Author: ktinboulder

Textbooks

Unfortunately, carrying around a heavy backpack full of textbooks is a reality for me these days.  I remember laughing out loud when I was told there were no digital options for these books, no iPad version, no online version.  I’m sure some amazing company like onswipe will help publishers with this problem, sadly I’ll be done with my MBA program by then I’m sure.

Textbooks are:

  • Not searchable. Instead of attempting to use indexes to look up terms in my book I just google them and usually end up on wikipedia.
  • Heavy. My work bag contains a MacBook Air, one folder, a pen and a pencil.  It’s light as a feather and I love that.  My school bag weighs almost 30 lbs and requires daily reorganizing of textbooks and supplemental materials (all tons of paper of course).
  • Hard to hold. Every morning I sit in this big, comfy chair in my living room in front of a fireplace drinking coffee and reading before work.  Because textbooks are so big and bulky I have to sit at the kitchen table all slumped over when reading course material.

The content in these textbooks matters to me and engages me, but the format is so awkward, bulky and archaic that I’m distracted and don’t enjoy the experience of  interacting with the material.  Now, where’s my highlighter?

 

10 People that Influenced my Career in 2010

This is the most procrastinated post I’ve had, but wanted to put it out there anyway.

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As a great year comes to a close, it’s fun to reflect on people that impacted you in some way, here’s my top 10 list in no particular order.

Mark Suster

I found out about Mark when he began hosting TWIV.  This is now my favorite podcast, I watch it either on the plane or in my basement on the Apple TV.  Mark’s knowledge, attitude and passion for his industry is inspiring and motivating.  Thanks Mark.

Brad Feld

Ever since I met Brad he’s been a huge source of motivation to me.  The type of motivation Brad brings is unique, it’s practical motivation.  I have learned more tactics (Morning Think, Life Dinner, Do More Faster) from him than anyone else thus far in my career.  Thanks Brad.

Ninan Chako

Since our company was acquired a year ago I’ve been on a ridiculously fun ride.  Ninan, the CEO of PR Newswire, asks questions constantly, loves what he does and generates energy whenever he comes to Denver.  I am having a great time working for and learning from you Ninan, thanks.

Mark Solon

I met Mark somehow this year via Twitter and can’t think of anyone I barely know that I have more in common with: tech, skiing, biking, investing, family.  Mark’s story is awesome and his career situation is one I’m striving towards.  Thanks Mark.

Rob Johnson

The project my team began this year involves big data and semantic goodness.  I had talked with Rob face to face once before during the 2009 Triple Bypass bike ride around 11k ft at the base of Loveland Pass.  This year I have talked with Rob and the GNIP team weekly getting a full blown education in API terms of service, rate limits and the activity format which has been crucial to our success.  Thanks Rob (and Jud and Chris).

Dan Primack

I signed up for Dan Primack’s daily email this year (thanks Mark Solon) and have felt more in touch with the PE and Venture Capital industry than ever before.  It is the most informative email I get every day, easily trumping any NY Times or WSJ email updates, etc.  Thanks Dan.

Vivek Wadhwa

I have never met Vivek and have only seen him speak once, at the Defrag Conference this November in Denver.  I talk to people almost daily and cite points from Vivek’s talk about creating innovation culture.  Thanks Vivek.

Howard Lindzon

2010 began by dialing into an 8am skype call with Howard on New Years Day, Jan 1st.  I was surprised when he suggested that time but then realized this is how people that are motivated, successful and driven role.  Time, place, space….these things do not matter to people like Howard.  Thanks for starting my year off right Howard.

Jason Keller

Jason was a co-founder of The Fuel Team, acquired by PR Newswire in 2009, and ran global products for PR Newswire for a year.  We have been working side by side for 8 years but this year was especially fun.  Jason’s work ethic, personal organization, family focus and drive is a huge motivator for me.  Thanks Jason.

David Allen

I’m not sure how I learned about David Allen’s Getting Things Done but it has absolutely had one of the most positive impacts on my work and personal life than anything else in the past few years.  I have his podcasts, specifically the Guided GTD Mind Sweep episode, at the ready.  I use Things for the Mac throughout the day and have used many of David’s ideas to optimize my personal and professional life.  Thanks David.

Lists are a funny thing.  If I had titled this “the top 20…” then I would have written about amazing people like Micha Hanson, Elliot Turner, Keith Hunniford, Chad Fowler, Fernand Galiana, Paul Kedrosky, and Rod Nicolson.  As I finally post this in 2012, it’s fun to see who I’m still working with, who is still a big influence and who has faded from my life.

 

My Blog writing style is now my writing style

As I am now required to write papers, summaries and personal assessments for my MBA classes, I’m realizing my writing style has changed since I last had to do projects like this.  My writing style is now my blog writing style.  I write as if I was talking to you, only in a more concise, thought-out kinda way.  The impact of blogging, email and status updates on my formal writing education is apparent.

Going through this experience has made me reflect on how I write (“written communication”) at work.  My job doesn’t require me to abide by any guidelines as an Investor Relations Officer or CFO might.  I write tons of emails, occasional internal blog posts, comment on internal posts, etc.  I am only judged on the effectiveness of my writing, nothing gramatical.  If I swear in an email and the impact is felt ultimately leading to improvement, then it’s been well written.

I am looking forward to seeing how my MBA professors respond to this style.  Will a looser, conversational tone be appreciated for easily communicating the point or will I be penalized for not following some set of outdated writing rules.  Maybe I’ll throw in a #hashtag for effect to test the boundaries.

Why would a Programmer get their MBA?

I was an Information Systems major at the CU Boulder Business School when I taught myself some HTML and took programming classes like C and VB alongside stats, accounting, principles of database design and marketing, circa 1996.  Since then my life as a professional Programmer seems to have come to an end and the next chapter is beginning.

For the past 2 years I’ve worked as a “Product Owner” for PR Newswire.  A Product Owner bridges Product Management and Software Development, understanding the business, customer and market as well as the code, deployments and infrastruture (see Agile).  I love this job and it’s perfect for me.  My 10 years as a Programmer gave me the foundation for building great software, however I felt weaknesses in my business knowledge, specifically as I work more and more with the corporate enterprise (budgets, financial statements, etc).

So, I’ve decided to get my MBA.

The Executive MBA program from the University of Colorado is right down the street from my office in downtown Denver, the class is full of experienced colleagues from a variety of industries and I’m really digging this so far.  The program meets one day a week, alternating Fri and Sat.  We take 2 classes at once, currently Leadership and Financial Accounting.

My observations after the first 2 weeks:

  • I can now easily read and understand Financial Statements: 10k, 10q, 8k, Balance Sheet, Income Statement, Cash Flow and Shareholder’s Equity
  • I spend every other day throughout the week with an Auditor, Bond Trader, Marketer and Product Manager, my Class Group for the next 2 years and my new best friends.  It’s a wonderfully new perspective and I’m enjoying sharing it with this group.
  • CU is 5 years behind the technology curve.  I have heavy textbooks, lots of paper and everything is Powerpoint, jump drives and, no joke, overhead projectors (think: Jr High science class).  This has been a bummer given my current MacBook Air, global distributed team and cloud based tooling for every single aspect of my life.
  • Spending 1 day a week thinking about business finance/accounting and leadership is incredibly refreshing and energizes me for my daily life at PR Newswire.  It’s like having an offsite once/week.
  • 2 big resources for me already have been MBA Mondays and Finance Fridays

Several of my Business Heroes advised me against getting my MBA but gave me tons of support applying.  I really appreciate that and think about their opinions weekly.  I’ve loved comparing my MBA experience with their advice “F the MBA, if you really want to learn about business go work for a startup!”  I want them to know that in the past week I’ve cited TechStars, Do More Faster and the Boulder, NYC tech scene almost every time I’ve opened my mouth to say something about financing, executing or kicking ass in general, Thank you.

Back to studying!

 

 

Using GTD Agendas and Life Dinners to improve your relationship

My Wife Sarah and I try to have Life Dinners every month.  It’s a great time to organize, talk about upcoming trips or things we want to accomplish together.  Recently we have found ourselves with little to talk about related to life tasks and schedules as we leverage basecamp and email for passive communication about life stuff.  However, passive communication can get overwhelming at times.  I have found myself barraging Sarah with emails about various life tasks which stresses her out and creates the same problems we were trying to solve with the Life Dinners.

A few weeks ago I attended the “Mastering Workflow” GTD seminar.  This was mostly review for me but the tactic of using “Agendas” really stuck.   In Things, there’s a “People” list that I have never leveraged before.  As life tasks crop up that I need to discuss with Sarah, I associate them with her in the Things and wait until our Life Dinner to discuss.  I also do this with my boss as we have a weekly video chat standing meeting to review anything outstanding.

Using Agendas is a great way to cut down on daily email and task switching while still feeling organized.

 

How a pregnant wife helps with software development

My wife is pregnant with our second child, due in May.  For those of you who have never experienced this release cycle, it’s 9 months long and does not have an exact release date.  There’s a thing called “Nesting” that occurs during this time in which a couple works together to get every single detail perfect in preparation for the baby’s arrival.

As I shop for curtains, read updates on the latest in car seat technology and scour color palettes for that perfect shade of blue, I am reminded how “Nesting” plays a serious role in the day to day life of the Agile Product Owner.  As a Product Owner myself, I am not writing the amazing code that drives our application, I am focused on keeping everything in motion and getting all the pieces just right.  As I see our baby room come together in just the right way and our app taking shape so beautifully, I can’t help but feel like a proud papa.

Now, if only I could get my wife to use Kanban.

 

Building Software is Amazing

For the past 6 months I’ve had the opportunity to work on one of the best projects of my career.  This thing has all the buzzwords: big data, social media monitoring, semantic analysis, kanban, ruby on rails, github, distributed teams, expertsourcing, skype video, lean, pragmatic, platform, you name it.  The team is brilliant and highly skilled in their areas of expertise (rails programming, UI/UX development, architecture).  Each member cares deeply about their craft and is highly passionate about our project.  We argue, we collaborate on great ideas, and all stress the difference between opinions and facts.

This quick reflection just reminds me that building software is amazing.  It’s not writing up exhausting requirements that no one cares about, it’s not outsourcing all of your technology to a vendor, it’s not making stupid decisions that leads to wasting money and not shipping product.  Building software is about being creative, respecting the craft and the team and adapting quickly to a changing environment while relying on tried and true principles.  I can’t wait to see what shows up in the next “git pull”.

Calendar Retrospective

You feel busy, wish you had more time and work really hard but feel like you are still behind.  Sound familiar?  It’s time to do a retrospective on your calendar.

I use a program called RescueTime to analyze my productivity in conjunction with BusyCal.  I have tuned the software to run from 9a-5p only Mon-Thu.  I don’t like to analyze my Morning Think or nightly reading routines and work at home on Friday usually declining meetings.  A few weeks ago RescueTime told me that I was averaging 6hrs per day talking, on skype or in meetings.  No wonder I was struggling to keep up with my workload.

I decided to try an experiment to see if I could reduce the 15 or so meetings I had on my calendar for the upcoming week.  I reached out to Project Managers explaining what I was doing and asking to be removed from the meeting request for a few weeks.  I promised to rejoin if my name kept coming up in the meeting.  This worked and I have reduced some of my standing meetings freeing up some quality time to be productive.

Our our software development team we are using agile and have a scheduled retrospective at the end of each release (quarter).  It is important to physically block time for the team to analyze how they work together, pros and cons and ideas to improve efficiency.  I am finding this same concept is important to the quality of your personal productivity.  Do yourself a favor and conduct a calendar retrospective.

Review of Do More Faster by David Cohen and Brad Feld

Looking at my book shelf organized with business books, seeing my iPad filled with iBook samples and seeing the New York Times Sunday edition laying around would make you think I’m a big reader.  In fact, I’m a fraud.  I’m the person that likes to start lots of books, read for a few minutes at a time and hardly ever finishes a book.  I pre-ordered Do More Faster by David Cohen and Brad Feld and read it from start to finish the day it arrived.

Do More Faster is divided into 7 Themes: Idea and Vision, People, Execution, Product, Fundraising, Legal and Structure and Work-Life Balance.  Within each Theme are several 1-3 page stories written by Entrepreneurs, VCs and other interesting people in the software, internet, product development, startup realm.  It’s a great format for the hyper caffeinated, ADHD, check twitter while your reading type of personality.

This book was fun for me to read because many contributors are familiar faces I either work with in some capacity or have seen around the flourishing Boulder/Denver tech community.

Chapters that blew me away and taught me something brand new:

  • To 83(b) or not to 83(b), There is No Question – Matt Galligan
  • Usage is like Oxygen for Ideas – Matt Mullenweg
  • Karma Matters – Warren Katz
  • Don’t Plan, Prototype – Greg Reinacker

Chapters that reinforced some of my favorite work related topics:

  • Don’t Suck at E-mail – David Cohen
  • Get Out from behind Your Computer – Seth Levine
  • Be Specific – Brad Feld
  • Get Feedback Early – Nate Abbott and Natty Zola

If you want motivation for anything you are doing I highly recommend Do More Faster.

Why GTD Projects and Agile User Stories are so similar

David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) approach reiterates the challenges of breaking a Project down into Tasks.  He focuses on the psychologic barriers people have with the work in front of them.  A common example (I’m paraphrasing here) is a person adding “Mom” to their ToDo list.  When digging further, David discovers that “Mom” really means “Mom’s birthday is coming up” and there are no Tasks or “Next Actions” defined to move the Project closer to completion.  This avoidance is very stressful on the person and a very inefficient way to life a busy life.

We use Rally’s ALM product and the Kanban custom tab to manage our User Story development.  I have worked with 2 teams over the past few years and both I consider quite amazing and talented.  Ongoing debates about naming conventions for User Stories, the importance of Tasks, and who should be the Story Owner have never been resolved.  Our teams crank out great software, but always within a stressful environment.

As I was enjoying a nice bike commute into work last week I was listening to the GTD | Podcasts episode titled “The Do Lectures”.  Around minute 10:30 David Allen says that to clarify anything, you have to decide “What outcome are you committed to finish about this?”  I realized how similar GTD Projects and Agile User Stories really are.

  • A GTD Project clarifies the outcome you want.
  • An Agile User Story describes what the User wants to achieve.

Both GTD Projects and Agile User Stories use Tasks as a method of describing the work required for completion.  In both, Tasks probably need to come in some sort of order, will vary in their scope and may require different people’s resource.  Also in both, if Tasks can be defined it signals a complete understanding of the work to be done.  Granted, you may have missed something, gotten something wrong or encounter changes along the way, but at least you’re on the right track.

My experience in working with fellow Developers is that being asked to Task out a User Story is sometimes treated as some kind of insult or waste of time.  We joke a lot about a common Task name we use in Rally simply titled “do it”.  Again, the GTD project similarities are strong here.  The initial reaction is to keep things in your head and resist verbalizing the steps required to complete the work.  Instead, insist on breaking every User Story down into Tasks and agree that the first Task to be worked on or “Next Action” is the most important one.

By leveraging the GTD Projects similarities in your Agile team, hopefully everyone will be more efficient and less stressed!