philcrissman.com

CIO Magazine is forecasting job growth in the IT sector.

This is good news on several fronts. Clearly it’s good news for those still looking for work, who may have lost tech jobs after the fall-out from the burst of the dot-com bubble, or due to outsourcing of some flavor. It’s good news even for those of us who are not looking for work, as it indicates that job security is probably good, and the economy overall is improving. That last phrase may just spill over into yet another bit of good news; to me, it seems that this is good news even to those not employed in the IT field at all. If business are expecting to hire more technology workers, that would seem to indicate that business is good, which in turn would indicate a strong economy.

Now the sobering news; a lot of the growth seems to be focused on specific skill sets which may or may not require more experience. Networking and database administration skills seem to be in demand, whereas general coding skills are not. Take note, and (if you’re looking for work), order your studies accordingly.

Continue reading ‘IT Job Growth Forecast’

This is not a new essay, but it’s new to me, in that I haven’t read it before. I have read several of Paul’s essays before. Paul is "an essayist, a programmer, and a programming language designer," and is the author of Hackers and Painters.

Paul’s essay on "How to start a startup" is not only full of interesting advice on starting a new business (especially a technical one), but is also an entertaining read.

Here’s Paul on business:

On having an MBA…

A longish, insightful essay on starting a startup. It’s so well written that whether you have the itch to start a business yourself or not, I recommend it anyways.

Continue reading ‘Paul Graham on Startups’

I was in Barnes & Noble last night and read (most of) a book there called Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono. De Bono is an expert in teaching on thinking and creativity, and is also the author of Lateral Thinking and I Am Right, You Are Wrong.

The ideas in Six Thinking Hats are very simple, and it’s pretty easy to see how they could easily be a great aid. It discourages our normal paradigm of argument/debate, critical thinking, and focusing solely on "pros vs cons" of an idea, and encourages a group of people to think "in parallel". That is, instead of people defending their individual ideas, and basically arguing through things (to the point where simply the best arguer wins), the group uses the concept of six "thinking hats" representing different styles of thinking, and each person attempts to approach the problem in the same way at the same time. For example, instead of one person focusing on "pros" and another on the "cons" of an idea, the group would decide to "wear" the yellow thinking hat (which is the positive thinking hat) and all come up with all the possible positive, beneficial, good things about an idea; no negative ideas allowed. Then, after, they might adopt the "black hat" (cautious, the "devil’s advocate" hat) and everyone together would think of all the things which could possibly go wrong with the idea.

And so in turn with the other "hats" — the white hat for "just-the-facts", neutral, objective thinking, the red hat for emotional, "gut-feeling" thoughts, the green hat for crazy, creative, zany ideas, and the blue hat for "big picture" (think sky), organizational thinking.

The end result is that you attack a problem or situation from many different sides, and instead of debating at each turn, everyone is trying to think in the same way at any given time (hence the associated term "parallel thinking"). It’s a cool idea, easy to see how it could be a useful tool for creativity and productive meetings.

Continue reading ‘Six Thinking Hats’

From the article (NewsForge): "The PGA Tour, a membership group of professional golfers that is not affiliated with the Professional Golfer’s Association, is making extensive use of Linux in its interactive Web site PGAtour.com and its real-time game tracking program, TOURcast."

Golf is typically about as conservative a sport as you are likely to find in America, so it’s great to see the adoption of Linux, even if it is only on the back-end. Linux on the desktop is still aways in the future for organizations like this, as Steve Evans (VP of Information Systems) makes reference to near the article’s end. Always good to see this sort of adoption going on.

As an aside; why bother to post every company we see using Linux? Why is this news? Well, it’s news if one is interested in promoting the adoption of Linux, as it makes people aware that not just a fringe group of geeks and hackers are using Linux, but that a wide variety of organizations, some of them quite large (IBM, Cisco) or conservative (PGA Tour, for example), are also using Linux, and are very happy with it.

It’s also interesting, despite ongoing FUD about Linux being more expensive than Windows, we consistently see IT/IS Managers stating that they are switching to Linux because it is saving them money. There seems to be a disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality, there… Hmm.

Speaking of which, I think I’m going to take up golf this year. Maybe when it gets warmer. This is totally offtopic, but hey, it’s my blog. :-)

Continue reading ‘The PGA Tour utilizing Linux’

Mambo, the open source CMS (which runs this site, among many others) has won another award. This one is from the UK Linux magazine Linux Format, and the award is "Best Free Software project of the year."

Mambo’s own site also carried this announcment, ending with a summary of other awards that Mambo has won.

Strange, the first five paragraphs or so of both articles are identical. Also this one: I guess one of these must be an "official" press release, I don’t know. You decide.

Continue reading ‘Mambo wins Yet Another Award’