July Commentator of the Month!

Congratulations to DigitalMind (Jason) from TechieNation.com for winning ten bucks - he is July commentator of the month!
Don’t spend all the money at once now!
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Join my Newsletter for more SimonStapleton.com!

I have just launched an opt-in email newsletter which will give you more from SimonStapleton.com.
The newsletter isn’t just a re-hash of the same content, but it will be more great news, discussion and advice not available on the website. It’s stuff like this:

More personal views on the IT industry from me, Simon Stapleton
A round-up of [...]

Putting Your Value in the Spotlight

I found this great article on CIO.COM , which discusses ways to raising the awareness of the value you create.
I strongly recommend you take a look at it. What I like is the tips are simple and straightforward, and anyone can implement them - you don’t have to be top brass. And they’re fun! [...]

Be Enlightened Each Day!

It’s so easy to be alerted to new articles on this website every day by Subscribing to my RSS Feed.
It’s simple, and you can use your favorite RSS reader by adding the feed address below or simply view it using the Free RSS viewer with Feedburner - just click on the link!
What’s more I’ll be giving away [...]

Suggest a Topic - You Could Earn $10

Nobody has the monopoly on good ideas. So I’m looking for your suggestions on topics for me to cover on SimonStapleton.com. Anything goes really, as long as it is appropriate to the IT industry, IT career building or personal development.
For those suggestions I like the most, I will pay $10 and credit you with the [...]

Commentator Leaderboard added! Bonus Cash Prize!

I’ve added a Leaderboard for on the far right sidebar to show the most active commentators.
And I will be giving $10 USD to the top ranked commentator on the first day of each month!
I’ve done this to encourage commenting. Why? Commenting adds to the quality and richness of this site’s content as comments [...]

Not Green IT again!

I’ve been fishing around the IT community for a couple of months to understand the general attitude towards ‘green IT’. I received quite a mixed bag of results so I thought I’d share them with you.
Firstly some stats. I’ve spoken with 98 people, mostly from IT ops, specifically about the issue:

Only 12 of these people [...]

What is Your External Profile? A Simple Test

Here is a really simple test to find out if you’re a somebody or nobody
Open Google.comand type your name inside “quotes” (e.g. “Simon Stapleton”) into the Search Box. ClickGoogle Search. Look at the results.
OK yes, that is REALLY simple. But did the results surprise you? Are there pages that mention your name and you’re [...]

What Soft Skills Training and Development do Freelancers need?

The big benefits of being freelance is that you generally decide what work you take on, and when you take it on, and there are considerable financial benefits in the short term. IT freelancing is lucrative, compared with permanent positions: income can be three times or more!
The trouble with freelancing though is that reaping the [...]

Technical Professionals acting on Social Responsibility

Example: With a worldwide energy crisis in full effect, IT is coming under pressure to be more socially responsible: what is your response ?
The $64,000 question is how responsible you feel towards the social implications of energy consumption? Do you care if data centers are burning more energy in a day than a town does? [...]