I think the key to using Slack is no DMs

We've been using Slack quite a bit for communication at Blinkfire Analytics, and I'm starting to learn what's effective and what's not.  We're a pretty distributed team, and spend a bit of time visiting customers and partners.



I sent this message to my team at Blinkfire Analytics (in Slack) because I really think it's been a great tool given we are working in a highly distributed environment, and I am travelling from office to office much of the time.

Communication - In a distributed environment like we have and will continue to have, it's super important to over communicate what you are working on, what you are having trouble with, and what you have accomplished on a daily basis.
Slack is the best groupware tool I've used in my career, and I love that the team has found creative ways to use it and communicate  ( Great profile of Stewart, here: http://www.wired.com/2014/08/the-most-fascinating-profile-youll-ever-read-about-a-guy-and-his-boring-startup/ ) - but I think the key to making it work is that 99% of the conversations have to be public.   In fact, if i can figure out how to turn off DMs in it, I'm thinking hard about it.   Really, the only conversations that should be private are HR and in some cases, corporate finance related.  If you have to ask me or anyone else a question that isn't HR related, you should do it in most relevant public channel so we can all learn from the answers and know what's going on.

Many times, I get a DM from a team member, and I ask them to switch to the public channel.  Most of the time, the team benefits from seeing these private conversations turned public.

Interestingly, we haven't had to pay for Slack yet, and it made me question their "premium" vectors of charging not for the number of users, but for data archival and the number of connected services, but after using it for a few months, I now think it's genius.  I also know they will have us as a paying customer really soon.

Or you can just work with the other 95% of engineers where they are

I recently read Paul Graham's post on immigration and the need to import the best engineers into the states.   I think it's absolutely true that immigration reform needs to happen and I have experienced how messed up the visa process is for immigrants in tech startups, but I also think the workplace is changing in such a way where we can now work more globally as teams.

In fact, I'm living this right now as we are building Blinkfire Analytics.  As it stands, half of our team is in Chicago, and half of our team is in Valencia, Spain.   This is not an "outsourcing" relationship. We work as a team remotely using a combination of video technology (Google Hangouts) and live text/HTML messaging channels ( Slack).   These two enabling technologies, and primarily the former which is allowed because of the availability of high bandwidth, are game changers for remote teams.

There are a a number of things I have put in place to make this work:

1) No audio calls

To me, video conferencing is infinitely better than audio on the phone, almost to the point where I shun a regular phone meeting these days.   If someone suggests a phone call to me while they are driving in a car, I immediately ask to reschedule as I find these calls to be useless 95% of the time, especially if it is a conference call with multiple parties.  So I insist on video meetings that are remote.

2) You still need in-person visits

As good as video is these days, it's not a replacement for in-person meetings.   So we still have built into our plan travel back and forth between locations.  What is true, is that video conferencing is much easier once you have met someone face to face.   I learned this working at Google where we often had to work across locations.  I was much more successful visiting remote offices and meeting people face to face, and then flying back and working remotely.

3) Only keep people who can work in this environment

Some employees can work this way, some can't.  Do your best to find people who can work with others remotely.  They are usually driven, motivated, and will get on the plane to do #2.   It's all about communication.   If you choose to work in a distributed fashion and an employee can only work with people who are sitting next to them, or they lose focus when not with others, let that person go and move on.

This is generally working well, and it's been a great way to attract really talented engineers that would be much harder to find in Chicago, or anywhere else for that matter.

Working globally in a distributed environment is not seamless, however.  Even if engineering talent is quite a bit cheaper outside the US, there's definitely some overhead in having multiple locations, and international ones at that.  For instance, you have to pay two sets of lawyers, accountains, payroll systems, and there's always this nagging set of tax consequences you never feel good about.

Nevertheless, it seems to be a better alternative to me than fighing with the US Government on getting talented engineers visas, green cards, or citizenship.  We now live in a global economy.  Deal with it.

How Apple can turn the U2 fiasco into a business model

I've been somewhat fascinated by watching the whole Apple / U2 fiasco over the last few weeks.  In case you missed it, as part of the iPhone 6 announcement, Apple worked a deal with U2 to give every iTunes user a free copy of U2's new album, Songs of Innocence,  by automatically placing it in the user's iTunes library and allowing them to download it for free before a certain date.

Now, I've been a U2 fan ever since the mid eighties, so I was quite grateful to Apple and U2 for doing this, but many people were not.  I get this.   If they put a Jay-Z album in my account, I probably wouldn't want it either, and would probably find a way to delete it.  It would probably annoy me.

Seeing this article about how this whole move prompted a huge sales bump in U2's back catalog, though, it got me thinking about my whole music consumption and purchasing experience these days. As where I just used to just walk into a store and pick something that seemed to be marketed to me and would take a chance, these days I typically listen to something on either Spotify or Google Play, and if something grabs me I'll usually still buy it, and in many cases I will buy a bit of the back catalog.  Sometimes in one sitting, sometimes bit by bit over time.

Putting these two things together, Songs of Innocence is just and ad for the rest of U2's back catalog, and for those that like U2, it seems to have worked. The problem was that the ad was totally untargeted, and users generally don't like ads that aren't targeted to their interests, or their purchase intent.

The thing is, Apple also has this thing called iTunes match, where I can upload my entire library to iCloud.  This allows them to pitch me music I might like.   For bands that are similar to what's in my music library, why not allow me to opt-in to having Apple sell my music library as targeting to bands whose albums I don't own, and putting in albums from those bands that might make me buy the back catalog?

So the money would flow like this:   the music label would pay Apple to target me and put their album in my collection for a month, and if I download it I get to keep it.  Hopefully, I would buy more of that band's back catalog and then the band would make up the cost of the placement and more.  Hopefully they bought a fan.

I don't know all the numbers to actually work out if this would be a viable money maker for any of the parties involved, but it feels like there would be something there if done right.

Amazon, I really want AutoRip for books

I read most of my books electronically these days - it's just easier and more portable.   That said, there are certain books I still prefer in paper format.   These are usually the ones that are "high design" with lots of pictures and diagrams - where the layout counts. They are just better in paper format.

But the biggest drag with these (literally) is their size.   My backpack needs to be as light as possible.  I hate carrying around books.

I don't understand if I buy the paper book from Amazon why I don't get the Kindle version as well.

Amazon, you made this happen with the music industry;  when I buy most physical CDs I get the MP3 version automatically put in my account.

Please, make this happen with books too.

Three is the magic number, for messaging clients that is

I've found it interesting that throughout my career, the number of messaging apps I use simultaneously has been about 3. Three is a magic number.

There are always challengers to break into the top 3, but the core number has remained about 3. I'm talking about mostly synchronous instant messenger clients.  This doesn't include email or things like Linked-In In-Messages.

I'm also convinced there will never be unified messaging. The road is littered with companies who have tried.

Instant messaging is a commodity by itself, but the social network attached to the messaging system is not, because there is value in the social network attached to the messenger.  It's probably also the case that a person can handle at most 3 social networks at a time.   I haven't thought more about that, but it's probably true.

The other observation is that popularity of messaging apps seems to extremely localized across either geographic, cultural, or lingual boundaries. At the start of my career, there was Aol Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo Messenger!, and ICQ. The first two were split across whosever Mail product you used, and ICQ was pretty much for the rest of the world. Over time, I think MSN Messenger supplanted ICQ, especially in Asia because they supported extender character sets.

These days the 3 are Google Hangouts (Talk),  Apple Messages (SMS) , and Avocado.

What's app is waiting near the ring to knock out one of the contenders soon, for my co-workers in Europe.

Where Microsoft is really getting hit hard: new developers

I've been talking to a lot of college engineering students these days, both through NUvention Web and also via other ties into Northwestern, and the one thing I've noticed is that Microsoft is a company that is totally absent from their periphery when it comes to programming enviroments and technologies.

When you give students a chance to build something, using Microsoft technologies isn't something that would ever even enter their mind.  First choices seem to be Ruby on Heroku or Python on Google App Engine.

It makes me think Microsoft is in a world of hurt from the developer standpoint.  Try finding a new college computer science major who wants to learn .NET technologies.  I haven't found one yet.  This seems to me to be a problem for the longevity of the company, as engaging developers is important.

This isn't a surprise to me, but I'm just recording it here as another data point.

It's all about thin

While cleaning out my basement last weekend, I found my first laptop.  It was a Thinkpad 750Cs with a passive matrix screen, and a 170MB hard drive, I believe.  Yes, that's MB.

I was working for Andersen Consulting at the time, and working 16-18 hour days on top of an hour and a  half commute, so working on the train was absolutely critical.  This could barely run the ParcPlace Smalltalk distribution we were developing our architecture on at the time, but it was still useful.

I haven't touched this machine in years, but besides it being really really heavy (I can't even find a google search that will reveal what it weighs) the first thing I noticed about it was that it has almost the exact same footprint as my 11" MacBook Air.

I've used smaller and bigger laptops, but I find this size is about right for what I need.  The utility of that dimension hasn't changed.   But the thinness is what has and makes the MacBook Air such a useful too, especially for travelling.   Apple really got this right.

I find it's the same thing with phones.  Thinner the better.   They can be a little bigger on the height and width, but the depth has to be as thin as possible.  That's probably why I'm enjoying the Galaxy Nexus right now.  Huge screen, great for email and reading books on the Kindle application, and thin enough to be unobtrusive in the pocket.

I, Pork Smuggler

Those who know me know I generally don't "dig on swine" - like Jules in Pulp Fiction, not for any religious reason, but mostly just because literally went cold turkey and stopped eating most red meat long ago just because I think it's healthier. I'm not totally strict about it, like any good sushitarian can tell you, there are always exceptions.

There are only two times I really eat pork:

1. When I am in China.   Well, I've only been to China once, but I quickly learned that ordering "Chinese Broccoli" really means "Chinese Broccoli with Pork."  They put pork in everything.  Tell them you don't eat pork and that's like telling them you don't eat rice.   They look at you like they have three heads.  Plus, those BBQ pork buns are just so tasty.

   

   pork and peppers

   
   
   
2. When I am in Spain.  I go to Spain a lot more than I go China.  Usually once per year.  In Spain, you can easily avoid eating pork, but you would sure wonder what you are missing.  Especially in Madrid.  That's because madrileños sure do like their jamón.  They even have this chain restaurant pretty much everywhere in central Madrid called Museo de Jamón (Museum of Ham, pictured below) where you stand, eat a ham sandwich and drink a what they call a caña of beer.

   

   Museo de Jamón

Back to the story at hand.   Appetizers before a main meal in Madrid usually consist of a plate of shaved cured ham.  There are many many varieties of it, but the biggest delicacy, and also the most expensive is the ham the Spaniards call "Jamón Ibérico" or Pata Negra, which means "black leg," because the pigs apparently have black legs.

It gets better.  The best of the best Jamón Ibérico is called "Jamón Ibérico de Bellota" which essentially means Iberian Ham from Acorns.  As the Spaniards romantically tell it, these black leg pigs apparently only live in the Southwest of Spain and Southeast Portugal and they live there because they only eat the acorns from this special tree that only grows in the Southwest of Spain and Southeast Portugal.  (Actually, they totally leave out the fact that they have these pigs in Portugal as well, and I'm sure if it ever were brought up, the ones in Spain are somehow better and more exclusive.  So it goes.)

These prima donna (i guess prima doña, in this case) pigs allegedly get an acre of space each to rome around and eat these special acorns.  Anyone who has ever seen a pig before knows that pigs will eat freaking anything, so I'm guessing that's all there are to eat are these acorns.

So said another way, when you are in Spain and your guests serve you some pork from a special pig that only lives in Spain that only dines on an acorn that only grows in Spain, you eat the pig.

To make this even more exclusive, you apparently can't bring this particular pork into the U.S. without a special import license, which is difficult to obtain and comes with the right be be taxed at 100%.

Luckily, they sell tons of this stuff, vacuum packed in a box like at the top of this post at Madrid's Barajas airport.   Seems safe enough.  Surely the stuff in the duty free shop is already packaged for export to the US, no?

I get in line, with the cashier that looks remarkably similar to Penelope Cruz, and I say hello in Spanish.  She greets me back in Spanish and asks for my ticket and passport.  Seeing it's a US passport, she continues to say to me in Spanish that it's prohibited to bring the ham into the US.  I'm about 95% sure I know what she means, but I ask her back if she can sell it to in Spanish, and then if she speaks English, just so I am sure I understand.

The Penelope Cruz cashier looks at me with a sigh and says, sounding just like Penelope Cruz speaking English, "Excuse my English.  All I can say is that this is prohibited to bring into the US.   If you put it in your bag and it gets taken away, it is not our fault. Es prohibido."

"Claro.  I understand."

I make it a point to bring back Jamón Ibérico whenever I fly home through Madrid.   Nevermind that I can buy it not at Binny's liquor store a half mile from my house.   That's no fun.   It's much more fun being an international pork smugger.

How great customer service made me a programmer

My roots of being an entrepreneurial programmer date back to when I was about 12 and received a Commodore Vic-20 as a gift from my parents.  I'm pretty sure neither they nor I knew why I needed this device, but I think the thinking is that if you had a computer at that time, it would help you do better in school.  Although I don't think I really ever understood what PEEK and POKE did at the time, I became a pretty proficient BASIC programmer, mostly by programming text adventure games, with the occasional dabble into the Space Invader like games that were barely possible at that time.

However, I think the thing that pushed me over the edge was after taking one course of Pascal in college I remembered how much I liked programming and wanted to take more.  Up until that point, I had entered college thinking I was going to be an Orthodontist, so I was mainly taking pre-med classes.

At any rate, I was learning C and but kept reading up on C++ and "Object Oriented Languages" and decided I wanted to be on the bleeding edge.  So I wrote Borland a letter explaining to them that I really did want to learn C++, but I couldn't afford their compilers (I couldn't) - so if they could please make academic editions available.   A few days later I got a personal letter back from Philipe Kahn, who was CEO and founder of Borland at the time, along with a huge box of their most expensive C++ and Assember compilers at the time.  

From then on, I dove into programming with both feet.   My first class after that was Computer Graphics and although we were supposed to code in C, I asked the professor if I could code it in C++, as I wanted to use my new compilers.  To his knowledge, I was the first student to use C++ at Northwestern.

So I've kept the license card around from Borland, because I became fiercely loyal to them up until the point Philipe was pushed out and probably beyond, and it serves as a reminder of how important customer service is.

Is that a nerdy story or what?

What's taken the place of mixtapes?

Back in my day, when you wanted to really impress that special woman...you made them a mixtape - which was going to buy some cheap cassettes at K-Mart, and then taping your favorite songs for her from your record collection, then later your cassette collection, and then even later your CD collection. It usually included "Open Arms" by Journey.

However in this non-cassette, iPod laden, digital world - what has takent he place of the mixtape? Surely the need for this type of expression hasn't gone away...and if I were in high school, I certainly wouldn't be purchasing an iTunes mix or anything. So what does one do? Load up an iPod? Dump a bunch of ripped MP3s on a CD? Inquiring minds want to know...