Points of Future via MAX keynote

There are many ideas being presented today.  I’ll try to highlight a few and also add some personal thoughts.

The youth of today are important.  It’s important to provide them the tools they need to express themselves, or else they’ll find other ways.  To kick off the show with some of today’s creative youth was awesome.

Content is no longer one sided.  One point hinted out early on is that content is no longer the domain of one group.  Today’s web users are just as excited to create content as they are to consume it.  You need to plan for that fact.

It’s important to not just build great websites or ads, but to also know how your customers think and behave.  I know that I would like sites to be smarter about me.  I’m tired having to re-explain myself to each website/company.

The next point is that full version Flash is coming everywhere: desktops, netbooks, smartphones and TVs.  The biggest problem was RAM usage.  It’s a true dilemma for Adobe and device manufactures.  I, as a techie, realize that devices and computers aren’t equal in power and ram.  However, my mom doesn’t understand that.  Most of the public just assume that a machine is a machine.

Helping Developers Bridge the Gap

In yesterday’s post, I talked about finding your niche.  Today, I share more about my niche and my plans to get back into it.

I used to run Silvafug, the Silicon Valley Flex Users Group.  During my tenure, the group accomplished a lot. (Heck even without me, the group is still doing a lot.) However, one goal eluded me, despite having a great need to be attained.  I think it’s time to revisit that goal.  What is it?

Helping Flex developers bridge the gap from beginner-to-mid and/or mid-to-advance level.

It’s an ambitious goal, but hey, why aim small, right?  I sorta started down the path with a “hit” series of mine, “Graduating from Hack to Architected Development” (available on 360|Whisperings and Adobe’s Flex Developer Center)  Adobe said that was one of their most successful pieces at the time, though I’m sure many have surpassed it now.

Staying Happy During Tough Times

I know articles like this are bad news.  People losing jobs is not good for their psyche or for the economy.  Or is it?

I’m an odd egg, I get that.  I see life in a slightly skewed way.  The result of this is that I love experiencing everything: the good, the bad and the ugly.  I have contigency plans.  Should I ever get to the point where I have no job or any leads at all in the tech field, I’m looking forward to trying my hand at selling cars and flipping burgers.

In regards to selling cars, I have a list of ideas I’d use to help me be a great salesman.  I even went to 3 dealerships one day to do research.  The experience was so bad at all 3 (low end, mid and high) that I wrote down all the things that I would do to make the experience better.

For burger flipping, I’ve always wanted to work at In-N-Out.  I realize that I’d be the oldest employee, but I’d have a blast.  Last I checked, working your way up through the ranks was the only way to open up your own In-N-Out.  Plus, managers make a hefty salary and have wonderful benefits.

Getting ahead by serving others

Too many want to climb to the top by stepping over people versus being pushed to the top by a group of friends.

I wrote that statement awhile back to explain my philosophy on leadership, particularly in business.  Sadly, the world of business has become too much about greed.  Too many CEOs and other business “leaders” look out for only one person, themselves.  It would seem that amassing ever larger fortunes are more important than looking out for those who are supposedly in their care.

A lot of this is because leaders these days have forgotten what it means to serve.  A leadership role does not command respect by default.  Though, many in CxO level positions seem to think that.  Heck, I’ve seen that mentality manifested down to the very first level of management.  Respect, at all levels of the workplace, is something that must be earned.  Many think that intimidation or bureaucratic process will help them achieve this respect, but that just backfires.  They may feel they have respect, but don’t realize that people laugh and talk smack about them behind their backs.

Leaving the Valley, Geeks and Workday for the Desert, Family and my Startup

Yup, you read that right.  It’s been a wonderful 3+ years in Silicon Valley, but it’s time to head to the desert of Queen Creek, Arizona.  I jump started my career here.  It’s funny to say that because I moved here when I was 30!  But these past 3 years did more for my professional life than my previous 12 years of working in Southern California.

There are two reasons I’m moving.  One is sappy and is detailed on this post over on my spiritual blog.

The other is related to my day-to-day activities.  In these tough economic times, I feel lucky and sad at the same time.  Some out there do not have a job or are stuck in a deadend job.  I, on the other hand, have two great opportunities in my life.

The first is my employer for the past year and a half, Workday.  Many people come to the Valley in search of that great startup to join.  Workday definitely fits the bill.  The people are incredibly talented and the work is some of the most challenging out there.  My team is one of the best I’ve ever worked for.  (If you want to join the Workday UI team, drop me a note and your resume/cv at tom.ortega@gmail.com)

Gaming: Playing both sides

Being an OG – Original Gamer

For as long as I can remember, I’ve gamed (specifically the video kind).  Before I got married, I spent almost every birthday I can remember at Chuck E. Cheese’s (even my 21st!)  To me, birthday equated to gaming.  In addition to those special days, I have a lot of memories in life associated with gaming:

• When I was 6 or 7,  I remember me and my dad going to our frequent hangout, an arcade down the street.  It was actually a miniature golf course, but we never did anything but game.  We’d play Vanguard together.  As you can see by this image, it had this unique setup.  It was one of the first games I can remember that had multiple buttons.  My dad would drive (use the control stick) while I sat shotgun (took control of the 4 direction shoot buttons).  Oddly, I think this contributed to my sense of it being okay to take the back seat for the greater good.  As long as the team wins, it doesn’t matter which position you play.

Birthday Thoughts: Resource Utilization

The phrase “Resource Utilization” has so many meanings in my life currently, that I have no idea where to start.

At Workday, I (relatively) recently got a new manager, Charlie Boyle.  One of his strengths is definitely resource utlization.  Every manager has their own style and no style is right or wrong.  However, Charlie has brought some great plans to the team.  He’s brought on some processes and tools that make our lives as developers more productive. I don’t think we as a team work any less harder, but we’re definitely working a lot smarter due to the resource management.

My Silicon Valley Flex User Group (silvafug) is sorting being revamped as I write this.  At our most recent meeting, several of us got together to discuss how to better the user group in a variety of ways.  After Wednesday’s meeting, we’ll likely be officially announcing the launch of Silvafug South (and by default, Silvafug North).  There are a lot of great people in the user group with great ideas on how to make it better for everyone.  I look forward to working with them.

Birthday Thoughts: Philanthropy

Yesterday was my birthday.  I turned 33 years old.

Ever since I can remember, September has been a time of contemplation for me.  Around Labor Day, I take advantage of the three day weekend to sorta turn inward.  I take inventory of my life in its totality.  I see what I have or have not done, where I can do better and if I need to make a shift in any area of my life.  Some big decisions that have been made during this time include the following:

• Organizing a coup d’etat of the literary/writer’s club my senior year of high school ( I put out more publications that year then the club did the previous 3 years combined, w00t!)
• Meeting my wife’s family to see if I could marry into it (they passed and we got engaged in October)
• Bought my first house, signed docs on my birthday (though later backed out to pay for the wedding instead)
• Got married to my beautiful wife (My reminder: 18 (my b-day) + 4 (ever) = 22 (my anniversary))

Help me teach you Flex!

John posed a question to me the other day: What’s important to you?  I’ll leave out the obvious answers: wife, two kids, and church.  He was asking more in relation to business and in particular, our business: 360|Conferences.  So I was noodling on an answer for him.

Saturday morning, I finally caught up on a thread on an internal Flex list.  The list was about a fairly common problem we have in the Flex world.  There seems to be a nefarious void that people learning Flex tend to fall into.  One where they’re beyond “This is a file.  This a tag, made up of brackets and text in between them.” and below “I just rewrote the AdvancedDataGrid component to run 50% faster.”  I have feelings in regards to how to help folks cross that void, so I started noodling a response to the thread.

Then it dawned on me, my two noodles were of the same type: helping folks grow and learn.

What kinda person is Tom Ortega?

I was chatting with Brendan the other day. He asked what kind of person am I to attempt to carry a full time job, put on conferences on the side, manage a successful user group, write articles for the Edge and Adobe Development Center, be a good husband, be a good father of two, and be a good cub scout den leader.

This got me to thinking. Most people only know the Northern California Tom Ortega. Prior to my move to the Silicon Valley, my list of activities were quite different. In Southern California, my plate consisted of holding a full time job, being a good hubbie, being a dad of one and a whole lot of commuting. I didn’t blog, didn’t really participate in any tech community and flitted from one business idea to the next with none taking shape or form.

The concept of Tiny Business (i.e. smaller than Small Business)

Business is changing. We’ve been hearing this for quite sometime now. As a whole though, business really hasn’t changed much. You still have massive companies, with many different layers. Even Small Businesses tend not to be very “small”. I think I’d like to coin a new term, if I may be so bold: the Tiny Business.

By tiny, I’m referring to employee count vs company reach. My business partner John Wilker and I put on tech shows for 300 to 400 attendees under the tiny company known as 360Conferences. We’ve done two so far and two more are in the works. Running a tiny business is hard, very hard. I’m sure all tinies have it hard, but what adds pressure to ours are two things: Part-time and Industy Transformation.

First, I’ll talk about the Part Time aspect. John and I have full time jobs as developers. I work at Workday and really enjoy my job. Last week was an incredibly busy time for the UI team. It was so busy that not much time went to 360Conferences. As the dust settled on the Workday front, the work for the 360|Flex Atlanta show picked up steam. I mentioned to John, “I never realize how much we do for 360Conferences while we do it. When we’re in tune with work and family, things get done at an amazing pace. However, jumping back in after a week off, it seems overwhelming.”

At first, I thought I was being a bit over dramatic. My wife says I’m full of “drama” and she’s probably right. However, I was thinking there was some merit to my feelings and received some validation in Atlanta. Ang’elle, the gal helping us out at the OMNI Hotel, was about 3/4 of the way through our onsite visit before she asked the following: “Now, are you guys a 3rd party planning company? Someone’s hiring your company to do this show, right?” We told her no and explained that we put on 360|Flex for developers. We tell her it’s not an Adobe conference. “They support us, but it’s not an Adobe show per se.” She followed up with, “Well, how big is your company? How many in your department?” John and I laughed, then explained we were the entire company. “The buck stops here…literally.” She ended with, “You’re kidding, right? I was thinking there was a whole army back home helping you do this event. Wow.”

Now, if John and I were just repeating a familiar formula of planning high-priced conferences, things may be simpler for us. We’d be taking a known pattern, adjusting it to fit our topic (Flex) and then be calling it a day. However, John and I also felt the need to throw another challenge into the mix, “Rather than just do a better conference for Flex, what if we changed the way conferences were done as a whole?” This is where the Industry Transformation aspect comes in.

To be a memorable and honest business, you have to be ready to take on an industry and change the playing field. Being a tiny company also helps play a roll in that. With it being only John and I, we can turn on a dime. We can come up with, discuss, hash out, re-argue and refine a point over night. We can then implement that new aspect the very next day as a concerted business effort. The effects of that power cannot be understated.

We’re not the first to enter into this foray of low-cost, developer-centric conferences. We’ve never claimed to be the first, but we would like to think that we’re one of the better ones out there. That’s the thing about trying to be a truly disruptive company vs. one that just talks about being one. You have to listen to your heart/gut as you destroy the business norm, but you still have to make sure the customers are happy. If no one likes what your disruption brings, then your disruption is more to feed your ego than it is to provide a better environment in the particular marketplace you serve.

It’s also incredibly lonely being a market disrupter. The old guard doesn’t like you, rightfully so since you’re killing their business. Being a tiny business doesn’t help either. I have John and my wife to fall back on when I get discouraged; no department, no manager and no Big Boss. John, the poor guy, then has to not only support the workload we share, his full time job, but also my floundering spirits. My wife, the poor gal, then has to deal with not only two growing toddlers, but a husband who then needs a little TLC. Both of them are amazing though and I’m usually back to high spirits soon enough thanks to their efforts. There’s one more source I can go to for support as well, and more often than not, I forget about them because I don’t see them when I get home and they’re not IMing me all day. However, this source plays just as big a role in the grand picture as my wife and my business partner. That third source is my customers.

Yes, MY customers. I work hard for them. I literally give my blood, sweat and tears for them. Sure, you can say every company does that, but let’s face it, the heart, the love, the passion are usually not there. Like I tell John, I wake up with customers on my mind and go to bed with them in my heart. Heck, I even include my customers in my prayers, “Heavenly Father, help me find better ways to serve my customers.”

I am proud of every single one of my customers. Whenever one buys a ticket, Eventbrite sends John and I an email. I see their names long before I see their faces. They maybe faceless for a little while but not for long. John and I greet every one of our customers at our shows. If you can’t welcome your own customers to your show, you shouldn’t be putting on a conference. Sorry. We hand greet all 300 to 400 of our attendees and sponsors. Nothing makes me smile more than when I say, “Hi, <insert customer name>. I’m Tom, welcome to 360|Flex.” and they do a double take. They look back at John then me, saying “THE John and Tom who planned the show?” To which, we answer, “That’s us.” The person gets a smile and you can tell that you have made them feel special. We’re not super stars, but we can make our customers feel like they are the most important thing in the world to us. This is because, quite simply, they are.

We sent out a little note to past customers at 2am on Friday night/Saturday morning. We asked them to share the experience they had at our conference with others as we’re nearing the final 30 days of 360|Atlanta. By Saturday morning, we had a few email responses and blog posts. I have a feeling that we will continue to see the “love” be poured out by them over the next week or so.

I thank my wife and John all the time for their support. To my customers though, I wanted to send out a huge thanks. Not just for your monetary support, but for all the kind words (and constructive criticism) you send our way. I know John feels the same, but he’s just not as mushy as I am. I’m a softy though, and my customers help me feel the love.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of truly serving a customer of your own. You should definitely give it a try. Nothing beats the feeling, especially if you’re lucky enough (and humble enough, I’d say) to learn how to serve them correctly. That’s what business is about: Not money, but people. Sadly though, many businesses fail to remember that.

John and I aren’t perfect. Far from it. One thing you’ll notice at our shows is that we bicker like an old married couple. The reason for that is because while we cannot promise our customers perfection we can promise passion. We will do everything in our power to try to achieve the closest thing to perfection that you can get at a show. It’s not because of your money that we strive for perfection. It’s because you are a real person who deserves the best experience. Your money is merely a vehicle to help us achieve that goal. Too many businesses these days feel like their customers owe them something. I hope those businesses die off and let those who care take over. I have a feeling that the replacement companies will be Tiny Businesses: small in size, but big in reach.

Thoughts on Consolidation, Part 1: Adobe 3rd Party Tech conferences

As John can attest to, I see the world in business terms. One common past time of mine is looking at particular industries and seeing how close they are to saturation, whether it’s time for consolidation, and who will consolidate with whom. Recently, I’ve been reflecting on two industries: tech conferences and Flex (maybe RIA) consulting. This post tackles tech conferences. I’ll make a separate post for Flex consulting.

The tech conference market is way past saturation. I foresee a consolidation happening soon and let’s be honest, it’s long overdue. Particularly with these smaller, lower cost conferences winning rave reviews over bigger, more expensive ones. I’m not tooting my own horn, as we can take 360Conferences out of the picture and still see the same effect. For example, FOTB vs FlashForward plus the rise of BarCamp style events.

Post 360Flex San Jose, we were in talks with various companies about conferences. The thing that struck me as odd was a statement made by someone in the conference space. “Conferences are big money.” Price points aside, there’s a lot of money involved in conferences. Our last event in Seattle made more than a quarter of a million for the Red Lion Hotel alone and we’re a tiny show in the conference paradigm. The same individual noted to us that if your conferences get big enough, hotels will pay your company for each room booked at their facility, etc. We don’t plan to ever have a show that big, but it was an interesting point to know.

Once we smaller events start to take away enough customers from the Big Shows, they will react. Right now, we’re seen more as mosquitoes that are more pesky than anything. Eventually though, these individual sores will add up. When a substantial decrease in per show revenue starts to take shape, that’s when the Big Shows will strike.

Currently, they could hurt us by simply dropping their price point to match ours. This will take care of the biggest differentiator between us and put us in more heated competition. They wont’ do that just yet though for two reasons: profits and budgets.

Let’s tackle profit first. Let’s say we small guys give them a 10% hit in their numbers. 90% of their old numbers is still a lot of friggin’ money. You can just hear some middle manager somewhere saying, “Why are we going to walk away from a cash cow? No one really takes those small conferences seriously.” Silicon Graphics said the same thing about PCs running Windows NT and look what happened there. Money makes you comfortable and slow. It’s one of the curses of success that companies must constantly strive to avoid.

Next comes budgets. People are amazed that John and I alone put on the 360Flex conferences. Granted, we have some temps hand out surveys, but that’s it. Now, we don’t do all the work, of course. We have partners (web hosting, ticketing, etc.) and a creative agency (for fliers, signage, etc.). However, our conferences currently do not support any full time staff. Nobody gets paid to work on 360Flex for their day job. You look at these Big Shows and companies, they have dedicated event staff demanding full time salaries. Some even have event departments.

Yes, John and I wouldn’t mind being full time employees of 360Conferences. However, the employee count should stop there. We’re hoping to never need more than 2 employees, but I’m guessing we’ll likely bring on board 1 more person in the future. (If for nothing else, to be the tie-breaker.) We will never have an office that we pay rent on. Nor will we ever have middle management or even peons. No work is below us and if it takes too much time to do, then we’ll find a partner to do it for us. For these factors alone, we’ll be able to out budget a majority of these high priced conferences. We need less, so we can charge less.

Therefore, as you can see, the Big Shows won’t be able to compete on our terms anytime soon so that leaves: mergers and acquisitions.

I’ll be honest. I think a lot on merging. I scan the landscape of just Flex/CF conferences and imagine consolidation to make it easier on attendees, speakers and even sponsors. For goodness sakes, there are 4 events between February and June of 2008 that serve the Flex/CF technologies: 360Flex in February, cf.Objective() in early May, WebManiacs in late May and CFUnited in late June. The crazy thing about the last two are that they are a month apart in the same city, Washington DC!

I thought about merging with Jared. We could easily rename CF.Objective() to 360CF or something of the sorts. It would be a good fit because it would give us a mid-US presence and he’s a low cost small conference as well. However, he’s dabbling in Flex so it’s not a straight CF show anymore. Plus, he’s growing exponentially so there’s no need for him to merge with us.

I also chatted with John about approaching Fig Leaf to merge with what was at the time FlexManiacs. Let’s face it. Fig Leaf is probably more interested in the training business their show funnels their way then they are about the show itself. Therefore, they should just shut down their show and become the premiere sponsor of our 360Flex East Coast shows. This will save them the time and hassle of trying to do their own show, but still drive whatever training business they want their way. However, they became WebManiacs so now that deal doesn’t make much sense. Plus, going up against CFUnited on CFU’s hometurf is suicidal.

CFUnited is tough to get a bearing around. It makes no sense for us to merge with them, because their an old skool Big Show type conference. At twice the price of the other shows mentioned, they aren’t shooting to compete with us. They do have their CFUnited Expresses though that is their approach to low cost conferences. If you’ve been to one of those Expresses, drop a comment and let me know your thoughts on them.

The way I see it going down now is WebManiacs dying off and CFU winning the DC front. CF.O chipping away at CFU and 360Flex trumping CFU’s play for the Flex attendees. CFU will then have to react to us, but I just don’t see how yet. If you care to speculate, drop a comment.

That’s just the Feb to June timeframe stateside events. 360Flex and CFU are both headed oversees this year. One conference on the other side of the pond that John and I are going to attend is Flash on the Beach. I’ve heard nothing but rave reviews about this show and how it’s ran. Hopefully, while we’re there, we can chat it up with John Davey. The refreshing thing is that he started FOTB for the same reason we started 360Flex: to fill a void. He’s in it for the community as are we, so it’ll be great to see what we can learn from each other. Davey competes against FlashForward, another of the Big Shows. While FF has its following, a lot of folks have said that it’s been going down for the past few years. Lynda is still probably licking her wounds from the failed DX3 fiasco, but it’ll be interesting to see how they react to FOTB. Like I said though, FF is a Lynda Event production which means to me there’s a bunch of staff sucking up budget money.

Well, that’s my thoughts. Remember, they’re just that: thoughts. No merger talks ever took place. No consolidations are going down (that I know of). However, if you agree (or disagree) express yourself in the comments. I look forward to the dialog.

Digital Primates (Even More Monkeys in the House)

In case you haven’t heard the news yet, Digital Primates and Nimer-Tapper have merged!  It makes sense that these small, but highly qualified dev houses merged into one.  They’ve written a book together, so they know how each other works under time constrants.  I’m sure they worked on projects together as well.  By combining, they’ll now have the bandwidth to take on lager projects (since they have more man power combined then each did separately).  Plus, their community efforts will likely grow (if that’s possible since they’re everywhere) because more troops can share the workload while others are participating out in the community.

Any business transaction that allows for more (or continued) community involvement is a good transaction in my eyes!  Congrats guys! And keep up the good work.

Changes are afoot at 360Flex

First off, if you’ve gone to a 360Flex event or plan to someday, go answer this three question survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=yGMLUk_2f4IRYXqoobzijRuQ_3d_3d

The responses to that survey may fundamentally change the 360Flex Conference.

Business is so interesting. I didn’t graduate from Business School, so maybe they teach you a lot of this stuff there. However, I have read 200+ books on business in the 14+ years that I’ve been a part of the business community and very few books actually captured the essence of business life.

The beauty of business is it’s role. A business is there to serve it’s customers. Do a good job, you get to stick around. Do a bad job and you’re out. I think 360Conferences is doing a good job, but John and I are always looking for ways to improve. Over the past few days, some folks have made some remarks about the amount of money we spend on food at our conferences. They suggested that money would be better spent paying travel expenses for speakers rather than lining the hotel’s catering pocket.

John and I feel that food is a major part of the conference. We think it helps build the community. (You can find our full thoughts on our company blog.) Some of our customers have already stated they feel the same. If only there was a way to ask everyone else, to get a consensus. Well, guess what? There is. With the internet, a business can not only talk to all of its past and current customers, but also to all its future customers.

What John and I think is not important. We’re just facilitators for our customers: attendees, speakers and sponsors. If we’re wrong, then we must change. Just because we think something is cute or needed, doesn’t mean it is. Just because we think something is right, doesn’t mean it is. Our customers are the only ones that know what’s right. John and I are hear to make sure we do what’s right.

So far, we’ve had two conferences. With that, over $180,000 of our customers hard-earned cash has passed through our hands. 360 attendees came to eBay’s beautiful campus for 3 days. Another 360 spent 3 days with us in the Emerald City. Over 60 sessions have been given and countless knowledge has been shared. Many people have landed a “dream” Flex job or picked up some contracting work. Most importantly though, friendships have been made. Good times have been shared.

$180,000 may not seem like a lot of money to a big corporation. It’s a lot of money to me though. If it was $180, it would be a lot of money to me. Every dollar given in business is an honor that has to be earned. Each dollar comes with trust and deserves to be spent as wisely and efficiently as possible.

Now, if our customers decide to drop food for speaker fees, that’s fine. However, one person remarked after reading our cost breakdown post, “$80 per visitor per day for food? Wow, I must say I’m speechless. That must have been some orgy.” Now, I take great personal offense to that statement. To say that I would take our cutomers hard earned money and throw an “orgy” hurts. The reality is this: Each person was $59 dollars a day for breakfast, lunch and breaks. Plus, each water and or soda was an additional $5. Monday night BBQ was $25 per person. That is standard hotel pricing for food. “Why not use an outside caterer?” You can’t. “Why not order cheaper food?” That was darn near the cheapest. I wish hotels were cheaper, but they’re not. However, our customers said, “Move to one central location, like a hotel.” We did, and it was certainly not to have an “orgy”.

I stress over every dollar. John lets me handle the books. I let him handle me. I probably have the better deal. We are in debt from the last two shows. It’s only about $15K, but that’s $15K that we owe to the bank and we have to make good on it. This is why it’s important to us to get profitable. Unlike other conferences, we don’t have a corporate backing. No one writes off our losses as marketing for their training business, product business or consulting business. We’re just 2 developers looking to grow the community. Hopefully, we can continue to grow it for many years to come.

So once again, if you’ve gone to a 360Flex event or plan to someday, go answer this three question survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=yGMLUk_2f4IRYXqoobzijRuQ_3d_3d

It’s only 3 questions to you, but it’s worth quiet a bit more to me.

Thanks,

Tom

P.S. The live results of the survey can be found here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=vYl0EBqFwQOrWCuur46_2bDfittExkiV1oYuHuVUgA6k8_3d

P.P.S

If you blog, please post the survey and/or the results link on your blog too.  We need as much feed back as necessary.

I’m at MAX

If you’re at MAX, look for me. I’m wearing either a 360Flex or Workday shirt. John and I are walking around meeting all the 360Flex Alumni (speakers, attendees, sponsors) and looking for new future alumni.

I’m actually giving a session, “Intro to Flex”. It goes down Monday 4:30 to 5:30 and again on Wednesday 11 to 12. I’m really excited about my presentation. It should be a nice blend of Keynote (slides) and Flex Builder 2 (live coding). It’s the first time that I’m excited about my slides, as I usually think slides suck, but these slides are fun.

It’s awesome to represent two great companies at MAX: 360Conferences and Workday Inc. We’re both startups, both passionate about our customers and both looking to change the business that we’re in. With 360Conferences, I get to hang out with John Wilker, my business partner and, more importantly, my friend. With Workday, I work with a bunch of great people that I’m getting to know more and more each day. Do I feel lucky? I sure do.

If you haven’t said hi to me yet and you’re reading this post, then swing by one of my sessions. I’d love to hear any ideas you have about conferences. If you’re looking for Flex work, Workday is hiring and I can take your resume to hand back to HR.

New Flex Blog to add to your Favorite Feed Reader

Workday UI Blog at http://workdayui.wordpress.com(feed)

As many of you know, I joined Workday, Inc. back in June. Many people have asked, “Where do you go after eBay?” Well, for this developer, it was a company that’s doing some crazy, exciting things with Flex. Workday is an ERP SaaS company. For our frontend, we use Flex.

The exciting thing is that Workday’s choice of Flex wasn’t on a whim. They specifically chose Flex because of the amazing things that Flex can do that traditional web apps cannot. Here’s our app in a nutshell. It’s a custom built Flex VM built atop of Cairngorm. A UI server sends us a view and a model, which we then render together on the fly. We, the developer, create low-level components that the application makers then use as building blocks for our products. Therefore, the things we do vary greatly from creating a custom component one day, to creating an effect on another or tracking a logic issue in Cairngorm. And I literally do mean day to day as those were my last 3 days. One thing you will never be at Workday is bored.

At eBay, my users were a group of 20. Here, it’s literally the entire company (138 people and still looking for more). I say that on two levels. First, it’s our HCM system. We use our product just like our customers to track employee data. Secondly, our products (HCM, Financials, Payroll, etc.) are built on inhouse tools. Those tools are the exact same system as the final product. There’s nothing more rewarding than walking around the office and seeing YOUR work on EVERY employee’s screen. It’s just awesome to know you empower not only end customers, but also your coworkers.

One thing Workday is looking to do is give back some of our knowledge and experiences back to the community. The way we will do that is by sharing items on the Workday UI Blog at http://workdayui.wordpress.com(feed). There you will find posts on hard hitting technical Flex issues such as Memory Leaks in Classes to lighter UI topics like Fun with Icons. The things we’re doing here are pretty amazing and I hope you follow along not only to learn from us, but to share your knowledge with us as well.

Leaving eBay to start a new Workday

It’s official. My last day as an eBay employee was Friday, June 8th. My first day as a Workday employee is Thursday, June 14th.

This is the first time I switched jobs for a strategic purpose vs. disliking the company. As a whole, the team I worked with at eBay was great. The North Campus where I sat most of my eBay life is beautiful. The work was fun and rewarding, especially during the “crunch” times.

I grew a lot during my tenure at eBay. Silvafug, free Flex training and 360|Flex were all hatched during that time. Heck, eBay even hosted the first 360|Flex conference!

If it was all so great, why leave?

One thing is size. I’ve been in corporate life for quite sometime now. I miss the days of knowing most, if not all, of a company’s employees. Knowing a team of 20 at eBay was nice, but was a drop in the bucket in number of total employees. At Workday, knowing 20 would be roughly 1/5 or 1/6 of the company.

Another thing is the amount of customers I can impact. At eBay, my direct customers were the various internal users of my apps. Indirectly, one could say that all the eBay buyers and sellers were my customers too, but I never felt that vibe. At Workday, I’ll be joining the UI team and will directly serve Workday’s customer base. I can help make the lives of these people more simple, fun and efficient. As the numbers of customers grow at Workday, so will the number of people I help. After serving a few hundred customers directly with 360|Flex, I found that serving large numbers of customers directly is something I enjoy.

I’ll be moving out to Walnut Creek for my new job. It has a slower pace feel to it than San Jose does. It also has a ton of restaurants that I can’t wait to try!

Adios, eBay: It’s been a blast!

Hola, Workday: Let’s make amazing things happen!

Saffron – My prayers have been answered

Ryan dropped a post on Saffron. Recently, I did a big write-up internally at eBay about a tool to help our XUNI development (Flex-based framework) go smoother when integrating with the Java folks.

In our current development cycle, I’d say 20 to 30% of our Flex dev time is building the actual Flex code for the UI parts, the remaining 80 to 70% is spent on integration. When you try to do concurrent development of the front and middle tiers, the part that suffers is communication and clarification of your data model. Let me show you the problem that we experience:

1. Middle tier gives you a Transfer/Value Object (i.e. what gets sent from them to you that houses the data they have and you need) at the beginning of the project
2. You (the flex peep) code to that object
3. If you’re lucky, you get a stub web service call that sends you back one of these objects
4. You test your code against the stub and tweak your code until it works perfectly
5. Middle tier changes the object for justifiable reasons. However, due to schedule and delivery timeframe, they forget to inform you of the change and most definitely do not update the stub web service
6. Integration testing comes and it doesn’t work obviously
7. You tweak your code so it works with the new object
8. After all integration bugs are solved, you hand it back to the Business Systems Analysts or user for a test run. They say the data is wrong and needs to change again
9. Both you and the middle-tier folks make the changes and finally wrap up the project

Sound painful? Yes, it is. What would help is a tool that all parties (users, Business Systems Analysts, java devvers, Flex devvers, heck even QA) can use to visualize the data objects and spit out code for the front and middle tier developers to stay in sync with.

The parts of Saffron that I’m most excited about are:

• Wireframe editor allows both developers and/or designers to create wireframes for their projects
• Allows for Actionscript 2, Actionscript 3, PHP4 and Java Code generation directly from the app.
• Enterprise level capability having the ability to support models with hundreds of classes without performance degradation
• Integrated Version Control

I’ll admit that I don’t know Samuel Agesilas Paste personally, but if you do tell him to drop a line to info@360flex.com because the developer world needs him to speak about Saffron at our 360|Flex Conference in August!

Flash: Can get you rich and/or provide a better UI

This is why I love the Flash platform. Jeff Atwood has two good posts (Yes, more Jeff, I tend to “catch up” on blogs when the post count gets high in the Google reader)

Post 1: How to Get Rich Programming

This is something that I hope to do someday. Hopefully, I’ll be as successful as Paul Preece with his Desktop Tower Defense. To be honest though, monetary success isn’t even a requirement. I’d be happy doing something like Snowcraft. That little game had me playing for hours back in the day, and still takes up too much of my time when I open it. (Yes, I realize that it was made with Director, but the same could be accomplished in Flash now.)

Flash is so incredibly good at creating fun little games. Heck, Flex can even let you build games as Joe’s Connect Four shows you. I think that’s why I like being a Flex programmer. While I may be programming “serious” apps during the day, I know that all that time put into coding is going to pay off someday. I’ll be playing with my boys and wham! Inspiration is gonna hit. I’ll quickly jot down the idea and all my flexy flashing knowledge will later help it take shape. Now, if I could just find where I last left inspiration.

Post 2: Zoomable Interfaces

This post deals with something that I’ve always felt is missing in UIs, zooming. I have to agree that it is by far the most intuitive thing to the human mind. We manually zoom to objects in our daily lives by walking up to them. Movies and photos all take advantage of zooming to play with our emotions. It’s just something we know intrinsically.

Adobe Lab’s JamJar app utilized zooming to create an ever expanding workspace. The best use case for this type of interface though is best explained in Aza’s talk at Google. He demos this little experiment that you should take for a spin. An hour into the talk is when he shows the tool. During the demo, he talks about how his dad was helping a company work with the medical field. Nurses were given a tool that let them zoom in and out from patient’s medical charts. When the zoomed in far enough, they were able to edit. It took the nurses 45 seconds to figure out how to use the system. That’s is sickly fast and all apps should dream of a 45 second learning curve. The nurses themselves then began thinking higher and said, “Don’t stop at just charts, zoom out to see the room, zoom out to see the ward, zoom out to see the floor, zoom out to see the hospital, zoom out to see the chain of hospitals.”

I’ve currently got two experiments going on in Flex. When I finish those two things, I’ll move onto a zoomable experiment. I can’t wait to do my take on this UI concept. If you know of other examples that use zoom very well, please post links in the comments so I can check them out.

Us vs. Them: Let’s stop it already

I’m just now reading a May 9th Post by Jeff Atwood. He brings up the “Us vs Them” thing, in regards to Microsoft and Open-Source developers. While it’s a fun read, the best nugget deals with neither side of the fence. Instead, it deals with every developer and an attitude that needs to change.

“As far as I’m concerned, every software developer, regardless of what’s on their tool belt, has the same goal: to craft useful computer software that delights users. We’re allies, not enemies. Friendly rivalry I can understand. But the rabid partisanship that I typically see– on both sides of the fence– isn’t helping us.”

I can’t agree more. I would have to say that until eBay I didn’t think that being allies was possible. For years now, I’ve been interacting with middle tiers not written in the same language as the front tier. Every time, it was the same thing. The developers of the middle tier would say, “Why are you developing the front tier in THAT language? You know, our language can do the front end too.” Then it usually goes downhill and bugs are the front end’s fault because it’s the “lesser” tool and soon it becomes them vs us. At eBay, the Flex team (front end) and the Java teams (middle/back end) realized they had a common goal, got to work and delivered. It was a great feeling not having that animosity and to be a “team”.

As we (developers) get on board with projects, we need to keep that goal in mind and not the technologies. Let’s deliver the best software we can, regardless of what tools we use. In the end, that will make life better for all of us.

Is that THE Ryan Stewart?

That was the inside joke we had during 360Flex. Every time we saw Ryan strutting down the halls of eBay’s Town Hall, we’d scream that at him. (If you’ve never seen Ryan strut, it’s pretty sweet….I wish I had a strut like that).

Going into business with someone is not easy. Ask anyone who has a business and they’ll tell you that. In the case of John and I, when we thought of who we’d like on our side moving forward the choice WAS easy. Lucky for us, he was kind enough to drink our kool-aid.

Welcome, pardner. Let’s do this thing. =)

Adobe: Google’s Best Kept Secret Enemy

Everyone has been blogging and hyping the Adobe vs. Microsoft feud. The real power struggle is actually between Adobe and Google. I know this may sound a bit farfetched, but I think I have some valid points that prove my case.

Flex vs Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

Both are aimed at Java Programmers. Regardless of your thoughts on Java, you can’t deny the numbers. Thousands of enterprises have deployed this technology and therefore, there are A LOT of developers in the Java space. As Bruce Eckel pointed out, Java has not provided a nice way to deliver Rich Internet Applications on the web and that’s where Flex and GWT come in.

Both tools facilitate a simple framework to build dynamic web apps, but utilize different output formats. Flex spits out a swf file that runs in the Flash Player. GWT spits out AJAX code that runs in a browser. Both claim to eliminate the need to program for different browsers, a bane that turns off a lot of non-web developers. Whose version will Java developers buy? I don’t know, but whoever wins this battle will pull ahead in the enterprise space as all the Java-heads will preach that technology solution to those who sign their paychecks.

Apollo vs Firefox (via Netscape)

Both will perform a lot of the same functionality in the future. Google has the main Firefox guys on their payroll and obviously Adobe has the Apollo guys on theirs. What’s funny (in a weird way, not the “ha, ha” way) is how both companies can thank Netscape for their platforms. Netscape took Macromedia’s cash back in the day to include a new plug-in called the Flash Player, while Firefox got its first start toward the end of Netscape’s brief life.

Netscape publicly announced that it was going to take on Microsoft and win. This did do two things though: made Microsoft play catch-up (i.e. asked Macromedia if it could include the Flash Player too) and accelerated the browser as a platform (via the browser wars). Unfortunately, you shouldn’t challenge a giant until you know you can win, Netscape missed that somehow.

Now, both of these technologies are fixin’ to deliver on the timeless promise of a “Write Once, Deploy Anywhere” platform. Firefox wants you to program for its platform and Apollo wants you to build on theirs. Apollo will let you do Flash (Flex), HTML (AJAX) and PDF with any mix in between. Firefox will let you build apps on their platform frameworks such as XULRunner, XPCOM, etc. I’m fairly certain that a future version of GWT will likely support exporting code to the XUL platform. It would only make sense.

The holy grail is both technologies support the 3 big OSes: Windows, Mac and Linux. There’s one big difference to this support though. Adobe wants the OS to stick around, their tools depend on them. Google, however, does not and that leads me to my last point.

Desktop vs Nettop

One day, and sooner rather than later, Google wants the desktop to die. They want the world’s computers to run on their NetOS. I’m not here to speculate exactly what that entails, but let’s look at their profit model. The more time you spend online, the more money they make.

Adobe, however, have tools that run on OSes. They make money off these tools (Photoshop, Flash IDE, Flex Builder, Acrobat Professional, etc.) and they give away the runtimes that deploy content built with their tools (Acrobat Reader, Flash Player, Apollo, etc.) They don’t want the desktop to die anytime soon. In fact, if you look, Adobe seems to be trying to expand its tools to support all 3 major OSes.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, Adobe and Google are squarely pitted against one another. The only problem is that they both share a common enemy: Microsoft, who is bigger and tougher than both of them combined. There’s an old saying, “Keep your allies close and your enemies closer.” While Adobe and Google both want to win this war, it seems they want to kill their common enemy first. However, if Microsoft was to pick up on this secret rivalry and bring it to the forefront, Microsoft could force everyone into a 3-way battle. The key question will be how resolved Google and Adobe are at taking Microsoft down. If Microsoft tries to turn the two against each other, will they be strong enough to resist the bait? If not, can Adobe and Google handle fighting two battle fronts? I don’t think they can. If the war between these two goes live and loud, I think Microsoft will have a better chance on trouncing both. I guess only time will tell what happens, but it’ll be an interesting war to track nonetheless.

360Flex – My Thoughts

360Flex is over and guess what. I’m sad. =( I may be the only person in the world who enjoys making sure that 380+ individuals are having a good time and are learning. It was an honor for me to be both your conference host (as part of the 360Flex committee) and your location host (as I work for eBay and you were in “my house”). You attendees are amazing and make every bit of time and effort worth it.

The true stars of the conference were the community and the technology. Sure, we the committee gave a lot of time and energy, but it was the attendees and presenters that made this event into something special. I love that a lot of our speakers were just as excited to see other speakers as they were about presenting their sessions. Plus, we owe a big thanks to Adobe and their wonderful teams for creating the technology that we could spend 3 days discussing and learning.

Some have commented on how I didn’t appear stressed or nervous, despite the fact that I have never been involved in an event of this size before. The reasons for that is many. I had 2 trusted companions at my side in the committee. If you had John Wilker and Ted Patrick backing you up, you wouldn’t be nervous either. Another reason was that I was so excited to meet you all. I didn’t get a chance to meet everyone despite trying to while handing out badges Sunday evening and Monday morning. Next time though, we can shoot for me meeting all of you.

The feedback that you guys have been providing has been great. Please keep it up by filling out the survey and by posting your thoughts on your blogs. We want this event to keep getting better for you. I know we messed up some areas, and they have been marked for “repairs”. =)

I’m actually kind of jealous of Ted’s job now. He gets to meet you all throughout the year as he does his evangelizing. Well, don’t forget to drop a note to me and let me know how things are going, where you need help, etc. If your on the east coast and a big corporation/organization with a conference facility, drop me a line. The only way I’m gonna get to see my newest 400 friends is with another conference, so onward! =)

‘Til next time, thanks for coming and making our lil conference a success. If you’re local to the Bay Area, don’t forget to sign up for Silvafug (http://silvafug.org) so I can see you sooner. =)

Eternal Optimism of Youth

Just a quick little entry on how great the minds of our youth are.

When you hear, “Almost there…” You likely imagine the last few steps, the light at the end of the tunnel, the last few days of a year long project.

My little boy, TJ, and I were at the playground the other day. He was playing on the “big boy” playset. There was a climbing portion that was meant for kids much bigger and older. He was brave enough to try it though. I started telling him, “You’re almost there,” as he neared the top. By the third or fourth time, he put one foot on the first step and muttered, “Almost there.”

It just sorta struck me as a nice philosophy. Rather than, “I still have so far to go…” next time just say “Almost there” and repeat it to yourself with every step.

eBay/PayPal SecurityKey – Bye, Bye, Phishers/Scammers!

I just wanted to drop a quick little note. Everyone needs to sign up for this and pronto. http://www.ebay.com/securitykey is eBay’s newest way to battle Phishers and Scammers. It’s a little token that gives you a code to sign into your eBay and PayPal accounts.

Think of it as an always changing PIN for your accounts. Without that key, there’s no way for the scammers to get access to your account, even if you get tricked by a fake website. If you forget the key, eBay will call your cell phone and give you a temp number to login with! PayPal makes you answer your secret questions. In other words, it’s really, really hard for someone to steal your account.

It’s the best $5 you’ll ever spend. Trust me.

(Yes, I work for eBay but even if I didn’t, I’d be telling you to get this!)

User Optimization

Take a look at this.

How sad that must be for the peeps in the search groups at MSN and Yahoo. You can just hear the announcement now. “So, team, we appreciate your hard work but, um, we’re going down a different path towards product acceptance. Some may call it bribing, but we prefer to call it ‘User Optimization’.”

For those nerdy couple out there in the valley, here’s a perfect date for tonight.

Library 1.5 (No, not 2.0 quite yet)

A couple of American professors did a new study on auction bidding behavior. The data used was collected from a Korea auction site and the auction style is different than eBay’s, but it’s an interesting read nonetheless.

While the data used in the study was all publicly available data, the neat thing is that the data was provided to the professors by the auction company. This helped the professors by letting them jumpstart into the nitty-gritty, rather than wasting time trying to collect data.

All the megaNet companies (eBay, Google, Yahoo!, Amazon) have tons of this data. Being walled communities, privacy concerns, etc., yada-yada, they keep this information under lock and key in some dark closet. (Not really, because internal employees must be analyzing the hell out of the data, but we’re talking about the view from outside the company.) This leaves researchers/professors to fend for themselves in data collecting. Knowing how uppity sites are about their data, they probably wouldn’t take too kindly to researchers “collecting” what the company’s consider their data and would probably urge the researchers to stop. So, what are the academics to do?

It’s time we bring a bit of the Old World into the New World. When you wanted to (or were forced to, I should say) do research for a school assignment when you were younger, what did you do? You went to the library.

In the library, there were sections that had reference books that never left the building. You were free to use them all you wanted while at the library, but you couldn’t take them with you. This was a hassle because you had to leave your house, go to the library and look like a nerd. Sometimes though, things worked out and you’d find or bring a friend and things would move faster as you split up tasks. Soon enough, without trying, you’d be having fun and have a better project because of the interaction. If needed, you could copy the pages of info you needed and take that to go with you so you could continue the research until the wee hours of morning.

What if these megaNet companies created their own in-house libraries? Places where academia could come and share a common space and perform research on this fat collection of data.

Before you all go off on a rant about the infeasibility to do such things due to privacy issues, corporate espionage, etc, hear me out. Let’s tackle the obvious issues and agree on solutions.

1. The workspace – Lots of talking goes on at companies, not to mention other visible evidence of what’s coming but not out yet. Besides, the obvious NDA, you could put all the academia in a single room. This would prevent wandering eyes, fly on the wall eavesdropping, etc. I’m not saying the rooms have to be windowless, single door jail cells, just setup where nothing big and secretive is easily viewed.
2. The Information – The data these peeps will be after is full of personal information. We can’t possibly allow them access to this stuff and not be sued. Sure we can. We can put a DBA, network security and SOX compliance cop in the room with them. The DBA can be setting up temp tables and views into whatever data the researchers want, while carefully stripping personal data. The network security person can be setting up shared drives for the researchers and monitoring their net usage. The SOX cop can insure all’s okay from the legal standpoint. (Sure, this isn’t really SOX related, but SOX peeps are good at freaking out about the smallest bit of security and info breaching, so they’re a good fit.)
3. The Computers & Networks – The biggest fear is that these researchers are not going to be able to control themselves and start emailing troves of data out of the company and into the public. No problem. Have two networks in the room: one with access to the corporate network (that the employees are monitoring) and one with a direct connect to the internet only. This way, the researcher can query like mad on the corporate computer and then just manually type his results to the other computer.

Now, each library would be different. Some would be more aesthetically pleasing, while another more intellectually pleasing. Each library would in essence be a miniature version of the host company themselves.

Eventually, the companies would see the good work these researchers are doing for their line of business. They would ask the researchers to assist on projects and begin interacting with employees. Heck, I’m sure some companies will even begin to hire the researchers.

The point is that the data we’re holing up needs to come out somehow. I can think of no better way than having the academia go in there and help us understand what we do on these sites we practically live on. I know I’m curious, aren’t you?

Steve Jobs Aura

I’ve been watching Steve Jobs keynotes for years now. I’ve marveled at his ability to ahh and wow the audience during his keynotes. I’m not one for public talking and therefore, it’s nice to admire those that do it well.  

For years, I’ve wanted to see the man in action. I’ve heard stories of how he enthralls the room, of how all attendees are sucked into the Steve Jobs reality vortex and transported to Jobsian Nirvana for the 90 minute talk. I wanted to take this little trip with him just once. Today, I finally did.

My impression: It ain’t all that. Now, before all the members of the Steve Jobs Fan Club jump all over me, hear me out. I too am a member, remember? I think the man is a genius! I love the output of both of his companies, Apple and Pixar. However, the Keynote wasn’t as hypnotic as I thought it would be.

Now, granted, I had two distractions. One the guy in front of me who had to keep standing up to take pictures. It wouldn’t have been too bad if each shot didn’t take 10 minutes to take. Then there was the idiot behind me who couldn’t be bothered to either turn down his cell phone’s ringer or just turn it off. You’d think after one call, he’d do something about it. No, instead he was too busy feeling important and wanted, “I’m in the keynote, can you just call back later? [hang up] Geeze, some people.” Yeah, buddy, some people.

Now, without those two distractions, would I have been mystified? I doubt it. Before I rag on Steve, let me comment on his better points:

1. He can relate to the common man. He makes you think he’s just an ordinary schmoe who just happened to be picked to talk about all this new “stuff”. He even calls it “stuff” too, not some technical term, just like Joe Neighbor would call it “stuff”.

2. He’s relaxed in front of the rabid Mac-fans, press, VIPs and countless cameras. I’ve seen very few people who seem generally relaxed in front of crowds. Watching him, you sort of forget how hard it is to public speak, until some other speaker comes on during the show, then it’s obvious.

3. He’s humble…now. I know that wasn’t always the case, but the Steve Jobs of today (literally) gave all the credit for these brilliant products to the engineers that made them a reality. He even made them stand so they could receive their proper accolades from the crowd. And boy did we heap it on them. =) Here’s a little more even: Great job, guys! You rock!

Okay, so there’s some good points for you; Now, onto the criticisms. A lot of you people will think the following, “Well, of course, he’s human, you know.” But that’s my precise point, Steve is not supposed to be human during a keynote, he’s the world’s closest thing to a demi-god to his worshippers in attendance.

1. You don’t know when to clap. A good speaker leads you in the interaction. You should know when to clap and know when you shouldn’t but feel the need to do it anyways. Today’s biggest awkward clap moment was during the .Mac talk. He said, “I’m happy to announce that we now have 1 million subscribers.” He paused…which I suppose was a cue for us to clap so one or two people did. However, since the response wasn’t enthusiastic, he quickly added, “And we expect continued growth in the future.” Another pause. By this time, we all had a clue and applauded. It was just a weird moment and there were several of those.

2. He misspeaks often. The funniest instance of this was when he said “Webshite” instead of “Website”. =) He also seems to get lost in thought sometimes. He never loses focus, but you can tell he tripped over a word or phrase and has to find his way back.

3. The “stuff” is the true magic. What is captivating about his keynotes are the demos and the ads. Now, I know he has a lot of input into those things, so you could say that’s part of his charm. Not really though, it’s the material that knocks your socks off. Whether the material is a new piece of hardware, software or advertisement, Apple has solid “Oh I gotta have that products.” Heck, I even get emotionally misty-eyed during the iLife demos because it usually deals with family themes and I’m a family man.

There you have it. This newbie’s impression of his first Steve Jobs keynote. Maybe he was just off this year. Don’t worry, I’ll give him another chance in June. I’m going to try to make it to the WWDC! =)