Something like this frustrates and confuses me to no end:

This appointment requires you to have: • Marketing or Communications related qualifications • at least five years’ work experience in project management • an effective social network profile • a good understanding of WEB2.0 applications for business purposes and an understanding of the international media world and its many challenges.

I don’t think I know a single person with “AT LEAST five years’ work experience in project management” and “a good understanding of WEB2.0″ and “an effective social network profile”. Are you joking?

You might be able to find a project manager with 5+ years of experience who has no clue how to spell “WEB2.0″ (if anyone’s using that terminology any more), or you might find a candidate with a social network profile, a great understanding of social media, convergence and innovation with a 2 years of experience.

Finding a combination of the three is one helluva task.

This frustrates me because there are many young, talented individuals who could jump at this job with open arms and do it effectively who would not be able to apply (or would be dissuaded from even applying) because of the experience. Or a very experienced, gung-ho candidate who needs a prod in to social media who is intimidated by the application standards who you lose out on.

I think that the job description of “Innovation Project Manager” is enough to entice people of a certain caliber that you can then filter yourself in the interviews. Don’t knock out the applicants before you even see them.

Let me not get caught up in my own head and clearly lay out what I intend to say:

It’s simple idea but on that only recently dawned on me. I am fortunate to be in an innovate environment. Imagine if I was still a print writer? I’d be doing the same thing over and over and over, every day. I’d call my contacts, I’d gather information and construct a story from the information, I’d conduct an interview and write the story which would be edited, sub-edited and cut-up by the mechanisms in place. My byline would appear in the paper and the sun would set and rise again to repeat the cycle. Sure the focus of the story changes but more often than not it’s the same mechanisms.

Let’s look at an accountant, yes there are challenges in every client that an account might audit, but on the whole there is very little innovation in their market. Pascal might come out with an update, a law might be tweaked here and there and if an account is lucky they land an extremely strange client who they enjoy auditing, but the premise is the same, the actions are the same, the results are the same. NOTHING is new from year to year in the way that they do things.

Very similar situations apply to Lawyers, many GPs (which is a pet hate of mine), Judges and many other careers, career choices, markets and industries. There is very little that drives innovation.

Then you move in to the mobile industry and the market is booming, filled with innovation and change, constantly. That appeals to me.

Now don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that other jobs or industries aren’t appealing and don’t have their own, relative levels of what some might term innovation. But where I am right now things change on a daily basis. My job spec today could be completely different tomorrow and in every likelihood will be entirely different next year when my current projects launch.

This motivates me and this keeps me interested in what I am doing. I hate being stagnant and I hate reaching a point where maintenance of a job is more common than innovation, creation and envelope pushing.

I have a bit of a different approach to this concept than many of the bloggers have already taken. I say tough shit. I say what makes you think I want YOUR idea? I say, what makes you think that I didn’t think of it first and that’s why I got it out quicker? I say, I must be better, stronger, faster, smarter than you if you had the idea and lost out. That’s what I say.

Mike commented on Tyler’s post asking him to name names and brand the ones that stole. Let me tell you that does no good. Mike is right though, the ones that “stole” ideas will meet their fate. The world is made round to go round and comes round fast.

But I must reiterate, what makes you think that anyone wants to steal your ideas?

My point? Your ideas are not original. Nothing that you or I can come up with will be a truly original thought. Those thoughts are all long gone. Show me an idea and I can show you another who has thought it. Give me an invention and I’ll show you one just like it. Nothing is yours.

My rebuttle question is this: Where did YOU get your idea from? Who are YOU ripping off? How self-righteous of us all to think that we thought the ideas and that others want to steal them? Who do we think we are?

What a load of rubbish. I have not claimed to have an original idea. I am a man who implements not necessarily innovates. I cannot claim that at the ‘ripe’ old age of a whopping 23 that I have come up with anything great, wondrous or truly innovative or original. If you think you are that great, prove it. Don’t complain that someone ripped off your idea.

I bet that Alexander Bell wasn’t the first to create the telephone and Henry Ford wasn’t the first to create the motorcar. They were simply the first to release their inventions and receive the accolades. This is the way of the world, this has always been the way of the world. Simple.

Currently Fleck is not supported on IE, the makers suggest Firefox and are in the process of developing an IE version soon.

I am still in the process of familiarising myself with this tool but I think it sounds interesting. A little bar at the bottom of your screen pops up with various options available including bullet, note, share, blog and others. Below is a screen shot.

The other joy of this little tool is that there is no need to sign-up or register. You can do so if you wish, but it isn’t necessary. I have a registration addiction so I tend to register with every site that I stumble across.

coComment takes a bit of getting used to and understanding but let’s be honest, if I can do it, anyone can. It’s a hop, skip and a jump away from registering to getting in the full swing of the process involved in tracking your comments.

I not only spend alot of time reading blogs that I like and commenting on them, but following up on those comments and conversations. It is extremely time consuming to try and cover them all in one fell swoop and remember where I’ve been, who said what and when. So now I simply have coComment do it for me. The program can be downloaded (If you are using Flock or FireFox) and simply attaches itself to your blogger/wordpress comment box and asks if you would like to track the conversation. This is where it gets a little bit slow, once you tick the box and say you do want to track the conversation, you need to enter the blog title, url, post and post link then write your post and sign in as per usual. The comment is then sent straight to your coComment inbox where you can thereafter view and track comments on the conversation.

It’s simple, it’s easy and that’s the way I like these sort of applications to be. Easy enough for me to use and explain in 2 days and one post. Done and dusted.