Matthew Botos

Forget Milton’s Red Swingline; you want the Bling Stapler!

I’ve always been a big fan of making the computer do the arduous part of the work so I can concentrate on the more interesting parts. When writing software, that’s generally meant relying on terse or sophisticated languages like Perl and Matlab. I’m currently taking it to the next level, though, by using code-generation tool and frameworks to generate complete code layers with full unit tests.

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I enjoy Morgan Spurlock’s work; both Super Size Me and 30 Days provide a fresh, provocative look at modern issues. It got me thinking: how would each of us cope if we had to live a lifestyle opposite to our own for 30 days?

The first step in this thought experiment is figuring out what that personally meaningful opposite is, be it a belief, lifestyle, or position on a certain issue. For me, I think something that shapes my life significantly is the regular use of computers. It’s how I earn a living, communicate with friends and family, and even meet women. How would I fare if unplugged for a month?

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It’s pretty cool to see one of my former projects, the Unity enterprise social suite, getting plenty of coverage at the Enterprise 2.0 conference. (Naturally, the news came to me through the social grapevine of my del.icio.us network.) I was involved in the first year or so of the project, and it looks like it’s really evolved - this photo by David Terrar gives you a hint.

As noted in the articles, it was a big undertaking with lots of technical challenges. Sharepoint seems a little overemphasized; we also built a handful of custom web applications, feed infrastructure (ATOM as well as RSS), Google Search Appliance integration (one of my contributions), NewsGator Enterprise, and security.

Of course, the bigger challenge in any enterprise is cultural adoption by employees and management. To that end, deploying enterprise 2.0 takes passionate advocates from project management to grassroots early adopters. The Unity team has carved a solid beachhead there, so it’ll be exciting to see how it continues to grow!

I’ve been in my new job for 6 months now, which is long enough to take a look at the bigger picture of that change:

The transition was tougher than I expected; changing companies is a much bigger shakeup than changing projects. I had gotten comfortable with the latter; even though there was an adjustment period, the corporate culture was the same and I had grown a large network there. It probably took a good three months to assimilate, and I’m still putting together the bigger picture of this new company and new industry.

The proverbial grass is greener in spots, though interviewers conveniently don’t mention the brown patches, or the occasional dog turd. The project was in worse technological shape than advertised, though I’ve learned a lot about good & bad architecture, reverse engineering, and refactoring in the process. There’s also a lot of opportunity in the turnaround; I got to be scrum master and lead the implementation of test-driven development and other modern practices.

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In a reassuring sign that my current senior management understands a bit of Enterprise 2.0, our CEO launched an internal blog this week. So far the posts have been short, casually-written glimpses of what the CEO sees and most employees don’t. I think that goes a long way towards helping us peons understand the king’s strategy.

I was also pleased to see that comments are enabled without any moderation. It’s running on a vanilla install of WordPress, so comments are as anonymous as you choose to make them. Being a shameless self-promoter, I not only signed mine, but threw my LinkedIn profile in the URL field. No one else thought to do this, so my ingenuity actually earned me an introductory visit from the vice president of information technology, who I’ve worked under for almost 6 months. More than anything else, that proves how enterprise blogging breaks down barriers.

I was recently invited to join Naymz, a professional social networking site like LinkedIn, but with more emphasis on reputation. Going through the initial setup and looking around, several features caught my eye:

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The Wall Street Journal has some interesting things to say about The Next American Frontier:

The most compelling statistic of all? Half of all new college graduates now believe that self-employment is more secure than a full-time job. Today, 80% of the colleges and universities in the U.S. now offer courses on entrepreneurship; 60% of Gen Y business owners consider themselves to be serial entrepreneurs, according to Inc. magazine. Tellingly, 18 to 24-year-olds are starting companies at a faster rate than 35 to 44-year-olds. And 70% of todays high schoolers intend to start their own companies, according to a Gallup poll.

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This is so true, I should put it at the top of my resume:

Work Isn’t Their Whole World: Sure, they’re going to go to work, but it had better be fun. For Gen Y, work isn’t their identity. It’s just a place. Gen Y sees no reason why a company can’t be more accommodating, offering benefits like the ability to work from anywhere, flex-time, a culture that supports team communication, and a “fun” work environment. They’re also not going to blindly follow orders just because you’re the boss. Sometimes dubbed “Generation Why?” they need to “buy in” as to why something is being done. Old school bosses may find their questioning insubordinate behavior, but they would be best to just change their management techniques and adapt. Gen Y hasn’t known much unemployment and they’re not going to put up with being treated poorly just for sake of a paycheck.

From Why Gen Y Is Going to Change the Web - ReadWriteWeb.

I happened to click on a LinkedIn Company Profile today, and realized it provides metrics that most companies themselves don’t. These range from things that are hard to track (where do people go on to work afterwards), to ones human resources more closely guards (age and gender). Of course, these are just from the LinkedIn crowd; some companies aren’t as young or diverse as that subset appears. In any case, it’s one more source of information about employers, and potentially a gauge of how Web 2.0 and social network savvy a company is as a whole.