I've known my friend, Ted Neward, for several years. We met at a tech conference when I accidentally almost ran up behind him to give him a big bear hug because I mistook him for someone else. We've remained friends ever since. Ted is the Director of Technology Culture at Quicken Loans. In this interview, Ted shares his experiences shifting the entire culture of a large technical team from working 10% remotely to 100% remotely. Ted also reminds us to invest into your people during the good times so they will be flexible during the hard times, to empathize with employees, and also "eat your own dogfood." All of the things Quicken Loans has done so well during this unprecedented novel coronavirus pandemic. I hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I did while recording it.
Learn more about my friend, Ted, on his personal website at: http://www.newardassociates.com
I've known my friend, Ted Neward, for several years. We met at a tech conference when I accidentally almost ran up behind him to give him a big bear hug because I mistook him for someone else. We've remained friends ever since. Ted is the Director of Technology Culture at Quicken Loans. In this interview, Ted shares his experiences shifting the entire culture of a large technical team from working 10% remotely to 100% remotely. Ted also reminds us to invest into your people during the good times so they will be flexible during the hard times, to empathize with employees, and also "eat your own dogfood." All of the things Quicken Loans has done so well during this unprecedented novel coronavirus pandemic. I hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I did while recording it.
Learn more about my friend, Ted, on his personal website at: http://www.newardassociates.com
Dane joins Christina to talk about the other side of feedback, receiving it. There is an implied agreement to collaborate when giving or receiving feedback but the person who receives feedback shouldn't be passive, instead directing what they want and need to move their project forward.
Director of Communications at LG Designs, Dane comes back on the show to discuss giving feedback, something he knows a lot about after years of working with collaborators, clients and me. "Giving feedback is an agreement to collaborate and help make the person seeking feedback realize their vision for their project."
Director of Communications at LG Designs, Dane is a jack of all trades. Based in Los Angeles, California, he not only helps keep Lg Designs running but is a terrific speaker coach, writer, and consultant. Today we talk about the stages of grief the entire world is going through as COVID-19 tops the news and requires us to be more mindful as we make our way through this... together.
Christina Aldan is the CEO/founder of LG Designs (lgdesigns.co) and a digital media marketer who travels the world speaking to tech industry folks, entrepreneurs, and female business owners
Lee Brandt founded the Kansas City Developer Conference 12 years ago because he noticed the tech scene was lacking. There were 120 attendees at that first conference and it has steadily grown to nearly 2500 attendees in 2019. Today KCDC is a non-profit organization that leads the charge for tech polyglot (multiple technologies and leadership skills) conferences. They created a collaborative community to help support local tech businesses in the Kansas City area.
With COVID-19 influencing conferences worldwide, I stopped to ask Lee about some of the challenges conference organizers are facing, and possible solutions that he is witnessing within the conference community. In this interview we discuss potential hardships for conference organizers and tips for speakers who are wanting to still stay connected.
Learn more at kcdc.info
Email general questions to staff@kcdc.info
Email lee@kcdc.info
Tanya Butenko is a developer, founder of @MusesCodeJS, a free-coding events enthusiast, an International speaker, #mentor, and @GoogleDevExpert. She lives in Australia and is working to improve diversity and inclusion in tech. This woman walks the walk and talks the talk, encouraging people to think about their problems it from a different angle, to broaden the circle of your acquaintance. As humans, we can only have our own experience and we don’t often think of the problems of other people. However, she caution that we can at least try and be aware of our biases. Tanya went from a myriad of jobs such as teacher, interpreter, manager, business coordinator, and waitress before finding engineering 5 years ago. The tech community was instantly friendly and inviting to her. Today she volunteers as founder of Muses Code JS, a not-for-profit organization which can be found in 7 different cities around Australia. They offer education in many forms to help anyone trying to build a career in tech. Their upcoming mentorship program is called Muses Career and focuses on preparing people for interviews, communication, and conflict management. Although many of their upcoming in-person workshops have been canceled due to the global COVID-19 epidemic.
They are always looking for event sponsors as well at:
Michelle Hausbeck, owner of Hausbeck Brand - A Creative Company, always had the dream of being her own boss, always had the entrepreneurial spirit and being surrounded by a family of creatives — artists and entrepreneurs — motivated her to follow suit. She crawled her way up the ladder of various ad agencies before launching her own business. Hausbeck Brand and LG Designs have similar approaches and business models.
Straight from the Hausbeck Brand website:
“Hausbeck Brand uncovers brand insights and creates innovative design solutions. We work with clients of all sizes, from large to small businesses, in a wide range of fields and industries, including gaming, hotel/casino, restaurant, security, non-profits, real estate, law, education, coaching, health/wellness, personal branding, and many others. We are firm believers that every step involved in developing and marketing a brand has a goal. Knowing the goals before the design process begins is key. This helps create a strategy not only for design and marketing, it also guides the creative development for the brands content, voice, imagery, usage, and marketing placement.
We are a team of professionals, made up of digital marketing experts, content writers, PR agencies, photographers, videographers, executive coaches, and corporate trainers. We all are aligned in the belief that talent, street smarts, and persistence is the perfect mix to create success for our clients.”
On this episode, Michelle talks about her tips for success — forging strong relationships and having a consistent daily routine — along with covering some of the things she and her company do, from brand development, management and design to keynote speaking.
Michelle believes the only constant in life is change and we all have a choice. In how we are going to react, overcome the situation.Part 2 with Michael Dowden and it’s all about accessibility. Michael Dowden is co-author of “Approachable Accessibility: Planning for Success” available now on
Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/Approachable-Accessibility-Planning-Martine-Dowden/dp/1484248805
Today on Luckygirl: A Bite-sized Podcast for Solopreneurs he discusses the importance of accessibility, how users use assistive devices to help them navigate websites, and tips you can use right now to take an audit of your own website.
Tips for auditing your website:
Push the mouse to the side and just use keystrokes.
Can users still access key information?
Keyboard access is important.
Are their pop-ups that are obstructing the view?
Consider transcripts for your podcasts.
Consider captions on your videos.
Screen readers are assistive devices that take the text on the page and they interpret the structure of the page. So you must name common elements like navigation, content, sidebar content, to identify the areas for screen readers.
Make sure the heading levels are in order.
An image must have an alt text to describe the rest of the text around it.
Color Contrast to help users who may have color blindness, as an example. Make sure the information can be processed and read to differentiate the contrast between the elements on the screen.
Make sure the background is not too noisy Google has a materials design library that can be used for resources
Follow
@mrdowden on twitter
andromeda16.com
Buy the book
https://www.amazon.com/Approachable-Accessibility-Planning-Martine-Dowden/dp/1484248805
While he always thought he would work for himself, Cory House took a financially conservative route to becoming a solopreneur. He is a dad of 3 children and the ebb and flow of income was too risky for him. So he made the decision to live conservatively and stay with him employer until he had a comfortable enough nest egg to weather the ebb and flow of entrepreneurship. The response to his recent independence was met with unequaled support. Cory double-majored in marketing and advertising so everything he has built around his brand is focused around 4 pillars:
1. product
2. price
3. place
4. promotion
When he tweeted about his independence on Twitter, companies jumped at the opportunity to work with him. His advice for anyone thinking of starting a consultancy:
Diversify your brand through various media instead of getting work from just one lead source
Networking is not a dirty word. Instead of "networking" try making friends and good things will happen for your business, too.
Follow Cory on twitter at @housecor If you're a developer, check out his courses on PluralSight.com
If you're looking for React training, visit
https://www.reactjsconsulting.com/
Cory House has been writing JavaScript since the days of Netscape. He has specialized in React since shortly after it was launched and has partnered with teams around the globe to ship dozens of significant React projects. He authored multiple courses on React and JavaScript that have been viewed by over 500,000 developers worldwide. He has trained over 10,000 developers in person while leading 100's of sessions at businesses and conferences across the USA and internationally.
Christina Aldan is the CEO/founder of LG Designs (lgdesigns.co) and a digital media marketer who travels the world speaking to tech industry folks, entrepreneurs, and female business owners
Christina Aldan is the CEO/founder of LG Designs (lgdesigns.co) and a digital media marketer who travels the world speaking to tech industry folks, entrepreneurs, and female business owners
From a young age, Michael Dowden had an entrepreneurial spirit. Doing odd jobs when he was young, to building his own consulting agency, to managing a successful startup, means he has lots of experience to share with small business owners.
As a software architect Michael focuses on the K.I.S.S. principle, keeping systems as simple as possible (but no simpler). Michael is passionate about lightweight frameworks in both Java and JavaScript ecosystems, often pointing out that Java is to JavaScript as Car is to Carrot. Since 1992 he has provided full-stack technology expertise to deliver usable, scalable, and secure web-based solutions to more than 60 companies, from startups to the Fortune 100.
As an MBA Michael focuses on solutions that provide true business value and always works to improve collaboration and communication between teams. He has been an entrepreneur his entire life, operating several businesses and founding 5 startups. He loves working with and advising other entrepreneurs and is always working on developing new ideas.
His book, "Programming Languages ABC++" has worked its way into the lives of my own children, and he continues to influence technologists with his new book on web accessibility. We recently met on an adventure mastermind experience in Antarctica (see www. AntarctiConf.com) and he shared his journey in entrepreneurship and how he and his family create their own luck by designing a business and a lifestyle that meets their needs.
Michael would be happy to:
• Help your company capture additional revenue from their unused parking
• Speak at your next conference or event
• Coach your software development team
• Develop a prototype web or mobile application for your startup
• Autograph your copy of Programming Languages ABC++
Learn more at www.andromeda16.com
Christina Aldan is the CEO/founder of LG Designs (lgdesigns.co) and a digital media marketer who travels the world speaking to tech industry folks, entrepreneurs, and female business owners
Matthew Renze is a data science consultant, author, and public speaker. Over the past two decades, he has taught over 200,000 software developers and IT professionals how to make better decisions with data science. His clients include small software startups to Fortune 100 companies around the globe. I recently joined him on an adventure mastermind trip to Antarctica (see AntarctiConf.com). In this interview, learn about his journey in becoming a data science consultant.
Read his articles on data science and watch his free courses at www.matthewrenze.com
Christina Aldan is the CEO/founder of LG Designs (lgdesigns.co) and a digital media marketer who travels the world speaking to tech industry folks, entrepreneurs, and female business owners
Mariela Twiggs started writing code when she was just 13 years old. She worked her way up the career ladder in Health Information Technology. Her consultancy grew, along with her stellar reputation for Information Technology Security. Eventually her company was acquired and she had a very successful exit. She decided to remain on staff at the new company, becoming their Chief Motivation Officer. I hope you find the story of her entrepreneurial journey as inspiring as I do.
Check out her work at mrocorp.com and to contact her directly with questions, email Mtwiggs@mrocorp.com
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Christina Aldan is the CEO/founder of LG Designs (lgdesigns.co) and a digital media marketer who travels the world speaking to tech industry folks, entrepreneurs, and female business owners
Anna Tomasiello is a personal trainer, entrepreneur, and consultant who helps people seeking alignment in their life.
Work with Anna 3 ways:
Call 702.290.2160
annatomasiello@gmail.com
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Christina Aldan is the CEO/founder of LG Designs (lgdesigns.co) and a digital media marketer who travels the world speaking to tech industry folks, entrepreneurs, and female business owners