My Professional Blog

It is hockey season now and so I’ve been paying attention to the local team and all things surrounding it.  So today I noticed that Mike Modano has relaunched his site.  Well, Mike has been one of my favorite players for more than a decade and since I make my living in technology its of interest to see what the site looks like.

So when you go to www.mikemodano.com, you see a nice enough site, but I am not impressed with animated GIFs or Flash animation.  These days I quickly resort to viewing the source to see just how astute the designer or design agency is.  So in this case, what do I find?  Obtrusive javascript and a tables-based design.  Yikes!  Maybe I, myself, need a reality check, but I thought we were past this kind of implementation approach.  Its just too easy to build it the right way with web standards these days.

So I had to go explore which firm put this site together.  Clicking the link at the bottom of the page takes me to Nform Interative which contains an all Flash home page with a logo that is clipped in Firefox and a page entitled “temp_home_page”.  What’s more, there’s no pages to describe the agency.  Needless to say, its completely SEO-unfriendly.  Wow!  And they got the Mike Modano gig?!

This is all relevant to me because I am embarking on a freelance career where I do contract programming and website development.  I do all this with the latest trends in technology and web standards.  So, test-driven development, CSS-based designs and lean standards-compliant markup are staples of anything I would do.  But it highlights to me that we still have a long way to go because people are still building old school sites and clients are still paying for them.

Hopefully, I can articulate why my approach is better and start winning some of these clients.  Doing so will offer them bigger bang for the buck and position them better for the future.  Its too late for Mike’s site, though.

People have asked me quite a lot lately what I’m going to do now that I’m free and clear of Click Here and my pat answer has been one of two or three things:

1. Find a product-oriented company with a high-performance team building something amazing, or
2. Bootstrap my own tiny consultancy, and / or
3. Build an amazing product.

As luck would have it, I’ve already landed an interview at a company that offers the first option. I’m excited about the interview, but realistic about the possibilities. Because they appear to be a high-performance team, they are guarding the entrance quite closely. My level of intrigue is all that much higher because the interview process is anything but easy and normal. Suffice it to say that you can’t get hired by being a good guy and liberally dropping high-impact buzzwords. You may laugh, but I’ve been hired through such good-guy interviews.

This is a position which features the use of Java as their primary implementation language, so my challenge is to get back into the Java mindset after several months of Ruby development. My friend Mike once supposed that I would never return to Java. Its possible he’s wrong as I could be circling back. Working with Ruby is fun, but my talents and experience position we well for a Java shop and there is more of a job market there too.

But even as I say that, I must admit that looking at Java for the first time in a few months has surprised me. Java hasn’t changed, but it seems that my mind has started to think in Ruby. I am actually alarmed that a language I’ve worked in for years could be subject to this kind of transition. I found myself asking fundamental syntax questions. So I wondered if this had happened to anyone else. Or is this just a by-product of my being 43?

Well, I’m not worried about picking Java up again, but I am picking a problem to code to get my head back into it. I still have a series of Java projects from an interview process I went through in June (yes, I was offered the job), so I’m going to work through one of those. To make it more fun, I may try to integrate it into a JRuby on Rails project and do a local deploy. This will enable me to prepare for the interview and explore the integration possibilities for JRuby and Java.

What happens if I don’t get the job? Well, that’s a real possibility, so I’m planning my bootstrapping activities for my consultancy. Having done recent work for a medium-sized consultancy, I know there is work out there and I know that I can provide high-quality work for a portion of the price that bigger companies are charging. But as every entrepreneur knows, you cannot be successful without customers, so my biggest challenge will be to construct a marketing machine capable of producing a sustainable pipeline of work. For technicians, this is not an intrinsic skill, so I’ve been thinking more about marketing than my technical skills — the latter is the easy part.

In some ways this takes me back a great many years ago when I created a small software company, SportSoft Systems, which created and marketed Fantasy Football software and a few other things. This was back 20 years ago and my product was just about the best out there. Had I only known that the fantasy sports craze was to explode, I would have stuck with it. I did actually make decent money, but the pressures of supporting the product and building in new features every year while being an ethical employee at my primary job caused me to discontinue my efforts.

So for now, I’m circling back — either to the Java world or to a world where I build my own company. Should be fun wherever things lead.

I have been making my living for the last 20+ years following processes.  Unfortunately, I have not seen that processes have been maintained, evaluated, and evolved as they should be.  My theory is this: no one collects any metrics anymore, so no one knows how well their processes really work.

There are two adages that I believe apply:

You cannot manage what you do not measure.

What gets measured, gets done.

All too often, processes go stale or drift so far from their intent that it becomes a disadvantage to be process-driven.  If you work for such a company or even if you have your own personal processes, consider putting into place a layer where you measure parts of the process.  I don’t know what those measurements would concern, just start measuring something.

Once you have a reasonable set of data points, attempt to perform some analysis to see if you can draw any conclusions.  At a company I worked for in the past, we measured the effectiveness of peer reviews by tabulating documentation defects and code defects detected by the group and by person.  In a separate activity, we measured defects detected by our QA group and ultimately by the customer community.  My point being, we could take all this data and eventually determine our effectiveness and even predict our future performance.  Being able to predict our performance enabled us to estimate and plan much better and thus be more competitive.
If you are a company that suffers from this, you need to swallow the Red Pill and see the truth.  Measured and analyzed processes can become your Morpheus.  If you swallow the Blue Pill, you will almost certainly continue to languish within old, non-value-added processes that lead you into an uncertain future.

You should now be conjuring up an image of Laurence Fishburne gesturing you to come and get some.

Anyone tried to get a good domain name lately?  If you have, its likely you’ve been frustrated with the options that you have left.  Of course, that is the case only if you wish to have a domain name that matches the name of your site.  However, there may be a creative solution available to you.

Consider taking the Google or Yahoo approach whereby your sites are “properties” and are named at the subdomain level.  For example, http://maps.google.com or http://local.yahoo.com.  Taking their examples, you can see that their primary domain name has nothing to do with either of their properties.  So basically, you simplify your problem down to finding one good domain name.  Thereafter, you can use any subdomain name that you want.

With most of the good domain names taken, this may be your best option.  I’m not sure why we aren’t seeing more of this.  Given how easy it is to put up a website these days, its likely that people will start to have multiple websites and this would be a perfect strategy.  However, you may have to Think Two Products Ahead and have thought about the brand behind your properties.

I had this thought many months ago and searched for a domain name to use.  Even finding one was difficult, but I was able to do it — I’m sure you can too.  The domain name that I chose is neatoidea.com (nothing there yet), which has a sort of quirky retro feel and could be used for any of my properties.  So now I can create http://.neatoidea.com and I’m all set.

Of course, you will have to decide whether you want coordinated accounts for your properties or whether they each stand on their own, so a little planning is in order.

Here’s hoping this is a helpful, if not neato idea for you…

I read somewhere that Bill Gates retreats for a few weeks to read whitepapers and books in order to strategize for the future.  I know there are fewer Bill Gates fans out there these days, but idea has definite merit.  So as I embark on another vacation, I usually spend a couple of weeks trying to decide what readings I’m going to take along with me.  Of course, I never work through every book I take, I just want to have the variety around me just in case I stall on a book or just am in a different mood on a particular day.

So what am I taking this year?  In no particular order:

• Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.
• Mavericks at Work by William C. Taylor and Polly G. LaBarre
• Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
• The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
• Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg

You’ll note that none of these books is technical in nature — well, you could make a case for Dreaming in Code, but its certainly a different sort of book about technology.  I get a full dose of technology during the other 50 weeks of the year.  I treat these two weeks as an opportunity to read about business strategy, marketing, innovation, or human behavior.

So why this mix of books.  Made to Stick is about the science of memorable ideas and appears to be incredibly well-written.  I am guessing I’ll power through this book and maybe even complete it on the plane.  Who among us does not need to know how to sell their ideas?  You need this skill every day, though admittedly some ideas are bigger and deserve more attention in their craftsmanship.

I have already read over half of Mavericks at Work, so this one will get finished fast as well.  I enjoy reading about creativity in the workplace.  If you’ve been in a culture where you feel somewhat suppressed, reading a book like this gives you hope and inspiration for the future.  I’m particularly enjoying the sections that talk about Southwest Airlines since they are a local company.  Their culture seems to be remarkable.

Wikinomics and The Wisdom of Crowds are two books that center are on group behavior in the online and offline worlds.  Though the perspectives are different, I’m very interested to read about each.  I’m reading these two for insight into the growing popularity for social websites.  And who knows, maybe I have an idea rolling around in my head that needs to be nourished.

And finally, Dreaming in Code.  This looks like an interesting book, though I can see myself stalling out on it as it might remind me too much of the other 50 weeks in my life.  I’m not sure when I’ll start this one, but it will get read at some point.  At any rate, I would really like to see what others’ experiences are.

Not making the trip is Release It which is a book about properly architecting systems for their life in a production environment.  You say that every system eventually goes to production, eh?  This would be true, but you’d be surprised how little thought goes into the post-development landscape.  I have read the first part of this book and many of the anecdotes are ringing very true and familiar.  But of course, as I say that, don’t think that I design crappy systems.  All I can say is that sometimes constraints beyond your control lead you down a sub-optimal path.  The trick is to minimize risks in the face of the constraints you will surely have.  Obviously, this book doesn’t make the trip because this is the life I lead outside of Think Weeks.

As many of you know, I’m looking for employment now while my Nokia days come to an end. I thought I would post some thoughts on how you find a job in the current job market. Nevermind that I don’t have a job, I just started looking in earnest a couple of days ago. So here goes:

The first thing to get straight is that YOU are the product. Prospective employers are your customers. And as a result, you need a marketing plan. Your marketing plan must begin with the usual self-assessments which eventually lead to your main marketing vehicle — the resume. In some ways, you could almost consider your resume as the product.

Next comes the distribution problem. How do you get your resume in front of those who you wish to become your buyers? In today’s world, you get your resume and profile up on all the job boards that are relevant to your profession. However, reentering the same data over and over is such a pain. To ease your pain, use SimplyHired which is a site that will enable you to enter your resume data once and then blast it out to sites of your choosing — a real time saver. Just be sure that you get the information right because after SimplyHired does its thing, you will have to manage individual accounts at all the sites.

As an added touch, I created my own website to promote my efforts. The website serves as a visual reinforcement of my technical skills. Its well-designed, uses semantic standards-based markup, is CSS-based, and uses progressive enhancement in a couple areas to improve the user experience (printing, tag cloud AJAX). Its not an over-the-top tour de force in technology, but is just enough to impress the target audience — prospective employers and recruiters. Because some of you will go there, I readily disclaim that its been soft-launched. Expect to find minor cross-browser issue and some content yet to be provided. You techies are a tougher audience than my target audience!

So when you flip the switch on this machine, you will get assaulted with emails and opportunities. These are your customers banging on the door. To organize yourself, get a Highrise account from 37Signals. Highrise is a mini-CRM application and let’s face it, you will be talking to people, exchanging email with people, and more or less manage the sales process. Highrise is perfect for this and is free for limited use.

Once you actually start interacting with people you’ll have to get pretty savvy at determining who to spend your time with. I have received very generic requests to call recruiters and I don’t get involved further unless I am able to get a compelling story up front. Be prepared, you will also hear from people who will disregard your skills, experience, and relocation preferences entirely. I am deleting most emails on that basis alone.

So far, things are going well. I think that treating this situation like a product campaign has been beneficial. I already have some solid leads and opportunities that I’m following up on. And this is Day 3.

I have been assigned a “little buddy” at work to become my replacement — do you think they know something?  This is the first move toward redundancy in quite some time, so maybe so.

Anyway, so I started asking some basic questions of this guy to assess where to start with the transitioning.  Unfortunately, my initial questions included Spring Framework, MVC, servlet, but all received negative responses.  And then when I got up to draw on the whiteboard I asked if he knew UML.  Negatory.

Its not his fault, of course, but I started thinking how hard it is to replace someone like me.  I’m sure this will come off arrogantly, but I don’t mean it to be.  The fact is, at my level, I know lots of stuff.  And you can’t just parachute a warm body into place and expect a replacement in two months.  I’m basically going to have to build this guy from the ground up.

So it led me to wonder what our tech stack is.  And so I started to draw it out for him just as a means to highlight what we needed to cover and why we needed to meet daily from now on.  In no particular order, here are some technologies and tools that I deal with.  And I’m sure I’ll leave some obvious ones out:

Java, JSP, JSTL, Freemarker, Spring Framework, Acegi Security for Spring, EhCache, Tiles, Sitemesh, Log4J, Ant, RegEx, JUnit, HTTP, SOAP, XML, XHTML, CSS, SQL, Bash Scripting, Solaris, Windows, DOS, Intellij, Toad, Subversion, Test Director, Inquira, Sun One Web Server, Apache, WebLogic, Alteon, Visio, Oracle, Firefox, Firebug, IE, Siteminder, CAS, SSH, Telnet, AppGate, SCP, UML, RSS, Checkstyle, JCoverage, etc.

I’ve left out the obvious ones like Word, Excel, and Outlook.

Looking at the list that I know is probably woefully incomplete, I can’t help but think that most management and most business folks grossly underestimate us.  So its no wonder, they deal me a newby.

For my Rails and Ruby audience, obviously there’s a slew more elements that I could have added, although the cool thing about Rails is that your tech stack compacts quite a bit as has been pointed out by many before me.

Just to be clear, IT in this context means being in an IT department, not being in the IT industry.

I’ve spent a combined five years in IT departments of two companies — one a large company another a small company. In each case, the experience lacked job satisfaction and only marginally advanced my career. If you find yourself faced with a job opportunity in an IT department, consider the following to be likely experiences:

• You will be frustrated because technology is not the core business. And unfortunately for you, this means that you aren’t likely to be the rockstar of your company. You are an enabler of minimal importance in a cost center.

• You will deal with technology that is likely to be obsolete or on the verge of obsolescence. In IT, it is not important to those you serve what the technology is, rather its whether the solution provides the desired value.

• You will integrate with old technologies or products that have challenging integration scenarios. As you are the tail on the dog, no one will ask you your opinion for the products that are most likely to integrate well with your technology stack. Rather, you will be brought in after such products have been selected.

• You may find that the talent around you is watered down. The trend is to cut costs which inevitably leads to outsourcing. In my experience, outsourcing provides less talented, less instinctive colleagues. These will be your teammates.

• You may find that cost cuts means there is little investment in the “factory” that you work in. Hardware and software that could make your life easier are not accessible due to budget challenges. Therefore, the factory eventually resembles an old car plant with declining efficiency.

• Your managers may care only about your utilization and your costs. Innovation is secondary to these factors, so you may have trouble championing new ideas.

• You may find in bigger companies that consensus-building consumes most of your time. Be ready for double-digit emails per day with people copying you on details that are irrelevant to your job.

• You may find that the company has organically grown in layers causing you to fight through multiple layers just to get simple tasks done. As such, simple tasks are hard tasks and hard tasks are impossible. If you think that something as simple as opening a firewall port can’t take weeks, think again.

• You may find that since the company has cut costs to the bone that you end up wearing more hats than you feel qualified to wear. You will be best prepared to succeed if you can write your own requirements, write code, write markup, develop your own styles, be your own DBA, be your own system administrator, and do your own testing. You will most likely have to build your own infrastructure enablements because those would be too costly to be purchased for you.

• You may never understand the business decisions made by those who ultimately create your projects. You may question whether they know how to scorecard, perform cost-benefit analysis, or whether they even know their business. But in the end, you will have no choice but to work on their projects.

• You may find that your natural curiosity for new technologies or business strategies is not appreciated or valued. Old school managers may even make fun of you for having your nose in a book reading about those “new-fangled” technologies. Be prepared to have uninspired leadership.

• You may find that your colleagues eventually have become zombies. They show up every day and walk the halls, but they seem to be in an unproductive, unchanging funk. And worse, you may recognize yourself making the same transformation.

Is it really this bleak? Yeah, I think so. What should you do?

If you must work in an IT department, do so as a contractor so that you can limit your long-term exposure if you find the environment toxic. If you can only join as an employee, then be prepared to highlight job security and a regular paycheck as the best part of your job. Be prepared to be held hostage by those same qualities.

If you are a technician on the leading edge of standards and new technologies, you will only be happy working with like people. These types of people work where technology is the core business. They work for companies where technology is the product — or technology enables the product. So your next job should be at a company that matches this profile.

If you are in an IT department now, your job is to sharpen your skills — probably on your own time. Your challenge is to plot an exit strategy and execute on it methodically, but without losing your spirit. If you are successful, maybe one day we’ll be co-workers. If you get there first, keep a chair warm and I’ll see you soon!

No, this isn’t a sports-related post on my professional blog.  Well, okay, maybe it is sort of.  Its just that sports analogies come easy to me since sports is one of my passions.

While the above post title refers to the long-languishing baseball team from my neck of the woods, this post is actually inspired by a retirement in the hockey world.  Joe Nieuwendyk retired today.  He’s one of my heroes from the 1999 Stanley Cup Championship run and beyond that an all-around great guy.

Besides being a part of a championship team, he always seemed to be the guy who scored the great goal…or the memorable goal.  I’ll never forget his game-winning goal in triple overtime in the first round in the 1999 series against a physical Edmonton team.  He had a joyous celebration jump afterwards which I can still conjure up almost exactly in mind.

But to the point.  Joe is a guy who can look back on his career and savor the memories.  He has played for winning teams and has won a championship.  Any of the Texas Rangers?  Not so much.  When you hang ‘em up, you want to be able to look back and have felt like you achieved or made a difference.

So as I heard of this retirement today, my thoughts soon focused on my own career.  Right now, I feel like I’m playing for the Rangers.  Underachieving.  Losing.  Not growing.  Retirement is still 20+ years away (if I’m lucky).  Given that, I still have time to play for a winning team and to stand out enough to maybe be remembered.  But that won’t happen defending the status quo.  I need to make something happen.

Maybe you feel the same way.  Here’s hoping we find a way to knock one (or more) outta the park…

In these Web 2.0 days, there’s never been a better time to aspire to be a Rockstar Programmer. You’ve seen these people, right? They are household names in our industry, they write the must-read blogs, they write the best-selling books, and they are coveted speakers at our industry conferences. Let’s face it, our jobs aren’t considered among the sexiest, but somehow a select group of folks elevate beyond the stereotype and enjoy the splendors.

So imagine the life: you command the blogosphere, you never eat alone at conferences, you headline magazine covers…and you even parlay this good fortune into a date or two or even a spouse! If you are exceptional, maybe you become the next Mark Cuban.

This sounds pretty good to me, so how do we get there? Today’s your lucky day, I’m going to tell you exactly how. What’s that you say? You say you’ve never heard of me and so how could I possibly tell you how to reach this state of nerdy nirvanna? That’s a fair point. Just consider me the guitar teacher that teaches you your first chords and the discipline to practice. Or the art teacher that teaches you to see beyond the stroke of a brush. The point is, I can tell you what you need to do, but most of this will be up to you.

So without further ado (no, its not adieu), here’s the list:

• Discover your niche. Being a rockstar means you are going to play the same songs over and over as you tour the world. As such, you better like the songs, right? Same goes for you. Figure out where to focus your interests and ensure that your passion has staying power.

• Read cutting edge books and blogs. You need to dig in and be in the top one percentile of those who are considered experts in your niche of choice. In short, figure out who the cool kids are and then figure out which cool kids know what they are talking about. Read them religiously. Basically, I’m telling you to listen to their songs and attend their concerts.

• See beyond present day usages and limitations for current technologies. Rockstars play the impossible solos. You take a technology and do something amazing with it. You extend it and make it seem like magic. You empower others to make magic.

• Start locally. To be a rockstar, you must rock your local venues. This means that you should start at your place of work or in your home town. Build your reputation and your chops locally and then broaden your horizons. What can you do locally? Attend user groups and speak often.

• Master fundamentals and tools.  To be a rockstar, you must be more productive than the most person.  Few people completely master their toolsets and thus leave a lot of productivity on the table.  You will not make this mistake.  Mastering your tools means more energy and time will be spent creating your magic.

• Apprentice with other rockstars. Find an open source project and begin contributing. Work your way to trusted committer. In other words, learn from others before you strike out on your own. Accompany Kurt Cobain, but become David Grohl. Realize that playing the small clubs help you refine your act for stadium venues.

• Blog substantially and regularly. You must establish your “brand” and share your insights and secrets. You must cultivate loyal followers. Your followers will legitimize your efforts and your brand. You must create a stir; electrify the blogosphere.

• Be a mensch. This advisement stolen from Guy Kawasaki. The point is that you must share your work, your time, and your enthusiasm generously and expect no immediate return. Instead, consider these interactions as long-term investments.

• Write books and speak at conferences. You must spread the word in person and through formal channels. Be on the record. Establish name recognition. Write well, speak well. Be entertaining. Let the power of your passion embolden you and spark interest among those who share your interests.

• Maintain an outstanding web presence. Yeah, you have a blog, but you need more. Your presence is your online resume. If you are a programmer, its implied that your website will do cool things or teach others how to do cool things. If you are a web designer, its expected that your design will always be inspired and innovative. NOTE: this is a do as I say, not as I do advisement as my current design reflects poorly on my skills! Remember: Me => your teacher; You: => Grasshopper.

You expected more? There really is no more to it. Follow the list and you’ll be a rockstar. The problem is, most people are unable or unwilling to do so.

Before you go, here are a few rockstars that you might look to for inspiration:

• Rod Johnson and Juergen Hoeller. These are the founders of the Java-based Spring Framework. These guys won’t bowl you over with flamboyance. They are simply great technicians with a framework whose benefits are an easy sell for the disenfranchised EJB (and otherwise) community.

• David Heinemeier Hansson. The creator of the Ruby on Rails web framework. You have to admire a guy who thumbs his nose at established enterprise technologies and goes maverick with a not so well-known language like Ruby. The Rails framework has fueled many Web 2.0 creations.

• Jeffrey Zeldman. The poster child for standards-based web design. No rockstar has ever been so articulate and entertaining in spreading the word. As an aside, I think Jeffrey actually played keyboards in a past life. Rockstardom sometimes takes a while or gives you second chances.

• Dan Cederholm. Web designer extraordinaire: Odeo, Cork’d, SimpleBits, et al. Writes books and now speaks.

So there you go, I wish you good fortune in your quest to rock the house.