Welcome To September – News, Jobs, Events and Updates for 9/5/2012

Really?

September?

Already?!

Wow.  The kids are back in school, fashion freaks have put their white items into storage, and am I the only one that’s thinking “Where did all of those Mayan calendar conspiracy freaks go that were screaming at the tops of their lungs four months ago?  Shouldn’t they be getting louder right about now?”

Meh.  We’ll keep scheduling our events and writing snarky blog entries until the world actually gets swallowed by a black hole, or collides with another planet, or whatever the heck else is supposed to happen…so let’s get rolling…

Our next event will be one of our casual networking events, and it will take place on Thursday, September 20th in the back room of the BlackFinn in Royal Oak. As always, you can find the details on our sitehttp://www.ITinTheD.com/meet/ – or on LinkedIn (http://linkd.in/P0pRyr), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ITintheD), Meetup (http://meetup.ITinTheD.org), or any of our other “presence” pages or event listings around the web.

Should be a good time, looking forward to seeing you there.

And of course we have some reading material for you.

I believe we’ve adequately covered my addictive personality in the past, and so it should come as no surprise that Angry Birds…every edition of it…lives on my phone.  It should also come as no surprise that I managed to get a networking analogy out of Angry Birds, which you can read at http://www.ITinTheD.com/3017/dont-be-that-guy-the-angry-birds-edition/

On a completely random note, while I thank all of you who reached out for your concern, when I posted a note wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday weekend over the long Labor Day weekend and included a warning about every cop on the planet hunting drunk drivers…that didn’t mean that I had gotten a DUI the night before.  I was just genuinely expressing some concern and broadcasting a heads up…but nice to know I’ve set the bar so high for your expectations of me…

Speaking of expectations, you might want to read Don’t Be That Guy: The Booty Call Networker over at http://www.ITinTheD.com/2415/dont-be-that-guy-the-booty-call-networker/ if we haven’t talked in a while and you have expectations in mind as to how that call will go.

Another new entry went live in the How Not To Suck category, simply titled Always Be Yourself.  Because you should always be yourself…even while doing The Humpty Dance.

That’s right – The Humpty Dance.

Can’t wait to read it now, can you?  It’s over here: http://www.ITinTheD.com/4040/always-be-yourself/

And of course there’s always our LinkedIn group.  That lives over at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=91763, and there are always conversations taking place, jobs being posted, all sorts of fun stuff going on.  Right now, there are a few chats you might be interested in:

– Is “Chief Technology Marketing Officer” the next “hot” CxO position? http://lnkd.in/Eyeizx

– Recruiting in technology beyond LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter: http://lnkd.in/xM2gdd

– A really good discussion about the whole A+ cert, and questioning if it’s even really worth it: http://lnkd.in/RERe3f

– We all know ageism exists, but are you making it worse? http://lnkd.in/Dm8XgD

– Is Indeed “the” spot for hiring? http://lnkd.in/dYCNvh

– Are you in the military Reserves?  Ever had any issues with employers?  Are you an employer that’s got Reservists on staff?  One of our members would like to hear from you: http://lnkd.in/5iXxri

If you’re interested in the whole healthcare reform thing, and how it’s actually going to impact business owners, employees, students, etc., then you might want to check out this event – https://www.wepay.com/events/SocialMediaisaParty – next Wednesday (September 12th).  We don’t normally promote events you have to pay for…but since I was actually involved in the last one of these sessions that took place, I can actually say that I met a lot of good people there, and so it might be worth checking out if you’re interested in the topic.

On September 11th, there’s a free event for embedded systems folks:

Do you design, develop or get involved in computing systems or time-critical apps for automotive, industrial automation, mil/aero, telecom, datacom, process control…more? The Real-Time & Embedded Computing Conference (MathWorks Keynote, educational Breakouts, Exhibits, plus lunch & parking/free) is coming to The Metropolitan Hotel in Troy on Sept 11th and the invitation is Open to you and your colleagues! From 8:30am – 2:30pm, meet up with several leading vendors and their own experts, such as AMD, MathWorks, Acromag, AAEON, ADLINK, Meta Technical, plus another 30. See new product demos, hear the latest trends, learn and network from industry vendors and your peers. Register for your free full-access comp pass: http://www.rtecc.com/conferences/view/100

Remember when we tried to do a pub crawl and people freaked out because we were heading downtown?  Well, maybe this one will be more to your liking.  Friday, September 14th. Pub crawl on the East Side of town.  Pub crawl ends at a club for a comedy show.  And since it’s an event to celebrate the birthday of one of the comics…well, you can be sure everyone’s bringing their “A” game.  Yep, it’s those comics that I keep writing about lately, and you can find more info or buy tickets out at http://www.thedetroitfunnies.com

Yelp.com has something pretty cool going on this Friday that you might want to check out.  It’s called Yelp Turns It Up To 11, and it takes place at the Fillmore downtown.  It sounds ridiculously cool:

DETROIT! Are you ready to rock? You’d better be, because we’re calling on you to join us for our biggest bash yet! This free shindig is going down on Friday, September 7th from 7-10pm at the legendary Fillmore and this is the place to save a spot on the guest list!

Wanna know more? Here we go!

Raise your goblet of rock and toast with some of our fine refreshments! We’ll have a cash bar plus tastings from: B.Nektar Meadery, Hard Luck Vodka, High Liquors, L.Mawby Sparkling Wine, Pearl Vodka

Hungry? Sop up that booze with eats from: BlackFinn, Cliff Bell’s, Green Dot Stables, Just Baked, Peteet’s Famous Cheesecake, Treat Dreams, Zoup!

Hydration? Required. Sip on some: Coffee Beanery, Monster Energy, Vitaminwater

We can’t crank this ‘ish up to 11 without some stellar local tunes, right? How about sets from: The Sights, Passalacqua, Matt Jones & the Reconstruction, DJ Skeez, DJ Chuck Sipperley

Not enough? How about some entertainment and interactives from: Alchemy Henna, Detroit Derby Girls, Great Lakes Trivia, i3Detroit (with life sized Connect Four, Robot Fight Club and more!) , Rodan + Fields, Shutterbooth, Sweet Bikes, Velocity Cow 

…you can read all about it, check out links and try to get your name on the list at http://www.yelp.com/events/detroit-yelp-turns-it-up-to-11.

On that note, we’ve also semi-decided that we’re going to start having even more fun than usual from time to time.  To that end, we’re tentatively calling a few things “ITintheD After Dark” events.  These won’t be networking events, but they will be a hell of a lot of fun.  If you’re interested, keep an eye on our Facebook pagehttp://www.facebook.com/ITintheD – if and when we do things, we’ll announce them out there.  Candidly, it’s going to be things that we’re already going to with our friends because we think they sound like fun (wrestling events in dive bars, roller derby, etc) and if you feel like meeting up with us at one of them…great.  If you don’t?  Also great.  Seeing the 2 Live Crew in a bombed out warehouse building in the heart of Bartertownuhh, downtown Detroit, probably isn’t for everyone.  We get that.  But every time we tell a story of our latest adventures at one of our ITintheD.com events, we get a handful of “DUDE!  WHY DIDN’T YOU **TELL** ME YOU WERE DOING THAT?!” …from people, and so now we’re going to tell you.

Most of the time.

Some things…well, some of the things we do you just really don’t need to know about.  It’s better that way…trust me.

So, again: Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/ITintheD

But to bring it back to our LinkedIn group for a moment, if you do happen to be looking for a gig right now, there are plenty out there at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?careerDiscussion=&gid=91763

I think that’ll do for this time around.  Catch you next time.

Regards,

Bob, Dave and Jeff

ITintheD.com
On the web: http://www.ITinTheD.org
On LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=91763
On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ITintheD
On Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ITintheD
On Meetup: http://meetup.ITinTheD.org