Career Days Are Awesome

For a number of years, I’ve visited schools across Honolulu to talk with students about STEM and being an engineer. I’ve talked with everyone from 1^st graders, to high school, to community college students. I’ve probably talked with hundreds of students at STEM events like Lacy Veach Day of Discovery, to career talks in classrooms, to symposiums. I am passionate about the belief that if I can be a software engineer anyone of our keiki can. Every once in a while I receive an indication that my efforts make a difference and it is really what keeps me going. 

At the high school level, I often pass out my business card to students with one stipulation - any student that takes my business card must contact me in the future.  I’ve been contacted by a few students that made good on their promise. This particular contact just happened via LinkedIn and its pretty remarkable. So here is the story….

The exact Pearl City career day where I met this extraordinary student

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Student:

Hi Aaron,

I meet you back in 2014 at Pearl City High School’s job fair and we also did a job shadow too. I tried to contact you, but I found out you're now at DataHouse. Can you please provide an email so I contact you?

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Me:

Hi! It's great to hear from you. Are you studying programming at school?

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Student:

Yes, I am studying computer science with a minor in math and entrepreneurship! I am sophomore now and I completed almost two years of CS classes. It has been a few years since we talked in the job shadow Ms. Kat helped me with. 

I just want to first thank you for inspiring me to pursue in coding. It has not always been an easy road, but I enjoy it too much to ever give up. Its pretty crazy, but I been holding your business card in my wallet to one day share what I have done thus far. What better time to get in touch with you as I begin building my portfolio/resume. 

I will be heading back to Portland on Saturday but when I get back in the summer do you have any suggestions that I should pursue?  Also Congrats on the new company by the way!

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Me:

Thank you for sharing your story with me. I believe in you. Us Hawaii kids can do it. We can be right there with everyone else in STEM. And little by little, one engineer at a time we can pave the way for more of us believing.

My Thursday and Friday afternoon is currently open. If you want to come by DataHouse (by Ala Moana) to talk story you are more than welcome to. However, let me know ASAP so I can reserve the time for you. Otherwise, we can definitely stay in touch and chat.

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Student (after coming by DataHouse to talk story):

Hi Aaron. Thank you for lunch and all of your advice! I continue to be inspired by your story and I am thankful for your support! Definitely a highlight of my break and I can't wait to build through opportunities and grow as a software engineer. Look forward to staying in contact with you as well.

Wow. What a great story. I am really proud of this student for what he’s doing.  It is amazing what Career Days and a little outreach can do. We have remarkable kids in Hawaii, kids that really can do anything they set their minds to, kids that can compete globally, kids that really do make us proud. I believe in them.   

I am determined to reach more of Hawaii's students. Please let me know if you have students I can talk with. I would love to talk with new schools and even schools on the neighbor islands. Career Days Are Awesome!


Update: as I wrote this blog I've been contacted to do 4 Career Days in the up coming months!

I am a Software Engineer! Its an Awesome Job! You can be one TOO!

For a number of years now I've gone to elementary, intermediates, and high schools to talk about being a software engineer.  The message is simple, "I am a Software Engineer! It is an AWESOME job! and You can be one too!"  I feel so lucky to be working as a software engineer in Hawaii. It really is a great job. I love solving problems, being creative, learning, and working as a team.  I love my the lifestyle that working as a software engineer provides. I am able to surf, coach my son's baseball and soccer teams, travel and spend lots of time with my family and friends.  I truly am very lucky.

I teach the students about what software engineers do. Where they work. What they get paid. How many jobs there are. What they do for fun. What kind of companies employ software engineers. What kind of technologies software engineers create. Why software engineering is a great career.  And MOST IMPORTANTLY that every single one of them can be a software engineer if they want it bad enough and are willing to work hard.

When I'm done with my presentation, I ask the students, "who wants to be a software engineer?" and nearly all of them raise their hands. Its great to see the hope and excitement on their faces. I know they can do it. Heck if I can make it they certainly can.

My last talk was at Holomua Elementary in Ewa Beach. I talked to 4 classes at Holomua and I just recently got a package with 44 thank you notes from the students. Here is what one of them said,

Dear Aaron Kagawa,
Thank you so much for being so nice and kind!
Ever since you taught me all about software engineering, I want to be one some day!
You told me that in order for me to get there I have to work hard in school. Even if you're not the smartest I can still get me there!
Thank you for taking your time to to teach us all about your job!
From, (A Holomula Student)

It was very touching to read all of those letters and especially letters like this one.  I am thankful for being able to share my passion of software engineering with the students of Hawaii. I believe anyone can make it in the world of software if they work hard and believe in themselves.

LiveAction Company Retreat in Monterey California 2015

Back in August 2015, LiveAction had its second company retreat in beautiful Monterey, California. (Our first retreat was last year on the famous North Shore of Oahu. You can read more about that here: http://liveaction.com/employee-retreat/.) The primary task at our retreats is always very important; hang out and continue to grow our relationships with our fellow employees. At this year's retreat we had a blast. We played volleyball and football, had a private lunch and wine tour in Carmel, serious camp fire relaxation, and some intense games of werewolf (http://www.playwere wolf.co/). Our other retreat task is to check-in, validate, and verify our company culture by sharing what's working and what's not. We had lively discussions and debates and in the process we brought our team closer together. We eventually solidified our Mission Vision and Values 2.0.

Mission 

Revolutionize the network by establishing LiveAction as the visualization and analytics standard.

Vision

Our Vision is for LiveAction to be the kick ass solution to simplify the network while providing our team members an awesome personal and professional life.

Values

1. Determined to win together 
2. Create remarkable experiences for our customers, partners and team 
3. Open, honest communication 
4. Kick ass innovation 
5. Empowered 
6. Hold each other accountable 
7. Respect each other, our customers and partners 

Flying everyone out to Monterey, California for a retreat is pretty damn cool. (btw, Monterey/Carmel is super nice. If I was a sea otter I totally would think that Point Lobos is paradise.) My engineering team spent extra time in San Francisco, Big Sur, and silicon valley and we had an awesome time as well. However, all the sights and sounds of the retreat would mean absolutely nothing if we didn't genuinely and thoroughly enjoy spending time with one another.

I've been working on LiveAction with a bunch of engineers for about 8+ years now and these people are more than my coworkers. They are definitely lifelong friends; we’ve shared so many great experiences together. Every day I come to work to our Honolulu Office, which has awesome view of Diamond Head, and realize how lucky I am to be engineering a product with people that I really respect and cherish that is used all over the world by some of the largest companies in the world. LiveAction is a kick ass and revolutionary network visualization and analytics solution. And yet, it is so much more. LiveAction is a team of wonderful people that are committed to do our very best for our customers and for each other.

I am so fortunate to be working for this company and with these people. I am so thankful. It has been an EPIC ride and I'm ready for more.

Oh and by the way... our next retreat is on Maui next month, December 2015! AWESOME.

here are some pics from the retreat

how about a teach kids tech series

if you haven't seen it by now there are bunch educational videos for parents that google has put together. http://www.teachparentstech.org/watch



i just sent my mother a "tech care package" to hopefully educate her about using the computer. it was a joke of course.

this whole thing got me thinking about teaching people about tech. perhaps google should make a video series for kids. (if they already have one let me know... haha i make like people read my blog). maybe the videos showed kids how to use various google tools like google docs, email, web development, etc. schools could use this as classroom material. then all these kids would be techies already and we won't need this teach parents tech one generation from now. awesome!

shoyu flakes

while i was eating some cold tofu, ginger, and shoyu i had an idea.... the idea is called shoyu flakes. its like shoyu that melts in your mouth. it would be an awesome garnish on top things like tofu, sushi, or even something like salad. it could be like bonito flakes but of course it would be shoyu favor instead of fish.

what do you guys think? maybe @chefmorimoto might like it and i'd be rich and famous.

UPDATE
http://www.nymtc.com/pl_mtcpremium/200709soysalt.html

a couple lame ideas

(its been a while since i blogged. i've been meaning to get back into it. so here is my first attempt)

idea one: email/wiki page
email is great. haha. well, this idea kinda is about how email sucks for discussions. i don't know about you but it sucks when ideas from email threads. its hard to trace through how the idea evolved, hard to make sure you see everyones comments and concerns. things get lost.

a great example, is my family's football game potluck emails. an email goes out week for people to sign up for potluck, people don't respond to all, format the response funny, etc, etc. by the end its hard to know who is bringing what unless you read all the emails.

enter. wikipages and google docs. some people know that some things are better to collaborate on in wikipages or google docs. good job to those people. but its out of the way. its a separate place. usually when its separate its hard to get people to use it consistently. not to mention a very low percentage of people actually know what google docs is.

anyway... the idea is that we could better integrate google docs and gmail. actually, perhaps its like a distributed wikipage. where there is a document structure thats possible and threaded discussions. i like that... hm. let me think about this more.


idea two: twitter filter
i like following people on twitter. i hate following people that tweet any more than 5 things a day. i tend to ignore anyone with a few thousand lifetime tweets. i just don't want to see that much information. i know there are probably a lot of external services that can do this, but i really just want a way to filter tweets from specific users. perhaps the filter understands the users "tweet rate" and gives me a down sampled view. or maybe the filter just picks a "popular" tweet from that user.

anyway, thats a simple idea that would really be awesome.



(these ideas were kinda lame. but i just wanted to write something down for a change)

abercrombie tech discussion

on tuesday april 6 i attended a discussion on the hawaii technology industry hosted by neil abercrombie (see http://twtvite.com/AFGTech). the discussion was moderated by burt lum of bytemarks and the panel included; jay fidel, dan leuck, dr. pat sullivan, and neil abercrombie. this discussion was said to be not part of abercrombie's campaign in anyway. it was purely a discussion for the betterment of the industry. there were about 20 people in the audience and it was broadcasted live on the internet. (see some pictures of the event here http://www.flickr.com/photos/neilabercrombie/4499296522/)


some of the discussion points were the following (note i'm not quoting anyone i'm just trying to paraphrase the discussions):

problems and issues with the current industry; capital formation and the brain drain

that we've made a lot progress in 25 years.

that its now or never for the tech industry

the need for a tech advisory panel to help aid the future governor and legislature

the need for a CIO to reform the state IT infrastructure

talked about the progress that act 221 made and some of the issues associated with that

talked about how the different industries are related; like hotel and tech.

talked about hawaii has a unique diversity and potential to make disruptive ideas

etc, etc...

there were a bunch of good discussions. and i really do appreciate the fact that it was held. i abercrombie a lot of credit for hosting it. and a big thank you to the moderator and panel. BUT i have some comments/suggestions/qestions

where were all the engineers?
i convinced two other engineers from my company to come because i think this is important. but i think we were the only full time engineers in the audience. the tech industry is made of business people AND ENGINEERS. engineers need to stop being lazy and come out to these events. or how about students!

what problem?
several times in the discussions people attempted to put a finger on what the problems were. i was really interested in what the panel responded with. but... that was from their perspective. it was problems that dan sees or problems that pat sees. valid for them. but maybe not applicable to the larger industry.

i left the discussion still wondering what the problem was. i first asked myself do we even have a problem? to know if we have a problem one must know what the expectations are. i don't know what that is, so i can't tell you if we have a problem. and for those of you following THAT IS A PROBLEM. what are the expectations? yes, i agree tech isn't as big as it should be. but, what have we done to expect more? have we committed more money to reach goal X? i'm not sure we have. we lack a baseline of to evaluate our status.

lets say that we use the number of tech jobs as a scorecard (i'm not saying this is a good measurement). well, then we have something to evaluate. we can frame our discussions around that. only when we have goals and expectations can we evaluate our progress.

jay and neil mentioned that this seems to be now or never (i'm paraphrasing) for the tech industry. hmm. i don't know what to make of that. now or never for what? i don't get what that means with respect to our lack of goals.

anyway... you get my point. actually, i just wanted to throw out there that i feel good about my little area of the tech industry. i'm really happy with my company, career, and role in the tech industry.

other cities and states?
i was hoping some one in the panel said something like, "new mexico and north carolina has similar problems as we do with regards to technology. their state government is doing these 5 things. we can learn from their progress and failures. and i think we can try this." to me it kinda felt like we were trying to figure this out by ourselves. there has to be other examples that we can learn from.

thoughts about the brain drain
one of the real problems that i see is the brain drain problem. everyone talks about it. everyone agrees that it occurs. but there doesn't ever seem to be a discussion about it. why is it happening? what can we do about it? so... here is my take on those two questions.

cost of living. plain and simple. its too expensive for a lot of new grads to start their life in honolulu. hawaii typically doesn't pay as well as the mainland and its more expensive than most cities. what can we do? hm... well how about we do more remote working? maybe these new grads can live somewhere where the cost of living is cheaper. and still contribute to a local company. we could provide tax incentives or something for that. thats probably a lame idea, so you think of something.

competing with mainland companies is definitely a problem. i know for a fact that local kids that move away to college have a hard time looking for jobs in hawaii cause its so hard for them to know what hawaii has to offer. hawaii companies need (maybe even with assistance from the government) make much bigger attempt to lure our top notch students back to hawaii. we need to market hawaii tech companies to our own kids.

we need to educate students on what type of job their education targets. the panel mentioned that we have a great Department of Electrical Engineering that attract many mainland company recruiters. i wonder if the career people in the department tell the students that most of the jobs they are studying for are on the mainland. if i was a student and i knew i wanted to live and work in hawaii, i would want to know the number of hawaii jobs available. teach students about our local industry. allow them to gear their studies to compete for local jobs. if the students don't realize what jobs we have, then their will always be a mismatch. there will always be a drain, because they have no choice.


summary
this was a great event. i don't think the discussions were ground breaking, but i think its awesome that this could be the start of a lot of great things. i really appreciate the leadership that is needed to want to hold such an event.

to summarize. i want real goals. i want someone to say, we need tech to grow by X amount this year and this much in 4 years. here is how we are going to evaluate it. and here is the plan to accomplish that. or maybe its not that simple....

referentia open house

this afternoon my company hosted 28 students from the UH Department of Information and Computer Science, College of Engineering and IEEE student chapter.

i gathered a bunch of my engineers to help me with the presentation. its like we are pro presenters already. we know exactly what we want to talk about and how we want to deliver our message. each time we do this it gets better and better. this presentation went really well. i'm really proud of our engineers for stepping up and contributing to efforts like this.



so, what did we talk about? i'll give you a quick summary.

referentia has awesome projects.
we talked about three of our coolest projects. we talked technical and we even gave a demo. the key thing here was that the enthusiasm about the projects really showed in the engineers presentations. our projects are cool. we are doing innovative stuff. it does matter. it is awesome. and it showed.

referentia has awesome people.
one of the points that we really wanted to show was that our employees are really cool. coming to work is fun. our lunch conversations are awesome. we all get a long and really makes a difference. austen mentioned its like we are all in college together struggling through classes trying to make it. it actually does kind of feels like that. we definitely have a bond that isn't normal work stuff. better yet, we have really smart people at referetia. bonus points!

advice to students
we always jump at any opportunity to tell students what we think. and we definitely went into this presentation with a goal. our goal was to shock the students a little. here is a summary of what we said:

we hire top notch students. the students we hire do more than just school work. they work on real projects. projects that give them an edge over their peers.

you are competing for jobs. you better separate yourself from your peers.

you need to know what kind of jobs are out there. start using your opportunities in school to reach your goal.

i don't care if you don't know java. we can teach you that. but i require that you are driven, determined, and communicate well. if you can't work in a team setting, then i can't you won't do well in our environment.


for the record
none of the students use netbeans!

advice for students

a friend on twitter shared an article about how students should focus on more than just their GPA. here is an excerpt.

Students seem overly obsessed with grades and organized activities, both relative to standardized tests and to what I’d most recommend: doing something original. You don’t have to step very far outside scheduled classes and clubs to start to see how very different the world is when you have to organize it yourself.

For example, if you try to study a subject in depth without following a textbook or review, you’ll have to decide for yourself which sources seem how relevant to your topic. If you try to add something to the subject you’ll have to decide what changes are how feasible and interesting. Doing these may feel awkward at first, but they will be very useful skills later in life. Similar skills come from writing your own game or starting your own business or composing your own album.

i think the article makes a great point, although i think organized activities does have room for originality. i shared this article with our intern and he wasn't too impressed. i was trying to come up with a reason why that this is probably good advice. but it didn't really click. i tried what i usually do and i sent him my blog post about doing a honors thesis. he seemed to like that a little more, but maybe because i wrote it. haha.

anyway, i left our chat hoping i proved a point. later in the day i came across these two articles; Advice for College Students and Success & Motivation:Scatterbrained and in College. i think all three of these provide good advice.

here is steve shapiro's talk at RIT. the cool thing is that his advice is inline with our student intern mantra; make students awesome and my thoughts about soft skills.


mark cuban's article:

You are still in school. You don’t need to have all the answers or focus on one thing. You should be trying a lot of things until you find the one thing you really love to do and are good at. When that happens, you will be able to focus.

Being focused at 21 is way over rated. Now is the time to screw up, try as many different things as you can and just maybe figure things out.

The thing you do need to do is learn. Learn accounting. Learn finance. Learn statistics. Learn as much as you can about business. Read biographies about business people. You dont have to focus on 1 thing, but you have to create a base of knowledge so you are ready when its time.

You will never know when that time will come. But you can be ready when it does.

i sent both those articles to our intern and had a short discussion.

intern: wow...
intern: I'm wasting my money
me: well he got that opportunity from school.
me: his point is that there are a lot of opportunities in school
me: from being in school
me: take advantage of that.
me: ie. like honors thesis
me: ie like other programs they have.
intern: i see
intern: i wasn't that ambitious of a college student in the past few years
intern: that is where i fail
me: yeah neither was i.

i hope that he got that "yeah neither was i." really meant i was like him until i made the decision to do my honors thesis. and after reflecting on all these articles. the advice they all share is carpe diem. seize the opportunities that are given to you. if you don't do anything you get nothing. don't be lame, do something.

ps. our intern is doing something. he's becoming awesome.

lacy veach day of discovery 2009

for the third year in a row, referentia systems incorporated participated in the lacy veach day of discovery. once again, we taught the kids about scratch. and once again, the kids blew us away with their awesomeness. the cool thing was that we've seen a few of the kids before and they are getting smarter. it seems like more kids (at least the kids that comes to these kinds of events) are learning about programming either through things like scratch or through robot competitions. thats cool.



anyway, thanks to the engineers at referentia for always volunteering for events like this. it really makes a difference.

dear ICS student

(i got an email from one of the students i met at the career fair today. i wanted to follow up with him, but i decided to post my response in my blog, because i think others could benefit from it. i'll leave out the specific personal comments.)

dear ICS student,

thanks for following up with our discussion at the career fair. i'm glad you stopped by to talk to the different companies. ICS students are probably under represented at the career fair, so you coming by to meet us is definitely a very good step on your part.

i was impressed by several things that you did:

you came to find us again after talking to you more informally last semester. you've shown good initiative, by being more prepared this semester. i really think coming to visit companies at every opportunity is a very good thing. whats even better is that i remember you from last year. it shows that you understand thats important.

it was immediately obvious is that you have done side projects that help grow your experience. having longer term project work whether in the classroom or out is definitely something students should strive for.

your resume looked well thought out and you had an appropriate amount of real world experience given that you are still a student.

you were dressed appropriately. usually, i don't necessarily dwell on this point. but, the competition (namely the other EE students) are definitely on their game in this respect.

you know what type of software development (web development, database, client, etc) you were interested in.

here is some follow up advice.

continue to learn about the companies out there. talk to us as much as possible at these events. learn what we do and how we do business. come with specific questions. in general, its even more impressive when students come to visit us and know what we do.

i'd spend some additional time networking and meeting other technology professionals. read blogs (like mine. hahaha) and sign up for things like TechHui. the more you can network the better. you'll learn a lot from those relationships. back to my blog again, here are some posts that i wrote about students: career fair, work on your soft skills, don't be afraid to speak up, student portfolios, making students awesome, COE Fall Career Day

continue to do larger project work. one of the best things to do in an interview (or at a career fair) is talk about your lessons learned on ongoing projects. for example, how your leadership influence the project or how you debated over design decisions. more importantly, its your chance to show off your domain knowledge and how you are able to learn about the problems you are trying to solve with your software. in my opinion this is really important.

you did a good job of approaching us at the career fair. definitely the best attempt from an ICS student we talked to today. keep it up!

thanks, aaron

(i'm going to get a little more general now and tad bit negative)
some of the ICS students that i talked to today weren't really sure what they wanted to do. this might be acceptable for intern positions (however, even intern positions are very competitive these days). but its probably definitely not okay for students looking for full time employment. career fairs are your chance to show the employer, wow we need to hire this guy; immediate benefit to the company usually wins over potential. immediate benefit and potential definitely wins over uncertainty. i remember when i interviewed with companies, one of things that i would say is "this is what i can provide the company... i bring experience in... and i believe that my skills can make this company better" that might be a little to forward for some places, but i wanted to be sure i found a company that would allow me to utilize my skills and where i could make a difference. the bottom line is that we have a whole stack of resumes and a lot of them know they want to work for us. students need to show that same excitement.

in general, ICS students (i'm being general and isn't directed at you) don't seem as prepared as other college of engineering students that we talk to. i met a student once that said, i'm interested in mobile development. i asked why? and he said cause i just finished a course. hmm... well um. i think you need a little more experience in mobile development than that.

i want to make another quick note. i'm seeing more and more students from the mainland coming back home. these are students from USC, UW, MIT, ITT, etc with a good amount of schooling and experiences. YOU ARE COMPETING WITH THESE STUDENTS. you're advantage is that you are in hawaii for your entire schooling and we are in hawaii, but thats about it. so you better maximize that advantage. to me that means, students cannot come to visit companies their last semester and expect that all the companies are going to be standing their with open arms. getting a job is competition. its a pretty serious and important competition. do something that separates yourself from the rest of your peers and even the rest of the mainland school students. you need to if you want to compete. here is one example how, why you need to do a honors thesis.

night time internet is awesome

a few of us (austen and james) at work started something called "night time internet". i think it basically started because we were working on proposals and side projects after work at home. so, we would get home from work, eat dinner, etc and get right back on the computer and work on stuff; instant messaging each other to communicate. eventually, it just became part of our routine and habit to come onto night time internet. a lot of times we would be working on totally different things and different projects. i would be reading and writing blogs as austen hacked away on hackystat, while james pretended to be online. haha. (okay well we don't do this every night, just when we have stuff to do; i suppose we have lives...)

anyway, now its part of our culture. we have a few people that are part time night time interneters. and even people from different companies. but, i think the cool thing is we use a lot of this time to learn from each other.

i'll just focus what i get out of night time internet...
1) i use this time to do a lot of just talking story. a lot of times i'm pretty busy at work so i don't get a lot of time to talk to my engineers. i'm probably able to talk to a large majority of my engineers on night time internet. and the discussions tend to be really good. whether its me offering advice or trying to solve work problems, i view night time internet as a really time to do this. it really does seem to work for us.
2) night time internet is an opportunity to experiment and learn about things that i don't get to at work. i do a lot of digging into new ideas and technologies at night time internet. i read a lot of blogs and try to learn more about things that i'm interested. its awesome because i can share them with others and get feedback.
3) internet networking. um.. you all probably know i spend a lot of time networking. and night time internet allows me to learn about the different people and organizations out there.

those are some of my initial thoughts...

STEM at the apple store

i've been visiting apple stores more frequently over the holidays and especially since i've got my new iPhone. one of things that i finally realized is that the apple store is changing the world. haha... okay stop laughing. let me explain.

this past weekend i walked into the kahala apple store and i noticed that almost every mac book was taken over by kids playing halo. at first i thought to myself that the kids were basically keeping real customers from checking out the products. after walking around for a while i noticed that the kids weren't only playing halo, some of them were playing with iMovie and some art software (i don't know what it was because i don't have a mac... boo). after checking out some of the iPhone accessories i came back to the mac books and saw this



this scene was so awesome that i had to snap a picture of it. something about these kids excitement was so captivating. they were having so much fun in the apple store. hm.. self taught STEM education at the apple store. now thats definitely unique. i don't have a mac book and i'm not sure if these kids have one either. but, mac book or not, its awesome to see that we share the same fondness of technology. i love technology, but i had a slow start - i didn't really learn about the internet till i was in college. when i grew up we didn't have apple stores, we didn't have opportunities to learn about technology in the shopping centers; technology wasn't part of everyday life. now it is... these kids have a lifetime of loving and learning technology and hopefully that inspires them to accomplish things that i've never dreamed of. and the apple store is playing its small part of making technology cool.

next time while you are at the apple store. look around at the people. notice the young and old loving technology. its pretty awesome when you think about it.

ideas for web videos

i read a lot of blogs and i've noticed that i actually prefer when the blog/article has pictures instead of videos. actually, videos are great for digging deeper into the topic, but i've found that the videos in blogs slow down reading a lot, because you want to know whats in the video. so, you tend to load up the video and manually fast forward to see if there is anything good in it. this slows down my reading and i hate that. but i continue to do that because sometimes the video is actually way easier to understand than the write up.

to solve those problems i have two visualization ideas for web videos.

skimming for web videos
skimming is a iMovie thing and its pretty cool. basically its a way to explore and preview your video and is a great way quickly identify the best parts of your video. to skim all you have to do is move your mouse horizontally over the video and the video plays back chronologically in respect to the mouse direction. you can also hear the audio while skimming. watch the apple tutorial on skimming

skimming for web videos makes a lot of sense to me. it allows you to quickly find things of interest. perhaps there are technical issues with doing that, for example how to download the data to be able to do that. the whole buffering the video thing really sucks and i hate that i have to do that all the time. not to mention it sort of defeats the purpose of the skimming feature.

a collage of video thumbnails
usually, when you upload a video you can select a single thumbnail of the video to show users what the video is all about. but, i've always wondered why stop at just one thumbnail. what if there were multiple thumbnails that showed snapshots of the highlights of the video. then i can just look at the collage of thumbnails to know what the video was all about. i created an example of my thumbnail collage for this time lapse video:

(my mock up)

compare my mock up with the actual video. i wonder if my thumbnails actually helps. what do you think?

(actual vimeo video)

perhaps there would be away to toggle between skimming and the thumbnail collage. anyway, those were two ideas that i think would help save time while encountering videos on the web. do you think those two features would be useful?

stop saying there is a lack of technology talent

I've been trying to stay away from this discussion on techhui about Are Hawaii's Tech Tax Credit Worth the Cost?, because I don't particularly think its that productive and has a far too negative tone. But, I decided to chime in because of this comment:

As a whole, in software/IT, I don't think the local talent compares with the level of global competition a startup has to face. (This is the same point Guy Kawasaki essentially made.) Because of the talent deficiency, funding such companies is almost inherently a high/bad risk. Money is a very inefficient way to compensate for talent. Using state funds to subsidize this is very likely to be wasteful.

Here are a few comments:
(1) did i miss the state wide talent evaluation survey that allowed you to make this claim. perhaps people should stick recounting their own experiences and refrain from making broad claims. besides i really don't think the talent thread you keep pointing to had very much careful and analytical examination of talent. i know a lot of these software and IT people that you are calling talent deficient and i think thats very wrong and inappropriate. perhaps all the talented people are avoiding you. or perhaps its the senior management, entrepreneurs, and executives that aren't getting the job done. i'm being sarcastic, but i think my statement is just as plausible.
(2) i actually think Guy Kawasaki is a little mistaken in his comments. we do have awesome professors and students in the College of Engineering (he actually is forgetting about the Department of Information and Computer Science where most of the software and technology graduates comes from). but, the problem is that the startup industry is too small of an industry for them to target to transition into. i recently had a conversation with a professor that said we want to grow the startup mentality in his students. perhaps Guy should visit the College of Engineering and Dept of Information and Computer Science and help build and transition the "supply".

anyway, say what you want about the actual tax credit program, the facts, the reports, the investors, or even the companies. but stop calling the people in hawaii's tech industry talentless.

reactions to some of the TechHui discussions

there have been some discussions on TechHui my favorite hawaii social network about a couple of subjects centering around Act221 and the talent in hawaii.

here are some excerpts (i know a few of these authors, so i'm definitely not taking a shot at them):

In Dave Takaki's forum post Action Committee for Threatened Hi Tech Tax Credits John raised an excellent point, "But maybe the issue is: Hawaii has insufficient tech talent so we are simply throwing money at the wrong problem." This is definitely a serious issue for a number of reasons.

- the talent is fairly limited (which is the premise of Dan's opening post)
- we lack talent in building startups
Let me give 2 examples:
When I worked in SF, our 50 person startup had the equivalent of a Hawaii all-start team. The academic and work credentials, along with the level of expertise was extraordinarily high. Someone like Dan would easily excel there but a lot of local techs would have trouble because of a lack of experience/training at that level.

For example, I used to go to the Ruby meetup in Berkeley and every meeting had 30 guys who were really advanced programmers. That's just Berkeley and just for Ruby, there were others in Novato, SF, San Jose, etc. While Hawaii has a number of people with similar skills, it's nowhere near that quantity of people.

IMHO, Mainlanders (well, West Coast mainlanders from my limited experience) tend to invest more time establishing their careers before settling down.

I view Act 221/215 as a High-Tech Charity (or Welfare Program) that should not be renewed.

All of these comments seem to be be pretty negative. And I tend to disagree with them. Here are some of my comments:

Hawaii is Hawaii - Hawaii doesn't have to be a Silicon Valley, Berkeley, or where ever. It needs to be what it is. Hawaii is about its people and thats what makes it special. With that being said, I don't think we need to have a Silicon Valley culture to make it in the tech world. We need to maximize the strengths of Hawaii to create a tech industry that thrives off of our own unique culture. People that want Silicon Valley culture should probably go to Silicon Valley. Lets not lose our identity - diversity is key.

Perhaps its not the talent, its the leadership that sucks - there are many talented people in hawaii. many that i think would thrive in startups. i think a large part of the finding and retaining talent in hawaii is the lack of true leaders, visionaries, and mentors. i always like to think about this quote that kevin taketa said in hawaii business magazine:

In Hawaii, you have to listen, you have to be a good listener. You need to pay attention to relationships and how relationships are all connected here. And you need to have a certain kind of humility. And humility does not mean you don’t have courage or a certain kind of self-confidence. Hawaii is a people place and if people don’t feel you respect them or don’t care about them enough to think about them, it is really hard to lead here.

leading and talking the loudest is different. leading and having the most money is different. you have to listen before people will listen to you; and thats the way it should work. we have the talent, but can you lead us?

less talk and more doing - there are a lot of people that unhappy with the current state of the hawaii tech industry. myself included; especially when i was being recruited by google (i failed the interview, i suck). but, i've come to realize that i'm to blame, because i know that i could be doing more to help. i've devoted the last couple years to not only this blog, but also to numerous student and industry events. my goal was to talk to as many students and people (including people like mazie hirono and neil abercrombie) that i could find about what we (techies) do and why its awesome. there is a huge need for mentors and experts to talk to students. do something for the greater good, anything.

anyway... its great to see discussions on TechHui.

UH ICS: 0, UH Linguistics: 1, MIT CS: 4

tonight was another successful Holiday Science and Tech Job Fair w/ Global Pau Hana Mixer at the japanese cultural center. as usual there was a good crowd and a lot of employers (i think the free food and beer has something to do with it). the idea for the event is to...

Meet Hawaii’s high tech companies and learn about the many diverse opportunities awaiting you. From full-time to internships and how you can be part of Hawaii’s growth in technology.

there was a nice crowd tonight and we talked to a lot of people for about 3 hours straight. i really enjoy talking to students and job seekers wanting to learn about our company and our industry. for the rest of this post, i'm going to concentrate on the students...

i talked to four MIT computer science students (i'm guessing someone told the MIT hawaii students about event in an email or something). they were all looking for internships and in my opinion they were pretty impressive. one came in a suit and we had a pretty good conversation about what his expertise was and what he was interested. he asked good questions and really wanted to know how to prepare himself for the future. he was a good student; i guess thats why he goes to MIT! anyway, i think its great that we had a bunch of students from MIT show up. last year, we talked to a bunch of USC and Pacific University students.

on the other hand, i talked to one student in the UH linguistics department that was really new to programming. she was just starting to take a few ics classes, because she was interested in applying computational techniques to her linguistics knowledge. she was super excited about programming and learning more. very enthusiastic. i think thats awesome and she is the type of person that we want working with us.

one of my friends asked me after the event if i talked (or seen) to any UH ICS students. unfortunately, i didn't talk to any. for some reason i've been seeing many more mainland university students with hawaii ties are looking for internships and work in hawaii. this increase probably doesn't help the uh ics students chances, especially when they are under represented at job fairs like this. this is the second "job fair" in a row that i've been a little disappointed with the UH ICS turnout (the other was the ICS industry day).

in all i had a lot of fun at this years event. it was great to talk to a lot of great students and job seekers. its an awesome event. i can't wait to shift through the resumes to contact a few them to chat more.

google workshop for women engineers

Up to 75 female computer scientists will be selected to attend a 3 day all-expenses paid workshop at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California January 22-25, 2009. This special workshop will include technical talks and career workshops, and a unique occasion to build and strengthen networks of women in technology. Students will also enjoy tours of the Googleplex, have the opportunity to meet with Google engineers in their research fields, and have fun exploring the San Francisco bay area.

http://googleforstudents.blogspot.com/2008/12/google-workshop-for-women-engineers.html

aiea high school career fair and ics industry day

i had a couple of STEM events last month. the aiea high school career fair and the ics industry day. one of the events was really successful the other wasn't.

i've given a lot of talks at a lot of different stem events; roosevelt career fair, ics industry day, coe fall career day, honors program, and coe career fair.

and one of the things that i've noticed is that organization of the event is really critical. for example, (now that i think about it more) the aiea high school event was really organized well. here's why...

BEFORE the presentation started i over heard one student said to the other, "ryan, you want to be a software engineer". ryan responded with, "yeah maybe". woah! they know what a software engineer is.

it seemed like the students really wanted to learn about what we did.

when i asked, if they liked math, they pretty much all raised their hands. i think we got the entire math team or something

when we were done with the presentations the students asked a lot of questions.

after the presentations were long over, a handful of students visited us again in the gym to ask more questions

aiea high school got it right. they seemed to put the right students in the right presentations. i was super happy with the students we met at aiea. (i was pretty surprised at this! i graduated from aiea high school...)

on the other hand, the ics industry day was sort of the opposite. it probably wasn't organized the best. (and i can be critical of the organization because i helped organize it!). this event usually attracts more than 30 students, but for some reason this time around i would guess that we didn't get more that 10. maybe one can claim quality over quantity at this statistic, but it still discouraging nevertheless. AND i feel bad that i let the other companies down, by not meeting their expectations.

we happened to be bring our intern to the event, who is from the college of engineering. and after the event, our intern explained how he didn't understand how come the ics students didn't come to the event. i think he also said, he didn't understand why they didn't come to the fall career fair either. something is different in the students... hm... i get way more resumes from engineering students compared to ics students. engineers seemed to be much more prepared when i talk to them. engineering students walk around the fair talking to and questioning the companies. ics students seem to stumble upon us. i can't tell you how many times i get the "oh i didn't know this was going on today" from ics students. i don't know why that is.

needless to say, i was little disappointed in the turn out. but, i was really happy with the few students that i talked to. for example, i talked to one student that i met on techhui. he seems like a pretty bright student. regardless of the low number of students, talking with students like that makes it all worth it.

next time things are going to be different in the ics industry day. i think i made a few errors in my planning that i will correct. for example, i will keep the presentations to much shorter; like 10 minutes max. or maybe no presentations at all an just go with table presentations. i want to talk to more students.

upcoming events: another roosevelt career fair, 2008 Holiday Science & Tech Fair with Pau Hana

DFTC and more core values

atlassian just put out this cool video about their core values:

(purpose)
create useful products people lust after
(values)
open compnay, no bullshit
build with heart and balance
don't $#&@ the customer
play as a team
be the change you seek

i thought this was awesome, particularly because it really lets the software culture of our generation shine through. note to other software companies out there; we think atlassians core values are awesome.



i might as well continue the core values talk and share one of my favorite talks about core values. its from mitch kapor, the founder of lotus development and now on the board of directors of mozilla foundation, linden lab (makes second life), and is doing many other things...

here is what mitch kapor had to say about trusting your employees; download this podcast and fastforward to 31:30 (note the following is a paraphrase of his talk):

how do you trust the people you hire?

its earned and built. no found. its on going process, invest in it.

i think it helps shared framework of principles and values

a set of external set of standards

if you are willing to invest in a discussion of about what we believe in and what standards are we going to hold ourselves accountable to,

then you have a means by which to negotiate and navigate all of the stuff that happens, because stuff happens in a company. you never have enough resources

you can't watch everyone. it requires people to have a lot of initiative. but if you know everyone is operating against the framework of principles then you know they are guided

everyone will learn together

people will sort themselves out and trust will be built

it requires a commitment; everything worth while requires a commitment

there needs to be an equal commitment (from the company)

if you put on after the fact, its going to fail.

in closing, you must provide a clear vision of your company's values and goals. you need to trust your employees, but more importantly you need to allow your employees to trust the company. and DFTE!