Lets see if this Facebook thing can be better than LinkedIn for networking and getting new business.

As an experiment, we’ve just opened a Dublin IT Contractors Group on Facebook. No matter what the Technology is that you use, you’re welcome to come along and take part.

In an ideal world, potential customers would read this blog then decide that they want to do business with me.

In the real world many of my customers haven’t heard of a blog, and are quite happy that way thank you very much.

Given that a lot of ’selling’ to these customers is on a personal level, the fallback is to use the traditional common or garden CV. Which gives rise to the following problems :

• Too Long or Too Short? : How do you get 13 years experience into a document without it looking like a version of ‘war and peace’?
• The curse of the technical buzzword : You need to include the technical buzzwords (Oracle, Java, Agile etc) to show you can do the job (a lot of people just do a 1st scan for words like this). But, put too many in, and you just end up looking silly.
• People or Technical skills: Apparently you can have great technical skills , or great people skills , but not both. How do you stop yourself getting pigeonholed? What about non-traditional experience (e.g. blogging, writting, speaking, training?)
• Customer confidentiality: A lot of the stuff we do is internal to clients. But potential  clients need to know what you’ve done to judge your work. Where’s the balance?

You can judge how successful I’ve been here: Paul Browne’s CV online [pdf].

Yes, I’m slightly more available than normal in the coming months. Yes, I’ll consider proposals slightly outside ‘normal’ contracts, if the projects and upside are interesting. And yes , I may just take some time off that I’ve been promising myself (but I’ve said that one before). Email me at PaulB@firstpartners.net.
Note to recruitment agencies: I’m very happy consulting through FirstPartners. No, I don’t want a permanent job. No, Cork is nowhere near Dublin , but I will consider Belfast. No, I don’t believe that you’re in for anything other than the money - that’s ok , you probably have a family to feed; but let’s not waste time pretending otherwise.

Well, it’s not me. Despite my best efforts at blogging over 2 years (and a bit of Search Engine Optimization), a Google for ‘Paul Browne’ shows that I am only number 3 on the list. Even worse , the ‘Dr Paul Browne (PHD) DCU’ hasn’t been updated for 3 years. What do I need to do to get to number 1, get Twenty Major to take out a hit on this guy?

On a related note, Jason Kolb has a list of things to do to protect your online identity (good). John Breslin has a list of (bad things to avoid) and we’ve blogged about this notion of ‘blogs as the new CV‘ in that future employers will want to be checking out your blog (as a harder to fake version of your CV).

Update: As of Sept 2007, a Google Search for Paul Browne now shows this blog in No 1. position (unless Google are doing some fancy personalisation of searches. Next step will be to trademark (or even better find a way to Patent) the name and charge all the other Paul Browne’s for it use.

Java Meetup in the Virtual Dublin Pub

By Paul Browne

I don’t think these guys will be joining the Web2Ireland (even Web 2.0) group anytime soon. Basically , their website says ‘We couldn’t be bothered using any of the Ajax toolkits out there, so we’ll get you Mr Customer to do all the work for us’. I wonder what their look-to-book ratio is ( I used to do some work for Aer Lingus - LinkedIn Profile).

Scandanavian Airlines (SAS) Website.

Hint to SAS: Here is how to fix this (pdf), or hire us and we’ll fix it for you.

Or if you prefer , reassure yourself that you’re not the only airline with Ajax problems.
More blogposts on Ajax.

Been reading the various posts by bloggers on the recent Web2Ireland event organised by Enterprise Ireland.

(Photo of Marc Canter Speaking , by Dermod)

Prize for one of the better (and concise) definitions of Web 2.0 goes to Kevin Sherry of Enterprise Ireland:

Web 2.0 is the Second Wave of Internet Business Activity.

Having said that , my view is Web 2.0 is almost , but not quite , going mainstream (in Ireland at least). Judging by the people I met (more below) and the dress standards I would judge the audience as 1/3rd Business-VC (suit and tie) 1/3rd Techie (Jeans and T-Shirt) and 1/3rd Professional Technologist (Suit but no tie). This contrasts with the last Web 2.0 event , where the audience was almost exclusively techie, despite dual business and technology marketing.

You can judge for yourself from the agenda at the Web2Ireland site, but my only gripe is that I’m not sure if Enterprise Ireland got the balance right. Aside from Marc Canter (who managed to successfuly quote Joyce in a techie presentation!) the main speakers - Judy Gibbons from Accel and Jeff Clavier (Software Only) - were either VC or Angel investors. That’s not to say that they didn’t have a lot of good, interesting and relevant things to say (more below), it just meant that you had to bear in mind their angle on things (we want to lend you money). Given the success of all the people mentioned  this paragraph, I think they are well worth listening to. Adam Green , who despite being on a blogging break, hosted a very good lunchtime session (summary: ‘everything is XML’).

The key things I learned from the above speakers were (these are paraphrased , so excuse me if the quotes get lost in translation):

• Web 1.0 is dialup , Web 2.0 is broadband.
• Web 2.0 is part of a virteous circle, where each technology builds on the expectations - e.g. consumers now expect to find information online , so more information becomes available.
• Web 2.0 is still incomplete , so need to navigate around what is possible and what is not. (e.g Netflix , started with posting out DVD’s , but will stream video as that becomes widespread).
• Content is not scalable, but user generated content is.
• ‘The customer is only one click away from never using you again.’
• A valid business model is (still) seeing what has worked well in the US, then implementing it in Europe before the Americans can.
• Only exit strategy is to be bought - forget about IPO’s.
• Innovation comes from small companies.
• Make your website / service addictive.
• Leverage the power of community.
• Enterprise Web 2.0 is not there yet , but it will be.

This last point is of particular interest, given that the stuff that FirstPartners build is increasingly Web 2.0 techniques and technologies applied to the problems of the Enterprise. That’s probably worth another , separate blog post.

There a lot of good people that I met on the day, but a lot of people that I either missed, or didn’t have enough time to complete our conversations. By way of an apology , I’ll use the power of Wordpress to trackback to them. Their blogs are well worth reading for further information / angles on the event.

• Conor O’Neill from Argolon - judging by the camera angles he was sitting behind me , but despite reading his blog for a number of months , I’ve yet to meet him.
• James Corbett,Eirepreneur who I didn’t get time to interogate on his latest mad business idea.
• Paul Watson’s notes on the event
• Liam Morrison took a break from his search engines to be there.
• Fergus of Nooked did a short presentation / pitch.
• Derek Organ survived the 200m commute to be there. Another person who I was looking to , and failed to meet!
• Tom Raftery (correct spelling this time!) - a pity the podfather didn’t catch the event on video

Technorati Tags: web2ireland

If you’re non-technical , or less technical than you used to be , it can be daunting sorting the good people from the bad (and believe me , I’ve met some of the bad ones).

This is doubly difficult for new languages like Ruby , where you might not have the expertise in house to sort out the most obvious blaggers. Java used to have this problem 5 years ago when it went mainstream , but there’s enough half-decent Java people in most companies to flag when something seems wrong with a CV / interviewee.

If you are looking for Ruby people (maybe attracted by it’s ability to do make the routine things easy , or by it being the lingua franca of Web 2.0) , then this article on O’Reilly maybe a good place to start.

If your CV is like mine (viewable online), then the chances it is:

a) accurate but terse
b) full of technical details
c) covers years of your life in one sentence
but worst of all
d) doesn’t really give a good indication of whether you have the skills and experience needed to do the job.

In fact, do you suspect that some people you are working with may have ’stretched the truth’ a little too far on their CV?

Now imagine if your CV was in a Weblog (blog) format … a good example (picked at random via Google). So apart from being trendy, what are the advantages of doing your CV this way?

• Because the sections in your Blog / CV are ‘tagged’ you can give more details, and let employers view just the areas that they are interested in.
• Because you update your Blog / CV on a regular basis, with more information, it is harder to fake. A one or two page CV is easy to write as a work of fiction. A blog that represents your life for the last 3 years would take too much effort to fake, so it is more likely to be trusted.
• Because you write about things you are interested in, people get a better idea of your motivation, and what you are really good at.

What do you think, are blogs the new CV? If you’re looking to use Blogging to land yourself a new job, then Jobster isn’t too bad a place to start.

I wasn’t sure about this one at first, but a copy of my CV is now available online.

The reason I wasn’t sure is because of privacy concerns, both for myself and the companies that I work for.

I resolved the problem by using an online format, with a lot less detail (e.g. where I have worked for Clients of Clients such as Government Departments, I have just left it at that level and not named names!) If you are interested and want to see more detail , you can contact me here.