About this talk: “In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to just ignore the ordinary stuff. Marketing guru Seth Godin spells out why, when it comes to getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones.”
job
Hot workplace trends for 2011
Posted by David / Category: freelance, general, market, trends
Portfolios trump resumes, more workers telecommute, social media continues its spread, and mobile marches over desktop: Online magazine CIO provides technology and business leaders with insight and analysis on information technology developments and gives an interesting forecast of some of the key trends for the next year.
According to CIO, the workplace has evolved in new and exciting ways and has become even more centered on the Web. In 2010, mobile applications gained on desktop apps as many companies focused on facilitating smartphones and tablet PCs. Traditional marketing techniques were edged out by web-based marketing via search engines and social media. However, one of the most important trends is the continuous growth of online work. According to the CEO of one of the leading marketplaces for online talent: “It’s a digital world, and the smart companies will hire more flexibly and get more work done online in 2011″. Read the full post on CIO.com.
Technology-centered work trends for 2011:
- Digital portfolios replacing resumes
- Mobile is the new desktop
- Online work: Hiring in the could
- The HTML5/Flash War: Programmers needed
- Businesses will get even more social
- The decline of traditional marketing
The austrian motivation-trainer Peter F. Kinauer found out how to make your professional life more relaxed. He wrote a whole book about it: “So macht Arbeit Spass! 60 Impulse für mehr Motivation im Job”. We put together 9 steps he figured out to ease your working life.
Our life’s get more stressful and a whole lot of general problems stress everybody out. Political problems, climate change and financial crisis all over the world put mental pressure on every person who reads the news. It makes especially the working life easier to remember the positive things in life. This kind of motivation is free and nearly everybody is able to realise it.
Step one: Make yourself smile! You can arrange your office new, e.g. with new decoration.
After slightly descending project postings on projektwerk.de in May, the overall positive trend continues. In particular, the number of SAP projects hit a record high in June: figures mount up to 296 projects in 2010 compared to 110 projects in June 2009.
This growth is due to an unexpectedly strong business year for SAP – as the German software developer was able to increase it’s turnover considerably in the first quarter of 2010. This significant upward development can be attributed to the after-effects of the economic crisis, which drives many companies to restructure operations. This, in turn, leads to heavy investments in the IT sector.
However, not only SAP projects on projektwerk.de show an upward trend.
According to BITKOM, the German Association for Information Technology, the expectations concerning the tendency of the ICT sector’s financial situation rose by 71 percent in the second quarter of 2010.
“The BITKOM-industry is expecting further growth”, says BITKOM chairman Scheer. This is partly due to the necessity of upgrading such infrastructures as electricity supply, government agency networks, and the educational system. Nevertheless, such improvements are only manageable with sufficient specialists available to get the work done. As part of this development, the demand for IT-professionals and freelancers will increase significantly. According to BITKOM there are about 20,000 vacant positions in the ICT sector – every third company listed in the BITKOM Index is complaining about a lack of experts, negatively affecting their performance and business development.
Managing Director of projektwerk GmbH, Dr. Christiane Strasse, sees significant advantages for IT freelancers: “Based on our figures, we can say with certainty that the recovery of the IT market will further continue as more investments will be made. Another important factor is the lack of experts. However, this deficiency can be optimally offset by utilizing freelancers.”

UpMo is a next-generation career management and advancement platform that accelerates professionals to their career goals…
it facilitates job hunting, networking, and career management, and is designed for professionals trying to maintain career control. Take a look: UpMo
not surprisingly, the u.s. is still far ahead of germany and the rest of the world in terms of entrepreneurship. this interesting chart, produced by grasshopper, compares the u.s. portion of gdp (gross domestic product) that comes from entrepreneurship against that of major european countries.
entrepreneural activity in the u.s. (as a percentage of gdp) lies at 11.3%, compared to 6.3% in germany for example. also worth mentioning is how “would-be” entrepreneurs perceive starting a new business in the current economy: according to the data provided, entrepreneurs in the u.s. feel far more optimistic about starting a new business in the near future and foster much less fear of failure.
in addition, the graphic depicts the percentage of enterprises by size, native vs. foreign-born self-employed and the overall difficulty entrepreneurs face when starting a new business.
image by theeducatedentrepreneur.com
check out the full size infographic here.
CSS Spezialist in eigener Sache gesucht
Posted by Simone / Category: creative, creative-projektwerk
projektwerk wächst und gedeiht. Bei soviel Baustellen benötigen wir natürlich auch Hilfe. Gesucht wird ein CSS Könner für folgende Aufgaben:
• CSS / Javascript / Frontendentwicklung in einem agilen Webprojekt
• Umsetzung SEO-Maßnahmen mit dem Ziel der Verbesserung unserer Suchmaschinen-Leistung, darunter
Optimierung URL-Struktur, HTML-Struktur, interne Verlinkung usw.
• Schnittstellen-Funktion zwischen Entwicklung und Marketing
Alle weiteren Infos zur Profilanforderung gibt es hier: CSS Entwickler
Batching all the similar tasks you have to handle in a certain period can be a very useful support to get work done more easily.
In other words you can work smarter if you do tasks that aim in the same direction at a specific time of the day respectively of the week. This means for example that you do your customer support at a certain block of time and then go on to the next. This keeps you into the subject and you don’t have to switch between them during the day again. Some more points are elaborated here.

The number of open projects for freelancers in U.K. is rising constantly. Almost a quarter of the five million freelancers in the country are in this business no longer than two years. Half of those 1.2 million have been their own boss for even less than a year. The number seems to be rising since beginning of the recession 2008.
Also in America more people start employing their selves which gets obvious when looking at numbers from the U.S. market.
source: moneyexpert, odesk
project-related work requires very different talents and capabilities. the lack of such capacity creates inefficiencies. by utilizing a community of people with similar issues and needs, these inefficiencies can be minimized through collaboration. co-working spaces enable efficient teamwork by bringing people together in a shared working environment. this interesting post on mashable gives a great overview of why co-working makes so much sense for businesses…
image by mashable


















