A.I.-generated image by DALL-E of a mentor mentee discussion

Last fall I took a non-credit certificate course through the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay on mentoring. Why did I do this? Long time readers of this humble blog may vaguely recall me writing in the past pessimistically on the lack of mentorship in the technology field and the fact that I did not have a formal mentor at that time.

Where I’ve had many informal mentors that have been valuable to me throughout my life and career, I have never been in a formal mentor/mentee relationship. That being said, I’ve been told by many people specifically that I have been a mentor to them. In those cases it was not in a formal mentor/mentee relationship nor was I necessarily seeking that with them. Through all of this I knew there was more to mentoring and this was the catalyst for me taking the certificate course.

My greatest takeaway from the course was learning the optimal structure of a mentoring relationship between the mentor and the mentee. From the goals of both the mentee and mentor (yes, the mentor should gain much from this too!) to a formal mentoring agreement to the cadence and format of meetings the course gave me a true 360 degree understanding of mentoring. The course was organized into 3, 2-hour virtual sessions, with some attendees being local to northeast Wisconsin and others from around the US. There were guest speakers in each session sharing their experience on topics from process to ethics. Each session had pre-work including articles and exercises which lent to a great overall learning experience. I left with the tools to properly initiate and sustain a mentoring relationship. There was no exam at the end, however upon completion I was awarded a certificate suitable for framing and the following verifiable digital badge – click the badge below to see for yourself.

Now What?

So what do I do this? Of course I’ve added the digital badge to my LinkedIn profile, the About page here at The Hot Iron and my resume. My employer has no formal mentorship program so it is nothing I will be officially applying there but will continue to informally mentor staff and colleagues. There are mentor programs out there – for example, UW-Green Bay has one and is seeking volunteer mentors – however with my current schedule I decided not to pursue it, yet. Where I haven’t looked into mentoring programs a little closer to home (I prefer to meet people face-to-face whenever possible) that will be the path I will likely take to get into formal mentoring.

I decided to pay for this course myself, and at around $300 it was good value for the return. More information on the course is available on the UW-Green Bay Web site. As of writing this there is not a date listed for a future offering, however I’d recommend contacting them as I did to be in the know when another is scheduled. And feel free to tell them that I sent you.

Deconstructing Mentoring Education

Anything worth doing is worth doing well. As I felt this way about mentoring, I took this certificate course to get the tools and right mindset should the opportunity present itself, either as a mentor or a mentee. It was an enjoyable experience that has inspired me, at the right time, to pursue an activity I feel I will be good at.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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As the passing of the first third of the year is upon us, I am already breaking one of the 2 promises I made to myself at the beginning of 2023 regarding how I work. It was not a resolution, rather a small behavioral change for me to be more efficient and perhaps even more effective.

That promise was to not take any paper notes and only record things digitally.

Literally Getting Out of Hand

The genesis for this move was an ongoing pile of papers – some small Post-Its, others full notebook pages – that was becoming a bottleneck to reviewing discussions and even completing tasks. I would always have some form of paper at hand to scribble notes and manage priorities throughout the workday. I often found that taking notes by hand was more efficient in being active in meetings, an idea that has been reinforced by other colleagues and articles I have read.

For the most part this cutting out paper worked for me. I would still occasionally print a draft of a document for editing, but after applying those changes to the document file I’d promptly recycle the paper. Several times I consciously stopped myself from trying to write something down, a reaction I was able to curb by simply not carrying a notebook or paper with me. The notes I captured would go directly into my Microsoft OneNote file, which is where the written notes would eventually go as well.

Over time, there was one piece of paper I found that I needed to go back to keeping alongside me throughout the day – my personal dashboard. This is a landscape piece of paper, printed from an Excel file, with columns for projects or areas that I am working on and rows for high-level tasks or issues for each. It’s not a task list per se, rather something I refer to have everything I or my team are working on available at a glance. Thus the term dashboard applies well.

My current dashboard has 7 columns, with the last one being for “personal and professional growth.” It had 6 columns the other day, but as another project came to fruition it warranted its own column. As I am working on multiple projects with my goal to focus blocks of time on one thing at a time and avoid multitasking (as much as I can), the dashboard is a reminder of all else going on in my world.

A Break or a Bend?

Talking with some colleagues about this, there was doubt from them I was actually breaking a promise and instead bending it. To stop consuming paper was not the catalyst of this decision, but it was a nice by-product. However I consider it a break, and until I have a different system – or less going on at once – the dashboard will remain with me as I find it effective.

What was that other promise I made you may be asking? To stop asking people to turn on their cameras in work online meetings! By now, if people don’t want their camera on or realize the benefits to work culture, who am I change their minds? I have also been guilty of not having my own on as much as I used to, especially when I am the only person who turns their camera on for a meeting.

Deconstructing Breaking Promises

Looking back on my earlier decision, where I am somewhat disappointed I was not able to carry through with promise, it has certainly not broken me. Reevaluating earlier decisions or what we do is something we should actually take time out for rather than it be solely reactive and come from frustration or other emotions.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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On February 20, 2023 and with little fanfare, the AmazonSmile program officially shut down.

For some of you reading this, you may be saying, “really, they shut it down? I had no idea!” For others, you are saying, “what the heck was AmazonSmile?” Allow me to respond to both camps mixed with my opinion of this move.

What it was

Back in 2013, the retail behemoth introduced the AmazonSmile program as a way of giving to charities supported by their customers. For every purchase made by a customer who signed up for the program and visited Amazon with a special link, 0.5% of every purchase of items eligible for AmazonSmile went to a charity who is enrolled in the program.

Those 2 previous sentences are packed with conditions that must have been met for a charity to earn that percentage. First, you the consumer had to sign-up for the program as well as navigate to the link smile.amazon.com – yes, you had to do this, as any purchases made at www.amazon.com would not count. Really. Of course that navigating was done in a Web browser (e.g. Safari, Chrome) and early on purchases made with their mobile app didn’t count. These alone led to many of my purchases not counting towards my contribution.

A charity must also enroll in the program, as you couldn’t just designate the Mike Maddaloni Society of Reflection and Coffee as your charity. Once an organization was accepted, you could choose them as the destination for your half-percent of purchases. You could also change charities at will, as I have done over time. Originally I had my kiddos first school as they were an early adopter of AmazonSmile, but when we moved, I chose their new school. On top of this, there were occasional items that didn’t qualify towards AmazonSmile contributions; I never looked into why this was, as I only saw it infrequently as I shopped their platform.

Why shut it down?

I first heard about the shutdown in a roundabout way, and with some searching I found this official announcement on Amazon’s corporate blog. Interestingly, I never received an email on this, but I digress. In smaller circles I saw news stories on it, such as this article from the Associated Press that quoted Amazon spokespeople as well as charities impacted by this. But by and large, this passing went by without much attention.

I’ll let you read both of those linked stories above, but I will share my interpretation of what happened. A quote from an Amazon spokesperson said they were making a “strategic shift” and those 2 words also pack a lot. First off, Amazon doesn’t need a program like this – after the lockdowns over the past few years, people’s shopping habits have moved more and more virtual with Amazon being a major beneficiary of this. With their recent layoff announcements, they and many other companies are cutting back and an assumption that they are cutting this simply to reduce overhead costs isn’t an unfair assumption. Plus a CEO handing a giant Happy Gilmore-style check to an equally giant charity makes for better public relations than an anonymous check arriving in the mailbox of a needy charity. Blend in global inflation and recession and all of this is only amplified.

Define impact

Learning about this a mere few days before the program closed and disappeared from their Web site, I decided to take a look at my own impact, which you can see in the screenshot below:

As you can see, in the almost half decade I was using AmazonSmile, my family and I helped raise a whopping $117.51 for charities. Not a lot, eh? But again we are merely one shopping family with the previously-mentioned caveats.

Another way to look at this is in a glass half full way; as AmazonSmile is going away, enter local distribution centers and delivery in your area and the jobs that come with this. Though to some charities it may be a slap in the face to see an Amazon truck driving through a neighborhood that is losing a quarterly charity donation from its owner. Where one economic door closes, another opens.

Speaking of economics, one way to express your disappointment with this move by Amazon is to shop elsewhere. Granted the convenience of throwing things into your cart and ordering whenever is not to be dismissed, but many of the items you are shopping for may be available in local stores you likely have forgotten about. Check them out – you may be pleasantly surprised.

How do you feel about AmazonSmile’s departure? I welcome your comments to this blog post at thehotiron.com.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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On a family road trip to Yellowstone National Park and Mount Rushmore a few years ago we included a stop in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The decision to make a layover there was due to several factors including its position along our journey, interest to see the eponymous falls of the city, as well as the fact that we once considered moving there.

The following is a tale of potential opportunity, deception and emotions as part of a career change. Names have been suppressed to protect the offenders.

When I was at a crossroads over the direction of my career among the channels I was exploring was postings on LinkedIn. One day such a listing caught my attention – a Director of Technology for an organization in the Greater Minneapolis / St. Paul, Minnesota area. Leading tech in an org in an area where individually both my wife and I had once considered living, plus an area where we had friends and not too far from our then home in Chicago, it seemed logical to consider. Before even checking with my wife, I applied. Granted I told her later that day and she was encouraging of my choice.

Within a few days I heard from the human resources / recruiter, and their message started as typical about receiving my application and interest. It then pivoted in a way I was not expecting. The recruiter said the position was actually in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. They continued that they had problems finding candidates for positions in the past, and thus had advertised it as being in the Twin Cities. Their message concluded by asking if I was still interested.

To put this revelation in context, it is approximately 237 miles from Minneapolis to Sioux Falls, with a driving distance of close to 4 hours. To say that Sioux Falls is in “greater” Minneapolis/St. Paul is like saying New York City is in “greater” Boston! Look on a map if you don’t believe me, but certainly nobody would ever say there’s such a tie between the Big Apple and the Hub.

This was the first deception, and though I say that today I didn’t necessarily say that then. Looking at the description of the role, and with a few other questions answered and in consultation on the home front, I decided to move forward with my candidacy.

This forward motion included further discovery about Sioux Falls and took a two-prong approach – by reaching out to the local chamber of commerce as well as our dentist who was from that area and still had strong ties with it. Again this is discovery – could we consider relocating there, and what were factors to consider. After reviewing materials received and a few conversations, we decided I should continue the interview process. To be honest my wife and I moved to Chicago with less research on the city than we did on Sioux Falls, but that being said Chicago is a much, much different city.

That next step was an interview with the hiring manager, who was the Director of Marketing and whom this role, the Director of Technology, would report to. The Marketing director was part of the parent organization of this new one, and was to move over into this org. Where some may have thought this in itself as a red flag, I didn’t. Over the years I have seen various configurations of organizational structure and have had clients who were in similar roles and I worked well with them. So in a smaller org, I did not see this, in itself, as a concern.

Then came the interview, which would be done over the phone – remember this was over a decade ago, and video interviews weren’t as common as today. I prepared as best as I could for an interview with a Marketing director, including questions that would determine to me their knowledge of technology as well as other factors such as goals, budget, staffing, etc. I also anticipated questions that may be posed to me and appropriate answers for the level of Technology director.

When the phone rang, I popped into an empty office in my co-working space and took it standing, wearing a headset and holding notes in one hand and using the other for note-taking and being expressive! The Marketing director seemed a little hurried in their banter at the beginning of the call, and then asked me to tell me about myself. As I talked about the breadth of my experience, they cut me off at one point and asked me about something I just mentioned, specifically about email marketing. I proceeded to describe how not only have I setup email campaign platforms for clients but also had developed a product offering around email marketing. Again I was interrupted and asked about details of what I did for clients, and talked about developing goals to tactical email templates as well as managing their email lists. Again, I was stopped midstream and they asked for more specifics about how I setup the lists, to which I talked about working with the customers as to whom opted-in to receive email, and once again I was stopped. They then asked if I could populate an email program with email addresses, to which I replied yes, but it seemed the word took a while to come out of my mouth as I started thinking hard about where the line of questioning was going. They then asked if I was able to take email addresses from different kinds of files and put into one database. At this point I was confused and asked why they were asking questions about this level of work for a position that had Director in its title.

The reply was not what I was expected, where the interviewer asked, “I need to know how low can you go.”

It was that one statement that made the ambiguity I had of the call crystal clear, and exposed the second deception – this role was not at a Director level, rather it was for a marketing or technology analyst at best. There is nothing wrong with those roles, but that’s not what I do or bring to the table, not to mention where I was at in my career. You may as well be asking a brain surgeon to put bandages on skinned knees! I then somewhat tuned out the ramblings of the interviewer and told them I am not the person they are looking for, and thanked them for their time. I was polite on the outside but infuriated on the inside. The HR recruiter had followed-up with me and I chose to take the same high road with them too – I didn’t have to and my inner Italian wanted me to let them have it. But I did not, and don’t look at that decision with any regret.

In the end, what was presented as a job I would have to move several states over for was a job I wouldn’t cross the street for!

Other than my wife I only followed up with our dentist and told him about the debacle to which he was sorry to hear. Where over the years I have had poor to bad experiences with recruiters and HR departments, this was and continues to be the worst of my multi-decade career. And I hope it is never superseded by anyone or anything else.

Deconstructing Deceptive Recruiting Practices

We all face challenges in life and work that sometime seem insurmountable. It is in these times that creative, fresh ideas coupled with openness and honesty are needed to achieve our goals. Using deception and justifying it in the name of the challenge is not only wrong, but can have unknown repercussions on you or your organization. Where I let this one pass me by, someone else could have taken this to social media and caused a problem for the upstart organization. Taking a 360 degree view on their decisions, and considering the candidates for this role, could have avoided all of this.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Recently a friend moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, the city where I live. Like me he is in the tech industry, so I started forwarding him links to Web sites and other resources in the community to help him get acclimated in his new community. I also logged them and am sharing this list here to a greater audience.

By no means do I believe this is the be-all, end-all of what is out there and going on in Willem Dafoe’s hometown – if I left something out, please leave a comment to this post. I have organized these into community and the tech industry, and they are in no particular order. Though many of these outlets have a social media presence, here I have listed the traditional ways of how to reach them, highlighting their Web sites, email lists and RSS feeds.

Community Resources

All Things Appleton – In the last year or so this site came onto the scene and is dedicated to the finer details of the inner workings of city government you can’t find elsewhere. It is frequently updated and has an email list and RSS feed.

Appleton Post Crescent – The local newspaper is among most all major papers in Wisconsin that are owned by Gannett and fall under the USA Today banner. Where the changes in the newspaper industry are evident in its publications, it does encompass most of what is going on. They offer email lists and RSS feeds, and much content is available without paying for a subscription.

Appleton Magazine – This is a monthly lifestyle magazine covering the greater Fox Valley and features people, dining and entertainment. Much of the content is available on their Web site and it has an RSS feed, and you can pick it up the paper version in stores and restaurants or subscribe by mail for a nominal cost.

GB News Network – GB stands for Green Bay, which is a short 30-minute drive north from Appleton. This is a news and events site for the Green Bay area. You can also subscribe to their weekly email for the latest information leading into the weekend.

Appleton Public Library – The city’s one and only library is in the midst of a metamorphosis, where the current building will be expanded and reimagined, and in the interim the library will be temporarily in a former Best Buy store. Their email list is a great way to keep up with the comings and goings over the next few years and beyond.

Go Valley Kids – As a parent of young kids this Web site is a go-to resource for family-friendly activities in the area. Their Web site lists current activities and events, but what I find the best is their robust archive of evergreen places both indoors and outdoors, especially for those times when you can’t think of what to do with the kiddos. Subscribe to their email newsletter for the latest news and events plus they have recently launched a podcast.

Fox Cities Magazine – It’s nice that there’s more than one monthly lifestyle magazine in the area, and this is another. You can read entertainment and activities listings on their Web site, though their RSS feed is infrequently published to You can also pick up the paper version at restaurants and stores or subscribe by mail for a low cost.

Appleton Downtown, Inc. – The business association for the downtown/College Avenue area, their site offers events and business profiles for that area. In addition to their Web site they offer an email newsletter and RSS feed.

Fox Cities Chamber of Commerce – This is the largest Chamber in the area and features events plus business listings (hint: restaurants are a business!) in the area.

Appleton Historical Society – If you want to dive deeper into the history of the city, this is a place to visit. What looks like an old house has a wealth of displays and photos of the city over the years and hosts events on various aspects of that history.

History Museum at the Castle – Formerly a Masonic temple (thus the name “castle”), the museum has a mix of historic displays of the area as well as traveling exhibits. A must-see is the permanent exhibit on Harry Houdini, who lived in Appleton in his younger years, and tells the secrets of many of his magic tricks.

TGVG – The Greater Valley Guide – This printed publication and Web site is primarily focused around sports activities but also includes a variety of other kid-related events and things to do around the area. They offer separate RSS feeds for their blog and events.

The Wheeler Report – This is a Web site that aggregates news stories from across the state of Wisconsin and is centered on state and local government. They used to have an email newsletter but stopped it for some reason, but this is a site to bookmark and visit daily.

Mile of Music – As the photo above mentions to singing, it’s likely referring to the beginning of August for this week-long music festival. Artists from around the country and the world converge on Appleton for this music festival which some compare to the SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas. They offer a mobile app during the festival to set your entertainment schedule.

Flag Lowering Orders – A little outside from the others here... but if you have seen a flag at half-staff around Dairyland and wondered why, subscribe to the email and text alerts and be in the know. Alerts cover all orders that pertain to the state, including from the federal level. This is useful as Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers seems to issue an order almost weekly if not more often.

Tech Industry Resources

Insight on Business Magazine – This is a monthly business magazine that covers all business in Northeast Wisconsin. You can subscribe to its print version, read online and subscribe to their email newsletter.

IOM – A sibling publication of Insight on Business, it focuses on – you guessed it – manufacturing in the area. As well, you can subscribe to its print version, read online and subscribe to their email newsletter.

BizTimes – Out of Milwaukee, a state-wide business magazine that also covers news from the Appleton area. They offer a paid subscription to their paid version, free email newsletters and a subscription to their Web site.

New North – This is an economic development organization focused on Northeast Wisconsin. They offer an email newsletter and have a wealth of resources on their Web site, including a section targeting people to move to the area.

NEW Digital Alliance – This organization focuses on the technology sector in the area. They offer a monthly email newsletter and listing of tech-centered events in the area.

Women In Technology Wisconsin Inc. – Started locally, WIT now has chapters statewide and offers live and virtual events throughout the state and has an email list. Though the organization started to foster the community of women in the tech sector, men are also welcome at their quality events.

Meetups in NEW – Here you can find local tech events on the global event listing platform.

WisBusiness – There is a wealth of business news and information on this statewide site, featuring an email list, podcasts and an RSS feed.

Greater Green Bay Chamber – The Green Bay area has a vibrant tech sector, and the Chamber there offers a number of events there, especially at their own co-working incubator, UrbanHub.

Start In Northeast Wisconsin – Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, WEDC, is the state’s economic development agency and this section of their site lists some events in the area. They also offer an RSS feed.

Fox Cities Founders – This is a group consisting of tech founders in the Fox Valley. You must be either referred or apply to be in it.

Editors Note: Modified on 4/7/2022 to add Fox Cities Founders - thanks for letting me know Andrew!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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