Tag Archives: podcast

Events, podcasts, etc.

It's not just Art Fair this week

Yes, it's Art Fair week.  Townies know to avoid driving into Ann Arbor unless they're actually GOING to Art Fair.  I have a meeting on Wednesday, so I'm riding my bike from the outskirts of town.  Usually, our friends Melissa Dominiak and Micheal Cole come in to do Art Fair, but this year, they're skipping it, so I am too.  They have an ultra cool gallery in Hannibal, MO now, a renovated church. We were there last October.  The home of Mark Twain, it now has a thriving artist community.  Who'd a thunk it?

Anyhow, other than Art Fair, there are still things to do! GANG (Great Lakes Area .NET User Group) has Julie Lerman coming in to talk about ADO.NET.  Bill blogged about her visit, and it's on our calendar as well.  And as Bill points out, if Lansing is closer, she's speaking at GLUGNet on Thursday as well.

And I discovered a new podcast, thanks to a member of the Java Posse Google Group (thanks Patrick Archibald!).  The Software Engineering Radio Podcast is available on the SE Radio website and on iTunes.  This week's podcast is an interview with Martin Odersky, creator of Scala.  It's queued up and I'm looking forward to listening!

Still waiting on the Google web team to send us the link for the registration for the Google Tech Talk in Ann Arbor on August 2.  Hang in there!

Hannibal Arts Council
Micheal and Melissa's gallery is listed here
Software Engineering Radio Podcasts

Bill's blog entry on Julie Lerman's talk
Julie's speaking this week at GANG and GLUGNet

Carly Fiorina on Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast

I recently learned about Stanford's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast (on the Java Posse podcast: thanks Tor Joe!), and downloaded a few episodes to my iPod.  I swear, dog walking has NOT been the same since I got the iPod.  Sometimes I extend my walk because I'm enjoying the talk so much that I don't want to head home (or back to work).  Today was one of those days, in spite of the fact that it was raining.

Anyhow, today's speaker was Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP, and Stanford alum.  She studied medieval history and philosophy at Stanford as an undergrad.  She talked a bit about her windy, twisty career path, and it was quite interesting.  I have to say, I would have never guessed that she was a secretary as her first job out of college, before her MBA!

The entire talk is great.  The first 40 minutes or so consist of her speaking.  After that, there's a Q&A session with the audience (another 30 minutes).  If it takes too much out of your day to listen to the entire episode, definitely listen to the first 40 minutes.

The highlight for me was in her describing leadership.  She talked a lot about it being a personal choice.  Anyone can choose to be a leader, and make a difference. It's not always those who seem to be in the best position financially, or status-wise, that make leaders. Often times, those people don't choose that route, whereas someone that you would expect to be unempowered to make a difference stands up and chooses to do so.  She compared some Harvard grads in her age group who seemed unable to determine what it would take to make a difference to a soldier, recently back from Iraq, who had lost both legs and his eyesight.  It was the 20 year old soldier who was incented to make a difference, in the lives of other people who had been injured and not the Harvard grads who, seemingly, had "everything" going for them.

She described some key aspects of a leader:

  • Capability
  • Collaboration
  • Character

It takes all of these things.  It struck me that the times in my life when I have been most disappointed in situations where I met someone who I thought was a leader, were when the person violated one of the these principles, specifically the latter two. From a collaboration standpoint, either they don't know how to "ask questions and LISTEN to the answers" (as Carly put it) or they don't seek out people with differing viewpoints and learn from people with varying experience.  Or, they fail in the character category by not treating people well.

If you have a chance to listen to this podcast, definitely do so (and feel free to post comments; I would love to know what others thought). I'm looking forward to the other talks in the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series and I hope that I will be as thrilled with them as I was with this.   The dog will enjoy them too, I'm sure.  Anything that prolongs his walk makes him happy.

Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast
(also available on iTunes)

Live isn’t always best

Getting Spoiled by Podcasts?

Did I mention that I REALLY liked the talk that I went to on Tuesday night, by Owen Taylor from Gigaspaces, for the Ann Arbor Java User Group? Yeah, I guess I did. Anyhow, as I was sitting there, in the talk, I was thinking what a GREAT podcast it would have made, and how I wished that the talk had been recorded so that I could listen to selected parts again but mainly so that I could share it with a few other people who I knew would be interested (but weren’t in attendance). Sheesh, who would have thought that I would PREFER a podcast to a live meeting? OK, I can’t go that far. It was definitely better, in person, where I could see what was going on and eat pizza and have a chance to win an IPod (still bummed about not winning that). But it definitely occurred to me that it would have been great to have had a recording in addition to the live presentation. And, with 2 small children at home, I can listen to WAY more podcasts than attend live meetings. Funny how technology sometimes changes our perspective a bit …