Now anyone who has worked with me or met me at a hack will have probably noticed I LOVE coffee and the caffeine it has in it.
I am normally not too far from a can of energy drink or stameing cup of coffee, however last week I was struck down with a horrendous stomach bug which kept me out of action for 4 days.
During this time I was unable to eat and was left to drink water and/or flat ginger beer (the non-alcoholic version).
When I came to the end of the week and was finally able to eat food again and had the option of a hot coffee, I said no.
I have no idea why, but I didn't have that craving that is normally in the back of my head, the one that sits hunched over in the darkest recess of my brain saying 'one more hit'.
It will be nearly 2 weeks tomorrow since I had any caffeine and I feel pretty good, I am sleeping better than I have in years (I have 2 kids under 5 and I know about sleep deprivation).
I wouldn't say I feel like I could run a marathon or play the violin or anything, but I feel pretty good.
How long this will last I don't know, but if you work long hours and rely on caffeine to get through a day, my advice is to go through the coffee tremors/headaches and all that horrible stuff for a day or so and then give a coffee free life a go for a few days.
It is amazing to try and go about your normal day while trying to stay out of your normal routine, I really think 70% of my coffee addiction was down to some bizarre repetitive syndrome that made me want a coffee because I had one yesterday at the same time...
Anyway if you give it a go, good luck breaking the habit of a lifetime, I am about to shave my beard buy a suit and leave the world of software development to become a insurance salesman.... not
Thursday, May 02, 2013
Thursday, April 18, 2013
speed reading for business - great course from mylearningworx
As part of the quality testing team at www.mylearningworx.com I get to test some of the courses that are created by the community, the goods ones go live the not so good ones get help and advice form our worxsmith team to make them good.
And every once and awhile a course comes along that I think is awesome, quite tough as we are getting some pretty slick courses being created at the moment.
The one that I just finished testing is "Speed reading for business" by Alex Garcez (@alexgarcez) the speed reading coach, I liked it so much I made it course of the week!
I must admit I was a little skeptical about this as I have always thought I could read pretty fast, take in and then retain information as I read. But after finishing the 2 hour course I realised I had been missing a key part of it all, the techniques that Alex teaches are simple and for me they worked nearly instantly, like a light bulb being turned on.
And no I wont give away any of the techniques here, all I can say is it will be £27 well spent.
I now read in excess of double the speed I used to and I guess this will only get faster as I hone my skills.
It does mean I may be getting through a few more books on holiday though, so much for packing lite.
If you need to read and retain information on a day to day basis, I cannot recommend this course enough www.mylearningworx.com/app/take/course/760/speed-reading-for-business
And every once and awhile a course comes along that I think is awesome, quite tough as we are getting some pretty slick courses being created at the moment.
The one that I just finished testing is "Speed reading for business" by Alex Garcez (@alexgarcez) the speed reading coach, I liked it so much I made it course of the week!
I must admit I was a little skeptical about this as I have always thought I could read pretty fast, take in and then retain information as I read. But after finishing the 2 hour course I realised I had been missing a key part of it all, the techniques that Alex teaches are simple and for me they worked nearly instantly, like a light bulb being turned on.
And no I wont give away any of the techniques here, all I can say is it will be £27 well spent.
I now read in excess of double the speed I used to and I guess this will only get faster as I hone my skills.
It does mean I may be getting through a few more books on holiday though, so much for packing lite.
If you need to read and retain information on a day to day basis, I cannot recommend this course enough www.mylearningworx.com/app/take/course/760/speed-reading-for-business
crowd sourcing, where do we start
Whenever any mentions crowd sourcing, don't ask me why, I think of the immortal Monty Python scene outside Brian's mothers apartment and the scene in the sewers under the castle where the 2 groups of 'terrorists' meet and end up fighting over who came up with the plan first.| DEADLY DIRK: Campaign for Free Galilee. FRANCIS: Oh. Uh, People's Front of Judea. Officials. DEADLY DIRK: Oh. FRANCIS: What's your group doing here? DEADLY DIRK: We're going to kidnap Pilate's wife, take her back, issue demands. FRANCIS: So are we. DEADLY DIRK: What? FRANCIS: That's our plan! DEADLY DIRK: We were here first! FRANCIS: What do you mean?! DEADLY DIRK: We thought of it first! WARRIS: Oh, yeah? DEADLY DIRK: Yes, a couple of years ago! P.F.J.: Ha. Heh. Ha ha. DEADLY DIRK: We did! FRANCIS: Okay, c-- co-- come on. You got all your demands worked out, then? DEADLY DIRK: 'Course we have. FRANCIS: What are they? DEADLY DIRK: Well, I'm not telling you. P.F.J.: Aghhh... |
FRANCIS: Oh, come on. Pull the other one. P.F.J.: Shh! DEADLY DIRK: That's not the point! We thought of it before you! WARRIS: Did not. DEADLY DIRK: We did! FRANCIS: You didn't. C.F.G.: We bloody did! BRIAN: Shhhh! P.F.J.: Shhhhh! Shh. DEADLY DIRK: You bastards! We've been planning this for months. FRANCIS: Well, tough titty for you, Fish Face. Oh! Oh. RANDOM: All right. WARRIS: Clever. You sly... BRIAN: Brothers! Brothers! We should be struggling together! FRANCIS: We are! Ohh. BRIAN: We mustn't fight each other! Surely we should be united against the common enemy! EVERYONE: The Judean People's Front?! BRIAN: No, no! The Romans! EVERYONE: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. |
Both scenes are a great fun poking exercise into how we think and act when in a crowd, the power of the people and all those other cliches come to mind as well.
The sewer scene is a good reminder that sometimes we need to make sure we are all working on the same problem in the same direction, fighting the common enemy.
Crowds can go bad
This is where crowd sourcing could fall apart, I mean if everyone who joins the 'crowd' is in it for different reasons, or the same end goal but have different motives for getting there, it would be easy for the crowd to get steered away from the original goal.
Personally I love the idea of crowd sourcing, the dev4good events and every other hack event around the planet are in essence crowd sourcing events. People who are interested in an idea, come together to work on it with other people with different skills.
So maybe 'skill pooling' is more apt name but not one that would ever take off I guess?
The difference to these hack events to the sewer scene (other than it being in a sewer and under a palace) is it is an open forum for discussion, debate. No one person has control over any part of the group, if people in the group don't like the 'plan' they are encouraged to start their own group (and yes we do call these people 'splitters') and see what happens.
Sometimes this works, other times it doesn't, that is part of the game.
The online training system I am co-founding (www.mylearningworx.com) is at its heart a place for people interested in learning and/or teaching to meet and share their knowledge (and in the process make some money if they want to).
The way I see it everybody is an expert in their own world, shed, castle, boat, whatever. Most of us never part with this knowledge and will take it with us when we leave. When we look around skills, languages, cultures are being lost because people simply don't share like they used. Before the advent of TV and the internet, people spent more time together talking, passing on information. Nowadays, this happens less as people 'interact' more in a virtual way and the conversations have gone from 'Dad how do you change a washer?' to 'Nom eating dinna'.
What we have tried to do with the My learning worx platform is to make it as easy as possible for anyone with some information to share it (and make money if they want).
This knowledge transfer can take place anywhere, anytime and just about on any device, meaning there is no reason why we cannot do it.
Feel free to take a look around the new platform and let me know what you think!
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
dev4good holiday hack
On 24th November 2012, possibly the most productive single hack event started.... I may be biased
After a few years of organising hack events, I was beginning to get a bit annoyed by the fact that we can bring together some super smart people with amazing skills and ideas, but not get around to pushing these ideas out to market. Maybe we were doing something wrong, targeting the wrong charities?
To prove to myself that you could build an MVP project in a weekend I built a dev4good windows 8 app in around 30 hours, so I knew it would be possible as long as you kept it as a simple a product, it could be pushed to market. With knowledge I had some mental leverage (not the crazy kind) to show people what could be done.
This time around we decided to bypass the charities altogether, instead we invited developers designers, marketers, ideas people and anyone who was interested to join us at Google Campus for the weekend. In the end we had 40 people, a few familiar faces, a few crazy ideas and a load of passionate volunteers looking to make a difference.
Our holiday hack mantra for the weekend: MVP MVP MVP (keep your eye on the Minimum Viable Product) Along with things like "you are not at work, if it is wrong tell your team, they cant fire you", "hey crazy boy, no we are not adding that to the project", it will all come together shortly"
The only rules were each team must be made up of different skills, a team of developers would never get finished and a team of designers might look good but wouldn't get out of Photoshop, it was all about co-operation and finding the right people with the right skills when you needed them.
With an initial intro from Heidi (our co-organiser from The Giving lab), Amy (the dev4good design/UX guru), myself and Jas (API architect from the Giving lab) we started everyone off with ta simple question. Think up new ways for people to give to charity, you have 10 minutes....
20 minutes later (scope creep can start at anytime), the groups came together and pitched their initial ideas to the masses. This (for me anyway) is where the magic happens at these events and if it doesn't happen you might as well head for the hills, people just start working in teams. It reminds me of those 60s horror films with each idea (the blob) just moving about consuming people, spitting them out until it finds the right group of people to start hacking.
Throw in some coffee, pasta, work tables, beanbags, sweets and the whole place was alive with people sketching ideas, writing code (and in one case launching their project before 1pm on the first day http://www.shevember.org .
At 4pm we had a quick meetup with everyone to see where they were or what they needed to get things done.
Other than Shevember ho were onto making their site work better and trying to arm twist people to donate through their site, the other teams were all at different points of their build. But the Shevember roject really highlighted the fact that keeping it simple makes sense and most importantly means you can push ideas out to the internet very quickly. Which I think spurred the other teams on, there is nothing like a constant reminder of 'hey my site is live, how is yours' to make any developer grit their teeth and weep a little.
Unfortunately I wasn't on site for the Sunday, but when I left on Saturday night I was stoked and very very proud of the work everyone had done. These people had given up their weekend to come along to a building with absolutely no idea what was going to happen or what they would achieve. And the fact that we were looking at 3 maybe four projects being ready to go live, I was a happy organiser.
All in all we had 5 or so products live by the end of the weekend, with a couple more close to going live and one in the iTunes store being authorised..... A massive achievement by anyone's standards and as far as I know (I could be wrong) the most 'to market' projects ever written during a hack weekend (imagine if we were allowed to stay overnight)
As for 2013, there are a lot of plans for new events, bigger events and even more products to market! If you have an idea that could help a charity or a community in general, send it to ask@dev4good.net you never know we could build it in a weekend.
Massive thanks to everyone who came along to work with us, even bigger thanks to Heidi, Amy, Jas, Dom and all those who made it possible, see you all next time!
After a few years of organising hack events, I was beginning to get a bit annoyed by the fact that we can bring together some super smart people with amazing skills and ideas, but not get around to pushing these ideas out to market. Maybe we were doing something wrong, targeting the wrong charities?
To prove to myself that you could build an MVP project in a weekend I built a dev4good windows 8 app in around 30 hours, so I knew it would be possible as long as you kept it as a simple a product, it could be pushed to market. With knowledge I had some mental leverage (not the crazy kind) to show people what could be done.
This time around we decided to bypass the charities altogether, instead we invited developers designers, marketers, ideas people and anyone who was interested to join us at Google Campus for the weekend. In the end we had 40 people, a few familiar faces, a few crazy ideas and a load of passionate volunteers looking to make a difference.
Our holiday hack mantra for the weekend: MVP MVP MVP (keep your eye on the Minimum Viable Product) Along with things like "you are not at work, if it is wrong tell your team, they cant fire you", "hey crazy boy, no we are not adding that to the project", it will all come together shortly"
The only rules were each team must be made up of different skills, a team of developers would never get finished and a team of designers might look good but wouldn't get out of Photoshop, it was all about co-operation and finding the right people with the right skills when you needed them.
With an initial intro from Heidi (our co-organiser from The Giving lab), Amy (the dev4good design/UX guru), myself and Jas (API architect from the Giving lab) we started everyone off with ta simple question. Think up new ways for people to give to charity, you have 10 minutes....
20 minutes later (scope creep can start at anytime), the groups came together and pitched their initial ideas to the masses. This (for me anyway) is where the magic happens at these events and if it doesn't happen you might as well head for the hills, people just start working in teams. It reminds me of those 60s horror films with each idea (the blob) just moving about consuming people, spitting them out until it finds the right group of people to start hacking.
Throw in some coffee, pasta, work tables, beanbags, sweets and the whole place was alive with people sketching ideas, writing code (and in one case launching their project before 1pm on the first day http://www.shevember.org .
At 4pm we had a quick meetup with everyone to see where they were or what they needed to get things done.
Other than Shevember ho were onto making their site work better and trying to arm twist people to donate through their site, the other teams were all at different points of their build. But the Shevember roject really highlighted the fact that keeping it simple makes sense and most importantly means you can push ideas out to the internet very quickly. Which I think spurred the other teams on, there is nothing like a constant reminder of 'hey my site is live, how is yours' to make any developer grit their teeth and weep a little.
Unfortunately I wasn't on site for the Sunday, but when I left on Saturday night I was stoked and very very proud of the work everyone had done. These people had given up their weekend to come along to a building with absolutely no idea what was going to happen or what they would achieve. And the fact that we were looking at 3 maybe four projects being ready to go live, I was a happy organiser.
All in all we had 5 or so products live by the end of the weekend, with a couple more close to going live and one in the iTunes store being authorised..... A massive achievement by anyone's standards and as far as I know (I could be wrong) the most 'to market' projects ever written during a hack weekend (imagine if we were allowed to stay overnight)
As for 2013, there are a lot of plans for new events, bigger events and even more products to market! If you have an idea that could help a charity or a community in general, send it to ask@dev4good.net you never know we could build it in a weekend.
Massive thanks to everyone who came along to work with us, even bigger thanks to Heidi, Amy, Jas, Dom and all those who made it possible, see you all next time!
Thursday, November 15, 2012
My Learning worx, turning the corner in e-learning
A few months ago I joined forces with a team of people with an idea to try and change the way people teach and learn online.
Our goal is to ultimately change the world, nothing big there then.
At the moment there are a large number of sites around that allow people to take courses, mostly based on SCORM which is the industry standard for e-learning. If you have taken any courses at work for Office, Health & Safety etc it was proabably a SCORM based package.
The problem with SCORM is you need to buy software and know how to use it before you start.
Making a course is relatively easy, but you then need to host it somehow, or run it locally on your own PC, which could make it difficult for others to use.
What we want to achieve is to give the power of authoring to anyone with an internet connection, without the need for a training course on how to build a training course.
My learning worx allows anyone with a basic knowledge of the internet the ability to create a course, promote it and then sell it (or give it away for free).
The better your course and the more sales you make, the more money you can make.
So if you have an itch to teach or want to learn the easy way, we would like you to check out the site and give us feedback - but most of all to try your hand at authoring some courses.
We will be looking for developers to help me build a Windows 8 (& phone) app for the platform in the near future, so keep an eye out if you are interested in e-learning.
We're giving prizes of Amazon Kindle Fires to the best courses published before Christmas.
Course authoring is really easy, all you need is an idea on what you want to teach people.
To read the blog and get more information go to: My Learning Worx Blog
Or signup and start making courses - http://www.mylearningworx.com
Our goal is to ultimately change the world, nothing big there then.
At the moment there are a large number of sites around that allow people to take courses, mostly based on SCORM which is the industry standard for e-learning. If you have taken any courses at work for Office, Health & Safety etc it was proabably a SCORM based package.
The problem with SCORM is you need to buy software and know how to use it before you start.
Making a course is relatively easy, but you then need to host it somehow, or run it locally on your own PC, which could make it difficult for others to use.
What we want to achieve is to give the power of authoring to anyone with an internet connection, without the need for a training course on how to build a training course.
My learning worx allows anyone with a basic knowledge of the internet the ability to create a course, promote it and then sell it (or give it away for free).
The better your course and the more sales you make, the more money you can make.
So if you have an itch to teach or want to learn the easy way, we would like you to check out the site and give us feedback - but most of all to try your hand at authoring some courses.
We will be looking for developers to help me build a Windows 8 (& phone) app for the platform in the near future, so keep an eye out if you are interested in e-learning.
We're giving prizes of Amazon Kindle Fires to the best courses published before Christmas.
Course authoring is really easy, all you need is an idea on what you want to teach people.
To read the blog and get more information go to: My Learning Worx Blog
Or signup and start making courses - http://www.mylearningworx.com
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Is windows 8 that bad - I dont think so
This is a reposnse to www.pcgamesn.com/article/why-i-m-uninstalling-windows-8
I started writing it as a comment to the looooong 'uninstalling windows 8' post, but it got a bit out of hand so here it is instead;
Dear Tim,
A few things, I have had windows 8 running for ages and yes it is 'different' to other windows experiences and yes some of it works better on touch devices, but I dont think uninstalling it is really the answer. The more feedback we can get out for others to comment on the better, good/bad or otherwise.
Microsoft needs to see and use this feedback to make it better and to be fair they have listened to some of the feedback with regards to the new Visual Studio, maybe this will herald a new beginning for the application life-cycle of MS products?
I really don't think Windows 8 is that bad, its not 'Oh my god, the best OS in the world' but none of the current ones are either, they all have their quirks.
They are built by humans, I mean we aren't perfect and creating an OS that keeps every single user happy is impossible.
There are a few keys that you have missed off your comments that I think may help you with some of your usability issues.
The windows key will always take you to 'home' (this being the tiled metro homepage)
Using windows key combinations you imitate touch gestures;
Windows + Z, Windows + X, Windows + C all bring up different menus while inside an app or 'home'
Windows + D still works to take you back to the old faithful desktop
Windows + Tab & Alt + Tab still shuffles you through the active windows
Windows + R still brings up the run command
The full list of old and new key combinations is here - http://www.pcworld.com/article/251022/windows_8_consumer_preview_keyboard_shortcuts.html
Yes I realise that we shouldn't have to use the keyboard, but it is one of the 2 most used input devices we have.
Okay there is no start button (start scary horror soundtrack music), but to be fair most consumers and remember Windows 8 is designed for the general public who are consumers of information, not geeks like most of the people who read this who are pro-sumers - that is we make stuff. They will use a dozen or so 'apps' on a day to day basis and don't care if they cant see the 'control panel' menu or most of the other options under the start button as they everything they need will be visible on 'home'.
So as long as they see their main app tiles they wont care either way.
I think if you are a geek or gamer you will feel unjustly forced down the 'app' centric route, it took me a long time to come to like iPad because of this. For a long time I wanted to get into the nitty-gritty and play with the folders hidden inside the OS. I even bought an android pad to do this... waste of time and money. Anything with a 10" screen is NOT designed for inputting large amounts of data.
You take a picture upload it to face book, send 140 character message to a friend, tell the world what you are eating for dinner, check whats on TV, watch a TV show,find a recipe, listen to a song, job done - it is nearly always consuming data.
I was also a bit confused with the whole home vs desktop idea. I am a dektop man, we all are I guess, everything gets dumped on the desktop first (or in the downloads folder) to be used whenever we need it and then left to clutter up the view, I used fences for ages to help clear this up.
But in windows 8 there is this clean (and easily read) blocked out 'home' interface that just allows me to see the top 20 or so tiles that link to the apps I use the most, not 4 screens (I have a lot of desktop space) of random files, links and shortcut, I mean really how on earth could that be easier and more productive? (sarcasm)
Windows 8 has made me do things differently, much the same way Mac users do things differently to windows folk. I now store nearly everything on skydrive and dropbox, very little is stored locally.
My laptop only gets the files I need to use, then they are stored or deleted, I just don't need them.
It has forced me to be more organised, I have not installed anything that I dont really need and do install a lot of crap that just hangs around, but if a tile stares at me long enough and I don't use it I remove the app, as the old meerkats say 'Simplesss'.
I will be lining up to buy a Microsoft Surface (not the old surface or pixelsense as it's called now, the new tablet one) when it launches in the UK. Why you may ask, well its really because android and I just don not see eye to eye and I am still not convinced the iPad is for me. Don't get me wrong it is a great platform with an awesome design/UX, however it just does things I don't like and I want to see if a Windows 8 touch device feels better and this is the big thing for me.
This is the crux of the whole mobile device OS issue. The difference between one OS and another is not how it works or what it looks like or if it crashes every 2 seconds, but how it 'feels' when I am using it; is it tactile?, does it make sense when I am doing a task?, does it allow me to access something in a way that feels right? can I use it how I want to use it?
I might be biased towards Windows 8 as I have a windows 7.5 phone, an Xbox 360 and rely on Microsoft stack and it's technologies to help pay my mortgage, but I personally think that Windows 8 is going to make people stop and think about how they work and what they 'really' use their PC/tablet/mobile device for.
And from a financial point of view, even if only half all current windows users move to Windows 8 that is still a shed-load of consumers who will be in the market for new shiny apps and that can't be a bad thing for us developers/designers.
One last thing, when reviewing an OS we shouldn't really focus on the apps that it runs, I know the mail client is pretty basic (although not that bad really), it is Outlook express at the end of the day and is not Outlook.
In general the apps are written outside of the OS, so shouldn't we review them in their own context?
regards,
Craig
I started writing it as a comment to the looooong 'uninstalling windows 8' post, but it got a bit out of hand so here it is instead;
Dear Tim,
A few things, I have had windows 8 running for ages and yes it is 'different' to other windows experiences and yes some of it works better on touch devices, but I dont think uninstalling it is really the answer. The more feedback we can get out for others to comment on the better, good/bad or otherwise.
Microsoft needs to see and use this feedback to make it better and to be fair they have listened to some of the feedback with regards to the new Visual Studio, maybe this will herald a new beginning for the application life-cycle of MS products?
I really don't think Windows 8 is that bad, its not 'Oh my god, the best OS in the world' but none of the current ones are either, they all have their quirks.
They are built by humans, I mean we aren't perfect and creating an OS that keeps every single user happy is impossible.
There are a few keys that you have missed off your comments that I think may help you with some of your usability issues.
The windows key will always take you to 'home' (this being the tiled metro homepage)
Using windows key combinations you imitate touch gestures;
Windows + Z, Windows + X, Windows + C all bring up different menus while inside an app or 'home'
Windows + D still works to take you back to the old faithful desktop
Windows + Tab & Alt + Tab still shuffles you through the active windows
Windows + R still brings up the run command
The full list of old and new key combinations is here - http://www.pcworld.com/article/251022/windows_8_consumer_preview_keyboard_shortcuts.html
Yes I realise that we shouldn't have to use the keyboard, but it is one of the 2 most used input devices we have.
Okay there is no start button (start scary horror soundtrack music), but to be fair most consumers and remember Windows 8 is designed for the general public who are consumers of information, not geeks like most of the people who read this who are pro-sumers - that is we make stuff. They will use a dozen or so 'apps' on a day to day basis and don't care if they cant see the 'control panel' menu or most of the other options under the start button as they everything they need will be visible on 'home'.
So as long as they see their main app tiles they wont care either way.
I think if you are a geek or gamer you will feel unjustly forced down the 'app' centric route, it took me a long time to come to like iPad because of this. For a long time I wanted to get into the nitty-gritty and play with the folders hidden inside the OS. I even bought an android pad to do this... waste of time and money. Anything with a 10" screen is NOT designed for inputting large amounts of data.
You take a picture upload it to face book, send 140 character message to a friend, tell the world what you are eating for dinner, check whats on TV, watch a TV show,find a recipe, listen to a song, job done - it is nearly always consuming data.
I was also a bit confused with the whole home vs desktop idea. I am a dektop man, we all are I guess, everything gets dumped on the desktop first (or in the downloads folder) to be used whenever we need it and then left to clutter up the view, I used fences for ages to help clear this up.
But in windows 8 there is this clean (and easily read) blocked out 'home' interface that just allows me to see the top 20 or so tiles that link to the apps I use the most, not 4 screens (I have a lot of desktop space) of random files, links and shortcut, I mean really how on earth could that be easier and more productive? (sarcasm)
Windows 8 has made me do things differently, much the same way Mac users do things differently to windows folk. I now store nearly everything on skydrive and dropbox, very little is stored locally.
My laptop only gets the files I need to use, then they are stored or deleted, I just don't need them.
It has forced me to be more organised, I have not installed anything that I dont really need and do install a lot of crap that just hangs around, but if a tile stares at me long enough and I don't use it I remove the app, as the old meerkats say 'Simplesss'.
I will be lining up to buy a Microsoft Surface (not the old surface or pixelsense as it's called now, the new tablet one) when it launches in the UK. Why you may ask, well its really because android and I just don not see eye to eye and I am still not convinced the iPad is for me. Don't get me wrong it is a great platform with an awesome design/UX, however it just does things I don't like and I want to see if a Windows 8 touch device feels better and this is the big thing for me.
This is the crux of the whole mobile device OS issue. The difference between one OS and another is not how it works or what it looks like or if it crashes every 2 seconds, but how it 'feels' when I am using it; is it tactile?, does it make sense when I am doing a task?, does it allow me to access something in a way that feels right? can I use it how I want to use it?
I might be biased towards Windows 8 as I have a windows 7.5 phone, an Xbox 360 and rely on Microsoft stack and it's technologies to help pay my mortgage, but I personally think that Windows 8 is going to make people stop and think about how they work and what they 'really' use their PC/tablet/mobile device for.
And from a financial point of view, even if only half all current windows users move to Windows 8 that is still a shed-load of consumers who will be in the market for new shiny apps and that can't be a bad thing for us developers/designers.
One last thing, when reviewing an OS we shouldn't really focus on the apps that it runs, I know the mail client is pretty basic (although not that bad really), it is Outlook express at the end of the day and is not Outlook.
In general the apps are written outside of the OS, so shouldn't we review them in their own context?
regards,
Craig
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Dev4good 2012 deconstructed - part 2
Please, please, please listen! I've got one or two things to say.
I have been writing code of some description since 2000 and would consider myself fairly knowledgeable when it comes to UI design, user interactions etc. I am realistic and know that I couldn't design my way out of a paper bag and that there are always better ways to do things...And I guess most developers think the same, we all code our systems to be designed around the functions we build and the specifications we are given...
My way of thinking was about to be beaten with a stick (probably with a few rusty nails stuck in it).
Stwike him, Centuwion. Stwike him vewy wuffly!
Picture the setting (this isn't me), its 230am on a Sunday morning, you have been coding a project since 11am the previous morning and you turn the developer across the table and say 'something just isn't right'. The UX consultant who has been trying to tell everyone in the team about something called 'stakeholder', behavior, touch points for the last 15 hours turns and says "Boys I have an idea".Queue 3 mini coopers, a bus going over the alps, or at least - 3 developers a super smart UX consultant and a whiteboard....
As I mentioned, I wasn't actually in the scene above (a lot of literary licence was used), I called in right towards the end (heading for what would turn out to be an incredibly uncomfortable bean bag) just to say goodnight, only to be told "Craig, Amy has just told us we don't need an IT solution for the Gaza project". Bearing in mind the gaza team had already split and it was nearly 3am, I thought what the hell this could be interesting.
Amy went through her presentation and I went from being completely shattered to being completely awake, everything she was talking about made sense. It appeared we had all missed the 'human' aspect of the problem and looking at the problem from a different angle (not the developer 'must write code' angle) meant the solution was extremely simple - we need somewhere for people to meet and share information.
This was where I dropped a bombshell, 'why dont you just do a mashup?'. Use the data feeds from all of the other projects, plus blogs etc and create a place for people to see the information they need to see.
The Gaza1 team came in as well to say they had realised that their solution was not going to work, mainly for technical reasons. They had framework issues and were stuck, everyone discussed options and they headed back to try some new options.
After an hour of discussing the different approaches of developer and designers I went to bed, feeling enlightened.
I've been here five years, they only hung me the right way up yesterday.
It will probably sound very cheesy, but the early morning lesson really struck home. I am reading the Nail it, then scale it book at the moment and there is a lot of talk about doing the minimum right first. You build a minimum feature set first and seeing what people think/need before adding more to it, this is exactly what the teams should be doing (lightbulb moment), thinking as a developer you always build to the end specification and would never (rarely) remove functionality just to get a build/release.However thinking about the human problems and behaviours of the stakeholders you very quickly realise that actually most of the functionality in the spec is down to what you (or they) think they need not what they need.
This would prove to be a valuable lesson that I think nearly everyone learnt over the weekend, all for different reasons
Two days to dismantle the entire apparatus of the Roman Imperialist State
I digress, the morning started slowly, actually I think it was more like Saturday, just became Sunday so there was no real start and everyone just got up and carried on.More coffee, monster energy, coca-cola was drank while the teams started on the home straight.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Dev4good 2012 deconstructed - part 1
Life of Dev4good 2012 - part 1
I have to admit there are a few grey spots from the dev4good weekend,
I think the lack of sleep and overdoses of caffeine, taurine and sugar are
probably the reason or a middle aged brain or a bit of both, anyway here is my dev4good,
deconstructed.
I sometimes hang awake at night dreaming of...
On the 7th of July at 8am I wandered up from
Charing Cross station to 101 St Martins Lane (mozSpace London) to begin dev4good
2012. As ever when I run events I like to get there really early, more out of a
weird recurring dream that I sleep in and missed my own event, than anything
else.
I am always apprehensive about how many people actually turn up, I had 57 registered but with 4 other hack events within a 20 mile radius it was a busy weekend for developers.
I am always apprehensive about how many people actually turn up, I had 57 registered but with 4 other hack events within a 20 mile radius it was a busy weekend for developers.
I had everything organised, from badges indicating the
skills of the wearer (developer, designer, other) to chilled beer and energy
drinks.
But what had I forgotten?
This when the fear (F**k Everything And Run)
kicks in, the nervous energy and adrenalin start pumping….
Thankfully people started to arrive, massive relief and more
adrenalin (wuick flash back to Waynes World - if you book them they will come). John from Mozilla let us in and
the fun began.
The early starters were given jobs while I headed to Tesco to pick up breakfast. All I had to pick up was 80 pastries to go with the Lavazza coffee we had been given. However the staff at Tesco had an issue with this and kept asking me how I was going to carry 80 pastries, “in a bag” I kept saying but they still couldn’t comprehend the purchase.
The early starters were given jobs while I headed to Tesco to pick up breakfast. All I had to pick up was 80 pastries to go with the Lavazza coffee we had been given. However the staff at Tesco had an issue with this and kept asking me how I was going to carry 80 pastries, “in a bag” I kept saying but they still couldn’t comprehend the purchase.
Anyway after much packing of pastries I got back to mozSpace
to find a few more people getting ready to go drinking the freshly brewed
coffee. Still not the 50 or so people I was expecting, but by this stage I had
forgot the numbers problem, we had enough for 1 solid team and that’s all you
need for a good hack.
We waited for a bit longer than I had wanted to, but
everyone was happily chatting and meeting the other geeks, just on 30 people had turned up - stoked!
Welease the dewelopers
After Intros from me, the Givey Team (Dave and Nick), Mozilla
(John) and Iyas who runs Hope and Play, plus a quick cameo from the naked guy out of friends at the window across the
courtyard kicked the weekend off.
As you will see only one charity had a representative, this might be down to me not communicating the importance of this as well as I should (note to try harder next year) and to be honest it was something I was initially concerned about. This worry was quickly dispelled while listening to Iyas talk about his recent trip to Gaza, how bad it really is on the ground and what we could to do help.
As you will see only one charity had a representative, this might be down to me not communicating the importance of this as well as I should (note to try harder next year) and to be honest it was something I was initially concerned about. This worry was quickly dispelled while listening to Iyas talk about his recent trip to Gaza, how bad it really is on the ground and what we could to do help.
I remembered that we are
working on problems ‘seeded’ by charities and the more input the charities have
in front of the teams the bigger the chance our projects will come to solving
the ‘real’ problems, more on this later.
I have to admit some of things I used in my opening speech
may have had a bigger impact on the weekend than I had anticipated (in a good a
way I hope).
Things that come to mind “if you are in a team and are not
doing anything constructive, leave and join a team that needs you”, “last year
teams wasted a lot time on trying to make an existing platform do something
that it wasn’t designed to do, it might be quicker make it from scratch than to
rebuild existing code” or “use the skills you have already, focus on your
strengths and use them, learn where you can and teach where you can, but
remember time is limited”...
What have the Developers ever done for us?
The goal for each team was to produce and demo a mvp
(minimal viable product) in front of everyone else, sounds simple enough doesn’t
it?
Queue the mission impossible theme tune.
So project intros were complete and now the scariest part of
any hack event…. Will the people do anything when the gun goes off?
Another fear moment (probably a recurring dream about this too), everyone has heard the pitches and then decide to not take part and leave. However I forgot I had a room full of some seriously smart and passionate people and after running around, trying to find the man size post-it notes, I came back to find the organic process of a group of individuals turning into teams.
Another fear moment (probably a recurring dream about this too), everyone has heard the pitches and then decide to not take part and leave. However I forgot I had a room full of some seriously smart and passionate people and after running around, trying to find the man size post-it notes, I came back to find the organic process of a group of individuals turning into teams.
Popular people front - splitters
This is a process that if you haven’t seen is quite cool to watch, it’s hard to
explain but is a bit like the opposite of the Big Bang or like kids playing with play dough.
You start with a few people talking and others walking past overhear something interesting and get pulled in, if the conversation isn’t what they want they head off on a different trajectory. The bigger the group the more gravitational pull they seem to have on others, then all of a sudden the group will disband and people start to wander off again.
This continues until the groups stop disbanding and regrouping…. A very weird herd/pack thing I guess.
This happened last year as well, so there must be an
anthropological reason for how/why this happens, whatever it is, it is very cool to watch.
The teams then headed off and started the first stint before
food arrived, time for me to put on the “client” or “devil’s advocate” hat on.
For the next couple of hours I bounced in and out of projects when asked to (or
not) listen to their ideas, pitches and try and help them to keep their ideas
within the rough specs we have. I think I was helping out but it is hard to
tell this early on in the day, I am sure I pissed a few people off. My goal of
the weekend was to make sure everyone built something that worked end-to-end, I
think people enjoy to complete something and show it off.
Otters noses, badgers spleens
Food arrived at 12 on the dot, there was enough food to feed
a small army. The herds snuck out from
the safety of their territories (air conditioned in some cases) to eat at the
watering hole then moved back to continue working. There was a serious buzz
around the place and nearly everyone seemed to be locked in to whatever they
had been tasked with.
More splitters, the developers front of tower.js
This is where the fun began, there had been much talk about
platforms, frameworks etc, with some very strong ideas about which is best for
this and that. One of the teams had already split in 2 by this time, so we had
Gaza1 and Gaza2, this was down to platform/framework choice I think.
I have to admit there had been murmurings from some, those mumbles of wrong framework, bad ideas etc and a few people had moved out of teams to help elsewhere.
Something I really liked (it took some balls to drop out of a team) and not something people can do at their day job - “Sorry boss I don’t like the database structure we are using and I am going to head off and work in the canteen this afternoon, ok, thanks, bye”
One of the best quotes of the weekend has to have come from one of these particular incidents - “They all went for a cigarette, but never came back”.
I have to admit there had been murmurings from some, those mumbles of wrong framework, bad ideas etc and a few people had moved out of teams to help elsewhere.
Something I really liked (it took some balls to drop out of a team) and not something people can do at their day job - “Sorry boss I don’t like the database structure we are using and I am going to head off and work in the canteen this afternoon, ok, thanks, bye”
One of the best quotes of the weekend has to have come from one of these particular incidents - “They all went for a cigarette, but never came back”.
The aliens/ufo scene
Between lunch and dinner there is a large grey spot in my memory, I do remember bouncing in and out of scrum meetings, making fresh pots
of coffee, but not much a lot of detail. There seemed to be a lot of work going on and a lot
of people sitting at their laptops with headphones on, just getting on with it.
Solidarity brothers, solidarity
Pizza arrived and this is where the teams had their first
proper long break of the day, everyone came together for a some chill out time before heading back to the keyboards - dedication!
It was about this stage that I realised what I had asked everyone to do, last year the goal was to have a good weekend hacking and have some fun. This year they had to build something that worked, then show it off and as any developer knows #failure is not an option when it comes to a live demo (Win95 and a USB device anyone).
I also had a chance to check out the project whiteboards and reflect on what had been planned by each team, they all had pretty big ideas and were way above what I thought was possible (proof of the skills and knowledge of the teams taking part).
It was about this stage that I realised what I had asked everyone to do, last year the goal was to have a good weekend hacking and have some fun. This year they had to build something that worked, then show it off and as any developer knows #failure is not an option when it comes to a live demo (Win95 and a USB device anyone).
I also had a chance to check out the project whiteboards and reflect on what had been planned by each team, they all had pretty big ideas and were way above what I thought was possible (proof of the skills and knowledge of the teams taking part).
I'm not the Messiah! Will you please listen?
There was a lot of coffee, monster energy drank over the next 12 hours, plus a tiny piece of sleep and in the early hours of Sunday morning, something close to a geek revelation took place for 2 developers (and me).Crucifixion party, one cross each, by the left, wait for it...
big thanks to
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