Accidentally in Code

Tag: Extreme Blue

  • Patents and Prior Art

    Patents and Prior Art

    The Future Of Medical Science
    Credit: Geek and Poke / http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2007/07/the-future-of-m.html

    As part of Extreme Blue, my team and I put in two patent applications. One of them was put on ice, and the other has been deemed publish. This is pretty cool! So I’ve been working on it since last week. The end is in sight – I hope.

    This has meant reading a disgusting amount of patents and patent applications. At the time when we put together the proposals, and now as I try and write the paper. Randomly one of my search results was one about dismemberment.

    Some of the patents I’ve read are very clear, and concise, and make sense. I read one from Google – that one was good. Some of them (particularly the applications) are utter nonsense; vague, unspecific, with unrestricted scope. The good ones are inspiring – “see, we did something worthwhile! People are in this space. It’s interesting!” – the bad ones? I feel like my brain is melting, that they are making me stupid, and that the biggest problem with patent trolls (yes I’ve come across some of their stuff) is the utter drivel they write that people actually working in that space have to suffer through reading.

    The upside is that once this is done, and published, I’ll get to share what I spend the summer working on. Publishing is much faster than patenting, so that’s coming sooner. Also, I have mixed feelings about patents. Close to your own work, it seems obvious. But I can’t believe other people won’t have this same idea, independent of seeing what we did. I’m happy with this outcome.

    But – I think you have to play the game that’s on. I don’t know any software engineers who are wholly in favour of patents, and patent trolls are widely thought to be complete scum. But I think there’s more credibility to argue against the system if you’ve been inside and looked at it. When someone with a stack of patents says to me, “I think there’s a problem” that carries more weight. Patent applications were part of the EB game. To opt out would be to let down my team. I would not do that.

    I don’t really understand, how if our ethics stop us patenting, how that helps. The trolls won’t stop. In fact, won’t it be easier for them? When we patent, or publish, we create prior art that others can cite and build upon.

    Back to the dismemberment patent – so ridiculous and far away from what I worked upon that I think it’s a safe example.

    I might patent or publish a system for decapitation (as clearly outlined in patent X), which is combined with the sophisticated intravenous delivery system for a hallucinogenic drug (as outlined in patent Y), and my innovation lies in the combination, previously not thought possible, by the invention of this specific mechanism.

    Meanwhile, the patent troll has “invented” a system to do with decapitation, where various vague and poorly defined things might happen before, and/or afterwards.

    I believe, strongly, that IBM is an ethical company. I was proud to work there, and sad to leave. I think where I’m going next is an ethical company too. Both use patents defensively. Both invent things, and patent genuine work, not airy-fairy floaty ideas.

    So on balance, I’m in favour of the creation of prior art. Because the more time I spend staring at my screen, trying to decipher the interwoven language, the exhausting and poorly defined details… the more I think that we don’t beat patent trolls by not participating. I think we can raise the bar so that they can’t compete because they don’t implement. For myself, I just choose companies that I believe act honourably in the process.

    Anyway, maybe I’m too optimistic. Feel free to tell me I’m wrong in the comments.

  • 10 Things I Learned About Presenting in Extreme Blue

    lolcat javascript
    Credit: flickr / Brian Warren
    1. You can distill a 15 week project to a 4 minute pitch. In fact, you can probably distill anything to 4 minutes if you truly understand it – the trick is learning what to leave out.
    2. Images are trickier than you think. For instance, our project involved a university and we wanted to have a picture of a university in our slide deck. The thing is, people’s images of universities are highly localized. Some – big, famous – schools are recognized by everyone, but particularly second or third tier universities are influenced by where a person grew up, and what university they attended themselves. You would not believe how much time we spent thinking about this.
    3. Start with the conclusion. Cate who’s been trapped in grad school for two years wants to start with the justification and work up to the conclusion. She is wrong. You have credibility as a speaker and you can speak pyramid style – people will ask questions later.
    4. Leave stuff out. There was a question we kept getting to the point that we contemplated including the answer to it in our presentation. We didn’t, theorizing that it would get people to come to our booth to speak to us. It worked! Also, can you imagine anything more depressing than having nothing left to say after you present? Save it for the conversations that follow, and blog posts.
    5. No amount of practice makes perfect. Towards the end, our team got to the point where we’d been through so many iterations that we were struggling to remember what we had to say. We had some minor tweaks that we’d have liked to make, but it was time to stop and get what we had right.
    6. Presenting as a team is different. Really, really different. For a number of reasons, but here are the big 3 – you have to have a consistent style across everyone, you have to trust your teammates, and you have to consider body language when not speaking – i.e. you want to redirect people’s focus to your co-presenter who is speaking. This is harder than you think, especially when you’ve heard their section approximately 34,576,295 times.
    7. The right level of trust is important. Some teams spent a lot of time arguing about phrasing, semantics, details. Others took feedback constructively and debated, but not for longer than necessary. The first approach didn’t predict a better presentation, only late nights and weekends working.
    8. You need to be passionate about your topic. Some time around the midpoint, where my section of the pitch had changed at least every week, and sometimes more… I lost my passion for it. I was bored of what I was saying, and tired of it changing. People noticed. A session with an amazing presentation guru changed my perspective and inspired me to be passionate about what I was saying. It changed everything.
    9. Be clear about what you want when asking for feedback. We would pitch to people often, but came to find they didn’t always comprehend how short a time 4 minutes is. Towards the end, I realized that saying – we are right on 4 minutes, so adding something means we need to take something out would help focus suggestions. There is always more stuff to add. You only want add the things that are part of your key message.
    10. Most people do not present well. After all the training, and all the pitching, and the constant feedback I’ve started to notice things. Like, presenters who fidget, or don’t make eye-contact, who ramble and/or repeat themselves. Hand gestures are incredibly hard to master. It’s hard to stand up in front of people and talk – kudos to those who do it – but it had taught me that a little more consideration to what you’re doing will make you stand out.
  • I am an IBMer

    I am an IBMer

    cate sam palmisano
    Credit: ShaoWei Png

    Tomorrow is the last day of Extreme Blue. At the US Expo in New York last week, I stood 6ft from Sam Palmisano, and listened to him talk about IBM’s vision for a smarter planet. He spoke about why we need to build a smarter planet and how IBM is trying to engineer this vision.

    That was the day that I “got it”. Earlier the same day, Nick Donofrio had talked to us about the origin of Extreme Blue, the importance of focusing on the problem and how IBM almost died in 1993 and how, since the reinvention, the company approaches innovation.

    Numerous IBMers have talked to me about how great it is to work for a company that has reinvented itself multiple times. Finally, I understand the magnitude of the change – I get it. I am proud to be an IBMer – even if it has only been temporary.

    However, here’s the most awesome thing. It doesn’t feel temporary. Wherever happens – wherever I go next, whatever I end up doing – I’m taking these values with me.

    Focus on the Problem.

    Innovate.

    Act with Integrity.

  • Failure Is Not An Option

    Egg Drop Failure
    Credit: xkcd

    Having admitted that I seek out a high level of stress, it’s timely that I have, once again, gone way past the level of stress that I like to operate and hit the “woah this is damaging to my productivity” bit. I wrote before about How to be Crazy Busy Without Losing Your Mind and apparently I should be listening to my own advice.

    Or not, because flying right out of my comfort zone is one way to stretch it. Best not dwell on other likely outcomes though.

    Over the next two and a half weeks I will:

    • Pitch at the Canadian Expo for Extreme Blue
    • Pitch at the North American Expo for Extreme Blue
    • Spend half a day in Toronto finding out more about GBS (do I want to be a consultant? Answers on a postcard, please)
    • Head to Waterloo for my 2nd on-site at Google
    • Pitch to guy working on awesome project
    • Interest interview with another awesome project
    • Leave for a 3 week trip to the UK

    In order to get to New York, we’re taking the bus. What’s interesting is the thing I’m most freaking out about right now is not one of the Failure-Is-Not-An-Option items on the list. It’s the thought of 8-10 hours of enforced unproductivity each way. It occurred to me the bus might have power-outlets and wifi and I could use the time to Get Stuff Done. It doesn’t. (The distress this caused me was amusing to my teammates, and then worrying – their plan: get me drunk and/or medicate me. My plan: read The Algorithm Design Manual (Amazon)). The way back was going to be 15 hours on the bus, because we’re coming back via Toronto. I’ve ended up getting off in Toronto instead for this GBS thing, and, unable to bear the thought of 5 hours on the train will fly back to Ottawa after that.

    Was the total of 25 hours or so on a bus distressing to me as a European, because my perception of distance is different? I think it’s just – what do you do on a bus? With no power or wifi, clearly not code.

    HR Guy: What were you planning on doing?

    Me: I was thinking about creating some wordles, but anyway it’s not relevant. The thing is I don’t cope well doing nothing.

    He suggested I watch movies and sleep. I think he and I see the world very differently.

    So, what is this other than another story as to how I’ve completely over-committed and over-scheduled myself, again?

    I have put this huge stress on myself because I really want to have a job lined up for January by the end of September, preferably by the end of August. And I don’t want it to be just any job, I want it to be a great job. And this is a problem because my ideas of what I want to do are somewhat vague – I want to make things! I want them to be pretty! I want to make the world a better place! Programmers can do that, I know it!

    IBM is not a place that deals in vague. I was speaking to this awesome woman the other week and she said, “I love PROCESS! That’s why I liked being a software engineer, because I liked the PROCESS!” Last week I saw her again at a lunch and learn – she was talking about how she found a great job at IBM and it was all about how she navigated the process.

    I do not deal with the process well. I find it intimidating and overwhelming and confusing. I’m trying to create this mapping between my ideals, goals, priorities and things that will fit into the process. I’m asking for things – which I hate, preferring to operate on the “be awesome and people will notice principle” that has so often failed me and others optimistic enough to use it.

    Our MBA is my career coach. He says things like, “When you’re in Toronto you should set up meetings with at least 6 people”, and I make a note that I must speak to multiple people, ask my Toronto-based mentor if she wants to have lunch, and ask more people if they are willing for me to email them my resume.

    It’s a start. I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile… can I send you my resume?
    Cate Huston UK Resume Mod

  • My Secret Life as an Introvert

    hiding
    Credit: flickr / PoliCardo

    My friend Maggie tells me I’m an introvert. Not because I’m shy, or because large groups make me nervous, but because I don’t get my energy from being around people. I was surprised by this, because I guess I’ve always considered myself to be extroverted and so I asked another close friend and he said that was nonsense because I’m happy to be the center of attention and the life of a party.

    It doesn’t really matter which of them is right – introvert, extrovert – it’s is just a label. Thinking about it, I’ve decided that I need to be both. Too much time alone makes me angsty, but I don’t think someone who was truly an extrovert would love living alone as much as I do.

    When my life is very social, though, I do get to these points where I desperately need to be alone. Too much stuff going on, too many people makes me stressed. When I get to about a week without any “Cate-time” I will literally block off time in my calendar to make sure I get it. I got to that point last week.

    Perhaps it’s not really about introvert vs. extrovert. Perhaps the real problem I’m having, is being a maker living on a manager schedule. Hour by hour blocks and lots of meetings and jamming about pitches and posters might be manageable, but then my personal life is on manager-time as well… and it’s too much. It means that I get to the point where it’s mid-afternoon on a day when we’ve spent all that day working on our pitch and I feel strongly that if I have about half an hour before I’m going to crack from too many people, too much talking. From the article linked above (emphasis mine):

    I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there’s sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you’re a maker, think of your own case. Don’t your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don’t. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.

    My whole team was overloaded like this, and so we called it quits and I escaped and – bliss – had a whole evening of maker time, which I spent coding. It’s interesting that most of the technical people find the pitching stressful.

    I would have thought I would be OK, since I do a fair amount of public speaking. However,  there are two things that make giving talks by myself different:

    1. It’s one aspect of what I do where I do my best at the time and try and improve for next time, sure, but good enough is fine. Because I won’t teach that exact same class again any time soon, or give that same talk.
    2. The talks I give alone are either are made in maker time – in fact, require maker time to create because it’s all about connecting the dots and inspiring.

    In what we’re working on, we give the same pitch nearly every day. Each time we have something new to work on. We have thrown out my section and started over on it more times that I can count. It’s exhausting. The idea might need maker time, but the pitching and the discussions and the hammering away at it until it shines – that’s manager time.

    So I’m going to make a conscious decision that as my work-schedule moves to manager-time, I’m going to shift my personal life to maker-time. It satisfies my need to be alone, and my need for unstructured time in which to create. Coding distracts me from the stress of pitch-pitch-pitch.

    Strange that the final stretch and living on manager-time is the biggest stress I have. But good to know.

    How about you? Do you live on maker-time or manager-time? How do you cope when you’re on the wrong one?

  • Extreme Blue

    Extreme Blue

    Morpho peleides (blue morpho butterfly)
    Credit: flickr / Armando Maynez

    One of my closest friends works at another large tech company, and all summer we’ve been having conversations that go like this:

    ME: I’ve had such an awesome day! I found out about this awesome thing and made some progress on my awesome project. I love my job! How was yours?

    HIM: Good! I finally hunted down this bug and I am a Java-optimization ninja.

    And then, we have to find something else to talk about. And it’s completely understandable – but nevertheless, hard to be so passionate and excited about something and not be able to share that with the most important people in your life. It’s the same with blogging about it – not being sure what I could say, I haven’t been saying anything.

    However, last week I had an epiphany. The technical project is perhaps the least interesting part of Extreme Blue. There is a reason why they call it a “leadership development program”. Yes, they take people with strong technical skills and you’re pushed that way, but you’re pushed in other ways and taught so many other skills too.

    It’s All About the Pitch

    The most important thing we work on is the pitch. At the end of the summer we’ll go to Armonk and we’ll have 4 minutes to sell what we’ve been working on. At first that seemed impossible, but the truth is that if you can’t explain the key concepts of what you’re doing in that short a period, you don’t understand it.

    We’re down to 3:30, and looking for really compelling things for that last 30 seconds. Not the ideas that make our case – the ones that hammer it home so that people watching us can’t doubt that what we’re doing has potential.

    As a programmer, or a technical person, it can be hard to accept the idea that the pitch is more important than the actual work. However, without a business case, there is no technical work. Our job is to prototype and demonstrate value. So our team is embracing that idea.

    Ask

    If we have a question, or someone who it would be helpful to talk to, saying “I’m Cate and I’m in Extreme Blue – do you have a moment?” has almost invariably got me what I need. This is awesome, and a refreshing change from university culture. Obviously, you don’t want to be annoying or too pushy. But if you need to, ask – it’s stupid not to.

    Leading Through Vision: Effective Communication

    Everyone in EB has shown leadership. So just because you’re invariably in charge for every university project, doesn’t mean you will be here. If you have a team of four and everyone is trying to lead but has a different agenda, that won’t work. Defining a collective vision that you’ll work towards and letting everyone lead some aspect seems to be working for us.

    Communication is so important. Initially, the MBA and I were communicating in what may as well been two different languages. Now we both make an effort to speak the same one.

    Constructive Criticism

    The other day, we gave our second demo. Afterward, we were waiting for our mentor to come give us feedback and it came out that we all thought that we had been most inadequate. It’s tough, because every day we try and do better and after each thing there’s something to work on. But this kind of feedback is so helpful for practicing relentless improvement and being the best we can be. The same is true of feedback from each other – we’re on the same team, and we only want to help each other improve.

    Time Management and Scrum

    We are trying to do scrum, but it’s hard because of the exploratory nature of what we’re doing. When I have a clear task that I need to do, it’s easy. When I have something more experimental that I’m playing with, it’s hard. When things start crashing I’ve a propensity to just give up on planning until things are working again. It’s a process – I’m learning about how much leeway I need to build in and how to plan better. But I’m not there yet.

  • Teachable Moments in the Wilderness

    Algonquin Provincial Park 2008
    Credit: flickr / Eyeline-Imagery

    I was not excited about the mandatory work trip to the wilderness for a number of reasons:

    1. It is completely incomprehensible to me to drive that far just for two days.
    2. I have no desire to sleep in a tent. There is a reason why inside and beds were invented.
    3. We have a lot to do and our team are getting on fine – why spend two days “team building” when we could be getting on with stuff?

    Everyone was of course teasing the British girl who was scared of the wilderness (you know there are bears?!) but it was just funny because I was never actually that freaked out, I just wouldn’t have gone out of choice – and wasn’t going to stay longer than I had to (or sleep in a tent). In fact, when we had to put on a skit, my team put one on about my hatred of the wilderness and at the end I kung fu’d a bunch of beavers. My teammate played me – and I was completely fine with that. As long as it’s funny, it’s OK with me.

    But despite coming home (of course) with multiple injuries (a twisted ankle and an unexplained but extremely painful hip injury) and covered in bug bites. I actually got a lot out of it.

    I missed the internet, of course, but being disconnected wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Also, I got to spend time with a bunch of people who I really like.

    The team building activities were actually quite interesting – sometimes additional information/material is a distraction. Sometimes the best solution uses everything you’ve been given. Sometimes it uses something extra that hasn’t been included, but hasn’t been excluded either. Sometimes you need a single leader. Sometimes everyone needs to contribute. Sometimes the person watching will have the clearest idea of what’s going on.

    Finally, there was the mock trial for the interns who had been two hours late. Their reaction to the result of this did not reflect well on them – I got increasingly frustrated and bored as they complained, endlessly, about poor directions and lack of GPS. Eventually, the guy in charge laid down the law about timeliness and respect – I think everyone got the message. He saw a teachable moment and he took it; I liked and respected him for it.

    Mistakes I thought they made:

    • We’re well paid, so just rent a GPS if it matters so much – it’s not important. Complaining about $20 comes across as petty.
    • Moderate drinking at an event like this is probably OK, but don’t get hammered the first night.
    • Own your mistakes. Apologizing for being late and going along with what was laid down would have made things end much sooner. Blaming everyone else and pretending blamelessness did not endear sympathy to their cause.

    So – in all, not awful. In fact aside from the injuries it was kinda refreshing. But would I go back? I think I’d rather go to a spa and turn my phone off instead.

  • Career Planning

    Career Planning

    Barney had the distinct feeling that his career as "the girl's best friend" was over before it had really begun. He sincerely hoped that the girl's mum would continue to look after him.
    Credit: flickr / David Blackwell

    The other week I had a phone interview for what I thought was my dream job. In the days before, I realized that was the kind of thing I’d been doing. And then, I waited.

    Meanwhile, work was going so-so. My computer broke – again – so I lost a day and a half on my Most Important Task (nothing remains of my original machine) plus the time it took me to reinstall everything I needed, and the MBA and I had an argument.

    Aside from the awesome technical support, something that’s really amazing about Extreme Blue is how much support we get. So the organizers of the program sat us down for what became a 3-hour angsting session, explaining that our group had been put together knowing that we would end up in this place, and discussing personality quadrants.

    My dominant quadrant is definitely my logic quadrant, so that conversation formed into an equation that frankly made my head explode. However, I tend to communicate from my relational quadrant – and as our MBA is detail-process oriented, with nothing in the relational… this had been causing problems. I thought he was being really rude and disrespectful, and I guess I just didn’t make any sense at all to him.

    By Sunday, I had an equation that worked – our MBA is on the spectrum (you can take an online test to discover where you lie). And of course, as a compsci, I know and have known a lot of people who are. And so I know how to deal with it – in fact, I can’t believe I didn’t realize sooner but I guess I saw him as an MBA rather than a techie – so this week we’ve been getting on fine. I’m consciously communicating from my logic quadrant, and I’m now seeing that my input is considered, and also I’m getting the information I need out of him. He is also making a real effort to take constructive criticism.

    The point of this histoire, is over the last week I’ve been having more and more of a hankering to code. And my other takeaway from this conversation on Friday, was a worry that I wasn’t seen as technical.

    So when the results of the phone interview came back and I’m wasn’t through to the next round, I was disappointed. Especially because the woman who interviewed me had really strongly given the impression that she couldn’t be bothered with the whole thing. But I talked to my friend Dig, who was great, and I moved on to the next phase of what I’m doing at work – where I finally get to code – and ran into a roadblock so I got no further than a “hello world” test to verify my IDE was working.

    So frustrating. But – it has made me glad I didn’t go further with this non-technical role – in fact, almost grateful to this woman. This job was probably the only non-coding job I would have applied for, or taken. And I applied because I think it’s a route to where I will end up – but what I’m realizing is, I don’t have to go there now.

    In fact, I’m not ready to.

    I have an on-site interview for an awesome software engineer job in July. And when I spoke to the EB guy (in fact, the one from Friday’s meeting) about who I should list on my resume he started a conversation about whether I wanted to progress to a proper job with IBM. And so I told him I’d spoken with one of my personal mentors (Sacha is amazingly helpful and supportive) and she’d given me some resources, so I was working on that too, but that I wanted something more technical than what I was currently doing. And he committed to helping me find the kind of opportunity that I want.

    Wow. I don’t know what will happen next, but I have to tell you – right now I feel really lucky.