A geekfest on internet-related topics is the perfect place to find advice and help
KEY POINTS:
Covering a conference without attending presents a challenge, but when it's a geekfest on internet-related topics going by the name of Webstock, it must be possible to make a good stab at it by going online.
So I thought last week, as I found the webstock.org.nz site and
looked for ways not to have to fly to Wellington.
The Webstock folks bring together speakers who are able to shine light on issues about web design, usability, content creation and management, and new toys and technologies.
Just by following the Shawn Henry links to www.w3.org/WAI/, I came across a bunch of stuff on ways to make web content and web applications more accessible to people with disabilities _ and as a side benefit, also make it more usable on a mobile device. That's good news for those on expensive data plans who wonder why their 3G phone feels inadequately abled in browser mode.
Simon Willison's links lead to the Django project, which grew out of newspaper publishers' need to create complex, data-driven websites, and the OpenID method of online authentication.
Follow Scott Berkun down his rabbit hole, and you find essays like "Why software sucks (and what to do about it)" and other thought-provoking words on project management and creative thinking.
Michael Lopp made the 12-hour flight from San Francisco to share his experience on software design and the differences between managing bits and managing people.
I'm keen to talk to Lopp because he works at Apple, but discussion of that is off the agenda without the clearance of Apple's PR department.
That's okay because he has also worked at Netscape, Borland, Symantec and "a start-up he'd rather not mention".
The most recent post on his blog, www.randsinrepose.com, is an overview of how to give presentations.
Unforgivable mistake: "Don't read from your slides."
Useful tip: the last slide in the presentation is "Lessons learned".
"When displayed, [it] invariably results in a slew of cameras and iPhones appearing in the audience because they know this slide fits in their pockets," the blog says.
So how did his presentations go down at Webstock?
"I worried a lot about the audience. I was not getting a good feeling about whether they were technical, designers, managerial or government," Lopp says.
"Then when I talked to them after, they were all those things. It feels like a community with all these disciplines in it."
One thing Lopp does admit to doing for Apple is hiring people. That's what makes his blog piece "You have 30 seconds to make an impression with your resume" a must read.
"I like to hire complete people," Lopp says.
"When I visit universities and colleges, the thing I like to see on a resume is `I did a start-up'. When I was kid, we didn't do that, but the internet means young people now have more possibilities.
"Doing a start-up means they have thought about the whole business, they are complete people, rather than just being great Java programmers."
Lopp was at Webstock on the back of his book Managing Humans, which grew out of his web postings, which in turn grew out of the journal he's kept since he was 10.
"A friend said the way I had written it was not your traditional management speak but like a buddy at the bar trying to give you advice. I took that as a compliment.
"A lot of management books use language that is terrifying. There is an art to management. A lot of people want to throw graphs at it and personality tests, but you want to look at what other people are doing, and build your own way of doing it. So the book may be full of fuzzy California hippy speak."
A lot of what he's writing about is the difference between engineering and managing. When humans are involved, one plus one doesn't equal two. That may be why there seems to be an inflection point start-ups need to get over, which is usually 50 people.
"The second someone else shows up you have to have a meeting, so each person you add is a tax.
"I can tell you how to build software, but all these other things going on are expensive and hard to measure. The reason a product fails usually has nothing to do with whether it's great or not but because people are stumbling over each other."
Since 50 people is about as big as most New Zealand tech companies get before they are acquired or fall over, understanding that inflection point may be important.
Growing companies without losing their creative zeal is part of it. As he says, software is an art, and management needs to make room for artists.
ON THE WEB:
webstock.org.nz
www.randsinrepose.com
