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Practice evangelist

I joined Aaron Kim and Bernie Michalik’s team in IBM last week, and I
*love* what I’m doing. It’s such a terrific fit with what I’m
interested in and what I want to get really good at. I’m helping
people discover the benefits they could get out of emerging
technologies, and I’m looking for good practices we can share with
other people. And it’s amazing just smoothly sliding into the role,
with my network already in place… =) Happy happy happy.

It’s a little bit scary sometimes, too, this being a little bit
famous. I dropped into a Lotus Connections workshop earlier because I
was curious about who might be there. I liked the story Kathryn
Everest told about how she came to appreciate Dogear, and I wished I
could explain things as clearly as she did. <laugh> Then she
went on to say that in organizations, there are usually people who are
avid whatever-ers, people who bookmark thousands of sites and whose
bookmarks are useful. And then she cited me! That makes me feel warm
and fuzzy. And it challenges me a lot, too. There are many
opportunities just waiting for us to step up to them. That’s the scary
part, but it’s also the fun part.

So here’s what I want to get *really* good at:

I want to find or make good practices, and I want to spread them to
the people who can make the most of them.

I love sharing cool tips that solve people’s problems or help them
imagine other things they can do. I can find cool tips by coming up
with them on my own, but the best and most fun way for me to do this
is to catch other people doing good stuff. I can bring out their
experiences with my questions, write about and spread their advice,
and bring them other ideas as well.

I can spread good practices through articles, tutorials, podcasts, and
presentations. I want to know my audiences well, and to be able to
customize this content to address their particular concerns.

I want to do this for both internal and external people. For external
clients, I can bring the good practices we’ve found within our company
and at other companies, and I can help them adopt the ones that make
sense for their organization.

Hey, that’s interesting… Maybe I’m not a technology evangelist. I’m
a practice evangelist! (Gotta find a better way to describe that.)

Random Emacs symbol: display-time-mode – Command: Toggle display of time, load level, and mail flag in mode lines. – Variable: Non-nil if Display-Time mode is enabled.

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/4418

On This Day...

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  • 2012: Planning how to learn about validating business ideas — I’ve been taking notes at business events and sharing them on my blog. People tell me that they really like [...]
  • 2011: Weekly review: Week ending October 21, 2011 — Back to work! Transition was smooth, thanks to some weekend time spent catching up with mail and getting things ready [...]
  • 2010: Drupal Features and Drush: updating our development workflow — I’m working with two other people on a Drupal project, so we’re coordinating our work through a Subversion source [...]
  • 2009: Vacations and the introvert — What’s your ideal vacation? Many people would probably describe an idyllic retreat on a pristine beach. Others dream of action-packed [...]
  • 2008: Catching my breath — I just came back from a trip to Boston that was jam-packed with interesting conversations and connections. The cookies were [...]
  • 2007: Why Emacs — Now that I’ve joined the wonderful world of the office workplace, I find myself missing my Emacs-based life. I miss using Emacs [...]
  • 2006: Emacs presentation was a blast! — Had too much material (of course), but had tons of fun anyway. =) Blew people’s minds. Yay! On Technorati: democamp
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  • 2006: Demo camp: Online grading and code review — The online grading and code review system demonstrated by Greg Wilson‘s students from the University of Toronto is really cool, [...]
  • 2006: Excited about my DemoCamp presentation! — I’ve written a totally small-time presentation thingy that cues me thanks to Emacspeak. ;) Here’s the setup code: (progn ;; Setup [...]
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  • 2003: Bah. mozilla-psm is segfaulting on me today. — Downgraded to testing and held.
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  • 2003: Internet and E-Mail on a dialup using linux — http://www.hserus.net/exim.html
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