Accidentally in Code

Tag: ghc15

  • #GHC15: Jo Miller – Build your brand as an emerging leader or technical expert

    #GHC15: Jo Miller – Build your brand as an emerging leader or technical expert

    My notes from @Jo_Miller‘s session at GHC.

    jo miller on stage

    The Emerging Leaders Quandary – can’t get recognised as someone who is ready to lead a larger team. 

    Why we get stuck – you can’t get that higher level job without the leadership experience… but you can’t get the leadership experience without the job.

    Do not outsource your career development to someone who cares less about it than you. You can’t afford to be the best kept secret in your organisation.

    How to go out and make a name for yourself in a way that uniquely differentiates you and your values.

    Think about how you’re currently perceived by others… and is it working for you? Do people perceive you by the full sum of strengths or do they see you as less than, or completely different? Take steps to understand how others see you.

    Advice: “Be famous for something. Know what is your claim to fame.” Example of someone who narrowed down her focus to her greatest strength – building great customer relationships.

    Who do you know who has branded themselves well? What catch phrase or brand statement do people use to refer to that individual?

    In this workshop:

    • Identifying your ideal career niche – what is it that you enjoy doing, that is a great match for your strengths, but also makes you sought after.
    • Your leadership brand. Get people to come to you.
    • Making your value visible.

    What’s your Career Superpower?

    Building a really strong, unique, powerful brand for yourself. Understand the three elements:

    1. What are you passionate about?
    2. What are your skills and talents?
    3. What does your company / industry need and value?

    If you try and build a career around something you’re great at and passionate about but don’t consider 3, you might end up not with an awesome career but an expensive hobby.

    Think about what this looks like for you at this moment in your career?

    “Be authentic about your own leadership style. Don’t try to change it. Own it. Communicate it. Put a value on it. Put a brand on it.”

    — Dr. Rohini Anand, SVP, Global Chief Diversity Officer, Sodexo

    Don’t be a professional pretzel. Start with your ideal niche and brand that.

    Brands can have a transformative effect on your career. Start with your ideal career niche, then scale it up have decide what you want to be known for next.

    “Make your brand scalable”

    — Krista Thomas, VP Marketing, The Rubicon Project

    Where do you want to be? Work backwards and decide what you need to be known for now in order to make that happen.

    Build a valuable entry level brand. If still known for that 3-4 years later it will really hold you back.

    Valuable contributor. Team-player. Specialist. Go-to person.

    Then build a mid-level brand.

    Strategist. Innovator. Subject matter expert. Change agent. People motivator. Project leader. Builds things that work. Turnaround architect. Intrapreneur.

     After that, the senior level brand e.g:

    Visionary. Thought leader. Leader who develops leaders. Charismatic leader. Rainmaker. Quiet Leader.

    How do you not be the best kept secret in the organization?

    In school, early career:

    Results = Reward + Recognition

    At work:

    Results + Make them Visible = Reward + Recognition

    4 Steps for making your brand visible:

    1. Work less – don’t spend all your time head down delivering results.
    2. Communicate your brand to others.
    3. Work hard on the right projects.
    4. Promote your accomplishments.

    Have a 30 second commercial:

    • Name
    • Job title and/or brand
    • I am responsible for a, b, c. 
    • Come directly to me when you need x, y, z.

    Work hard on the right projects:

    (Most important)

    • Showcases your brand.
    • Demonstrate your ability to deliver results.

    Other things to consider:

    • Directly support your organisations strategic plan and goals.
    • Improve the bottom line.
    • Perform a specific, not general role (technical track)
    • Expose you to a new department, function or client (management track).
    • Push the cutting edge in your field of expertise.
    • Special projects sponsored by executives.
    • Sharpen business acumen and leadership skills.
    • Participate on special task forces and committees.

    “It’s not what you know and it’s not who you know.

    It’s who knows what you know.”

    — Nora Denzel, Interim CEO, Outerwall

    Two reasons self-promo backfires:

    • Way chosen is off-brand, seems inauthentic.
    • Doing it in a way that isn’t rewarded or recognised by the team culture they are part of.

    How to promote accomplishments:

    • Present in meetings. Invite leaders.
    •  Send out a newsletter or regular status updates.
    • Submit article to your organisation’s newsletter.
    • Write a blog, or paper for publication.
    • Ask to be nominated for an award.
    • Ask a colleague to “toot your horn”, and reciprocate.
    • Speak on panels, and at conferences.
    • Forward kudos emails with “FYI”.

    Choose a couple you are willing to try. Practise! And put into action.

    “There is nothing untoward about being honest about what you do well.

    Your company cannot fully appreciate how to leverage you as a resource if the company does not have visibility into what your unique talents are. So, don’t deny that of your company.

    Get out there.  Make sure that people see you.  Make certain that they know what you do well.  And while you’re doing that, make sure that you’re lifting some other people up as you climb.”

    — Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, SVP, Chief Tax Officer, Wal-Mart

    Thanks to Capital One for hosting me as a blogger this year! I had an awesome time.

  • Communities @ GHC

    Communities @ GHC

    tiny_raccoon_moustache
    “Tiny Raccoon and the Large Pink Moustache”

    One complaint that I heard a bunch last year – and levelled myself – was that it was so student focused there wasn’t a lot for mid-career women.

    But last night I went to two events that were really different from other events I’ve attended before at GHC! So exciting.

    First was Munchies, Mojitos & Making Things, which Hilary Mason from FastForward Labs hosted along with Accel and SHE++. This was super fun! Great (virgin) pina colada, and cute little cards with circuits to make them light up.

    Our next stop was the iOSatGHC event, which was super fun. @NatashaTheRobot, @ayanonagon and @kristinathai organised and hosted it. There was great swag (I finally have a selfie stick!) and delicious food. Even better though was how they opened it – it’s not a recruiting event, it’s about getting together and connecting about iOS and building cool things. Come talk about jobs if you want (at sponsor companies: Capital One, Intuit, Venmo, Instagram, Lyft), but recruiting wasn’t the purpose of the evening.

    I took one of my friend’s daughters with me, who was thinking about her next internship. At the end of the evening I asked her if she was sold on mobile development. She said yes!! One at a time…

    Anyway it was lovely to hang with other women over our shared technical interests. Often these kind of communities seem to arise from within a platform – PyLadies from the Python community, for example. 12K people at GHC this year is a bit overwhelming, but it’s meant that we can go the other way – we can reach out to other women around our shared interests, and build a community.

    So I caught up with friends, nerded out about iOS, did a little light mentoring, and then went back to the hotel to experiment with the selfie stick.

    tiny_raccoon_selfie
    “Tiny Raccoon finally has a selfie stick”

    I’m at GHC this year because Capital One is hosting me as a blogger! Come by and find me at the booth to say hi if you’re here!

  • #ghc15: Natasha Murashev – The Zen Guide to WatchOS

    #ghc15: Natasha Murashev – The Zen Guide to WatchOS

    My friend @NatashaTheRobot gave an awesome talk at GHC about WatchOS. I find a lot of tech talks focus on the how, not the why, but she completely inverted it – tying the technical details to the kind of experience you want to create. I’ve been pretty meh on watches (and glasses) because I want fewer notifications in my life not more! But her talk and philosophy on this made me think that maybe – if every developer was so considerate and mindful of their user-experience – a watch might not be a bad thing, at all…

    NatashaTheRobot and the Tiny Raccoon
    NatashaTheRobot and the Tiny Raccoon

    Tao Te Ching – Chinese philosophy book, way of life. Very zen and very nice, like to read it as part of meditation.

    “We join spokes together in a wheel,
    but it is the center hole
    that makes the wagon move.

    We shape clay into a pot,
    but it is the emptiness inside
    that holds whatever we want.

    We hammer wood for a house,
    but it is the inner space
    that makes it livable.

    We work with being
    but non-being is what we use.”

    ~Tao Te Ching, Chapter 11

    How does this relate to the watch? The watch is one of those devices, it’s a physical device, but it’s about not using it. Want people to use our apps, but think about what kind of world do you want to live in? Want to live in the moment. People miss out on things because they’re always on this phone.

    Watch is about freeing you from that mentality. Does this through 3 things:

    1. Notifications – on your wrist, you can really feel it. Free you up to move around the world, have zen feeling – if something comes up, you will know about it.
    2. Glances / cards. Can go through multiple apps and get the most important pieces of data. 
    3. App. Only use it from glance or notification. Watch is very action oriented. Go to the app for more information, would never think “I’m gonna go read the NYT on my watch”.

    New watch OS, new interactions – complications. Making glances even less important.

    Creating the watch experience is about asking “what’s the one most important piece of information the user needs?” Give it to them, and then they can move on with their day.

    “The personal nature of Apple Watch requires a different approach when it comes to designing Watch app, glance, and notification interfaces. Your interfaces need to display information quickly and facilitate fast navigation and interactions. Creating that kind of interface means you should not simply port your existing iOS app behavior over to Apple Watch. Instead, create a complementary experience to your iOS app.”

    ~Apple Watch Programming Guide

    Don’t be the heart rate app – screen dies before shows heart rate. Should be instant. No endless spinners.

    Biggest development, architectural thing, make sure the data is right there. Not going to be visible, pretty. People aren’t going to notice it because it’s just going to work.

    Watch connectivity – framework for passing data between iOS app and watch app and vice versa. Watch isn’t really standalone. Can do API requests, but most work should be done on iOS device and then passed to the watch.

    Watch connectivity has two big parts.

    • Background data. Want to transfer data in the background, by the time the user raises their hand it’s too late. Think about transferring data as the app runs in the background. Apple controls when info gets passed. You don’t have the control of when, but pretty much guaranteed when they raise their wrist it’ll be fast.
      • Application context: e.g. game score 5 minutes ago doesn’t matter, what matters is score now. Queue of one piece of data. New data replaces old data. At time of transfer, only the latest data is sent across.
      • User info transfer. Data over time. e.g. conversation app. Need to make sure every piece of data is moved over, use user info. WatchOS and iOS are different platforms, can’t pass objects. Like plist data types, dictionaries. Have to serialise and create an object on the other end.
      • File transfer: images. Can send over metadata, e.g. picture ordering, can organise by date.
    • Interactive messaging: you need to transfer data right away. E.g. flappy bird on the watch, hit the watch to make the bird flap on the iPhone.
      • Immediate information transfer.
      • Requires reachable state (have unlocked recently, there is a chance this could fail).

    Coding

    WCSession – singleton. WC – watch connectivity. That’s how you transfer data.

    Not hard. But have to make sure it’s supported. Universal apps; iPad will not support the apple watch. 

    Because WCsession is a singleton, wrap in another you have more control over. Might have to do some data processing, but you want to check because you don’t want to do data processing if you don’t need to. Have a “startSession” function, can call it in applicationDidFinishLaunchingWithOptions.

    A valid session means the app is installed, and paired. Don’t want to be doing data processing for the user that doesn’t have a valid session.

    Overall API is pretty simple. Sender, receiver. Use WC to send the data.

    Resources

    I’m at GHC this year because Capital One is hosting me as a blogger! Come by and find me at the booth to say hi if you’re here!