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

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.

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.

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.

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!

COE Fall Career Day

this past wednesday was another College of Engineering Fall Career Day. here are some observations and comments:

(btw, if you are student check out these posts; after the career fair, make students awesome, and you need to do a honors thesis)

actually, i'm not sure if it was just an engineering event, i thought that the Information and Computer Science Department was involved as well, but there weren't that many students. the COE site has a has an events listing and of course it showed this event. but, i noticed that there wasn't an event listing nor a fall career day listing on the ics department site. but, i'm sure they have it post on their mailing list.

there were are few engineering professors walking around and talking to the companies. one professor, tep dobry walked by last semester and mentioned he got a few good students. and because of that we hired one as an intern. the point is that its great to see the professors going out there an promoting their students. we had a lengthy discussion about his student and his other students. we were discussing our needs, their classes and the future. i really appreciate that kind of involvement from the faculty. there were a bunch of engineering faculty walking around. it was good to talk to gerald lau from the ics department.

i didn't get many ics resumes. but, i talked to a handful of students that didn't have their resumes. it was good talking to them, they all seemed really intersted. and as usual i recommended ics 413, because i think none of them knew what junit was. i often give these students my personal email address, hoping that they will contact me...

i met a lot of EE students. its pretty cool because we hired a couple of interns that know a bunch of students. all their friends came to visit us. they all seem like good candidates. they seem to have a lot of good experiences with cubestat and micromouse and if they are anything like our interns then we think they will do great.

i heard a few students talking about the BS in computer engineering and wondering if its good. most of the discussion was from the EE students wondering if the ICS courses were good. and whether i thought it was a good move. i'm not sure what to think about that new degree...

i think a large majority of the students need to work on making a great first impression. sell your skills, stand up straight, eye contact, and stop trying to steal the pens! haha. seriously, i think a few of the younger students need to practice a little more professional communication. the Center for Career Development
and Student Employment actually has a lot of great resources for that. i did a few practice interviews. trust me it really helps!

i think this year was a little bit slower that most and we were in a strange location in the corner. but, i thought it was a pretty good career fair. i was pretty happy with the ee and ics students i talked with we had some good conversations. and for me its all about just talking with students; even though they don't work for me, i hope that i help them learn more about our industry.

programming from scratch

as you probably know now, i've been promoting scratch at the lacy veach day of discovery events.

Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

i really like scratch, because it has a lot of great resources for educators, parents, and kids. here are some resources:

learn how to use scratch

information for educators

referrals and quotes

research on scratch

they even have a conference on scratch

they even provide ways for the students to upload their scratch creations, comment on others, and even download scratch files. its a great way to create a community of kids and educators. check out the:

projects

galleries

forums

and scratches to help promote scratch

how we scratch
here is a short summary of how we utilized scratch for the lacy veach events.

first of all, our role in lacy veach day of discovery is to provide interactive displays that hopefully teach the students about cool technology related to space exploration. we decided to use scratch to accomplish that, since we felt that programming abilities is often over looked in the aerospace industry.

anyway, here are some things that we did to make scratch work in this type of event;

we developed quick lesson plans for students that would help teach the students scratch in about 5-10 minutes. the goal was to teach them some initial concepts that they can take with them as they try out the program in more detail at home. basically, we tried to have the students create two sprites and move them in different ways.

we created user accounts on the scratch site to upload their scratches to. here is the user account for the 2008 event; http://scratch.mit.edu/users/LacyVeachDay2008 and here is the account for the 2007 event; http://scratch.mit.edu/users/Referentia

we created fliers to give the parents and students making sure that we told the parents that the program was free and that it could be downloaded. we also made sure that we told the parents and students that their creations were going to be posted online.

we brought our computers and network. we gathered up 5 of our own laptops, complete with a entire network so we can exchange files between the computer. this was important because we wanted to display the students work on a projector.

we created a demo application that looped through the students creations so the students and parents could view their and others creations. this was useful as a way to attract students and parents to our display.

lessons learned:

we talked to as many parents as we did students. parents are amazed that this sort of resource is available and free for that matter. the parents seem to be really interested. so, make sure you have enough volunteers to work with the students and parents.

some kids are really into it and want to do more than the basic examples. the scratch cards come in handy in these situations.

scratch is awesome because kids think its awesome. its really cool to see the kids face light up with interest when they see what they can do. they really get into it. and to me thats what programming is all about. its the creativity, challenge, and accomplishments that make programming awesome. hopefully, more organizations, teachers, mentors, and parents use scratch as an education tool.

if you need help, let me know.

lacy veach day of discovery 2008

this past weekend we participated in lacy veach day of discovery, which is a large scale science fair with exhibits and workshops. we had a great time with all the kids. i even learned a lot! science is cool. we presented programming from scratch and its becoming a yearly tradition for us a referentia systems inc.



at the event we taught kids how to program with scratch, an interactive programming language that creates animation, games, music, and art designed for kids to help develop 21 century skills. it was a huge success. the kids at the event were great. my friends did a great job of helping the kids. overall it was a huge success. we posted the kids' scratch creations on the scratch mit site. check it out!

here are some pics of my crew at the event:
my coworkers at referentia are awesome. without them our scratch display wouldn't be possible. they really step for this event. it must be something about teaching kids to program that gets them into it. so, thanks to those referentians that helped out, it really does make a huge difference. (i remember learning logo when i was a kid and its probably a huge reason why i ended up in computer science; read more about my strange academic journey)

here are some pics from the rest of the event:

this year seemed to be a lot bigger than last. there were many more exhibitors and it was pretty fun to walk around checking out the displays;

Astronaut Onizuka (check out the Onizuka Day on Hilo)

BAE Systems

Bishop Museum - they had a a cool globe projector.

FIRST robotics (Moanalua, ROC, Sacred Hearts, Waialua)

HaSTA

Hawaii Academy of Science - i talked to them about the Hawaii State Science Fair. this event seems really cool. i want to go check it out next year, i think around april.

Hawaiian Astronomical Society

HECO - heco was there in full force. they always do a great job of helping the kids

Institute of Astronomy - these dudes are really smart. i talked with them last year and the stuff they are doing is really cool.

NASA Pacific Regional Planetary Data Center

Pearl City Elementary - there were a bunch of kids from pearl city.

Referentia!!!!! - YAY!

Robofest

Starbase (couldn't find a link)

UH College of Engineering

there were also presentations;

keynote speaker Astronaut Stanley Love

assembly with special 3D program, student interns at NASA

science Magic--science demonstrations with a flair

and a bunch of workshops:

The Incredible Mars Pathfinder Mission

Dr. Gadget presents Gadgets that Float and Glide Through the Air

Water Powered Bottle Rockets

Meteorites: Rocks from Space

Hydrogen Fuel Cells

Gases in Space Living

Polynesian Star Compass

(see the full listing here)


it was an awesome day of learning. now that i've learned more about the different workshops and presentations, i actually want to be a kid and sneak in and learn. there are some many great exhibits, workshops, and presentations. WOW! anyway, i had a lot of fun talking with the kids and parents. i can't wait till next year.

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.

my ics courses

today, a few of us visited the ics department to plan the uh ics robocode competition. while, i was walking around the post building i stumbled upon this document; information and advice for computer science majors and minors. it seemed pretty interesting and i wanted to see what type of information the department provided its students. so, i took a copy for myself.

the document seems pretty interesting at a high level. i'm not really sure it offers a whole bunch of advice, it does have a lot of information. anyway, if you have been following my blog for a while, you'll know that i've tried to lay out a lot of advice for students. so, i won't go into a lot of details about process, work habits, communication, soft skills, 6 steps to awesomeness, undergrad thesis, etc. instead, i'll give you a pretty concrete piece of advice.

Take ICS 413/414/613
Software Engineering
from Dr. Philip Johnson

is that clear enough for you? here is a current website of the fall 2008 ics 413 class. and look it even has a quote from me:

The skills you acquire in ICS 413 provide professional advantages. Aaron Kagawa, a software engineer and recruiter for Referentia Corporation, has this to say: It has been my experience that learning technologies like Ant, JUnit, Eclipse, and Subversion and practices like Code Reviews, Extreme Programming, and User Testing will separate you from the rest of crowd when applying for entry level Software Engineering positions. While recruiting and evaluating University of Hawaii ICS students one of the first questions I ask is "Did you take 413 Software Engineering?" Followed by, "Do you know what JUnit is?"

anyway... if you are still wondering what classes i took, here is a list of all of them. i also included my grades in those classes for one reason. i got pretty good grades. but, i guarantee it is not because i'm smart. i got good grades because i worked my ass off. if you read my academic journey you'll see what i'm talking about. here it is, all the ics classes i took (note i started UH in 1998. i didn't start taking ics classes till 2000)

semester	class	grade	comment
spring 2000	ics 101(lab)	A
spring 2000	ics 111(lab) [lew]	B	i had a fantastic ta that really helped us
fall 2000	ics 141 [gersh]	B
fall 2000	ics 211 [biagoni]	A
spring 2001	ics 212 [peterson]	A
spring 2001	ics 311 [suthers]	B
fall 2001	ics 312 [sugihara]	A
fall 2001	ics 313 [stelovsky]	A
fall 2001	ics 321 [deryke]	A
spring 2002	ics 331(lab) [ikehara]	A
spring 2002	ics 413 software engineering [johnson]	A	TAKE THIS CLASS!
spring 2002	ics 415 web programming [stelovsky]	A
summer 2002	ics 491 [gilbert]	A	.net programming
summer 2002	ics 499 [gilbert]	A	.net programming
fall 2002	ics 414 software engineering II [johnson]	A	TAKE THIS CLASS!
fall 2002	ics 499 [johnson]	A	working on my honors thesis
fall 2002	ics 691 [johnson]	A	a class about hackystat. i was the only undergrad in the class
spring 2003	ics 463 hci [hundhousand]	A
spring 2003	ics 499 [johnson]	A	working on my honors thesis
i finally got my undergraduate degree! grad school starting
semester	class	grade	comment
fall 2003	ics 613 software engineering [johnson]	A	grad level software engineering
fall 2003	ics 623 data security [peterson]	A	dr. peterson is a genius
spring 2004	ics 691 [quiroga]	A	information architecture
spring 2004	ics 699 [johnson]	A	masters thesis work
fall 2004	ics 624 data management [nordbotten]	A
fall 2004	ics 664 hci [strevler]	A
fall 2004	ics 690 [suthers]	A
fall 2004	ics 691 [binstead]	A	design for mobile
fall 2004	ics 699 [johnson]	A	still working on the masters thesis
spring 2005	ics 699 [johnson]	A	still working on the masters thesis
spring 2005	ics 700	A
summer 2005	ics 699 [johnson]	A	still working on the masters thesis
i finally got my masters degree!

hopefully, this is interesting or useful to some of the students. if you have any specific questions about the classes i took let me know.

current student activities

things are a little crazy these days. there is a lot going on. here is a short list of things that i'm working on.

ics alumni association
i've been pushing hard to help create an alumni association for the department. its definitely an uphill battle. i've been talking about it for a while on my blog. but, it wasn't till the department realized that they need to drive the need that we really started.

we are working on a coding competition for the department. originally, it started as a Topcoder event, but it since has changed to a Robocode Event. we changed it because of a couple reasons, first the topcoder competition was going to be held at 6AM! for some reason thats the only time topcoder could give us. second, topcoder is pretty hard and doesn't seem like a lot of fun.

while working on the alumni association we created a techhui group called ICS Mentors. this got us a little attention, but it has died down. we also, just created an ics alumni website; http://uhicsalumni.org/. we plan to use this site as a place to get membership information, plan events, etc.

there are a few issues that we are facing. first, we have a small group of people, which i all we need for now until we flesh out the details of the association. but, my worry is that the other graduates that i talk to just don't seem that interested. where am i going to find the volunteers in the future. my worry is that it is just going to die after this event. oh well.... my second concern is actually creating a non-profit organization. i hear it is a little difficult to organize and finish the paper work. i'm falling behind in getting this done and it is a concern.

anyway, the robocode competition is just starting to get formalized. i'm starting to learn about robocode and even compiled my first robot. i'll be posting my notes and tips here. i really hope that the students are interested in joining the competition. and i really hope that we (the alumni association) can pull this off.

lacy veach day of discovery
lacy veach day of discovery is next week! referentia is going to support this event by conducting another scratch programming teaching event for the students. i'm pretty excited about doing this again. we had a great time last time and hopefully we can do it even better. we are trying to get more laptops so we can teach more kids. and we have even more volunteers this year. its going to be awesome.

planning this event was a lot easier this year, because we are doing scratch again. in fact, this decision has taught me a good lesson about how to run these events. plan well for one year and you can reuse your efforts the next year. this not only makes it easier to support these events. it also lets you improve how you approach the lessons and even plan it more efficiently. thats cool!

career fairs
i have three upcoming career fairs; the UH engineering career fair, aiea high school career fair, and the UH ICS industry day. each event is different. for the aiea high school event we are going to give a 30 minute presentation. i did this last year and it seemed pretty successful. this year, one of my engineers is going to give the speech. the engineering career fair is always fun. its actually pretty tiring talking to all those students. career fairs are a great way to help students. i always look forward to talking to the students and offer and advice i may have for their job seeking journey.


sheesh thats a lot happening in the next few weeks...

2008 hawaii's top high-tech leaders

tonight a few of us from referentia systems inc attended the 2008 flavors of technology and technology industry awards. it was at the hawaii prince hotel and it was awesome.

the cool thing was that i won an award for high tech leaders. here was a little info about it;

DESCRIPTION
Technology News Bytes and the Pacific Technology Foundation honor individuals who are highly regarded for their leadership and service in Hawaii’s high technology industry.

PURPOSE
To recognize and reward outstanding individuals for their leadership and service in Hawaii’s high technology industry, both within their organizations and in the community at large.

SELECTION CRITERIA
All nominees must be:
• Active professionals serving their current organization for at least one (1) year
• Individuals who have improved or advanced their organization using technology
• Recognized by their co-workers and collogues for their commitment to excellence in their profession
• Known for their expertise in technology
• Highly involved with professional organizations
• Active contributors and volunteers in the community
• Nominations are accepted from the private, public, and non-profit sectors. Nominations are limited to a maximum of two (2) nominees per company, and can be either self-nominations or third-party nomination

i was surprised to find that i was even nominated. thanks to ian kitajima for the nomination. i had to rush a little on the questions, but here is a first draft (which i revised later).

anyway, the event was awesome. there was a coat and tie dress code, so we all got dressed up. here are some pictures from the event (i hear that there is a video of me accepting the award).



we actually had a csdl reunion of sorts; austen ito, james wang, robert brewer, and me. we also cheered on rosemary sumajitfor for winning her high tech leader award. yay rosemary! i hear that robert and philip have won awards in the past too. csdl represent!

also congratulations to my friends lynn fujioka and dan leuck for their awards!

anyway, i'm not sure that i really deserve this award just yet. there is so much more that i need to accomplish. i'll continue to push forward. but, a lot of the credit has to go to the awesome people at referentia. starting with the leadership from nelson to all the engineers that help me help the students. referentia has allowed me to grow in this capacity and i think thats awesome.

my academic journey

this is my academic journey

little kid days
i was a sports and outdoors kid. i wasn't allowed to have a nintendo and i couldn't watch tv during the week. so, that meant i found myself outside almost every single day after school from when i was in elementary to high school. i didn't need to be told i couldn't watch tv; i didn't want to. i played ayso soccer and little league baseball, played basketball and football with my friends, went surfing, hiking, bike riding, camping, fishing, etc. you name it we did it. it was a lot of fun.

i did okay in school;

i was a very curious kid; asking why about everything

i liked math and science and did everything i could to get out of reading

in elementary i won two science fairs for my demonstrations of magnets and the ozone.

for some reason i still remember winning a lei making contest and winning second place in our chess tournament.

i also remember taking two computer programming classes. one was in my elementary school where we learned logo. i really liked hacking logo on the macintoshes. next in my intermediate school we had a graphics programming class where we made animations. i remember these classes pretty well. i must have really liked them.

i remember my parents going over my report card with me every term. i was always upset that my friends got money for good grades and i didn't. my parents used to say my grades were for me and only me; and that i should do it for myself. this is where i eventually learned to be responsible for my education.

high school
high school centered around two things; baseball and having fun. i played for aiea high school JV and Varsity teams. baseball consumed a lot of my life and homework did not. i still got really good grades, but didn't do nearly as much studying as i probably should have.

i didn't learn trigonometry. i wasn't interested and it showed.

when we had reading assignments; i would do all i could do to fake it. i don't think i read one fiction book in high school.

i didn't learn anything about using the computer, i didn't even know we had a computer lab.


i'm not sure that i learned a lot in class, but i made sure we had a lot of fun. high school was a blast... but with all that, i still got pretty good grades. i graduated with honors. i even got a scholarship to the university of hawaii.

baseball
i really learned a lot about life playing baseball. i played baseball all my life, but things changed when i started playing at the high school level. we played baseball year around and my game changed and my roles on the teams changed. i went from a bench warmer to the veteran starter. i went from a freshman follower to a senior leader. these experiences were real. i learned a lot about being a leader. and i learned a lot about being a mentor.

i think the valuable thing about baseball was that i was able to really focus on baseball. i wasn't going to back down and i wasn't going to give up. competition drove my constant improvement of myself and my team. every practice meant something. every game was a stepping stone.

i mention baseball in my academic journey, because there is nothing quite like high school sports. for me, it was one of the most important academic experiences that i've gone through.

university
my first semester in college was shocking... my techniques for getting by at aiea high school wasn't working. i was playing to much... i couldn't BS my way through the tests by just being there in class. ha! i was actually pretty surprised. but, i wasn't playing baseball any more. so, i kind of lost focus. but, luckily some how one flunked pop quiz and a few family problems kicked me in the ass and i regained focus. this time i was focused on school. i was self driven. i didn't have a team anymore, i had to do this by myself and i better kick some butt. this was an important lesson for me.

agriculture
but! i was an agriculture major in the college of tropical agriculture and human resources. besides a scholarship, what the heck was i doing in there? this is where i made my second realization that i HATE WORKING OUTSIDE (but i love playing outside), i really don't care how plants drink water, and i really don't care about bugs and soil.

so, i quickly left CTAHR and ventured out into taking ICS (Information and Computer Science) 101 and ICS 111. i took these classes just because i remembered that i used to like computers when i was a kid. i really had no clue what programming was.

the internet!
this was right about the time when i got my first computer and got the internet! woah.. i was 19 years old learning about all this crazy internet stuff. i would ask my friends what does "www" mean and what does this yahoo site do. they'd laugh at me, but i was soaking up like a sponge. it was really interesting particularly because in high school i didn't geek out like this.

i did well in ICS 111 and i enjoyed learning java. so, i figured to keep on going. so i took another class. eventually, i told my CTAHR adviser i was out of the college and moved to ICS. the only problem was that i wanted to work with people and help people and i didn't know how would do that in ICS.

ICS
i got a few computer jobs, learned a lot more and realized that i really liked working with computers. i got good grades in my ics class, but i wasn't learning that much. i was a senior in college taking 400-level ICS classes and i began to think what i was going to do with my life. the scary thing was that i was pretty much getting a 4.0 in my major and i had no idea what i was going to do or where i was going to work. my initial thought was that i needed to work for a web company. thank goodness that changed when i took ICS 413 ...

ICS 413 taught by Dr. Philip Johnson turned my university education around. for the first time, i learned what it was like to write real software. imagine that... i took ten ICS classes and didn't know what it was like to write software. this class changed my life. i felt like i just learned what computer science was all about, so i couldn't bear graduating right after that ICS 413 semester. it tuns out that Dr. Philip Johnson convinced me to do my Honors Thesis. committing to this meant that i delayed my graduation for at least a year. i was in no rush, so i did it. (now, i realize that everyone should do an honors thesis).

during my honors thesis work, i started to see that software was all about people. wring software is people management; its peopleware. AHA! i found out that i can help people with my geek knowledge. geek + people is awesome! i found my calling! i found myself using the same people techniques i learned in baseball.

i eventually finished my honors thesis; The design, implementation, and evaluation of CLEW: An improved Collegiate Department Website.

grad school
now, i was about to graduate with my bachelors of science in information and computer science with high honors and was faced with another "what now". i still had no clue where i would working in hawaii. so, i applied to various graduate programs around the country, but i got rejected from all of them. luckily i was offered a spot in CSDL as a graduate research assistant. i jumped at that opportunity.

i did my graduate research working on the hackystat system. while working on that project i got to be part of a few publications:

Comparing personal project metrics to support process and product improvement

Practical automated process and product metric collection and analysis in a classroom setting: Lessons learned from Hackystat-UH

The Hackystat-JPL Configuration: Round 2 Results

Hackystat MDS supporting MSL MMR

Hackystat MDS supporting MSL MMR: Round 2 Results

Hackystat-SQI: Modeling different development processes

Hackystat-SQI: First Progress Report

Improving Software Development Management through Software Project Telemetry


one of the awesome things that i got to do during my graduate studies was an internship at the jet propulsion laboratory in pasadena california. it was a great experience and was really useful as a talking point for interviews, etc. not to mention a really really really really cool place. i got to see the mars rovers, went into the mission control rooms, saw them testing the mars rovers, saw them building the next satellites, watch cassini fly through saturn's rings, and talked to a lot of rocket scientists!

after my internship i finally finished my masters thesis; Priority Ranked Inspection: Supporting Effective Inspection in Resource-limited Organizations. yay! school is over. (actually i got into the PhD program, but i decided that i was done for a while. write a thesis is a lot of hard work).

work work work
i entered the job hunting with relatively little information. unfortunately, my time at the ICS department didn't teach me about our local high tech industry. so, i applied to places were my friends worked. and it turns out i accepted a job where i didn't know anyone; Referentia Systems Inc was my new home.

i've been working at Referentia for the past 3 years now. i was hired as a software engineer and now i'm a engineering supervisor. at the end of it all, i rely on much more of my soft skills, outward thinking, and the wonderful paradox than my technical skills.

moral of the story
i don't think there is a moral of the story... its just the way that i did it. its has been a long journey and i feel really fortunate and grateful to be where i am now.

i think its ironic that some of the most important lessons that i use today in the real world comes from times out on the baseball field.

there is so much yet to come. i've recently become really interested in helping others through their journey. i've learned this from leaders like ian kitajima. i've just started this next chapter but some things are already in motion;

making students awesome

Dept ICS TopCoder Software Engineering Competition

ics alumni association for real this time


wish me luck!