Leo Laport’s Expanding Career- and love in the work place
After seeing the video of Leo’s new leased work space (like no workspace ive ever seen), finally made it to his blog (friend feed has completely taken over my reading patterns and makign me a bit lost and behind.
Here Leo talks about his plans for the future since the end of The Lab . Leo is always a man good with words, theres really no way for me to express his intentions in my own words.
You can read his entry here ‘The Next Chapter’.
My favourite quote is “I just want to be able to make a living doing what I love: talking about technology with a community of engaged and intelligent people, and perhaps, along the way, to help people understand how to better use technology in their own lives.”.
This is why i listen to TWiT and Cnet, and follow the Digg people, Jason Calacanis, Chris Pirillo and many more. Its their passion and love for what they do. Listening to them always cheers me up and gives me hope that work can really great. Ive always thought this, but after years of temping: doing basic admin jobs, and working in retail, it starts to take it out of you.
Everyone seems to accept that work is bad and being miserable is just part of it. I never find it easy to accept this however. All i see in a job is how it can be made better. But everytime i express ways to do this, it isnt recieved well. This is one of the major reason’s i am scared to get a permenant job in computing, because i know i will love it, but i know i will get driven mad by the fact the system wont work and they wont want to make improvements.
But with seeing Kevin Rose on Diggnation, and listening to Leo Laporte, and also Molly Wood, and theres so so many now, has shown me that passion in the work place does exist and can be done. There is hope!
Here’s to people doing what they love! soon i will be one of them, and at some point be paid for it too!
I have to say I’m one of the passionate ones and have been for coming up to 9yrs now but I’ve had to make it a personal passionate that I do through my work (basically my work is my hobby). That can have it’s downfalls but it also gives you the drive to improve yourself and, in the long-term hopefully, your career.
You’re right that there is always a problem to be solved technically but it’s never that which is the hill to climb over. It’s persauding those that hold the decision making powers that the reasons you’re wanting to make this change is for the benefit of the business, and that’s where the battle really lies.
From the other point of view you have to remember that a service is being provided to the customer. Now if the systems in place are doing that, even if they flawed, then they’re doing the job. Even if you think they could be 100% better that is still the foundations that you have to work from
It’s tough but I enjoy it. Most of the time!!
James
(Twitter / Clarkee21)