Category: Articles

Where oh where have all the attractive nerdy women gone?

Ok, lets put this out there… I’m single. 

(pauses for shock and awe)

I know, sad, isn’t it just?

That said, I’m only recently single (less than 6 months) and although dating sites like the venerable eHarmony or RSVP.com.au serve a purpose they sure aren’t the kind of place that attractive nerdy women frequent…

Now let me put the brakes on right here. So ok yes, I’m sure there are plenty of kinda nerdy women screaming “HERE I AM!!!” that are all over these sites.

But I’m talking about women who enjoy going out for a drink as much as they like kicking ass at a round of Tekken or some co-op L4D zombie-a-go-go blasting… NOT the prissy, stupidly self-centred women who think they are nerdy because their last boyfriend made them sit through a Lord of the Rings Trilogy marathon or accidentally brushed their arm up against a book which happened to fall open at a particularly rousing rant by Dostoyevsky.

Where the hell are they?

Well mostly, they are all at home playing awesome games or watching some killer scifi, perhaps updating their blog or programming up a storm… that’s right fellow nerds, most of the time they aren’t out at bars or pubs or clubs, you might strike it lucky once in a while but its not the rule, its the exception.

So how do you meet these women and what is the secret to cracking their nerdy girl Da Vinci Code-esque lives?

The answer? Think like a nerdy girl would…

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How to NOT invite people to meetings.

notmeeting How to NOT invite people to meetings.

Anyone who’s ever had to call or attend meetings before, for any reason knows the difference between a good meeting and a bad meeting.

Often though it has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of discussion and everything to do with the attitudes and egos of the people attending. And sometimes to absolutely disastrous effects.

Think back to your last few meetings, how did they go? would they have gone better if a certain person wasn’t invited? or perhaps if a few different people were there instead?

Thus is the art of:

Not inviting people to meetings.

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When social networks die.

gplustomb When social networks die.

It is 2012, social networks are the most common way for people to communicate and yet while there are clear leaders such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn there are also hundreds of other services vying for market share on the internet.

Google+ is of course the newest to the leader pack, but even it is suffering the slings and arrows of mediocrity when compared to the established networks.

So why is it failing? and why do so many fail where others succeed?

First a little history.

  • 2004 – Facebook launches, limited to Harvard Students.
  • mid-2004 – Facebook expands to include other university campuses.
  • 2005 – A ‘High School’ version of Facebook is launched.
  • 2006 – Twitter is launched limiting its users to only 140 characters per update.
  • late-2006 – Facebook is opened to the public.
  • 2007 – Twitter’s popularity gains ground with SXSW festival participants.
  • 2008 - Twitter has 100 million tweets posted per quarter.
  • late-2008 - Facebook sets up international HQ in Dublin, Ireland.
  • 2009 - Twitter crash due to  Michael Jacksons death, 100,000 tweets a minute.
  • late-2009 - Facebook becomes ‘cash-positive’ for the first time.
  • 2010 - Twitter has 65 million tweets a day posted on average.
  • 2010 - Facebook’s estimated value calculated to be $41 billion.
  • 2011 - 20,000 pages are removed from Facebook per day due to security issues.
  • late-2011 - Twitter rolls out its third major design change.

This of course is by no means a full and annotated history of social networks, but it does include several important milestones along the way. Both Twitter and Facebook have had their fair share of scandals and hardships placed upon them due to world events, international legislation and capacity problems, both services however have managed to keep afloat through incoming investments and several venture capital rounds.

You might at this time be wondering why I haven’t mentioned other networks like Bebo, Pownce, Identi.ca or Yammer. Well don’t fret, I’m getting to those…

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