Muiz Brinkerhoff and Inside Skills Center offering software skills training to individuals, businesses, and in classes at SRJC

Welcome to the eFolio Class Website

Announcements

graphic: New!Friday 14 May 2010, 5.30pm graphic: New!
Grading of Portfolio Websites in Progress

I want everyone to be very clear about NOT removing ANY of your pages at your sites UNTIL Final Grades have been submitted to Admissions & Records.

I am IN THE PROCESS of doing the grading, and it's going to take me into the week AFTER finals to complete it. The reason is that I will be out of town and off the grid all of next week.

Saturday 08 May, 2010, 11am
Gradebook Updated

I've looked at the Lesson 6 Job Board/Freelance Directory Reviews, Company Research/Work Contract Reports, and have recorded the scores on in the online gradebook.

Sunday 02 May, 2010, 5.40pm
Gradebook Updated

I've looked at the Lesson 5 Portfolio site evaluations, and have recorded the scores on in the online gradebook. I'll be looking at the Job Board/Company Research/Work Contract assignments from Lesson 06 beginning tomorrow.

I'm quite pleased with how most everyone approached the site evaluations, both for your classmates', and your own sites. There were only a very few instances where it looked like the evaluator may have been a bit too lenient or too strict.

I'm also happy to see the many good suggestions for improvement, as that shows that you're really understanding the principles, and noticing fairly objectively whether an area meets them or could be brought a bit closer.

Hopefully this exercise was a valuable one for you.

This course is really jam-packed with information and things to focus on, remember, and get accomplished, and you all have worked very hard, and done a great job.

Tuesday 27 April 2010, 8.30am graphic: New!
Substantial Changes Made to Lesson 06

This announcement only pertains to anyone who may have looked at, or printed out the Lesson 06 page and/or the Assignment 06 page, yesterday afternoon, evening, night, or before 8.30am this morning.

I made some significant changes to the assignments this morning, and a few changes on the Lesson 06 page, so you will need to reprint, or at least be very aware that things have changed when you begin working with this week's material.

Monday 26 April 2010, 10.30am
Gradebook Updated

I've looked at everyone's Self Promo assignment, and your 1st Drafts, and have sent you each detailed comments for any areas that I think need to be massaged, or fine tuned, or have issues or aspects that need to be addressed.

I want to say that I'm aware of how difficult the Self Promo exercise is for most people, and also how much work has gone into getting your Portfolio sites pulled together in only 2+ weeks.

If you haven't done so yet, please read the clarification of the Self Promo exercise that I posted here on 20 April (below), as almost everyone misunderstood the nature of the transition from Plain Facts Paragraph to Elevator Speech.

Tuesday 20 April 2010, 2.30pm
Self Promotion: A Difficult Assignment, and a Bit Misunderstood

Quite a few folks seem to have misunderstood the process of turning the Just the Facts paragraph into the Elevator Speech -- they mistakenly condensed it down, making it shorter by removing a lot of important, concrete details which the Just the Facts paragraph contained.

What they're left with after the surgery is a weak cousin of the Just the Facts paragraph, that makes a few vague and unsupported claims to skills, instead of the powerful older brother of Just the Facts, which will strongly project the image of competence AND accomplishment that the Elevator Speech needs to be.

And of course, in the next step of condensing the Elevator Speech into the Sound Bite sentence, what was already weak gets weaker, because the there wasn't enough 'meat on the bones' in the first place.

Elevator Speech
The Elevator Speech is your primary, promotional pitch for you and your skills that you have ready and could give to anyone, at any time, to leave them with a sufficiently powerful, detailed impression that you have what it takes to meet their needs.

After hearing your pitch in person, or reading it at your site, you want them to remember you and specifically what you can do for them, so that when they need the services or product which you can provide, they will be sure to contact you, rather than just grabbing the first person listed in the yellow pages.

Your Elevator Speech/promotional pitch should have enough detail in it to make that positive first impression and memory connection, and it needs to be longer than 2 or 3 brief sentences.

If read aloud, or presented verbally to the person you're pitching your skills to, it should take approximately 20 - 30 seconds (the length of an short elevator ride).

It needs to strongly answer the potential employer/client's question "what can you provide or accomplish for me and my business?" and to do that it needs some specific, concrete accomplishments that the employer/client can relate to, and not just a simple listing of the names of software applications and programming languages.

Sound Bite Sentence
This needs to contain just enough overview PLUS detail to confirm the potential client's decision to stick around and take a closer look at your About Me page (where they'll find your Elevator Speech which will contain the concrete detail about accomplishments that they are looking for), after their attention has been grabbed by your Slogan/Tag Line and the look of your top page.

A very important perspective to keep in mind,
or Geek-Speak About Tools versus Plain Talk About End-User Services and Products
Some clients will be familiar enough with the various names and uses of the technical tools and applications that you are skilled with . . .

  • Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver
  • HTML, CSS, Java, JavaScript, C, C#, SEO
  • Standards based Web Site Design, Database Driven Content
  • and so forth

If they are familiar enough with these technical terms and names, they are likely to know already what these tools and applications can potentially produce for them, or how someone proficient in their use might be able to benefit them and meet their needs. The list of techie stuff, plus a few followup questions, will enable them to tell whether you're the right person to hire, or not.

Most others, however, won't have a clue to what those things are or what they represent. Their interests and understandings are in the end products, the real world stuff that they either need to begin using, or need to upgrade, in their day to day business operations.

They generally have little interest in the names of the tools or the technical jargon that usually accompanies them. Because of their focus on their business needs and the products and services that they are offering for sale, their vocabulary orbits around the names and the jargon connected with

  • web pages
  • interactive forms, mailing lists, events calendars
  • shopping carts, secure credit card payments
  • top ranking in internet searches
  • and so on

There is often a huge gap between the real world understandings, experience and needs of the client, and the technical understandings and experience of the professionals they need to hire. When that gap exists, the names of the tools/apps and the technical jargon used to talk about them can often confuse and even intimidate the client.

Don't Let Geek-Speak Predominate
If Geek-Speak predominates in your promotional content, it can put the potential client off, leading them to believe that they may be entering a situation where they don't understand much of what they will be called on to ok and pay for, and so will be risking not being able to tell whether they're getting what they're paying for, or getting ripped off.

I am NOT saying that you should remove all technical terms and application names from your promotional content. I AM saying that the tech talk needs to be grounded in the end results -- what can you produce/achieve with these technical tools.

To promote yourself effectively, you need to bridge that gap for them in both your Elevator Speech and your Sound Bite, by talking about the things they use and need, in addition to your tech skills and accomplishments -- it's a balancing act, but if you keep remembering to stay focused on their end-result needs rather than on your particular technical process and the tools you will use, if you keep asking yourself the question "what does my promo content say about being able to meet their specific needs?" it is an achievable balance.

Monday 19 April 2010, 10.30am
Lesson 05

We'll we're over the hump and heading downhill towards the finish. This week you'll be evaluating a classmate's portfolio site, and your own, according to a series of Evaluation Rating Criteria that are drawn directly from the Portfolio and Resume Guidelines, so that you both give and get a reality check about which areas of your sites really incorporate the Guidelines and which areas don't quite, or possibly have missed the mark altogether -- all for the purpose of giving you the concrete information that will allow you to make them better than they are, already.

I've looked through the Self Promo assignments, and will be sending some comments about how to tighten them up, or add more concrete info, or to get your tech skills mentioned first, so that they are more promotional of what you're trying to promote -- your and your skills for a particular target industry or career.

Because the majority of you haven't indicated that your Portfolio 1st Draft is ready yet, I created the list of students in the rotation for site evaluations from those who uploaded the Self Promo assignment.

There's no point in assigning someone to evaluate a site for a student who may not have anything uploaded to evaluate.

If your name is NOT on the list, and if your site is ready to be viewed BEFORE the next Saturday, please contact me via email, so that I can arrange for someone to evaluate your site, and for you to evaluate a classmate's site. DON'T just pick someone at random, as you won't get credit for that evaluation.

Tuesday 06 April 2010, 3.30pm
Gradebook Updated (5.15pm)

Scores for all Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 assignments that have been submitted as of 5.15pm today, have been entered into the online gradebook.

BEWARE of Splash Pages

In creating your Portfolio sites, be aware of the Cons against using a Splash Page that forces your site visitors to go through it to access your real Portfolio home page, as well as the Pros for using one.

Despite the obvious graphical and showcasing Pros, there are quite a few navigational, organizational, and accessibility Cons. Check out the following links which focus on this issue:

Just Stumbled Across this Site - Web Pages That Suck

In searching for links to include in the section above about the Pros and Cons of Splash Pages, I found this article:

Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995 - 2015, by Vincent Flanders, at WebPagesThatSuck.com

The author offers 16 categories of 'suck-ey-ness', with snarky titles, narrative, and links to examples that demonstrate the point he's making. Here are few of the category titles:

  • Believing that people care about you or your website;
  • Using design elements that get in the way of your visitors
  • Thinking your web site is your marketing strategy
  • Have you ever seen another web site? Really? Doesn't look like it
  • Using Mystery Meat Navigation
  • Forgetting the Purpose of Text
  • Confusing web design with a magic trick
  • and so on

This could be a great resource for you to consult when you start feeling creative, to add a bit of practical reality to your flight of inspiration or fancy.

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