Making Weird Stuff Awesome on YouTube

When I was a kid, I used to pretend that my sister’s horsewhip was a sword and play Highlander by myself.  I mostly dueled with inanimate objects…sometimes destructively.  I most assuredly looked like a huge dork.  YouTube wasn’t invented yet and this paragraph is the only proof (along with some scuffs on the wall in my parents’ basement).  So, there was no one to make my antics into something awesome.

Several years ago, a young lad was inspired to do similarly. However,  he was inspired by Star Wars,  he taped it and it made it on to YouTube:

And, either fortunately or unfortunately for him, it went viral (Ahhh…it was almost me!).  Then something cool happened.  Someone made his awkwardness into awesomeness.

Recently, this happened again.  And, it all started with a double rainbow.  A full on double rainbow, and someone who really liked it…a lot.

And, this nice gentlemen became famous, and even went on Jimmy Kimmel.

And, yet again, someone made it awesome.

It’s amazing what an auto tuner can do.  I want one permanently embedded in my voice-box so that I can  sound awesome even during regular everyday conversation.

But that’s beside the point.  The take home message here is:

It turns out that you can crowd source awesomeness without even asking for it, and people are so creative that they can be inspired by literally anything.

6 Job Interview Tips from Experience

Over the course of my career I’ve interviewed a lot of software developers.  I’ve also interviewed at a few places myself.  Recently I was on the interviewer side of a very bad interview, and it inspired me to share a few hints that I have that I kinda thought were obvious, but evidently are not.

Here they are:

1. Have the right goal. This is true for almost anything, but here is how it applies to job interviews.  The right goal for a job interview is not to get the job.  The right goal for the job interview is successful communication between the parties involved such that the right decision is make one both ends concerning the individual coming aboard the team.  Most of my advice follows from this.
2. Understand that this interview is just as much about your decision to come aboard as it is about their decision to offer you the job. If I ask you if you have any questions for me when I’m interviewing you, there are two things you shouldn’t do.  First, don’t say “No.”  Second, don’t have that look on your face that says, “Oh crap.  I should probably ask something.”  That communicates to me that you don’t actually understand your role in the interview.  It also shows that you aren’t engaged, and probably will need spoon fed your tasks.  Something I’m not interested in doing.
3. Be able to articulate what the companies you worked for did, the role that you played, and how you played that role. In the case of technical jobs, you’ll need to have to explain this both on a technical and higher level business level.  The inability to do that communicates to me that you don’t put a lot of thought into your work, and are not going to be an articulate communicator.  If the words, “I don’t remember” come out of your mouth I will probably write you off.  It’s happened.
4. Don’t show anger or frustration with the interviewer for asking tough questions. Job interviews are a difficult thing on both ends.  You have to make sure this is the right company, environment and role for you and so do I.  I can’t have a film crew film you doing your job for a month and make a decision on that.  This isn’t The Apprentice.
5. Not only show interest in the career you chose, but BE interested in the career you chose. If you can’t talk intelligently about the domain and understand its jargon, I have to assume that you’ve simply kept your head down done you specific role and collected a paycheck.  As a technologist, that won’t work.  Things change too quickly for that.  Personally, I don’t think it’s the attitude to take for any career.
6. Understand that your personality is part of the package and will be weighed into the decision. Most jobs, especially software development jobs, are very team oriented.  I need to know that you can work in a team without your ego getting in the way, that you can communicate well with other team members, and that you will know what questions to ask and when to ask them.  The team has to be comfortable with you and you have to be comfortable with the team in order to achieve the type of openness required to achieve our goals.

At the end of the interview, you want the decision to be truly about whether you are a fit for the position, not about how you interviewed.

My Apologies to the Young Man That Cuts Our Lawn

A few weeks ago, an esteemed executive told me that I shouldn’t admit to having someone cut my lawn, because I guess it’s something one should take a great deal of shame in.  I believe this man, because he’s an extremely hard working, talented, visionary.  Just ask him.  Scratch that.  You probably won’t need to.  He’ll volunteer that information.

So, in my shame, I want to apologize.  I apologize for giving a high school student a summer job and allowing him to develop a healthy work ethic.  I apologize for paying him more than what he asked for, because we felt that he was under charging for his product (which is, quite frankly, amazing).  I apologize for helping him save for college.  And, lastly, I’m sorry I made the rash decision to hire someone to cut my grass without making sure that it was the socially acceptable thing to do.

Next time I make even the most minor life decision, I will make sure to ask a high and mighty, over educated, executive.  As I lack the social aptitude and intellectual wherewithal to make such decisions on my own.

Brands Speaking and Listening Through Twitter and Foursquare

A while back I posted a story about how companies can “Twitter Sniff” and find out what people are saying about them.  You can read that here.  In that post, Smokey Bones found one of my tweets about them, and started a dialog with me.   Recently, I had another experience that mirrors this.  It involved an application called Foursquare.

When I became mayor of Chipotle on Foursquare (meaning I checked in more than anyone else), Chipotle tweeted a congratulations to me and started up a dialog with me that was similar to the one I had with Smokey Bones.  Earlier today I was at Chipotle (feeling some brand loyalty, given my experience with them), and eavesdropped on an employee getting trained.  I was very impressed with the thoroughness of it and I let Chipotle know about it via Twitter.  Below is the conversation:

Me:  @ChipotleTweets I am listening to an employee being trained and am very impressed. Very thorough.

Them:  @PureCognition Nice. We’re pretty thorough. Even for us staffers we had to work in the restaurant for at least 4 weeks. -Colin

Me:  @ChipotleTweets Very cool. I bet that helped a great deal with your perspective on things.

This is another great example of a company that is speaking and listening through Twitter (and Foursquare) in ways that were previously unheard of.  This is not an impersonal TV spot or billboard sign.  This is a high touch one-on-one conversion, and a glimpse into the direction that marketing is going.  And, did I mention it was mostly free?

Lost Theory: Possible Timeline Reconciliation

Warning:  Not only are there potential spoilers below, but if you don’t watch Lost nothing below will make even a small amount of sense.

As many of you may know Lost is the greatest TV show that has ever graced planet Earth.  Calling it a TV show somehow demeans it.  It’s far more than that.  As of the time of this writing, there are only a few more episodes left.  Here is a theory concerning a particular aspect of the show…the parallel time lines.

If you are watching Lost, you know that right now they are telling a story through two parallel  time lines.  In one time line the plane safely lands in LA, this is a new time line to the viewer.  In the second timeline, the plane lands on the island, which is what the viewer is used to.  Here’s how this may get reconciled.

The event of blowing up the island seemingly spawned the new timeline.  I agree with this, but I disagree that we actually SAW the island blow up.  Instead, we saw the correction.

Originally, the bomb blew up the island, and this caused the plane never to have landed on it (amongst other things, since this took place in the past and prevented other things from happening as well).  However, this isn’t what we saw.  We only saw the consequence, starting at the plane landing safely in LA.

In this timeline, the characters are starting to remember the original time line.  My theory is that they will, and will then go back in time to the island and do something to render the bomb useless, but not perceptively so.

Then, when the time comes for the bomb to blow up…it won’t.  Instead, what will happen is that the electromagnetic pocket will blow (which will be referred to by Dharma as the ‘incident’).  The incident will transport our losties to the future where they are now.  This is what we saw.

So, in summation, the “on island” time line is after the correction.  The “off island” time line  is before the correction.  The correction is the rending of the bomb as useless, and is elegant because doing it actually affects nothing BUT the explosion (leaving everything in the past in tact).

Disclaimer:  This is not what I believe will happen as much as a possibility I see based on what we’ve been shown so far.

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