Can Your Online Profile Replace Your C.V. or Résumé?

In a recent communique with a potential customer, I was asked to send a resume, even though I had forwarded my LinkedIn profile. I was dismayed that someone in the tech industry would still be wedded to the static nature of a Word document. It is certainly my opinion that the role of "telling who you are" is best accomplished through a person's online presence -- LinkedIn, a professional landing page, or perhaps even FaceBook. If one is in the job market, I believe it makes more send to send potential employers to your LinkedIn page instead of sending a Word or PDF version of your résumé or C.V. If you are like me, you might use your LinkedIn profile to include not only your qualifications, but testimonials from colleagues and clients, and other information such as publications or successful projects. I feel that the need to establish professional credentials is best served efficiently by sending someone to a LinkedIn page. This will convey relevant experience, and in a place that is maintained because it’s easy to update on a regular basis. Further, as an IT professional, I can appreciate the concept of the "single source of truth" model for data -- instead of uploading copies a résumé to job banks, or keeping track of various versions, outdated or otherwise defunct.

Now is not the time to give up on the Internet

The opposite of liberal is, well, IMHO, the desire to inflict on others a reduction in 'adaptive potential'. I would suggest this means the ability to choose between a range of attractive opportunities. Barriers to social mobility, relentless mega-corporation dominance, endless growth of government, restrictions on human sexuality and freedom of expression all qualify as narrowing.

I find the Internet has proven to be a means to facilitate growth in adaptive potential. Opening markets globally for large and small businesses. Amplifying peoples' voices. Reducing cost of public service delivery.

Supply chain and e-commerce improvements are contributing to overall economic growth. With the size of the global market getting bigger, the rewards for uncovering lucrative new ideas grow -- a multiplier effect. Moreover, as new ideas flow across national boundaries faster and more easily, humans all benefit.

Public officials, potential laws, and other public policy issues are scrutinized and influenced by Internet-organized movements.

Public spending should focus on broad-based, pro-growth, pro-poor services like primary education, primary health care and infrastructure investment.

Win8 is good for the Cloud? Tom Calls BS!

In this article, Greg Pierce claims the Windows 8 tablet is the best solution to speed up cloud adoption... because... "Beneath the “shell” is a full-featured version of Windows." He goes on to state that "Several problems that have plagued tile versions of Windows in the past, including required hardware, power consumption and especially interface, have been addressed." That's a hoot... how is Microsoft supposed to police makers of Win tablets, to ensure hardware, power consumption and other integration problems truly are solved? I would be very surprised to see a single code base run across processors and platforms seamlessly. ;-)

Greg's focus is clearly MS-centric, as he claims not seeing someone's Exchange calendar on an iPad is a deficiency of that device. Only if you care about Exchange. Cloud adoption, by definition, ends vendor lock-n. If Exchange's proprietary calendar interface won't work with HTML 5, who is to blame? As my da used to say, it's a poor carpenter who blames his tools for crappy 'implementation' (last word is my version, sorry).

Greg makes his point clear: "Software providers will be given a tablet platform in which their full-featured applications will work out of the box. In order to tailor the app for Windows 8 tablets, there will be GUI changes to make the tactile experience easier – but the app does not need to be re-written." Don't re-write to leverage the platform, but stick with your old, hackney code.

No, thanks. Objective C development on the iPad and iPhone has yielded amazing new apps, not possible in the previous MS-centric world. Building true service-oriented enterprise solutions opens the door to platform flexibility. Few would argue that the iOS interface is the benchmark for touch on a mobile device; slapping some oversized icons on Windows is not a solution. Re-thinking your approach to integration of enterprise, mobile user needs, and freedom of data is a way forward... IMHO.