Kopanas

Tanya and Aran have been raving and quoting Dr. Anita Sands, VP of Innovation & Process Design at RBC, ever since they heard her speak at the Canadian Marketing Association’s Digital Marketing Conference that was held a couple months back!

Tanya just sent me a very short clip with Anita expressing what she wanted people to take away from her presentation she gave that day:

“Innovation is about adding new value to clients, it is not about new things necessarily. Go into wherever it is you work and just work with the assumption that there is a better way to do something you are already doing. There is a better way to look at something you already know. Always challenge the status quo. Always drive for constant improvement. That is innovation.”

The way Anita sees innovation I see the right way to grow software. From choosing the next feature to implement (what brings the most value to the clients relative to the cost), to examinug how I can improve the code every time I open up a file by reducing it’s complexity and making the code more expressive in less lines of code to improving how we work so we get more joy of doing what we love.

It has always driven me nuts that people don’t speak more often in terms of adding value to their clients lives and questions the status quo. Way to go Anita, RBC is really lucky to have someone like Dr. Anita Sands working for them.

Linda, Skrud, I think I would like to see Anita at CUSEC 2009, I think SOEN students would learn a lot from her!

→ view a short clip of Dr. Anita Sands

I have always had a dog or cat in my life for as long as I can remember and now I presently have one dog and two cats. I probably care more about Mr. Big, Fedra and Eros more then the large majority of people in my life. To quote my Dad, “they are my kids”.

When the story of Micheal Vick running a dogfighting ring came out with detailed information about what was happening at these dogfighting events only two things came to mind: I hope Micheal Vick gets gang-raped daily in jail and more importantly, what is going to happen to these poor dogs.

I was worried that all the dogs would be put to sleep for safety reasons but a big smile was put on my face this morning when I came across a expose DogTime did on Bad Rap, a rescue group for Pit Bulls out of California, that took in ten of the Pit Bulls from Micheal Vicks home. It is really crazy to see how far these dogs have come:

I can imagine taking in these dogs into your home can be really scary but I have outmost admiration for anyone who is taking that risk. I am sure they are being rewarded ten fold by the amount of happiness the dog brings to their life.

You made my day Bad Rap, you made my day! :-)

Disclaimer: I do not wish rape onto anyone… I can’t even fathom how difficult being raped would be on someone. I used the term rape really just to depict how friggn angry I was when I heard what was happening to those dogs.

“I strongly recommend that you find a vocation in your life where you just really enjoy the act itself. Not just the results, not just the external incentives. The actual work. There’s not enough time to spend it doing anything else.”

From David Heinemeier Hansson blog post “In it for the long haul“

But seriously, are you doing what you love? No? Time to change. No friggn excuses. Just do it!

Every year it is funny how all the keynote presenters topics end up overlapping in such a way that it makes each one of their messages that much more powerful. A smart ass would say that it is probably because of the theme we choose but you would be surprised how many presenters don’t even take into consideration the theme of the conference. That is not a bad thing though, we choose these presenters because they are smarter then us, they need to talk about what they think will have the most impact on us.

So, gros-aux-modeaux, these are the three messages that really stuck with me this year at CUSEC 2008.

1) If You Are Passionate About Software Then To Be Happy You Have To Work For A Software Company

I think this was mentioned in at least three keynote presentations at CUSEC and if I remember correctly Joel Spolsky also recently mentioned this in one of his blog posts.

I have worked both in companies whose product and main source of revenue was software they developed (both desktop and web-based applications) and I have also worked in companies where we developed software to support the business.

I have to say their is a significant difference. If you work for a software company the majority of the focus is on the product. The company lives and dies by the quality of the software. The software developers are respected and play an important role in the process. The application is constantly being improved and even the smallest changes that improve the user experience are appreciated. (If you want to work for a software company make sure you choose one that is lead by someone who comes from a tech background and has a passion and appreciation for software development.)

If you work for a company where you just build software to support the business you are looked upon as “just a developer”. You are lucky if they give you a say in what you are building. There is a project manager, business analyst(s), internal customers, network engineering team, architect, standards compliance office, etc. You as the developer are the last person they want to talk to and they tend to hate to deal with you. That is one reason, in my opinion, why many companies have outsourced the developer role to India. There is ton of politics and a ton of red tape.

What I personally hate the most about the enterprise software world is that their is good enough. In my book their is no such thing as good enough, there might be good enough for this iteration because it is an improvement over the last from the user perspective but we are still going to continue to improve it in the next iteration. If a user is forced to use an application that does not put a smile on their face then my work is not done!

Just look at it this way. For those out their who work in large corporation and use both enterprise software and traditional public applications… which ones do they talk positively about… which one puts a smile on their face? That is what I thought. The process to develop enterprise software is flawed!

(I have to say my experience has not been that bad developing enterprise software. I have been very lucky that my bosses/co-workers have allowed me to improve the way we work and the way we look at software but it took a lot of effort and earning their trust from my side.)

2) Writing Might Be Even More Important Then Programming

Jeff Atwood of CodingHorror fame really drove this message home for me this year. If you are lucky, a couple people might read the code you write but thousands, and if you are as lucky as him, tens or hundreds of thousands might read what you have to say. The pen is mightier then he code.

And it is Jeff’s presentation that drove me to start writing again. For a couple of reasons: 1) I need to work on my writing skills, writing is probably the hardest thing for me to do; 2) Writing will help me structure my thoughts, it is one thing to have your thoughts in your head which always seem perfect, but once you put them on paper you find all the flaws in your reasoning and writing gives you the opportunity to refine them; and (3) I am extremely opinionated and want to test my ideas out, I want feedback on them so I can take my ideas and thoughts even further.

3) Concurrency Is A Problem… And Nobody Has A Good Solution

Why is concurrency a problem? If you have not noticed the frequency of CPUs has not increased significantly over the past 3-4 years because chipmakers have run into the laws of physics. So what chip makers, like Intel and AMD, have been doing is putting more core’s into each CPU and in some cases more then one multi-core CPU into the same machine.

That is sweet from a geeky level but now the problem is that the large majority of applications have not been written to take advantage of multi-core multi-CPU systems. Having programs designed to run on single-core single-CPU systems run on multi-core multi-cpu systems do not directly benefit from the new architecture. (The new architecture can indirectly benefit the application performance since the applications running can be split between the cores but a single application can not run on multiple cores to speed up processing time.)

And that is for when we want to fun an application on a single system. As we move towards cloud computing we might have dozens to thousands of computers available to work on any mathematical calculation you are throwing at it. If we want to successfully move to cloud computing we have to re-think the way we architect the applications that we write. We need to move from thinking sequentially to thinking concurrently… and that is not an easy task my friend…

What messages hit home the most for you from CUSEC 2008?

Last year I signed-up for an unlimited mobile plan with Bell Mobility and I started to play around with the “Mobile Internet” when I was out and about with my friends. One of the first things I noticed was that for a lot of the sites I was playing with the Information Architects were just taking the architecture of their current website and just shrinking the site down to fit into a smaller screened mobile phone. They didn’t take into consideration the context in which the majority of users were using their mobile browsers.

I was most frustrated with sport sites. If I am mobile, the most likely reason I am logging onto an ESPN.com is to check out the score of a game that is either presently being played or just recently finished. So why does it take 3 to 4 clicks to get to a sport score for a specific sport? And why, on top of that, do I have to return to the home page to follow then do the same path, but for another sport, o get up to date scores for another sport?

If an interface for the Mobile Internet is created with context in mind I find that the mobile interface can be more compelling to their desktop equivalent. This is simply because the mobile interface has to be more opinionated because it is smaller and can not have more then a single column layout.

TheScore’s Mobile iPhone Edition is the perfect example of a web interface done right. The Information Architect for the mobile interface I am assuming either is a sports fan or studied the needs of sports fans when they were away from their TV and computer.

The good thing is that I am not the only crazy one that believes that the mobile interface is not bad. AdaptivePath’s Peter Merholz recently blogged about designing interfaces and more elegantly solidified my thoughts on designing for mobile interfaces:

What we’re realizing is that the key item of concern when designing for mobile is the context in which the device is used. What this means is that discussions of “PC” versus “mobile” are misguided, because we shouldn’t be focusing on the device. We are not designing for mobile — we’re designing for mobility.

The quote is from Don’t design for “mobile” - design for mobility.

With a couple clicks of my mouse Google sends me a daily email with a list of all the new references to CUSEC and Kopanas that Google’s spider finds from that day (or day before?). Tell me how cool is that! This way you can easily follow your brand, product, favorite sport, dog, hobby, etc. and the story people are telling about it!

If you are a real geek you should at the very least have a good alert set on your name.

On a side note, that would make for a friggn cool marriage proposal, write your proposal on a website and wait for Google to spider it and send it to your girlfriend as part of her Google Alert. Ok, maybe too geeky, how about just a treasure hunt of some sort?

→ Set your Google Alert

Am I suppose to still wear deodorant when I use body spray? Am I even suppose to use body spray on my pitts (I guess I will find out by the end of the day)? How about cologne? Do I mix cologne with body spray? I am so confused.

I am guaranteed women if I use Axe’s body spray but I want to make sure I am using it right for optimal results! Axe should sponsor CUSEC!

After every CUSEC I go through a state of depression for a good week, if not longer. This is not uncommon for anyone involved in organizing or attending CUSEC. I have had a conversation with every Chair of CUSEC about post-CUSEC depression and they have all gone through it and I am sure it is not just a Chair thing. All organizers and even attendees to a certain extent go through it.

Part of post-CUSEC depression comes from pouring your heart and soul for almost twelve months into organizing CUSEC that then climaxes with a three day conference. Then everything comes to an abrupt end.

The biggest part, at least for me, has to do with the bonds that are formed with your teammates and the attendees of the conference. This might sound really stupid but the only time in my life where I have felt truly comfortable with the people that I was being surrounded by was at CUSEC. Software Engineers and Computer Scientists are just the best group of people I have ever meet in my life!

I hate goodbyes. Hell, I did not even say goodbye to anyone at the hotel yesterday. When everyone was starting to get ready to go start saying their goodbyes I made a b-line for the front door.

And I still don’t want to say goodbye to anyone. I just want to say hello to all the great people I worked with, meet and partied hard with at CUSEC this year. This is just the beginning my friends…

In no order I want to say thank you to the following people who made my CUSEC experience this year one of the best yet. Abdullah, Neeraj, Claudio, Alan, Jeff & Robert (or John & Mayer), Mila, Julie, the Direct Energy party patrol, Emery, and many many other people. Folks, we took dancing to a whole new level!

Before I forget: “What happens at CUSEC, Stays At CUSEC.”