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Welcome to the personal blog of Richard Anderson.

Friday 20 April 2007

12 Rules for Self-Leadership

Here is a post from lifehack.org which I quite liked. I've put some of it in bold to highlight the points I really agree with /like (to be honest, I could have put most of this in bold).

1. Set goals for your life; not just for your job. What we think of as "meaning of life" goals affect your lifestyle outside of work too, and you get whole-life context, not just work-life, each feeding off the other.

2. Practice discretion constantly, and lead with the example of how your own good behavior does get great results. Otherwise, why should anyone follow you when you lead?

3. Take initiative. Volunteer to be first. Be daring, bold, brave and fearless, willing to fall down, fail, and get up again for another round. Starting with vulnerability has this amazing way of making us stronger when all is done.

4. Be humble and give away the credit. Going before others is only part of leading; you have to go with them too. Therefore, they've got to want you around!

5. Learn to love ideas and experiments. Turn them into pilot programs that preface impulsive decisions. Everything was impossible until the first person did it.

6. Live in wonder. Wonder why, and prize "Why not?" as your favorite question. Be insatiably curious, and question everything.

7. There are some things you don't take liberty with no matter how innovative you are when you lead. For instance, to have integrity means to tell the truth. To be ethical is to do the right thing. These are not fuzzy concepts.

8. Believe that beauty exists in everything and in everyone, and then go about finding it. You'll be amazed how little you have to invent and much is waiting to be displayed.

9. Actively reject pessimism and be an optimist. Say you have zero tolerance for negativity and self-fulfilling prophecies of doubt, and mean it.

10. Champion change. As the saying goes, those who do what they've always done, will get what they've always gotten. The only things they do get more of are apathy, complacency, and boredom.

11. Be a lifelong learner, and be a fanatic about it. Surround yourself with mentors and people smarter than you. Seek to be continually inspired by something, learning what your triggers are.

12. Care for and about people. Compassion and empathy become you, and keep you ever-connected to your humanity. People will choose you to lead them.

Cheers,

Rich

Source:

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/12-rules-for-self-leadership.html

Saturday 10 March 2007

ASP+ and the NGWS runtime

It's hard to believe that it's almost seven years have past since I worked with Wrox Press & Microsoft to author one of the very first books on ASP.Net. 

Back then ASP.Net was still called ASP+ and the .Net framework was still being called NGWS (Next Generation Web Services).  Microsoft re-branded to .Net just before TechEd 2000, too late for us to change all of the references.

I felt very privileged to be invited to write this book.    I got to work closely with some great people at Microsoft, spending countless hours with the ASP.Net team, esp. Scott Guthrie and Rob Howard.

Here is a picture of the book (I'm the guy in the top left):

Amazon.com still seem to list the book too, pretty amazing:

http://www.amazon.com/Preview-Active-Server-Pages+/dp/1861004753

So, what are all the authors doing these days?

Dave Sussman - Still going strong teaching and writing.  I've got a link to his blog on this site.

Alex Homer - As with Dave, still writing away, doing alot of Microsoft work (PAG stuff last I heard).  Check out www.alanddave.com to see what he is up to.

Rob Howard - I've not been in touch with Rob for a long time.  A believe he runs the company that create Community Service (www.communityserver.org) these days.

Where is ASP.Net today and do I use it?

These days I run a company in the UK who builds several enterprise applications built using Asp.Net.  I'll blog about those applications and the company I work for another day.

Asp.Net continues to grow.   Check out the this site for lots of information.  

Will I author another book?

I've not written anything professionally or had anything published for about 5 years now.  Maybe in a few years I'll consider writing again, but, I've got a few other personal objectives to finish first.