#work (328 links)
- What, exactly, is a Product Manager? | MindTheProduct mindtheproduct.com
- Tinyproj / Hello tinyproj.com
- Central Working London, Office Space, Networking London | Central Working centralworking.com
Coworking space near TCR.
- Blogging Innovation » How to Hire and Manage Consultants business-strategy-innovation.com
Useful from the other side i.e. how to be hired as a consultant and not suck.
Wondering why I didn't save this in 2008. Keep referring to it.
- Self employed business and commercial insurance | The Co-operative Insurance co-operativeinsurance.co.uk
- Salary Benchmarking – February 2011 | Cogs Agency cogsagency.com
Salary Benchmarking for London 2011.
- Hacker News | Life Hack - The 30/30 Minute Work Cycle Feels Like Magic news.ycombinator.com
Lots of discussions re. ratios.
- Hacker News | Ask HN: Recommend a freelance job board news.ycombinator.com
- The most effective debt collecting email I ever wrote | For A Beautiful Web forabeautifulweb.com
I like this. "A quick note to say that I am really disappointed that you have still not paid me the [..] that I'm owed for the work I did for you. In the grand scheme of things, it's not a lot of money, but actually I think that this is more a matter of respect."
- Rands In Repose: How to Run a Meeting randsinrepose.com
There are two useful types of meetings: alignment and creation. Briefly, alignment meetings are tactical communication exchanges that rarely dive into the strategic. These are fine meetings that have a weekly cadence, and while there are lots of ways to screw up these meetings, their tactical repetition often keeps them on the rails. Creation meetings — diving into solving a hard problem — involve, well, more creativity. Each hard problem requires a unique solution, and finding that solution is where creation meetings can go bad.
- Hacker News | What does a product manager do? news.ycombinator.com
- What does a product manager do? iamnotaprogrammer.com
A product manager enables the team to execute the company vision.
"That is the new way to build companies, College degrees don’t matter much IMHO anymore, for developers anyway. It’s more how you interact with the open source community and what you release yourself. Your github account has become your new resume and what you say on Twitter and in various IRC channels are more likely to get you the best jobs then any recruiters ever will." Although only if you're working for people who've actually heard of github i.e. not adland.
The key idea here that most entrepreneurs miss is that you really need to vet your own ideas. Many aspiring entrepreneurs dream up an idea, and then stick to it doggedly, either because its the only idea they have, or they find it technically interesting. They don't want to discover that it won't work, so they don't try to figure it out! This is a bit like writing some code, and then not testing it because you really don't want to discover that its buggy.
- The scariest pricing idea ever. That works. | The Freelancery thefreelancery.com
"Here’s a pricing technique that sounds, at first, like the dumbest newbie move of all time. Call it ‘fill-in-the-blank’ invoicing. Or ‘pay what you want’ pricing. The notion is, you do the work first, then let the client decide how much to pay for it." Heavy caveats.
- How to Lose Time and Money paulgraham.com
I've definitely had days when I might as well have sat in front of a TV all day—days at the end of which, if I asked myself what I got done that day, the answer would have been: basically, nothing. I feel bad after these days too, but nothing like as bad as I'd feel if I spent the whole day on the sofa watching TV. If I spent a whole day watching TV I'd feel like I was descending into perdition. But the same alarms don't go off on the days when I get nothing done, because I'm doing stuff that seems, superficially, like real work. Dealing with email, for example. You do it sitting at a desk. It's not fun. So it must be work.
- Chris Heathcote: anti-mega: griotism anti-mega.com
<blockquote>Employing an internal data griot makes a lot of sense: someone who can spend the time looking for both large trends and individual needs and uses that illuminate and portend. It’s a hard job, needing a mix of skills rarely found – a smidgen of hard maths and statistics, a pinch of programming, and dessert spoons of various liberal arts. The Economist (sub required) posits them as data scientists (a position Flickr are currently looking for), but this misses the ability to ask interesting questions, and having hunches – being so immersed in the data that relevancy screams out."</blockquote>
- What is data science? - O'Reilly Radar radar.oreilly.com
Analysis: The future belongs to the companies and people that turn data into products.
- Invest in Hackney invest-in-hackney.org
Details and links to managed workspace providers in Hackney.
- Why trivia is so important | Life and style | The Guardian guardian.co.uk
""This has come to be known as the Colour of the Bike Shed Phenomenon: the time spent on any item will be in inverse proportion to its cost and importance. Relentlessly, the trivial squeezes out the non-trivial [...] Similar effects – where small stuff preoccupies us because it's small – course through our lives [...] I fear that something related is also what's transpiring whenever I get that delusional feeling of achievement from having powered through multiple unimportant items on my to-do list, leaving untouched the few tasks that really matter. Taken together, Parkinson's two laws amount to a wry but certainly not trivial warning: the work we do expands to fill the time available – and, half the time, it's not even the most important work."
- Steven Poole: Working for the Man stevenpoole.net
What would videogaming look like if it rejected the machine as a model for play, if more games incorporated gratuitous moments of relaxation from their constant, accelerated striving? Or if more games did not treat us as employees but as autonomous co-creators?
Bad title, interesting points. "I learned that introverts prefer to think before they speak, while extroverts tend to think /as/ they speak. I also learned what energizes introverts (solo activities) versus extroverts (social activities) [...] They seek out allies as trusted sounding boards and champions who can help spread the word about their quiet strengths."
- Startup School 2009: 37 Signals has some lessons for European startups eu.techcrunch.com
Always do good things, never do bad things.
Friends tired of forking out for a Classic Super Club or a Wild Crayfish and Rocket to eat at their desk have asked me to chuck a few suggestions their way for something they can make themselves to take to work.
- Kickstarter kickstarter.com
A funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, bloggers, explorers...
#design #music #business #social #work #creativity #startup #ideas #entrepreneurship#fundraising#funding #art "Here’s some things I’d recommend that you consider if you’re looking to get hired into a creative company". Particularly like this part: "don’t be scared to big-up other people you worked with".
"I have been asked by my work place to provide my passport." Not just employers; looks like it's becoming standard practice for recruiters to ask even if trading as a limited company. Something to do with the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006.
- Present.ly - The Constant Awareness Communication Tool presentlyapp.com
Twitter revolutionized public communication by creating organic networks for one-to-many updates. Present.ly brings this revolution to your business with tools and features custom tailored for a work environment.
- Time to invest or invest in time? internetworld.co.uk
What would I do if my business allowed me to do in a downturn? Keep ahead of the curve. Get myself to any and every relevant show, event and conference, meeting and networking opportunity. Get up to speed with what’s coming down the pipe from all of the technologies. Understand their priorities and where they think we will be in the coming months and years.
- TechCrunch UK » Blog Archive » Dear Agencies, it’s time to join the start-up party uk.techcrunch.com
One of the biggest problems in the UK, and I would say Ireland as well, is that digital or ‘new media’ agencies only ever decide to incorporate new Web apps or social networks into their thinking when they bubble up from Silicon Valley or elsewhere. Few ever think to jump in and create a few apps themselves.
- Scamp: Tuesday Tip No.59 - How To Freelance scampblog.blogspot.com
Thanks to the wonderful credit crunch, many of you are about to become freelancers (ie fired). I have freelanced before (and am likely to be doing so again) so allow me to enlighten you as to what to expect.
- Roome Consulting roome.co.uk
Digital media recruiters near Old Street.
- Make Money Online: 101 Top Ways of Doing It experienced-people.co.uk
For PH.
When 37signals first started out, we didn’t make products. We did client work...
- Cool business card designs | creativebits creativebits.org
- londonsocialmediacafe wiki / Free and Open Spaces in London londonsocialmediacafe.pbwiki.com
This is just a list of free and open spaces in London, places where smallish groups might congregate to do something, like talk, understand things better, make plans, organise other things.
- Web Worker Daily » Archive Busyness vs. Burst: Why Corporate Web Workers Look Unproductive « webworkerdaily.com
"The busyness economy works on face time, incremental improvement, strategic long-term planning, return on investment, and hierarchical control. The burst economy, enabled by the Web, works on innovation, flat knowledge networks, and discontinuous product
- Five Ways to Boost Creativity or Kill it Altogether | Slow Leadership slowleadership.org
Slowing down is essential to any kind of creativity — even if it makes you unfocused, inefficient, undisciplined, or unsystematic too
- Mental Detox Week : iain tait | crackunit.com crackunit.com
Adbusters have changed their Turnoff TV week into Mental Detox Week, its tagline is Escape the Fantasy.
- Fire the workaholics - (37signals) 37signals.com
Here’s another take on that: Fire the people who are workaholics!
Some good, some bad.
- Creative Space Agency : Pages creativespaceagency.co.uk
- Start Your Own Business : Journal : Mark Boulton markboulton.co.uk
A small article on making the leap to working for yourself