Regarding my presentation.  I presented on shipping an idea.  Taking an idea you have from idea/inception all the way to launching it.  I would say that my session went well, had a decent attendance, and good questions were asked during the session.  I have posted the slides for the presentation on SlideShare, and have a Speaker Rate page.  Please feel free to visit the links.  If you attended my session, please rate me over on the Speaker Rate link.

Presentation on SlideShare

Session on Speaker Rate

But good things always have to come to an end at some point and a new beginning must be made. There are always new lessons to learn, new challenges to overcome, and cool new projects to get involved with. So as of today, I’m not longer employed by Sogeti, and will be moving on to a stealth-startup here in Houston.

Before you ask, no, this is not my startup, it’s someone elses. I’ll still be working on Just for Bands and a couple of other projects I have in the works (more on these soon, I hope). But this is a company that hired me to work with them on getting their product launched. Since I have a little bit of experience in that area, here’s hoping I can help them with theirs.

What will I be doing? At first it will mainly be Ruby on Rails work. But long term there is some mobile application development that will need to be done and I’m hoping I can get my feet wet in that area too. I’m the second developer on the ground, so there’s some room for growth as well. It promises to be an interesting project where I will get to apply some of the things I have recently learned about Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and getting an app from idea to launch. Hopefully I can learn a few things along the way as well.

Is it Absolutely Necessary

Eventually it all came down to one simple question: Is that feature/idea absolutely essential to booking a show for your band?

If the answer to that question was a “No” then we shelved the idea for possible later inclusion.  It might seem like a really weird idea to not build as many features as possible, but doing so keeps you on the path to actually launching your product.  If we hadn’t followed that one simple rule when deciding where to focus our work, Erick and I would still be working on LiveShow and wouldn’t have gotten it out the door.  If you don’t ever release your product/application then you can never make money off of it.

Release Early, Release Often

Creating an an application that runs and works on the internet means that you can release a product early and gradually add to its feature set as time passes.  The phrase is often heard in what is known as the “agile development method” and it’s called “Release early, release often” and it means to release the product at the earliest possible point and then gradually improve it over time (have many successive releases).

If you want an example of a company that does this frequently, look no further than Google.  A good example of Google doing this would be Gmail, their online email product.  When Gmail was first released it allowed you to do 2 things with the emails you got: read them or archive them.  There was no “delete” button because Gmail gave users one gigabyte of space, compared to Yahoo and Hotmail which gave around 250 megabytes of storage, that was a lot of space.  They believed you’d never need to delete an email again.  Over time they found that customers really wanted to be able to delete so they added a delete button, and then they add a “Trash” folder so you could recover accidentally deleted emails.  They also over time added Google Talk to Gmail.  And more recently they added the ability to make phone calls from within Gmail.  Gmail is just one example of Google doing this.  Android is another example, so is Google Calendar.

The idea is to get your product out in front of the public.  Even if it doesn’t have all the features you’d want it to have, if it at least accomplishes the basic goal of the application then it’s good enough to launch with.  Just because you launch it doesn’t mean it’s done.  You can still make changes, add features, and fix bugs.  Getting the product out in front of people allows you to figure out how people will use your application.  You might find that they use it in a way that you hadn’t foreseen and that might give you a whole new direction to go in (read about Flickr’s early beginnings for a good example of this).

Conclusion

When you start to build something, ask yourself what is the absolute essential things your product needs to allow users to achieve their goals.  If a feature or idea isn’t a part of that, then shelve it for later.  You want to get the product out to the public so they can use it, not keep it to yourself until it’s “perfect” because realistically it will never be perfect.  Get it out there.

Well, do something about it.

Write Your Ideas Down

Have a great idea?  Write it down.  In a notebook, in Evernote (or SpringPad), on a napkin that you put in your pocket, write the idea down.  Basically store it somewhere that you won’t lose it later.  If you write the idea down, you can come back to it later.  I can’t tell you the number of ideas I let slip away because I had this great idea while I was at work and didn’t write it down.  So I started carrying a notebook (Amazon affiliate link) around.  When I have an idea, I stop and write it in my notebook on one of the pages dedicated to business ideas.  This allows me to easily find it later.  If I don’t have the notebook with me for some reason, I open up Evernote (web page or application) and write it down in a note that is specific to my business ideas.  Sure it means I have to look in two places when I’m reviewing those ideas, but at least I don’t forget the idea.

Don’t just write down the idea.  Write down anything related to it.  For example, I once had an idea to give companies the ability to create their own secure chat server, so I wrote the idea down, but I also wrote down to look at cloud computing options that would allow me to start and stop servers as needed, chat server software, protocols, and so on.  That way I just didn’t write down the idea but also the surrounding ideas so I knew what direction I wanted to go.

Pick An Idea

After you’ve gotten a few ideas written down, spend a Saturday reviewing them.  Flesh them out a little.  What do you need to implement those ideas?  What things should you research more?  Which one really gets you fired up?  If you find that an idea sparks a million other thoughts about that idea, go with it.  If you aren’t passionate about it, you’re probably not going to get very far with it.  However, if you find that a specific idea really gets your brain going, focus on it.  It’s really about passion.  You’re going to have to really like that idea to be able to spend the next year or so working on it.

Keep it Simple

That idea that’s spawning a million thoughts a second, that’s good.  But don’t let yourself get carried away with all those secondary ideas.  Write them down so you don’t lose them to the ether.  Instead, after you’ve written them down go ahead and pick the absolute essentials.  For every sub-idea, ask “is this absolutely essential to accomplishing the initial idea” and if the answer is “no” then move onto the next sub-idea.  This will help you determine what’s really important to the idea.  The ideas that aren’t absolutely essential can be worked on/implemented after launch.

This is important: If it’s not absolutely essential to the achieve the goal of your product, you don’t need it to launch.

Build It

This is one of the most important thing to do.  Build it.  Get working on it as soon as you can.  You’ll hit road blocks, have burn out, and have to put some time in during your off hours.  But if you don’t build it, you can’t release it.  Set up a schedule to work on the project.  A couple of hours a day, no less than three days a week.  Having such a schedule really helps you to set aside time for the project but still allow you to have a life.  Having a life outside of work and your side project will delay any burn out experience you’re likely to have.

When you do hit a period of burn out, work on something else related to the project.  Don’t have the website design, work on that.  Formulate plans for after the launch of the product.  Organize the to-do list or write a blog post about what you’re working on or some of the lessons learned so far.  These things help you get through the burn outs but allow you to maintain momentum and your work schedule.

Release It

This is probably the most important part of the whole process.  Getting it out to the public.  Letting real users hack away and break things.  Hey, thinks are going to break, accept this truth early on and you will be less stressed about it.  But releasing your product means you completed the process.  You took an idea from inception all the way to release.  Sure you probably hit some snags along the way.  It probably took you a little longer than you initially thought (it always does).  But, it’s released, it’s out there.

Unfortunately, just releasing the product isn’t enough.  You’ll need to make enhancements.  Those ideas I said you need to put to the side because they’re not essential, start cherry picking those and working on them.  You’ll have bugs to fix.  There will be customers to support, they’re going to request things.  Getting here though is the just the start of the journey.  If you can get to this point, you’ve made it farther than most.

1. Buying a HDTV: 720p vs. 180p & Seating Distance – Here I go over what 720p and 1080p are and how seating distance can play a role in buying an HDTV.
2. iTunes/iPod Tips & Tricks: Recap – This is a list of articles that were written about various tips on using iTunes and an iPod. Many are applicable to the iPhone as well.
3. Artist versus Album Artist – In this article I explain the difference between the Artist and Album Artist ID3 tags that can be utilized in iTunes and other Mp3 tagging tools.

If you missed these articles (not all of them are from 2009, they were just the most read) feel free to give them a nice read over.  And look forward to new and exciting content in 2010.

Look at the bigger picture.  It’s a simple means of allowing a worker to do whatever is necessary to get the job done.  Human nature alone dictates that I will never know everything, but someone out there is going to (more than likely) have the answer to my question.  Being able to send a blast out on Twitter or even read a news blog can save me hours of work I might have to on my own as part of a trial and error process.  The internet is an extremely useful tool.  Yes, it can be used to waste time on, and some people would rather surf the internet and watch stupid YouTube videos all day than do actual work, but realistically most workers are going to use the internet as a tool to find answers more than they are going to use it to waste time.  And hey, lets be honest, no one works all the time.  You have to have a mental break, otherwise you’ll go crazy or make bad decisions.  So taking 10-15 minutes every so often to do something that might be considered “unproductive” will actually result in better productivity.  I know I’m going against all sense of general manager logic here but think about it, if an employee wastes 30-60 minutes doing the occasional unproductive things like watching YouTube videos or reading non-work related websites but has solid quality output, what does it matter?  Does someone have to go back and fix his work, is she constantly behind schedule?  If not, what’s the harm?  If you have a slacker, deal with them.  Give them warnings and if necessary, fire them.

As an example, I once worked with a guy who constantly touted his productivity, but it was well known that all he did was play web games, listen to music on his PC, and browse the internet.  It looked like his numbers were great, as a support guy his number of closed tickets rivaled other “less productive” members of his team.  But when we started looking at how many of his tickets were reopened after the fact because the problem was not fixed, it opened management’s eyes to a much larger and more costly problem.  So while he appeared to be a very productive individual, he was in fact the least productive as he generally created more work for the rest of the team.  The problem here wasn’t his browsing the net, it was his work ethic as a whole, and this was eventually dealt with (he was let go).  The point I want to make here is that if the company had used hard rules about internet access and began blocking sites as a result of this one guy, it would have decreased the moral of the other team members and even less work would have gotten done because they would have all been upset with this one guy who didn’t do his work and caused the rest of them to lose privileges.

The key here is, everything in moderation.  Reading blogs, following certain people on twitter, even the occasional look at LinkedIn Answers helps me stay up to date.  And as a consultant, being up to date is extremely important.  However if my work starts to slip, that’s a problem, but if I’m getting my work done on time and it’s quality work, there should be zero issues from management when I take a few minutes to read a news article, look up something on eBay, or watch a music video on YouTube.  In the long run you’ll see more work from me if you allow me to work the way I like to work than if you force me to work in a way I don’t like.

Draconian access rules like blocking web blogs, social network sites, or video sites will only lead to lower employee moral overall and a higher turn around rate on employees, meaning higher costs overall because you’re constantly having to train new people on your practices, policies, and routines.  Like I said, open the internet up to your employees, deal with those not working and you can have a productive and happy team.

If you read this article from CrunchGear, you’ll see that the article and the people commenting that “physical media is dead” and pointing to the fact that they “stream from netflix” or “use bit torrent” to watch their movies.  And while this is most definitely the case, that geeks are streaming/downloading movies more than buying them, the rest of the non-geek population is not.  We as geeks live in our own little world and regularly forget that the rest of the world doesn’t think like us.  They also do not (for the most part) act like us either.  Which means, when they want to watch a movie they either buy it from the store, rent it from Blockbuster or Netflix, or watch it on Pay-Per-View off their cable/satellite boxes.  Watching on Pay-Per-View is about the closest to streaming a movie onto their television that the average consumer gets.

The average consumer of audio/video mediums prefer having the physical media.  That’s just how it is.  Now, in reference to this and the article’s attack that people aren’t buying Blu-Rays I say if that was true, the Blu-Ray section at my local best buy wouldn’t take up an entire front and back of a very long store shelve.  Also, people aren’t buying Blu-Rays because they cost more than DVDs and in case you forgot, we’re in a recession and that means that people are watching their spending.  If they can get a movie for 12-15 dollars on DVD or spend 25-30 on a Blu-Ray, chances are they’re going to buy the DVD over the Blu-Ray.  And since the report in the article mentions that people are buying fewer DVDs, in this particular recession it looks like that most people are opting against both movie mediums.  We’re in a recession, so people buying less is no great shock, but lets keep it in mind when we’re looking at the purchasing of a non-necessity okay?

Just to reiterate, physical media is not dead.  It is also not dying like we geeks think it should.  The average consumer is buying fewer DVDs and skipping Blu-Ray because we’re in a recession.  Before you count physical media as having bit the big one, consider all the pieces.

My last journey into Linux was about 3 years ago when I ran it at home for a solid year or so. The Linux world moves a lot faster than it use to so i figured now was a good time to jump back into its waters. I began by installing OpenSUSE. The reason being is that it was sponsored by Novell and I really want to focus on Mono and have full compatibility with the Mono stack. Since Mono is also sponsored by Novell, I figured it would be my best bet. While I was in fact able to have the latest version of Mono (even used a nightly build), configuring other parts of my system were more complicated than they needed to be. Specifically I’m talking about wireless networking.

In my house, all the computers connect wirelessly. The router/AP is in the center of the house (in the entertainment center) and gives decent signal to the rest of the house. I hadn’t always been connected wireless, this is a recent development that came about due to the birth of my son. Having wireless connectivity is now essential to my set up. OpenSUSE required that I compile and load the wireless drivers manually. While this is fine, and it is a process I’m comfortable with, I knew there had to be a better way.

Enter Ubuntu. The last time I ran Linux, I had ran Ubuntu. While I can’t remember the exact version, I’m pretty sure it was at the most 7.04. Back then, wireless connectivity wasn’t perfect either (better than most other distros though). But having read that the latest Ubuntu (9.04, Jaunty Jackalope) was getting rave reviews, I decided to burn off a live CD to see what happens. Behold, the second it booted into the live CD environment, and I saw the list of wireless networks, I knew this was how it should be. Bye, bye OpenSUSE.

The lesson learned here is that Ubuntu, which has set out to be the distro for everyone, really does seem to be the distro that “just works” on most computers and most hardware. I did not have to manually compile wireless drivers and load them into the kernel, the network device just worked from the get go. Sure, I’m going to lose out on using the absolute latest Mono (unless I want to compile my own, which I could do), but my system works without having to jump through hoops. To me that’s a big step in getting people to like Linux. You can’t expect people to have to compile custom drivers in order to get something like wireless networking operating. There is something to be said for having a Linux operating system that “just works” from the point of installation on.

Now, to be fair, the rest of my OpenSUSE experience was good. The wireless configuration just really annoyed me. I also found that the user community for OpenSUSE was lacking compared to Ubuntu’s. Not sure why that is, but it was my observation. My wireless issues might be resolved in 11.2 version of OpenSUSE, currently in beta, and if that’s the case, I might switch back. It seems to be easier to manage alternate repositories in OpenSUSE than it is in Ubuntu, making it easier to install newer versions of software.

While having the latest and greatest version of some software is not always important, when it comes to development libraries it can be the difference between a lot of code and a lot less code. For now, the version of Mono in Ubuntu is usable so I can live with it.

Daily Photo (2008-09-28)

Originally uploaded by mkoby47 ]]> http://www.mkoby.com/2008/09/28/daily-photo-2008-09-28/feed/ 0 http://www.mkoby.com/2008/07/02/links-for-2008-07-02/ http://www.mkoby.com/2008/07/02/links-for-2008-07-02/#comments Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:30:18 +0000 Michael Koby http://www.mkoby.com/2008/07/02/links-for-2008-07-02/

Edit (2009-01-16): The original author,  Lori Borgman, of this piece has commented with a link to the entire piece.

Below is the obituary for Common Sense:

‘Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: Knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm; Life isn’t always fair; and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended
from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.

It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an Aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an
abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason. He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame, and I’m A Victim.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

I find this very interesting, because I derive some form of pleasure from keeping up with everyone and with what’s going on in the world of technology and the social web.  There’s just too much to keep up with though.  Or at least it appears that way.

What about you my dear reader, are you experiencing a burnout on social media?  How are you coping with this consistant flow of information?  Have you cut back or are you still diving head first into the social (and I don’t mean the Zune)?

I apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused.

“Why are talented people so busy?”

“They’re fixing the problems made by people who have time.”

me: LOL!

Check out this little conversation on this Dilbert animated comic.