Marianne Elliot is a human rights activist, yoga teacher and writer from New Zealand. She describes her site as “a watering hole for do-gooders, wanna-be do-gooders and recovering do-gooders. If you’ve ever thought the world could be a kinder, safer, fairer place – and maybe you could play a role in making it so – this site is for you. It’s a place to remember you are not alone, to meet others of your kind and share your stories.”

I first discovered Marianne’s website while I was working in Toronto for a nonprofit organization and in great need of instructions in self-care. Her website spoke to me because she addressed the danger of burn out that often comes with working in nonprofit environment while presenting the idea of self care without making it seem too wishy-washy.

I’ve followed her blog as she was writing her memoir, and she shared her doubts, hopes and joys throughout the two years of writing her memoir. I think that this was a brilliant business strategy, because by the time her book was ready to be published, she had already created an online community of supporters eagerly anticipating this book. Her writing is honest, intelligent and compassionate. She talks honestly about her anxiety, grief and guilt that she has experienced as a human rights lawyer working in war torn countries – I think that this perspective is often missing when we talk about heavy political topics. In this way she brings a human quality to global stories.

Marianne, who describes herself as a “recovering human rights worker” now devotes herself to helping people heal through yoga and writing. She runs online yoga classes, 30 Days of Yoga, and is innovative in her approach by creating a community through forums that participants can access and personalized emails. I don’t think that there is any other yoga class like it.

I took one of Marianne’s 30-day yoga courses when I was first interested in yoga, but wasn’t brave enough to attend an in-person studio class. Her online class offered the privacy to do yoga from home, but with the support of an online community of other students. Because of the nature of online communication, I think that I actually had more engaging connections with these students than would have been possible in an in-person class.

She highlights other aid workers and healers on her blog through interviews, guest blog posts and other media, building a active community on her website. She is active on Twitter and Facebook and her writing has appeared on various online news sources.

I think what I find most inspirational about Marianne is that she is a great example of a successful online entrepreneur who brings a human quality to her online persona. She has taken her experience, skills and passions, found a niche in the online world and built a community around it. She shows that any skill or service marketed the right way can be implemented into the online world.

The website I chose out of my personal array of sites I choose to follow that have to do with technology is one of the best of the bunch. This website is extremetech.com

I chose this website because at the moment I am very interested in the newest technologies. I like knowing what other people are capable of inventing, for instance, with regards to technology.

This particular website makes them more interesting and worthy to follow because they talk about everything and anything to do with the newest technology. More particularly they go above and beyond most technology sites by going in-depth with each technology they showcase on their website. For instance they look at the behind-the-scenes of these technologies, which is different than the normal technology sites out there. This site has users and experts writing their entries that according to them are “seeking to answer the unanswerable questions of technology”. And to do this they use very easy to engage with and understand language, which is again out of the ordinary for other technology sites. This makes is so that anyone in the public can read their site entries.

They use their blog style website to communicate effectively by including many different category links, so if a person is looking for something in particular they can easily access it on the front page. They also include on their front page “top searches” and “trending” links. This is very effective for the audience because they are able to see what other people are looking at and what the most popular technologies are of the moment.

I would include them in my own Personal Learning Network because they have a particular sense of humor and easily understandable entries on their site. The sense of humor and beginner vocabulary that they use on their site makes it very easy for me to read and follow along. This in turn allows me to become interested in what they are writing about.

An online personality that I find inspirational is Ann-Marie MacDonald from the CBC. Ann-Marie is the host Doc Zone, CBC’s critically acclaimed documentary program. She is also an author, actor and broadcast journalist. I am a huge fan of her program because she is great at breaking down complex societal issues (that often involve technology) into easy to understand pieces on her show. Topics covered on Doc Zone range from surviving the future, investigating the organic food industry, to exploring the dangers and consequences of sexting and Facebook.

Her show brings controversial issues to light and provides the general public a look inside very mysterious and secretive industries. I think the documentary format is a highly effective way to communicate with viewers as it features commentary from the parties involved as well as commentary from the host. It provides the viewer with a balanced view of the topic on hand and lets the viewers decide for themselves whether or not something is good or bad or can be trusted.

I have included Ann-Marie MacDonald into my personal learning network as her work is easily accessible, interesting, and the topics she covers are unique. Her work manages to surprise and inspire me to learn more about the issues covered on the show. Doc Zone is an excellent program to watch if you want to learn something new and exciting. It can be found here.

Extra Credits is a web-series started by Daniel Floyd. The episodes are generally written by video game developer James Portnow, and narrated by Daniel’s high-pitched voice. The topics have always been about video games, ranging from advice for aspiring video game developers, critics about the state of the industry, addressing issues within the community, and looking into the psychology of video games.

I began watching the series in 2010 just after starting university. As someone who played a lot video games at the time and wanted to become a video game developer eventually I was ecstatic to find a smart show about video games from people involved in the industry.

Extra Credits have discussed a lot of topics that will be useful to refer to in a video game developer’s career. They’ve looked at poor game designs like using Skinner Box reward systems to keep its players to keep playing instead of using a genuinely rewarding system. Issues with how gender, race, and sexuality have been portrayed in games have been addressed. Extra Credits have covered other concepts useful for developers to learn, such as the concept of failing faster and proper software testing.

As I go forth with my career I’ll be sure to keep what I’ve learnt from Extra Credits in mind, and hopefully these lessons will take me far!

There is a primary source I visit to get information about technology – which for me is usually in the realm of software development. It is called StackOverflow, part of the StackExchange Network. It is a question and answer site focusing on all disciplines and languages in the programming world. It is not just a Q&A site, they do few interesting things.

StackOverflow is heavily gamified. You get points for answering, commenting, up-voting, and even asking. Anybody can use it, although I will admit it can be a little intimidating at times. The website has a pretty strictly enforced “get to the point” mentality. Duplicate questions are not tolerated, and are closed almost instantly. It is even important how you word your questions – it will get deleted if it is asking for an opinion. The site is totally user-moderated; everyone who has enough points is a Mod. One of the fastest ways to get your post modified or deleted is to be too wordy or causal, you need to be to the point and direct. This is because StackOverflow is the resident source for programmers to find code snippets or theories. If you are stuck on something, chances are it has been asked, and answered on StackOverflow before. Because of this, I use it multiple times per day – I would guess between 5-10 times on average.

StackOverflow is so successful because of the enormous wealth of knowledge that the massive user base possesses. They may be a tad rude, especially to newcomers, but the service cannot be beat anywhere online (that I am aware of). Without this community, I would waste so much time trying to figure out something that someone else already knows, and has documented!

The visual representation of my self-tracking.

Starred days are days I went to the gym. The percentages represent the quality of my sleep for that night, determined by Sleep Cycle app. The graph, from Sleep Cycle, shows what time I went to bed.

In Marvel’s Iron Man trilogy and the Avengers movie, much of the focus  is around Tony Stark and his legendary Iron Man suit which we all know and love. Though another piece of really cool technology in the movie, which is more software than hardware, that many have grown a liking to is JARVIS. JARVIS, Just A Rather Very Intelligent System is an artificial intelligence system that runs all of Stark’s computers, home, surrounding environment, and even his iron suits. Being a very advanced system Stark can communicate to JARVIS flawlessly and can even carry a 2 way conversation with him. He even uses sarcasm sometimes when Stark comes up with a very outrageous idea. In our current society, nearly all of us have our own personal form of a JARVIS, just not remotely near as advanced as him. Many of us use Siri, or other speak command functions. The way Stark uses JARVIS to do things is just like how we use those built in features to call someone or change the radio in your car, or if your fortunate enough even your home. JARVIS is also like a personal assistant for Tony. He can place calls, alter his calendar, send emails, do almost everything a real assistant could do. If JARVIS took over one of the suits he could in theory go around and preform daily tasks that require physical interaction. So not only do I believe that this is a similarity to our current contemporary lifestyle, but also a direction that it is headed in. At the rate technology is advancing today I would not be surprised if sometime in the near future we each had our own personal JARVIS.