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.

More Saving. More Doing.

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.

Poaching Chicken and Code

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.

Change of Employment

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.

On Google

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.

TEDx Retrospective

A TED Conference is expensive: expensive to put on and expensive to attend.  But why should TED corner all the great ideas?  To this end, they started TEDx. TEDx is a TED conference put on by a group independent of TED, but following TED guidelines.

I’m a part of such a group, which you most certainly know if you follow me on Twitter.  Going back to last year, we’ve been planning TEDxTriangleNC, a TEDx day long conference for the Triangle.

The relevant details:

Date: March 6th, 2010

Time: 10 am to 6pm (Doors open approx. 9:15)

Who: You and a long list of North Carolina speakers on a broad range of topics

Where: RTP Headquarters

Cost: Free

Coffee and Lunch provided.

Registration open soon.  There will be enough room for about 150 people to attend.  All this info and more is available on the TEDxTriangleNC site, including the list of speakers.  Take a moment to look it over.

I hope you can make it.  If not, the plan is to tape all of the talks and make them available online, while also live streaming the event.

Beyond TEDxTriangleNC, there are three other information sharing events going on in the Triangle in March:

March 3rd: Ignite Raleigh

March 8th: FizzledDurham

March 23: Pecha Kucha Raleigh

With all of this going on, you don’t have an excuse not to be intellectually challenged.

TEDxTriangleNC

That was the deal that I signed up for and here’s the review.

Upon opening the book, the first thing I noticed was the loose page placed inside.  It was a typed letter to me, as an early reviewer, briefly explaining Linchpin and thanking me for any review I might write.  I didn’t expect this.  The only way it could have been better was if it had been personally addressed to me and actually signed by Seth.  Also if it had been handwritten, but given that over 2000 people got in on this deal, that’s probably asking a bit much.  Certainly the book as it’s found in stores won’t have this loose page, but it does highlight that Seth is willing to practice what he preaches.

The other thing I quickly noticed was that the inside of the book jacket contains a collage of pictures.  It’s face after face after face.  I vaguely remember reading on Seth’s blog his request for photos, but I wasn’t expecting to see it here.  How expensive is it to print all these photos on the inside of the book jacket, typically a place left completely blank?

Already, this book is different.  The difference also extends to the content.  I’ve read some of Seth’s previous books: The Purple Cow, and The Dip.  I enjoyed them, but Linchpin is a departure.  I think that previous books of Seth’s could be described as pithy.  They have a core message that is repeated in various ways, but after reading the book there isn’t much else to take away beyond the main message.

Linchpin is weightier.  More arguments are presented, more evidence given for why Seth sees the need for people to become linchpins and to make art.

That last sentence needs some definitions.

When Seth writes about a linchpin, his definition is of a person who is indispensable.  They are indispensable because if the business let them go, it would require a significant amount of time to find and/or train someone else to replace them.  This is because the linchpin went above and beyond their job: they make connections and get work flowing.  Being a linchpin is more than just having domain knowledge: it’s also being willing to do the hard work and getting it done.

Finishing.

Seth stresses that point.  Linchpins finish.  So who is a linchpin?  Someone who finishes.

What does a linchpin finish?  Art.  Seth points out repeatedly that when he says art he doesn’t mean the kind made with a paint brush and canvas, or clay and a spinning wheel, although his definition could include those things.  Art is anything that makes the world a better place.  It’s going above and beyond.  It’s the waiter who smiles and is friendly while serving you and it’s the office assistant who makes sure the people who need to be talking are. They make art and in their art they finish, they ship.

What keeps people from being linchpins, from finishing?  The resistance.  Our lizard brains, the fear we have of moving forward.  It’s the part of us that tells us we’ll be laughed at.  The part that doesn’t want us to look foolish.  The part that has us check Twitter for the one thousandth time in the past hour, despite the deadline we have tomorrow.  That’s the resistance and it’s what we’re fighting to finish.

Most of us fail.  That’s what makes linchpins so rare and so valuable.

The book starts out interestingly, as a history lesson.  Seth details how the world has been set up to lead us here, to a world where most everyone follows the system and linchpins are rare.  Then the book slowly morphs and becomes more like a typical Seth Godin book, with him communicating his message and then pounding it home with example after example and continually layering on the details.

My main criticism of the book would be the “foot note system” he introduces early on. Sections with titles in parentheses are supposed to be ones you can skip if you want.  The problem is, I couldn’t tell much difference between these sections and others.  They read the same and felt the same, not like an aside.  Seth introduces the foot note system idea but then doesn’t use it much at all.  If feels like an afterthought, a half formed idea.  The book is better served if you pretend the foot note system doesn’t exist and read everything anyway.  I suspect this is what most people will do.  If Seth wanted to somehow make the book shorter, he either needed to cut those sections he felt unimportant or provide an executive summary.  Most adults are adept at skimming if they don’t want to read something, so leave it up to them what they want to skip and don’t want to.

Is the book worth it?  I say yes.  It’s a more substantial book than any of the previous Seth Godin books I’ve read.  It felt like I was reading a book more in the David Allen vein than in the Seth Godin vein, although it is still clearly a Seth Godin book in style.  However, if you’re expecting instructions on how to become a linchpin, a step by step list, you won’t find it.  It isn’t there and Seth explicitly says he can’t give it to you, because it’s different for everyone.

It’s clear from the references through out the book and the included bibliography that Seth Godin is very well read across a variety of subjects.  It demonstrates how cross pollination of ideas can lead to new and better ones.  Seth writes in the book that to have good ideas you first have to have lots of bad ones, but he doesn’t mention the value in exposing yourself to many ideas and how that helps to generate new ones.

A puzzle of the book is that on the final page, the words The Resistance are printed, although it has a curious misspelling that I haven’t reproduced here.  When I first read it, I wondered why Seth chose to put it there, with the misspelling.  Now that the book is officially released, I know why: it is a key you can use to unlock bonus material Seth has provided online.  I should be happy for the bonus, but I’m not.  I liked it better when the final page was an enigma.  What did Seth mean and what did he want me to think?  Was it a reminder to never forget what keeps me from getting ahead?  Something else?  Now I know there wasn’t a deeper meaning, which is disappointing.

I recommend Linchpin.  It’s worth the price, especially if you like Seth Godin.  If you don’t, it might still be worth it, given how different this book is from his others.

If you don’t want to read it, here’s the book in a sentence for you:

Be smart, work hard, do more than is required of you.

Come to think of it, this could describe most of Seth’s writing.

Linchpin: My Review

I had planned to write a blog post on considering the opposite of whatever you’re doing – but Derek Sivers has already written it for me.  In fact, he’s produced the message thrice, twice as a written post, the other as a talk.

Reversible business models

Japanese addresses: No street names. Block numbers.

Japanese Addresses: the opposite is also true

What made me want to sit down and write on this topic?  One was Derek Sivers.  After reading the first post he did on Japanese addresses, I’ve had the idea stuck in my head.  Then I came across a link to the Wikipedia article on Antiobjects and the idea struck me that this was a different way of programming (not an idea original to me).  What if instead of looking at the object as the fundamental building block, we looked at the space around the object?  From object oriented programming, this probably shakes out to become functional programming, but I’m not sure.

Consider: What in your world would change if you did the inversion of what you’re doing now?  What would programming with antiobjects look like?

In light of the new year: what if instead of a resolution to change something, you considered the things you wanted to keep the same?

Thinking in Opposites

So asks Neil Gaiman on NPR in a story on audiobooks.  It makes for riveting listening, thanks to Gaiman’s ability to make the mundane fantastic and because he has a mesmerizing British accent that holds me rapt.

Gaiman makes the point that audiobooks continue on, strong as ever.  The rise of the iPod has only made them more popular.  Given our information starved yet saturated world it seems the ceiling for audiobooks is limitless – until the day we can download information directly. Even then, there’s always a market for a good story.

So what is an audiobook? Gaiman wonders.

According to audio producer Rick Harris: “Well, my feeling is that it is not a book.”

“An audiobook is a separate entity that is absolutely true.  And a novel can be seen as many things, and one of the things it can be seen as is a script for an audio performance.”

Gaiman sums up: “An audiobook is its own thing, a unique medium that goes in through the ear, sometimes leaving you sitting in the driveway to find out how the story is going to end.”

As an audiobook is its own thing – separate from, but attached to, a book.

So to a program is its own thing – separate from, but attached to, code.

For what is code, except a script that is read by the compiler/interpreter?  We developers just happen to count on the compiler/interpreter reading the script we give it the same way every time, even though there is nothing that dictates this must happen.

It would be an interesting world to have a compiler/interpreter that put its own spin on the code given it.  To an extent, this does happen now, except in reverse.  You and I can write dialects of the same code and the compiler/interpreter will read it and spit back the same performance, even though it was based on two different scripts.

Code as performance.

I grew up in a world where stories were read aloud
- Neil Gaiman

What would the world be like if code was read aloud?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/playfullibrarian/3315024196 / CC 2.0

Book as Script, Code as Script

I’m now a contractor with Lenovo, as of this past Tuesday.  It feels good to have meaningful employment once again.  It comes at a good time, as the coffers needed replenishment.  As for details, I’m part of the Advanced Technology Center.  I’m programming Python.  That’s all I can say.  Since my position deals with technology and software that isn’t yet available, I can’t talk about it.

The job is awesome.  I’m leaning in leaps and bounds.  I’ve been taken out of my comfort zone, as this isn’t web programming.  It’s great.  I’ve seen that there’s more to the world than the web.  I’ve been reminded that there are a myriad of problems to be solved with programming and they don’t all involve requests per second.

There are other aspects to this job, beyond technology, that are forcing me to lean.  As a contractor, I receive no benefits, beyond getting paid nicely.  This puts me on the market for health care, and as every freelancer will tell you, it’s expensive.  People don’t realize how much their employers currently subsidize  health care.  I knew my previous employer subsidized my health care, but until I needed COBRA, I didn’t know by how much.  Even with COBRA, I viewed it as a necessary short term pain.  Now I can’t ignore the cost of health care: I have to pay it fully.

Going through this experience, I think everyone should at some point have to pay the full cost of their health insurance.  It would open people’s eyes.  At the very least, it would provide everyone with more understanding of the system.  It would be amazing to see a country in which no one had to worry about health care.  Imagine how liberating that would be.  How many more entrepreneurs would exist?  To be an entrepreneur today means accepting huge risks, including risks to your health if you can’t afford insurance while you start a business.  How would the calculus of creating a startup change if health wasn’t part of the equation?  What innovations are we now missing out on, because of the status quo?

I’m lucky.  I’m in a position to be able to afford health care.  It makes me hopeful that this country passes some form of health care reform this year.  I don’t doubt that any new law will have flaws, but it’s a start, and we need to start somewhere.  I think everyone, whatever political persuasion, can agree on that.

I’ll step off my soap box now.  I don’t want this post to become an argument about politics.  I do however want to document my experiences and my situation.  I have a new job.  For that and all the blessings in my life I’m thankful.

I encourage you to look for me Monday through Friday on 540 as I head to work.  I’ll be in the crowd, slowed to a stop at the Six Forks on-ramp as everyone waits for traffic to merge.  Wave to me, if you catch my eye.  I’ll be smiling, because I have a job, and I love it.

New Employment