Stormy's Corner

What do I do at work?

A couple of people have asked what I do. I blogged about it a while back, What do I do as Executive Director of GNOME, but I get the sense that people are looking for regular updates. You can find those on the Foundation blog, I post a weekly update there.

(And I think a lot of people have questions about what Executive Directors do. My post is now #3 in Google if you search for "executive director job description", #2 for "what does an executive director do" and #3 for "executive director do". So if you are an executive director, you should probably post what you do for your community, employees and shareholders ... it looks like they'd like to know!)

The challenge is the fun part, not the winning

People think winning is fun. But they're wrong, it's the challenge that's fun. Don't get me wrong, losing isn't fun, but winning without a challenge isn't fun either. Knowing you stepped up to a challenge and overcame it - now that is satisfying. (And challenges are also what keeps life interesting - it's what we talk about when we tell stories. It's what we watch in the movies.)

A bit of career advice I've gotten several times is to pay attention to when you're having fun. Then you'll really know what you enjoy doing. (And I find it's best to check during the task. It's hard to think back and remember if you had fun while you were doing something.)

Some times it's really obvious ...

A couple of weeks ago, I played an entire shift of 4 on 2 in hockey - as part of the two player team. (Two of my teammates were in the penalty box.)

As we skated out I asked Jeff, my much more experienced teammate, "what do you want me to do?"

He said "I'm going to mumble-mumble-mumble."

"Ah, ok." (mumble-mumble-mumble??) "What do you want me to do?" (We only had seconds and I really didn't know what I was supposed to do or I would have asked about the mumble-mumble-mumble part.)

"Chase the puck."

"Chase it??" (That didn't seem very wise to me ... I mean there were four of them.)

"Chase it."

"Chase it?"

"Chase it."

So I did. I skated like a ball bouncing between cat's paws from one skater to the next, getting there just in time to block a direct shot on goal and time to chase the puck to the next guy ...

What stood out for me was the comment one of my teammates made afterward. "I was so glad it wasn't me out there, but you were grinning the whole time!" And I realized it really was fun. It was hard, it was even a bit scary, and I skated harder than I ever had before in a single shift and every move counted. But it was fun - much more fun than making a couple of assists and a goal.

And it was fun because it was a real challenge. And Jeff, the goalie and I stepped up to it. And even if they had scored (they didn't), I still would have had fun - I was grinning because I was playing hard and it was fun, not because we were winning. But I played harder because it was a challenge and I was having fun, and that's part of the reason we won.

Photo by Eduardo Amorim.

Why do people go to conferences? For the people!

People go to conferences to see friends, meet people and learn new things.

Over 80% of people said that seeing friends and meeting new people was the reason they went to conferences or it was very important. 53% of people said "attendees they want to hang out with" is the reason they go to conferences. The comments really reflected this with people talking about how meeting people renewed their energy and many talked about how "fun" it is!

Good speakers followed as a close second with 96% of people saying the talks were at least somewhat interesting. (Two thirds thought the talks were very interesting or the reason they go to conferences.) Interestingly enough 100% of people thought meeting the speakers was at least somewhat interesting. I didn't ask why they wanted to meet the speakers ... I assume to talk to them about their  topic but perhaps it's just meeting someone famous!

Keynotes were less of a draw, 15% of people couldn't care less about them and half (51%) thought they were only somewhat interesting. So that would kill my fame idea ...

Closely related to meeting people and listening to talks is learning new things. Both learning more about topics you are already interested in and learning about new topics ranked high for most people.

But here's the data. You can see for yourself.

This data is not necessarily statistically significant. I didn't ask for any demographic data. I recruited people on this blog and on twitter. That crowd is definitely not representative of the general population. (But I wouldn't want to ask the general random population about attending conferences.) You are welcome to use the data and blog about it yourself, just link back to here or explain where you got it from.

In this first question, I added two items to the list after it started, so that's why the responses for the last ones are lower. Also, the first two respondents couldn't pick an answer in every row. They alerted me to the problem and I fixed it for everyone else.

 
I was impressed by how many people would go out of their way to see their favorite speaker speak again. Especially since most speakers tend to talk about the same topic.

 
This question would have obviously been better as a percentage and I did open a new survey just for this question (redone) but very few people responded to that one.

And then I asked people in their own words why they went to conferences:

• To learn something new, meet new people, and touch base with people I've met previously.   
• I think good conferences are inspirational for the attendees, and I like to travel, so both thing make me go to conferences.   
• That is a good question...
• To meet my preferred e-mail addresses contacts face to face
• To be an active member of the community
• To hook up with people
• Meet old freinds, make new freinds, be seen, learn about the latest developments
• To meet F2F with colleagues and come to concensus on how to solve the problems that vex us, where email/irc/other distractions simply don't allow progress to be made otherwise.
• To learn, expand my horizon, see / hear about technology 'at the edge'
• to learn new stuff
• A combination of the talks (news), friends and beer.
• I go to present, to meet people and to hang out in the "hallway track"
• Sell, Sell, Sell! Party!
• networking
• because they rock
• To Learn more about the organization and product.
• to collaborate, start collaborations, and have a good time with friends   
• To renew energies in my FLOSS involvement
• Because of the people I meet there!
• meeting co-developers, learning interesting things about other projects (by talks) or even your own project
• Meet people, help build up the FOSS community, learn about technologies
• I want to know where the open source community at large is heading.. also I really like keynotes but if they get posted as OGGs I skip them because I don't want to miss the small parallel tracks
• Its vital for making me feel that im part of a community made up of real people, not just hacking gods. The creativity blossoms at conferences, while there is some creativity in irc channels, i havent seen this offline creativity and lust for hacking replicated online.
• fun and interesting
• It's fun! :-)
• For the feeling you get that you are part of something big.
• Metting people. It's easier to interact with people through the Internet if you konw them in real life
• I go to get an introduction on technical subjects that my peers find exciting
• networking
• for the people
• Spending time with peers, interesting venues (fortunately I'm "new" enough that every conference has been a different city), renewing my interest in volunteering on specific projects.
• It's different for "work" conferences compared to "play" conferences. But in both cases you get a chance to hear the best in the field, make new contacts, learn what others are doing (find out the cutting edge), and publicise yourself/your company.
• Meeting with Friends
• Learn new Things meet great ppl
• To expand my circle of contacts and learn about new tech.
• To meet people
• People! :-)
• To learn new things
• I typically go to conferences to meet new people and hang out with old friends. However, it really depends on why I am at the conference. When I am at the conference for a project I am usually in a booth or talking to people about the project. I catch a few talks if I know they will be good. If I am at a conference for myself I usually hang out around booths, see a few talks and talk with people in the halls. If I am at a conference to attend for work I feel I have to see as many talks as possible and end up limiting my talking with friends and new people.
• No single reason; meeting up with folks, learning new things, promoting our work, arguing about stuff ;-)
• meeting and talking to people who work in the same/related space
• I go to meet people, show what I've worked on, plan for future things. And to party!
• To better myself, via the sharing of ideas with like minded people
• for the bandwidth of face-to-face ideas exchange
• To hear other people opinions about the stuff I think I'm good in. And then to rethink if I'm really good.
• To Connect!
• Learn, network, and recharge.
• network with people
• To gather with interesting people and listen to them talk about interesting things.
• To meet people
• To learn and to network.

Why do you go to conferences?

To be honest with you, I go to conferences to meet people. I see old friends, meet online friends in person and meet new people. While I occasionally see a good talk, like Dries Buytaert's rules for creating a great community, I usually only go to talks to start conversations in twitter or on my blog.

Lately I've had a strong desire to turn my talks into conversations instead of lectures. That's what I did at SCALE and at the Collaboration Summit. (Losing my voice at the Collaboration Summit ensured that I had to make it a conversation!)

So today when I got an email advertising a conference's keynotes, I wondered - who goes to see the keynotes and why. And if not to see the keynotes, why do people go to conferences?

I created a survey in SurveyMonkey, and you can see the results on my blog.

Photo by dkalo.

Actually, it is all about you

We spend a lot of time telling people "it's not all about you". At least I tell my 8 year old that every once in a while and I've heard it a few times myself. (And I sometimes really want to tell other people that it's not all about them.)

But playing hockey on Sunday I decided it is all about you.

When teams are doing poorly, some people do nothing different (which is frustrating), others blame everyone else on the team for doing the wrong thing (which is demoralizing) and some people buckle down and try harder. Which ones do you think make the best team players and help the team win?

I have to admit that all too often I fall into the blaming others group. It's much, much easier to see what everyone else could be doing differently. However, since this was my second hockey game in 5 years, this time it was easy for me to realize that I was probably part of the problem! (We won the game. Probably not due to anything I did. As the matter of a fact, it was probably due to the 10 year old that joined our team ...)

So the next time your team is having trouble, remember, it is all about you. Figure out what you can do differently and work your hardest! (For my part, I'm going to work on transitioning from skating forward to backwards without losing momentum, picking up the puck when I take a shot, passing to where people are, not where they were, ... well, you get the picture.)

Photo by DVS Photographer.

How to figure out if you can be a good advisor

Over the past year I've had the chance to be an "advisor" to several different organizations. There's lots of different types of advisory roles. The word advisor can cover all sorts of jobs:

• Giving public endorsement
• Being a consultant and doing work for hire.
• Giving advice (but not necessarily being listened to.)
• Managing/directing a project or group.
• Getting public recognition as an "advisor" in exchange for doing work.

I'm not going to go into what being an advisor should be. However, I do think these are some of the questions you should ask if you are asked to be an advisor:

1. What do you expect from me? What will my responsibilities be? This could range from making introductions, blogging, speaking on behalf of the organization, allowing them to use your name as an endorsement, managing a committee, ... you just want to know what they expect before you sign up. The group asking you to be an advisor may not be able to articulate it but if you talk to them long enough, you might be able to figure it out.
2. Will I be paid? I've had all sorts of experiences in this area. I've been paid well, I've not been paid for substantial amounts of work, I've had my travel covered and I've even received a surprise payment. Any of those is ok, as long as you agree to it.
3. Who makes the decisions for the project I'm advising? Will that person be the one I talk to regularly? (And I strongly recommend that if you don't get to directly advise the people making the decisions and you will be publicly affiliated with the project, you should turn down the opportunity.)
4. Is this group wanting to change? Why do they want an advisor? Is it for public perception reasons or are they committed to making change?
5. Why does this group want an advisor now? Is there a particular issue they are facing? Is it one you can help with?
6. Who else will be advising? Depending on all the other answers, it might be important to have other advisors who will reinforce your opinions or it might be important to have people that will offer a wide variety of opinions.
7. What do you want the advisors to accomplish? Often I've found that the people seeking advisors already know the advice they want and just need help convincing others in their organization.

Anything else? What has been your experience?

Twittering from conferences

I like twittering at conferences. It's a way to take notes, share insights and start interesting conversations. However, I'm always forgetting to append the event hashtag and I eventually get tired of manually typing it, so I wrote a Greasemonkey script to automatically append a hashtag.

To use it, you have to:

• install Greasemonkey,
• install my script,
• use Firefox as your browser,
• set your hashtag with the Tools/Greasemonkey/UserScriptCommands/Set hashtag. (Note you have to be on Twitter.com to see the commands.)
• tweet directly from Twitter.com.

Some notes:

• Thanks to @marnanel for suggesting I use a Greasemonkey script.
• I had much bigger plans and started out writing a Ruby program with the idea that I'd create a Ruby on Rails app but I soon realized that I didn't really want to write yet another Twitter client. If Gwibber, Tweetdeck or Twirl would add some nice hashtag support, that'd be great.
• It's been a long time since I wrote code and I've never written any javascript so this took probably 10 times longer than I think it should have. And it doesn't have enough error checking or any number of cool features I would like but it does what I want it to.
• While I was looking at Greasemonkey scripts for Twitter, I found a couple of other useful ones like updating your twitter home page without refreshing, endless tweets so you don't have to page, seeing @'s to another user, ...

I'll be twittering this week at #osbc.

Book Review: Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It

Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It is a great book.

I've always thought that traditional work would eventually transition to contract work where people get paid to produce certain results. The problem with that is not all work fits contract work. Cali and Jody have envisioned (and implemented!) a workplace with traditional employment instead of contract work where people are measured by results, not time. I think that's pretty amazing. They call it ROWE, Results-Only Work Environment and they've implemented it at Best Buy.

The problem with most work environments today is that they reward the amount of time we work, not the amount of work we get done. The authors suggest a couple of strategies:

• Stop making negative comments about time, "Sludge". So don't joke about how late someone got in, don't apologize for getting stuck in traffic, don't note what time email was sent. "Stop using the words early and late and antiquated terms like by the end of business today. Stop talking about how many hours you work or how hard you're working."
• Make sure you are results-orientated. Every employee should know what their goals are and be measured on their results, not hours worked or time in the office.

By doing this, you treat employees like adults, they'll be happier and they'll do more real work as opposed to more made up work to look like they are working. (Like arriving at 7:30am and reading the paper online for the first hour.)

While the authors had a lot of good advice and how to, I wish they'd spent less time talking about how great peoples' personal lives are in a ROWE environment (I buy it but I think their examples just made ROWE seem like a boondoggle.) and more time on how much more work gets done. Because in order to get companies to buy in to ROWE, they need to understand that much more work will get done. Or at least the same amount of work will get done and employees will save hours and hours of "being in the office" or attending unnecessary meetings.

I also think that open source embodies the results-only model. In open source people only see what is done. They don't care how many hours you spent sitting in front of your computer. They don't care how many meetings you attended or how many conferences you went to. You are measured by what you get done. (I also think they are pretty good at recognizing non-code type work, but that's for another blog post.)

FYI, I liked the book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: No Schedules, No Meetings, No Joke--the Simple Change That Can Make Your Job Terrific much better than I liked the authors' blog.

The good, the bad and the ugly of busines books

Or perhaps this should be called the great, the good and the ugly.

The Great

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High is a great book. If you have ever had an argument that you've regretted, you'll appreciate what this book is trying to teach you.

The authors explain that when we get in an argument, adrenaline takes over and we don't end up arguing in our own best interests. We forget what we want or how to get it and we focus on winning.

They give lots of examples and tools to try to teach you how to "dialogue" better. Unfortunately, it sounds really hard, almost impossible. (Which the authors recognize and they give you a pep talk and some tips at the end.) I'm going to try to use a couple of their techniques and I'm keeping the book. However, don't expect any miracles here. (Although if I learn just one or two of their techniques I think it will be good for both my career and my personal life.)

The Good

Penelope Trunk is a good writer which makes Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success an easy read. The book was funny, entertaining and usually pretty accurate. Supposedly it's full of controversial career advice for Generation X and Yers but I thought most of it (but not all) was good advice. I'd recommend this book as a graduation present for a new college graduate. Penelope gives lots of practical insights like "What you like learning about is probably what you like to do" as well as advice on interview questions, when to use IM or email and what to do in the case of sexual harassment. If you've been in the work force a while, you might not find it super useful but it's an easy read and you might find a few nuggets.

The Ugly

In the case of The Science of Getting Rich, you'd be better off not listening to the writer's words but rather doing what he did. In this case he wrote 105 pages with 2 inch margins, and a catchy title. And in case you're short on words, he has lots of examples of fillers like "And further", "It is evident", and "The question arises here". And blank pages between each chapter. Then you sell your book on $7.99 on Amazon. For a weekend's worth of work, you might make a few dollars.

Note that other people feel differently. My used copy was heavily underlined and highlighted (until page 50) and the book is rated an average of 4 stars on Amazon by 105 people. What I should have paid attention to was the rating distribution. 15% of people, 16 people, rated it a 1 star.

I thought it was terrible and gave it 1 star as well.

So that's the great, the good and the ugly:

• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High (great)
• Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success (good)
• The Science of Getting Rich (ugly)

Diversify yourself

The Diversified Bootstrapper had some intriguing career advice about how to diversify yourself. In addition to having a couple of interesting side projects and consulting gigs, he recommends the type of job you need to have in order to be able to diversify. It's good advice even if you don't decide to diversify. According to Scott Scheper your main job is critical and must be:

• aligned with your passion
• have freedom or be part-time
• value results (over time in the office)
• teach you new skills
• be challenging

FYI, open source software projects and volunteer jobs are a great way to learn, meet others and open up opportunities.

Photo by Michelle Brea.