I already mentioned that I participate as a cyber-mentor at Academos, a site where student get the chance to talk with professionals from all domains to ask them what the work is like, how to get there and what to expect once you become a professional. If you are a high school teacher (in Quebec, Canada), I strongly suggest that you take a look at the site and see what it can offer for your students.
Next week, I’m taking it to another level. A high school student will be following me for a day (not much following to do since I work on the computer all day). This will not impact my work too much and I will be able to help someone experience first hand what his potential future career will look like, about 6 years before being able to get there.
Helping the future software engineers is something we, at Hint Innovation, and I truly believe in. We depend on what the education system builds, in terms of graduates, and as employers of future graduates, I think it’s important to be a part of that system.
Web development education is at a critical point, it’s mostly untouched by software engineering formations but most companies now need professional Web developers. There are places other than universities that teach Web development, but they don’t teach the same things as the universities. Both are needed, but currently only one exists.
Have you ever thought about becoming your own employer? On living on your blogging income? Well, this guy did it in just 279 days. He even wrote an excellent ebook (he calls it a manifesto) “279 Days to Overnight Success” to tell people interested in doing the same how he did it.
I find the manifesto really interesting because that’s something I would like to do myself, at least partially. I love writing, teaching people new things, sharing my experiences. I say partially because I wouldn’t have anything to write about if it were not for my work, where I get to learn so much. I have so many project ideas, but I don’t take the time to even start any of those. After having read the manifesto, I’m a little more motivated, I need to answer 2 important questions raised in the ebook (he calls them “the two most important questions in the universe”):
- What do you really want to get out of life?
- What can you offer the world that no one else can?
Anyway, if you ever thought about going solo and working on your own, give this ebook a chance and read it.
As you may know, I have started blogging a bit more regularly over at Crossbrowser.net. I’m still in my early attemps at blogging and the quality of the text probably shows that. I’m still happy so far of what I’ve written, hopefully a few more people will start following and commenting. My goal for this year is to write at least one entry per week, I already have content for a dozen posts, but I need to learn to take more time to write.
Here are a few interesting posts (in my opinion) you might’ve missed:
In the past few weeks I improved the navigation and layout. I also made some improvements to help with SEO (Search engine optimization) (on this website too). If the traffic gets good enough, I’ll probably try to put up some advertisements (non obtrusive of course). In the meantime, I’ll keep posting to improve my writing.
