Noticing increased demand for Simmasters …

Noticing increased demand for Simmasters (made that one up) and OpenSim Administrators, encouraging and motivating. I don’t think you have to be technorati to predict the growth of both of those titles in the technology career list.

To me the Simmaster is the architect/builder/conceptualizer/designer behind a sim. I have met people in SL that say they don’t do anything but are always busy, these are the Simmasters, fingers in everything but over the concept and realization of a sim region or group of regions.

OpenSim Administrator equates to Web Administrator or Middleware Administrator and I suspect will come from those skill pools as more content goes from 2d to 3d internet.

Two separate folks have contacted me about independent OpenSim installation and administration consulting in just the last two weeks. Another friend got snatched up from previous job to do the same. Clearly these are skills to focus on.

Trying a new approach to personal manage …

Warning: Mostly boring personal management stuff ahead. For the more polished stuff stick with http://imohax.com.

Trying a new approach to personal management of core skills. If you don’t teach yourself ain’t nobody gonna teach you. This blog is very much a personal log above everything else, but no reason not to share. I twitter almost everything so no harm done. Don’t worry, nothing company confidential will get blogged here, just the type of work done. Goal of this blog is to

• Prove to myself that I actually am getting stuff done, even on those days it does not feel like it
• Keep me focused on core skills
• Track where time is going for regular review and assessment
• Identify skills gaps based on work that does not fall into tagged group
• Give a level of transparency to those interested in working with me
• Help in project acceptance decisions
• Serve as curriculum vitae base material later
• Provide opportunity to add comments and follow up notes later about lessons learned, etc.

Core Skills, Languages, Tools

Here are the core skills to bring to level five and maintain in order of personal priority. Most all involve the OS or SL viewer, other related tools listed:

• Programming (LSL, Mono, Ruby, Python, Shell, Java, Perl, C++)
• Animation (Poser, Blender)
• Skinning (Photoshop, Poser, Blender)
• Modeling (Blender, 3dsMax)
• Texturing (Photoshop, Blender, Max)
• Terraforming (Photoshop)
• Admin (OS, Ubuntu, Shell, Ruby, Python, REST)
• Bot (libsl, libml)
• Hosting, DJ (New Media, Streaming)
• Exploring, Events
• Mentoring (Video Tutorials, Office Hours)
• Contributing (Code, Content, Blog/Wiki Updates)

Core languages to keep fluent:

• LSL
• Mono
• Python
• Ruby
• Java
• Perl
• C++

Core toolset:

• Second Life
• OpenSim
• Photoshop
• Blender
• Poser

Tags to Match

I think I will use a strict set of tags on this blog to be able to quickly see if I am weak in a focus area just by the number of blog posts for a given tag. Those tags with two parts are actually just subcategories of the first:

• secondlife
• opensim
• programming lsl mono dotnet ruby python shell xml html rest mysql db2 postgresql cplusplus
• animation poser blender
• skinning clothing photoshop poser blender avpainter
• 3dmodeling blender 3dsmax
• texturing photoshop blender 3dsmax uvmapping bumpmapping imagemapping
• terraforming photoshop
• administering opensim secondlife ubuntu linux aix windows
• bots libsl secondlife opensim
• hosting events dj music video presentations conferences
• mentoring tutorials video officehours
• exploring locations
• contributing

And how about a few tags for posts like this one:

• personal assessments goals skills lessonslearned
• learning (goes with any others when not actually working on it)

Four Hour Time Blocks

Going to try and time blocking roughly into four hour blocks tagged as above to represent completion. Even if not all sequential, hoping that not having any post to this particular blog that does not roughly represent four hours of focus will help map out areas that need focus in the tag cloud, etc.