‘Personal’ Achievement?

October 8, 2018 was an extremely memorable night for Drew Brees at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans. Under the intense scrutiny of Monday Night Football, the quarterback of the New Orleans Saints became the leading passer in the history of the National Football League. (For those not familiar with this sport, you can think of his 72,103-yard milestone as a lifetime-achievement accomplishment of ultramarathon’ic proportions.) The narrative on Brees’ contributions to ‘the game’ are anything but complete. In fact, the longer he plays, the more impressive this milestone becomes, as he continues to place distance between himself and every other NFL QB.

Of course the record books, and Brees’ inevitable induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, will all position this as an individual-achievement award. Whenever given the opportunity to reflect upon seemingly personal achievements such as the all-time passing leader, Brees is quick to acknowledge those who have enabled him to be so stunningly successful in such a high-profile, high-pressure role – from family and friends, to teammates, coaches, and more.

As I wrote about another NFL quarterback in a recent post, like Tom Brady, Brees remains a student-of-the-game. He is also known for his off-the-field work ethic that he practices with the utmost intensity in preparing for those moments when he takes the main stage along with his team. Therefore, when someone like Brees shares achievements with those around him, it’s clearly an act that is sincerely authentic.

Full Disclosure

At the very least, self-curating and sharing in public some collection of your work has more than the potential to come across as an act of blatant self-indulgence – and, of course, to some degree it is! At the very worst, however, is the potential for such an effort to come across as a purely individual contribution. Because contribution matters so much to me personally, I wanted to ensure that any portfolio I self-curate includes appropriate disclosures; disclosures that acknowledge the importance of collaboration, opportunity, support, and so on, from my family, friends and acquaintances, peers and co-workers, employers, customers and partners, sponsors, and more. In other words, and though in a very different context, like Brees I want to ensure that what comes across as ‘My Portfolio’ rightly acknowledges that this too is a team sport.

In the interests of generic disclosures then, the following is an attempt to ensure the efforts of others are known explicitly:

• Articles, book chapters and posters – Based on authorships, affiliations and acknowledgements, portfolio artifacts such as articles, book chapters and posters make explicit collaborators, enablers and supporters/influencers, respectively. In this case, there’s almost no need for further disclosure.
• Blog posts – Less formal than the written and oral forms of communication already alluded to above and below, it’s through the words themselves and/or hyperlinks introduced that the contributions of others are gratefully and willingly acknowledged. Fortunately, it is common practice for page-ranking algorithms to take into account the words and metadata that collectively comprise blog posts, and appropriately afford Web pages stronger rankings based upon these and other metrics.
• Presentations – My intention here is to employ Presentations as a disclosure category for talks, webinars, workshops, courses, etc. – i.e., all kinds of oral communications that may or may not be recorded. With respect to this category, my experience is ‘varied’ – e.g., in not always allowing for full disclosure regarding collaborators, though less so regarding affiliations. Therefore, to make collaborators as well as supporters/influencers explicit, contribution attributions are typically included in the materials I’ve shared (e.g., the slides corresponding to my GTC17 presentation) and/or through the words I’ve spoken. Kudos are also warranted for the organizations I’ve represented in some of these cases as well, as it has been a byproduct of this representation that numerous opportunities have fallen into my lap – though often owing to a sponsorship fee, to be completely frank. Finally, sponsoring organizations are also deserving of recognition, as it is often their mandate (e.g., a lead-generation marketing program that requires a webinar, a call for papers/proposals) that inspires what ultimately manifests itself as some artifact in one of my portfolios; having been on the event-sponsor’s side more than a few times, I am only too well aware of the effort involved in creating the space for presentations … a contribution that cannot be ignored.

From explicit to vague, disclosures regarding contribution are clearly to barely evident. Regardless, for those portfolios shared via my personal blog (Data Science Portfolio and Cloud Computing Portfolio), suffice it to say that there were always others involved. I’ve done my best to make those contributions clear, however I’m sure that unintentional omissions, errors and/or (mis)representations exist. Given that these portfolios are intentionally positioned and executed as works-in-progress, I look forward to addressing matters as they arise.