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Neerav Bhatt Guest Lecture 30th May 2012

University of Technology, Sydney

Master of Business in Information Technology Management (MBITM)

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Neerav Bhatt - Who Am I?

Portfolio Worker / Wannabe Polymath. Multiple contracts, industries, employers (Freelance Journalist, Research Librarian, Travel and News Photographer, Pro-Blogger, Political Candidate …)

DegreesUWS B Business (Computing & E-Business) and UTS Grad Dip (Information Management).

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Continuous Learning

Concentrate on learning transferable principles more than specific software, technologies and tools.

“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”- Philosopher Eric Hoffer

Photo credit: “Rich13” on Flickr

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Career?

“No more vertical. No more ladder. That's not the way careers work anymore. Linearity is out. A career is now a checkerboard. Or even a maze. It's full of moves that go sideways, forward, slide on the diagonal … A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand”

- Tom Peters, Fast Company article http://bit.ly/tompeters1997

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Flexibility & Diverse Skills

Jobs / Self Employment in the future will require diverse knowledge and skills.

To survive and succeed you’ll need a flexible mind, keenness to learn new things and gain specialist knowledge in more than 1 area so you aren't caught unprepared by shifts in the economy or workforce.

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Don’t Be A Commodity Person

Commodity people are easily replaced, their work outsourced or eventually automated.

White Collar jobs are not protected from this trend.

What are your unique characteristics?

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Be Audacious

Motto: Don’t Ask, Don’t Get.

The strongest force stopping you achieving goals is often yourself.

Be audacious when the worst that could happen is someone saying “No” – low downside risk.

Strong temptation to stop innovating when you’re at the top of your game.

Better approach – every success is leveraged swiftly to generate future success. “Levelling up” In gaming terms. Read more at http://bit.ly/AvoidComplacency

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Avoid Complacency, Level Up In Life

Entrepreneurship Isn’t Easy

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gapingvoid.com

Neither Choice Is Perfect

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gapingvoid.com

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Weasel Words

Be wary of companies and people who use weasel words.

Avoid dealing with people whose spoken or written communication contains crimes against the English language.

Excerpt from book “The 21st Century Media (R)Evolution: Emergent Communication Practices” by UTS Professor Jim MacNamara http://bit.ly/jimmcnamara

www.weaselwords.com.au

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Build Your Brand & Reputation“Beat The Drum”. No one will do it for you … stand out from the flock.

Register www.yourname.com to create online Hub.

Use Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook. Perhaps even Flickr, Youtube or Vimeo. Link or embed content from all these on your online Hub site.

For Branding & SEO try to use same avatar photo and username on all sites.

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Online Hub yourname.com

Setup Wordpress blog on www.yourname.com

Publish content regularly such as your best Ideas, Thoughts, Photos, Audio, Video.

Your site has 5 seconds to impress. If it looks abandoned, that reflects badly on you.

Photo credit: Wordpress creator Matt Mullenwegg

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Micro, Photo and Video Blogging

Blogging isn’t just about writing articles. It’s also complemented by the quality of your micro, photo, video blogging & how professional these are.

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Be Yourself & Be Sensible

• There are lots of “rules” about social media. Be yourself but also sensible because it’s really easy for people to take a screenshot and quote you later.

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Patience Grasshopper

• most people want to get everything done now. They want to start from nothing and they expect to be ranking highly in Google or popular on Twitter etc within six weeks. It doesn’t really work that way. Because it takes time to build up a genuine profile and for people to trust you and know what you’re on about, unless you’ve got a huge profile already, you can’t just parachute in and expect to dominate search results if people put your name into a search engine

– Neerav Bhatt on Future Tense, ABC Radio National, 5th May 2011

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Technology changes, Humans dont

• Social Media and Blogging are only the latest iterations of ways to tell stories and communicate.

• They are not new. Before Twitter was SMS, before that was letters, before that was telegrams and Morse code …

gapingvoid.com

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Contact Details

www.neeravbhatt.com

www.bhatt.id.au/blog www.roadlesstravelled.com.au

www.flickr.com/photos/neeravbhatt/sets/ www.twitter.com/neerav