Cam Findlay

Archive for the ‘Websites’ Category

Just a quick update, lecture for my uni paper have finished up for the year… I’m currently on some study leave to prep for the exam… wish me luck.

So whats next for the blog? Well I have planned a series of posts with some great info on how to become more independent from your computer and make use of some of the great cloud computing tools available out there.

Also before I forget a big shout out to Simon Waterhouse a great photographer and designer here in Christchurch for his help on the photos and design of my personal development plan(PDP) assessment. Be sure to check out his great photography here www.simonwaterhouse.com

Another shout out to the great guys at Silverstripe CMS… i used this to power my PDP website… once I had the design I was able to integrate and drop in the content in just under 4 hours work! A killer speedy content management system for anyone looking to jazz up their website.
My final big thank you goes out to Juliette Powell, Author of “33 Million People in the Room” who sent me a signed copy of her book… made my day! A great read if you are interested in social media, co-creation, and where things are headed online. I was lucky enough to meet her at a conference this year and really enjoy her contributions online through twitter and facebook.

On the leadership tip, I will leave you with some words of wisdom from the women herself, Juliette Powell, enjoy….

Just follow this simple flow chart! (Source: http://xkcd.com) Click the image for a larger view…

Take the VIA Character strengths survey… its quite long but gets a pretty accurate top 5 strengths it should take about 30-45 mins to run through. Check the link here

http://www.viacharacter.org/VIASurvey/VIASurvey/tabid/237/Default.aspx

These are my results from the survey:

Your Top Character Strength

Your Second Character Strength

Your Third Character Strength

Your Fourth Character Strength

Your Fifth Character Strength

My signature strenghts from these 5 are:
Love of learning
Curiousity and interest in the world
Teamwork, citizenship and loyalty

These 3 give me the most joy, excitment and I would pursue them in everything I do.

Here’s a little something I just came across for the rainy season.

A katana (Samurai sword) umbrella!

Ward that nasty weather away the samuari way.

This goes on my halarious xmas present list if anyone feels like getting me one

We had (at work) a great core values session with Kendall Langston from the Results Group yesterday to really nail down just what it is that we believe in and want to ingrain in everything we do at RockStar Recipes.

This is what we came up with…

• Curiosity – To learn new things, in the future, in our history, in people and relationship building, teaching methods.
• Embracing technology - Adapting and utilising new tech as it rolls out, being tech savvy and aware of what is new and finding best places to use it (or not use it) to augment our teaching, our delivery, our work flow and our lives.
• The experience to teach – building mentor relationships, being skilled in what we teach, having great communication, producing great content and resources, inspiring students – this is internal as well as external… that is we at RockStar Recipes learn as much as our students.
• Being a musician – Being active in your music community, being creative, expression through music, seeing music as a universal language.
• Being a “tight band” (or band member) - Being a “good dude”, team player, serving the band not just the self, having a friendly vibe, laid back & focused, supportive of the other band members!

Companies don’t have core values… people within them DO and I think we have really nailed what makes us at Rock Star Recipes tick, no marketing or PR bullshit… bottom up not top down,  just real honest values that we live and bring to our work.  It’s just like being part of a band and we all bring our unique style and character.
We hope that our customers, fans and friends can also relate to them and join us in our movement to shape the next generation of musicians!

Show that young people are a positive part of your community

Celebrate International Youth Day and Hoodie Day by holding a mufti day at your school or orgnaisation on Wednesday 12 August, and raise funds for young people and older people in NZ.

Donate the funds you raise to Hoodie Day organisers NZ Aotearoa Adolescent Health and Development (NZAAHD) to show your support for other young people in NZ. NZAAHD works to support, inform and connect organisations that work with youth across New Zealand . NZAAHD will pass on 10% of funds raised to their partner organisation Age Concern – to help show that young people care about their older people! Age Concern work to serve the needs of older people in NZ.

I spent a good half an hour or so going through the survey handed out to us by Lane Perry who is looking at leadership and engagement in tertiary students and undertaking his PhD in Higher Education at Canterbury University, New Zealand.
Looking back during high school I don’t think I really did much in the way of any community type service as part of my schooling.  Whether my high school did not provide the opportunities at the time or perhaps I was busy being a teenager and doing my own thing (Probably a lot of hours on gaming consoles!).
I have found now that I have gotten older, getting involved in things and helping or serving others has started to become a bigger part of my life.
Up until a few months ago I was in a Board of Trustees position at the White Elephant Trust, an organisation some friends and myself set up about 4 years ago to provide youth focused events and activities (When we said “youth” we meant 15 -25 years).

Making the decision to leave my place on the board was pretty hard as we had done a lot of great work and had made great friends not to mention had provided some amazing events and opportunities for youth people in Christchurch.

My focus now is on continuing with my study at university and taking some time out to learn more about myself and what I want from life. Fortunately the paper I’m taking is all about that so I think I’m on the right track.

If I also think of service in terms of providing help and spending time with other staff at work or friends to help them succeed I feel I have good levels and strengths I think area too.  While not part of my official “job” at RockStar Recipes I like to share what I have learnt from 10 years of technology and web development with anyone interested.  One staff member, Moses, I am helping him learn HTML and web design by providing him with resources/books etc and making an effort to follow up on his learning process every few days to make sure that he is on the right track, he’s doing really well.  I also have several friends studying at Polytech that come to me for advice and resources around my area of expertise, again I’m always ready to help and provide resources to help my friends learn.

So engagement and service is definatly a plus for me and is very rewarding.

I think to “up” my level of self-responsibility I will need to take more time to explore my ideas more fully and following through on them.  Though in saying that I have recently had the idea of blogging my university paper journal questions which was an idea I spent some time going over in more details and acted upon and made it happen using some easily found tools on the web available to anyone.
I’m also hoping I can use this platform to deliver my final Personal Development Plan assessment due later this year.
Having this blog space acts as something to help increase my personal leadership as I now have a space to get ideas down and spent a little time each night thinking and writing about topics I’m either learning about or am passionate about.

I have also taken up Iaido classes (which is great for the spirit and promoting a calm, reflective mind) and play a little indoor football once a week with a great team of friends.  Again these are all activities I envisioned doing and stood up and started doing them for no reason other than enjoyment & building spirit, body and mind.

So rather than this being “what would you have to change?” it has become more “What have I changed recently and started in motion?”.
I’m not sure how you would quantitatively measure self-responsibility but hopefully the more I contribute, share and write on my blog, commit to training and get involved in a bit of team play, the more I can hit that magic 20%.