Cam Findlay

Archive for the ‘Journal Questions’ Category

Perhaps if I started to seek out more people around me that need help and guidance around technology and how they could use it to connect and converse with their audience better.  This is something I have done in the past in just about every job I have worked in and I get a real buzz when I see technology used in new and exciting ways and when I myself find interesting ways to make the most of new technology in everyday life and business.

I think I am lucky in that those people who I mentioned back in an earlier post about positive energizers would also be people to help me in heading towards my calling.  I also am lucky enough to have meet a few great people through the X:Media:Lab conferences that I am sure would be interested in any technical related work that I undertake and perhaps offer mentoring.  I also have a great following on Facebook and Twitter that could offer feedback or perhaps even be people I help out with my ideas and technical skills.

If you were to commit to your own sense of calling what external resistance might you expect?

If I was to really commit to working towards making the web easier and helping organisations connect with their communities I would likely encounter resistance from others in the industry perhaps asking “who are you? What gives you the right to say how an organisation should do its business on the web?” and also most likely some internal thoughts to the same effect.  As much as I have a passion for this technology and communities online I feel like having to prove myself within the web and open source communtiy to be a barrier or resistance.

What fears would you have to face?

Again the fears are similar to above the ideas around feeling like a fraud when giving advice and consulting businesses around their online strategies.  The fear of not feeling smart enough compared to others in the industry and perhaps getting out of my comfort zone in regards to public speaking and rapid change. There are also fear around my ideas, are they correct?  Do they really help?  Is what I write any good?  What do others think of my work?  These are all questions I don’t know the answer to and thus fear of the unknown and uncertainty.

What would you have to give up?

Making a move away to Wellington which my partner and I have decided is a great idea takes me away from my comfort zone here in Christchurch.  I would be leaving behind good friends, a stable and great job, family and a place that I know well. 

How much attention are you paying to your life and what invitations are present in your life right now?

I feel that I am one to pay a lot of attention to the opportunities and invitations that pop up and make themselves known in my life.  Right now I am entertaining some invitations around moving cities to Wellington perhaps next year. I also find that many friends and colleges are always coming to me with technical questions which I always see as an invitation to share some knowledge or perhaps teach someone something new.  Perhaps the most exciting invitation that has surface recently is that an off-shoot of the popular TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference held in the US is looking to be held in Auckland this year.  It would be great to be selected to attend so it looks like I will be filling out a registration pack soon!

What is the unique contribution that you can make?

I want to make the way we work on the web easier and help businesses get online and use all the great tools and technology that I enjoy.  I want to encourage a move toward more conversation and community around organisations online.

If you were to write a paragraph describing your calling doing worked you loved & making a contribution what would be in it?

I would be including in this paragraph my passion for technology and the ways I can use it to help guide conversation online in the form of social networks and making interacting on the web for everyone a very easy task.  I would also include building relationships with businesses and professional networks to find out common problems and barriers they find while doing business online or attempting to move to an online business model.  I am hoping that my calling will allow me to find solutions to these problems.

What are you naturally good at and what talents do you have?

• Good at listening and understanding others.
• problem solving and learning.
• translating “geek”… that is I have always been able to communicate technical concepts clearly and concise to people that aren’t very technical.
• Anything technology and computer related, programming, web development.
  
• I often see opportunities and uses for technology to make working easier.
  
• Helping others understand and make use of new technology, website, social networking.
• I have a good feel for music, i have played several instruments, DJ’d and written music.
• I have recently found a “talent” within my chosen martial art, iaido which also offers time to work on a clear mind and a greater sense of spirit.
  

What are the images you associate with you doing work that you love?

Gadgets, computers, communities of people both online in forums, social network and offline in professional networks and hobbies, music, solving challenging problems, writing useful website code.

Think of the three greatest/most significant experiences/achievements of your life. What are the images that you associate with them?

1. Completing my Diploma of Multimedia – Being creative with computers, solving problems, working with clients and to a brief, self paced learning.
2. Getting my current job at RockStar Recipes – Getting to combine computing with music, teaching others to play guitar, building an online community around learning, solving technical problems and contributing to the vision of the organisation.
   
3. Attending the X:Media:lab Conferences – Getting to learn about the latest technology and ideas, meeting the worlds best in my industry, being able to speak on a highly technical level and being understood by others who are as technical as myself.
   

If you were to do work in the future that you loved and that was totally aligned with these images what would it look like? How would it feel?

I would be using the latest new technology on the internet to help people communicate there would be a sense or feeling that I am contributing to making the world online a better, easier and more fun place for everyone to interact, have conversations, do business and hopefully it would be so easy, integrated and intuitive that everyone can participate and contribute without the current technical barriers.

Creative images are those clear images you may have had as a child or while growing up that have internally hinted throughout your life so far at what your purpose or calling may be.  Below is a bit of a time line from memory (I’m sure I have left some things out) of some of the creative images and opportunities or invitations to explore my creative images.  You will see that technology and invitations to align myself with technology based activities is intertwined throughout my time line.

0-5 years: From what I have heard from my parents and relatives and to a lesser extend what I actually remember myself I have always as a child been drawn to gadgets and electronic things… I remember a story told to me by my parents when I was about 18 months old or so I had this electronic toy phone which made tones when you pressed the buttons… I carried it everywhere and one afternoon was able to highly annoy my parents while stuck in traffic in Brisbane’s 30 something  degree heat by holding one of the buttons down… perhaps I was just letting them know about my enjoyment of technology in my own special way.

6-8 years: My Grandmother worked as a teacher in the childrens ward at Timaru hospital.  I remember as a kid she would bring some of the computers home to her house (Apple IIe!) and I would spend a lot of time on them figuring out how they worked, playing games and playing with a publishing program making all sorts of graphics.  I was quite lucky to be able to have access and free time to learn the ins and outs of computing at a young age.  Becasue of this jump start when I later encountered computers during primary school I was able to help my class mates use them.

9-11 years: I would spend hours after school and weekends at either of my old school friends houses tinkering and playing games on thier Commandore 64 computers (A classic personal computing platform).  Again I find this was all adding to my understanding of what computers could do, how they worked and continued to spur my interest in technology.  I was lucky as at those times (late 80′s, early 90′s) it was uncommon for house holds to have computers in the small town I lived in and to have access and shared interest with 2 friends who had computers available to them is another one of those oppertunies offered up by the universe that I was able to take.

11-13 years: I remember having this great teacher at Intermediate School that was very much into electronics and computing.  He would run after school courses in building circuit boards and writing using the LOGO programming language which of course I took up.  It was my first introductions to understanding just how computers worked and how to give them instructions to get them to do what I wanted them to do.

13-15 years: We moved to Christchurch and I started high school.  I also had an Auntie and Uncle who introduced me to the internet and let me visit them whenever I wished to research school projects and generally spend time plaing around and surfing the internet.  I remember catching buses, walking and finding anyway I could to get myself to their home and sitting on their doorstep until they got home just to spend a few hours on the net.

15-18 years: I was introduced to web publishing and HTML programming by a friend of my Mother’s boss, subsequently I took over building and maintaining the company website (They imported and exported classic cars around the world).  I also spent a lot of time during my high school years building websites for family friends companies and generally getting a sense of the global community of the web and that I could reach and communicate with a worldwide audience.

18-20 years: I did really well in the commerce subjects (Economics and Accounting) at high school and went on to start a Bachelor of Commerce at Canterbury but after a year and a half left to pursue my passion for technology and practical skills by completing a Diploma of Multimedia at the National College of Design and Technology.

20+ years: I have been working in the web and technology industry ever since!  New opportunities are always presenting themselves and I do my best to take them up. I have been lucky enough to attend some great technology related conferences and meet some of the worlds best in digital media just by being open to these creative images and invitations.

Looking back over all these childhood memories, creative images  and invitations it paints a clear picture that my purpose, calling or what ever you wish to call it definatly somehow will involve computers and technology as these themes and the invitations to follow what I enjoyed seem to have been present through growing up.

Below shows some activities in my life where I experience “Flow” that being a place where my skills and challenges meet to allow me to perform at my very best. It also shows some of my core values and sense of purpose around these activities.
(Click the diagram to enlarge)

These are just 3 of many areas in which I find a sense of flow there are many more but focusing on these ones for now they have helped (and continue to help) me become more integrated and differentiated in my life by:

Participating in communities are various types gives me both a place to learn from others and a place to share my skills to help advance the goals of that community. I find that there is a sense of community in just about everything I do. Being part of the “Dance Music Community” and helping run events and share my music with others as a DJ and music producer. On the web development and coding side of things I am part of the “Open Source Community” where ideas around building great websites, producing reusable code that anyone can use, modify and make better drive this movement and foster a place where I can again learn from other open source participants and at times contribute back so that others may learn and make use of what I have learnt.  I am also part of a community with my Iaido training which is a subset of the greater community of people doing martial arts (Budo) in a quest to build character, mind, body and spirit in their lives.
I find that for all of my broad range of skills, talents and hobbies there is a community of people (either online or offline) that can benefit from my participation and contribution into that community.

I think Ii still need to explore the idea of SMART goals further before I can successfully start implementing them.  At present I do think I have a strong strategy which I outlined earlier but while I believe these strategies could be re-written into SMART goals I need to make them more Specific, Measurable and Time-Oreinted as in “when am I going to do them”.

For example one of my strategies is to “Continue to work within the technology and web development industry/landscape” but to be more specific I think I need to work out which technology I want to focus on, which companies in the industry and where are those companies? When am I going to approach these companies? How do I measure this or rank my progress on this?

I do think however my goals/stratagies toward my purpose and vision are Attainable and Relevant.  Attainable in that I already have several years of experience in the industry and a good background in technology, coding and I am able and willing to continue learning to enhance my skills so I am able to achieve the goals that I will eventually set. (Perhaps working out what learning I need to undertake and when could be a SMART goal to add).
My goals are also relevant as they all fit and help me progress towards helping make the web an easier place for businesses but without having nailed down my BHAG or full vision the goals themselves are slightly unclear.

The more time I can spend converting and breaking down my strategies the clearer my SMART goals will start to become. (A SMART goal now would be to work out what my SMART goals are and to set a time frame on sorting those out, though one time frame has been set for me… the hand in date on the Personal Development Plan!)

I think I am lucky that I have a lot of supportive people around me, I am intending on running my PDP and my future goals by my partner, Julia, my current boss and college, David McKinnon and my Mum and Dad… all of whom are already following my journal questions on my blog and offering great feedback and encouragement.  These are people I have built great relationships with and will be honest with me, trustworthy and will really help motivate me to do my best as I start to impliement my Personal Development Plan into my life.

Thanks everyone

My strengths in positive leadership are:

• Demonstrating forgiveness for mistakes and errors.
• Providing support and development to indicate forgiveness to those who have blundered.
• Modeling positive energy and encouraging other positive energizers.
• Continuously improving and developing strong inter-personal relationships.

Some development areas I would want to include as part of my PDP are:

• Running more formal events to encourage and communicate emotional support.
• Developing best-self feedback from others.
• Complimenting more with email and cards those around me that are performing well.
• Establishing more one to one meeting on a regular basis.