My top 10 posts of 2009

Posted by Gina Rosenthal in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Here are the the top 10 viewed items from my blog in 2009

10. The Power of Language: What does sexy mean

This post was a response to responses to my post and activities at PodCamp Boston this year. I’m still really struggling with what happened during PCB4, but I’m lucky enough to be around people who really challenge me when I challenge their thinking on societal-based issues such as gender.

9. If the world is changing, why am I studying about the guys that sent us down the wrong path?

In the Fall ’09 semester, I took 2 Human Performance Theory (HPT) courses. One of them did a deep-dive into HPT. I started thinking – wait. If we are trying to reboot and innovate management styles now, why do I have to study these jokers who messed it up in the first place? πŸ™‚

8. Twitter Tools

I created a Twitter cheat sheet that could be downloaded and folded into a pocket-sized reference for EMC’s diversity team. I based it on the cheat sheets EMC Education used to have for connecting Unix hosts to storage. Apparently people liked this. πŸ™‚

7. What is informal learning?

I wrote this for executives at work back in February, when our organization (like many other corporate learning orgs) was really starting to struggle with this. This initial conversation has led to other interesting things that I’ll be able to discuss openly soon. πŸ™‚

6. My portfolio

To graduate from my Master’s program, I must have a portfolio. I’ve been trying to keep most of my artifacts online and linked to this area of my blog. Apparently people have been reading them – I hope that is a good thing!!

5. Anyone can be an ID. But should *anyone* be an ID?

This post came out of a #lrnchat session that (to me) was a little bit too hard on SMEs. I’m expected to be an SME, but I also do ID work. I just hate when IDs are not nice to SMEs.

4. If the Gervais principle isn’t working, what is the ideal management structure

One of my favorite posts this year was about the Gervais principle, which explained that we all love the TV show “The Office” because it does a good job of portraying middle management. I read this in the midst of my Fall Semester (studying HPT), so that’s where the post came from.

3. EMC FAST – how do IT folks keep up to speed?

This post was to talk about EMC’s FAST launch, as well as to tell people about the EMC Proven Professional Engineer 2 Engineer broadcast that focused on FAST for Celerra and Symmetrix V-Max.

2. Language that homogenizes creates losers

This post referenced my new-favorite Gervais Principle post, but was about the sexist overtures at the Yahoo Hack Days in Taiwan. If you are counting, this is sexism post #2.

1. Podcamp Boston, lack of women speakers, and bringing things to neutral

I went to Podcamp Boston. I worked with 2 other women to create an ad hoc session about why women didn’t speak at tech conferences, especially when the barriers were so low (as they were at podcamp boston). I walked away from the entire experience feeling attacked and vulnerable. Gender, and the power to define gender, still is a weird thing that baffles me. I’m so happy I have people who are willing to push back and help me really understand this gender thing! (If you are keeping score, this was gender post #3!)

So – what will 2010 hold? For me personally, lots of big changes at work, in my academic life (I graduate in Spring 2010), as well as my personal life (I’m getting married 10/10/10). Thank all of you for not only reading my blog, but talking to me about what I post in the comments, on Twitter, on Facebook, and via email. I hope I get to meet you face-to-face, but until then please keep challenging me to look at things from all sorts of different angles!

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