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....

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.

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!

re: Path to AwesomeNess...

here is a comment that i left one of our interns on his blog; path to awesomenes.... i wanted to share this with the rest of you, so i added it to my blog.

this path to awesomeness post started as our internship program that we presented at the uh ics industry day. our presentation was titled; make students awesome. so, we had the idea that our intern keep track of his progress in a blog.

so here are my comments.. and you can read austen's comments at his blog.

that is a pretty good start. here are some comments.

2) learn to research
the idea here is that you learn about researching about all sorts of things, including hacking. but, i intended it to be more general. like doing actual research. for example, an honors thesis is research. the important aspect of research is that you are able to form new ideas, communicate them, evaluate them, defend them, and utilize them. conducting research is an important part of what we do as a company, but it is also very important for your development.

perhaps the thing to do here is learn more about how we do research in our company. if you don't know what "research" we are doing, then ask.

5) learn how to increase your marketability
this one is really important. you have to learn and develop things that will separate yourself from your peers. figure out what the norm is and go way beyond it. when you think you went far enough, go further.

6) learn about the industry
this one is important too. you need to know about your options. what types of companies work in hawaii. i say this not so that you only groom yourself to work at company Foo. but, more so that you learn what possibilities out there in hawaii and on the mainland. learn about what other companies do. what technologies are they working with. what are they researching. what software development processes do they follow. are their projects meaningful, etc, etc?

you are on your way. if at the end you have learned a lot about these six areas, you will definitely be AWESOME!

good luck.

pivot for stem

our friends at geekdads are at it again, with the Pivot Stick Figure Editor is a Great Animation Tool for Kids post. ken introduced us to a cool tool called pivot. its basically a stick figure animation tool;

Pivot makes creating individual frames really easy, and moving animations is based on a simple click and drag process. Each figure has different points (red dots) that can be manipulated and a single point (yellow dot) to move the whole figure. A simple left-hand-side toolbar has about 5 or 6 options which are simple to grasp and not overwhelming for young users.

So I began to create a stick figure waving at us from the computer screen and within a couple of minutes I had about 5-10 seconds of animation. Within 5 minutes, my four year old and six year old were asking for a turn. They mastered the basic concept very quickly. Together we worked out you could insert any jpg background from the hard-drive and they were away.

Despite my own beliefs in the capacity of children and their ability to do things that we never acknowledge (so never see them do), I was amazed at the speed at which they picked up the basic concepts using Pivot. After a few days they had realized they could create their own stick figures to animate and had begun to use the simple drawing tool to save their own stick figure props like beds, cannons and barbells.

so, i thought this posting was pretty cool. it seems like something a teacher can bring into a computer class and make a lesson out of it. so, i decided to try pivot out.

here's what i thought;

its not the easiest thing in the world to get started with. i started up the program thinking that i would create an awesome demo animation. no such luck. i made one really lame animation.

as i worked through my own animation i'm not sure what i was learning. but, its definitely true that i was thinking. or maybe i was just confused on how to make my stick figure run.

i got the hang of it, but i quickly got a little impatient. it wasn't flashy enough.

well, those seemed negative. the fact that i made an animation is really cool. i had fun making it and running through the examples. i think its a pretty cool little application. here is my lame animation;

(click on the image to see my animation)

maybe its an entry point to bigger and better animation software. i don't know about that. but, i definitely think its shows kids that computers is cool and fun. to me thats the main point. it got me thinking. i think thats 90% of the battle. kick starting imagination is key!

ps. i'm thinking there must be hundreds of these little applications that teaches something different. i have a few others i want to share...

guy kawasaki on bytemarks cafe

guy kawasaki was on bytemarks cafe the other day. i got a little quote (from the hawaii blog) about what he said on hawaii education.

Calling himself a “supply-side guy,” he said the best thing Hawaii could do is “to properly fund and create the school of Engineering at the University of Hawaii.”

“If you have a great School of Engineering, you have great engineering professors and great students and those great students will come up with great ideas. And if you have students with ideas, the money will flow, the corporate financial attorneys will flow, the PR firms will flow… everything is because of two guys in a garage with a great idea. Yes, you can create funds to make that easier for two guys in a garage, but if you don’t have two guys in a garage, it doesn’t matter how many funds you have.”

first of all, i absolutely agree. its all about the students and generating awesome talent. but, i'd like to point out to mr kawasaki that there is a College of Engineering and a Department of Information and Computer Sciences.

I felt like i had to make this comment because I'm starting an ICS alumni group, and its hard to shine the spotlight on the smaller ICS department. in general there is a lot of support for the CoE, but not so much for the ICS department (for example the engineering banquet vs the ics alumni lunch). my goal is to change this. even if it takes one student at a time; i'm going help make them awesome.

and you can help me! check out the ICS topcoder competition.

non-routine savants

here is very useful post for all you students out there:

How do we find these non-routine savants? There are many factors, of course, but we primarily look for ...

... analytical reasoning. Google is a data-driven, analytic company. When an issue arises or a decision needs to be made, we start with data. That means we can talk about what we know, instead of what we think we know.

... communication skills. Marshalling and understanding the available evidence isn't useful unless you can effectively communicate your conclusions.

... a willingness to experiment. Non-routine problems call for non-routine solutions and there is no formula for success. A well-designed experiment calls for a range of treatments, explicit control groups, and careful post-treatment analysis. Sometimes an experiment kills off a pet theory, so you need a willingness to accept the evidence even if you don't like it.

... team players. Virtually every project at Google is run by a small team. People need to work well together and perform up to the team's expectations.

... passion and leadership. This could be professional or in other life experiences: learning languages or saving forests, for example. The main thing, to paraphrase Mr. Drucker, is to be motivated by a sense of importance about what you do.

These characteristics are not just important in our business, but in every business, as well as in government, philanthropy, and academia. The challenge for the up-and-coming generation is how to acquire them. It's easy to educate for the routine, and hard to educate for the novel.

i have a priority to those factors.
1. Passion and Leadership
2. Team Players
3. Communication
4. Everything else.

be passionate and communicate! be a tigger!

UW CS enrollment up and invest in students

i just read an interesting post; Computer Science Enrollments: The Real News by Ed Lazowska. he talks about a few things but i particularly liked the sections about enrollment and students.

enrollment

One place where we can easily measure changes in student interest is in the enrollment in our first introductory course, which serves the entire university. Between 2003-04 and 2007-08 (a 4-year period), enrollment in this course is up by 27%. Enrollment by women is up by 45%. (Annual enrollment of women into the major is up by 64% over that same interval.)

thats good news. i'm especially impressed by the women enrollment increase.

Here is a spreadsheet with charts showing Bureau of Labor Statistics projections for employment between 2006 and 2016 for all fields in the sciences and engineering (including the social sciences). What it shows is that of all of these fields, between now and 2016:

70% of all newly-created jobs will be in computer science.

62% of all job openings (both newly-created jobs and jobs available due to retirements) will be in computer science.

wow thats good news again!

students
here is some great comments about attracting students to computer science:

What do we do at UW to attract students? Many many things. As one example, starting tomorrow at UW we’re running an annual 3-day workshop for high school teachers of math and science, sponsored by Google. The goal is to show these teachers that computer science is important to their fields, and is a great field to send their smartest students into. Information is available at http://cs4hs.cs.washington.edu/. (We do this jointly with Carnegie Mellon and UCLA.)

We have a set of terrific videos that illustrate several important points:

1. People enter the field of computer science for all sorts of aspirational reasons.
2. People do all sorts of things with their computer science degrees in addition to working in the software industry.
3. Working in the software industry is highly exciting and creative and interactive.

You can take a look at these videos at http://www.cs.washington.edu/WhyCSE/.

Most importantly, we really invest in our students. Word gets out. At the University of Washington, we have the strongest undergraduates, because students know they can get a great education here.

How do we “calibrate” our program — make sure our students are ready for careers? Here is a Word document I prepared recently for another purpose. Every year we are a top-5 supplier to Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.com — our students are fantastic.

two things jump out at me; "we invest in our students" and "we make sure our students are ready for careers". thats awesome!

when i was in school i often felt the complete opposite. i was really clueless. i wasn't connected to the department; i certainly never felt an investment from the department into my education and i certainly didn't feel like getting me ready for my career was a department goal. luckily, i found a few professors and students that got me out of the motions, paid attention to me, motivated me, and put me in the right direction. i was really lucky.

i always bring up students and their educational experience... i think its really important:

interview with ka yee

engineering banquet

interview with randy cox

ics alumni association

making students awesome

pixar is getting a lot of great press lately

and they apparently deserve it. check out this article: Pixar's tightknit culture is its edge.

According to “Pixar Rules — Secrets of a Blockbuster Company,” the company has created an incredible work environment that keeps employees happy and fulfilled. The result: “A tightknit company of long-term collaborators who stick together, learn from one another, and strive to improve with every production.”

Thanks to Pixar University, employees learn to see the company’s work (and their colleagues) in a new light. “The skills we develop are skills we need everywhere in the organization,” Nelson said. “Why teach drawing to accountants? Because drawing class doesn’t just teach people to draw. It teaches them to be more observant. There’s no company on earth that wouldn’t benefit from having people become more observant.”

You can try to outspend the competition. Or you can try to outculture them. Create a place that makes employees feel special. A place that makes them feel like they’re part of a bigger whole. A place where they continually get to learn and evolve. A place where everyone actually likes each other.

wow.. that is cool. here is another one: The human side of Pixar's robot - (37signals)

Pixar proves it’s one of those great companies that is run by unabashedly human people, and it’s no wonder why their work is so personal and touching. When you engage yourself with your customers and your audience on a level that reminds them you are the same, the experience is far greater than just using a product or just seeing a movie. Humanity is desperately missing in our age of megacorporations and big box stores.

People love robots, but they’ll love you if you’re human, too.

thats great press! but more importantly, its really awesome! going back to the pixar university. i think thats really smart, because it fosters creativity. providing a diverse group a people with the same language and framework equals a creative situation. the pixar university keeps the goal of the company at the forefront of their every day activities; make awesome movies and push the limits of what animation can do.

haha. i can say some funny things about work now... but, i'll refrain. :)

embrace your imagination

Somebody much smarter than me once said that pessimists are usually right, optimists are usually wrong, but all the great breakthroughs in history were done by optimists. - Thomas Friedman.

i just read an awesome blog about The most important competition is the one between you and your own imagination. here are some excerpts:

In the latest edition, I added a whole section on why liberal arts are more important than ever. It’s not that I don’t think math and science are important. They still are. But more than ever our secret sauce comes from our ability to integrate art, science, music and literature with the hard sciences. That’s what produces an iPod revolution or a Google.

One thing we know about creativity,” he says, “is that it typically occurs when people who have mastered two or more quite different fields use the framework in one to think afresh about the other. --Marc Tucker

the messages that i take away from this blog post is to not give up on my imagination. i just so happened to be thinking about this recently and have been posting random ideas that i have:

an firefox extension idea for copying links

an idea called moody

wordle for my blogs and an idea

an idea for twitter

an idea for ESPN

i've always practiced communicating my thoughts. now, i've found my self trying to practice to communicate my imagination. its somewhat different to formalize imagination.

i'll make sure that i give my imagination a fighting chance.

wordle for my blogs and an idea

greg wilson's blog post about wordle got me interested enough to try it on the last three months of my blog. so, i copied and pasted all the text from my blog and got this:



it looks like for some reason i write about students a lot. i hardly see any software terms in there. i guess this isn't much of a technical blog. haha. wait a minute, i don't even see hackystat in there. i better write more about hackystat, hackystat, hackystat. :)

what does your wordle look like?

here is an idea
wordle should make wordle's for your twitter feed. here is a wordle from ian's tweets for the past couple weeks:

(twittering ian's wordle - this was my first version using screen scrape from the twitter website)

(twittering ian's wordle - this is my second version using rss feeds)

re: JSR-666 Extension: Significant whitespace

i just read JSR-666 Extension: Significant whitespace, and while i get the JSR-666 (The Java Specification Request from Hell), i'm not sure if i understand if the posting was a joke or not.

In many software development teams that I've worked on, code reviews are done by printing out the code to be reviewed. This is in turn read and scribbled on with red ink by developers suffering from a delusion that their coding standard is better than mine. An example of some such code:

public boolean equals(Object o)
{
   try
   {
      if (Calendar.getInstance().get(Calendar.MONTH) == 1
            && Calendar.getInstance().get(Calendar.DATE) == 29)
      {
         return true;
      }
      else
      {
         Thread.sleep(10000);
         return new Random().nextBoolean();
      }
   }
   catch (Throwable t)
   {
      // Something must have gone wrong, try again
      return new Random().nextBoolean();
   }
}

When reading the above code, the obvious problem that jumps out is that it contains no less than ten curly braces. When printed for a code review, this is a waste of valuable ink. The squids of the world have been working overtime to provide the ink needed to print out all the code that needs to be reviewed, it is about time we gave them a break. I'd therefore like to propose to the JSR-666 expert group an extension that curly braces be replaced with significant whitespace.

The previous code example would become:

public boolean equals(Object o)
   try
      if (Calendar.getInstance().get(Calendar.MONTH) == 1
            && Calendar.getInstance().get(Calendar.DATE) == 29)
         return true;
      else
         Thread.sleep(10000);
         return new Random().nextBoolean();
   catch (Throwable t)
      // Something must have gone wrong, try again
      return new Random().nextBoolean();

A fine piece of code that would pass any code review.

This feature will also solve a number of other problems, for example, it will eliminate the age old argument over whether braces belong on a newline or not. It will also force developers to write neatly structured code.

This feature will not require any JVM changes, but will require compiler changes. Existing code may need to be changed, however, if the existing code was well formatted to begin with, it should suffice to simply run the following command in vim: :%s/\{|\}//g

i guess its april fools again. its actually funny cause this dude works at atlassian. so, my guess is that this crazy blog posting was actually some sort of marketing ploy to market crucible. (so, i guess i might have to explain why its funny.... so, its funny cause i hope that atlassian people; people that develop software development tools, use their own products and not paper code review). thats the only conclusion that i can come up with. i guess it the marketing ploy worked cause i'm on my blog talking about crucible. anyway, crucible looks like a pretty good tool and we plan on giving it a serious try.

anyway, sorry for this boring post. i just thought his posting was funny.

less text more information

i totally like the CNN Election Webpage. I like it because it has less text, but has more information.

Its full of graphics, pictures, charts, tag clouds, etc. Its concise and easy to find information. its easy to for your eye to wander and discover things you didn't know.

reading text is good for somethings. Its good to get detailed information (maybe)... One thing is for sure, text is pretty boring. CNN's approach is cool and eye catching and fun.

more information should be displayed like this. (haha. i guess that was my only point).

undergraduate programming is crazy

i just finished reading undergraduate programming from mr. joel. i had to read it a couple times...

basically he says:

JavaSchools are not operating in a vacuum: they're dumbing down their curriculum because they think it's the only way to keep CS students. The real problem is that these schools are not doing anything positive to attract the kids who are really interesting in programming, not computer science. ... It would be a huge magnet to the talented high school kids who love programming, but can't get excited about proving theorums.

woah.. i can't believe he just said that. that sounds like trade schools to me.

i can't believe that we've come to that approach. while i think its good that we have programmers, i value things like critical thinking, research abilities, having broad area of knowledge, etc. bottom line is that being a software engineer is much more than writing code. being a great developer requires more knowledge than just knowing how to write code.

does the industry really just want programmers?

anyway... i'm a little confused about his post.

atlassian has a stream of consciousness, hackystat should have on too

atlassian just put out an interesting blog; JIRA Studio: Stream of Development Consciousness.

basically, they want to expose a developers activity across different functions in one single place. its an outboard brain type of thing. see help me help you and hackystat and my outboard brain.

atlassian's attempt to do this is really cool because they are actually providing the functionality in an integrated fashion. the only problem with their approach is that it is limited to atlassian products. duh... hackystat can expose so many more hooks and so many more different types of activities.

we will get there one day. i just wanted to point out that where i once thought we were so a head of the game, in terms of metrics and reporting, people like atlassian is a head of the game in other areas.

wow.. i just had a cool idea. what if hackystat used open social to expose certain metrics. thats way cool.

help me help you

i was reading some of the Wired blogs like Epicenter and Wired Science (actually two of my favorite blog sources), when i stumbled upon a "help me help you" idea.

basically, it all started with Alexis' attempt to provide transparency into his thinking. he decided to do that with sharing his "shared blogs", his twitters, and facebook page with his readers. he challenges his readers to help shape what he writes about by learning more about the things that he thinks about. (read about it here; My Outboard Brain Is Your Chance to Shape News).

that was an interesting idea. he is basically saying "help me help you". he wants his readers to understand who he is by viewing his interests. and he wants his readers to help him understand what they are interested in by hopefully creating a community of collaborating readers.

the other wired bloggers followed his lead:

There's a serious point to this. Journalists are no longer the gatekeepers of the news. Instead, we're hubs -- conduits -- and we'll succeed to the extend that we're able to facilitate the flow of information. We think tools like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can help us do that better.

And yes, this is one big experiment. We don't have all the answers.

this is cool. it is cool because they are trying to use social networking technology to create something other than just social networking. this is something i've been trying to describe in my posts. my point has been that social networking is pretty much meaningless entertainment, unless it is applied to "something bigger". in this specific case, i think it is cool because they are taking "sharing to a new level".

re: Encouraging people to contribute knowledge

the official google blog put this article out today, encourage people to contribute knowledge

the blog is very interesting and it has some of the things about sharing that i've been talking about for a while:

There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it. We believe that many do not share that knowledge today simply because it is not easy enough to do that. The challenge posed to us by Larry, Sergey and Eric was to find a way to help people share their knowledge. This is our main goal.

the article quickly turns into an advertisement for something similar to wikipedia; and i didn't want to highlight that. thats too bad because i thought they were on track when they said, ""knol", which stands for a unit of knowledge", which is similar to my thought about 10 second vignette of knowledge. in that sense i think they might be falling short of their mission. wikipedia, and i guess neither will knol, doesn't really capture or encourage sharing. i suppose, it will initially, as people generate content. after a while you have a critical mass of things and then it will just sit there. anyway, i think the google blog identifies a very worthwhile goal, but i'm not sure their solution really attacks the problem as much as it should.

anyway, i was really excited for a little while after reading the first couple of paragraphs, then said to my self, "oh my they are copying wikipedia". in that sense i guess it was a disappointment.

re: ICS or EE

one of my friends posed this question: "i was thinking about transferring to ICS from EE, what do you think"?

here is my generic answer:

companies needs management that understands about software development. in my opinion, a lot of companies are missing that. companies that have that sort of leadership probably has a culture that has good software practices. so, i think that you can grow those skills and use it when you lead your company. but, that is the important part. you need to use it to lead your company. that means creating policies and management procedures that rock star programmers feel that they can thrive in your company. that means understanding how developers think and what drives them. in my opinion, i think only people with software development expertise knows how to do that.

on the other hand, i think, going the engineering rout is equally important. companies need subject matter expertise. and that is equally important. engineering offers so many other subject matter expertise that ICS cannot provide. (just think if they combined curriculum's. that would be awesome). in my opinion, a rock star would "rock" either major. EE guys are awesome too.

both opportunities will teach you how to conduct research and to critically think about problems. that is the most important aspect of any masters or phD education. it is the quest to write down your ideas and evaluate them objectively and subjectively that is most important. in addition, growing leadership skills, communication skills, and "knowledge skills" are really important. so one needs to focus on that.

i don't think picking one major or the other will vastly change your ability to make an impact. its more about what you like and what you enjoy learning. one or the other are fantastic opportunities.

i just personally like the software engineering problem more than i like something like signal processing. my belief is that software is going to revolutionize the world once more of us attack the essence of software (read the mythical man-month by fred brooks if you don't know what i'm talk about).

anyway, back to you.. i think you have a wonderful opportunity to learn about solid software engineering practices (from Dr Johnson) and actually putting them in place; by sticking with ICS and using your position to make difference in your company and in the industry. that is just my 2 cents.

either way, i know it will be an awesome experience.

re: My Resume Objective Is Crap

austen wrote a interesting blog about his objective statement. based on what he wrote, i have some additional comments.

how about this instead:

i value work environments that value developers over products, science over marketing, and innovation over the bottom line. in this environment the development team can write software that is revolutionary and will make a difference. As a software engineer, i strive to create software products of the highest quality and i am determined to find a work environment that matches my enthusiasm.

well, that encompasses things that i strive for. but, i believe you are interested in similar things

in fact, one needs to figure out a mantra. now that is a cool idea. what is your personal mantra. thinking for 20 seconds, my mantra is "quality innovation" or maybe its something like "world changing" . haha something like that. i think a problem that i am currently struggling with is trying to find my personal mantra.

once we figure that out.... one needs to determine whether the work environment has people with similar aspirations, mantras, motivations, determinations, skill, etc. in addition, whether those same things are valued by the company by creating policies, organization structure, projects, etc where those people can strive. it is all connected. people and companies need to understand that. companies like fogcreek, google, and it seems like even atlassian is getting there.