Another amazing event last week at The Albion. We had a huge turnout, especially with it being cottage season. Our next event is in Sept, please sign up to attend here, and contact me if you’d like to demo.
Thanks to the following people for stepping up and demo’ing:
If anyone’s paying attention, things may be a little quiet here over the summer.
Next Wednesday evening is DempCampGuelph6. It’s an open event, talk about us, tell your mom, get people out! If you’re attending, please make sure to put your name on the wiki attendee list. If you want to demo, contact me.
Oh man, now there’s a title for you. Sure, I’m going to define the topic of leadership right here and now for you all. You best move on to smarter places like here, here or here if that’s your expectation.
I’ve been in a few common positions in relation to leadership, possibly in chronological order:
Those experiences have given me some entry level insight into what leadership is all about. So what do I know today about leadership? Here’s my completely made up on the spot list:
So good leaders gravitate towards voids in leadership naturally, when they’re comfortable. As a leader, the ideal way to find leaders is to allow this natural progression by opening up tolerable voids in leadership within your teams. This is in contrast to creating roles and assigning them. Have I created roles and assigned them on teams? Yep and I will again, however, I view those occasions as failings on my part. Have I been on every side of every fence I describe above? Pretty much.
If you’re a plain old team member who wants to become tomorrow’s leader then my advice is to watch closely for those voids in leadership on your team. Don’t clutch and grab at them. Identify them and work with your entire team to help them move forward on those issues. When you see these voids, the worst you can do is sit back, bitch and moan about the terrible job you’re current managers are doing.
If you’re a leader trying to grow your next crop of leaders. Strive not to assign leadership roles. Think about these voids and try opening some up on your teams and see who naturally steps in. When you see someone stepping in then do everything you can to support, encourage, and make them successful. Oh, and grow a thick skin and be prepared that some people may see these voids as failings on your part.
I’ve explored and I’m willing to admit I’m fully on twitter. What that means for this site is that I post far less small bits here. Example, just saw this cool site bookrabbit that’s like zoomii for everyone’s bookshelves. I now tend to post small bits like that in twitter and not here. That’s all, thought you should know, it’s me not you.
If you know me and have any interest in what I post to twitter, you can find me here. On a similar note I’m pretty sure I’m trashing my facebook account soon.
Paul Polak was on The Hour a few weeks back. From what little I saw, I like Paul and his company D-Rev. The quick story, most major innovation and design is aimed at the wealthiest 10% of our population. D-Rev is “Design for the other 90%”.
One point Paul which struck a cord with me was when discussing the treadle pump and it’s total cost of $25. He said that one of their goals is NOT to give things for free. You can’t gift people out of poverty, hand outs are not a way to end poverty but a way to create a welfare system. Instead they require that individuals invest and pay for a pump themselves. If people aren’t willing to invest $25, it likely doesn’t bring them enough value. “Virtually everything we do is designed to give a 300 percent net investment, and that way, they can leverage up”.
It got me thinking about my kids and allowances. I remember hearing the author of a book called Young Bucks say that giving your children an allowance was a great way to raise welfare children. Bold statement I’m not sure Paul would disagree with.
It also got me thinking about extreme welfare shows like Extreme Makeover. Everytime I see them tear down a rat infested shack and replace it with a multi-million dollar mansion complete with grounds, pools, and fancy gadgets to maintain, I wonder how insane a leap that would require. To go from the human and capital cost of not maintaining a one room shack to maintaining an estate. Who can do that? Someone should start a show where they return to these homes a year later to see how all those gadgets are holding up.
The people on these shows are no doubt in need of help but when it comes to long-term, sustainable results, I’ll take Paul’s help anyday over ABC’s. Paul and D-Rev are eye opening as it’s way too easy for us in business to get lost staring at the people with the big wallets.
If you’re a tech caveman like myself then you may not have a loving relationship with IDE’s in general. Hang on, now that I think about it, I grew up with IDE’s and I’ve tried, and spent a lot of my career in, most of them. This isn’t a case of not wanting to use the kid’s fancy new tools. Ok, stopping tangent…
When I lived in the java enterprise world, I was a heavy jdb user. Yes, even in a java shop I was in the minority in using a “simple command-line debugger”. Sorry but I’m a simple guy.
Lucky for me, python has pdb which “defines an interactive source code debugger for Python programs. It supports setting (conditional) breakpoints and single stepping at the source line level, inspection of stack frames, source code listing, and evaluation of arbitrary Python code in the context of any stack frame. It also supports post-mortem debugging and can be called under program control.”
I don’t know for certain, however, if pdb is like jdb then this is the module that any python IDE is using to offer you debugging capabilities. They build their gui on top of this module and expose pretty pictures and some subset of pdb to you. That’s another reason I prefer to use, and understand, things like jdb and pdb instead of relying on an IDE’s rendition.
If you have any interest, there are the ugly details and a gentle introduction.
I’m embarrased to say I didn’t know about shift-k in vi and stumbled upon it with a caps-lock incident. Yes, I am admitting this in public. I didn’t say I was good at this computer crap.
Now I don’t know how I survived without it. Not only will it hook you directly into man pages, it takes file context into place. So shift-k with my cursor over “range” in a python file takes you directly to…
“Help on built-in function range in module __builtin__:
range(…)
range([start,] stop[, step]) -> list of integers………….”
To get the python docs working, you’ll need python-doc installed “sudo apt-get install python-doc” and you’ll need something like this in your .bashrc or related file…
# PYTHONDOCS
PYTHONDOCS=”/usr/share/doc/python2.5/html/”
export PYTHONDOCS
Now can someone comment and tell me how I can wire django docs into this as well??
Warning, there is no geek stuff in here…
I love my local convenience store. It’s a short walk from home and I can get most things I need in a pinch, including a decent dvd. Having that allows me to walk over at 9pm, grab milk, bagels, chips, and a movie. It’s run by Bea who would often say “if you can’t find something, let me know and I’ll make sure it’s here for you next time”. Up until recently I knew all the staff by name.
My lovely little store was recently sold. One of the staff told me yesterday that all staff are being let go so who really knows what the future holds for our store. What’s my point? I think we all deserve a well run convenience store within walking distance from our homes. When I think back over the years to all the times I would have had to climb into my car and drive, instead of walk, to a store further away, it blows my mind. Yes, I’m suggesting that convenience stores are an environmental issue!
Here’s my pitch. Someone, since I’m out of time, needs to start up a franchise network for convenience stores based on Great Harvest’s model. That being a solid supporting network of owners with heavily customized, local franchises. The goal being quality, walkable convenience stores that are shaped, influenced, and ‘owned’ by the communities they support and serve. Traditional cookie-cutter 7-11 franchises won’t work for this.
Oh boy, apparently my new platform is ‘convenient convenience stores for all’?
Holy crap, I cried, I almost literally wept. Thanks Kyle for this…
