Our next DemoCampGuelph is on for Sept 30th. Sign up to attend here. If you’d like to demo, apply for a demo spot by contacting me directly. Include a one or two liner pitching why our community needs to see your demo!
Check out demoCampGuelph.com for all our other links. Please spread the word!!
A quick wrapup post on last week’s DemoCampGuelph. Once again thanks to all who attended, demoed, helped organize, promoted, etc. These are community events and only as good as what we all give. Thanks to eBar for hosting us and our event sponsors Communitech, Sun, and our newest sponsor Guelph Chamber of Commerce.
The evening itself went smooth for the most part. Estimates are there were 60 to 80 people in attendance, including a great crowd that stuck around after the event to socialize. There are rumours that some people continued on at The Albion afterwards but I can’t speak to that.
Special thanks for Will Pate for stepping in last minute and saving our butts as our invited speaker. We had a solid list of demo submissions and unfortunately didn’t have room for all. If you didn’t get a spot for this event, please don’t let that stop you from submitting to the next event.
Our demo’s for the evening were:
Thanks to Simon for his major overhaul of the Crowie (pictures anyone??). The Crowie for demo of the night went to Cory and jTweetr, keeping in mind that the prick host forgot to get Justin and Markiter in the voting round.
Thanks again and keep your eye out for the next event, likely late September. Sign up for our google group to stay informed.
I’m just realizing now, less than a week from the actual event, that I haven’t even posted here about the next DemoCampGuelph. Lucky we don’t rely on this site to drum up demo’s and attendees.
This Wednesday July 15th at the eBar in downtown Guelph, come hang out and see some tech. Jason Van Zyl is our invited speaker and will kick the night off with a short talk. We have a load of demos so it should be a fun night.
Sign up here if you’re attending. All you have to do is show up, you do NOT have to demo to attend. If you are interested in demo’ing, contact me directly asap.
If you missed DemoCampGuelph9, Blake took some appropriate notes.
Here’s a little tip I use a lot when interviewing/hiring. Make sure you involve people in the process who appear to have NO decision making power. A receptionist or admin type person is great but technically anyone will do, all that matters is that the people you’re interviewing think you have no say in the process. Let’s call these non-decision makers NDM’s to save me some typing.
Now flip it and make those NDM’s key decision makers in the hiring process (Yes I realize I’ve just nulled the NDM term I created by making them decision makers, slack please).
Why?
I alluded to this before, in that you can get a better feel for a person’s true character by observing how they treat the NDM’s. They can’t help but put on a show for the decision makers, they’re trying to impress them.
At brainpark, if you treat our NDM’s like slop you have zero chance of joining our team regardless how many sql’s and sharp C’s you have in your basket. We need people who treat others with respect regardless of their ‘power’ or title. I’m actually considering taking this a step further and intentionally introducing some mild conflict between candidates and NDM’s to see how they handle it. In cases where some tension has naturally arisen between candidates and NDM’s, it’s always incredibly revealing. Through this we’ve found some lovely, gracious people and we’ve uncovered a few nasty pricks. Both of which are impossible to spot on a resume or by asking what the difference is between a class and an object.
Now a tip for the other side. If you’re interviewing for a job, don’t assume the manager, and other ‘power’ players are the only ones making the decision. Or even better, just don’t be a dick to anyone period.
As Mark writes, Brainpark has been selected to the final four for Launchpad at Enterprise 2.0. As the selections were based on community voting, I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who took the time to vote.
One of the talking points in my recent MeshU talk was “lead with action and change, not policy”. For whatever reason, maybe just front of mind, I seem to be repeating this thread more of late.
Whether it’s HR type processes within a company, product design or your software process, it’s rare that leading with policy is effective. Symptoms of this are referred to as ‘adoption’ issues. Why aren’t we doing what we said we’d do? Instead of using policy, cultivate a focus on making small course corrections, of a reasonable scale from an implementation perspective. Watch for the changes that are successful and then find ways to codify those, ie make them policy.
In my opinion, policy should be a communication and sharing strategy rather than governing or leading. Does this scale? I have no clue. Certainly you can take the small change approach within smaller groups, then codify the proven ones to a larger population. I don’t want to tackle the scaling issue here, just convey a simple approach that works for me personally.
This approach is heavily influenced by Jeffrey Pfeffer‘s book The Knowing Doing Gap. For a shorter summary read, try this article titled “Why Can’t We Get Anything Done?” The basic premise is that organizations struggle with major gaps between what they know(policy) and what they do(action). The painfully obvious solution being that if you only create policy through action then you have less of a chance of having a gap.
Bottom line, use policy less as a tool to create change and action and more as a way to communicate(share) successful change.
Recently we ditched cable at home and moved to a setup where we have an old PC connected to the TV. It’s been an eye opening change for the better. While I realize we’re on the ‘bleeding edge’, it points to cable providers having some massive challenges in front of them.
One example of the positive changes, I watch way more TED talks now. I highly recommend these two talks that are focused on creativity, it’s value in our society and how we foster it.
Elizabeth Gilbert talk on nurturing creativity speaks to it from the perspective of the genius, ie the successful artist. It’s an enjoyable talk with humour from someone who recently acquired, and now lives with, the title of creative genius.
Sir Ken Robinson‘s talk is about how schools kill creativity. As with Elizabeth, the talk is actually pretty funny and both could have side careers in standup. He approaches the topic from the perspective of how we educate children and instill creativity. He makes some bold statements that demand some consideration today. He points to a school system that is failing us all. Unfortunately the people that system impacts the most aren’t tall enough to even ride the water slides little on inact real change.
Enjoy, let me know what you think or other related talks we should be watching.
A quick update on my attempts to keep email at bay. I can’t say I’m doing an excellent job of only checking email twice per day but I’m making a worthy effort. The main issues I keep running into is drafting emails effectively.
I still need to write emails, however, I don’t want to send them. The reason I want to wait to send is that if I’m sending emails throughout the day, it sets the expectation that I’m checking email and therefore ignoring responses. It’s difficult with most email clients to compose drafts without catching a glimpse of your inbox and having it’s unread total scream out at you for your valuable attention. If someone knows a simple way to write drafts, for sending later, without having to interact directly with your email client, let me know. I’m using plain old text files and cut and paste today, which is a pain.
Even if you’re not attempting to reduce how often you check email, here’s one tip I have for you. It’s not my tip, I’m sure I heard it from somewhere else. Never check email to start your day. We all do this. We start every freakin day by catching up on email. Subsequently we get lost in email hell until our stomachs remind us we’ve missed lunch and over 1/2 a day of actual work. Just try this, close your email client at the end of the day, then start everyday by tackling a real task BEFORE you even open your email client. Just try it, you’ll like it.
Just a note, I include twitter, facebook, laconica and other forms of messaging, networking, etc under this “email” category. The interesting thing that happens when you ball all these apps up and only check them twice a day is you quickly realize how much time they take to nurture and feed. You need to decide if they’re worth it to you personally.
If this topic sounds new and you’re looking for background, try this.
Your last reminder that tomorrow, May 13th, is DemoCampGuelph9. If you haven’t signed up to attend already, please do so here. Today is your last day to submit for a demo spot. If you’re interested, submit immediately to myself. Spread the word, tweet, phone, email, mail.
Please make note and remind everyone of the venue change. We are upstairs at the eBar this time around at 41 Quebec St.
Genius is We, not You!
If you haven’t seen this Ted talk with Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing genius, please watch it when you have time. In a strange way, her thoughts related to genius align well with Christopher Alexander’s concept of the unselfconscious society. The idea that with the renaissance, we created a modern of notion of individual genius. Elizabeth talks about how previous generations viewed genius as something disembodied and not tied to the individual, not unlike little elves that visited to lend a creative hand. It’s about we not you!
