Continual Education

One of my early concerns with working for myself was my continual education, since life-long learning is one of my goals. I soon realized that, when I was working at Microsoft, I found that most of my own education was self-initiated and outside my job role.

For fun in 1997, I obtained an MCSE and and MCSD certification after running through 15 different exams in one month. As a Microsoft employee, I had free access to the training material in the library and was able to purchase each test for $20. I was surprised that I could study for one or two day before the exam and pass it without any hands-on experience. (I did this, while taking two exams per day.) I learned about IT software development and network administration, but the certifications really meant nothing to me in my professional life.

Yes, I admit that I did learn a lot from the software development process and a lot about Microsoft technologies. There was also interesting conversation to be had from smart employees at Microsoft. In the end, I felt that I could still maintain the same rate of learning outside Microsoft, since I would own my free time and choose to learn generally useful knowledge with that time, rather than something that may only be particularly useful to Microsoft.

Even though it’s five years since I left Microsoft, it’s almost as if I still work there. I am still usually in the Microsoft campus an average of twice a week. I am also a member of the Microsoft Alumni organization, so I get the internal Micronews as well as Microsoft software as a fraction of the retail price at the company store. (The discounted software is not as useful as first thought, since I already get it all from MSDN Subscriptions.) I also have access to the Microsoft lecture series with some technology notables such as Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize winner, Peter Diamandis, X-Prize founder, and Dean Kamen, Segway inventor (yes, I rode a Segway). I am also given a chance to usability test the latest iterations of Microsoft APIs and software every couple months, with one or two free parting software gifts of my choosing. All my friends in Seattle happen to work at Microsoft as well.

Living next to Microsoft, I have also attended a recent three-day Whidbey Compiler Labs (with architects like Jim Miller or the recent IronPython hire), have dinner with the BCL team, and show up blogger dinners at Crossroads hosted by Robert Scoble.

I purchase about over 100 computer and business books a year, certainly not as much as Nathan Myhrvold, who buys $60,000 worth of book in one transaction. I also have accumulated  about a thousand electronic books on the computer science and business in my computer.

I got into the reading blogs and RSS in early 2003 because I felt that it would allow me to listen in and engage in conversations with other small people in technology. Shortly after, all of Microsoft jumped in the blogging bandwagon.

I also joined several different developer user groups such as the NETDA user group in Seattle. I listen in on lectures in University of Washington and Washington Software Association, follow MSDN Webcasts, as well as lectures on the Multi-University/Research Laboratory (now Research Channel). I regularly take a virtual course on MIT Open Course Ware, which are all of MIT Courses made freely available on the web!!

I have watch Rory present MSDN Events in Seattle four times and attended on DevDay on Smart Clients. I have my own MSDN Universal Subscriptions, so I can play with the latests betas.

I am a member of Washington Software Association, Association of Shareware Professionals, and Educational Software Cooperative. I was spending a bit of money in dues for ACM and IEEE Computer Society, but don’t actually utilizes the services of these organizations very much, so I temporarily leaving until I have an income.

One thing that I realize is that my lack of everyday social contact does not bode well for my communication skills. I felt like I lost the ability to talk when I was in at a recent CLR dinner in Bellevue.

My question is what more should I be doing or what should I be doing differently to maximize my overall learning?

Comments

[Joe Duffy]

I find that the more I learn, the less I am able to communicate clearly with other people. I had thought the opposite would happen. But perhaps my studies are too esoteric--i.e. computer science and mathematics.

Unless I am able to assume a certain level of familiarity with fundamental concepts during discussion (often not possible), I never get a chance to say what I want to say, I spend too much time "pre-educating" to get to the point where a real discussion can happen. But often this process takes too long, and I don't get there. Then I am left feeling like a moron because I wasn't able to get to the point. Was the pre-education unnecessary and come across as being too elementary? Perhaps they think I'm a fool now?

I suspect this is why being a researcher and devoting your life to science in academia is a lonely life. Rarely are you able to communicate "on the same level" with another human. I wouldn't know first hand, of course, but this is my guess.

[xu]

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One thing that I realize is that my lack of everyday social contact does not bode well for my communication skills. I felt like I lost the ability to talk when I was in at a recent CLR dinner in Bellevue.
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Is it so bad in your life?

[Drazen Dotlic]

I have recently adopted a pace where I read one book a week (to clean up my backlog of bought but not read books). It's going pretty well for now (about 10 books/weeks later) but it's not easy. How do you find the time to read 150 (!) books a year?

[Jason Haley]

I am not doing quite as much as you, but I am also sort of hitting a wall. In the past couple of months I have tried reading non technical magazines like the economist and businessweek, then not read them the following week to see what sort of effects that information has on my ability to communicate ...

The results come down to this: reading either 1 economist or 1 businessweek magazine (most of it but not all of it) exposed me to a different style of communication and vocabulary that I am quite rusty with (I've been out of business school now for almost 10 years) ... so in the end it really helped me with my communication abilities. Mostly in the area of new ways to explain technical ideas as well as discuss non technical issues. Your results may differ, but I am now planning on getting a subscription to the economist and trying to read it every week ... problem is I don't want to give up that time of reading to non-technical information ... but I now believe it is in the best interest of my over all balance.

[Toby Patke]

A very interesting post.

I subscribed to this blog because you are obviously a very intelligent guy. I can see now that this is the result of a lot of hard work. The most interesting thing about this post - for me - is the last sentence. Why do you want to maximize learning? I suspect that there is something you want. Some result you expect to achieve from learning. If this is true, I would suggest reading history books. Try and find one person in history who achieved their goals through "continual" learning. Regardless of your goals, I don't think such a person exists. Everyone must take action sometime. If you want to do something innovative - then you will not be prepared for all the problems you encounter...ever.

As I say, you are a really bright guy so it feels a bit weird giving you advice, but maybe you should try being wrong more often. Take more risks.

It is funny to think that engineers don't rule the world. Why is that?

[Ben]

I think you need a business partner. I fear that you are caught in a trap of inaction or over thinking problems. You seem to lack direction. I hope you can find your way. Why not take a job somewhere for a while?