More Saving. More Doing.

That’s Home Depot’s current marketing tag line. I’m also making it mine.

More Saving Time. More Doing Projects.

My goal: Not to feel like I’m wasting my time – whether in front of a TV or mindlessly reading information on the web or doing nothing.

As evidenced by my hiatus from this blog, I’ve been busy. I’ve accomplished a lot; it just hasn’t been in the realm of code. There’s more to life than code, but code is one of several things I love.

More Saving. More Doing. More Code.

I’m an avid cook. I love the opportunity to try out new recipes, especially those from another culture. Sometimes my wife is pleasantly surprised by the results, other times, she’s just surprised. For Christmas, I recieved Rick Bayless‘ cookbook Authentic Mexican. My first foray using a recipe from the book involved making chicken enchiladas. To prepare the chicken, Rick instructed that it should be poached.  I had never poached a chicken before.

Poaching isn’t difficult.  You bring water to a boil, drop in chicken, add spices, ignore. After the chicken is cooked, pull it out, continue with dish. I was disappointed in that the spices didn’t add much, if any, flavor to the chicken; however, they smelled spectacular while the chicken cooked. The chicken was amazingly tender. It almost shredded itself for the enchiladas.  It is difficult to get chicken this tender using other cooking techniques; it would takes a watchful eye and careful hand.

From this experience I added a new skill to my cooking repertoire. I now know poaching’s strengths and weaknesses.  Had I not been venturous, I wouldn’t have grown as a cook. In coding, it’s the same.  If I never leave my comfort zone, I never learn new techniques. I can keep writing code using the same methods and same tools, but it’s akin to frying chicken every night. It’s good at first, but eventually you get tired of it and it might kill you.

Spice is the variety of life. Try a new technique and see what it teaches you. By knowing how to use an array of tools you have the skills to program in any situation. It’s the same as knowing multiple ways to cook chicken:  you can always prepare the chicken, no matter what kitchen you find yourself in, so you never go hungry and never tire of practicing your trade.

Somewhat fitting, since it is now the beginning of spring, I have changed jobs. My contact with Lenovo is complete.  The project I was working on, the Skylight, should be available soon. I now find myself as an employee of iContact.

This change brings me back into the world of web development. I inhabited this world previously during my work with Lulu, so this isn’t a shock to my system. It’s good to flex programming muscles that I haven’t used in a while.

Perhaps the biggest benefit for me is that I get to work with new developers. This means new perspectives and renewed learning. It’s difficult to replicate the experience of working with someone different and having their ideas infect your thinking. I can’t imagine what it was like in the world of old with career jobs the norm.

I’ll finish with the required disclaimer: The opinions and writings on this blog are mine and are not those of iContact and anything I say here should not be taken to represent iContact’s position in any way.

Just like every other technology focused person on the planet, I’ve taken time to ponder Google’s immense success. I’ve predicted in the past that their rapid growth in numbers of employees would catch up with them. It’s hard to tell on the outside if Google’s size is having much effect, although they have shown some missteps, such as with Buzz. Their language Go I also find rather peculiar: why did they invent something new instead of improving what exists? I admit to not having looked at Go closely, so there maybe valid reasons.

Tim Bray has become one of the latest employees at Google and has shared his thoughts on starting there. He mentions growth, although he only skirts the issue in vague terms. I hope he says more on the issue in the future, because it would be insightful to see how Google is dealing with these issues internally. It would even be interesting to know what they perceive as the issues internally. I’ll be watching to see what else Tim he writes.

TEDxTriangleNC was held March 6th.  As mentioned previously, I was one of the organizers.  I want to look back at what worked and what didn’t.

At the event I checked attendees and speakers in.  Due to this I missed most of the first talks, so I can’t speak to how the day kicked off. From what I did see, the talks and performances were high quality.  Some talks held my interest better than others because of the topic, but all of them were engaging.

The talks were scheduled by theme, so each block of talks had similar topics.  This made sense from a presentation standpoint, but in hindsight I’m not sure it was the best layout for the day.  The talks about relationships – generally high energy and high emotion talks – were grouped together.  It was a lot to take in, one right after the other.  These same talks also took place in the morning, giving the morning more energy than the afternoon. If we had spaced these talks out it would have spread the emotional load out over the day and giving the afternoon an energy boost that might have helped propel people through the day.

TED has an image of being sanitary and safe.  I often find it hard to disagree with TED talks I watch, but that maybe due to selection bias – I only watch TED talks I find agreeable.  If TED is to be about spreading ideas, then it can’t just spread ideas that people will agree with: it also has to spread ideas that challenge people.  TEDxTriangeNC did that.  Joel Wiggins talk has received some comment.  Joel’s talk was on missing fathers and how families would benefit from having the father in the home.  Is Joel’s idea platonic?  Yes.  He didn’t include mention of alternate family structures in his talk.  I’ve seen comment that some people disagreed with this.  Good.  We should challenge each other’s ideas; it is how we all grow.

Another talk that challenged was Dr. Mitch Krucoff’s.  He spoke on the power of prayer in healing, using specific examples from India. Are his ideas and examples at odds with a scientific mind?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  Even if you don’t agree, it’s good to hear the viewpoint.

David Beaver’s talk as the finale was perfect.  Speaking on space, he pulled everyone out from the close and personal to a broad view highlighting humanity and the earth we inhabit.  It was a great cap on the event that gave perspective to all the other talks.

In between groups of talks – groups that generally ran from an hour to an hour and a half – there were twenty minute conversation breaks.  Twenty minutes felt right.  As the organizers, we debated how long the breaks should be.  At TED, they’re forty-five minutes.  During our initial planning, we had them at ten, but then lengthened them to the final twenty.  Twenty allowed people to go by the restroom if needed and to grab a drink, while also connected with those around them.  Nobody was rushed, but the break didn’t drag out so long that people wondered when the talks would start again.  We got this one right.

We got coffee wrong.  While coffee was available for the start of the day, that was the only time we had coffee provided.  We completely missed that coffee and caffeine would be needed to get people through the midafternoon lull.  The RTP staff bailed us out and brewed some coffee using their break room equipment.  Thanks goes to them for that.

We got the venue right.  The RTP Headquarters is a cool building that worked out really well for the event.  Not so small as to be tight, but not so large that you could get lost in it.  Granted, we didn’t have full capacity, but the venue still worked well.  One lesson learned for next time is overbook by some amount, because people will drop out, especially for a free event.  Some attendees expressed to me that they thought a larger building might be needed in the future, but I’m on the fence about this.  If the event were to grow too large, would we lose the intimate conversations?  The speakers were able to intermingle with the attendees and speak to everyone: if the event is larger, does it just become a line of people waiting to talk to the speakers at breaks, instead of small groups riffing on the ideas presented?

It was awesome that most of the speakers were able to stick around at least part of the day, if not the entire day, to speak to the attendees.  That enables clarifying questions and the challenging of ideas.  To often speakers are treated like idols not to be touched.  The truth is they’re no different from everyone else and they can learn as much from the attendees as the attendees can learn from them.  Thank you to all our speakers: you did an amazing job and sparked amazing conversations and were amazingly accessible.

Every great event, even if it has a script, eventually has a mistake and improvisation is required.  Zach Ward, our MC, reminded us of this and showed how improv skills can save the day.  Zach did a great job stitching the day together and making the transitions flow.  He and his troupe also provided comic relief from the serious talks of the speakers.  Laughter is humanity and thanks Zach for providing it to us.

Thanks also goes out to Sherlock: his improv near the end of the day, in spontaneously standing to thank Zach, was much appreciated and showed everyone what rewards we can reap from reaching out to others.

Thank you to our sponsors for making the day possible, to our speakers for sharing their ideas, and to the attendees for being willing to give it a chance and experience something new.  The day wasn’t perfect, but it went amazingly well.  I hope everyone got as much out of it as I did.

Don’t let the ideas from the day die: continue the conversations and convert the ideas into action. Ideas are no good unless action is taken upon them.