Each month I summarize my work during the previous month.  I hope that by pausing to reflect on my activities and reviewing my progress that I can learn how to do better in the future.

October traffic increased quite a bit, more than double September!   Makes me happy because it means more of you are reading and sharing what I’m writing.  I hope it also means you are getting more value and useful information from me.  Comment if you agree or if you’d like me to write about something specific.

Getting more of your comments and feedback is the thing I need to work on the most.  Engagement.  Right now, mostly I’m broadcasting.  I write and you read.  This is probably a result of my writing style.  I suspect I’ve too many years of reading and writing dry, technical documentation, having no plot, no hero, no winner and too little interest in feedback from the reader.   I’m trying to change my approach.  Please feel free to offer your suggestions.

But my writing might be more useful to you if I understood better what you wanted.   It’s hard for me to know if what I’m writing is truly helpful without your feedback, comments, and questions.

By now, you know that I write about career development topics for Technology workers in Telecoms.  If that is you, meaning you work in the technical department for an operator, a contractor or consultancy, a service provider or a vendor, then I’d like to hear from you.  I’ve written about using LinkedIn, Microsoft Excel, Web Development and general Telecoms issues.  I write about these topics in a pretty practical, get-it-done kind of way.   If there is there is something you’d like me to write about these issues, please tell me.

You can post a comment directly on this blog, no need to register or log in. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me, @telecomvoices, on Twitter.  Bangkok Beach Telecom has a company page on LinkedIn, you can follow me there if you’d like.  I have not set up a company page on Facebook.  Would you like me to?

Blog Posts

I used to think that the most difficult part of maintaining my blog was figuring out what to write about.  But I don’t have that problem anymore.  Now, my challenge is to figure out which subject will be most valuable for you. 

The reason for this shift?  Once I changed my focus to serving people like you, Technology Workers in Telecoms, it’s so clear that there are many things I can show you.  I need to get over the reticence I feel about saying how long I’ve worked in Telecoms.  So here goes.  I started as a central office switchman, for the local phone company in Los Angeles in 1979.  Yeah.  That means I just passed my 38th anniversary.

A few things have changed in all those years.  One thing that has not changed is the need to report on how the equipment, the network, and the service is performing.  There are so many different aspects of that I’ll have things to write about for a long time.

This month I published 3 articles.  Each one barely scratches the surface of what can be said about these topics.

Microsoft Excel for Telecom Managers, 24 October.

2G Network Decommissioning, Ready?  10 October.

Excel BTS Project Tracker – Dynamic Named Ranges.  5 October.

Create an Awesome LinkedIn Profile

My latest book is now on sale!  This book tells you how to change your LinkedIn profile so that people will read it and know what you do, what you love, what motivates you, what drives you to excellence.  People will read your profile and quickly understand that you are the person they want for the stories, projects, jobs, and opportunities that they have.  Don’t miss out, Create an Awesome LinkedIn Profile today!

Read about it here, and buy it on Gumroad. 

October Traffic Summary

After a record-setting September, October still managed to surprise.  Monthly page views more than doubled and for the first time was over 2,000!  Visitors also more than doubled.

I hope this means you like what you are reading here and you are telling your friends.  If you aren’t telling your friends, tell me why not!

The “Excel BTS Project Tracker” series of articles continues to be very popular.   That series is almost complete, however.   The next post will show a dashboard for providing just about every project stat imaginable.  

The Excel BTS Project tracker used data which was created manually.   All the updates were provided by technology workers in the field.  This type of data and this kind of reporting is very common in Telecoms.  But almost as is reporting and dashboards based on machine-generated data.   By “machine-generated” I mean log files, or messaging streams or reporting outputs. This type of reporting is almost as common as manually generated data, so I hope this will be as helpful.

’till next time, Russell