We caught with up Esther Derby in the middle of snow storm and hoping the airport is cleared before she has to fly out to Webstock in a couple days time! In addition to her conference presentation, Esther is running a full day workshop on Agile Retrospectives.
1) Tell us something about your past work history and how you’ve arrived at where you are.
I started my professional career as a programmer. I wrote my first program using punch cards. My first portable computer looked like this:
Some things about our field have changed a lot.
Other things…not so much.
I was really good at finding the source of odd behavior or errors in large systems. My managers noticed this, and promoted me to be a manager. I believe this method of selecting managers remains largely unchanged.
It is true that all complex systems share certain characteristics, the parts are interconnected and a change in one element can have ripple effects throughout the system. The connections aren’t always obvious, and the fix many be far away from the effect. Still, the skills needed to steer a human system (which is what managers need to do) are just a little different from those that made me good at trouble shooting software. So I set out to learn a different set of skills.
Along the way, I earned a Master’s in Organizational Leadership, studied family therapy, and took a dive into Humans System Dynamics, a new field that applies concepts from chaos and complexity science to groups and organizations.
In my first years as a manager, I missed the challenge and satisfaction of solving technical problem; I’ve come to learn that working with human systems is just as intellectually challenging and just as satisfying. Does tend to be a bit more messy, though.
2) Have you always worked with an Agile methodology? If not, did you have a “ray of light” experience that brought you to it?
I’ve been around long enough that I’ve seen methodologies come and go. When I look back over the teams and projects that worked best, we were applying at least some of the principles of agile development. We found ways to build feedback into the system: working in small chunks, testing early and often, keeping public project progress posters (the precursor of Big Visible Charts). We worked in the same office and we had frequent communication with the people who would use our products.
What got me interested in Agile (with a capital A) was the explicit emphasis on collaboration, sustainable pace, and pride in work. I’ve seen too many organizations where work is a dehumanizing slog. Life is just too short to spend 40+ hours a week that way. Many teams have had success using agile principles and methods. I’ve heard from scores of developers that the Agile teams they worked on were the best work experiences of their lives.
Sadly, I think many organizations are drawn to agile because they see it as a way to squeeze more work out of people. Sort of like the days when executives didn’t read past the word Rapid in Rapid Application Development. The truth is that if executives want to get more done faster, they have to look at the work system, and the way they manage.
3) Why do most managers suck so much?
Most managers want to do a good job, but don’t know what to do or how to do it. It’s not surprising, since most managers in software organizations are promoted into management from technical position (as I was). So they do what they’ve seen their managers do. Or if they’ve had a bad experience, avoid doing what their manager did.
The broader problem is that the predominant mental model of management is way off. I know, all mental models are wrong….and some are wrong in ways that are more damaging than others. Much traditional management thinking focusing on getting people to work harder and smarter with carrots and sticks. But the most effective way to get everyone to work more effectively is to work on the work system so that everyone can do better.
4) You’re giving a workshop on ‘Agile Retrospectives’. Who should attend and what will they learn?
Agile retrospectives are the engine for continuous improvement on teams. Anyone who wants to learn how to help their team think, learn, and improve together should attend. Same for anyone who has dull, do nothing retrospectives. We’ll do a project, have a retrospective, and then learn how to design effective retrospectives by examining the pieces and parts of a retrospective and how they fit together–all without PowerPoint!
5) What are you most looking forward to about Webstock?
I’ve heard so many wonderful things about New Zealand. I’m looking forward to visiting Wellington, catching up with some old friends, meeting new people. I’m also looking forward to the energy and drive that just rolls off the Webstock program. I’m sure I’ll have fun.
Thanks Esther. And we can promise there will be no snow in Wellington in February!
In the second of our speaker interviews, we caught up with Rives.
1) Once a poet, always a poet? Or, have you always been a poet? Or, one day did you just start?
I remember writing poems as early as age seven. But it wasn’t until the song parodies of my tween years that I really hit any kind of rhapsodic stride.
2) Does being a poet help you get laid? I mean, more than, say, being a web designer does?
If more poets and web designers did both, we could make a graph or something. Or you could make a graph — I’m busy that night.
3) You’ve spoken at numerous TED conferences. Are they as good as the videos make it seem?
The TED talks are about as good as the videos make them seem, and the videos in some cases are even better, what with all the fine camera work and editing. The conference itself is a have-to-be-there.
4) Your ideal dinner party. You and four others. Who would they be?
Of the four invitees, I imagine only Vincenzo Peruggia would show up. And I’d send him home with the leftovers. Really, I’d insist.
5) What’s your process for writing a poem? Do you need to be writing? Does it come straight into your head? Do you revise and edit a lot?
That’s a total of four questions, so: Private. No. Yes. Scrupulously.
In the first of our speaker interview for Webstock 2010, we talked with Brian Fling. In addition to speaking at the main conference, Brian is also taking a workshop, ‘Designing mobile experiences‘.
1) The past year has been pretty busy for you. Tell us what you’ve been up to.
What? It has been a year already? Wait… it is 2010 already? Actually the past year was crazy, challenging and fun all at the same time. The first part of the year I was finishing up my book, Mobile Design and Development followed almost immediately with starting up the mobile agency, pinch/zoom.
Since then we’ve had the opportunity to work on some fantastic projects with some amazing clients. While iPhone apps have been our mainstay, we are certainly seeing an increased need for other app platforms and a renewed interest in the mobile web.
But my main focus these days is helping people “get” that the interactive landscape is not the same as it was one or two years ago. These little mobile devices, that we sometimes call “phones” are changing everything.
2) Nexus or iPhone?
I’m an iPhone guy. I bought a Nexus One and while it is a pretty sweet little device, I still think the Android user experience is lacking. It is as if it is living in a time prior to the iPhone. And I don’t just mean the user interface, I mean the total experience. People are expecting a lot out of these smartphones these days, from form factor, to UI, to services, and I think the iPhone is the only one that offers a complete package.
3) Looking further ahead, give us a snapshot five years into the future. What’s the relationship between mobile, web, ubicomp look like? Who are the players in this space? What’s the endgame?
You didn’t just say five years did you? If you think about it, it took us nine years to put all the guts of the original iMac into what we now call the iPhone… and it is a phone too!
I try to look at the future as what we know now:
• We know that the always on, ubiquitous network is here. The pipe is pretty constrained today, but there is new tech on the horizon that has the opportunity to fatten it and change the way we look at the network in the process. I think roaming data plans and mobile payments are the next big hurdles that we face, but I expect more here within the next few years.
• We know the cloud is here to stay, but I think instead of thinking as one big amorphous cloud, I think we will see lots of small local or regional clouds emerge. Basically information and services that are highly relevant to my location, but are also highly connected to everything else.
• We know that all devices will increasingly be on the network, and they won’t just be phones. Machine to Machine (M2M) communications is growing fast, especially in the US where billions of stimulus dollars are infused to put everything on the network. But I think of it this way: If it has power, it is on the network. If it has a screen, it has a web browser.
So to answer your first question, I no longer see a difference between mobile and web. It is all mobile, and it’s all on the web.
As far as players, I think we will continue to see Apple play a crucial role in the space for many reasons that a lot of their competition hasn’t even begun to rival. They have redefined the mobile ecosystem in a way only Apple can. Even big names like Nokia, Microsoft, Sony, Samsung and RIM will be hard pressed to compete as long as they serve the operators first and users second.
An endgame? The user… always. Mobile, like no other medium, highlights the importance of user needs. I’ve seen even a basic mobile strategy cobble large companies because they can’t figure out how to shift to being a more people-centered organization.
4) You were a judge in this year’s ONYAs. How did you find that? Any comments on the quality of what you saw?
Overall the entries were pretty awesome. Some of the design was some of the best I’ve seen. However I was a bit disappointed to how some interpreted what is means to be “accessible.” Accessibility isn’t just about technologies like screen readers, it is how your content will be interpreted by things other than humans, like mobile devices, search engines, or even other websites or applications. Poor accessibility traps your content into a single presentational format, the death knell of a by-gone era. With devices like the iPad, eReaders and other mobile/netbook hybrids looming, content must be fully accessible or die.
I also have to admit that while reviewing the entries I went into a prolonged and ill advised tirade on Twitter about Flash. Tasty nuggets like: “The future of the Web simply doesn’t have Flash in its roadmap. Devices that can’t support will become the major mode of access on the web.” and… “Flash will never come near to being ubiquitous on the *thousands* of different types of devices on the network.”
5) You’re giving a workshop at Webstock on “Designing Mobile Experiences”. Who should attend and what will they learn?
Anyone. I try to make sure I have something for everyone. In fact I make a point to talk to everyone before we begin to make sure I understand their background and needs and adapt the workshop of the fly to the people in the room. So no two of my workshops are ever the same. We will cover a lot of ground from how to create a cross platform mobile strategy to building prototypes and testing them. In some workshops we make awesome prototypes and in others we coded up apps.
We’ll cover some things that are specific to iPhone and even the iPad, but I always make sure to abstract it out to the patterns I’ve seen in other mobile application platforms I’ve worked with over the years. My goal is to make sure that everyone, regardless of their level walking into the workshop, walks out with a firm understanding of mobile, gets the basic principles of strategy and design and how to take it back to their organization and take it to the next step.
Thanks Brian. We’re really looking forward to having you here! And re the future for Flash, well, you’re not the only one. *cough* Steve Jobs *cough*
For this interview we chatted with Brian Calhoun, CEO of SilverStripe, the Gold sponsor for Webstock 2010.
1) What’s the brief potted SilverStripe history and how did you come to be involved with SilverStripe?
We’re a web development company based in Wellington and we were founded in 2000. We open sourced our web Content Management System in 2006 and that’s when the company really started to grow. Since the open sourcing, we’ve been averaging 70% year-on-year growth and we’re going to grow by that much again this year. When we open sourced our CMS and framework we wanted to allow people all over the world to grow and enhance the web in exciting ways. We’ve also been helping New Zealand government adopt our technology. Last year we opened SilverStripe Australia in Melbourne. And we have a lot of exciting things to announce over the next few months.
I started working for a client of SilverStripe’s in 2006. As I got to know the SilverStripe team and product I really started to get excited about how I could help out. Over a span of about a year, I joined the company and worked my way into the CEO role. There was a great fit between my experience in Silicon Valley and what the company needed. I was originally attracted by the team and the possibilities of the software, and I’m even more excited about our prospects today.
2) How important has being based in Wellington been to SilverStripe’s success?
It’s been crucial. There is a wonderful ecosystem here of creative design firms, government, entrepreneurs, large and small businesses, all who use the web more and more every day. Wellington is also small enough so that you can walk to most clients or meet partners for a coffee down the block. Having that easy face-to-face contact is important because even with all the current communications technology, a meeting among people is still the most high-bandwidth form of communication. We’re expanding internationally, but we will always be based in Wellington.
3) You’ve described SilverStripe as a platform, rather than a CMS. What do you mean by this?
When we started we needed to provide a way for our clients to manage their own content for their websites. That’s how the CMS was born. Since then, web sites have gotten more complex to where the owners of sites need to do more than just update a “What’s New?” area of their site. For example, they might need multiple administrative interfaces for their customers, partners, and employees. Or they might need to add an ecommerce integration or a connection to a back-office system. Because of the changing nature of the needs of our clients, we started to talk about our framework, Sapphire, more and more. It’s always been there, under the covers of the CMS, but people who build websites need something more powerful than a CMS for their sites in today’s web world. Sapphire is a modern, clean, fast, extensible framework on which you can build anything for the web.
4) To someone who’s never been before, how would you describe Webstock? And why did SilverStripe decide to become major sponsor?
Webstock is inspiration. There are more great ideas floating around at Webstock than at any other time or place on the planet. That’s what we love about it. You get this wide cross-section of web industry professionals that you just can’t get anywhere else. And I’m talking about the attendees. The speakers are world-class, but it’s the event as a whole that really shines. We decided to be the main sponsor because we believe strongly in pushing the boundaries of what the web is. We believe in promoting Wellington as a great place for web innovation. And we wanted to give back because we’ve gotten so much from Webstock in the past.
5) You gave a brief talk at Webstock 08 on “Being human” and this is a focus of SilverStripe’s Webstock sponsorship. What does this mean and why is it important?
We all stare at computing screens for many hours a day. It’s easy for any of us to fall into the trap of elevating technology beyond what it is: a tool. Put another way, why do our clients pay us money? They pay us to solve human communication problems. Those humans happen to work for a particular company, or live in a certain region, or have some other commonality, but in the end, we in the web industry are still solving human communication needs. Our mantra at SilverStripe is Be More Human. It’s a reminder to us to focus on the human needs of our clients and each other as employees. We thought it might be fun to explore this concept a bit at Webstock so that we all can make sure that humans win.
In the first of interviews with Webstock 2010 sponsors, we chatted with James Robertson from 3months.
1) How would you describe what it is 3months does and the philosophy behind your work?
3months is an Agile consulting and web software development company.
We don’t just “do websites”, we use open source technologies to develop, custom web applications. Our focus is on the robustness and functionality of the application although we back this up with top class web integration (JavaScript/CSS) and great design/UX.
Our mantra is “Agile excellence”. We use Agile methodologies, particularly Scrum, to manage our projects and Agile techniques, especially from XP, to develop our web applications. Our highly regarded Agile PMs use their pragmatic day-to-day experience of Agile in their consulting engagements.
2) 3months is one of the more established web companies in Wellington. How has the industry changed over the time you’ve been around?
The internet is for everyone. Even only 10 years ago it was still considered optional to have your business online. Now everybody, from grandmothers to teens, expects to be able to access information, interact and publish online. As a result Content Management Systems (CMS) customisation work, once our bread and butter, is now a much smaller part of our business. Our main focus now is to help our clients “break the mould” and truly innovate, with fully bespoke applications.
The internet is (almost) the desktop. The web isn’t just about publishing or even Web 2.0-style interaction any more. Using Software as a Service (SaaS) it’s also the place you you go to create, manage and store content – all the things you used to have to do through the desktop. This means that we can build a much wider variety of sophisticated software that just “happens to have” a great web front-end.
The internet is everywhere. Apple’s iPhone, Google Android and others mean that the web is accessible anywhere, any time. This opens up a whole new way for business and individuals to access, create and interact with information and each other. We’re also working on mobile web apps that make use of the unique features of these devices, such as GPS and accelerometers.
3) You’re associated with Esther Derby as your Webstock speaker. Tell us why you’re excited about that association.
Esther is a world-renown Agile practitioner and expert on Agile retrospectives. Other than straight out hero worship, we’re excited because her appearance at Webstock heralds a gradual maturing of the New Zealand Agile community.
When well implemented, Agile methodologies (such as Scrum) hugely increase project success. This is not only great for us and our clients, but also New Zealand’s industry and economy. We look forward to spreading the word still further after Webstock.
4) What other speakers are you most looking [forward] to seeing at Webstock?
Hmmm … *most* looking forward to you say? That’s a tricky one … OK let’s say: John Resig, because we <3 JQuery (yes, we're nerds); Jeff Atwood, because who hasn’t used stackoverflow.com; Brian Fling because we’re lapping up everything mobile at the moment; and Toby Segaran, because data visualisation is cool, not to mention practical.
5) Crystal ball-gazing – what trends do you think will have the most impact on the web industry in the next 5 years?
Easy: SaaS/the rise of the web-browser as OS and the “mobile web”.
What were once only desktop or corporate-server applications now run happily “in the cloud” and over the web. And, where once only corporate executives had fancy PIMs for organising their golf schedule, in the next five years nearly everyone will have an always-connected, internet smart-phone.
That’s why we’re putting our energies into learning about, and crafting, great solutions in these two emerging areas. Keep an eye on our portfolio over the next year!
