Where: Barriques, S. Park St, Madison

I will not have a second location for this date, hence the reason I will be here past the noon hour.

Hope to you see you there!

This Thursday, May the 4th. I’ll start at Starbucks Monona 8am – 11:30 then head to Barriques in Middleton from 12:15 to 4:30. What’s this all about?

Check out the FAQ!

You are hired by Gundren Rockseeker to take a shipment of supplies from Neverwinter to Barthen’s Provisions located in Phandalin, an outpost that attracts quite a few miners.

Here’s the recap.

I have always been an avid listener of podcasts, mostly ones that relate to roleplaying games. Then it dawned on me, Brett and I talk a lot about them, why don’t we do one? At the time of this entry we have completed 15 episodes of Gaming and BS. Careful, we have an ‘explicit’ rating on the show. We tend to be passionate about our hobby and it comes through like a couple long-shore men. I love doing the show. I can’t believe we have listeners and subscribers, and that we have been at it consistently for 15 weeks!

Somewhere I came across Cliff Ravenscraft. He’s known as the Podcast Answer Man. It might have been one of his tutorials. Regardless, I have been devouring his episodes and has been quite an inspiration. It’s not just his show, it’s his genuine nature and his transparency. His show started out to help people do podcasting but it’s morphed into a mix of different topics. There is still podcasting, but there is also social media, personal/professional development, advice, and much more. It’s not hard technical, which is a turn off for some, but I don’t mind. It’s really a show to help people take their game to another level. Some day I’ll meet Cliff and personally thank him.

All of the above has lead me to launch TalentJockey.com. It is starting out as a podcast that helps job seekers, recruiters and hiring managers navigate the world that is talent acquisition. Eventually I will do workshops, public speaking, and advising. It is truly exciting. It will involve hard work and diligence, no question. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Even in roleplaying games we say that the journey is the fun part of it all.

If you’re interested in podcasting or obtaining advice on new media, then Cliff’s your guy and you should check out PodcastAnswerMan.com. If you like roleplaying games, and the occasional f bomb doesn’t offend you, then check out Gaming and BS. G&BS is what I do for fun. Talent Jockey is truly a new venture, and a professional one at that. I try to keep it light. Anyone that knows me, knows my demeanor. Check out the website for episodes and resources for my three audiences – job seekers, recruiters and hiring managers.

I was a bit of an audiophile when I was young. I wanted one of those massive stereo systems. You know, the ones that had multiple components, flashing lights and gauges with bouncing needles. What can I say? I liked the look of analog over digital, at the time. I started my amassing my collection of music growing my selection of cassette tapes. I eventually got a Symphonic fm/am/turntable/cassette all-in-one stereo system. At the time, I thought it made my music plenty loud. It wasn’t everything I wanted, but I thought it was great, so the desired bells and whistles didn’t matter much after the fact.

If you were a child of the 80’s then you know the role boom boxes played. Man, I had friends who had some monster boxes. The bigger the box, the more awe you got. Even if guys you didn’t like had one, you’d still say “I can’t stand that guy, but damn, does have a huge boom box.” My boom box. HA! It was a Sanyo half of a boom box. No EQ. It had treble, bass and volume knobs. It wasn’t even lit. The eject for cassettes wasn’t even slow or simulate a hydraulic opening. Mine was more like a bullet from a gun. Press firmly down on ‘eject’ and the damn drawer opened with a crack. Oh, did I mention why it was half a boom box? It was because it only had one speaker. That’s right one speaker. The two benefits it had, it played music just fine and it was light-weight. I would walk a couple miles with that thing and my arm never got tired.

I remember having a DJ setup in my small bedroom. I had headphones on, plugged into my stereo and then I’d have my half boom box sitting on top. During the Memorial Day weekend a local radio station would play the top 100 hits of the year. I would play them from my Symphonic stereo as loud as I could get away with and record it to my half boom box while adding my own DJ style commentary before the song started playing. I’d go through a few MX90 Maxell blank tapes, stacking them up as they got full.

So why do I mention all this? No, I’m not becoming a DJ. However, I am going to venture into what is being considered ‘new media’. The web has empowered people to do many different things. Creative types now have a very viable outlet to showcase their talent(s). I tried podcasting before using the Grumbling Dwarf, a website devoted to tabletop gaming in Wisconsin, but it ran out of gas after it’s 4th episode. I have given it another try with a buddy of mine from work. Same subject area, tabletop gaming and roleplaying games, but now with a co-host and more passion for the medium. I have also been devouring episodes of PodcastAnswerMan.com. All this excitement and fun has lead me to share my message via the medium of podcasting.

I have reserved the spkradio.com and talentjockey.com domains. The former will be a list of shows that I have done, and will probably not be overly active. It’s the network face of the shows. TalentJockey.com will have the tag line: “A show where we talk about hiring talent. Whether you’re a job seeker, hiring manager, or recruiting professional, we’ll provide insight and advice here on Talent Jockey!”

I’ve been a recruiter for almost 6 years of professional experience. I get contacted quite often about that part of my life. It could be someone wanting me to look over a resume, or how to use social media to find talent, i get called back into that part of my life. And it’s a great part of my life. It is about helping people. You help a hiring manager find a person with a (que Liam Neeson voice) unique set of skills, or someone find a job, or help recruiters to not be bad recruiters, which occurs quite often in their industry due to a few reasons.

So stay tuned to how this pans out. I’ll be tweeting things on twitter http://twitter.com/seanpkelley. I’ll also be firing up the Facebook machine (i had previously deleted my account). I’m excited to see where this goes.

Currently I accept a lot of invite requests on LinkedIn, but I’m beginning to wonder if that is the best way for me to network. My thoughts follow…

There was a time that I did not connect with someone on LinkedIn unless I had met them face-to-face. Some of you approach this platform in exactly this way, and that’s ok. When I became a corporate recruiter I chose to open the flood gates. The more the merrier was my thinking. One could understand, “ah, you’re a recruiter. I can see how you would want to network with a lot of people.” I came to this philosophy when I had attended a social media recruiting conference in San Francisco.

I met two gentlemen that are avid users of social media, do consulting and recruiting. One gentleman was Jason Seiden and the other was Craig Fisher. Both spoke at the small conference and they both worked with each other at Ajax Workforce Marketing. When discussing connections on LinkedIn Jason was more about having connections that were smaller in quantity and closer in relationship – someone that was more apt to help you. Think quality over quantity, my words, not his. Craig sided on ‘the more, the better’ side of the argument. I’ll define a quality connection as ‘one that would be more likely to help you’. Whether it be providing you with feedback on someone, routing a resume, recommend a vendor/restaurant, or providing you advice, it is timely interaction that I consider as being ‘quality’.

Fast forward two years. I am no longer in the people business, but I do network and use online social media quite a bit. It was a situation I had a few months ago that got me thinking, ‘what are people trying to get out of LinkedIn?’.

A contact of mine on Google+ let me know that his brother was in the job market and looking for opportunities. The brother had held a director title in information technology. I told my contact to get me a link to his profile on LinkedIn and I’d see what I could do. Once I connected with the director we traded some ‘inmails’. I asked for his resume, which he provided, and I then realized he was in the Atlanta, GA region. I ran a search through all my contacts on LinkedIn that were in the greater Atlanta area. I think I came up with about fifteen at the time. All were 1st level connections. I had personal ties with a few – I either grew up with them, worked for them, or spoke to them at some point in time. A few others work for the same organization as me, but our paths never crossed and simply working at the same place was our only reason for being connected. I wrote up a short message that I would send to all fifteen of these connections. The message essentially explained that I did not know the director and couldn’t speak about his work, personality, professional goals, etc, and that I was simply networking. I was trying to help someone out. I received a handful of responses ranging from “I’ll send his info over to our CIO” to “sorry, I wouldn’t know how to handle his info since he’s IT”. I would be happy with any response. A simple, “I have nothing. Good luck,” would have been fine. While I felt great about the people that responded, I also felt a sense of disappointment. I was disappointed because I had contacts I thought would certainly reply, but did not. I would understand if we have never interacted, but there were contacts in which I had good rapport and was in good standing.

Ask yourself, why are you on LinkedIn? Is it because it’s your version of a corporate equivalent to Facebook? Is it because you think you simply need to be on LinkedIn? Of course these questions are not asked of the job seeker. I’m asking the connections that are currently employed. I get requests every day. I have a good amount of connections, but I don’t know how many are interested in engaging or how many would use it for networking. It may be time to rethink how I use LinkedIn. It might be time to clean up my list of contacts.

I don’t know if the director ever found a job. With connections like his brother and people that leverage their networks, I’m sure he’ll find something.

I was quite young, I don’t think I was even in my teens. My uncle had a 70’s model Honda 750 Four. He made a left hand turn onto a street in our small village and I thought I was going to fall off right on to the pavement. 

I had ridden a pedal bike every day as a kid. It was fun to go ‘ride around’ as I would often tell my mother when she asked where I was going.  It was a way to get to friends’s houses, baseball practice, or just cruise around.

I knew a motorcycle would be the same to me as an adult as riding a bike was to me as a kid. My uncle’s ride, though not long at the time, still sticks with me today. 

During my teenage years I often purchased motorcycle magazines. Who had the fastest model? Kawasaki, Honda, Suzuki, Yami? My mother forbade me to buy a cycle until I was an adult. She had actually owned an ’82-ish Suzuki 450GS. She’d often tip it over because she could barely touch the ground at stop signs. She would tell me how a friend succumbed to a terrible cycle accident and was now brain dead; however, she knew it was just a matter of time.

Once I graduated from high school, at the adult age of 18, I purchased my first motorcycle from one of my friends. It was an 86 Suzuki GSXR 750. I didn’t treat it as hard as my buddy, who often did wheelies and essentially beat the crap out of it. I do remember riding it in a sea of Harley in the Wisconsin Liberty ride. A ride that ensured a helmet law was not enacted, but that the rider was free to choose. Of course, I also had my occasional pick up of a young lady that just wanted a ride. 

I left to go into the military, stationed in Germany in 1990. I purchased an 87 Kawasaki Ninja 1000R from an officer. I didn’t ship it home but sold that to a friend of mine. I still owned the GSXR back home. I tell everyone, “it’s like the Top Gun bike.”

I didn’t ride for a while after getting back to the states. I’m not sure why. The Suzuki needed work. I neglected it for a 95 Kawasaki Vulcan. I introduced my wife to riding. She loved it, until I laid it down and she got injured. Nothing life threatening, but was certainly scary. That was back in 2004. I sold the dinged up Vulcan.

My wife, like my mother, knew it was just a matter of time before I got another cycle. Now, 10 years later, I am back in the saddle with my 99 BMW 1100RT. In a month I’ve put on over 3000 miles. 

The GSXR? I still have it. Someone has given me money for it, but they haven’t picked it up, yet. It needs quite a bit of love, but it will always be my first. I’ll be bummed when it’s actually gone.

#mymotorcyclestory 

In the beginning of the book Mr. Prince talks about his father and how grew his business into a flourishing one. Erik learned some life lessons from his father, and while the younger Prince seemed to come from a family of privilege, it didn’t seem to be a factor in Prince’s life. If  I recall correctly, he even tried to separate himself from his family’s social standing as to not take advantage of it. However, Prince does use some of his family’s money to start Blackwater.

The book seemed to convey a human side to Prince as well as the staff that worked for him at Blackwater. Prince talks about his infidelity and loss of his first wife. It certainly doesn’t make you want to like him, but there is sense of honesty around that part of his life, honesty I felt to be more real than what you’d see from a politician like John Edwards. The people in the book seem distant. You don’t really get to know them. I’m talking about the teams that got killed doing missions for uncle sam. The tragic fall of four staff members in Fallujah is hard to imagine. The four were ambused, killed, set on fire, corpses dragged through the streets and then hung from a bridge. Say what you want about Prince or Blackwater, this was horrific.

Of course there is Prince’s side of the story. The side of Blackwater that was never really told in the media. To better understand the role of Blackwater in governmental affairs, Prince gives us a history of government’s use of contractors during major conflicts going back to the 1800’s. Blackwater, without question, grew exponentially with lucrative multimillion dollar contracts from the US government. There were other firms that made even more money than Blackwater but seldom made the lead stories in newspapers, magazines, and TV. As things heated up in hot zones like Fallujah the media started putting the spotlight on Blackwater, often portraying the staff as trigger-happy cowboys. What the media did not do was cover the stories of what these people did to overcome great odds to ensure the safety of some of their clients.

It is easy to take sides when all you hear is being propagated via many media channels and through a megaphone, but it’s also important to know there are always three sides to a story. Even at the end of the book Prince wants to disclose his affiliation with the CIA but is unable to do so outright due to nondisclosure agreements, etc. However, he gets a third party individual to put something together in order to elaborate on that confidential relationship.  I enjoyed  the book and as an ex-soldier, can appreciate the lines that are blurred and not clear cut when it comes to an unconventional enemy, a government that is about policy and politics, an organization stuck in the middle of it all, and the soldiers that are just trying to do their jobs and survive.

Want to read more about Blackwater, Erik Prince, and the men that lost their lives in foreign hell holes? Purchase this book.