Canadian IT Professionals : Ignite Your Career

Ignite Your Career - 2009 - E4 - Developing your Leadership Qualities

iyc@microsoft.com (Microsoft Canada) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:35:00 GMT

The Ignite Your Career webcast series was created as a result of your feedback that technical professionals needed help to develop those critical personal and professional skills that Technical Professionals so often neglect. We partnered with IT World Canada and the Canadian Information Processing Society – in order to bring industry experts and thought leaders together for a radio talk show chat where we discussed various topics and answered your questions

This special highlights edition of the Canadian Ignite Your Career webcast series takes the best ideas and soundbites from the previously recorded episodes. I’m joined by my co-host Shane Schick - editor in chief of IT World Canada – to help with the production

This session will focus on what a panel of Leaders/Managers has done in order to further their development of leader qualities. Whether you are part of a team, in charge of one already or aspiring to become a leader - you need to know how to develop your leadership skills. For some people, being a leader comes intuitively, for others it is something that requires both self awareness and leading by example.

Panel Members

Rob Howard:An expert in planning and growing Web communities, Mr. Howard is a pioneer in developing enterprise collaboration software. Whether it’s working with organizations such as Dell to plan and implement their single-vendor platform strategy or working with large social community customers such as MySpace.com or Microsoft, Mr. Howard is determined to help organizations of any size apply the value of collaborative work to their business.
Pedro Cardoso: Director of IT and e-business at Becton, Dickinson and Co. (BD-Canada), a medical devices company, where he also oversees application development. His areas of expertise include ERP, Business Process Engineering, Business Intelligence, Social Networking, SEO and Continuous Improvement (Lean & Transactional Six Sigma).
John Oxley: the Director of community evangelism, John manages a team of community advisors that reach out and connect with the IT community. The Team is all about community satisfaction and enabling the individual professional. His team of Advisors are Microsoft Canada ambassadors to the IT community, connecting, supporting and enabling the individual IT professional (IT Pros), Developer, User experience designer, Community Leaders, and technical enthusiast.
Cathy Shaughnessy: a Certified Executive Coach with Perspective In Action, has been working with people as they boost their performance in the workplace for almost 25 years. She has managed and coordinated corporate learning projects and established an outstanding track record of success as a sought after executive coach, speaker, training consultant and learning design specialist.

More information and resources related to the Ignite Your Career series can be found on it's main landing page.

Direct Download:

Subscribe to the podcast: (so you don't miss an episode)

Full episode available here.

Comments, Suggestions and Ideas for Future Topics can be left below as a comment or emailed directly to the Ignite Your Career feedback alias atmailto:IYC@microsoft.com

Music and audio production provided by Mark Blevis - ThirdStoryProductions.

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Ignite Your Career - 2009 - E3 - Selling Yourself

iyc@microsoft.com (Microsoft Canada) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:31:00 GMT

In this episode - we talk about expressing the right level of details on your personal and professional accomplishments and how it can come in very handy when talking with your manager as well as a couple of levels up within your company. Are you doing yourself justice when someone asks you in the hallway "what have you been up to lately?" Now take this to the next level - would you be prepared if the unexpected happened and you were now out in the wild looking for a new job?

Panel Members:

Scott Hanselman: is a Microsoft as a Principal Program Manager, aiming to spread good information about developing software, usually on the Microsoft stack. Before this I was the Chief Architect at Corillian Corporation, now a part of Checkfree, for 6+ years. I was also involved in a few Microsoft Developer things for many years like the MVP and RD programs and I'll speak about computers (and other passions) whenever someone will listen.
Andrew Dillane: Group CIO, Andrew Dillane leads the overall e-business strategy for the Randstad Canada Group of companies including Randstad Canada, Sapphire Canada, ATS Reliance, OriginHR and GMS Canada. Andrew also serves on the Advisory Board for Kids Internet Safety Alliance (KINSA).
Nick Corcodilos: The host of Ask The Headhunter® and author of How to Work with Headhunters (2009). Nick started headhunting in 1979 in one of America's most competitive job markets: California's Silicon Valley. Using the methods described in his book and on the ATH blog, he has helped people win management and staff jobs in companies including IBM, GE, Hewlett-Packard and Merrill Lynch.
Heather Hamilton: Manages Microsoft’s Global Competitive Programs Team responsible for competitive research and programs. In this role, she leads Microsoft’s efforts aimed at enabling global research centers to monitor the competitive talent landscape and leverage opportunities to recruit the best technical talent through deliverables such as competitive intelligence, training and opportunistic recruiting programs.

More information and resources related to the Ignite Your Career series can be found on it's main landing page.

Direct Download:

Subscribe to the podcast: (so you don't miss an episode)

Full episode available here.

Comments, Suggestions and Ideas for Future Topics can be left below as a comment or emailed directly to the Ignite Your Career feedback alias atmailto:IYC@microsoft.com

Music and audio production provided by Mark Blevis - ThirdStoryProductions.

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Ignite Your Career - 2009 - E2 -Internal vs External training

iyc@microsoft.com (Microsoft Canada) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:26:00 GMT

In this episode, we discuss maintaining your technical and personal skill sets and how they are critical to being successful in the job you already have and anything you might be looking to progress into. Unfortunately, the option of external training might not be available to you at this point in time. How can you take advantage of internal resources like job shadowing, mentoring, internal courses, study groups as well as external training activities when available? This episode is for you.

Panel Members

Barry Gervin: Founding Partner of ObjectSharp. Barry provides technical leadership to his valued clients, staff, and the development community. Over his 17 year career in the IT industry, he has helped many development teams architect and successfully deliver large software projects within tight schedules and budgets that consistently perform for their end users.
Brian Bourne: Industry expert with over 15 years of IT experience; he is responsible for managing all day to day operations at CMS Consulting Inc. and maintains his technical edge through consulting and participation with numerous technology related events.
Maurizio Laudisa: CIO of LifeLabs, where he rebuilt a national $14 million, 60 staff IT department in 6 months after sale of MDS Diagnostic to OMERS/Borealis. He has led or participated in several health IT initiatives, such as the Ontario Lab Information System (OLIS), Colon Cancer Check, integration to physicians’ CMS and EMR.
Aaron Skonnard: Co-founder of Pluralsight where he focuses on cloud computing, service-oriented architecture (SOA), XML and Web services technologies. He focuses primarily on the Microsoft platform and is considered an expert in the Microsoft community on Windows Azure, the Azure Services Platform, Windows Communication Foundation, BizTalk Server, SOAP/REST, and XML technologies.

More information and resources related to the Ignite Your Career series can be found on it's main landing page.

Direct Download:

Subscribe to the podcast: (so you don't miss an episode)

Full episode available here.

Comments, Suggestions and Ideas for Future Topics can be left below as a comment or emailed directly to the Ignite Your Career feedback alias atmailto:IYC@microsoft.com

Music and audio production provided by Mark Blevis - ThirdStoryProductions.

IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

Ignite Your Career - 2009 - E1 - Industry Insights and Trends Podcast

iyc@microsoft.com (Microsoft Canada) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:16:00 GMT

In this episode, we revisit one of the most popular topics we've had on the ongoing Ignite Your Career webcast series to kick of this season. Industry Insights and Trends. You need to be on top of what is happening in the industry in order to position yourself and your organization to benefit from these trends. This panel discussion will arm you with the information you need from experts in the ICT industry in order to stay on top of your game.

Panel Members

Richard Campbell: One of the co-founders of Strangeloop Networks and part of the team building an appliance to accelerate ASP.NET. Richard is co-host of the ".NET Rocks!, the Internet Audio Talk Show for .NET Developers" (http://www.dotnetrocks.com/) podcast and the host of "RunAs Radio, the Internet Audio Talk Show for IT Professionals" (http://www.runasradio.com/) podcast.
Jay Payette: A consultant serving public and private organizations in the fields of technology and management. He currently works for the Ottawa office of Accenture in the Systems Integration and Technology practice.
Lee Jacobs: Program Director for Labour Marketing Information at the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC). Lee’s current focus at ICTC is on refreshing the ground breaking supply and demand forecast for ICT occupations in Canada, the Outlook 2008-2015.

More information and resources related to the Ignite Your Career series can be found on it's main landing page.

Direct Download:

Subscribe to the podcast: (so you don't miss an episode)

Full episode available here.

Comments, Suggestions and Ideas for Future Topics can be left below as a comment or emailed directly to the Ignite Your Career feedback alias atmailto:IYC@microsoft.com

Music and audio production provided by Mark Blevis - ThirdStoryProductions.

IT Pro Team Blog | IT Managers Blog |Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

“What have you been up to lately? How’s the IT department?” Ignite your Career – Episode 3

iyc@microsoft.com (Microsoft Canada) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:12:00 GMT

Picture yourself walking into an elevator and having a senior executive standing in there. After the pleasant head nod, you press your floor button and stand to the side. After the doors close - the executive finally recognizes you and remembers you’re in IT. Because it’s a long ride up – she asks you a small talk type question like “So Bob, what projects have you been up to lately? How’s life in the IT Department?”.

Are you ready for this question? How would you answer?

Remember - You’ve got one minute to promote your personal brand and make an impression. Are you ready for that?

This is a serious topic that comes up in conversation when my team is out at events and talking with people. It’s mostly around the issue of looking for a job or trying to break into he industry as they are newly out and seeking employment. Kudos to the ones that are asking – most are seeking advice on what to say and how to promote. What about all the OTHER people in the room who are not doing a good job of connecting and self promoting? Sure – maybe they are gainfully employed now or have not had to look for a new job in a while – but what about if something changed?

Self Promotion / personal brand awareness / pride in projects completed AND being able to clearly communicate them in the proper depth and manner that matches the situation is something that is hard to do. Are you someone like me (believe it or not) who’s a little introverted when one finds oneself in a crowd of strangers, nervous to be the one who does the approaching - but more then happy to talk once approached by someone in a crowd to talk. Maybe you are a bit more extreme – someone who shies away from getting out there at all, making connections and selling yourself. Being confident and taking the time to build and nurture your “public” brand may not seem important to you now – but what about when it really counts?

when you find yourself being passed over for a new role with more responsibility.
when you feel it’s time to move on down a slightly different career path.
when it’s time to strike out into new territory all together and look for a new employer
when it’s time to get into your first career or into your next career change.

How do you stand out from the crowd – even if it’s not your style? Can you summarize your accomplishments from past projects clearly and succinctly? When is the last time you updated your resume or maintained your “project portfolio”?

My team and I have committed to do whatever we can do to support your career growth as an ICT professional both on the traditional “technical skills” side as well as on the “personal/professional skills” side. With this episode of the Ignite Your Career webcast series - I figured it was time to focus a little energy towards this very important topic. When I reached out to the team to see who they would suggest would be good panel members – WOW. I was impressed with who wanted to talk on this topic.

We’re coming at it from all angles here: A brand and image savvy developer, an IT manager looking to hire, a headhunter who can help locate the right candidate or give you an edge and finally an HR professional who knows all about recruiting and staffing processes. Check out this line-up!

Scott Hanselman – Principal Program Manager at Microsoft. You can find him on the web at http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ or listen to his podcast HansleMinutes. Trust me – if you are a developer – you’ve heard of Hanselman.

Andrew Dillane is the Group CIO for the Randstad Canada Group of Companies. He’s the national president for the CIO Association of Canada and is actively involved in the Program Advisory Council for Ryerson University’s Information Technology Management degree program.

Nick Crocodilos is no stranger to the Ignite Your Career webcast series. He’s provided colourful insight and valuable information on how to work with HeadHunters. His latest book How to Work with Headhunters is a great read and his previous book Ask The Headhunter: Reinventing The Interview to Win The Job was the #1 selling interview guide on Amazon for 26 months. You can reach Nick over on his AskTheHeadHunter blog. Note: Nick is making a SPECIAL OFFER for webcast attendees – Save $10 on his new book How to Work with Headhunters by using discount code = ignite

Heather Hamilton – manages Microsoft’s Global Competitive Programs Team which is responsible for monitoring competitive talent landscape and leverage opportunities to recruit the best technical talent possible. She’s a well known blogger over on her site called One Louder and is a requested speaker on topics related to candidate outreach and community building.

I honestly can’t wait for Thursday the 24th. This will be an episode you will NOT want to miss! Register today to attend this free webcast series.

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Pssssst! Wanna leg up with your career?

iyc@microsoft.com (Microsoft Canada) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:02:00 GMT

No… I’m not the guy with the trench coat asking if you want to buy the letter C, but I do want to make sure you’re in the know.

Talking with head-hunters / recruiters / IT Managers out there and there’s one thing they’ve told me again and again. They look to hire professionals with personal skills when ranking candidates with equal knowledge and experience. Your personal skills and the time you take to invest in your career development pays off big time – it gives you the edge over your competition. It doesn’t matter if you’re lookin’ for the next gig, or just looking for some extra confidence in the job you are currently at – it just works.

Take the time – make the investment in yourself and in your career.

My team is committed to YOUR success. We’re running our “Ignite Your Career” webcast series starting in March, running every Tuesday until April 7th. This series was extremely popular last time around and we’ve listened to your feedback asking us to bring it back again!

We’ve designed this series specifically for technical professionals that are interested in developing their career. We’re once again partnered with CIPS to help ensure we’re bringing together experts from across the country from all walks of the ICT industry – developers, IT professionals and managers – in order to answer YOUR questions and share their insights.

This is the third Ignite Your Career series I’ve worked on and I have to say I love putting it together. We’re using the “radio talk show” format once again – nice and easy to listen to, no “death by PowerPoint” and interactive with the audience asking questions using the question manager. In fact – this year we’re taking it up a notch or two:

You can E-Mail your questions in advance to iyc@microsoft.com.
During the webcast you can join the Backchannel conversation on Twitter by using the #IYC2009 hash tag.
Simply tweet your comments, chatter or questions and include to #IYC2009 hashtag to have them bubble up for all to see.

Main landing page can be found at http://www.microsoft.ca/ignite. You can check out the full details, schedule and episode topics from there. As we get closer – I’ll post some interesting tidbits about each episode on the blog. I’ve also extracted the titles, dates and registration links below if you want to register right now!

Series Line-up	Date	Time
Industry Insights and Trends	Tuesday, March 3rd	12PM-1PM EST	REGISTER NOW
Discovering Your Trusted Resources	Tuesday, March 10th	12PM-1PM EST	REGISTER NOW
How to Establish and Maintain a Healthy Work/Life Balance	Tuesday, March 17th	12PM-1PM EST	REGISTER NOW
How to Become a Great Leader	Tuesday, March 24th	12PM-1PM EST	REGISTER NOW
Building, Managing and Strengthening Your Team	Tuesday, March 31st	12PM-1PM EST	REGISTER NOW
Women in IT Panel Discussion	Tuesday, April 7th	12PM-1PM EST	REGISTER NOW

I can’t wait to get this started once again. I look forward to hearing from you on each episode. Don’t forget to register early!

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