Now that we know who the Democratic nominee will be, it's time to go to work...

Obama for America is looking for exceptionally talented web developers who want to play a key role in a historic political campaign and help elect Barack Obama as the next President of the United States. (Interested in a security expert position?)

This six-month opportunity will allow you to:

• Create software tools which will enable an unprecedented nationwide voter contact and mobilization effort
• Help build and run the largest online, grassroots fundraising operation in the history of American politics
• Introduce cutting-edge social networking and online organizing to the democratic process by empowering everyday people to participate on My.BarackObama

You must have:

• At least 5 years of professional web development experience
• A deep understanding of LAMP development processes and best practices
• Experience building complex applications using PHP and MySQL
• Advanced or expert CSS, Javascript, and AJAX skills
• An abiding desire to put your technical wizardry to work for democracy and for our country

Special consideration given to candidates who have:

• Experience scaling large LAMP applications
• Posses deep knowledge of MySQL performance and query optimization
• Strong practical knowledge of web application security
• Created highly usable user interface/experience for complex web applications
• Worked in a fast‐paced web development environment and have proven their ability to write outstanding code under tight deadlines

Successful candidates will join the development team in Boston, MA. Candidates should be willing to commit to work through the election in November. This is a salaried position. Housing assistance may be available for those not located in the Boston area.

Click here to apply!

When I was a sophomore in college, poking (not literally) around AOL, chatting until the wee hours of the morning was a pasttime. In 1998, you could logon to the AOL software and search member profiles for "Fordham" or "Brooklyn" to find people (girls) to IM with live. New people on tap--it's a concept that has largely disappeared from the typical social web experience today. Now and then, I get a random Skyper from Italy, but young US users don't really use Skype for IM.  Now it's about your friends (and maybe people who read your blog.)

In fact, one noticable change about Facebook in the last few months is the disappearance of "Network" pages. These were pages meant to aggregate all the activity of users in a particular network, be it geographic, corporate or a school. For the most part, they focused

on people you didn't know--random wall posts from strangers, events that were public but not really meant for you, and browsing of people in your city or school but outside your friend group.

This was counter to the experience Facebook clearly wanted you to have--one about your friends and the information they wanted to share with you. So, despite the fact that the site "opened up" to high schools, then to the general public, the experience actually got less open as these network pages disappeared. Even mass friending is generated by your email account, guaranteeing that you're unlikely to get a friend request from someone you don't know, unless you're Scoble or Calacanis.

What this means is that the social signal to noise is still pretty high.  If you think about all the content you see on Facebook, the vast majority of it is content directly tied to people you know.  That's why the events platform is so successful.  Finding relevent events on the web has been a challenge for quite a while, and now, having that filter of being shown events that my friends are going to is as good a recommender as any.  I find more new events though Facebook than I ever did using any other tool.  Evite has much of this same data, but they really blew it by not showing me things my friends are going to. 

Applications have gotten less and less spammy, too, and will be even less disruptive after the next UI iteration.

When you keep your connections to your actual friend group, the pictures, events, notes and updates are all highly likely to be relevent to you.  That's why its so hard to unseat Facebook at moment. Not only are all my friends there, but they're presented to me without much disruption.

Not only that, but that's also why mainstream users don't care about data lock-in. If all my friends are in one place, than what do I care if I can't move them? I don't want to. Imagine if Facebook was a bar and all your friends were there at a party. You wouldn't say, "Hey, all my friends are here... How do we get them out?"

That is, unless it felt crowded, which Facebook's reliance on activity vs. presence ensures it won't. At any given time, most of your friends,  just aren't doing anything, which is fine.

The interesting thing to me, though, is where all the strangers went and whether anyone mainstream really cares. There are video services like PalTalk that are based around random chat rooms, or servicesthat can introduce you to people along specific shared interest lines like last.fm, Flickr, MyBlogLog, but is seems clear that the web has gone the way of Meetup Scott's favorite shirt: "Fuck you, I don't need more friends."

Was it always the case that we preferred our own friends to new folks, and we just didn't have the critical mass of friends online before? Now, it's odd if someone my age or younger isn't on Facebook.

Fred wrote the other day that he think the web is going the way of everyone publishing to the world. I think he's almost right. He should have written "everyone publishing to whoever they want, which includes everyone, if they choose." I'm not sure whether that means people will choose everyone or not.

It's possible we'll wind up in two camps. There are tons of people who go out of their way to make Facebook profiles, MySpace photos, etc. private, and ohers who live out loud. The social implications of the divide are interesting, although I don't necessarily agree with Tom that its a class thing. There are just as many show-off inner city teens on MySpace as their are rich guys who want to publish their health records.

You might say those teens don't know any better, but I think we may get to a world where we just throw up our hands and say, "What was the fuss about anyway? So now you know. Big deal."

more cat pictures

more cat pictures

You know, there comes a point where we have to stop calling David a "wunderkind" and just refer to him as a really smart, thoughful guy who knows what the eff he's talking about.  I think I'll just shorten that to calling him "David Karp."   Does Anyone Still Read TechCrunch? | David's Log

"After giving some thought to the future of TechCrunch, I think it might be a necessary evil. It’s managed to capture a huge amount of the negative voices in the development community. Unless they’re leaking info, their stories have no real impact on anyone’s business. And so far as I can tell, the development community, at least the brilliant folks I’ve been lucky enough to spend time with, pay no attention to TC (especially on the East Coast). Meanwhile, anytime I catch their awful writing, or feel suicidal and start reading TC comments, I’ll have to remind myself that if these poisonous people weren’t holed up at TechCrunch, I might actually have to interact with them :[ So I think I’m grateful Arrington has charged himself with being the dev community’s douche magnet."

The most recent tracks I've been listening to on last.fm:

So Haterington is basically admitting that he wants to single out the Twitter team to rile them up.  What is that supposed to accomplish...  besides increased traffic to TechCrunch?

from Hey Twitter I Have A Few Questions Too

"Twitter continues to be annoyingly and constructively responsive to criticism. They respond to this post here, saying “We’re working on a better architecture.” Kind of takes the air out of the balloon when you can’t get them riled up."

I think it's pretty interesting to compare Kara Swisher's focus on the ongoing coverage of Yahoo!, Microsoft and Facebook--companies where billions of dollars are at stake, the future of search and the ad market, and the whole tech landscape, with Mike's continuing shoulder chip and insistance on picking on one small startup company (and a guy who doesn't even work there anymore) whose extreme popularity is causing them to face some tough technical challenges. 

The unfortunate thing is that it's causing a non-story to bubble up to the top of TechMeme.  I wish we could bury stories there, because a petty Haterington vendetta is not news as far as I'm concerned.

The most recent tracks I've been listening to on last.fm:

• Lessons on recommendation systems
  (tags: recommendations data)
• TechCrunch Stats W.1 – Why Mike Arrington is popular - The StatBot - Fun stats. Visualizations. Leaderboards.
  This bodes well for Disqus... the more you comment on your own site, the more engaging and popular it can be.
  (tags: comments stats data)

I've had two conversations with people in the last 24 hours who told me that they were trying to get over exes.  The process has captured their focus and is preventing them from seriously considering getting to know new people.

I think the idea of getting over someone is terrible and that we need to stop putting so much pressure on people to "move on".  Let's be realistic.  Unless the person you loved changes or you change, you're always going to love or at least be a little in love with them--and that's not a bad thing.  I just think most people aren't confident enough to be ok with the fact that the person they're with still has feelings for someone else.

But why wouldn't you?  That's totally natural.  If you were with someone for a long time, loving that person is always going to be part of who you are, and to be honest, if someone meets you and says, "Hey, I can't deal with you until you totally forget that person," then they're in a sense trying to deny part of what makes you who you are.  Hell, there's a part of me that still loves my high school girlfriend from like a dozen years ago--but it's not really active love.  It's just the kind of nostalgic fond memory of a time long since passed--a love for the innocence of the time.  The reality is that I haven't spoken to her in years and I have no idea what she's like now... but as far as that person that I knew in that moment in time, that feeling will certainly never go away.  It's part of who I am--I'm just not losing any sleep over it.

Of course, it's different if you're still actively trying to win back someone or get back together--but once you realize that's not happening, I'd be completely ok getting to know someone who has recently got out of a relationship.   Ending relationships cause a lot of introspection and self evaluation.  "Who am I?"  "What was I doing?"  "What do I really want?"   These are all questions that the end of a relationship brings that I want whoever I'm dating to be asking themselves in a pretty serious way.

If anything, actually, I'd rather be with someone who recently proved the capacity and willingness to love someone and commit to them versus someone who's last attempt at vulnerability is a long distant memory. 

What I'm saying is, don't be embarrassed over emotions in turmoil, or feel like it makes you some kind of relationship leper.  You are who you are at any given time, and if a new person doesn't accept that, just forget them.  We ALL have baggage.  Baggage helps us travel.  We take it with us to prepare ourselves for our trips, to hold on to valuable keepsakes that meant something to us.  You'd be crazy not to take baggage with you on a trip.  You shouldn't let it way you down, though, but don't pretend you don't have or need it either.   

I may pack light, but I have baggage, too.  Some of it is old and some of it is new, but I have no interest in anyone who can't deal with its existence.

From Wikipedia

"Manhattanhenge (sometimes referred to as Manhattan Solstice) is a semi-annual occurrence in which the setting sun aligns with the east-west streets of Manhattan's main street grid. The term is derived from Stonehenge, at which the sun aligns with the stones on the solstices. It was coined in 2002 by Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History. It applies to those streets that follow the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 which laid out a grid offset 28.9 degrees from true east-west."

My friend Ashley is a painter.

I helped her out recently and she transformed one of my favorite photos into a painting to thank me.  The photo is of kayaks stacked up in Riverside Park after the Downtown Boathouse Harrison Street Regatta.

Check out how cool this is...

.

• Top 10 Reasons to Date an Entrepreneur
  (tags: myposts dating)
• Welcome to Destination ImagiNation!
  (tags: creativity education kids)

Link: Verbose Coma : Culture Gone to Brunch: The Bagel of my Discontent.

Hilarious...  Any ideas?   Personally, I think if you had a hose with hot water, you could flush it with water through the screen.  Eventually, it would thaw, then get really soggy and disintegrate.

Here's what I've just been listening to on last.fm

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Hey Alex, I think there's a bug in our code, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

ew ew ew ew ew ew ew

Paul Graham recently wrote a piece about cities.  He puts forth Cambridge as a city of ideas, New York as a city that is all about money (where people doing startups are second class citizens) and the Valley as a place for startups. 

I’m not about to start comparing the Valley to New York City.  That’s just silly, because the Valley has a multi-generational head start on creating tech startup companies.  However, given that, it does make me wonder why Cambridge and the Boston Area is so far behind the Valley, because Route 128 has been a tech center since the late 1950’s.  I mean, “Harvard and MIT are practically adjacent by West Coast standards, and they're surrounded by about 20 other colleges and universities,” as Paul puts it.  Perhaps he should be explaining why his City of Ideas gets less than a third of the venture capital investment that the Valley does.

I think the fact that Cambridge is a city of ideas is exactly why you could say it’s questionable how great a place it is to do a startup.  In an environment dominated by academia—where you lack time pressure, a sense of immediacy—you’ve probably got just as much of a chance of creating an interesting intellectual exercise in burning cash as you do building anything that resembles a real company.  I mean, have you ever tried collaborating with an academic institution if you’re a business?  Your startup would run out of cash before they figured out the right academic chair to lead the effort and which pool of research money to allocate for you.  It’s no accident that startups need to be spun out of these institutions to be successful.  Plus, seen any hugely successful companies come out of university incubators lately?  (And no, Zuckerberg’s dorm room does not qualify as an incubator.)

Also, think about it another way.  What are the last 10 or 20 really novel "ideas" in the startup world?  Things that required a leap of thought...   We can debate it and certainly I'm up for creating a list, but when I think of good ideas, I think of del.icio.us, Skype, Wikipedia, Twitter, Bug Labs, Slingbox, Google (b/c of the biz model)...   Hardly seems like Cambridge has a lock on the idea generation market in the startup world.

Ideas today are a commodity.  Anyone can have an idea, so being the Capital of Ideas is pretty much equivelent to building your city of out of straw.  If I were a co-founder of 3PigsTech.com, I’d think about building somewhere whose choice of building material was more formidable. 

Which brings me back to New York City.  By saying that “New York tells you, above all: you should make more money,” Paul Graham is basically admitting that he’s never been north of Central Park, on the Lower East Side, or out into the Boroughs.  I grew up as a finance major in NYC and I made the same mistake that Paul makes.  It wasn’t until I finished school and got about three years into my career that I soon realized that there was a lot more going on in NYC than just Wall Street. 

When I think of ideas, I think of creativity, not just scholarly research and publication in academic journals.  An idea has no value unless it’s either a) new or b) executed.  If execution is a business phenomenon, I can’t imagine a better place to execute than NYC (or the Valley, if you’re a tech startup), but in terms of new ideas being generated from creative people, I wouldn’t exactly hold the ivory towers of Ivy League schools up against the creative culture of NYC.  New York City is a mecca for design, fashion, dance, art, film, theater, international relations—it’s not difficult to imagine that this stew of creativity rubs off on other industries. 

Hedge funds, for example, are a great example of creativity leaking into another industry.  The most forward thinking, creative investors break out of old institutions to play markets in out of the box ways at hedge funds.

We even solve creative engineering problems here.  Peter Semmehack from Bug Labs, an open source hardware company pushing the limits of creativity in the consumer electronics space, has always said that he has found the best and most creative engineering talent here in NYC.  Need to explore a completely unfamiliar environment millions of miles away?  That was the challenge for the Mars Rover, and it’s no accident that much of it was built here, by HoneyBee Robotics. 

Paul also makes the point that someone creating a startup in NYC would feel like a second class citizen.  I have to be honest—I’ve felt that way several times, but mostly from people outside NYC.  Within the city, I’ve actually felt really supported.  Most of my 21 angel investors are not only in NYC, but they’re either NYC natives or have lived most of their lives here.  Among my large diverse group of friends (I grew up here, went to school here, never lived anywhere else, and know tons of people doing very different professions), I’ve received fantastic support.  No one ever asks me why I don’t just go into investment banking or trading. 

In fact, most of my friends aren’t even in finance at all.  Some of my closest friends are a magazine publisher, a lawyer, and a producer for televised mixed martial arts.  I play on a softball team with two PR folks, a clinical psychologist, a chocolate retailer, two IT guys, another lawyer, a teacher, a media buyer, and oh yeah, one guy in finance.  Most of the volunteers at the kayaking program I participate in don’t even have regular 9–5 jobs.  The other day, I was out on the dock with a guy that resells guitars and plays in a band, a former non-profit exec, a public health researcher, and another IT guy.   And these people don’t all live in big luxury apartment buildings in midtown.  They live with roommates in Astoria, in studios on the Lower East Side…  just scraping by but still loving every minute of it.  And we haven’t even mentioned all the actors and actresses.  Surely they’re not in it for the money, right?

So, the idea that NYC is just all about the money is just ridiculous…. just as ridiculous as this:

“One sign of a city's potential as a technology center is the number of restaurants that still require jackets for men. According to Zagat's there are none in San Francisco, LA, Boston, or Seattle, 4 in DC, 6 in Chicago, 8 in London, 13 in New York, and 20 in Paris.”

How about we make the list “number of restaurants that don’t require jackets for men”?  I have a feeling NYC would lead that list, seeing as the total number of restaurants in NYC minus 13 is probably more than SF and Boston combined.  Is this really how Paul thinks his YCombinator startups should make decisions on where to build their business?  By restaurants with jacket requirements?

But rather than argue about whose city is better, which is similar to the arugument about what language to code in, go with what you know.  Generalizations will get you nowhere.  It would have made no sense for me to build Path 101 anywhere else but NYC, because my network is here.  I found a great technical co-founder, two amazing developers whose experience could not be any more well-suited to their tasks, and a slew of supportive angels.  That doesn’t mean all this stuff comes in a box if you move your startup here, but if you can say the same thing about your neck of the woods, be it Louisville, Miami, the Valley or Cambridge, stay put, keep your head down, and build like the dickens.  Your city is what you make of it and how you build your network, not what the pundits tell you it is. 

Last week, when I posted my "Top 10 Reasons to Date an Entrepreneur" I got a response from someone who was actually interested in going on a date.

It's funny, because that wasn't the intended purpose of the post--it came out of a conversation I was having with someone about entrepreneurs and what working on a startup does to your personal life.  Then I realized, that in my 4+ years of blogging, that was the ONLY time I've ever been approached that way.  2,246 posts and, before that, not a single person has stepped forward and said, "Hey, you seem like the kinda guy I'd want to go out with."

Now, I suppose for half of that time, I've been seeing someone, but I don't think that's always been apparent.  Still, what about the other half??  Perhaps there's the fear of the spotlight--as if I blog all my dates here, which I obviously don't. 

The one thing I think I can say is that, while there's a lot of content here on this blog, it really does only present just a side of me.  I think a lot of blogs are like that--where the professional person comes off in such a way that might be different from the person you'd get to know if you knew them personally.   So, I thought it would be interesting to start a meme encouraging other bloggers to share a little something about who they are and what they want when it comes to their dating/relationship life.

So here are the rules:

Write 5 things about either a) what you value in a counterpart or b) what someone needs to know about your dating/relationship personality.

Then, link to 5 people of the OPPOSITE SEX that you want to see answer these questions (to ensure that it doesn't just look like a bunch of dudes trying to get a date.)  If you're already in a relationship, you can still answer of course.  This is more about getting to know a different side of you, or just getting to know you better.

Ok, here's mine:

1. Despite my strongly held opinions and outspoken nature, I'm actually quite openminded and really desire that in someone else.  I like new ideas and perspectives, and it is exactly this desire for feedback, pushback, etc. that helps me form such strong opinions--because I do feel like I do what I can to be surrounded by tire-kickers.
2. I'm much more of a 1 on 1 person than I am about big groups.  I'd rather get to know one person pretty deeply than meet 30 people and just get names and what they do for a living.
3. I want to meet someone who is passionate about something--anything.  It doesn't have to be their career (although if you're going to spend 8-12 hours a day at something, that might as well be it), but I just can't relate to people who can't get really really psyched about at least one thing in their lives.
4. I need someone with a calendar--someone who understands how to stick to some kind of schedule.  That's really different than someone who needs a routine.  Being spontaneous is fantastic, but I also can't deal with last minute cancelations or leaving things too up in the air.  I don't see my friends enough.  I don't see my family enough.  So, if you can't tell me whether or not you're free Saturday afternoon at least a few days in advance, don't expect me to cut out possible family time to leave it open for whenever you figure out where the wind will take you that day.
5. I take care of myself and find it difficult to date anyone who doesn't respect their own body.  I don't think I could date a smoker, and while you don't have to be a gym rat, getting some kind of exercise at least a couple of times a week shows that you care about yourself and your body--that you think enough of it to keep it up.   I do, however, love desert, so ice cream is a big exception to this--Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia... rrrrrggggg.

Ok, I'll tag Shri (even though she's married) , Rachel, Tik, Tara, and Whitney (although you can learn a lot about her here).   Funny, there were a couple of other women that I wanted to tag, but I knew they'd never repost this, because their blogs are solely professional.  I think that's very telling, because a lot of women don't even want to open that door at all and let all the crazies in.  :)

Let's just do some quick testing of header and footer things with these templates.

Wow it actually works!

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Look...  Citizen journalism...oh yeah, and a fire across the street from me, too.  It was out pretty quickly...  No injuries.

Seth posted a great networking post that I could have written myself...    In fact, I pretty much did write all that in my failed attempt to write a book for college freshmen.  However, he's written it a lot more concisely worded (I tend to be overly verbose, if you haven't noticed) and tailored it to the VC world.

I'll add a few notes directly to his, and then I'd like to include a snippet from the book I was writing about what exactly you want to get accomplished when you sit down and have a networking meeting or call--the information you want to walk out with.

One thing I would add on to #5 and #6 is using Pubsub.  If you meet someone that you'd like to go the extra mile with in terms of staying in touch, create a Pubsub feed via RSS that includes their name, the name of their company, and their industry... perhaps even a competitor or two.  This way, you get relevent news that you can share with them up to the minute and comment on.  That will keep you current enough to be interesting.  There's nothing worse than sending stale articles to people in an effort to try and impress them.  (Well, I suppose there are lots of worse things, but its just an expression...)   

Ok, so here's what I wrote about what you should be talking about in a networking call or meeting, and its written to be relevent across industries. 

You might think that questions like "What do you do?" are too obvious and the kind of thing that you should have figured out before the interview, but to be honest, I don't think that outsiders really know what a firm does until someone inside explains it to them.  Now, obviously, you don't want to come to us and say, "What is Union Square Ventures?", but perhaps you could still ask stuff like, "So I researched about what your investment strategy was and I see that you invest in IT-enabled services, but can you give me a little more detail on what kinds of companies fit into that catagory as you define it?  How did you come to the conclusion that was the best place to invest?"

Ok, so its much wordier, but that's essentially the "What do you do?" question.  You just can't ask "What do you do" because you're supposed to have researched this beforehand.  Truth is, its really hard to research exactly what someone does unless you're a very experienced person in their industry, and since we're talking about networking as a younger person starting out, I don't think some improved verson of "What do you do?" is such a bad thing.

Ok, so here's the passage from my book that didn't go anywhere...

"Ok, so no coming out and asking for a job upfront. We’re just doing research at this point, right? So, what do we actually want to know from these people? The four most relevant questions a student can ask networking contacts are:

1. What do you do? The Old Standby. It’s the easiest question to ask and get answered. The key here is that when someone tells you that they are an astrophysicist, you need to make sure you know what that means. Some follow up questions to make sure you have the answers to make sure you understand exactly what someone is doing include:

a. Who do you do that for? (Are they self employed, work for the government, a firm, etc.?)

b. Why would they want that done? Why does it help them? (Of course, don’t ask if the answer is obvious. If someone is a firefighter, don’t ask why the city wants fires put out, lest you come off like a pyromaniac.)

c. Does everyone who does what you do work for the same type of company that you do? (Some lawyers work for law firms, others work for corporations, and because of that, their jobs are somewhat, but not entirely different.)

We’re not interested in only what someone does for a career. Remember that we said our idea of success involves your whole life, and that who you are isn’t simply defined by what you get paid to do for a living. What does your contact do outside of work? Do they have a family, a hobby, or are they involved with a charity or volunteer work? It is important to get a sense of the whole person that you are talking to, not just one facet of their lives.

2. How did you get into that? This question will give you answers about their past, but may uncover some helpful clues that you could use for your future. How they got into what they are doing now basically outlines the steps you might need to take should you be interested in pursuing the field that they are in now. It is also important to understand whether or not they actually planned on getting where they got into, or whether they pretty much fell into it. What seems to happen a lot is that the actual job they do is unexpected, but it often stems from poking around in some related area. This is why the message behind this book is not to start planning, but just to start poking.

3. Where do you think it will lead you? Obviously, no one can predict the future, but most people at least have an idea of where they would like their jobs to lead, or at least whether or not they want it to lead somewhere else. Is this the last stop on the line, or just one of many?

4. Now that you have a sense of the present, past, and future of this person’s self navigation, you need to measure how genuine it is. Maybe this person is at a place in their life that is the exact opposite of where they actually want or intended to be. It is important for you to ask how ideal their situation is and what, if anything, they would change about it, besides the pay, of course.

5. Possibly the most important thing you can ask every contact you speak with is for a recommendation to speak with someone else. This will ensure that your network grows. Whether the recommendation comes from your indication of interest in a particular field, or just your contact’s idea of what you find interesting, trying to get each contact to lead to a new one is a great way to build up your network and increase your chances of coming across something great. Just ask the person if they know of anyone that they think you would be interested in talking to. Keep it open-ended.

Keep in mind that networking is a two way street as well. What you tell them is just as important as what they tell you. By telling people about your interests and your search to find out what it is that you want to do, you accomplish several things. First, you impress people that you are an ambitious, motivated person who is trying to be thoughtful about the direction they set themselves out in. Having people think well of you isn’t such a bad thing, of course. Second, it gets the word out about your interest. Every person you talk to then becomes a scout for you. In the back of their mind is now an alarm set to go off when an opportunity for you comes their way, and the more people you talk to, the wider you cast a net that might catch something that might prove interesting to you.

At this point, for the average freshmen, networking should be all about asking a ton of questions. Yet again, this requires us to throw away antiquated ideas about what’s cool and what isn’t. Remember how, in high school, two minutes before class ended, you’d get all annoyed about that one kid that had to ask just one more question. Well now, asking questions are a sign of intelligence. Smart people ask questions—they know what they don’t know. You’re at college to learn—not just in the classroom, but in every facet of your life. You should be out meeting new and different kinds of people, asking them about where they came from, what they want for themselves, what they value and who they want to be. When you are at the gym, you should ask people to show you new ways to fend off that freshman 15. When you walk by an open door in your dorm and someone has a great inflatable couch, ask them where they got it. Learning off of other people is a great skill to have, and all it takes is a little effort.

So how does this work? Do you just call up everyone in your newly created contact list and rattle off five questions? No, definitely not. First off, unlike a telemarketer, you want to have some consideration for trying not to catch the person at a bad time. Contacting the person beforehand to schedule a second conversation is the best way to go. In general, e-mail is a great icebreaker if you have their e-mail address. I find that when people drop me an e-mail, I can answer it on my own time, and an e-mail will never inconvenience anyone. With a phone call, you never know what they might already be up to when they pick up the phone. Everyone is different, though. You should try and judge it based on your knowledge of the person. Drop someone a call or e-mail just to see if they might be willing to answer a few questions about their career and when it might be convenient for them to talk. Never send anyone questions. You want to actually speak with these people, because that forms a better connection. When you have a good conversation with someone, as we said before, it builds a real relationship. When you e-mail questions, it becomes more of a one-way relationship about what they can get you.

Setting up a time to talk in the future also gives the person an opportunity to get mentally prepared for what they might talk to you about. Even if you don’t give them the questions beforehand, knowing that they will speak with you about what they do will probably cause them to do a little thinking about it beforehand.