jonathanmeola

Freelancing – From Fear To Freedom

As someone who has worked on a full-time basis for the past 25 way too many years, the idea of moving into a “full-time freelancer” mindset brought on a full-blown case of the FUDs (otherwise known as Fear / Uncertainty / Doubt for the uninitiated).

While I have worked on some small part-time freelance projects over the years (mostly in-between “permanent” positions) I never really considered…

Great time for a great cause last night – our local Chabad (Reston-Herndon-Dulles-Loudoun area, Virginia) held its first annual Quiz Night and Silent Auction, to benefit educational programs and activities for the children of our community. Lots of fun, games, food, and awesome prizes… we raised over $3000 thanks to the generosity of the event sponsors, and those folks who came out to play and…

Why Internal Ventures are Different from External Startups

Jonathan M:

“A startup is a temporary organization in search of a repeatable, scalable business model. A corporation, by contrast, is a permanent organization designed to execute a repeatable, scalable business model. While a simple statement, this is a profound insight. When companies want to innovate a new business model (vs. innovating new products and services within an already scaled business…

EMC World 2014 – Post Conference Thoughts

Jonathan M:

Was going to write my own post-mortem blog on Momentum 2014, but I think this one pretty much captures everything I’d wind up saying myself. Will be interesting to see what changes are coming down the road for IIG over the next year or two.

Originally posted on Observing Content Management:

I’ve had a week now to gather my thoughts since EMC World, as well as to catch up on some sleep…

To Tell The Truth…

My wife loves sharing the story of how she told her daughter, when she was a toddler, that a black spot would appear on her forehead any time she told a lie.  It wasn’t long before she would find herself facing a precocious four year-old, with one hand plastered across her brow, telling her that she did pick up her books and games, all while standing in the midst of a pile covering the playroom…

Dandelions and Lessons Learned

Robert D. Austin, Dean of the Faculty of Business at the University of New Brunswick, explains in this video how Danish software tester Specialisterne maintains a diverse and productive workforce. The “dandelion metaphor” he shares is a great way to explain the “lessons learned” in a context that can be easily understood.

Back in the late 90′s, Steve Jobs redefined Apple via “Think Different”:

[y…

An MBA In Less Than 400 Pages? Read on…

(Images courtesy of amazon.com and Stanley Bing)

Again, courtesy of amazon.com and Stanley Bing. Now go ahead and buy the book.

Time to add this one to the bookshelf, people – if for no other reason than for all of the graphics and charts, including the two I’ve shared here:

The book is called “The Curriculum” and it’s from Stanley Bing, the guy who brought us “Crazy Bosses”,  “Sun Tzu Was A…

“The Heartbleed problem can be blamed on complexity; all Internet standards become festooned with complicating option sets that no one person can know in their entirety. The Heartbleed problem can be blamed on insufficient investment; safety review for open source code is rarely funded, nor sustainable when it is. The Heartbleed problem can be blamed on poor planning; wide deployment within…

Originally posted on Big Men On Content:

Last weekend Box CEO  Aaron Levie tweeted

“Disruption is the art of identifying which parts of the past are no longer relevant to the future, and exploiting that delta at all costs.”

To which I responded :

“deliberate disruption is extraordinarily rare. So rare that I think you can capitalize on it but never plan for it

I’ve been asking myself…

Why is this post different from all other posts?

Thought I’d share what I posted as my out-of-office message for the next couple of days:

Whoopsie.

I will be offline from this afternoon through Wednesday evening (16-April 2014), and will not be checking email or phone messages until Thursday April 17th. Wishing all who observe a happy and meaningful Passover.

Time 2 ch@ng3 y0ur p@55w0rd5…

“Heartbleed” security exploit of OpenSSL causing heartache for millions of internet users:

Heartbleed, so called because it creates a ‘bleeding’ leak of security, is a flaw in OpenSSL, the software used by the majority of websites to keep data secure.

The programme works by encrypting data – such as emails, instant messages, bank details or passwords – making it look like nonsense to hackers.

W…

From Old School To Bold School

Jonathan M:

The featured slide hits it out of the park; it may have been written about education, but it applies just as well to a successful environment on the job.

Originally posted on Principal Reflections:

A slide straight from Will Richardson’s  NHASCD workshop on  April 4, 2014

The ease of rhyme in Will Richardson’s workshop title (old to bold) doesn’t diminish the difficulty of Will’s…