I instructed the cab to make two stops: one back at the hotel to drop off most of the books, the other at Northeastern, near the core of Boston. At the hotel I run up inside, look longingly at the comfy bed I’d left so early, and run back down to the cab. We speed away to Huntington avenue, which splits the Northeastern campus roughly in half. The problem is street numbers: somehow less than half of the buildings feel obligated to help us figure out where the hell we are, so we move slowly up the street, cranning our necks, calling out numbers. Finally we see a tower of a building ahead on the left, and I know it’s it. We turn around and I run inside.

Peter Tarasewich, my kind host at the Computer & Information Sciences department, showed me around their cool offices and then takes me to another building for the lecture.

At 3:30pm I talk to 70 or 80 students and faculty about software design in a talk called “Why software sucks: and what to do about it” (essay here). 30 seconds into the talk I’m interupted by an imporant, but distruptive question. A few minutes later there’s another question from the same man, and then another. It turns out this was the highly esteemed Matthias Felleisen and this approach to lectures is simply his way (The questions were good, but the timing and tone was less than friendly). The rest of the crowd had more patience for me and we had some good discussions about the meaning of “code is poetry” and what it means to make good things. The post talk e-mail was good: lots of follow up questions which is always fun.

At 4:30pm I called Matt, the chair of the bostonchi.org chapter for a ride to next gig: speaking at BostonCHI.

Posted in On Tour | 1 Comment »

Over the next week I’ll be posting about the tour. If this bores the pants off of you just watch for the BT flag and skip.

Tuesday 10/12: First thing Tuesday morning (ok - first thing after I woke up) i made my way via cab to the O’Reilly office in Cambridge. I’d been warned the place was to hard to find: they were right. I didn’t trust the cab driver as he zig-zagged me through tiny suburban streets, the meter running higher as my confidence declined. There’s always a moment in cab rides when I think “Wait. I have no idea where I am and he could be taking me anywhere”. After a few false positives (him “is this it?” me “How would I know?”) we arrived at a simple but mostly unmarked two story office complex. I wandered inside (asking the reluctant cabbie to wait) and soon found a wall of O’Reilly books: I’d arrived at the world of tomes with animal covers.

I soon met Marlowe Shaefer, the fantastic production editor for The art of project management. Production editors are the PMs for the making of books and Marlowe simply kicked ass. There’s something wonderfully bizzare about meeting someone for the first time, despite working with them intensely over the phone for months. After a nice, but quick, lunch with Mike (the main editor for artofpm) and Mary, two O’reilly editors, I grabbed the box of promotional books they’d provided for me and headed to Northeastern University for Talk #1 of 9. I gave the cab driver the address, which he shrugged at, despite pulling away from the curb, and I hoped for the best.

Posted in On Tour | No Comments »

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum: Topic #49 -Death by autonomy.

Here’s this week’s situation:

I’m an engineer at a well known search company (rhymes with frugal). My loosely structured team is big on indepenendence but is starting to be low on maintenance: there’s some work that needs to be done to support the work 4 or 5 of us are doing, but that no one really loves or wants to do. So often it doesn’t get done.

How to you make sure maintenance and grunt tasks actually get done (especially if you’re working in a highly independent environment (intentionally weak hierarchy))?

- Signed D.B.A.

Posted in Management, Software/Web development | 1 Comment »

On tour, day 1: Columbus day (10/10). There’s something pathetic about waiting 5 extra hours in your own airport. Somehow waiting in distant airports is more dignified: at least you’ve moved. But given that the entire radar system in boston was down, travel was a bad idea all around: I didn’t protest. I briefly considered flying into NYC and driving up, but the math didn’t work out. I had faith (perhaps blind) in the unkown Boston radar mechanics which worked out. I arrived at the swanky Hotel marlowe near midnight (a splurge to compensate for nights on friends couches), and prayed to the book tour gods for better luck on the rest of my 10 day, 9 lecture trip.

Next: Lecturing at Northeastern and Boston-CHI

Posted in On Tour, Travel | No Comments »

Due to problems with the radar at Logan airport my flight was delayed by 5 hours. A few things need to be shuffled around. As a result, the glorious and wonderful social night will move back an hour to 8pm on Wed at Miracle of Science.

If you show, I’ll buy you a beer. I’ll talk about whatever you like. I may have a few free copies of the book . I may even be there before 8pm, and it’s a cool place so don’t wait for me to relax and have a drink.

Apologies for the reschedule. Hope to see ya.

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Details almost complete. Social night will be at Miracle of science. New boston date added. Still waiting for final details from Cooper Union.

Tu 10/11 - Boston 3:30-4:30pm, Why software sucks and what to do about it, Northeastern University, room Behrakis 10 (health sciences bldg)
Tu 10/11 - Boston 7:00-8:00pm, What to do when things go wrong, details at Bostonchi.org
10/12 - Boston 12-1pm, “What I wish they told me before I left college”, MIT, Sloan, Bldg E51 room 145
10/12- Boston 4-5:30pm , “Why software sucks: and what to do about it”, MIT CS building, G449 Room 54-100
10/12 - Boston 7 8pm-?, Social night, Miracle of science bar, Cambridge, MA
10/13 - Travel
10 /14- NYC , Razorfish, Private
10 /14 - NYC Google, Private
M 10/17- NYC 12pm-1pm Cooper Union, details TBD
10/18- Pittsburgh 12:00pm, “How to lead software projects (the art of pm)” , Carnegie Mellon University, location TBD
10/18- Pittsburgh 4:00pm, “What I wish they told me before I left college”, Carnegie Mellon University, Newell-Simon Hall 3305
10/19- Pittsburgh 5pm?, University of Pittsburgh, details TBD

The “What I wish” talk will be really fun: - a crossover of business, leadership and life advice I’ve collected that would have saved me oh so much suffering. I’ll be collecting new advice from the audience as well.

Hope to see you. If you’re interested in pub night in Boston comment here and I’ll make sure to follow up.

Posted in On Tour | 7 Comments »

I am in Web 2.0 ignorance recovery. For two months I’ve been playing catch-up about web 2.0 and social software. If I say something stupid or ask questions already answered please just comment me a link and I’ll shut up. (If you’re new too, start here).

Some folks have criticized blogs for being an echo-chamber: meaning that many blogs simply echo each other and people debate within narrow boundries. I’m not making this point, but I am leapfrogging over any echo debates to ask a larger question.

del.icio.us is a canonical example of both social software and Web 2.0. Simply put: in this example of social software (SS) people mark items that interest them and people can view the results. Looking at the top marks, it reflects a curious bias. Take a look:

Exhibit A: the most recent list of most popular del.icio.us items.

Generalizing from top ten lists has many downsides, given long tails and power laws, but it is an easy catalyst for questions.

This list seems not like what’s popular with most of the people I know, but what’s popular with the Computer science / web development/ blogging crowd (some of the people I know). Ajax is a development tool. Ning, the highest ranked item on the list, is a new kind of social software development platform. Half of the top ten are items reflect the kinds of things the makers of delicious are likely interested in (I mean come on: Monty python is just a dead give away. Although the cleaning link made me consider a programmer/OCD connection). This popularity snapshot expresses an interesting kind of bias: the users of this social software reflect the interests of the makers of the social software. I suspect the majority of delicious users, today, have similiar interests to the makers of delicious.

Exhibit B: Popular delicious tags

Tagging, which is another key aspect of social software, also makes visible some interesting bias effects.

The most popular tags again reflect the interest of people who make the tools. Web 2.0 and social software is new enough that the early adopters are not just super interested users, but tool builders themselves (See this for more tags). I am not suggesting why this happens, just making the observation that it may be true.

Exhibit C: Popular 43things.com tags

At another social software project, 43things.com, there’s a broader distribution:

Here are my questions:

1) Why does one social tagging system have such a different kind of focus (delicious) while the other doesn’t? Delicious and 43things are both available to the world. What explans the wide gap in their user’s interests? How do the demographics for Flickr.com, a service believed to be consumer oriented but which many of my thirty something friends have never heard of, compare to other kinds of tools? Other kinds of social software? Are they younger? More affluent? Are there generation gaps tied to social software?

2) In using friendster, linked-in, orkut and other social networking tools, I had the experience of meeting the same people in different systems. It was like being in college and moving the party from building to building (only without the drugs. Well, at least on the networks I was invited onto). Did I just not know enough people? Or is the social software crowd, today, smaller than we admit? Is anyone examining if diversity is growing with size?

3) What are the risks of the frameworks for social software being defined so strongly by early adopters? Do the frontier settlers self-interest, and ability to define their world, restrict the kinds of followers than will come (I think so)? (Insert favorite Mcluhanreference here)

4) How does a user new to a social software project establish a sense for how his interest match with the popular interests of the most active users? Where are the the tools that let me search against delicious like data to see what’s popular with people who have traits or interests I care about? For example: there will never be a luddite group on meetup.com. What other hidden biases are there? The digital divide as an important but easy example, but there are more subtle ones.

5) Are there inherent biases that most active users in social software have (e.g. technical, high math SAT scores, etc.)? How does this impact how social software should be designed? A traditional software designer can shape the design around different, and possibly under-represented, user’s needs - but if social software is user driven what counterbalances are there?

6) Are the things that interest social software early adopters the same things that will interest more mainstream and diverse people? Should anyone care?

Posted in Design, Web 2.0 / social software | 7 Comments »

I found this book in the discount rack at a used bookstore in Fremont. Having found much of what people call management quite ridiculous I laughed at the title and flipped it open. Inside I found validation for many of the pet theories and uncorrelated observations I’ve had over the years, written in clear, short, insightful chapters. It’s a gem. You’ll have many deep sighs when you read it and will feel relieved about the insanity at work that, until reading the book, you though only you felt.

The book does offer advice but is not a a how to guide. I found it more of a catalog of the inherent paradoxes of managing teams of people, things that impact everyone but are rarely mentioned.

The management of the absurd, Richard Farson. 172 pages.

Posted in Book reviews | No Comments »

Here’s a hypothesis: It only takes two points of contact for people to validate a reference.

If I tell you Flogging Molly is the best live band ever, you’d nod your head politely but pay me no mind. But if on the same day, or same week, another aquiantance of yours, one completely indepenent from me, mentions Flogging molly, you will instantly validate both sources. I think we assume that random, unsolicited references that correlate with each other must be true. And we only need two of them to place our confidence in recommendations.

So I think the word of mouth effect is really about two points of contact. The first time we hear about something it’s not far from noise, but the second time, especially if the sources are diverse enough, we’re ready to take action. Should we hear a third mention of whatever it is, we’d probably say “Oh. Flogging molly. Yes, I’ve heard lots of good things about them.” Even though we’ve only had two previous points of contact, possibly from sources we’ve never relied on before.

I’m looking to see if anyone has ever studied how people make recommendations and how often they’re based on small amounts of second hand data from third party sources. I’m familiar with The madness of crowds but this two points of contact idea is about more pedestrian things.

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

There’s a nice thread in response to the essay why software sucks over at artima.com.

Artima.com is an interesting forum for software development news and discussion. I hadn’t seen it before I found it in my traffic logs.

Posted in Essays, Software/Web development | 1 Comment »