a lot of food fast.

 

Respectfully,

– Steven Savage
http://www.musehack.com/
http://www.informotron.com/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/