Random Hacks of Kindness is a community of developers, geeks and tech-savvy do-gooders from around the world working to develop software for the challenges facing humanity today. RHoK brings geeks together with disaster relief gurus to identify critical global challenges and develop software to respond to them. They do this via RHoK Hackathon events that bring together the best and the brightest hackers from around the world, who volunteer their time to solve real-world problems. The founding partners include Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, three companies that don't always get along but have come together for the cause.
On December 4th and 5th RHoK is hosting its third hackathon in many locations around the world. The Georgia Tech Research Institute is a RHoK partner and will be hosting RHoK in Atlanta.
There are winners and prizes up for grabs. Each RHoK hackathon is structured as a code challenge where software developers have a set amount of time to solve the challenges they are given. At the end of the two-day marathon of hacking, a panel will review each hack, and the winners will walk away with prizes, as well as the right to call themselves “RHoKstars” ever after.
It's funny the way the Internet works sometimes. Last Friday I uploaded a networking profile to Scrid in prep of this article. On Monday my friend Shannon Russo writes a great piece on why you need a networking plan in order to land a new position.
My purpose for creating a sample networking profile is simple. Something like 80% of job opportunities are filled via networking. Lots of folks want to meet with me as part of their job search because they believe I am well connected in the Atlanta technology world and can introduce them to job opportunities. Neither clause is necessarily true. Yes I know a number of folks in the tech community, the vast vast majority who work for companies with less then $1 million in revenue, more often than not with zero revenue. Because they have no revenue they do not hire people (with the exception of the well funded). As a result of this our meetings are not very productive. I hate non-productive meetings. How can job seekers help to make meetings more productive?
Create a networking profile.
I first learned about a networking profile from Michelle Tullier a number of years ago. Michelle has written quite a few books on the subject of careers, including one called Networking for Job Search and Career Success. The purpose of a networking profile is to show it to the people that you are networking with in your career search during face to face meetings in order to start a meaningful dialog that will get you closer to discovering job opportunities. To provide people you are meeting with a spark to help them point you to other people who may point you to opportunities.
The sample networking profile I created is below. If I were really using this document as a job search tool I would take Shannon's advice and list out target companies that are interesting to you. I have done this in real world situations and it is amazing how it leads to conversations and connections.
If you are going to network in your search, and you should, you need a networking profile. Don't leave home without it.
Last week the first sentence of an article in the InformationWeek periodical specifically targeted at IT employees of the U.S. Government read as follows:
‘The General Services Administration has issued a Request For Quotation for cloud storage, Web hosting, and virtual machine services.’
This dry and seemingly innocent statement is in reality a blockbuster, a headliner worthy of amazement possibly and further investigation surely. Any computer industry veteran with federal government dealings will tell you the phrase ‘U.S. government technology innovation’ is an oxymoron (with the notable exceptions of the DOD and NASA). And now - low and behold! – the stodgiest of the stodgy is rapidly moving (that’s correct – rapidly) past all but the most innovative organizations in the world into the era of cloud computing! I’ll throw in a few cloud basics in a minute but just for those who aren’t ‘in on’ the cloud computing debate many still question whether cloud computing is a transformational advance in computing as many others claim or just a horribly overblown catch phrase meaning little. The InformationWeek statement is a really big nail in the coffin of the catch phrase camp. It’s not the first and it won’t be the last.
Why the sudden change after years of being exactly the slow moving inefficient bureaucracy all small government proponents complain about. Surely even the victory of a candidate who campaigned on upgrading the nation’s technology infrastructure could not have caused such a swift change in culture in 7 months. Maybe this technology innovation is too compelling to ignore even for this historically laggard organization. Maybe both. Neither seems likely but here we have it.
Let’s look at a few basic definitions to make sure everybody is on the same page. To follow the theme I will take this information from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST):
Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three delivery models, and four deployment models.
Essential characteristics:
On-demand self-service
Ubiquitous network access
Location independent resource pooling
Rapid elasticity
Measured service
Delivery models:
Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS) - Use provider’s applications over a network
Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Deploy customer-created applications to a cloud
Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Rent processing, storage, network capacity, and other fundamental computing resources
Deployment models:
Private cloud - enterprise owned or leased
Community cloud - shared infrastructure for specific community
Public cloud - Sold to the public, mega-scale infrastructure
Hybrid cloud - Composition of two or more clouds
Private enterprise is still trying to achieve a collective understanding of cloud computing and its value if any. Many continue to argue over the viability of clouds for any but a few unique applications (massive data, map/reduce, etc.), claiming obstacles ranging from security to audit ability to performance. After investigating these issues for many months, NIST has moved past these arguments and published a very mature definition of cloud computing, and an even more mature document on how to efficiently and securely implement a cloud computing environment. The document examines each advantage and each challenge presented by cloud computing. NIST sees the huge advantages many others see but they have also taken a hard look at the challenges and they view them as difficult but solvable. NIST is even helping drive some of the standards in area such as security.
In another fascinating development a fellow by the name of Vivek Kundra was tapped by Obama as the Nation’s first Chief Information Officer. Before taking the federal CIO role Kundra was the CIO for the city of Washington, D. C. The punch line? In less than two years Kundra moved the city to Google Apps replacing Microsoft Office software with Google’s SaaS offering. The city now posts their procurement process on You Tube. Kundra launched the ‘Apps For Democracy’ WEB 2.0 style collaboration contest in hopes of giving citizens a portal into such government information as crime reports and pothole repair schedules . Kundra expected maybe 10 apps and got 47 in 30 days. This endeavor saved the city ~$2.6M even after the $50K prize money was paid. Kundra works by the mantra that citizens are "co-creators rather than subjects." This 34 year old Gen-Xer is now in charge of information technology for the whole government! Looks like this may no longer be your grandfather’s federal government – at least in IT.
All of the primary cloud vendors have stepped up their efforts to sell this latest technology to the government since they too see the sleeping giant awakening. Companies like Amazon and Google who had done little business with the government in the past are now pushing the adoption of their cloud based technologies in all parts of the government. SalesForce.com, possibly the most successful SaaS, has also sold its software to several branches of the government. The DOD and NASA have both adopted elements of cloud computing. NASA uses SalesForce.com and the open source cloud software Eucalyptus. DOD is very actively promoting cloud computing internally.
The most innovative companies in the world today have provided the missing pieces needed to launch cloud computing as the NEXT BIG THING. Even the traditionally sloth like U. S. government is on board. To be sure, many of the truly transformational changes cloud computing will drive won’t be possible until the various technologies collectively dubbed ‘cloud computing’ mature even further. Additional innovations (some already envisioned, some not) such as better security, improved virtualization management and real cloud interoperability are needed to speed cloud adoption rates. Nonetheless, cloud computing is a transformational advance in technology on the level of the worldwide web or PC’s – or even bigger. If you don’t agree and you are a CIO you should look for a career ‘Plan B’.
On March 2 I announced the Build My Timbuk2 Bag contest and promised to announce the winner by midnight. Twenty four people joined in the fun and one person was even inspired to go get a Bag In A Box Gift Card for their wife's birthday. Thanks to everyone that participated and special thanks to Erika Brookes and SJ for helping me judge the entries. There were some tough calls.
Andy Macdonald, a 23 year old Graphic Communications student at Clemson University, earned honorable mention with his subtle semi-monochromatic design. It matches my car nicely, and if this was going to be my use all the time bag it would have won. But I have a standard issue Tumi that I use when things get serious, so while a valiant effort Andy did not take home the grand prize.
Ajai Karthikeyan, a second year College of Computing student at Georgia Tech, went bold with a design that mixed the FoG color palette with a tribute to my MindSpring heritage. Very nicely done. Another worthy mention.
Ultimately the judges landed on Clark Griffiths' design as the winner. Clark is an urban designer/planner and aspiring professional photographer out of Tampa Bay. The bag's blue/white/spinach scheme is both bold and fresh. It builds upon the equity that I have built in my FoG color palette. It is just smoking hot. A great bag for when I am hanging with the up and coming Atlanta startup crowd.
Congratulations to Clark for the winning design! And thanks again for everyone that played and helped out.
Team Skribit gave me a Timbuk2 Bag In A Box gift card for the work I have been doing with them. And what I am going to do with it is build my own bag. I have selected the medium laptop messenger as my bag of choice. Now I need to design it.
Issue is I am not much of a designer. I can provide design direction. I can even tweak design. But I am not much good at design itself. So I am going to have a little contest and have you design my bag for me. Winner gets the choice of a $20 iTunes or Amazon gift certificate. Spend 15 minutes. About $80 an hour. Seems fair.
Go to the next step and select the color of the logo.
Make a comment on this post indicating your design by midnight on Sunday March 8.
Use the following form in your comment: left panel color/center panel color/right panel color/logo color. For example Navy/Rocky Road/Army/Olive. (Timbuk2 really needs a save/share function).
Winning bag design will be selected and announced on FoG by midnight on March 11.
The winner of the contest will be decided by Erika Brookes who has been described as an expert on being both technically smart and chic, SJ who has a bit of a bag fetish, and me.
I don't have to actually use the winning design.
If I don't use the winning design the winner still gets the $20.
Atlanta has long been known as a center for the InfoSec industry. It seems that ISS alum with the quiet support of Tom Noonan spawned a nice little cluster of well over 30 startups.
Well leave it to a guy from North Carolina to point out that another such cluster is raising in Atlanta. An open source cluster led by JBoss alum. With the support of Marc Fluery. Who does nothing quietly.
In an article explaining why Marc is his hero, Mark Hinkle lays out the following:
I think one of the biggest contributions Marc made to open source was
that he infected a bunch of guys with the bug to go make it on their
own. Many of them walked away with more than a little pocket cash and
they started their own open source companies. Here’s a list of JBoss
alumns and what they are up to now.
Appcelerator - Rich Internet Applications JBoss alumni: Jeff Haynie, Ben Sabrin, Matt Quinlin
LoopFuse - Marketing and Sales Automation JBoss Alumni - Roy Russo, Tom Elrod
Force of Good is licensed under a Creative Commons License. You are free to share, remix, and share alike with attribution.
DISCLAIMER
The opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone (with the exception of comments by others of course). They do not represent the opinion or position of any other person or entity. All postings adhere to my personal values.
. The purpose of a networking profile is to show it to the people that you are networking with in your career search during face to face meetings in order to start a meaningful dialog that will get you closer to discovering job opportunities. To provide people you are meeting with a spark to help them point you to other people who may point you to opportunities. 
