I Want to Speak. What Topics Are Best?

We know that community conferences like That Conference and Codemash fulfill multiple roles in a technology community.  They provide networking opportunities, sure.  But they also provide educational sessions for people to learn new technologies, transition between technologies, or enhance their knowledge within their own skill set.

It's easy to figure that the topics at a conference run the gamut of all possible talks, and that you should just speak about what you know.  To first order, that's sort of true.  But not all topics are created equal, and I thought I'd share what I've found most useful, when attending conferences.

For me, conference talks fill that space between blogs about technology, and books. They're the perfect hybrid of dynamic, up-to-the minute content that books don't have, coupled with the story-telling dynamic presentation format that blogs just can't quite reach, most of the time.  Books work well as references.  Blogs work well as permalink content that can be searched on the web for little bits of esoteric information and deep dives.

If that's the space that conference talks generally fill, then what topics to I find most useful? The topics I look for as an attendee are those talks that

• Help people get started
• Help people transition
• Help people improve

If you're a prospective speaker and are thinking of submitting a talk, here are some ideas that fit the bill:

Introduction to "X"

Obviously, this talk is to help people get started.  In an introduction, you start people with the basics: what open problem this X technology or platform solves, why X is a better solution to those problems than other solutions proposed in the industry, how to get started.  In this type of talk, it's more of a survey designed to help people completely new to this technology, or maybe new to technology in general.  Advanced features and deep dives are unnecessary, and you won't get extremely detailed questions, so this type of talk may favor the new speaker.

"X" for the "Y" Dev

This type of talk is very similar to the Introduction to "X" talk described above, but it has a much more targeted focus: help someone transition from an existing technology to a new one.  Every technology has its way of looking at things and those memes are not obvious.  It's easy to write C# that looks like Fortran.  

These talks tend to have titles like "F# for the C# Developer : Learning to Funtional After Objecting All Your Life" or "TDD for the PHP Developer... Really!"  The point of these talks is still introduction, so the talk can't dive deep into the target technology, and you spend a great deal of time arguing by analogy from one language/platform to the other.  This type of talk favors the speaker that has made such a transition in the past and has good handle on what it takes to be successful with the new technology.

New Features in "X"

Technology changes all the time.  If you happen to be working with the next version of some product, there are people that need your guidance.  These types of talks help people grow in their current skill set.  You can assume a base knowledge for your audience, and sometimes get into really cool demos, as new features are generally put in to have a bit of a "whiz-bang" factor.  Here, you also have the ability to take a deep dive or two.

Top "N" Lists

This format can feel pretty tired, but I personally like seeing these talks.  These are talks like "The 5 Best Underused Features in Angular" or "9 Stories from the TDD Front Lines".  What I like is that while the presentation is centered on one particular topic or technology, you can tell quite a few disparate stories without the need for segue.  It's the presentation equivalent of a book of short stories, and if one doesn't really appeal to you, you wait five minutes and see if the next one does.  Also, some of the items can be beginner topics, and some can be advanced, so you can have a fairly diverse audience.

Real-World "X"

Probably my favorite type of topic.  If you are a frequent practitioner of any particular technology, you've run into situations where things didn't work out the way they did in the demos (Entity Framework? I'm looking at you!).  Your experience in the real world can save your audience time and bring some realism to a topic beyond the hype of the company that promotes it.

Remember, Call for Speakers for That Conference opens soon.  If you want to come out and share your experience, maybe one of these topics is right for you!

How to Be a Great Speaker

Full disclosure: I am not a great speaker.

I have spoken at precisely one user group and one community conference.  I love community, however, and want to offer my perspective on what makes a great speaker from a frequent audience member.  These are things I strive to do in my talks, but still don't have down.  Each one of these tips has personally affected my enjoyment (positive or negative) of a talk I've been to in the past year.

That Conference call for speakers opens in about a week, so you may not be at this stage yet, getting your abstract ready and such, but keep this handy for when you're preparing for your big day on the conference stage.

Practice, Practice, Practice.

This should probably go without saying, but the speakers that seem to do best have everything down. They've rehearsed their demos over and over.  They have their slide transitions down.  When its clear that you're winging it, unless you have a true gift for extemporaneous speaking (you probably don't, even if you've always thought you did), you lose your audience really fast.

Never Complain About the Conference Setup.

I was at a conference recently, and one of the speakers was having trouble moving his mouse in the limited space on the lectern.  That was pretty obvious from his frustrated mouse movements, but on top of letting the frustration show, about every five minutes, he would articulate that frustration. As an audience member, there was nothing I could do, but it made the talk feel like a downer.

Here's the thing: the audience doesn't care about excuses.  They don't need to hear why things aren't smooth. Make them smooth.  If you can't, move on as best you can.  The show must go on.

Give the Audience a Progress Bar.

This is a tip that hits me subtly, but no matter how rapt my attention is during a talk, at one point or another, I end up thinking, "Gee, how much is left in this talk?"  If you put this information right on your slides (Slide 21/44), the audience never has to move their eyes from your presentation, but if it's not on there, then the listener may switch on their phone, see the time, but also see a tweet from a good friend and think to respond.  At that point you may lose your audience member and not get them back.

Never Forget Your Fans.  

Good speakers are public figures.  They are authors, actors, and performers.  Just like the most famous of those, people will follow you.  These people are fans.  On twitter, they will follow you. IRL, they may follow you.  You may see them at every talk.  They're probably not even stalkers. Note that you might be a huge inspiration to them, and they may be starstruck.  Yes, over little ol' you. Embrace that.  These are like-minded folks in your tribe.

Never Complain About Your Time Slot.  

I know all time slots are not created equal.  Speaking over the lunch hour, or maybe very early in the morning when people were out the night before, or maybe last in the afternoon, when everyone's brains are hurting and full - yeah, I get that those time slots have issues.  You may not get the full room you'd hoped for.

But never say that to the audience that is there.  They have given up their lunch or come exhausted to give you the gift of their time and attention.  To learn from you.  Don't insult them.  Remember, you are happy to be there.  You're changing their lives.

Never Diminish Your Subject Matter.

In a recent presentation, I heard a speaker introduce a bit of their presentation by saying "This isn't very exciting."  Really?  Then why include it?  Actually, I haven't seen it, so it's totally exciting, to me.  Don't tell me what I should and shouldn't find exciting either.  I'm in tech.  I like lots of weird things.  I like to learn, too.  I'm interested.

Also, your material was good enough to get you a speaker slot to talk to your peers.  Never sell your material short.

Don't Recognize Comings and Goings.

I've seen lots of speakers do it.  It's like a reverse heckle of people who are coming in late.  "Thanks for gracing us with your presence."  Or "Ok, now that you're here, we can start."  No kidding, I've heard people say this.  People coming and going may be obeying the Law of Two Feet and coming from another sessions they knew wasn't going to be as awesome as yours.  Maybe they are leaving yours because they thought it was going to be more basic than you're aiming.  Maybe all the bacon has their stomach in a knot.  You don't know, so don't give comings and goings any recognition.

There is an exception to the rule.  If you have a packed house (good for you!), people who walk in may assume there are no more seats left and stand against the wall or sit on the floor.  It's reasonable to interrupt what you're saying to let people know that they can come closer and fill in gaps up nearer the speaker.

Don't Criticize Other Speakers.

I've heard speakers actively criticize other speakers.  As an audience member, that does nothing for me. But praising other speakers?  I love when a speaker does that. I'm always looking for great new speakers to check out.  Guide your listeners toward other great speakers.

Make It Easy to Follow Up.

Given that your material may create fans, followers, or folks with interest in what you have to say, make yourself available.  If you Twitter, then offer your handle.  If you have material to offer from your presentation, make sure you let the audience know how to reach your material, whether it's on Slideshare, GitHub, whatever, make sure you offer all links in some kind of url shortener.

Those are just some tips I wanted to share with speakers and prospective speakers.  Given that the Call for Speakers for That Conference opens up soon.  Get out there and speak!

The Importance of Science Education

This week is American Education Week, and since I am a strong believer in education as the foundation of not only a strong culture, but also a strong economic future.  I volunteered to spend most of yesterday speaking to the 7th grade science classes at my son's Junior High School.  For five periods, I basically got to impart some of my experiences to the future minds of tomorrow.  Because I put this together in a very short amount of time, I started with a transcript of what I wanted to say to them.  I did veer off in places, but this is very close to what I said to them.  I thought I would share.

-- transcript follows --

Hi, everyone, and as Mrs. Lang said, I am Dr. Davis.  I was trained as a scientist, and I'm here today for American Education Week to give you a little insight into how science education shaped my life, gave me opportunities, and why science is important and relevant to us all.

It started with astronomy.

When I was a kid, we didn't have the level of distractions that I think maybe kids do today.  But what the heck do I know, I'm an adult?

It was all about staring up at the sky and wondering what's out there, and why.

While I was growing up, space travel was in its ascendancy.  The space shuttle program had started in 1976, and there was quite a bit of hype about it.  We watched the launches in school, and every flight was pretty amazing.

So it was pretty easy to be a kid interested in science.  We were sending people into freakin' space!

So I was always fascinated with science.  By the time I was your age, I had a computer that I worked with.  No kidding.  My parents really didn't have a clue what it was, they just knew I was kinda interested in geeky stuff, so they gave me a computer.  So I started learning to program a bit. Nothing but little bits of logic here and there.  Text-based adventure games.  And of course, I played a lot of video games on that thing.

And chemistry.  Boy was I fascinated by chemistry.  I don't know what they do these days in school. Do you do chemistry?  You know where you take one kind of thing, and add it to another kind of thing, and then the next thing you know, it's this completely third thing?  It's basically magic, if you don't understand chemistry.  You've got some hydrogen, and you get a flame near it, and BOOM! There's an explosion.  And what's really happening?  You've got a bunch of hydrogen gas in the presence of oxygen gas, and then give it a little energy to get the reaction going, and boom!  And it doesn't disappear, that's the crazy thing.  It becomes water vapor!

If you think about it, that's a bit like smashing a kitten into a puppy and seeing a bunny come out! Seriously, this is what people think of when they think of magic!  Except it's not exactly a hanky turning into a dove...

So I really liked science from these three angles.

So, hey, here's all this crazy cool stuff that happens in the world.  We've got the far reaches of the universe we're looking up at and exploring.  We've got machines that you can tell what to do and they do it; I can't get my kids to do what I want, but I can tell a computer what to do!  We've got the power of transmogrification in our hands!

Well, don't you want to know why?  Well, we can kind of explain it with some references to some abstract concepts, but if you really want to get precise, and science does, we have to speak in a precise, logical language, and that, generally, is math.

Strangely enough, most schools kinda teach it backwards from what you'd think.  They give you all this math from a very early age.  Add this, subtract this, check out this equation, solve this system of linear equations.  Sines, cosines, tangents, geometric proofs with their smug little theorems and postulates, and you're like, "Well, what am I going to do with this?"  And they pack your head with a bunch of techniques for solving problems you generally don't have.

You know, beyond the situation where you have 25 apples and your sister eats 17, and you're left wondering... you know, who eats 17 apples?  How could this number manipulation seriously have anything to do with real life?

So where they miss all the kids in school is that they never tell you why you're doing math.  Sure, everyone needs to be able to add and subtract.  That's easy and obvious stuff.  You get paid for doing some work for someone?  Bank account goes up by that amount.  Want to pick up the latest call of duty game?  Do you have enough money?  You better be able to subtract.

But that other junk?  When are you ever going to use that, right?

Well one place that you most definitely use it is to talk about science.  See, math is kinda the language of science.  Science starts with curiosity, asking question about what, why, how much, when.  Science, at its core, is natural philosophy, a curiosity about the world around you and why it behaves the way it does.  It's a systematically defined methodology for asking questions and getting answers.  It's not really a belief system.  It's a formally developed way of getting at the causes behind the things you see in nature.

And inventing new ones!

One of the major pushes in science in the last century.  You know, my century, the 1900's.  Ha ha... I'm old.  One of the major pushes was to explore the tiniest of the tiny.  While some of mankind was pushing through the atmosphere and thinking about worlds beyond our own home, some of us were pushing into the deepest reaches of inner space.

Around 1900, just over 100 years ago, we'd just discovered the electron.  It took about 25 more years, another quarter century to discover the proton.  And then we started getting particle happy.  We found the neutron, and then we thought we were done.  But nope!

So we discover more and more particles that make up those things.  Quarks!  Up, down, strange, charm, bottom, top.  Whole families of particles that we can't see!  So science really runs the gamut from the very large to the very small.  From the very current, to the oldest times imaginable.

Well, I was pretty good at math, and I kept challenging myself to do harder and harder things.  In high school, at least for me, science started to get really specific.  An entire year of Biology, an entire year of Chemistry, but when I got to Physics.  Whew.  Man, when I got to Physics, I was hooked.

I mean, here's a discipline of science that basically aims to explain everything.  From the fundamental interactions of the smallest particles to the gravitational attractions and atomic reactions that govern motions and explosions in the farthest reaches of space, Physics has you covered.  No other branch of science is this universal, in my opinion.  Chemistry is very localized to things that are above a certain size.  Biology is limited to living things.  Astronomy is limited to the motion of objects through space.  And they're all kind of weird specializations of what Physics does.

At least that's how I read it at the time.  So in college, I go for a double major.  You guys know what college is, right?  And what majors are?  That's where you kinda pick what type of thing you want to do for the rest of your life.

But I didn't know what I want to be when I grew up.  And in a lot of ways I still don't, I suppose, but I knew I wanted to have a solid foundation for whatever I wanted to do.  And to me, that meant science, since it teaches you not what to think, but how to ask questions and how to find answers. There's no better framework for asking questions out there.  We have refined these techniques over thousands of years and they haven't changed.  It is the absolute bedrock for critical thinking.

So I set myself up for a double major in math and physics.  Thing is, when you take one of the so-called hard sciences like physics, you need a lot of math to understand it.  Like I said, math is the language of science, and to push your understanding of something, you have to get better at "talking" about it, so you take a lot of math classes, too.

And then I got to the end of college, and looked around and thought to myself, "Well, I'm really not ready to go get a job yet.  I think I should keep studying more science and get super good at it."  My goal was actually to become a university professor, because science education was really important to me, and as a tutor, I enjoyed helping other people learn, too.  And to do that, you really need a Ph. D. in the subject you want to teach.

But I was hedging a bit, see?  I was not sure that I would be able to be a professor.  There's only so many universities, and so many openings, so I wanted to make sure that I could find employment no matter what happened, so I reasoned that instead of going on and getting a Ph. D. in math, it would be better to continue on in Physics.

So I did my Ph. D. research... That's the thing about getting a Ph. D. is that you have to contribute to science first before it will contribute to you.  Science is kind of selfish that way.  You have to contribute some original research, something that someone has never studied before, before you are considered to have a doctorate in a field.  I did my Ph. D. research at Fermilab, right here in our backyard.

Have you ever been to Fermilab?  Even on a tour?  It's pretty amazing.  It's this huge particle collider where they collide protons and antiprotons (antimatter protons, you know) like a half million times a second at the center of these detectors that are five stories tall!  These infinitesimal itty-bitty no-see-um particles banging together so hard they light up a five story detector half a million times a second. Again, we're talking real world no-nonsense freaking magic here.  The ring they use to accelerate these particles towards each other is three miles around!

So yeah, I studied bottom quark production at Fermilab.  I wrote a Ph. D. thesis and got my doctorate.  But as I was getting to an end, I noticed science funding drying up in the United States.  Funny thing about doing science these days, is that to do research, you have to be fairly good with computers. There's no getting around it.  Scientists can't do that much these days with just a protractor and a pencil.  Sure if the power went out one day, they'd still muddle through, but computers are a huge part of life.

Think about how much data is generated at Fermilab.  Five hundred thousand interactions every second, running for, what three years?  How many seconds are there in a year?  Kids, you should know this off the top of your head.  It's something like pi times 10 to the 7th seconds per year.  Times three years. That's a lot of data.  No way we're writing that out in a notebook.

So right about the time I was graduating, the tech boom was happening.  1999, still just before many of you were born, right?  Well, the web was really blowing up.  Lots of people needed people who could write code (that is... program) on computers to write web pages, set up databases, etc.  At Fermilab, when the detector is taking data, it's not like you're writing the data points down as they come in.  Nope, to get at what really happens, you write lots of code.  Eight to ten hours a day, every day.  Doing cool data analysis, plotting graphs, trying to play detective and explain what's going on.

I figured that I could definitely help out in the programming world, so I took my Ph. D. and jumped into the world of business.  Thing is, the world of business is a totally different animal, but they still rely on people who can think very logically and rationally.  They need people that can do data analysis.  They need lots of people.

And those people can be compensated quite nicely for their efforts, because especially in this country, there's kind of a shortage of people who can think logically. I don't know if you know much about economics, but when you don't have much supply of something, and there's a pretty high demand, the price of that thing goes up.  Every company nowadays needs people who can think scientifically at least somewhere on their staff.  And there's simply not enough people that can do it.

And realize, that I'm not talking about an innate ability.  Everyone can think scientifically if you put in some effort.  In some ways it's a lot easier than being creative, because it's applying a very specific set of rules, a very specific set of training.  And those are all things that can be learned through effort and repetition.

So in 1999 I took my first non-science job as a software developer, though I suppose you could say that's still computer science in some way.  Ever since I have worked in the fields of insurance, finance, investing, and banking.  These fields not only need people that can write code, but people that also understand the sometimes complicated math and statistics that are used in those industries.

Could I have done all these things without a science education and background?  Maybe.  But the path would have been a lot harder, I think.

Couple parting thoughts on the current state of jobs and science education: do you have to wait to college to learn these skills.  No.  Not at all.  Go to code.org.  There's an event coming up December 8, where hopefully your teachers in tech will do this with you.  If not, ask them why not.  Like today, ask them why not.

Also computing people love to share.  There is no easier field to get into at any age.  Free tutorials about how to program are everywhere.  Write web pages, write simple games.  I work with a conference called That Conference, and we have a kids track every year that shows kids lots of cool technologies.  This year, we had an eleven year old girl showing other kids how to program.  Eleven years old and gave her first conference talk.  So what are you waiting for?

All right, so let's talk about science now. Today.  What have we done since those days I used to look up at the sky as a kid?

How about I tell you about just two of our most recent awesome achievements?  Hopefully you've heard about this stuff in the news or from your mom and dad, since they're kind of a big deal.  Real envelope pushing kind of stuff.

10/25 - Alan Eustace - he attaches himself to a helium balloon and floats himself 25 miles above the surface of the planet.  That's like more than here to the Morton Arboretum, and he went up, just him and a helium filled balloon, straight up!  When he was 25 miles off the ground, he says to himself... "Okay let's do this thing!" and I believe a small explosive charge separated him from his balloon, and he started to fall. On the way down, his body was going more than 800 miles per hour.

To give you a kind of comparison, when you fly on a plane, it's like between 500 and 600 miles an hour.  So he was basically going 30% faster than an airplane.  Just him himself.  No power, no rockets, just the awesome force of this giant lava-filled rock we're sitting on yanking him from his high altitude towards itself.

On his way down, he was going so fast he created a sonic boom that you could hear from the ground.
18000 feet, and his parachute deploys.  He floats safely to the ground, having broken a record that someone had set only two years prior with a similar stunt.  Now these aren't rednecks with a bunch of Wal-Mart balloons tied to a lawn chair.  These are professionals, and both guys who did this had teams of scientists creating their gear to safely get them both up and back again.

So that's just a few weeks ago.  Science!

Amazingly enough, we've got another story that was just last week.  Anyone know about this?  It was pretty huge news in the scientific community, and maybe you should get yourself plugged in if you haven't heard of it.

Do y'all know what a comet is?  Like what differentiates a comet from a planet?  Planets generally orbit in circles around the sun and are generally pretty large.  Comets, in comparison, are smaller and orbit the sun at a crazy oblique orbit.

The Rosetta spacecraft was launched in March of 2004.  Now this wasn't our spacecraft.  This was from the European Space Agency, but 2004.  You folks were only a couple years old at the time! The goal of this spacecraft was to be the first spacecraft to orbit a comet.  It's supposed to orbit this comet called 67P for 17 months.  And it just arrive there on August 6th, and entered orbit September 10th.  It orbits at a distance of 19 mi away.  That's closer than that Alan Eustace fellow was to earth, for a sense of scale.

But that's not as crazy as the story gets.  The Rosetta spacecraft is an orbiter.  But it was equipped with a lander, too!  So on November 12.  I'm not kidding you, it was totes just last week, like just a couple days ago, the lander Philae touched down on the surface of the comet.  Now this comet is about halfway between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, so it's pretty far away. It's so far away that its signal takes a half hour to reach us.  And we just dropped a 220 pound robot onto a rock that's on the other side of the sun.

Now if that's not cool, I don't know what is.  Science!

Really, what I can tell you is that my journey started with the outermost reaches of the universe, looking toward the stars and wondering what was out there.  Sprinkle a little bit of science education in there, and I ended up researching the smallest known bits of matter, wondering what the heck was in there.

I want to finish up by giving you a couple resources on continued education.  People to add to your twitter feed, or even watch out for or whatever.

Seth MacFarlane, yes, the guy who created Family Guy, is an executive producer to the show Cosmos, starring famous astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson.  Bill Nye the Science Guy is another one who campaigns very publicly for science education.  He had on an amazing show years ago.  My favorite episode was the "Eye holes filled with glue" episode, which you can now find on YouTube.com if you search for it enough.

So I want to give a shout out to those people that dedicate their lives in a very public way, but I also want to give major props to all science teachers out there.  Mrs. Lang deserves your utmost respect for spending her life giving all y'all a leg up learning science, as it's one of the most powerful and enabling things you can learn, both for yourself and pushing the entire human race forwards. Without science, we wouldn't have such amazing things around us.  Remember, it's better to shoot for the moon and miss, than to shoot for mediocrity and make it.

I want to thank you for your time and attention today.  I know it's weird having someone come in and take over the class for a while, so I thank you for your attention.

Oh, Soylent. Where Have You Been?

Sunday night our family spent about three hours preparing, cooking, and cleaning up a pretty big dinner.  The entire time, I'm thinking, "This is madness.  Why should this have to take so long and be such a chore?"

The short story is that I was missing my Soylent.  I ate nothing but Soylent for a week a couple weeks back and documented that experience, and I found it rather freeing.

Pretty much every meal I've prepared since then, even juicing, has been an exercise in patience.  I enjoy food prep. I really dislike food cleanup, and they kinda go hand in hand.  I missed the simplicity of going to the fridge and pouring myself a glass of lunch.

Note: I was an early backer of Soylent.  I love the concept, and despite the criticisms, it's working for me.  My first batch was Soylent 1.0, and I really enjoyed the flavor and texture by the end of things.

I did become a subscriber.  Once a month, a week's worth of Soylent will be dropped off at the house, meaning that I can enjoy a "Soylent day" about twice a week and be happy with my occasional vacation from the tyranny of cooking and cleaning up my own meals.

This new batch was Soylent 1.1, and they certainly are taking care of their repeat customers, as it shipped a week after I ordered it.  New customers have to queue up for the stuff, while I get the leisure of the monthly subscription being delivered without fail.

So how does Soylent 1.1 stack up to the previous formulation?  I have a couple reactions.  One, the texture of the drink is a little smoother, as if the tiny oat flakes are more finely chopped.  I am not sure I like this new mouthfeel.  It makes the Soylent feel a little thinner than the previous version. Second, 1.1 is not nearly as sweet as the previous version.  I heard it was made that way to be a little easier to flavor the way you want it, but I preferred the slightly more sweet variety.

I still feel it's kinda odd to want this liquid food.  It seems crazy to me that the food I'm eating is being versioned like software, but overall, I find myself drawn to it.  The gas we pass is still strong with this formulation, but I don't intend to do it more than a day at a time, so I don't expect it will reach the former levels of toxicity.

My Soylent Experiment : Post Soylent Blues

Ok, so as I was drinking my last bit of Soylent last night, I was struck dumb by a thought:

"I'm going to miss this little brown drink."

I could hardly believe it.  I'd come to appreciate the texture and the flavor.  I was actually enjoying every glass.  I wasn't really interested in flavoring it differently, or making it into a shake.  It was good enough for me.  The gas problems were an annoyance, sure, and I did get a little heartburn toward the end, but for the most part, I was loving not worrying about food.

Contrast that with this morning.  I got up, knowing that I was out of my beverage meal, and decided to chop up some mushrooms and crack some eggs into a skillet.  10 minutes into the process, I was thinking to myself, "Oh jeez, c'mon already!  Why is this taking so long?  Why am I dirtying all this cookware?"

And then eating.  To stop what I was doing to pick up the bowl and fork and take a bite felt... well... awkward.  It was a bit crazy to me to think that I'm stopping what I'm doing instead of taking a sip of a simple drink.  Making and eating breakfast took about 20 minutes out of my day.  And at the end of it, I wasn't really any more satisfied or happy about what I ate than when I drank my Soylent.

So yeah, I miss Soylent already.

It's pretty great that I got an email from them saying that my next shipment should be here in a few days, and it is the new formulation (Soylent 1.1), so maybe the gas will be less an issue.  I won't do it 100% exclusively, but I'm sure happy to have the option to forego meal planning and still have something good.

My Soylent Experiment: Days 6 and 7

After five days of writing, there's really not much to say.  I've enjoyed having a break from cooking and cleaning.  I've enjoyed losing a couple pounds.

I even enjoy the product, texture, and taste.  I think it's a good product.

Ultimately, though, I could not exclusively live on Soylent.  The "industrial sulfuric hate" gas that comes with the product is not worth it - not living with a family, and not even while living alone.  I'm going to pick up some more and use it as a supplement, maybe doing a day or two a week on it, as it is really easy and it does taste good.  My daughter had a sip and really liked it.

So thanks to everyone for their support.  I think I am going to try to do a little juicing to augment my clean eating diet.

If you're interested in eating healthier, check out "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead" and "Hungry for Change" on Netflix.

My Soylent Experiment: Day 5

As I mentioned in my first post, I'm overweight and have an unhealthy relationship with food.  It would be crazy not to think of Soylent as a possible weight loss vehicle.  If it provides all my nutrition in a measured number of calories that also happens to be an amount of calories that would lead itself to weight loss, that'd be ok, right?

Yep.  Fine with me.  As I said before, that's not entirely the goal, but it is in the back of my mind. Weight loss, when you're overweight, is always in the back of your mind, to some extent.

That said, while I am certainly trying to make positive changes to my life by eating clean, and by trying Soylent, there's always the little motivation in the back of my head that life would be better if I were, say, 33% smaller.

Friend and That Conference colleague Clark Sell recommended that I watch a movie last week called "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead".  It's on Netflix, so it wasn't a problem to watch it.  Hulu seems to have it in its entirety online, so there's really no excuse not to check it out if you're interested.

The movie is about how two men with similar physical conditions used juicing to get down to healthy weights from fairly precarious health conditions.  One bloke from Australia sets off on a 60-day juicing fast while driving across America, and while he's on his journey, meets another fella with similar conditions and convinces him to juice, too.  They both lose a couple people's worth of weight over the course of years and become fairly well known for it.

But the juicing thing seems very Soylent-esque.  And given the gas we pass on Soylent, possibly I'll try a juice cleanse in the near future.  Be sure to read about it here if I do.

So, to the point, I appear to be down somewhere between 4-5 pounds over last week. That includes a day of liquid diet, however, but I do believe that calorie restriction is partially responsible for that. We'll see how things shake out.

My Soylent Experiment: Day 4

One thing I didn't expect with this Soylent stuff, though a peek on their online forum confirms it's common, was the associated gas.

Note, I'm not talking about gas pains here.  The issue is the actual emitted flatulence.

And it's a deal breaker, in my book, for a Soylent-only diet.  Started to have problems with it on Day 3, but given my long term experience with flatus, I dismissed it.  But as of today, there's no doubt as to the source.

And when I say deal-breaker, I mean deal-breaker.  Until they get the formulation under control, there isn't anyone that's going to live with me while I am emitting these particular toxic clouds. They've been called "mustard gas" and "sulfarts" by folks on the forums.  One person even said that "I've had to wash things several times to get the sulfur smell to go away."  That, my friends, is a deal-breaker in action.

A couple of folks have suggested that the gas is coming from drinking it too rapidly.  After all, 670 calories is not intended to be pounded down in 30 seconds, despite the ease of doing so.  We'll see, as I'm trying to drink more slowly now.  But I think that this particular effect leads me to the idea of drinking Soylent only part-time.

A couple parting thoughts for day 4.

I've given you my impressions, but I'm not the only one interested.  See what other people have to say about Soylent and what the experience is like.

Note that there's been a lot written about the taste and the texture of this foodstuff.  Some folks have had a bad experience. Some reviews have called it gross.  One thing that's certain.  The company continues to refine Soylent to make it better for everyone.

My Soylent Experiment: Day 3

Hm.  Day 3.  It's almost fallen away into the background.  I'm not really thinking about eating.  We had a lot of errands to run today, so I wasn't home much, and I'm just happy not to have so many dishes to do.   I feel normal, and feel like I could probably continue drinking Soylent indefinitely.  I don't have any intention to do that, but I have to say, it's ok for me, at least on day 3.

When I tell people I am trying to eat nothing but Soylent for a week, I get a lot of questions, and I thought I'd create a Frequently Asked Questions list.

Why would you do that?
Well, I have already explained this in detail, but it comes down to needing a way to keep food from taking over my life, a way to ensure I'm not taking in too many calories, and managing my time.

Wouldn't you miss chewing?
I haven't been drinking Soylent long enough to know about me personally.  Maybe.  But in the first few days, it's not been a big deal.  I chew gum if I want to, but it really doesn't come up.  You really do forget about eating a bit.

Wouldn't you miss flavor?
Well, I was on a pretty restrictive diet prior to starting Soylent, so it's not like I'm going from pizza and burgers to Soylent.  I went from a pretty bland salt-free, sugar-free, dairy-free, low-carb eating plan to Soylent.  I was already drinking protein shakes every day, so this doesn't feel that unnatural. Seriously, when you aren't going to eat or drink anything else, you stop thinking, "Hm... what do I feel hungry for?"  You don't wonder what's going to be for dinner.  It's a bit surreal for someone like me who would plan food days in advance.

This is all you eat/drink?  
For the course of this week, this is the only nutrition I'm planning to have.  If there's any issues where I feel I need to have something else, I will, but so far, that's not the intent.  I do make decaf hot tea a few times a day.  I drink water all day, too.  I do both of these things on any average day anyway.

Are you ever going to eat food again?
According to the explicit goals of the folks behind Soylent, I shouldn't need to.  The founder of the company appears to have had nothing but Soylent for at least a year.  But I have no intent of eating nothing else for the rest of my life.  That's not the point, either.  Yes, this meal replacement is a possible food replacement, but my hope is to use it to simplify -- to have the occasional Soylent day, to ensure I'm not overdoing the calories.

Why would you subject yourself to such a restrictive diet?
I'd argue that we all make compromises when choosing what to eat.  If we all ate what we wanted and only what tasted good, no one would ever eat broccoli.  Sorry, broccoli, but you suck.  This isn't a restrictive diet at all.  I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want to.  But I recognize that left to my own devices, I can't make the right choices.  I'm choosing to explore this option for myself so that I can be healthy.  Another arrow in my quiver, another bat-tool on the utility belt.

Isn't it unhealthy to eat just a bunch of chemicals?
The word "chemicals", like the word "toxins", is a relatively meaningless term.  Everything we are and everything we consume, is made up of chemicals.  There's a difference between Vitamin C (a chemical) and sulfuric acid, in terms of useful nutritional content, but make no mistake: everything you eat is a chemical.  A vitamin extracted into a pure form in a lab doesn't mean it's different from that same vitamin naturally occurring in nature.  I guess my point is: you shouldn't be scared into reacting based on scary-sounding name-calling.

But seriously, how is this possibly healthy?
I don't claim that it is.  But there are people like me trying it out now, and a strong body of work should be forthcoming.  I like articles like this one, that provide the collected data.

Why not drink Ensure, or Slim-Fast, or any of the other things that claim to be meal replacements?
Soylent isn't formulated to replace a meal, or keep you from dying when you have stomach issues that keep you from eating solid food.  It's intended to be a theoretical replacement for food.  Each serving doesn't have 100% of your daily value of vitamins.  Each serving has a third of your daily calories, and each serving has a third of your recommended daily intake.  Slim-Fast and Ensure are not the same thing.  Check this thread for more information.

My Soylent Experiment: Day 2

Well, I decided to start work about 45 minutes early today.  Why?

I was full of energy.  Energized in a way that I've not been in weeks.

I won't say it's the Soylent.  I don't believe it's the Soylent.  Statistically, I'm entitled to an energized day now and again.

All I can say is that it didn't prevent me from feeling great.  2000 calories yesterday, a day that included a 5k walk/run, and I don't feel tired, run down, or anything.

I'm not hungry either.  Like I posted earlier, my immediately preceding diet set me up for success, however.  It's pretty easy to go from a diet of nutritious food you don't like to a liquid diet where you're not thinking much about food.

About halfway through the day, I was about halfway through the pitcher.  I took my normal lunch hour, but I didn't spend half of it scrambling for food.  I got some extra chores done, putting away laundry and dishes so that's stuff I didn't have to do later.

I did get hungry around dinner time.  Another glass of Soylent, however, and I was set for hours.  I finished the last bit around 9 p.m. and prepared the pitcher for the next day.

One thing occurred to me today.  Over the coming week, I will probably only dirty a handful of dishes.  I won't spend any time cooking, cleaning up, or doing dishes for me at all (still will have to help out the family).  If I were a bachelor and wanted to eat like this full time, I wouldn't need the following:

• A dishwasher
• Huge amounts of china, silverware, glasses
• Large number of pots, pans, tupperware, kitchen gadgets
• Large number of cabinets to house all that extraneous stuff
• Anything more than a small nominal refrigerator

Now obviously, this is a thought experiment taken to extremes, but it has some useful applications. Life is not so much a hassle that I don't want a kitchen anymore, but what do you do when you don't have a kitchen?  What if you live in a tiny house, where every last square foot of space counts?  What if you live in a third-world nation, where power is spotty, and you don't have easy access to refrigeration?  Soylent or similar formulations could be a real boon.

Anything different from the average is scary and weird.  I've gotten some pretty weird responses to saying, "I wanna try that Soylent stuff."  But remember, everything that we do everyday was once new and decried as a stupid fad.  

Don't be a get-off-my-lawner.  Embrace change.  Try new things.  You never know where the thinks will lead you.

My Soylent Experiment : Day 1

So this morning, I pulled the shaker of Soylent out of the fridge.  I mixed it up last night per instructions.

I was a bit disappointed with it off the get go.  The water and powder had separated overnight.  The mixture was beige, and having separated overnight, it didn't look appetizing.

But I did as the website said and shook it up vigorously.  It turned into a smooth beige mix. Sometimes the community refers to it as a slurry.  To me, it didn't look much different from any of the other dozens of protein or meal replacement shakes I've tried in the past.

So I poured myself a tall glass of chilled Soylent and took a sip.  My first impression of Soylent is that it tastes like just about every other meal replacement shake out there.  It's mildly vanilla.  It smells a little like a protein drink and a little like toasted oat ring cereal.  Not at all unpleasant, really.  They have gone to great lengths to make it pretty flavor neutral, and it is.

The texture got me a little bit.  It was a little gritty and chalky in consistency.  I see many similar complaints on the online forums.  But it wasn't too bad.  Also, compared to other protein powders and similar stuff, it was gritty, but usually I use milk or soy milk with those.

Another thing that was a bit surprising is that it doesn't look like you have enough to eat for a day. The pitcher isn't very large.  I poured a full glass, and it was maybe 1/8 the pitcher.  Given the pitcher is 2000 calories, that was about a 250 cal glass.  So a decent breakfast snack.

On the second time I tried blending it with ice, thinking I'd end up with a Soyleccino, or a Soygarita. I added too much ice, however, and it came out so thick, I basically had Soylent sorbet to eat with a spoon.  That was good too.

The rest of the day passed without incident.  I was never really hungry, and I took my son out for a 5k walk/run and don't really feel anything other than normal.

Day 1 in the bank.  Time to mix up food for Day 2.

My Soylent Experiment: Why Soylent?

I have a confession to make.  I'm addicted to food.  More specifically, I guess I'm addicted to overeating.  In a situation where I allow myself to eat anything I want, I find myself overeating.  I don't have an off switch, it seems.

When you fight something for thirty years, you tend to start thinking it's not just about willpower. Those that know me, know willpower isn't exactly my issue.  I have willpower.  I can stay on a pretty strict eating regimen, but only if it's super strict.  As soon as I get cheat days, or cheat foods, I cheat. That's the way it is.

It is in this way that my problem is like an addiction.  I can't have "only one" slice of pizza or "only one" scoop of potato salad.  If I have one, I'm having more, in the same way that a former alcoholic can't have "only one" glass of wine, or a former heroin addict.

But food is ubiquitous and not intoxicating (it could be argued otherwise), so how do you keep from eating too much?  Calorie counting?

I'm a complete calorie counting failure.  I have tried apps.  Many people have seen me try apps and fail eventually.  It's boring, difficult, and fraught with error and estimation.  There are easy ways to cheat yourself without realizing it.

If I want to maintain my weight, I have to go cold turkey from really high-calorie-density pleasurable foods.  And that brings me to a dilemma.

Because food is everywhere.  It's part of the social contract.  Go to someone's house?  Here's some food.  Refuse?  It's insulting.  Try to explain that they've just done the equivalent of offering a recovering alcoholic a beer, and they can't understand it.

So a while back, Nicole found a medical group treating "metabolic syndrome".  It sounded super hokey, and I still don't necessarily believe I have a "syndrome" beyond "I really really like cheesy pizza", but they offered her a restrictive meal plan that made sense to me.  It is basically a super-low-salt, no-dairy, no white carb, fresh foods only, clean eating program that takes all the joy out of eating.

Seriously.  It becomes a real chore to eat.  On such a restrictive program, I found it hard to eat anything that tasted remotely good, and everything you eat is so low-calorie-density that it's almost impossible to take in too many calories.

And it worked!  It worked really well!  In the course of a year or so, I'd lost about 50 lbs and was feeling really great.  It mainly worked because food wasn't on my mind all the time, because I didn't like what I could have, so it broke the cycle for me, and I stopped thinking about food, except when I was really hungry.  When I can't choose what I eat, I think about eating less, and I actually eat less.

And then the day came where I started cheating.  A day a week at first, and then that day wasn't convenient because there was a party somewhere on a different day.  Once off the track, I couldn't get back to the diet.  My resolve crumbled.  It took a couple of years, but the weight returned, because the food returned.

So at the beginning of September this year, I went back on the metabolic diet.  It sucks for the first week, as your body readjusts to not having so much sugar and salt on everything, and then it becomes a background hum.

And it's working again.  Down a few pounds and the clothes feel looser, and I'm starting to feel better, but on this diet, you end up spending a fair amount of time trying to balance your diet.  You can't eat celery all day, or have a day of only ground beef.  The prep, the cleanup, buying too many vegetables and they go bad; it's all coming back to me.

I remember that feeling from before - that my resolve will crumble before the work involved with eating healthy.  I remember thinking, "If only there were a way to get a balanced set of nutrients without having to think about it."  Sure, you can go the ultra-expensive route and do Nutrisystem or something similar. That would work.  But I'm not Rockefeller either.  Who's got those kind of megabucks lying around just for their food?

Then I heard an episode of Penn's Sunday School where the gang discuss the fact that dogs and cats eat the same balanced meal every day, ever meal, from the time they become adult dogs until they die.  And once you find a brand that works for your pet, you stay with it.  They don't have or need variety.  They need nutrition.  And the folks on the show speculated about the creation of human chow.

I don't remember whether this episode came before the idea of Soylent or after, but it really hit home. I decided to become an early backer of Soylent, to reserve me a week's worth of the stuff.  I figured that it was worth a shot for me.

Soylent is designed as a healthy meal replacement.  You apparently can substitute a cup of this stuff for any meal that you don't want to bother with?  Too tired to cook?  Shake up a glass and feel confident you'll get a balanced set of nutrients to replace that meal with.  Tired of doing dishes?  Take a week off and only wash the shaker and your glass.

That's the idea anyway.

Well, my box of Soylent came about a week ago.  I decided that I'm going to commit to the experiment of replacing my meals for a week with Soylent.  Note: I was already on a pretty restrictive diet, on which I have a protein shake a day, so I figured that this wouldn't be a big change for me compared to many other people on the web that have tried it.  I've been through the "three days in, and I'm crabby and hungry phase."  I've even had a day on a liquid diet in the past week, so I figure it should be easier for me than just about anyone else around.

Time will tell.  The experiment begins today.  I'll log my experience.

What is a Community Conference?

I know I post a lot about community conferences, but I never really talked about what a community conference is.  Like with a lot of things, there may be many definitions out there, but this is how I think about them.

For me, a community conference is community-driven.  It's grass-roots.  A few people in a certain geographic area, passionate about a particular thing, get together and decide that there have to be other people like them.  People that want to get together and talk about things.  People who want to learn and teach and communicate and network.

Probably some of those people already do this stuff at industry conferences.  Conferences like Build and DevConnections and TechEd for the Microsofties out there are a big deal.  Except not everyone can attend those conferences.  The price tag on them is simply too high.  At a couple grand for a ticket, maybe another grand for the hotel room, air fare, transportation, per diem for food?  It all adds up to a fairly expensive prospect for small to midsize companies when it comes to training.

And what do you get for that?  Sure you get the national platform, and some of them give out pretty nice goodie-bags with expensive tech-gifts in them (which is basically a way for you to get your company to buy you something you wouldn't buy for yourself), but you also generally get only the broadest of pictures.  In the case of Tech Ed, you get broad strokes and marketing spiels.  Many people who are there were sent, and may not be all that into it.  You have lots of managers and senior folks there who may not be getting much out of it, but are there as a perk for their job.

In contrast, a community conference is organic and attended by people who really want to be there. It is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people.  The conference is set up as a not-for-profit, so the ticket cost can be as low as possible.  This allows just about anyone to attend, even if they have to do it on their own dime.

Because anyone can afford to attend, it truly means that anyone with a passion for the conference material can be there, and those are the people you want to be there, both as attendees and speakers. People who are enthusiastic about the subject matter and won't wander off mid-conference to play golf.

Because it's not-for-profit, community conferences tend to be run by organizers in their spare time.  In my experience, however, that doesn't necessarily mean that things are thrown together or that there's no attention to detail, but I think you do lose some of the polish you'd get if you were paying people an annual salary to set up a conference.

In a lot of ways, however, that's part of the fun, knowing that the conference is as good as the community wants it to be, because they have to pitch in to make it special.  It's the difference between consuming and making.  It's possible to consume an industry conference, but you get to make your community conference. You don't get the high-priced goodie bags, but you get a very professional conference, with solid information, delivered by some of the most outgoing technologists you're likely to meet.

Of course I've said that community conferences changed my life, and I truly mean that.  Codemash is particularly well run, but it's pretty far away for me.  That's why I work to run That Conference. If I can help make that change in other people that happened in me, every second I volunteer to putting on a great conference is worth it. In case you didn't know, That Conference is a polyglot (any platform, any language) technology conference held in late summer at the Kalahari Resort in the Wisconsin Dells.  Check it out!

That Conference embraces all folks with a love of technology with open arms.  Hardware?  Software? InfoSec?  Data?  We have sessions on all things tech.  With a ticket price of around $400, it's way cheaper than the big conferences, and for those of you in the Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota areas, it's only a short drive away.  And if you stay at the hotel, bring your family and they can enjoy the waterpark as part of the room deal.  Better still, pick up a family ticket and teach the little ones your love of technology.

I would love to see you there.  If you do manage to make it out, come find me!  I'd love to meet more folks in this area that share a passion for technology.

Become a Developer - Getting Started

Software Engineer and Developer consistently rank as a couple of the best jobs you can have. Software offers a good combination of mental challenge, limited physical demands, good flexibility, and good pay.

And it's one of the simplest, easiest things to get into.

Note, I'm not saying that it's easy to be awesome as a developer.  It takes time, study, and dedication. But of all fields, it has one of the the lowest barriers to entry of any field, in great part due to the generosity of the community, the desire of that community to share and spread knowledge, and their by-nature ability to use their talents to democratize and disseminate this information.

A couple nights ago a friend from outside the field was talking to me about possibly changing careers, and I told him that I would share with him some insight into how I would advise any adult to start if they showed any interest in the subject matter today.  Note, with kids, I might start a little differently (Legos, Arduinos, and Scratch, oh my!).

I'm amazed at the free resources out there, so I'd start with them.  This is in no way an endorsement of any of things I've mentioned here.  I'm not affiliated with any of these organizations

http://www.codecademy.com/ - free resource to learn interactively what coding is like.

http://code.org/learn - Directed more at kids, but if you are completely new to the concepts, spend some time here.

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm is where you find MIT opencourseware.  Bazillions of classes on stuff. You could easily start at the programming stuff and go from there.

ChicagoCodeCamp is a free community conference held one Saturday in April.  Meet people, network, learn cool things.  There are lots of local user groups and so many people are available to help you out in getting started.

http://www.pluralsight.com/training - Oh, the amount of professional training and content you get here is amazing for how little you pay.  Per hour of training, it might as well be free.

With such a low barrier to entry, and given how much work there is out there of many different types, why don't more people do it?  Why is there still unmet demand in the industry?

Well, it's hard work to do well.  There are vast differences in developer skill level.  There are differences in demand for different types of skill.  Also, while I say that anyone can learn the basics, it takes an attention to detail, an ability to focus on mundane details, an ability to think procedurally and logically.

Some people find that kind of work taxing, or boring, or just plain can't do it, but I'm not so egotistical to believe that the people in the industry are the only ones that are capable of doing this kind of work.

Of course, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't trying to be part of the education of the community.  I want diversity in my community.  I want more kids getting interested in STEM.  To that end, I am a proud organizer of That Conference.  We are a community-driven, polyglot conference that is held annually at the Kalahari resort.  $399 gets you three days of sessions, networking, and good fun.  Come out and join us.  Tickets go on sale 5/15/14!

Working from Home, Two Months In

Ok, before this milestone slips away from me, I've got to write up my findings.  Because that's what I do.

Granted, this blog has posts about everything from travel to technology, from Team Foundation Server to personal enrichment, from corporate motivation to Chicago traffic.

One overarching theme I'd like to think is interwoven through all these posts is the importance of being happy and productive in your life.  Living for the things that you value, and making the most of your time and passion.

I've long theorized about what working from home would be like.  I've talked to dozens of people about it, hosted a Codemash Open Spaces session about it, watched endless presentations on the topic, and read books on the topic.  From the Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, to the Four-Hour Work Week, to The Year Without Pants, to Remote, I've read a lot on the topic.

I thought enough about it to at least want to give it a shot.

A year ago, I got my opportunity to give it a trial run: a part-time coding gig with a cool company out of California.  The interview was remote, the coding sample was remote, and the onboarding process was remote.  I spent hours working for them sitting on the couch, in the basement, or on my front porch.  I'd work in the evenings after my 9-5, or in the mornings on the weekends, or while waiting for my son during his scout meeting.

And it was fun.  I really enjoyed the focus I got from working remotely.  So when it came time to leave my previous employer, I knew that the ability to work remotely was going to be one of my base criteria for what a new job would have to look like for me to even be interested.

Note: remote work is harder to find than I thought it would be.  Of the many companies I talked to, a very small fraction of them enabled remote work.  Given the benefits that can accrue to an employer, not the least of which is more engaged and enthusiastic employees, I was shocked.  Butt-in-seats management is still firmly entrenched within organizations.

But persistence paid off.  I had time, and I spent it finding the right opportunity.  On March 3, I started at my latest gig.  My new organization has an office downtown Chicago that I've driven to a few times, but for many weeks, I've done my work from the basement of my house.

I have to admit.  It's the greatest thing ever.

Full disclosure, there's more than remote work contributing to my excitement.  I'm working for a much smaller organization.  They know exactly what we need to do, and have pretty awesome processes either in place or in flight.  On top of that, my new colleagues are all brilliant, and I can learn a lot from each of them.  And am learning a lot.  In all these regards, it's very different from where I came from.

As such, I can't necessarily attribute how awesome things are to the remote work.  So I thought I'd try to take a balanced look at my experience with being remote a couple months in:

Pros

More exercise:  Right out of the gate, there is more time available to exercise.  Between having built a treadmill desk for walking as I work and doing things with my colleagues like the squat challenge, there's more of a focus on getting moving than I had before.

More work:  Maybe I mean "more productivity" here, but I feel as if I get so much more work done. When you're not faffing about in the office getting stopped in the hall about ten different things, you can really get stuff done.  With nothing distracting you, it's amazing how in the zone you can get.

More family:  I'm putting this one in the more theoretical category, since I joined a team in full-barrel crunch mode moving toward a product launch, but I'm confident that in the weeks ahead, now that we're calming down, I'll be able to spend more time doing things like getting the kids off to school and having coffee and lunch with my wife.  I'm looking forward to that.

More freedom:  At home, you don't have the same level of scrutiny over your internets as you do at an office.  If I want to stream trance music over the speakers or listen to talk radio in the background, I can do that.  I'm not restricted to only receiving corporate mail over Outlook, and don't have to worry that all of a sudden GitHub.com or Knockoutjs.com will suddenly be blocked by the Corporate Nanny-Wall (both of which have happened to me).

More flexibility and fewer clothes: The school also called me to come pick up my daughter, who had strep.  I went over to get her and was back coding in about 10 minutes.  And she was upstairs resting while I was there. That is some flexibility right there.  That was also the first time I've ever had to say, "Shoot, I need to run out. Where are my pants?"  (I often work in running shorts because I use the treadmill desk on and off.)

Smaller environmental footprint:  This doesn't appeal to everyone, but I like to try to reduce my environmental footprint. Not because I'm an environmentalist, but because I am resource-conservative at heart, in the sense that I only like to use what I need and use what I do need efficiently.  When two weeks went by without having to put gas in the car, a little part of me did a happy dance.

Email:  Working with my team, we depend on chat, and are in direct communication all day, every day. As such, the need for email is basically nil.  We use it for broader, more consistent and more persistent topics, although for real stuff, we tot it up in Google docs and throw it in the cloud.  I can't tell you how little I miss having a life run by Outlook.  I've been moving away from it mentally for a while, but to finally get away from it is so lovely.

Dress code:  My whole working life I've been biz-cazh.  High school was shirt/tie.  I always felt that I got more in the spirit of working when dressed up.  Like formality was learning.  Sure, when I was in grad school, I wore shorts and T-shirts to teach labs, but that was Tucson, and no one wears a lot of clothes there.  But I did have the aforementioned "pants" epiphany.   I often wear running shorts so I can walk while working, or even wear jammies up until lunch because they're comfy to walk in, too.  Don't judge.

Cons

Diligence:  I don't know that it's a con, really, but diligence is a key requirement of having the right personality to work remotely.  It's been written about endlessly, that there's a real need to physically separate from the rest of the home to enable you to retain focus on your work.  Also, being diligent and focusing on your work can be really exhausting.  Being extraordinarily productive from home is well more difficult than being in the office.

Balance:  This is kinda the flip side of diligence.  I'm struggling a little bit because I'm an early riser, but the business hours for my org are 9-6.  What that means practically is that I am often up early, and since I'm up early, I jump online and start working, sometimes at 7:30.  Also, while I totally believe in the need for breaks, folks all take lunches at different times, so I hear the siren song of the chat window. I find myself in the basement and working longer hours that I probably need to, and certainly longer than is sustainable, but I'm enjoying what I do.

Chat:  So the way we communicate on my team is through a chat app.  This is very nice in that it is always open and on.  Once you get the hang of it, you can see what's going on peripherally and it's not really different from overhearing chatter in the office.  But sometimes... Sometimes you look at what someone's typed in the chat window and go "huh?" because what they've chatted makes no sense.  At least out of the context of sound and expression. Another thing that can be burdensome about chat is that when there's a flurry of conversation that you don't want to be part of, you may need to turn off the notifications or sounds.

Cleaning service: One of the things I didn't realize was that my work area in the office didn't stay clean on its own.  In the office, we had a cleaning service.  If I dropped a Dorito on the floor, no worries. Gone the next day.  In a home office, if you spill your coffee, guess who's mopping that up.  I hadn't thought about that.  Not that I have a lot of coffee-soaked corn chips on the floor, but I noted the need to be a lot more careful when eating around the work space.

Miscellany

Costs:  You'd think that costs would be basically a pro.  I haven't really analyzed the data, but I think I'm net #winning for the cost side of things.  I don't pay for dry cleaning anymore.  I wear fewer outfits per day.  I'm paying less in gas.  Car insurance has dropped.  I have to pay for food, but since I generally eat up leftovers that were getting thrown away anyhow, I think I'm doing it for free most days. That said, I have to have and maintain my own office, and any associated costs.

Loneliness and isolation:
I was warned very sternly about this.  The idea of being in my basement, not interacting physically with many people, is supposed to somehow be a drag, but I find it kinda the opposite.  I mean, with the chat and video and voice calls, I interact with my team at a rapid fire pace.  The rest of the time, I sit here by the window, lost in my head and the code and the issues I'm dealing with.  For me, it's a great mix.  So far, but I hear that like traveling, it can get old.  If it does, I'll be sure to post about it when that day comes.

Shoot, those are my thoughts on remote work so far.  I'd love to hear from you, though, on what your experience has been.  Hit me up on twitter or in the comments.

You Should Leave Your Job

Here we are again.  I'm talking to you.  It's just us here, and no one is listening.  Clear your mind.  Take all your preconceived notions about what you were going to do today and toss them out the window.  What I'm going to say may shock you.

You should leave your job.  Soon.  I mean it.  Start looking today.

Look, you know and I know that life is too short to hate your workday.  Let's make a huge assumption: 8 hrs of work a day + 30 minutes lunch + 30 minutes * 2 for commute = 9.5 hrs of your 16 hour day.  That is 60% of your useful day.  If you eat or work longer or are further away from work, the numbers get worse. The numbers get better if you're willing to skimp on sleep for a longer useful day.

You know that every keystroke you give someone is a gift, right?  In this great presentation, Scott Hanselman suggests you check this out.  Are you giving the gift of your limited keystrokes to the right people?  For the right reasons?  Do those keystrokes match up with your values?  Are you giving gifts that others want and only you can provide or are you buying generic gifts that the recipient will ooze with "meh" over.

I've seen your situation before.  You're dark matter.  You're a 5:01 developer.  When you got to the organization you're in, you loved the first project you were put on.  You were hired specifically for that project, so it met your idea of what you'd be doing when you signed on.  You put in lots of time learning, showing people you were excited, showing you could be counted on to deliver.

You were enthusiastic.

But that was years ago.  That was a couple CTOs ago.  That was a couple technology strategy direction changes ago.  The organization has moved on and you've adapted to provide it value, but maybe your day-to-day is not what you wanted to do.  Shoot, it's a convenient commute.  The compensation's right.  Family health matters made it inconvenient to take on a change at that time.

You like what you did at the organization in the past, but now there's very little to do.  You're in maintenance mode for the product you were hired to build.  Management appetite for new development is nil because of cost cutting.  You've been told to keep the lights on.  Leadership doesn't want to spend time adding new features because they would rather buy a replacement system, but never seem to actually complete the research to buy that replacement, resulting in continued use of subpar tools, and missing opportunities to sharpen developer chops.

You're a developer, but because of "budgetary constraints", the organization is not allowed to staff a team that develops software appropriately.  So you are doing business analysis or QA, because there's no one in those roles.  In agile teams that's something that's expected of everyone, but your projects aren't agile.  You spend a lot of time writing up documentation that never gets used or read.

The excellent team you signed on with?  Excellent teams are an unstable equilibrium.  If you were on a tiger team of development that does everything right, did your organization split it up to "seed" the talent in multiple places, not realizing that it's the team that did things right, not the individuals?  Great people working on excellent teams get recruited to join other excellent teams.  So maybe your team fell victim to entropy.

So that team is no longer.  Maybe that was many reorganizations ago, before many different sets of leadership came in and tried to optimize output of a fixed group of resources.

Maybe your organization favors butt-in-seat over other productivity metrics.  For that reason, you can't work from home, contributing to that feeling of wasted commute time.  Collaborative technology is discussed, and maybe even experimented with, but because not enough people are using it, it's never optimized.  Time-shifting is not allowed to enable you to work at your most productive times.

Maybe you're on a support rotation.  That wasn't in the original sign-on agreement, but "You know... We all have to be team players", and you don't really mind since it's not all that often.  Although when it does, even though comp time should be an expectation, it's never discussed.

Yeah, maybe this describes your situation.  Maybe only some of it does.  If it does, however, you should leave your job.

But maybe you're not convinced to move.  You're too complacent.  You're comfy.  This job thing is a solved problem and you don't think you'll ever really need to look for another one.  You can coast out your career on your current skill set.

Maybe, but I've put together a few signs that it might be time to consider moving on.

Signs

• Don't like working on what you're working on
• Don't like who you're working with 
• Don't like your immediate manager
• Don't feel as if the discourse is civil or nonconfrontational 
• Don't believe in management's vision or goals
• Don't believe in your management's ability to make good decisions
• Don't feel valued for your contributions 
• Don't feel the tasks in front of you are very exciting
• Don't feel focused enough on any one thing
• Don't have clear reporting structures; have overmatrixed teams
• Don't feel like your organization can prioritize
• Don't feel like productivity is as important as appearance
• Don't feel like the organization is moving forward quickly
• Don't feel like the organization makes data-based decisions 

I read the following as symptoms of organizational dysfunction.  To change any one of these is like moving a cultural mountain and require clarity of vision and charismatic leadership from the very top.  I don't think that mid-level management in any organization can change these effectively.  If you recognize a lot of these, it may not be just your position in jeopardy; the whole company may be in trouble long-term.

Symptoms

• Very peaked/deep org structures indicate a problem with reporting.  Need a low ratio of managers/doers.
• Lack of information flow
• Lack of recognition
• Lack of celebration for hires or promotions
• Lack of visible employee enthusiasm
• Lack of unity of processes across divisions
• Too many junk drawers 
• Too much reliance on transition plans (which don't work) 
• Lots of Not Invented Here silos of experience 
• Headcount is kept flat regardless of technical investment or debt reduction 

So if any of this resonates with you, consider leaving your current gig.  Fast.  There is too much demand in the development industry to spend time in an organization where you're not happy.  Some organizations just don't get it, but there are plenty that do.  Find one and let the ones that do hire unenthusiastic, unmotivated shlubs to barely work until they go out of business or get sold to a competitor.

If all of this resonates with you, call a recruiter today.  Shoot, call me.  I know enough recruiters and folks at good places to be a good resource, and I'm happy to help you find your passion.  If you just want to talk, I'm here too. You'd do well to find yourself a mentor, too.

And if you're happy with your gig, good on you.  Come on out and be part of the community.

I just want you to be happy.  Yes you.

Don't Shit Where You Eat

Ok, profanity?  Really? 

Well, I’ve never said I wasn’t coarse right down to my bones.

Besides, this isn’t mine.  It’s a common turn of phrase that I’ve often thought, but rarely said.

What’s worse, in doing a little internet search, it doesn’t mean what I think it means.  Or at least originally didn’t.  In reference after reference, it appears to relate to dating within the office. 

Except that’s completely and utterly not how I’m using it here. 

I’m using it in the “don’t cause trouble in a place or situation you are often in” sense.  But still in the sense of the workplace. 

I’ve seen people go out on Social Media and gripe about the company they work for.  Sometimes it’s blatant, and sometimes it’s more subtle.  I’ve heard people talk about their previous employers as bad places, saying things like, “I’d never recommend that place to anyone.”  

It’s one thing to think about the problems you see within an organization and talk about them in a generic way, in the hope of communicating with someone that has solutions that might be a good fit for where you are.  It’s something else entirely to badmouth your company, by name, in public.

I don’t get that.  That business is on your resume, and every negative thing you publicize about your organization devalues your time there and your resume.  And you’ve further identified yourself as someone who badmouths their organizations after the fact (or worse, during).  Who is going to want to hire someone like that?

You have just whizzed in the water cooler. 

Now, I’ve seen sites out there like glassdoor.com, which purports to offer a clear “insider” view to an organization.  I don’t know how accurate those portrayals are, but even if you posted anonymously, you’ve dooked in the doughnuts. 

And why?  To stick it to your former employer who took a chance on you, gave you a paycheck?  Seems a little disingenuous.  To "helpfully" warn good people to not waste their career there, like you did? 

See, I don’t think it’s enough to talk about the bad stuff there and air dirty laundry.  Every organization has some.  If you have a beef with your organization, try to change it.  If it doesn’t change, leave.  But just because you didn’t fit in there, or just because they don’t run the company the way you would, that doesn’t mean that the next person to come along won’t be the one to turn things around.

Companies, like people, evolve and grow.  Some even learn from their mistakes.  Remember that every little thing you see as negative may just be the result of a positive decision that was made somewhere else.  Organizations don’t optimize around you.

I’m not saying there are no bad companies out there; only that what’s bad to you might be a great turnaround opportunity for the right next person, and that you do no one any favors badmouthing any company in your history.

Don’t plop in the popcorn.  Ever.

Walking Desk

I'm always looking for new ways to work.  I have never hidden my opinion that the cube farm is the worst of all possible worlds, lacking the productivity of the war room/pit, and lacking the privacy and clarity of mind of the office.  And cube farms almost never offer the whiteboard capability of either of those.

But my criticisms do not end with the workspace.  It's widely noted that a sedentary lifestyle, lived by most tech and knowledge workers, is devastating to health in the workplace.  (Check out Get Up and Code for some more motivation than I can muster.) So many developers and other cube-dwellers do nothing but sit for 8 hours a day, using barely-if-at-all ergonomic equipment, most of the time with crappy posture.

So anything that gets a knowledge worker up and out of their seat is a good thing in my book.  I love the idea of walking meetings, and I've often had many productive business conversations while walking on the office walking trail.  Companies that have walking trails should promote their positive use more and encourage people to do their business in a very healthy way.

So it should come as no surprise that I have been following the trend in the tech culture of hacking your workspace to include those sit-balls, standing desks, and even treadmill desks.  Stand while typing? Walk while typing? Walk while coding?  Is this uber-productive and healthy, or multi-tasking gone mad?

Hanselman suggests in one of my favorite presentations of all time that one way to make more hours in the day is to do things while exercising.  Netflix + treadmill FTW, for example.  So it sure makes sense that those of us that work at computers all day should be able to make some use of a standing or treadmill desk.

Walking and standing desks are not really even that novel by now.  This experiment has been tried and written about.  Over and over and over again, to be sure.  I wouldn't call the concept mainstream, by any means, but it's not really new.

For example, I talked to someone at the office that wanted to try a standing desk as maybe being a little easier on the back.  I think that's a reasonable request to make, but the individual I spoke to offered that they didn't want to stick out and be the lone person with one-off or weird equipment.  It's a little sad to me that someone I know is afraid to ask for something that will physically help them because the culture doesn't encourage them to find the best way to work for them.

So score another one for remote work.  In your home office, you have the freedom to set it up the way you want.  I recently talked to a company whose entire tech staff all had some form of walking desk, and they all worked from a home office.  They suggested that I at least give it a try.

Sounds good.  I like to try things.

I have a treadmill that has pretty solid arms on it for support, so I thought I could probably fashion a temporary desk to try it out.  I happened to have an 8 ft scrap plank that was just the width of these arms, and some old scrap 2x4 for stabilization.  Here's what I came up with...

The Buildout

It starts with the bare treadmill.  You can see the arms that I'm going to place the plank on.

The invisible man went for a walk.  Naked.  In my shoes!

Nothing more than a strip of plywood cut to length with a couple 2x4s deck-screwed onto it.  The 2x4s sit just outside the rails so that the whole thing won't move left to right.

A very simple construction.

I placed the support over the beams.  It fit perfectly.  Here it is with the laptop sitting on it.  Trouble is, those bars are around waist level.  That means that my arms would be almost fully extended to type.  It was not comfortable to either look at the laptop or type.

The Invisible Man is now hanging out at the treadmill desk.  Still naked, that perv!

So we dreamed up a little top extension.  A platform on the platform, as it were.  This was made from the rest of the sheet of plywood from the platform itself and a couple scraps of 3/4" particle board we had remaining from one of our prior years' Halloween projects.

Here, Gamble helps me put together a top extension to the platform.

And once we put it in place, we saw a couple things.  One, the height was perfect.  Two, the support sides for the top extension hit the front handrest/heart rate sensors (I never use these, so I don't mind covering them).  I was going to have to notch those out.

Much better, but not perfect.

I build a lot of stupid little things around my house out of plywood and 2x4, when a rough construction will fit the bill, but I really don't like the look of unfinished wood.  I also don't have a lot of patience for stain, and don't like the cleanup of painting, but spray paint, spray paint I can do.  I took out a can of leftover black, and Gamble and I painted the pieces.

Taggin'.

Then we waited for the paint to dry.  It took forever, like watching paint dry.  Then we screwed the top to the bottom, and put it up on the treadmill:

Here you can see the finished piece.  It's at the perfect height, and you can see the angle I cut the back of the top extension to fit.  Note also, the Invisible Man has finished his workout.

Here's the final product.  When not using a laptop, you can still see the stats fine, and it's only a bit of a reach to hit the numbers.  With a laptop, however, you can see precisely nothing.  That's kinda good, because as anyone who uses a treadmill can tell you, sometimes it's more motivating if you forget how far you've gone (see throw yourself at the treadmill and miss).

Sweet.  The finished product.  The paint is dry to the touch, but looks wet around the edges still.  

The Verdict

I can't give you a full verdict just yet, since I only used it for a couple days before heading to Codemash. Once I had this built, I got on the treadmill.  What I can say is that starting out, it's hard to get used to.  The first thing I tried to do was read articles on my feedreader, and I found that the side to side motion of my head and body made it a little tough to concentrate on the screen.

I also didn't really know what speed to start at.  Some people that use a walking desk recommend 2 mph, so that's where I started.  I usually warm up at a walking pace of 3 mph and go from there, but given that this is meant for long periods of time, I figure I'll go slow.  My treadmill doesn't really like speeds slower than 2 mph, so this seemed like a good place to start.

After 20 minutes, though, I found that sensation had gone away enough to try typing.  I opened up Webmatrix and pulled open the source to www.kevinpdavis.com, I pulled down a NuGet package and included it in a sample page, just to get the feel of coding.  It's a little distracting, and I didn't feel that I was super quick.  It felt like each thing I did took extra time, but maybe that was just self conscious.

After I got down, I felt a little sore in my back and hips.  It's been a while since I've been on regular exercise, so this isn't a huge surprise, but definitely unwelcome (that said, this is why I'm looking at using a treadmill desk, after all).

So this morning, I tried again.  I've written this entire article while standing, and it's been relatively comfortable the whole time.  I got right up to speed and started typing right away, and haven't really felt weird about it (well, maybe a couple times, but only for a minute or so).  It's been roughly an hour, however, and I'm starting to get tight in the hips and back, so it's probably time to stop for now, right at the hour mark.

Another Attempt
For us coders, a big question is whether it's possible to get into the zone while walking.  Can you concentrate on a difficult problem, using whatever tools you like, while walking.  I very much wanted to figure it out, so I made another attempt, this time with some work I needed to get done.

And it turns out yes, it's totally possible to code.  You eventually just kinda forget you're walking.  Until you get tired, or you get a little thirsty (the shelf is big and sturdy enough, however, to handle a beverage on it, but remembering to keep hydrated isn't obvious).

One thing I did notice is that after I got off, I had sea legs, where it was almost weird to not be walking.  I'd heard similar things from people who use walking desks, so it didn't surprise me that much.

If you have any feedback, recommendations, or experiences, I'd love to hear about them in the comments or on twitter @kevinpdavis.