Monday, March 20, 2006
Service: * *Food: *
Ambience: * * *
Babe Count: *
Right. First things first. I'm at home, listening to Geoffrey Oryema's BEAT THE BORDER on Peter Gabriel's RealWorld label. The Oryema vibes account for the moderately cheerful ambience.
S. is out right now, enjoying her last week of freedom before gruelling rehearsals start for WE WILL ROCK YOU, the Queen musical she's in. Hence the low babe count in the flat.
I've now got a moment to myself after a rather hectic two-week period. Last week I delivered two seminars to the Wits Post Grad 'World of Work' project. In the morning, I covered the basics of how to be creative at work. We played some games, blew some bubbles, and learned some practical idea-generation skills.
In the afternoon, my seminar was on blogging as a career-creation tool.
I appear to have caused a quite a stir by telling the students that they basically had to be themselves, authentically, and honestly, and openly, if they wanted to succeed out in the big wide world.
The controversy basically arose due to feelings of insecurity. 'But if we say what we REALLLLY think, no-one will hire us!' said one post-grad student.
My retort was, 'If YOU were employing someone, and you had two identical candidates, one of whom said the "right things", and one of whom was real, who would you hire, and why?'
What came out of that bit of debate was a shaky concensus that it's better to hire real people. More productive. More motivated. That sorta thing.
My rider to that is this: 'There ARE INDEED bosses who WANT "yes-men" and corporate clones. And I've experienced working for such bosses. And they're the worst people in the world to work for. The bosses who want authenticity are the ones you wanna work with.'
And what have blogs got to do with this? To me, a blog is an online representation of who I am. People who read my stuff kinda know who I am. And if I'm unpalatable to them in cyberspace, I am SURE AS HELL unpalatable to them in real life.
I know that one of the reasons Rich...! from MISSING LINK occasionally hooks up with me is cos of my blog. It keeps me top-of-mind in his brain, and he knows who I am. He reckons I'm seriously crazy and creative.
Now... back to my flat. The service here sucks cos I've just fed myself a cardboard biscuit dunked into tea, with crumbs all over the damn desk, and crumb-porridge at the bottom of the cup.
Technorati Tags: blogging, creativity, seminar, wits university, wits, university of the witwatersrand, we will rock you, queen, realworld, oryema, careers, work, boss, rich...!, missing link
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