oDesk presentation for the PC Magazine SMB Award

Here is the presentation from Slideshare (link, or see below):

Weekend has gone by 2006 10 22

IMG_1523, originally uploaded by abdmhsn.

San Francisco was pretty awesome yesterday, right now it's getting foggy.

I'm about to take off to the Thirsty Bear, where a friend is performing Flamenco. I wish I had more time to learn all these cool things. Not that the weekend was unfulfilling, there just isn't that much variety in my everyday life.

I need to start putting something good on this crappy blog. Maybe figure out a way to store my big thoughts everyday and publish them here easily.

Someone actually read my blog

oDesk is hiring! Yes, it's true. After raising the second round (lead by Benchmark, previous investors are Globespan and Sigma), we are looking to expand the business aggressively and also hiring for some pretty awesome positions.

So, we put up the Careers page, and have been looking for kick ass candidates.

In one of my phone conversations, a candidate said that she had Googled my name (typical) found my blog (uh oh) and actually spent time reading it (What the *&$%?).

Someone actually took the time to read this crappy blog. That's amazing.

Also embarrassing.

So I've decided to at least put some effort into this site. Shouldn't come off as a complete idiot.

I think the next step would be to start putting stuff from my Flickr account.

The coolest fan video I have seen

Pretty amazing that people spend so much time on this. Enjoy...

RYAN WIEBER VS. MICHAEL "DORKMAN" SCOTT What began as a friendly rivalry between two effects artists explodes off TheForce.Net's FanFilms Forum and into the real world in a lightsaber battle royale. Originally created for the forum's lightsaber choreography competition, this fight to the death will decide once and for all who is truly most skilled with a saber. There can be only one. See the 5 minute epic for yourself.

oDesk Tour video is kick ass

Watch it at http://www.odesk.com/tour on on YouTube.


Hmmm.... I'm thinking this blog post isn't that great. I tried pasting the YouTube HTML code in here, but it messes everything up. Maybe I should also upload to Google Video and link from there. Soemthing for tomorrow I guess.

Made my first post on the oDesk Blog (http://blog.odesk.com/)

And I thought I would put it here also.

(Click here to go to the oDesk Blog)

For the past few years, my ultimate invention candidate has been the Star Trek Transporter (illustrated on left).

"Energize!", and you can go anywhere anytime. (My previous candidate was the Star Trek Replicator, to get my chocolate shake anywhere anytime). Why? Because the best places to work are not necessarily the best places to live (due to cost of living, deminished social life, being away from family and friends).

A lot of people end up living in foreign countries to pursue the career they want (e.g. me) and it's not easy to spend time with your family (who live in Pakistan and the UK). Skype and Gmail allow us to remain in touch, but they don't allow me to play with my nephew (picture on right).

I have a good friend whose main goal is to find a career where he can travel back and forth between Pakistan and the US, while not sacrificing the big bucks (he was working as a top programmer for a US company). He started a small outfit in Pakistan and was looking to get them some programming work. Naturally, I got him into oDesk as an Affiliate. He fairly quickly got a $100K+ project, quit his regular job in the US, and is now full-time involved as the Affiliate Manager.

Let me first outline some tips I got from him:

• He found job openings where his skill set was relevant (don't blindly apply to everything)


• He applied himself, and also had his Providers apply at the same time (so they appeared together in the Candidate List)


• He clearly outlined who he was (Affiliate Manager), who else was in his team (Providers), links to the oDesk Profiles of his Providers (use oDesk Short URLs in the cover letter), and why they were good for the job


• He had a US number where he could be reached during his business hours (you can either get a VoIP box from Vonics or Vonage, or get a SkypeIn account)

But the cool thing for me was that oDesk helped him achieve his equivalent of the Star Trek Transporter. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, has gone to his oDesk Buyer's offices in Texas, and spends time with him family in Pakistan while overseeing his (growing) Affiliate outfit. You could argue that it's better than the Star Trek Transporter. Captain Kirk always worked with the same people on his ship, and actually lost a few people in every episode (the poor Red Shirts). They should have just enjoyed their chocolate shakes in interstellar space and talked to the Klingons over Yahoo IM.

-

Abid

This is Nael

Although Rayyan is my main man, his little brother Nael is equally adept at causing women to swoon.

This cutie pie came into the world on Jan 27, 2005 @ 2:30 pm, weighing between 6 to 7 lbs. He has apparently gained a lot of wieght since then :)