We’re well under 2 months to Prairie Dev Con – West in Calgary, and it appears some of you need an extra push to register.
So why attend? Well, there’s the three days and over 80 sessions spanning software development, IT Pro, and Agile topics. There’s the pre-conference workshops available on WP7, TFS, and Agile as well as the Microsoft IT Pro Camp and Azurefest events. And there’s the value – comparable conferences in other cities will run you almost double the cost in registration, hotel, and airfare; Prairie Dev Con is all about bringing the knowledge to you, not you having to search it out.
Did we mention that Richard Campbell and Cark Franklin will be on hand doing a live .NET Rocks show from the conference?
But if all that isn’t enough to convince you, here are a few more reasons:
1 – Dylan Smith will Teach You How to Dance
Coming off a whirlwind tour of India and other locales, Dylan will be offering evening sessions on cultural dancing for those interested.
2 – BACON
I don’t know if I need to say anything more here.
3 – Jonathan Rozenblit Needs to Maximize Microsoft’s Banner Investment
Seriously, you can’t just put a guy’s face on a stand up banner and not use it anywhere!
Although he has been trying to get it some good facetime…
So what are you doing March 13 – 15?
The correct answer should be attending Prairie Dev Con – West in Calgary! Awesome sessions, fantastic speakers, and a lot of fun along the way.
Visit www.prairiedevcon.com to get all the info on the conference as well as how to register!
Also, we’re giving back to the local Alberta technical community! Check out this blog post to find out how you can help support your local technical user group simply by attending the conference!
Hope to see you there!
D
They’ve arrived! Microsoft is bringing a number of sessions from their popular TechDays events to Prairie Dev Con West in Calgary and they’re now posted on the site!
In addition to fantastic SharePoint, SQL Server, mobile, and cloud sessions, there’s more great content for those in the IT Pro world: System Center, VIrtualization, Lync, and more!
Check out all the TechDays content by visiting the Sessions page and selecting TechDays from the filter list!
http://www.prairiedevcon.com/Sessions
And a reminder – the January discounted price of $599.99 ends January 31st! Secure your registration to the conference today!
www.prairiedevcon.com
We often hear people say things like “Live with no regrets”, but I don’t think that’s literally what people mean. I know I’ve regretted many things in my past and there are some things I look back on with great disdain.
One of those things is my high school football career. I played 1.5 seasons with my high school team. The problem – I didn’t take it seriously enough. I wanted to have fun, not focus so much on winning and losing…not focus so much on conditioning and honing my skills…not focus on what it really means to be committed to a team or gaining greater understanding of the game.
So after my initial season riding the bench, and then my second season losing my starting position to someone that wanted it more, I just quit…decided it wasn’t fun so I turned in my helmet and went on to other things.
I regret that every day. Being in my 30’s and nowhere near the vision of health and fitness, I mourn the missed opportunity I had. I regret that I didn’t take advantage of an opportunity that was given.
That’s why I appreciate opportunities when they arise and try to embrace them. For me regret was not a constant reminder of failure or a weight to drag along the rest of my life, but a motivator and advanced-warning system for future decisions.
Regrets are something we need to live with and learn from, but they in no way define who we are today or tomorrow. I saw this on Twitter recently, and it rings true:
Don’t look for me in my past, I don’t live there anymore.
There’s a lot of talk today about SOPA and PIPA, the two acts being discussed in the US government and backed by the entertainment industry.
If you’re still in the dark about what its about, check out this article from PC world and then watch the video below.
PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.
I had a bunch of paragraphs on this post earlier talking about how on the surface this looks like its a win for non-US countries – why not just set up shop outside the US? Thanks to my buddy Don Belcham for commenting and passing on this link to Michael Geist’s article outlining how non-US websites and businesses will be impacted by SOPA/PIPA.
From Geist’s article:
Yet IP addresses are allocated by regional organizations, not national ones. The allocation entity located in the U.S. is called the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). Its territory includes the U.S., Canada, and 20 Caribbean nations. This bill treats all IP addresses in this region as domestic for U.S. law purposes. To put this is context, every Canadian Internet provider relies on ARIN for its block of IP addresses. In fact, ARIN even allocates the block of IP addresses used by federal and provincial governments. The U.S. bill would treat them all as domestic for U.S. law purposes.
Second, Canadian businesses and websites could easily find themselves targeted by SOPA. The bill grants the U.S. "in rem" jurisdiction over any website that does not have a domestic jurisdictional connection. For those sites, the U.S. grants jurisdiction over the property of the site and opens the door to court orders requiring Internet providers to block the site and Internet search engines to stop linking to it.
He goes on to point out that if a Canadian website owner wants to challenge a court order, the Canadian must consent to the jurisdiction of the US courts.
This decision has far reaching impacts on business and general internet freedom beyond the borders of the US. We had an inkling of that before, but this paints it in a much more dire light.
An interesting discussion popped up on Twitter between myself, Steve Rogalsky, Terry Bunio, Mike Iwasiow, David Alpert, and some others around using hours as a software estimating unit of measure. Steve’s been reading the book Beyond the Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and blogged about his stance on using hours for sizing work items.
In a nutshell Goldratt offers the following arguments:
Asking someone for a timeframe to complete a task puts their image in jeopardy
PMs will always try to squeeze whatever number you give.
Devs will fill the time in an estimate because if they don’t then they’ll be known as either exaggerators or as being very good but they don’t want to be held to a high level of expectation.
Estimating based on time will either waste hours to ensure estimates are met or will demoralize devs because they went over their estimate and this is totally “idiotic”.
So basically…
PMs are evil time crunchers who will squeeze every ounce of productivity out of developers on their projects
Developers are frail, timid creatures who have no personal guide on judgement or history of writing code that they can apply to task estimates
Developers must feel loved and accepted by their peers and that’s the most important thing.
As I’m learning more and more in my career, developing software is all about people and only partially about technology. I have no doubt that the Office Space-ish stereotypes Goldratt depicts exist – I’ve worked with some of them. But remember this all started with one question:
Is it really wrong to do hour-based estimating instead of story-point estimating?
In my view, storypoints are a buffer against reality. We feel better saying that something is a 3 instead of saying its 12 hours of effort – even though for reporting and tracking purposes, a 3 = 12 hours of effort. Also when starting out, most teams that use storypoints have to set baselines anyway else their estimating exercise makes no sense. So from the start, we’re masking hours behind a story point. So, speaking of idiotic…
Ok ok, don’t all pile on me for that last bit…was tongue in cheek (sort of). Here’s the funny thing – it doesn’t matter what unit of measure you estimate tasks in. What matters is the culture of the team, the shared commitment to success, the drive to delivery. Here’s what I try to implement on my teams that address some of Goldratt’s concerns.
Shared Estimating
The work items BAs provide need to be estimated, but I don’t want one person providing estimates. That act alone is wasteful for a few reasons. For one, that estimate is based on the sole experience and knowledge of that individual. A team is not made up of siloed individuals but a collection of people working together, people who have varied levels of experience, talent, and wisdom. It would be a detriment to a project *not* to do group estimating.
Technical Leadership
So you have a bunch of work items up on your Kanban board and there’s this one nasty grid that needs to do some nasty calculations. Your brand new, just graduated out of university, bright eyed and bushy tailed junior developer decides to take it! This is where sound technical leadership on a project (not technical, but personal) steps in to say “How about you tackle this task that will help you understand the new UI technology we’re using and the architecture stack?” Having the right people guiding the team is crucial, and that person should not be the PM – they have enough to deal with at the stakeholder level and you can’t assume PMs are technical.
Open and Honest Communication
I’ve heard so many stories from organizations that have a culture of fear. They can’t bubble up any concerns or bad news. Nobody wants to hear bad news, and nobody wants to be the bearer of it. What we need to do is remove that culture of fear from within the project. We need people to feel comfortable raising issues that come up so that as a team we can come up with a new solution, not point fingers in retribution. If you remove the fear, then raising issues isn’t a problem.
Create a Culture of Delivery
Goldratt’s argument is centered around an estimate for a specific task and whether the developer will complete it on time. In his view, the developer becomes entirely engrossed with how much time he’s spent, how much time is left, whether he’ll complete on time. But you can avoid that by creating a culture of delivery within your team, and these are basic Agile techniques. The easiest to implement is the use of short sprints and granular work items. Sure there’s more work items on the board, but if a developer completes 5 smaller work items within a sprint compared to 1 larger one, there is a psychological shift in perception – “I completed 5 things this sprint, I was very productive!”. Being productive feels good, and people want to feel good.
Moving work items from Work in Progress to Done should be seen as a big deal. On our team we applaud whenever we move items (we’ve toyed with the idea of getting a gong). Delivery is a good thing, it should be encouraged, and it should be celebrated!
So…is estimating based on hours bad?
WHO CARES?! If you don’t have the things I mentioned above, it doesn’t matter if you use story points, hours, days, parsecs, whatever – an arbitrary value assigned to a piece of work representing duration to complete is not what will determine success on your project. The people you staff it with, the way you lead them, and the culture you create around them will.
I received the good news on Jan 1st that, for the 4th year in a row, I was awarded a Microsoft MVP award for ASP.NET/IIS.
There’s some movement as there always is – some people not getting renewed their MVP award, new people attaining it. Some people have publically voiced how they turned down the award or just didn’t bother working for it for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into here. There’s also been some passionate Twitter discussions around community and groups and how valid they are, etc. etc.
But instead of adding to all that, I figured I’d focus on those new MVPs and give some insights from my experience in the program on how to maximize this opportunity.
Be Proud of Your MVP
Achieving an MVP award means you did *something* to deserve it. You were involved with user groups, code camps, speaking engagements, posting on forums, writing blogs, writing books, etc. The fact that Microsoft is recognizing your accomplishments isn’t something to take for granted, regardless of how secretive and closed the selection process is (a favourite complaint of many).
Go To Summit, Meet People, Meet Your Product Team
The MVP Global Summit is the highlight for MVPs every year, and provides an opportunity for us to network with each other and also with the product team members that our MVP designation is attached to.
However, understand that just because you’re an MVP you’re not going to be given the keys to the kingdom right away. Depending on the product group you’re part of you may or may not be privy to as much info as you were hoping. This might be confusing since we’re under NDA anyway, and we’re attached to the product groups, so why not share every little detail?
My view is that MVPs have shot themselves in the foot in the past. Every year it seems that there’s at least a few MVPs that get kicked out of the program because they tweeted, blogged, or posted pictures of NDA material. This is why its important to get to know your product team – the more comfortable they are with you and the more they trust you personally, the more access you’ll get.
Keep in mind that Microsoft has been very secretive over the last few years on a number of technologies. Microsoft employees here in Canada can’t even comment on “that operating system that might be coming out in the next few years” publically at any event. So if you’re wondering why the WP7 team won’t show you what’s coming two releases from now, don’t take it personally. Just get personal with them and your chances of being in the know will improve.
Get to Know Your MVP Lead
We are *spoiled* in Canada to have Simran and Ljupco head up the MVP program. They’re phenomenal leads who make a point of not only keeping in touch via email but actually visiting MVPs in their cities (Sim was in Winnipeg not too long ago). Your MVP lead can be a huge advocate for you within the MVP program and can also provide insight in how to maximize your MVP benefits. Drop him/her an email, set up a call, schedule to meet at the MVP Summit…do something to touch base with your lead.
Get Involved in the MVP Forums and Email Lists
To be honest, I don’t do this much but I have my circle of colleagues and friends who happen to be MVPs that I talk to via Twitter or email on a daily basis. When you’re starting out, its a good thing to get on the forums and the email lists as another way to connect with others in the MVP community.
Investigate MVP Perks
There’s a tonne of perks provided for MVPs from 3rd party companies. Ask other MVPs in your group and someone will be able to direct you to information on them.
Oh You Fancy Huh? Don’t Be!
There are a number of people in the greater dev ecosystem that do tonnes yet are never awarded an MVP designation. There are also those that get awarded MVP designations that have different focuses or degrees of experience with a technology/product and different levels of expertise. So the warning here is just don’t let this go to your head. Instead, focus on how you can leverage the benefits of being an MVP for yourself and also your employer, your local dev community, and your fellow MVPs.
Have Fun!
The MVP program has been a fun one to be a part of over the last four years, and I’ve had some great experiences. It’s not a perfect program, but there’s a lot of good in it and a lot of opportunity, so have fun!
If You Go To Summit, Head to Bush Gardens After the Attendee Party for Karaoke with the SQL Server MVPs
Go to summit, find a SQL Server MVP, find out if Bush Gardens is a go for this year. Trust me, a legendary night awaits!
Enjoy your MVP award and welcome to the program!
I read Dave Rosenberg’s recent article on CNET entitled “What you should do in 2012: Start a company”, which focussed on interacting with venture capitalists to raise money.
I think this is jumping the gun a bit though. The reality is that you don’t need VCs to run, or even start, a company. You also don’t need to quit your day job to do it, or hire employees right away, or put up huge capital to start it.
An Idea that Provides Value…or Don’t Be an Underpants Gnome
The most important thing you need is an idea that provides value to someone. Many people fall into the trap of trying to come up with “the next big thing”, that *something* that will make incredible money within a few months. I watch Dragon’s Den and am amazed at how delusional people can be with the valuations of their companies, suggesting that a company with no sales can be worth upwards of 1 million dollars – but its a great idea that people will love!
That’s because its easy to fall into the Underpants Gnome syndrome. Some context – there was this episode of South Park (no really, keep reading, this is important) that featured gnomes that would sneak into people’s homes and steal their underpants. Why were they doing that? Well, they were working from this formula:
The sad thing is that this isn’t unlike what many small businesses start with:
Phase 1 – I have an idea!
Phase 2 – Who knows, we do something I guess?
Phase 3 – I’ll make loads of money!!!!
But when starting a business, especially in the first year, your focus can’t be on profit. Most businesses won’t hit profitability for 3 – 5 years which means for those first years a business either breaks even or suffers losses (obviously if the losses are too great, the business may not be worth seeing through the initial hurdles). Even if there is some profit made in the first few years, that will typically be re-invested back into the business as it continues to grow.
The true focus needs to be on the first two phases, and we need to alter the words associated with them.
Phase 1 – Define the Value and Put Your Idea Out There
Successful businesses are ones that provide actual value to their customers. Many businesses miss that its not about making money, its about making money doing something for someone else. Businesses aren’t about dollars, they’re about people. The dollars are an end product of the interaction with those people. The more valuable your idea is to people, the more dollars will be produced. So before you start thinking about profitability or operations or any of that, you need to define what the value is for your idea. Your elevator pitch is your value statement – define it!
Now just because you think something is a great idea doesn’t mean everyone feels the same way. You need to test your theory that it truly is great. There are many techniques for doing this, which I won’t get into detail in this post, but a shortlist is using online surveys, soliciting direct feedback from focus groups, and doing market surveys. The point is, you need to vette out your idea before you jump in and make any investment.
When I did my first Prairie Developer Conference back in 2010 in Regina, I engaged the local community to ensure that I had their support and that they felt holding a technology conference was worthwhile to the technical community. Their feedback was crucial to ensure that the conference would be a success and they were instrumental in helping promote the event. If I hadn’t engaged them, I would have failed miserably.
Phase 2 – Do It!
The next important step is to actually do something! Note that there isn’t a defining line where phase 1 ends and phase 2 begins, and in fact you might find yourself “doing it” alongside your phase 1 activities.
Take one guy I worked for. He was in the automotive industry and saw a need for a better way for salespeople to generate quotes. So while still at his day job, he picked up a book on programming and wrote the first version of what would become a large software platform. While defining the value and soliciting feedback from colleagues and potential customers, he was actually building the software as well.
The balancing act, and its more art than science, is to determine *when* to invest in the doing part. The example above illustrates this: Let’s say he thought it was a need and a great idea and built a huge quotation system and then went to market, but the market responded negatively or the need wasn’t as great as he thought or other competitors were already established? The investment would have been wasted.
It goes back to businesses being about meeting the needs of people – define the value, put your idea out there for validation, and do it!
Phase 3 Profit! Just Kidding, its Actually Solicit Feedback, Review and Assess!
So now you’ve done something – you’ve made your idea a reality, you’re officially offering your product or service, and you have customers or perspective customers. Time to watch the dollars roll in? Hardly! Now the real work begins! Remember that businesses are about providing value, meeting needs, and above all people. So begins the feedback and assessment loop.
Things move fast in life. What was a need one day may no longer be a need the next, and the value your product or service provided today may be replaced with a competitor tomorrow. This is why its so important to continue connecting with people considering or using your product/service. This is also where many people feel tension due to emotional attachment to their business.
I was watching Kitchen Nightmares, the show where Gordon Ramsey goes into troubled restaurants and tries to help them. One was a burger restaurant in LA. The customers all had very strong opinions about how bad the burgers were, that the meat was dry, that there were things that should be changed. The owner was oblivious though, insisting that his burgers were fantastic and that people who disagreed were just trying to damage his business.
What people forget is that businesses exist to provide value to people. Even if that need is to enjoy a burger and the value provided is a good tasting beef patty on a bun, asking for feedback from customers, reviewing it and making adjustments is crucial for any business to survive. Personal preference and emotional attachment can’t factor in – its about them, not about you.
When I get someone giving me negative feedback for one of my conferences, I don’t take it personally; instead, I read and assess the feedback and see what I can learn to make the conference better. If possible, I’ll connect with the person directly to solicit even more details. Critics aren’t a danger to your business, they’re actually to be cherished; its the ones that aren’t happy but never tell you that you need to worry about.
Ok, But What About Profit?!
A business is built on value but runs on profit. The reality is that money does factor into the equation, and a healthy business will return a profit. Let me repeat that:
A healthy business will return a profit.
The danger of too much focus on profit is that it clouds the reasons for running a business in the first place. In my opinion, this is why so many companies are focussed on appeasing their shareholders than their customers. A healthy business is one that focuses on providing a valuable product or service and ensures that they’re adapting to the changing needs of their customer base.
When profit becomes the sole focus there’s a danger of doing things that maximize profit while undercutting value…when this happens, value decreases and the overall business suffers.
So You’re Saying I Should Start a Business But Not For Money?!
That’s not what I’m saying at all. Remember, businesses are built on value but run on profit. A business that doesn’t produce profit is not healthy and is not sustainable. And individually, there needs to be some payback for the time, effort, and energy that we put into our businesses.
But profit should never be the *starting* point for a business. If someone says “I know how I can make a lot of money by doing x” then in my mind there’s either a high probability of failure, or money that is made is done somewhat unscrupulously.
So Go Start Your Business!
Starting a business doesn’t require VC money or a bank loan. It requires an idea that provides value to people, confirmation from your market that its valuable, action to put your idea into the market, and gathering feedback to review, assess, and adjust.
You need to be realistic about profitability over the first few years and focus on your quality, value, and your customers.
Keep emotions and personal preferences out of the business as much as possible. Realize that for every time you choose yourself you could be sacrificing a customer.
A healthy business will return a profit, but the health of a business is not determined by the profit it achieves.
Good Luck!
2011 has been a fantastic year for so many different reasons, and its laid the groundwork for a fantastic 2012 to come!
Online Business Systems
In February I started with Online Business Systems, a technology and business consulting company based out of Winnipeg, Manitoba but with offices in Calgary, Edmonton, Portland, Minneapolis, and Toronto. Coming to online was the best decision I’ve ever made in my career. The mentorship and nurturing, the opportunities and support, and the culture of the organization has helped me grow professionally over the last year; I can only imagine the growth I’ll see in 2012!
Prairie Developer Conference
2011 saw the second year for running the Prairie Developer Conference, a software dev conference I put on in Regina. June 2011 was the second Regina event and we saw almost 100% growth from the previous year, which is fantastic! With TechDays not running in Winnipeg or Calgary, I decided to fill that void and put on Winnipeg’s first Prairie Dev Con this past November. Running the conference is a lot of work, but its a lot of fun and I love getting together with old friends, making new ones, and connecting with various developer communities across the prairies. 2012 will see the first 3 day Prairie Dev Con in Calgary this March and then in Regina in October.
Family
2011 marked the first full year we’ve had both of our girls (we adopted), and embracing the whole family aspect of life has been the most rewarding part of the year. Family is definitely the fuel that keeps me going and grounds me in my day-to-day activities. 2012 will see my oldest break into the double-digit age range and my youngest stringing more and more words together in conversation. They really do grow up way too fast, I’m treasuring every second!
2012 will also bring the 15th anniversary of being married to my beautiful wife Michelle! Gotta think up something special for this one.
And what about 2012?…
2012 will be a fantastic year, one filled with new adventures, experiences, people, and achievements!
I was going to try and make a bunch of predictions as to what will happen within the tech industry, but instead of specifics I think there’s one general trend that I see happening – the focus on solutioning and value delivered over platform, technology, and architecture. More and more, people want solutions to their problems and don’t really care how those solutions are created as long as they work. Technologists will need to understand this nuance, and that solutions need to transcend platform, operating system, screen size and device type. More and more people are expecting the same application to run across all their devices in a similar way. With the increase in computing power in even small devices like cell phones this will will become more and more necessary to consider when developing a solution.
We used to use the term “mobile” computing, but what 2012 will show us is that its not about mobile or non-mobile, its about writing applications that can work on a variety of devices. Microsoft switched their terminology over the last few years from desktop, laptop, phone to “screens” – recognizing that under the hood we’re always dealing with a computer, but the interface to that computer is really what’s changing. This concept will continue to evolve and grow over the next year.
Happy New Year
So happy new year to everyone, and we’ll see you back here in 2012!
The holidays have become a time rich with traditions for me. Family wise, its a time to get together and celebrate the people that love and support us throughout the year. Turkeys are cooked, gifts are opened, and well wishes are shared. But in the midst of all the goodness and emotion is another holiday that lends itself more to what Scrooge might value – capitalism, thrift, and commercialism. Yes, I’m talking about Boxing Day!
Boxing Day, for my American friends, is very much Canada’s Black Friday – but instead of attaching it to Thanksgiving, we attach it to Christmas. On Boxing Day people line up at ungodly hours outside stores in the hopes of scoring a good deal on something.
For the last few years, myself and some friends have evolved Boxing Day into a yearly tradition that is more about the experience than actually buying anything (last year I don’t think I bought anything actually). We have it down to a good schedule: Watch a late movie at the nearby theatre, then get into line at Best Buy around 1:30 AM.
What began years ago with just standing in line has evolved to a tailgating experience complete with cooking on a Coleman stove, bringing movies, and this year a table with board games! Below are some pictures from the event (you can see the full album on Google+ here), and a compilation of video footage I took from the night – including footage of what its like to go rushing through the doors at 6AM!
When Rob Conery left Microsoft I gave a blog retrospective on possible reasons behind his exit. Today I’m happy to reload the cannon and aim it square at the latest Microsoftie to hand in his blue badge – Phil Haack.
Phil has been a huge part of why Microsoft MVC is a success, and his contributions have changed the way web development is done on the Microsoft platform.
So why leave, and why leave to Github? Couldn’t he have just switched to the TFS team if he liked code repositories so much? Well, here’s some thoughts on what could be behind his leaving.
He Likes the GitHub Logo Better than Microsoft’s
Sure, sure, Github is all kewl and they do some awesome things and you can check in code and stuff, but let me tell you something – Phil Haack moving to Github has less to do with all that and EVERYTHING to do with his fascination with cute anime-ish cats.
Knowing that he gets an unlimited number of stickers with that cat with the weird octopus tentacles on them was part of his signing bonus.
That Bromance with Hanselman Didn’t Go Anywhere
Unfortunately the HaHaa Brothers never turned into the HaHaa Bromance Phil may have hoped for. After delivering numerous versions of the MVC framework (which actually stands for “My Valentine for sCott”) in hopes of displaying his adoration, Phil saw the writing on the wall when Scott started doing presentations with other members of the ASP.NET team.
The final realization came when Scott started ditching his lunch appointments with Phil for members from the Access team. I mean c’mon, nobody *willingly* meets with the Access team!
Phil Failed to Fix the Past to Preserve the Present
Phil never actually worked at Microsoft, that all happened in a different reality thanks to his *EPIC FAIL* in ensuring the past happened correctly…
Unfortunately Phil faded from the cover and thus his career path simply led him to Github.
But Seriously…
Phil moving on is a huge loss to those of us in the Microsoft web world. But as we’ve seen with others, moving away from Microsoft rarely means moving out of the community spotlight altogether. I’m looking forward to seeing how Phil helps Github move forward the same way he moved the ASP.NET team. Good luck Phil in all your future endeavours!
For Rob, I posted a link to Michael W. Smith’s “Friends”, but for you I’ve selected Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”. ‘Cause when you’re lost you can look and code in MVC, time after time…
I've been at GeeksWithBlogs for 6 years now, and over the years its been great to see new people join the GWB community. I wanted to highlight a few blogs that started up this year that you might want to add to your RSS feed.
Simon has some crazy deep, low level type posts on .NET code which I'm sure some people would think is fantastic. But what I really like is the insight into RedGate. Simon works for RedGate software, and shares experiences from his time there. I'm looking forward to the "Inside RedGate" posts in the coming months.
Lori is Canadian, involved in the Ontario developer community, and has some great insightful posts not only on tech but on book reviews and general geek life. I totally related to her recounting of working for a small company run by a jerk boss.
Malisa's blog is just fascinating! He runs the Ugandan .NET User Group and so in addition to some great technical content he provides a glimpse into the development community in Africa! I watched
a TED talk once by Chimamanda Adichie who talked about the danger of "a single story" and it very much challenged me on what my views of various parts of the world that I had never visited but yet had pre-dispositions towards. Malisa's blog is such an eye opener, exposing that yes - in a place most westerners associate with only starvation, wars, and horrible stereotyped wrestlers named Kamala - there's business, technology, software development, and .NET. It's a view of the global industry that we're a part of. Definitely a must-read, not just for the cultural aspects but also because Malisa knows his stuff!
These and other great blogs can be read on www.geekswithblogs.net!
D
Remember how I blogged about rolling with the punches?
So today my buddy and Prairie Dev Con speaker James Chambers went to present on Microsoft MVC. He brought his fancy new Dell XPS laptop, which he had used to do presentations and stream internet video to a projector before. But today, the technology gods were not smiling…
James tries to connect his laptop to the projector. Nothing. The projector just can’t recognize the connection. Realize that we’ve already had two sessions in that room already, so everything *should* work.
The Dell XPS laptop James has doesn’t have a VGA port. Instead, it has HDMI and Mini-Display ports. James had one of the Apple mini-display to VGA adapters. If I connected my Mac Book Pro, I could connect no problem, so it wasn’t the adapter. He could connect his laptop to projectors before, so it wasn’t the laptop. And we’d already had sessions, so it wasn’t the projector. So what was it?
Well, all three it turns out. Thanks to this post over at Irongeek.com we discovered that using Windows 7 on a Dell XPS with the Apple connector and a non-plug-in-play projector won’t work. So the fix was ditch the Apple connector, use the Star Tech model instead (listed in the Irongeek article).
So James is good to go, he’s going to talk at the last session and we’ve moved the Windows 8 talk Jim Russell and I were going to do until tomorrow.
Roll with the punches…
So I’ve been tweeting the last little while “Rolling with the punches” and I’ve had some people ask me what that meant. Whether you’re running a conference (like I am this week), or a project, or a birthday party for a 2 year old, you need to be ready to handle those things that are unexpected. Risk mitigation can only go so far and its at those times that you need to become resourceful.
So let me tell you what the last few days have been like. Today is the first day of Prairie Dev Con Winnipeg, a conference that I run. On Friday I was informed that my keynote speaker had lost his voice, one of my speakers had a family emergency and had to back out, and I got a warning from another that he was travelling over the weekend and if there was a storm or something he may not be able to get back by Monday for his talk. A storm didn’t happen, but their car did break down and he was delayed.
Finally, Saturday night I took my printing order to Staples. It was at 5 and they closed at 6, and I had a bunch of surveys to be printed and cut. The girl working said that she’d have it ready by the next day (Sunday). Her intent was to come in the next morning and finish the job. Unfortunately, she had to be hospitalized that night and never made it into work…and never informed anyone of the remaining work. They found out at 3pm when I came to pick it up and there was no way they’d be able to cut everything in time.
So how did we roll with these punches?
- Miguel, my keynote speaker, was a trooper and was able to do the keynote but asked that his session get moved from Monday to Tuesday. This is why I wait until the last day before printing out schedules, they can change up to the event and even later.
- I was able to move some sessions around to accommodate my stranded speaker and fill the empty slot from the speaker that couldn’t make it.
- Staples was able to get me half the cut surveys so I took those and my wife will pick up the rest today. I altered how we’d collect session surveys, and actually I think it’ll work better.
So all of this is to say, plan but also plan for what you can’t plan for – there will be things that happen that blindside you, that you’re not sure how to handle or solve. Stop, take a deep breath, and don’t feel that you need to limit yourself to the boundaries that you initially set for yourself. Roll with the punch and learn from it so that you can avoid the blow next time.
Now, back to the conference!
D
There’s been a lot of discussion around Scott Hanselman’s recent blog post around profanity in presentations. He discusses whether the use of profanity is appropriate in conference presentations, and the feedback through comments and the Twitterverse are varied. Some say its ok, others say it isn’t. Everyone seems to be discussing about the presentation itself, the “artistic license” that presenters are granted when creating their presentation.
I wanted to give a different take on the subject – the one from someone who organizes conferences. The content within a presentation reflects more than just the presenter – it reflects on the event itself and its brand. At Prairie Dev Con, I’d be just as concerned about language used within sessions as I would if a speaker was unprepared or they were a poor presenter. Conferences get associated with the type of content they provide. If I attend SXSW I have a different expectation than if I attend TechEd. Presenters need to be aware of how the conference wants to be known and tailor their presentations accordingly.
Another aspect is from a legal point of view. Whenever language, comedy, and images are introduced into a presentation, there’s always a risk that someone attending may be offended to the point of feeling that they were discriminated against. One session I attended compared two versions of a software product using an image of a woman screaming at a man (the older version) and Jessica Alba in a seductive pic (the new version). The presenter then went on to explain he had to Google “Angry Bitch” to find the pic of the woman screaming. Luckily nobody complained, but this presentation was done at a large software vendor’s event. I’m sure they would not want to be associated with what someone might see as blatant sexism.
There’s also a personal effect that presenters may not be aware of. This idea that you can be the “cool kid” and drop f-bombs in your session and that its ok for people in the room to be offended shows an immaturity – the point of a presentation is to share a message and communicate it in the best way possible. Why on Earth would you want to alienate attendees?! Also it starts to paint the community’s image of you, including those that may be considering hiring you at some point. If a presenter is comfortable using expletives within a presentation setting, how professional will he/she be in a boardroom presenting to executives and potential clients?
Weeks and months after a presentation, very few people will remember the content in detail. What they will remember is you and what their impression of you was. If you think that’s worth risking expletives and unprofessionalism for, then by all means go for it. You won’t be risking it at my events though.
We’ve all been inundated with images from the various Occupy Wallstreet demonstrations that have been occurring throughout the United States. Hordes of people frustrated with how their country’s financial systems have imploded due to corporate greed. I’m not American, so really I can’t comment on the situation – its an internal family issue that’s really none of my business. After all, Canada’s economy weathered the global recession very well and we avoided the disaster that befell other countries.
So I find it funny that others have adopted this “Occupy Wallstreet” movement in their countries. Consider this map from MotherJones.com:
Now Europe I can somewhat understand, since they’re in a bit of financial disarray. But why is Australia and Japan joining the fight? And Canada – what’s Canada doing in there?! Maybe its because of how the US is Canada’s biggest trading partner, and a healthy US economy translates to healthier economic health up here. That, after all, would actually make sense.
But no, the irony is that the “Occupy BayStreet” movement in Canada (BayStreet is the financial district in Toronto) has very little if anything to do with what Occupy Wallstreet is about. Instead, its an opportunity for a human rights organization to associate with a prominent movement to gain media attention.
The Canadian Peace Alliance (and its Manitoba group, the Peace Alliance Winnipeg), were the ones behind the Toronto event…and in Winnipeg. From the Peace Alliance Winnipeg’s website:
Peace Alliance Winnipeg will be there because we want to send the message to Stephen Harper that we reject the growing militarization of Canadian society, the wars in Libya and Afghanistan, the addition of overseas military bases and the expenditure of billions of dollars to pay for “stealth fighters” that have only one use – wars of aggression - while Canadian infrastructure and social programs crumble.
So while many may assume the protesters were standing up against fiscal wrongdoing, the Winnipeg event was meant to be an anti-war demonstration. As far as I know, that’s *not* what the American movement is about.
But maybe most of the hundreds that came out across Canada to join in the protests were fuelled by the “1% is richer than 99% of the population” rhetoric that has people so enraged. And I agree! I don’t feel that the richest 1% are doing nearly enough to help the other 99%!
So, what are you going to do Mr./Miss RichPerson?
Oh, let me explain. That MotherJones.com site I mentioned earlier had another really slick graphic, showing that the average income for the bottom 90% of US residents was $31,244.
So let’s head over to www.globalrichlist.com, a site created by a company in London called Poke who, from their website, state:
We built this site because we wanted to challenge people's perception of their personal wealth. And while we're at it hopefully raise some money for a good cause.
Now if we put in $31,244 US into their spiffy calculator (they list how they calculate this on the site), guess what?
The average income for the bottom 90% of US residents puts them in the top 7% of the richest people in the world!
That’s right, if you make just over $31k a year US, congrats – you’re actually part of the global financial problem.
Of course, everything is relative. But still, the fact that everything is relative makes Canadian demonstrations against the power of the Western Wealthy seem like privileged children not getting the new iPhone 4S for their birthday.
We are a fortunate country that supports its less fortunate more than most, and provides its citizens the freedom to realize their dreams. That’s not airy-fairy talk, its true! Want to start a company, do it. Want to start a non-profit, do it. Want to teach, or volunteer, or organize fundraisers, or get involved with politics – do it!
And to me, that’s what makes the recent demonstrations so frustrating. If people don’t like where our world is heading, then change it. Do something! Don’t just complain to governments, don’t make villains out of those that have embraced the opportunities our country provides.
Wealth is not a bad thing. Those that are wealthy are not inherently bad or evil. In fact, much good can come from wealth. Look at Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, two of the wealthiest men in the world and also two of the biggest philanthropists. And really, true wealth can’t be tied directly to salary or a bank account – true wealth is about family, friends, character; things that you can’t put a price on.
If we see social injustice, we should voice our displeasure. But what our country and our world really needs now are men and women of action who will do more than just put signs together and take a walk one day out of the year. We live in a rich country that gives us the freedom to change the world if we want to. Not taking advantage of that is the biggest abuse of wealth that I can think of.