Note: Re-posted from the Prairie Developer Conference blog.
Our event website will be going live early next week with details on the speakers and sessions, but today we’re pleased to announce the pricing for the Prairie Developer Conference!
| Registration Date | Conference Only | Conference &
Post-Conference Workshop
Bundle |
| By March 31 | $299.99 | $449.98 |
| By May 16 | $399.99 | $599.98 |
| Regular Price | $499.99 | $749.98 |
Groups of 3 or more receive an additional $50 off each registration!
Price for just attending the Post-Conference workshop is $299.99
(Read more about our post conference workshop here)
All registrations will be subject to applicable taxes.
Note: Re-posted from the Prairie Developer Conference blog.
The Prairie Developer Conference is pleased to announce that Microsoft MVP, author, and consultant Donald Belchamwill be leading a one day workshop on Friday, June 4th titled Making the Most of Your Brownfield Application Development! Pricing will be announced shortly, as will pricing for the conference in general and registration will be opening next week! Below is the abstract for the workshop.
Making the most of Brownfield Application Development
It is a rare developer, development team, or IT department that doesn’t have an application code base actively being worked on. Some are new initiatives that are being developed but have yet to be released. Others, which have made it to production, are firmly entrenched in maintenance mode. Still other projects are operating in production while subsequent releases are actively being developed. All of these projects have one thing in common: they’re brownfield.
Each and every project that has an active codebase is limited by the technical, architectural, design and environmental decisions that have been made up to this point. These restrictive decisions often begin to impede the ability for the project to progress with confidence, velocity and high quality. Signs that you’re in this situation include, but aren’t limited to:
1. Regression defects consistently being created when adding or modifying features
2. Large ripples of change required throughout the codebase when making seemingly simple changes
3. The team and client accept defects as a required component of developing software
4. Developers, management, analysts and clients physically and verbally express fear when change is discussed
5. Releasing the application to testing and/or production environments is wrought with problems
You have almost certainly experienced some, if not all, of these attributes in a project. They are commonplace in the development industry. The purpose of this one day seminar is to help you remove them from your projects.
The first half of the seminar will cover ecosystem concepts, a topic often ignored or relegated to an afterthought in many discussions. The ecosystem is the environment in which your code resides. The discussions will focus on the tools, practices and cultures that can be used to reduce, and even eliminate, some of the major issues that development teams are faced with. This will include looking at the capabilities of your version control system, your testing strategy, automated build tools, and how to manage defects. We’ll show how increasing the speed of feedback can decrease defects and increase development velocity and we’ll talk about creating a culture of quality for the whole project.
The afternoon component of the seminar will focus on the technical aspect of working in your existing code base. Topics will include well-structured layering, abstraction where and when necessary, the dangers of highly coupled code and refactoring techniques that you can use on your projects to help improve them.
Brownfield applications are the most common scenario that any developer will encounter in his or her career. The focus of this seminar is to better equip developers, and other team members, to deal with the issues they will see.
About Donald Belcham
Donald Belcham is a senior software developer, independent contractor, and agile development expert who is a strong supporter of fundamental OO patterns and practices. He is co-author of the book, “Brownfield Application Development in .NET” (Manning Press, 2008), and actively shares his expertise with other technical professionals at user groups, code camps and conferences held throughout the world. Past lectures have covered topics that encompass development practices, quality team leadership, and the intricacies of new and emerging technologies.
Incorporated into each lecture, blog entry and publication is Donald’s strong belief that the industry requires developers who are true craftsman; individuals who demonstrate a superior level of quality and are dedicated to producing applicable solutions that will consistently meet the unique needs and objectives of their clients. These types of craftsman show progressive advancement of skill and ability - similar to that which would be seen in an Apprentice/Journeyman/Master model.
In addition to acting as a mentor and keynote speaker, Donald has led a wide range of highly successful projects and developed top-performing teams. He is currently working on a set of .NET 3.5 services that will deliver business functionality to one of the largest public portals in Canada. For the past three consecutive years (2007, 2008, and 2009), Donald has held the prestigious title of Microsoft MVP in C# for his vast technical skill, leadership and community contribution; one of approximately 15 programmers in Canada, and one of approximately 300 in the world to achieve this distinction.
Donald is a founding member and the current president of the Edmonton .NET User Group.
Today I broke up with my Windows Mobile phone. Well, it wasn’t so much that I broke up with it as much as it became defective and unusable…which makes me sound like a jerk when I use a “breaking up” context, so let’s just forget that…and save the gory technical details for another post.
The main point: I have no usable phone and I need a usable phone. So I went to my local Telus store to see what could be done. The guy I spoke to (Darnelle sp?) was awesome and knew quite a bit about Blackberry’s (which is what I was looking to get). In fact he used a Blackberry Tour personally, which he had on him so I was able to see what it was like (Telus FAIL: You should have at least one working model of each phone for customers to see. Those fake plastic ones have 0 value). He checked my account and informed me that on Feb 6th I was up for phone offers from Telus. Basically I can get a credit towards a phone if I renew a three year contract (I was only 1 year into my current 3 year contract).
This was a problem. I can’t wait a full week to get a replacement phone! So this morning I called Telus and got a very nice rep named Karen. I explained the situation and Karen said that normally I’d have to send my phone to warranty first since it was within the first year. That would mean going to a Telus store where they would try and get me a “loaner” phone…but that might take a few days. I explained I couldn’t wait. She put me on hold and when she came back I was escalated to Sam (as in Samantha). I went over the situation again, and she wanted to make it clear and understood that I’d be signing up for a new 3 year term and that this was just a credit off the full price of the phone. I made it clear I realized this and just wanted to be able to sign a new 3 year contract one week earlier and take advantage of the credit I’d be getting anyway. After another minute on hold, she came back to say that yes they would put the credit on my account today so that I could get the deal.
We hear customer service horror stories all the time, and I want to thank all three of the Telus employees that I dealt with for helping me out. Greatly appreciated!
So why the “…well for a cell phone company” in the title? Because while the employees were great, the structure they have to work in doesn’t make sense.
Why is it that Telus store employees aren’t empowered to help customers the way the call center staff are? Why did I have to go through 3 people when I was already dealing with someone in the store…twice (the first time I went in, and the second time today…two trips)? This process is not customer focussed, as it causes the customer to do a lot of work while Telus benefits.
And seriously Telus: you’re going to make me pay a $20 fee because I’m switching phones? You give me an “option” credit to get a different phone, then stick me with this fee at the register? For switching phones?! Meanwhile, you force me to give up the unlimited data plan that I originally signed up for because you no longer offer it and you see this as a *new* contract that I’m entering into.
Of course I didn’t have to renew my contract with Telus. I could have gone to Rogers or Fido or MTS (local provider). But the rub of course is in the clause the cell phone companies include which states that terminating a contract early requires x number of dollars for each month remaining. In Telus's case its $20/month or $100, whichever is GREATER. So to cancel my 2 year contract would have cost me $480 and I would have had nothing but freedom from a contract.
So in the end, while I did experience great customer service from individuals, it ended up feeling like I got the three nice guards at a POW camp. Canadians are frustrated with the level of cellular service in Canada, from a cost, offerings, and service perspective. It’s nice to see that at least when it comes to truly meeting customer needs they’re hiring the right people on the front lines.
 | That’s right: January isn’t over and I’ve already plowed through not one, not two, but three books on my way to a record year for devouring tomes of the written word!
Now some of you might be thinking that, while you enjoy reading my technology posts or announcements of community events, or shamefully plugging the Prairie Developer Conference, really all you want is *just* my book reviews. Well I have good news: I’ve setup shop over at Blogger and you can read *just* my book reviews at
http://darcysbookclub.blogspot.com
Now, on to the third book of January… |
If Gurbaksh (his friends call him “G”, and since he’d *obviously* want to be my friend after meeting me, I’ll refer to him that way from here on) seems familiar to you, it may be due to his recent stint on FOX’s Secret Millionaire show. I bring this up for one very important reason: DON’T BASE YOUR VIEW OF THE BOOK ON THAT SHOW!
I re-watched the episode on YouTube tonight and to be honest he comes off like a douche at first, with his letter G on everything and his overuse of “bam”. Keep in mind that its a FOX show, and while mind-numbingly entertaining, their style of production is always on the extreme dramatic-effect side of the spectrum.
But reading his book is nothing like what you see on the show. Here we have a story of hope, desire, drive, and determination. This book chronicles his life from his parents coming to America from India through his adolescence and into his professional career…which, btw, started at 16, and the guy is only turning 28 this year.
During the height of the dot-com craze, G began a web advertising company in his bedroom…at 16. He grew the company and eventually it got bought, he made $40 million (on paper) on the deal. That eventually led him to start Blue Lithium, another web ad company, which he sold to Yahoo! for $300 million dollars.
The book is his story, but not just recounting the happenings. G talks about the lessons he learned in just over a decade of entrepreneurship. It’s also an interesting look at the unique struggles minorities must face in the business world and a warning of the realities of doing business.
Dealing with family issues and concerns, being hounded by a former employer who launched lawsuits against him, having to overcome other’s concerns about his age, and just the work involved in starting and selling two successful companies make this book an interesting and worthwhile read for anyone who is thinking about getting into business, currently in a business venture, or who is feeling stuck in their current job. G’s story is one of empowerment and freedom: empowerment by having an amazing attitude and freedom that comes from hard work and taking ownership of your own life.
I’m giving this book a 4.5 out of 5 for a rating because of its conversational narrative and the amount of valuable business wisdom it contains. Why not 5/5? Well…ok, there is *one* part of the book that you’ll roll your eyes at and think “this guy is kind of a douche”. It’s when he’s talking about, after he left the company that bought his first company, how he bought one car after the other: a Lamborghini, then a Ferrari, then something else, eventually settling on a Bentley…we get it G: you’ve owned a lot of cars. ;)
Rating: 4.5/5
Due to unforeseen technical issues, we’re postponing the January SharePoint event originally scheduled for tonight.
We’ll be rescheduling Rob Windsor to talk on SharePoint 2010 in February.
Sorry about the inconvenience!
 | Welcome to another instalment of my book review blog posts! It’s only the middle of January and I’ve already blazed through the second book of 2010! Before we get to the review, I wanted to mention that if anyone has recommendations for books I should flip through, please send them my way! Alright, on to the meat of this post… |
The caption on the cover of the book reads:
That was me, the guy begging money for a bottle of wine and a fifty-cent bed in a flophouse. I was thirty years away from being named an Officer of the Order of Canada, twenty years away from marriage and fatherhood, ten years away from earning my first million dollars, and a week away from deciding that I must change or die.
In italicized print under the title and author’s name is:
Co-founder of Second Cup
Unfortunately, as much as the author (Frank O’Dea) and publisher tried to make clear what this book was about, I’m sure many readers (including myself) focussed on that small bit of text at the bottom. In a world where corporate-world authors like Trump focus on their businesses successes, maybe it wasn’t such a stretch to assume this book would be the same: Frank picked himself up, co-founded a successful coffee chain, and the book would be almost entirely based on his experiences in setting up and running Second Cup.
Well let me state emphatically dear reader that this is *not* what this book is about. In fact his time with Second Cup takes only 32 pages of the 222 page book. I’ll admit that, having bought this book in the business section, I was a little bewildered at the course the narrative took. In fact after finishing it and digesting what I had read, I felt it was a disservice to Frank to have his Second Cup involvement feature so prominently on the cover, and why this was even in the business section to begin with.
This book is not the story of a businessman, it’s the story of a man who ran businesses among other aspects of his life. Those looking for insight into how to run a successful business from the ground up would do better to look elsewhere, that’s not what’s trying to be communicated.
The book spans three distinct time periods in Frank’s life. Pages 1 – 74 detail his childhood, his adolescence and entering adulthood. He walks us through life changing events involving his family, sexual abuse, and alcoholism that eventually brought him to live on the streets.
Pages 75 – 168 cover the business years, and not just at Second Cup. Frank was involved with many different businesses and political endeavours while dealing with leaving the company he co-founded, having his parents pass away, finding and holding on to love, and dealing with feelings and issues anchored in his past but revived in new experiences.
Pages 169 – 222 move into a new phase of Frank’s life: charity work, global causes, realizing the importance of being involved and giving back. In a speech he gave to the graduating class of Royal Roads University, he said “It’s not the money you make that matters most. It’s the difference you make.”; a fitting quote that speaks to the entirety of the book.
There were times reading the book that I was frustrated. During the course of his life Frank was sexually abused four times, yet I seemed to have more of an emotional response reading about them then was communicated through the book. Perhaps that’s due to what Frank was feeling as he lived through an alcohol-induced fog for so much of his life though, numbed to the severity of what was happening to him. It’s interesting to note that the more emotionally charged areas of the book seem to come after he became sober and dealing with his business partners and family.
Not all books we read to gather experience need to be topical, focussed on experiences in business or finance, telling stories from the boardroom and the sales floor. Business is a means for us to live, its a facet of our lives but it should never become our lives. Business is a means to an end, a payoff whether it be monetary or whether that business is in charity work for the betterment of street kids. Frank O’Dea’s story speaks to that, but it also speaks to something else. He entitled the book “When all you have is hope”, but I think a more apt title is “When you realize you have power.” Frank turned his life around on his own. He even admits that the moment he realized that he had to get off the street it wasn’t any big, emotional, spiritual experience. It was matter of fact. It was practical. And then, he acted on that.
That’s what I loved about this book. It’s not a rags to riches story. It’s a rags to riches to realization to giving back & finding happiness story. And really, its one that any of us could claim as our own if we wanted to.
As a Biography: 4/5
As a Business Book: 1.5/5
The Winnipeg Code Camp is going to be held Saturday, February 27th at Red River College’s Princess St. campus!
We’ve had such a response from people wanting to speak that we’re using 4 rooms this year, meaning we’ll have 40 sessions at this years camp! In addition to fantastic local talent, we also have Donald Belcham coming from Edmonton and Evan Hutnick from Telerik’s Boston office to present!
To get more information and to register, visit the code camp website. I’m posting more session abstracts and speaker bios as I get them, and the final schedule will be posted in mid February.
Hope to see you out!
D
So after updating the Prairie Developer Conference website with my snazzy Silverlight component with sweet fades, I get an MSN from my buddy Chris Williams.
I see a tan gradient background with a huge white box in the middle. No Silverlight.
Weird. I fire up Firefox on my machine and the Silverlight bit comes up fine! We start troubleshooting. Version of Silverlight? A-ok. Version of Firefox? He’s running 3.5.6 while I’m running 3.5.7. But, c’mon…that .1 couldn’t make *that* much of a difference could it?
Well, it did! Chris upgraded to the latest version and voila: Silverlight goodness!
I did a bit of digging online and found that other people were having issues with the 3.5.6 version as well and reporting crashing when viewing certain websites.
Unfortunately, because there’s nothing forcing people to update to the latest version, I’ve had to go with a non-Silverlight solution on the PrairieDefCon site, but it still gets the info across.
If you’re running FF 3.5.6 though, do yourself a favour and upgrade to the latest version.
www.prairiedevcon.com
I am VERY thrilled and excited to announce a new Canadian software development conference scheduled for 2010: the Prairie Developer Conference!
The conference will be held June 2 – 3 in Regina, SK at the Delta Regina Hotel and Conference Center. It will feature 40 sessions spread over 4 tracks:
- Web and Rich Internet Applications
- Development Foundation
- Application Lifecycle Management
- Database and Business Intelligence
I’ll be announcing registration pricing later this month, but I wanted to announce that the call for presenters is open! If you’re interested in speaking at the conference, visit the website and download the presenter request form which has all the details about what’s covered for presenters and how to submit your abstracts. One thing we’re looking for is a good mix of presentation styles: lecture, dojo, whiteboard, and panel sessions are all encouraged.
If you’re interested in being a sponsor for the event, please visit the website and download the sponsor information form and email me with any questions that you may have (there’s an email button on the conference page).
Finally, if you want to keep up with announcements around the conference you can follow us on Facebook or on Twitter!
Regina is going to be the place to be this June, so make plans today to join us!
It would appear that one of the biggest threats to our digital security has been exploits in Word documents. Or at least, from the extensive security features built into Word 2010, one would come to that conclusion.
I came across an odd issue tonight while testing a Silverlight application. I had a Word document (a .doc file, not .docx) on a webserver, but when I tried to access it I got this:
To which I said “Yes”, but when Word 2010 opened up, I got this message:
I thought maybe there was an issue with the file itself, but no: I could download it and open it locally without a problem. However, I did notice something when I did that…
Word 2010 was able to determine that the file came from the internet and warned me that it “might be unsafe”. Notice the “Protected View” verbage in the heading. I wanted more info, so I clicked. I was brought to a screen where it explained in a bit more detail:
Now going to Protected View Settings brings up a security console that would make Norton squirm. And, remember; this is WORD!
This is the Trust Center: a place where you can set all sorts of security settings for your Word documents and how Word 2010 acts when opening a document. This is the Protected View area which gives us the ability to enable the feature for various scenarios. Unchecking the middle two boxes got rid of the message on my .doc file when opening in Word 2010 locally. However, I tried all sort of combinations and still couldn’t get Word to open the file from my webserver.
So unfortunately I have no solution. It is, after all, still in beta. But I’m not sure what I’m more concerned about: not being able to open a doc from an internet location, or knowing I’m going to have to read a manual on security features just to use the next version of Word productively.
I put the final touches on a small Silverlight app that I had been working on over the weekend, and was doing some final testing of it. The app is pretty simple: it just displays stuff and has some buttons that take you to other web pages, launches the local email client, or downloads documents from a website. Simple tasks.
I ran into a weird issue which I’m pretty sure is Word 2010 related (not the focus of this post, more on that another time). I asked a buddy of mine to access the SL app on my webserver and try it out on his environment (he didn’t have Office 2010 beta installed).
Him: It doesn’t do anything
Me: What do you mean it doesn’t do anything?
Him: When I click the link to download the file, it doesn’t do anything.
Me: …
Him: I’m using Chrome though…I’ll try it in IE
So the IE on his side worked, hurray…but WTF was with the Chrome?! I had to investigate this for myself. Sure enough, Chrome rendered my app useless: none of the buttons or links worked.
The culprit was a combination of how I was trying to launch the different pages/docs and Chrome. Using the HtmlPage.Window.Navigate method works fine in IE and Firefox. However, it doesn’t work in Chrome…nadda…nothing…not even an error or anything, it just doesn’t react. THIS IS DUMB, mainly because of what the options are for ensuring this functionality will work in chrome:
Option 1 – Write a JavaScript method in the containing page, and have Silverlight just call out to that to execute the external URIs. Doable, but BLECH.
Option 2 – Instead of HtmlPage.Window.Navigate, use HtmlPage.Window.Eval. Eval basically let’s you pass in JavaScript for the containing HTML page to evaluate and execute…so its pretty much the same thing as Option 1 above, just in a different format.
I did Option 2, passing in a window.open parameter complete with the uri I wanted to navigate to…I basically had to write the JavaScript inside my code. Not ideal, but for the scope of my application I was ok with it.
So if your Silverlight app is going to be publically available, make sure that you include Chrome in with your testing. Yes, you should be testing in all browsers anyway, but sometimes we might assume simple functionality will just work across all three. That is *not* the case.
So with Mix 10 approaching, and the voting for the community submissions open, I’m sure you’re wondering “D’Arcy, who are YOU voting for?” since obviously my recommendations and backing is GOLDEN. So this can either be seen as a boost to the submitters, or the kiss of death to their hopes of speaking. I prefer to think the former, but hey, enough chit-chat, let’s look at my ballet pics!
SketchFlow for Real Software Development
David Wesst
Vote For This Talk!
There are a few SketchFlow talks scheduled for Mix. However, I know Dave personally and how passionate he is about SketchFlow.
Me: Hey Dave, how was that romantic date with your girlfriend last night?
Dave: Awesome! She was like “So Tiger, what do you have planned for tonight?” and I was able to use SketchFlow to prototype our entire date for her! I need to come up with some new shapes in the toolbox though…
But SERIOUSLY, Dave *really* knows SketchFlow and is actively using it in his day to day work. If you want to learn about it from someone, David Wesst is your man.
Security in Silverlight Applications
Miguel Madero
Vote For This Talk!
Spinning buttons be damned! We’ve all seen those demos, and while they’re great, understanding the nuts and bolts of working within the nuances of Silverlight to create secure business applications is where the *real* sexiness happens! Miguel’s submission looks to be a great overview of security within Silverlight, including common hacking techniques, authentication mechanism, service level security, and others.
Building a High Volume Private Cloud
Sean Kenney
Vote For This Talk!
“So D’Arcy, I don’t know if you know this, but there’s this thing called Azure…”. Yes, there is this thing called Azure, which is a fantastic platform that all developers should consider for cloud computing (wink nudge to the Azure team, you can buy me a beer at Summit for the shout out). HOWEVER, Azure *still* hasn’t solved a huge issue for Canadian organizations: information security in light of government policies. Because of the Patriot Act, Canadian information stored in cloud services hosted in the US can be access by the US government. This causes privacy issues in Canada, with some provinces (like BC) implementing laws requiring citizen data to be stored within Canada.
Anyway, for me that’s why I’m interested in hearing about setting up a “private” cloud as opposed to using an generic solution. Sean is from HP, and will be telling his experiences setting up a private cloud. I love real world examples. Should be a good one!
Its the People, Stupid – A New Framework for Developing Sociality
Deborah Schultz
Vote For This Talk!
“Service oriented design for the Next Web crowd. We’ll pay particular attention to what skills and organizational changes are needed as we think an attentive to and fro is the intimate secret of success. This is a catalyst session designed to challenge and elicit feedback from the room and galvanize new thinking.”
It doesn’t all have to be technical people, and a session where we’re mind-hacking an SOA for the next web crowd sounds very interesting. Add some Las Vegas 2-foot margaritas to the mix and this session has the potential to be *epic*!
Silverlight Killed the HTML Web Site…or DID IT?!
Moi
YOU JUST GOTTA VOTE FOR THIS TALK!
This list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning *my* submission. As an added bonus, I can announce that everyone that attends my session will receive a bar napkin autographed by Donald Belcham*!
*Note: Availability of Don Belcham autographed bar napkins depends on how much Scotch Don has at the MVP summit in February. Bar napkins may include profanity, vomit, and/or glass marks.
Silverlight, behind the daunting visage of spinning video buttons and deep zoom images, is a lover…not a fighter. While some bemoan the death of traditional web development in favour of Silverlight, the truth is that Silverlight itself wants to reach out and interact with HTML and its web site constructs.
Do you want to witness the capability and potential that adding Silverlight to your new or existing website can bring? Do you want to understand Silverlight as an option in part to your web development, not an either/or proposition to a solution? Would you like to discover that Silverlight needs the web and how it can help make it better?
Well there’s only ONE WAY: To vote for my session at Mix 10! To vote, just click on the image below and on the webpage that loads click the “Add This Entry To My Ballot” link. Then browse the other list of submitted talks and vote for your favourites (you can submit up to five on a ballot).
But of course, make sure *mine* is on there before submitting. ;)
Click the image or click here.
That’s right, Oprah isn’t the only hottie to have their own book club! One thing that I didn’t get a chance to do as much of last year was read. I have a pile of books sitting on my night table, but with our daughter being born in July I haven’t had a chance to plow through them. Now that life has settled into a schedule, I want to get back into these tomes of business and technology wisdom. What better way to help ensure I do that then by creating a semi-fictitious book club! I say semi-fictitious because, while you probably won’t see my book club logo on any book jackets at your local store, I am hoping that people will comment and share their thoughts on the books I post about. I’m aiming for at least 2 books a month (which is actually pretty aggressive). Let me know if there’s any books you recommend as well. Ok, so on to our first review:
We all can look back on our careers and point to at least one person (and probably more) that we would label an asshole. If the language is a little too blue for you, feel free to substitute jerk. Dr. Sutton, in The No Asshole Rule (TNAR), explains what a workplace asshole is and what they do, describes the damage (both interpersonally but also financially and reputation wise for an organization), strategies to implement your own NAR, helps the reader realize if they in fact are an asshole, and tips for those having to survive working with assholes.
The book itself is an easy read; it clocks in at under 200 pages. For myself I found it more of a review. Maybe that’s telling that I’ve worked with assholes in the past or that I have built up my own defence system against asshole behaviour. Still, Sutton presents a great amount of knowledge and insight gleamed from years as a professor and pulling in commentary and statistics from business people and researchers.
Assholes exist, and they suck the life out of people wherever they go. They’re energy vampires, preying on those they see as vulnerable and beneath them. The book encourages readers to try and implement a No Asshole Rule in their organizations. The rationale is that if you get rid of the negative drains on your employee’s energy and remove aspects of fear and negativity in the workplace, productivity and overall health of the organization will increase.
This sounds like a no-brainer, common sense type of thing. The problem is that, while many of us may recognize assholeic behaviour, we rarely act to squash the behaviour or we work in an atmosphere that encourages it. For those that are experiencing this for the first time, or are trying to cope in an environment plagued with assholes, this book offers some great insight and guidance. For managers and leaders, its an important read that challenges us to evaluate what we really value: money and production or treating people with dignity and respect.
But there were parts of the book that I found really frustrating. Chapter 5 is called “Tips for Surviving Nasty People and Workplaces”. This chapter is basically telling people who are stuck working in toxic situations how to weather the storms and come out with some semblance of mental health and emotional stability. I was uneasy reading this as it’s somewhat akin to telling a drug addict: Look, heroin is really bad for you…but if you’re going to shoot up, here’s some clean needles. Ideally everybody should have enough self respect to not put up with asshole behaviour. Of course, ideally we wouldn’t have assholes to begin with. I guess I have my own standards of who I will/won’t work for and the environments that I require to maintain employment.
The hardcover of the book is available now, and it appears that a paperback is going to be available in March or May of this year. If you’ve read the book please leave a comment and tell us what your take of it is.
D’Arcy’s Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Winnipeg has its own Girl Geek Dinner organization kicking off in 2010! The “Geek Dinner” idea has been around for a while now, providing an opportunity for geeks to get together over a meal or drinks and talk tech, sci-fi, or whatever geeky topics come up. The Girl Geek Dinner movement is meant to provide a forum for the fairer-geeks to get together and network with other femme-geeks. From the Winnipeg GGD page:
Winnipeg Girl Geek Dinners is an offshoot of the London Girl Geek Dinners, started by Sarah Blow.
The goal of these get-togethers is to make technology accessible and interesting to all age groups and all people, particularly women.
These monthly events are aimed at providing a welcoming atmosphere and a platform for learning in an informal environment.
Trish Rempel of Apptius Computer Solutions is spearheading the group and has set up a blog and a Facebook page for those interested in signing up for event notices.