You’re Qualified. Are They?
The tiny gatekeepers holding the keys to giant doors.
I always see the words “apply” everywhere I go. Apply to a job. Apply to secure funding for a startup. Apply to this class that will help you towards your future. I must admit, I’m a late bloomer. I made all the select teams, the jazz programs, and anything I wanted to be a part of growing up. I applied myself and got in. I auditioned into a jazz program for college and it was no different. And then my 20’s hit and I’m not sure if I really applied to anything in particular. I applied myself in the arts, but arts are subjective and culture was shifting. Gone were the days of record labels and a cost to music. In were the cover bands, the instant clicks, and by that time I was a dying breed of musician. Now, in my mid 30’s I’ve bounced back on the application train and it’s been an interesting ride to say the least. After applying to a great deal of many things I’ve stopped to wonder… who are these people that I’m talking to? What makes them qualified to qualify me? If this was The Voice, the judges would be a distinguished panel of accomplished singers. They wouldn’t be judging a song, for example, because many of them do not write their own music. No, they’d specifically be judging most likely a cover song and honing in on the voice, (thus the aptly named title of the show). But what about jobs? What about start up funds? This now more so resembles The Masked Singer but the roles are reversed. They aren’t auditioning for the judges, they are the judge. But who are they?
The Agile Garden
How to follow success rather than chase it.
I am no Martha Stewart. I do not pretend to know the slightest thing about gardening, so if you’re looking for authentic tips on how to prune an avocado tree, then perhaps another site will do. What I can tell you is a set of truths learned by an eclectic array of skills collected over the years. I was a jazz piano major briefly before a real push into the music world. I have spent a good part of a decade attempting to get a start up off the ground. I have shifted over into the user experience universe. These might seem like completely different skills but they are all potential seeds in the garden of my own life. I’m going to attempt to combine these experiences to help you think about your own successes. What are the things that you should nurture? And what are the things that you should just let die?
Amazon Driver to Bible Designer
From Obscurity to Designing Experiences for Millions
There are plenty of horror stories through the pandemic that, though feeling like lifetimes past, happened just a handful of years ago. I had taken a giant leap of faith after finishing The 12 Rules for Life in a Microsoft cafeteria in Redmond, Washington. I was in one of two places on the Microsoft campus. Either in a giant mostly empty warehouse with a tiny desk comically placed by a wall, or else at another building sandwiched between the outdoor dumpsters, the humming of a server room, and surrounded by a chain linked fence; no heat or air conditioning. Just the wafts of waste every now and then being carried through the loading dock by a gentle breeze. To close my office, you just needed a padlock to slide the metal together and lock it. If you’ve seen the show Silicon Valley, it was where a former CEO was sentenced to as a form of punishment, except theirs was nicer.