In Jeffery Pfeffer’s recent book Hard Facts, John Sall, a cofounder of SAS Institute, talking about MBA programs and strategy:

“The MBA program is a two year program correct? Why should it take two years to teach such smart people the secret to success: listen to your customers, listen to your employees, do what they tell you.”

His bottom line point, and the SAS strategy? It’s more important to “hear true things than to say smart things”.

I’m taking a shot at organizing DemoCampGuelph1. What’s a DemoCamp?

• DemoCamp page.
• David’s community post.

“A DemoCamp is a lighter-weight style of un-conference. A DemoCamp last only a few hours on a weekday evening, as opposed to a traditional BarCamp which would usually be a multi-day event and take place on a weekend. As such, they are easier to organize and tend to happen more frequently.”

It’s pretty simple. It’s about going to the albion, having some good grease and pints and mingling with other people who work in technology who live in Guelph and surrounding areas. That’s it. It really isn’t difficult.

If this is going to happen then we need to drum up attendees and presenters. Presentations are short (5 minutes) and don’t have to be earth shattering. You don’t have to demo something you’ve built or had anything to do with. It could just be some piece of technology you feel is worth sharing. That’s it. See demo tips on the DemoCamp page.

Go to the DemoCampGuelph1 page and sign up. Go to the GuelphCamp page and sign up for the groups.

Is any one else confused about this whole idea of work/life separation deal that’s in the press these days? I realize it isn’t new but it seems to be in the press a lot more these days. It was the topic on the CBC this morning.

The gist? We’re losing control of the work/life separation as the companies are taking over our home lives. I understand this but I also maintain that this is partially a new concept isn’t it? New as in since the industrial revolution.

These days I’m committed to the exact opposite, that is thinning and eliminating the work/life separation. It makes my life simpler if it’s just all one and I don’t have to think about if I’m working now or I’m living now.

Jaimie sent me this today. I really like the concept but I’ve been using the firefox search of late and couldn’t see myself going back to using a website to kick off search. I took a second look tonight and sure enough a search plugin does exist so I’m on board with the yubnub.

My question is, why isn’t this part of the search tool in Firefox so that I can configure and customize it? Or maybe allow me to set a keyword for each search engine I install so that I can select the search engine using the first word I type instead of having to use the mouse and dropdown.

I used to use %s and keywords in bookmarks to hack something similar in the address bar. I should take a peek, maybe an extension already exists for this.

I just upgraded to the new version of ubuntu. Not only did I not purchase a DVD, I didn’t even use one. I simply opened the package manager and selected ‘upgrade’. The new release then downloaded itself over the wireless network I’m on, installed itself and rebooted. No glitches, no extra drivers to install, and so far nothing’s stopped working.

To date, that’s the most painless major release OS upgrade I’ve experienced. By a landslide.

PS…The OS seems noticeably more responsive.

Nothing much more than agreement and a link.

This also gets me thinking about the use of third party frameworks like NHibernate, Lucene, etc in general. I’ll just say it, my experience is that “Microsoft” developers are biased towards Microsoft products. Ok, now that I write that I feel like I just said black is the new black. I’ll try to explain and hope I find a point in here somewhere.

[When I say “MS” developer, all I’m referring to is a developer who works primarily on microsoft technology, that’s all. I’m referring to myself currently.]

I’ve found that when optimization issues arise with open source frameworks, like NHibernate, that “MS” developers start pointing fingers. “NHibernate’s broken”, “NHibernate is doing this”. I have yet to run into a case where these haven’t been programming issues on our side. Typically they’re optimization issues that just need to be solved.

Now, take the same scenario and stick in a MS framework like ADO. The same developers who were all over the open source framework will just start optimizing and solving. There’s no “ADO’s broken” or “ADO deleted our data” etc.

I like to say that I’m technology agnostic but clearly we all have our biases. I just think the open source guys generally get a bum-rap from the ms developers. Maybe it’s deserved? I have no idea but my experience tells me no. All frameworks should be held to the coals when it’s their domain.

I’m in Toronto today and stopped into a Chapters hoping to grab a copy of Vonnegut’s God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater. I asked for assistance as there were literally none on the shelf. The chapters guy checked the computer which said there should be some. He wandered off and returned to tell me that all copies are behind the information desk as they’ve become hot items for theft. Huh? How does that work?

So if you’re in chapters and can’t find your Vonnegut fix on the shelf, make sure you ask. I’m still confused.

Mark’s got a piece he wrote available here. I often think of some of these fringe workstyles that I’m currently involved in as less of a destination than a protest of sorts. A lot of people are clearly not happy with the way companies are being operated. They may, or may not, have voiced that opinion but ultimately they’ve decided to leave and create their own community.

I fall into that category and I’m disappointed in myself because in a lot of ways that’s the easy way out. I left a toxic environment instead of sticking it out and helping to repair it. It’s the same reason two tiered school systems are a challenge. If all the passionate, concerned parent’s are pulling their children out of public schools and placing them into private ones then who’s fixing the public system?

There are a lot of people working independently these days. I don’t think the answer is that corporations will no longer exist and we’ll all be freelancers. I think the longterm answer is that companies will learn from what we’re doing and right themselves. At some point the smart companies will have to start asking themselves what they need to do to attract these people back or keep the ones that will otherwise leave in the near future. Or they could just phone us and we’ll tell them?

I was about to write something about using boolean parameters in methods when designing a framework. Luckliy most of what I would say is here, in the post and the comments. As well, msdn kinda-sorta touches on it here.

In general, boolean parameters used in this fashion in a framework API are poor design and should be refactored.