Knowledge Work

The Freaknomics boys are at it again, with an article in the Sunday New York Times about “expert performance.”

Simply put, research shows that people who are very good at what they do — star ballet dancers, soccer players, neurosurgeons — are not born with “natural talent,” but acquire their skills through ruthless discipline and practice.
Ericsson […]

The OpenDocument format has become an ISO standard.
OpenOffice 2.0 fully supports this standard.
Go download it now.
Related:

Free/Open Source Software Toolbox for Knowledge Workers (at Campbell-Online.com) 

Solveig Haugland has just posted a brief primer on how to use your word processor, and it should be required reading for anyone who writes as part of their job.
It’s cleverly masked as a article about how to format your documents so that they will be easier to share between word-processsing platforms, but it […]

Copyblogger is all about “how to sell with blogs, e-mail and RSS.” It looks like an excellent resource for small businessses and consultancies looking to leverage the power of the Web to market themselves.
Copywriting 101 is a set of articles about persuasive writing for the Web:
Copywriting skills are an essential element to the new conversational […]

Long seen as a method to maximize employment opportunities and salaries in the post-dot-com-bust era, a study released today finds that pay for certified IT skills falls short of the pay for non-certified skills.
The Q1 2006 Hot Technical Skills and Certifications Pay Index, released April 25 by Foote Partners, a New Canaan, Conn., IT compensation […]

If you’re an aggregator “harnessing collective intelligence”, what are you aggregating? If it’s data and information, you’re competing with just about everything–Google searches, reference docs both online and printed, the majority of tech books and articles, etc. But if you’re aggregating up the hierarchy through knowledge, and especially understanding and wisdom, you’re adding huge value […]

If you’re a frequent Googler (and who isn’t?) then you’ll definitely want to grab the newly-updated, two-page PDF version of the Google Cheat Sheets (Version 1.02).
Print them out, stick them in a plastic sheet protector and keep them near your PC.

The concept of the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is not exceedingly difficult to comprehend, particularly as it applies to the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).
However, the actual implementation of a CMDB and clearly demonstrating value can introduce subtle complexities as a result of competing business objectives and internal IT requirements.
But as a standard and trusted […]

Blogging is good for your career. A well-executed blog sets you apart as an expert in your field.
Ben Day blogged his way into a career as a high-earning software consultant while maintaining the freedom to schedule frequent jam sessions and performances as a keyboard player.
Blogging gave him the opportunity to stand out enough to support […]

I have seen the future of management, and it is Indian. Vineet Nayar, president of India’s 30,000-employee HCL Technologies, is creating an IT outsourcing firm where, he says, employees come first and customers second.
“Everybody was aghast the first time I said that,” admits Nayar.
Here are some things I can say about him with confidence: He […]

The Big Four accounting firms are rapidly rebuilding their consulting divisions, though these days they’re calling them “business advisory” groups. In the wake of the Andersen scandal, and fearing repercussions from crackdowns on conflicts of interest, three of the Big Four sold their consulting arms to outsiders: PriceWaterhouse sold out to IBM, Ernst & […]

MONEY Magazine’s Best Jobs: #13 - Technical writer

When a Sunnyvale tech company laid off the manager and most of his colleagues in its reliability testing group a year and a half ago, the manager said a few employees were spared — younger, foreign workers on H-1B visas.
The laid-off manager was infuriated that as an American citizen, he wasn’t given priority over the […]

NASA project manager Jerry Madden, the Associate Director of the Flight Projects Directorate at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, was a legend in his field. He began collecting and assembling a set of rules for project managers early in his career; after Jerry retired in 1995, others maintained and updated […]

“If you do not assume responsibility for breaking the system in the way you want it broken and then integrating it to a better plateau, it will break by itself to a worse plateau. So inaction does not save you; it gives the power of your demise to outside forces.”
Ichak Adizes, Managing Corporate Lifecycles

Pink Elephant today announced it has become the first organisation to receive worldwide accreditation for a new integrated ITIL® certification course that will enable practitioners to effectively manage, organise and optimise the Support and Restore processes, and minimise the adverse effects of Incidents and Problems, within the Service Desk function.
Pink […]

The 2007 edition of “America’s Best Graduate Schools” has just come out; if you’ve been thinking about adding a graduate degree to your resume, you’ll want to give this comprehensive ranking of the best programs in the United States at least a quick once-over.
USNews.com: America’s Best Graduate Schools 2007

A plan to boost the number of temporary visas is facing obstacles in the U.S. Congress, despite the plan’s popularity with technology companies and foreign workers.
Supporters of H-1B visas–reserved for highly skilled guest workers–applauded a move Monday by a U.S. Senate committee to nearly double the cap from 65,000 to 115,000 visas next year, and […]

Meet Steven Sinofsky. He does Windows.
Steven Sinofsky is a rare bird on Microsoft’s Redmond campus — a manager who actually delivers software on time. As head of product development for Office, he’s known for meeting release deadlines.
He’s now been put in charge of Microsoft’s Windows group, which has seen endless delays in the release […]

Most of the information that you can find about recruiting is for the employer, not the employee. (I’m as guilty as this as anyone: for example, The Art of Recruiting, I and II.) Let’s turn the tables, switch modes, and balance the scales by discussing what a hot candidate should ask a private, venture-backed startup […]