Specs & Spectacle

This a topic I have been thinking a lot lately and read this which kinda sums it it much better than I could.

From Up The Organization by Robert Townsend:

Objectives

One of the important functions of a leader is to make the organization concentrate on its objectives. In the case of Avis, it took us six months to define one objective – which turned out to be: “We want to become the fastest growing company with the highest profit margin in the business of renting and leasing vehicles without drivers”

(Ryan Note: I am sure folks can come up with a simple focused objective much quicker than six months…)

That objective was simple enough so that we didn’t have to write it down. We could put it in every speech and talk about it wherever we went. And it had some social significance, because up to that time Hertz had a crushingly large share of the market and was thinking and acting like General Motors.

It also included a definition of our business: “renting and leasing vehicles without drivers”. This let us put the blinders on ourselves and stop considering the acquisition of related businesses like motels, hotels, airlines and travel agencies. It also showed that we had to get rid of some limo and sightseeing companies the we already owned.

Once those objectives have been agreed on the leader must me merciless on himself and his people. If an idea that pops into his head or out of their mouths is outside of the objective of the company, he kills it without a trial.

Peter Drucker was never more right when he wrote: “Concentration is the key to economic results…no other principle of effectiveness is violated as constantly as the principal of concentration…Our motto seems to be let’s do a little bit of everything.”

It isn’t easy to concentrate. I used to keep a sign opposite to my desk where I couldn’t miss it if I were on the phone (about to make an appointment) or in a meeting in my office: “Is what I’m doing or about to do getting us closer to our objective?” That sign saved me from a lot of useless trips, lunch dates, conferences, junkets and meetings.

Most of all, work on simplifying and distilling your statement of objectives. Cato boiled his down to three words “Delenda est Carthago”-  and by saying them over and over eventually wiped out the competition

Dan Saffer had a great talk on designing for gesture and touch  interfaces. The iPhone for example uses an algorithm to figure out what letter you might type next (which they use for autocomplete). What’s cooler is how they use that information to make the typing interface easier to use since the keys are tiny (5mm). If you type ‘tim’ the system looks at the keyboard and knows that you are much more likely to type ‘e’ next rather than ‘w’ or ‘r’ so they increase the size of the touch target to cover that extra space which makes it easier to type the word.

There is a great article in the New York Times today with Charles Simonyi about intentional programming

He wants to overthrow conventional coding for something he calls “intentional programming,” in which programmers would talk to machines as little as possible. Instead, they would concentrate on capturing the intentions of computer users.

We see with Access more and more people getting involved with programming, becoming unintentional developers. Starting off with built in tools like wizards and WYSIWYG layout views and moving to building logic with macros and VBA. Programming has always had the challenge of a high bar of entry that often intimidates people into believing they can’t do it, when they can. Also Ruby has started to really stand as a language with a lower barrier to entry, take a look at _why’s Hackety Hack for example.

As more and more people get involved with developing software the possibilites get exponetnially bigger. It’s an exciting time!

Also, check out this great interview with Charles Simonyi from the 80’s by Susan Lammers

One of my favorite memories working at M7 was our unique experience in the enterprise. Watch the first 5 min of this video to see why we stuck out at our corporate clients. We were often called in to triage a system together when the ‘enterprise’ solution failed and people needed to get their jobs done now, not in six months to a year. It was that experience that showed me the flaws in the one system style solution foisted upon enterprise users over the past decade.

We had the opportunity to work with real users and integrate with the ‘master systems’ to create usable self supporting applications that survived well past our involvement. We had a mantra around empowering our users to crack open the applications and get their hands dirty. Most days I left work feeling like Harry Tuttle, knowing I made a difference but feeling like I wasn’t really changing the direction of things enough.

Why? I came into this game for the action, the excitement. Go anywhere, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there’s trouble, a man alone. Now they got the whole country sectioned off, you can’t make a move without a form.

Being at MSFT I have an even higher level of interaction with the enterprise and that’s given me the chance to see and hear the concerns and challenges of the very IT management living with both the broken one solution fits all and the wild wild west of thousands of Access databases and Excel files unmanaged across the network.

Back to the title of this post I strongly believe that true innovation in a business doesn’t happen anywhere near a committee, policy maker or management. It happens at the edge of the company, the people on the front lines of a business who have to be agile and deal with constantly changing environments and conditions. It’s those people that stumble upon the next great idea or process that will take a business to the next level. Well the tools of innovation for the front lines are Excel and Access not enterprise systems like SAP/Oracle or development platforms like Java & .NET. This kind of innovation is user driven not developer driven and the tools reflect that.

Listen, kid, we’re all in it together.

The word that keeps me excited to get to the office everyday is ‘empowerment’. Creating tools to empower real users to succeed/innovate at their job, keeping the policy makers and compliance officers sleeping well at night and having fun along the way is a goal worth pursuing.

So March is always my favorite time of year since it’s the start of conference season with events like Etech and SXSW. This year I was planning to hit up MIX in Las Vegas with my other MSFT buddy David Crow.  I had heard great things about last year’s MIX and figured being new to MSFT this would be a great chance to network and get a sense of how the MSFT web vision is perceived by partners and the web community before I jet off to SXSW in Austin.

So I emailed the organizers to see if as an employee I might get a special price on registration and I got this response.

Thank you for your mail. Microsoft employees do not receive the early bird special rate for MIX08. The rate for Microsoft employees is $1295 to attend, however at this time we have reached capacity for Microsoft Attendees. You can however register for the waiting list at this time.

I guess I will be skipping MIX this year, maybe I will just hit up Austin a couple days early for some R&R…

Jimmy over at O’Reilly Radar had an interesting post today about the possible future of Apple.

But the biggest threat might be from Apple’s most ardent supporters. Apple is famous for products and services that “think different,” as its old ad slogan goes. But once something moves from the edges to the mainstream, it’s not different anymore. It’s the status quo.

In some ways he is right on. Clint always asks me; how cool are white headphones anymore??

Everyone has a iPod, it’s ubiquitous. Apple has yet to face the real challenges (we know all about them) of ubiquity like hackers, viruses, governments and becoming boring.

What inspires me about Apple is the sheer staying power of their design, look at a product like the macbook pro/powerbook which really hasn’t changed it’s look in years and still is miles ahead of any laptop in it’s design. They still look sleek, modern and beautiful (Disclaimer: I am writing this on one.) It really shows what you can do when you focus on design and user experience. How many people can pull out their old DELL or IBM from even 3 years ago and say it’s a great design that’s as relevant today as they day they bought it.

From evalinux:

The following is a photo was taken by Diana Walker and it shows Steve Jobs in his house in 1982

Jobs said about it:

This was a very typical time. I was single.
All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo,
you know, and that’s what I had.

In 1982 Jobs was already 27 years old, 2 years after he was already worth more than hundred million dollars, and yet, he kept that elegant minimalism principle.

If they announce a 13″ macbook tomorrow I am going to have to hide my AMEX card!

Seems ever year has it’s trend and this past year tasers really made their mark.

The canonical example is “Don’t Tase Me, Bro” the Florida student that police attempted to tase the douche out of during a John Kerry Q&A.

In additon to widespread media coverage the saying made pretty much every top list of quotes for 2007. A search for taser on Google news brings back almost 4,000 results. Of course there are the sad cases like Robert Dziekanski the polish immigrant that died after being tased by the RCMP or the wheelchair bound Florida women who died after being tased 10 times by cops.

Now that the police seem to view tasers the first line of reaction to resistance, I wonder how long before security guards and nightclub bouncers take heed and start tasing customers and trespassers.

I estimate by the end of 2008 1 in 4 Americans will either have been tased or personally known a victim of a tasing attack.

The early developers who switched to rails have always been an eccentric bunch. From Why and his * to Hampton and his beer drinking conference talks there was always something entertaining happening. Well the latest rant from Zed (who brought us Mongrel) is something you would never find on a MSFT blog.

I’ll never be afraid of some pilsner fresh fat fuck who eats donut hamburgers and only gets exercise when he plays World of Warcraft on a DDR pad.

Priceless… I am eagerly awaiting the first person to set up a merb conference, I will be there for sure!

Just over a year ago I made 5 loans on this great service called Kiva

Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can “sponsor a business” and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence.

My first loan was to Teodoro Gonzalez who needed a $1500.00 loan to make a go of his independent barber shop with his brothers. 27 other lenders and me split up the loan for Teodoro. Now I have got my $200.00 fully paid back and can find another person to loan it to.

You don’t get interest or tax credits and you can take out your money once it’s paid back but why do that when you can use the same money over and over again to help people like Teodoro create a better life for themselves.

If you are ever in Nuevo Laredo I know a great barber!