2016/01/30

Hyperloop & Regional Technology Competitions

The SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition is a fantastic example of how people from around the world (or around a country or a region, like NE Wisconsin or the greater Traverse City area) can innovate and collaborate to solve problems or develop new solutions to challenging problems.

The main reason this competition and all the other work around the Hyperloop is happening is because one highly influential person wanted to make it happen. One person got thousands of smart people to voluntarily contribute hundreds of thousands or millions of hours of work on a technological challenge. One person’s involvement convinced organizations and investors to sponsor those smart people, mentor their work, and fund their expenses.

A recent article highlights the open innovation value of the collaborative competition Elon Musk has inspired and enabled:
"...The SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition is being held at Texas A&M [January 29-30, 2016]...In all, 124 teams from 20 different countries had one common goal: for their hyperloop design to be picked as a finalist in the weekend design competition...One Aggie team, Hullabaloop has been working on the project for nearly 14 weeks. "We've worked very hard on this, you know, completely cut off Christmas vacation and break and all that, and we just stayed here on campus and worked," said Martinez. One thing all teams could agree on is that they're learning from each other. "There's geographic barriers, but also the difference in education and inspirations from other teams," said participant Ian Devlaming. "There's a lot of different designs, things that aren't similar or even work similarly at all, and you can't believe different teams came up with such different ideas." They had the chance to look at and discuss each other's models. "It's really a lot of fun to see what other people are thinking, the ideas that they have and just so many people that are excited about a topic," said Agarwal. "It's just a really good environment to be in while you're studying..."
Check out the website for the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition being held at Texas A&M.

NE Wisconsin
If one highly influential person in NE Wisconsin or in the Grand Traverse region is passionate about creating more interest and participation in technology in their area, they could spark the organization and launch of a region-wide competition modeled after the Hyperloop efforts.

A regional technology competition can be done many ways. It might be done within one region, such as NE Wisconsin or the greater TC area. It can also be done between the two regions, or those two regions could collaborate to develop the competition concept then invite other regions in the Midwest to participate in the competition. The initial and primary focus of the competition is students, but non-students will also be welcome to participate.

Traverse City region
There could be a single technology focus of the competition, several to choose from, or a large range of tech topics involved in the challenge. Whether to have one topic for the competition or multiple topics will require balancing the two goals of (1) engaging the maximum number of participants in the challenge, and (2) having a compelling and focused theme for the challenge that will appeal to a wide spectrum of partners and sponsors. My proposal is to poll a variety of high school and college students, asking which five of the topics below they would want to work on, and what three other technology topics are of extremely high interest to them. Based on feedback from the students, a decision would be made to have a single theme topic for the challenge, or to let participants choose from the most popular three or five topics.

  1. Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality
  2. Robotics
  3. 3D Printing
  4. Wearable Computing
  5. Artificial Intelligence
  6. Cybersecurity
  7. Quadcopters / Drones
  8. Electric Aircraft
  9. Rocketry
  10. Cube Satellites
  11. Asteroid Mining
  12. Smartphone Apps or Uses
  13. Medical Technology
  14. Fitness Devices
  15. Internet of Things

Potential logo for regional technology challenge
Here’s a logo concept which might be used for a NE Wisconsin regional tech challenge. It can be easily modified based on the areas that choose to participate in the competition and the organizations who choose to support the concept. Or someone might develop a completely different and much cooler logo when they get involved with organizing the competition.

If you think a Regional Technology Competition is a worthwhile idea and want to discuss the concept of the tech challenge, contact Bob Waldron, bwaldron (at) gmail [dott] com.

If you want to see a regional competition happen, promote the concept with connected and influential people you know. One of them can be the spark who makes the competition a reality!

------------------------------------------------

Background PDF about the Hyperloop project
Wall Street Journal article about Hyperloop technology development
TechCrunch post about a startup working on Hyperloop

*****

2015/12/08

BarCamp Green Bay 2016, #2: 200 Participants

Original BarCamp Logo
One of my goals for BarCamp Green Bay (BCGB) on November 5, 2016, is to have 200 participants.

BCGB has had ~ 50 participants each year for the first three years. EdCamp Green Bay, a somewhat similar event, appears to have attracted ~ 100 participants. And EdCamp Fox Valley is scheduled for 2016, so unconferences other than BCGB are happening in NE Wisconsin.

Some participants from those two EdCamps are likely to come to BCGB 2016 if they know it's happening.


So how many people can we reasonably expect to come to BCGB 2016?

1,000,000+ people in NE Wisconsin
1,000,000+ people live in NE Wisconsin. If 5% of NE Wisconsin residents are the type who would enjoy a BarCamp, that’s more than 50,000 potential participants from our region. If half of those potential participants have unavoidable schedule conflicts with the Nov 5 event date, that’s still 25,000 who could show up.

Reasons that some of the 25,000 people without a major schedule conflict won’t be at BCGB 2016 include:

  • Haven’t heard about the BarCamp Green Bay
  • Are intimidated by the concept that everyone is a participant, not an attendee
  • Are reluctant to participate if they aren’t personally invited
  • Don’t feel it’s worth traveling ‘all the way’ to Green Bay, or don’t have transportation

You likely know other reasons for people not participating. If we come up with a comprehensive list of the top reasons people wouldn't participate in BCGB, we can then identify the most effective actions we can work on to improve chances of having 200 participants at the 2016 event.

If a core group of organizers for BCGB 2016 does a reasonable job of addressing the top reasons for not coming to the event, we should be able to attract 10% of the potential participants who don’t have schedule conflicts, which means 2500 people would register for the event if the event could handle that many. Even if we just do a mediocre job of addressing the above issues, we should be able to get a minuscule 1% of those 25,000, which is 250 people who will register for BCGB 2016.

If the above numbers are somewhat realistic, and it’s reasonable to expect 250 to sign up (not to mentioned the potential for 1000+ people to register for the unconference), why am I only shooting for 200 registrants?
Dunbar's Number

  • Limiting the event to 200 participants increases a person’s probability of meeting and beginning a relationship with most of the event participants, per the Dunbar’s Number concept for personal networks.
  • Making the event free for participants requires getting sponsors to cover the event costs. It’s much more challenging to recruit sponsors for 2500 participants than for 200. And it would be awkward or discouraging to schedule a venue for 2500 and get the necessary sponsors for a large event, then have only 200 or 100 people show up.
  • Arranging for a NE Wisconsin venue that’s appropriate for an unconference with 2500 people would be for harder than a location that can handle 200 participants.
  • Facilitating a technology unconference with 2500 people, especially the self-introductions and session grid creation at the start of the event, requires someone with advanced Open Space Technology skills and experience.
  • Planning and running an event with 2500 people is a lot more complicated than an activity that only has 200 participants.

I’ve explained why it seems reasonable to be able to get 200 people to register for BCGB 2015, and I’ve listed a couple reasons for not wanting more than 200 participants. But you might wonder why 200 participants would be better than 50 or 100. Here are a few reasons:

  • A tech unconference with more participants increases the variety of session topics, which means more cool and interesting conversations.
  • More participants means a higher probability of each participant meeting new like-minded or complementary-minded people with whom they’ll communicate or collaborate in the future.
  • 200 BCGB participants builds more momentum towards creating a virtual critical mass of people in the NE Wisconsin TIME community (tech, innovators, makers, entrepreneurs).
  • It’s more fun (based on personal experience)!

Although my registration goal for BCGB 2015 is 200, there are a couple caveats regarding that number, such as:

  • We should provide some type of wait list in case more than 200 people want to register. There will always be some people who register but don’t show up on the day of the event, or don’t participate for the entire event. We should encourage registrants to let us know if they aren’t going to participate, and we should have a way to notify interested people when a slot opens up because of a canceled registration.
  • It’s good to be able to accommodate walk-ins who are interested in a tech unconference but don’t hear about it until the last minute, or even hear about through social media or another way on the day of the event. Knowing that some of the registered 200 people won’t show up enables us to welcome walk-ins to participate in the event.

If you’re interested in helping organize BCGB 2016 or have questions about the event, please contact Bob Waldron, bwaldron (at) gmail [dott] com.

Hope to see you at NWTC’s Corporate Conference Center on November 5, 2016, so reserve that date on your calendar today for BCGB 2016!

---------------------------------------------------------

Other recent BarCamp posts:
BarCamp Green Bay 2016, #1: People Working On Interesting Topics
BarCamp Green Bay 2015: What Happened & What’s Next
BarCamping Civic Hackers: Participants, Not Attendees
Calling All Civic Hackers -- BarCampMilwaukee 10

*****

2015/11/16

BarCamp Green Bay 2016, #1: People Working On Interesting Topics

One of my goals for BarCamp Green Bay (BCGB) 2016 is to have 30 target participants who are doing particularly cool research, development or application work for topics of high interest to other BarCampers. This would be somewhat of a twist on a typical BarCamp and would make the event a little closer to the operating model of Foo Camp.

BCGB uses Open Space Technology to create session topics and run the event. That means we don’t have a pre-BarCamp published agenda showing titles, descriptions and times for each session.

The general focus of the event is technology, because BarCamps are technology unconferences. But because the event is a participant-driven, informal event, the agenda will reflect the interests and passions of the participants. If every person who showed up on the morning of BarCamp was a Python coder, many of the sessions would likely be related to a Python topic. But there would probably also be sessions on other coding languages or development platforms.

There would also typically be sessions not focused on coding, but rather on a wide range of other topics which are of high interest to participants. I’ve participated in sessions about ‘hacking coffee,’ photography tips and tricks, photo walks, the design of next-gen public libraries (not the coding variety), technology’s role in education or specific educational applications of technology, how emotional intelligence can help coders be more effective, using gamification in a corporate business setting, etc. Some of these sessions are led by tech people who are passionate about a non-coding or non-tech topic, and some are led by non-tech people who are interested in a specific application of technology to their non-tech world.

At BCGB 2015, I was in a session about collaboration, social entropy and future BarCamps. One person said he’d want to be a participant in future events which he knew would include people doing cool research, development or application work for topics of high interest to him. That comment would apply to pretty much everyone who has been a participant in BarCamps I’ve experienced.

As a result of the discussion in that session around cool work being done in a variety of topics, I’ve decided to focus on:

  • Identifying ten general topic areas of high interest to BarCampers likely to be at BCGB 2016, which is scheduled for November 5, 2016. (Put that event on your 2016 calendar!)
  • Identifying people doing unique work in those identified ten topics, especially people who might want to participate in BCGB 2016.
  • Reaching out to those identified people to make them aware of BCGB 2016 and to invite them to put it on their calendar and participate in the event.

As a start to identifying topic areas of high interest, I’ve developed a list of twenty topics that would be of interest to different BarCampers I know. I’m going to put those in a Google Spreadsheet and share that with BarCampers I know. I’ll ask them to use that spreadsheet to create their Top Ten list, which will be a combination of:

  1. Topics which will be of very high interest to them and other BarCampers.
  2. Topics for which they might be able to help connect to people doing unique or really cool stuff, especially people who might participate in BCGB 2016.

In an ideal world, we could have BarCampers doing awesome work in all twenty topics I’ve come up with. In the real world, there will a limited number of time slots for sessions and a limited amount of the time and energy needed to identify and connect with targeted participants who will commit to participating in BCGB. So my plan is to incorporate BarCampers’ feedback on the Google Spreadsheet to create a BCGB Top Ten topic categories or themes. I’ll then work with friends and acquaintances to develop a list of target participants and invite them to be part of BCGB 2016. My goal is to have three targeted people commit to being BCGB participants on November 5.

My vision is to have each of the target participants lead one session related to their focus area. Not a ‘presentation’ or ‘seminar,’ but a true BarCamp session, with lots of discussion from other participants in the session. If all 30 target participants make it to BCGB 2016, that would be seeding the event with 30 pretty cool sessions.

Of course, we’ll need to have enough additional session slots that people other than target participants will be leading sessions about interesting stuff they’ve been working on. And there won’t be any requirement for a session to relate to the Top Ten themes -- as always, sessions on pretty much any topic of interest to BCGB participants will be welcome, and anyone can lead a session!

I already have a list of ten more posts to write about an ideal BCGB 2016, so check back later if you’re interested in BarCamps. Not every aspect of BCGB 2016 will turn out the way I’d like to see it happen -- but I'm trying to leverage ideas from my Google Doc called “Hacking Your Culture.” At the start of that Gdoc, I’ve got the two quotes below that are relevant to working toward my ideal BarCamp:

Surround yourself with people who do what you want to do, 
and eventually you’ll wake up to find yourself doing the same.

Innovation can’t happen without accepting the risk that it might fail.

If you plan to participate in BCGB 2016 and want to help create the list of Top Ten themes, let me know…

--------------------------------------------

Other recent BarCamp posts:
BarCamp Green Bay 2015: What Happened & What’s Next
BarCamping Civic Hackers: Participants, Not Attendees
Calling All Civic Hackers -- BarCampMilwaukee 10

*****

2015/10/26

BarCamp Green Bay: BarCamps Have Participants, Not Attendees

BarCamp Green Bay 2015 is happening on November 7, 2015, less than two weeks away. Sign up TODAY -- it’s free, it’s fun, and it’s for You.

Yes, this event is ‘for’ you -- and this means that you and other people at the BarCamp will be a key part of making the event an interesting and enjoyable gathering.

BarCamps are unconferences with a strong focus on technology and other topics of interest to people who use or help make technology. If you’re not familiar with BarCamps, read “9 Reasons BarCamp Green Bay Is For Civic Hackers” to find out why you may want to participate in the event. Many of those reasons will be of interest to people who are not civic hackers.

PARTICIPATION is a critical aspect of BarCamps. BarCamps have only ‘participants,’ not ‘attendees.’

Conferences have attendees. At most conferences, most attendees have little or no impact on the success of the conference or how fun and interesting it is for other people at the event. The conference organizer(s) decides what will happen at the event, who the speakers will be, and what the agenda will be. The attendees only get to choose what presentations they want to listen to (or fall asleep in), and the presentations are generally not designed for input and feedback from attendees. Often the presentations are thinly-disguised advertisements for a the presenter's products or services, regardless of the attendees' interest in those products or services.

BarCamps have participants. The classic format for a BarCamp is an unconference utilizing Open Space Technology. This means participants determine what topics will be discussed at the event. This also means the participants will both lead sessions and actively participate in discussion at one or more of the sessions. Another way to state this is: “NO SPECTATORS, ONLY PARTICIPANTS.”

The concept of BarCamps is that discussions which take place in hallways at conferences art the most interesting and valuable conversations of the conference. These are discussions of high interest to people at the conferences, rather than the one-way canned PowerPoint presentations by a limited number of pre-arranged speakers. Unconferences put the focus on conversations of high interest to people at the event -- BarCamp sessions should be like hallway discussions at conferences. The person leading the session (a BarCamp participant) initiates and guides the discussion, while other people really interested in the topic (BarCamp participants in the session) chime in with questions, suggestions, resources, experiences, etc. Participants are key to all discussions and sessions at BarCamps.

Group Photo of BarCamp Participants
Unconferences are participant-driven events. Participants decide what topics they want to lead a session on. Participants decide which sessions they want to be part of. Before BarCamp, they can post on the event website the sessions they want to lead or participate in. Participants can lead sessions, or they can make the session discussions more valuable by asking relevant questions or contributing useful and relevant topic information or experiences. Participants help organize the barcamp or help the organizers with logistics on the day(s) of the event. They personally invite other people to the BarCamp or promote the event on their Facebook page, Twitter account, Google + page, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, blog or other social media they use. Participants recruit sponsors for the event.

In short, everything related to BarCamps is done by participants. There is no ‘they’ or ‘them’ at BarCamps, only ‘we’ or ‘us.’

My next post about BarCamp Green Bay 2015 will be on topic of ‘sessions, not presentations.’

Sign up today for BarCamp Green Bay, and reserve all day November 7th on your calendar for a good time with tech people, innovators, makers and entrepreneurs (the TIME community of NE Wisconsin).

*****

2015/03/31

Brooke Allen: Repairing A Broken Job Market

Brooke Allen has been working on Wall Street as a programmer, analyst, trader, and hedge fund manager since the 1980's and in 2004 he changed how he recruited so as to care about all his candidates, not just the ones he hired. After retiring from Wall Street he has dedicated himself to changing what he considers to be a broken job market. Below is a 31 Mar 2015 email interview with Brooke about this topic.

Bob Waldron, Question: Brooke, who are you?

Brooke Allen, Answer: I am a retired Wall Street executive. I have a BA in Mathematics, much of a MS in computer science, and an MBA in finance. My career arc took me from programming at a university to operations research at an airline to systems design at a small startup to computer consulting to the likes of Mobil Oil, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch. In 1988 I built a quantitative trading desk at Merrill and in 1995 I built one for a Canadian firm called Maple Financial and in 2004 we created a hedge fund firm called MANE Fund Management. It seems most of my career has been spent working for firms that begin with the letter M. In February 2014 I retired but I’m continuing the tradition because now I work for Me.

I am also a husband, father, ham radio operator, and Burner. At heart I am a maker, a programmer, and writer. A neighbor once told my wife, “Brooke is an Ideas Man” and I think that is just about right.

Q: What ideas are you working on these days?

A: One idea is that there is no shortage of work and when the money dries up the work piles up. I first heard this idea at a conference on the morning of May 6, 1982 and it changed my life. The economy was in recession, I’d been unemployed for quite a while and was slipping into depression. The idea is that rather than look for a job look for work that needs to be done even if there is no budget to pay you.

So I wrote to the 200 people I knew and said that because I was unemployed I had free time to help people, even if they don’t have a budget to pay me. Plenty of friends offered to let me pick up their laundry or babysit their children but Morgan Stanley hired me for a few weeks to read some code and write a user’s manual. That got me started on Wall Street and within a month I had three job offers. Looking back, all the big pivots in my career have come during downturns in the market because people would let me work for free or cheap when during better times they could have hired someone competent.

Another idea is that the job market is broken. It rewards people for being good at getting a job rather than good at doing it. And yet, as an employer, the very last thing I need you to be good at is getting your next job.

Q: So, what are doing about helping people find work?
A: In 2009 when I was speaking at a conference of my peers in quantitative finance I said that the bad news is that the market sucks but the good news is there is no shortage of work. Twenty-eight people unemployed audience members were so intrigued they organized a networking dinner where the rules included: 1) All conversations must begin with “How may I help you?” 2) You must be prepared with an answer to that question if you’re asked.

This “be helpful” orientation proved vastly superior to the blah-blah-blah approach to networking and for about a year I organized these events periodically but eventually it proved too much. The problem was very few people came to more than a few meetings because once they began working for each other they started landing jobs and they didn’t have time.

I created the website NoShortageOfWork.com to promote some of these ideas.

Q: What are you doing about the broken job market?

A: After retiring I created BetterWorkWorld.com to promote better ways of hiring. Now, rather than helping the  unemployed directly, I’m concentrating on getting employers to help the unemployed as part of an innovative hiring process that also flushes out the hidden talent who represent better value for money.

Q: Why are you going after employers rather than job seekers?

A: Because employers have money in the budget and job seekers do not.

For example, imagine an employer is willing to pay 20% of a $100,000 salary to a headhunter in order to pry a talented employee out a competitor.

For half that I can show them how to find someone for $80,000 who is just as good but currently unemployed (or underemployed) merely because they are bad at getting a job but perfectly fine at doing it. What’s more, my approach involves not judging people too early and teaching everyone how to find work even if not with the employer and therefore even the candidates who land work learn something.
landing jobs and they didn’t have time.


Q: How do you do that specifically?

A: It depends on the situation but I describe my approach in an article in Quartz: How to hire good people instead of nice people. I also recommend my piece in Science: Hiring in a Dysfunctional Job Market. This describes how I have been hiring since 2004 not only technical people but also executive assistants, compliance people, traders, and for many other positions. Employers should feel free to try any of these ideas on their own although I’d be happy to provide consulting if they want.

Q: You are also doing something you’re calling Staffup Weekend. What is that all about?

A: I’ve attended seven Startup Weekends, and at one of them in January, 2014, I came up with the idea of a Staffup Weekend, which you can read about at StaffupWeekend.org.

The idea is that most people are not entrepreneurial in spirit; what they really want is a good job. A Staffup Weekend is like a Startup Weekend, except with jobs instead of untested business ideas. One or more employers present jobs they are trying to fill and over the weekend attendees do work typical of what is expected on the job.

Anyone can attend a Staffup Weekend and students, job browsers, parents returning to the workforce, and anyone else can get a taste of what the work is like before investing the time to develop the requisite skills. The idea is that anyone can help even if your role is to keep everyone else caffeinated.

Q: Have you ever done one of these events?

A: We’re just getting started and right now we’ve only done one in San Francisco. You can see a photo of the attendees and read about their projects here, you can read an article written by a journalist who attended here, and you can read the discussion on Hacker News here.

We’d love to do more events for other employers, and we’re happy to customize them as needed. There is no requirement these be done on the weekend although running a Staffup Midweek makes it less likely you’ll attract candidates with day jobs.

Q: How does the Staffup Weekend differ from a Reverse Pitch?
A: I have never attended a reverse pitch event but my understanding is that at them corporations describe problems and entrepreneurs suggest solutions and perhaps even begin working on solving them. These sound like a fine way for employers to check out vendors and for vendors to show their stuff.

But it doesn’t sound like a good way for someone to investigate a job if that is what they want or for finding employees.

For example, let’s imagine you are a liberal arts graduate and you’ve been answering ads for an executive assistant and your first round of filtering is based on school reputation and GPA.

You’re not getting called for interviews and you suspect the reason is that you’re losing out to Ivy League grads with better GPA’s and internships at fancy firms. Even if it turns out you are right, you’d never know.

So you attend a Staffup Weekend where a marketing executive describes the work he expects of an actual assistant that involves prospecting and handling customer complaints. After spending the morning describing the product that afternoon you look for prospects on the internet and rank them by how qualified they might be. Then you write responses to letters of complaint from actual customers.

Although you studied Political Science at a state school you do a superb job because ever since you were in middle school you’ve been helping your parents with their restaurant supply business. The Ivy League business school grad who joined your team might have appeared to be a better candidate on paper but after experiencing the work she decides she would absolutely hate the job and she dropped out.

Q: How are things different today than they were in the 1980’s?

A: Back then you had to type cover letters by hand, employers were more interested in developing their workforce rather than out-sourcing, hiring managers were willing to give bad references, and that meant your reputation was more a function of what your references were willing to say in confidence than your social media prowess. People wrote letters and if they were in a hurry they called you on the phone. Your network consisted of people who knew you personally because, unless you were famous, there was no other way for someone to know you.

Today a single ad can attract hundreds of applicants who have done little more than click a mouse. I get 100-300 emails a day and nearly all of them are unsolicited demands on my time by strangers. It feels that unless I’m very careful there are many more ways of working hard all day and feeling like I’ve accomplished nothing.

When I getting my MBA in the early 1980’s I took the only class they offered on entrepreneurship and, frankly, I loved it. But I’d already started my own consulting business after working for other people for 10 years.

Today, being an “entrepreneur” is all the rage, but I think it is a bit overdone. Being an entrepreneur is not something you choose to be so much as it is a personality disorder – what happens when you becomes obsessed with an idea that will have people labeling you as crazy unless you prove to the world that you’re right. I’ve written about it in: Want to be an entrepreneur? First, ask yourself these five questions.

Very few people have the constitutional makeup to be entrepreneurs; there are even genetic markers for “ambiguity tolerance” and “openness to new experience” that can are hard to fake if you don’t have them. Successful entrepreneurs seem to think that “becoming more entrepreneurial” is the prescription for all that ails you. I disagree.

But maybe I’m just getting old and crotchety.

Q: Where will things go in the next five years?

A: I have no friggin’ idea. There are some things I hope will happen:

I hope character becomes more important than reputation.

I hope that skill and craftsmanship come back into style.

I hope that managers realize that their job involves motivating, training, and orchestrating the efforts of others and that not everyone is good at managing themselves, nor should they be.

Q: From the viewpoint of a company that needs professional work done, what is the biggest challenge in connecting with professionals to accomplish that work?

A: I’ve never had a problem hiring people because I never hired someone to do something I could not do myself. I hired people with the right attitude and aptitude and trained them in what I needed done. I think the biggest challenge is that many employers hire people for jobs they can’t do themselves and often they cannot even tell the difference between a good employee and a bad one much less identify latent talent.

From the viewpoint of a professional, what’s the biggest challenge in connecting with work where they can make good use of their time, knowledge and energy?

I talk to many job seekers and they ask questions like this and I have a lot to say but I’m not sure they want to hear it. Anyway, here goes…

First of all, what do you mean by “professional?” For a lot of people they really mean “white collar worker” but my dad taught me that a professional puts the interests of his clients ahead of his own. By this standard, my plumber is more professional than many of the people I’ve met on Wall Street.

It comes down to what the term “good use” means. The professional knows that one’s time, knowledge, and energy needs to be of “good use” to others.

Q: Do you think Staffup Weekend and Better Work World can scale in the way that LinkedIn, Indeed, SimplyHired, Career Builder, LinkUp, Facebook, Twitter, craigslist, Dice and Stack Exchange have scaled?

A: Absolutely not. My mantra is “care and people will care back; be honest and people will be honest back.” Those things are platforms but they don’t facilitate caring or honesty.

My hope is that Staffup Weekend will scale like Startup Weekend did, that is to say, in a very labor intensive way that involves a lot of people doing a lot of work because they find meaning in it.

Better ways of hiring can scale, but it is not going to take a cute website or an app. It will take a movement; hopefully it will scale the way Christianity or Buddhism has scaled, not the way Monster and iPhone apps have scaled.

Q: What advice do you have for someone who wants to hire the way you do but cannot afford to hire you as a consultant?

A: There is a lot you can do; after all, I’ve been hiring in new and more humane ways for more than 10 years and I didn’t hire anyone to teach me.

I tell everyone that the most important thing is to care. If you care then you can figure out the rest and if you don’t care then it doesn’t matter. When people tell me all the reasons they can’t do make a change they usually have spent more time thinking up reasons they cannot accomplish something then they have spent trying anything new. All that tells me is that they don’t care enough to do anything. Remember, care is a verb and you don’t do something then you might be wishing things were different, but you don’t really get to say you care.

I won’t hire anyone until I care about them and they care about me. And I won’t hire anyone until I have at least three people I’d consider hiring. This means that for every person I hire there are at least two other people I cannot hire who I’ve come to care about. So, develop a habit of caring about people you won’t hire.

Don’t get me wrong; you don’t have to care about everyone. Just the ones you would hire but can’t. See if you can help them get a job elsewhere.

Commerce is at its core an unselfish activity. I think people naturally want to care about others and be of help. For some reason they have become afraid to do that and I think it is a shame. I learned a very valuable lesson about this back in college when I was hitch-hiking across the country and I wrote about it in: You do not need permission to do the right thing. No one can give you permission to do the wrong thing.

In short, have the courage to care.

Q: If LaunchWisconsin Reverse Pitch organizers are interested in doing one or several StaffupWeekend events in northeast Wisconsin, will you consider running the event(s)?

A: There is a lot to running an event and I cannot do it alone. I would be more than happy to help provide design support and marketing materials but I have no idea how I could attract sponsors or manage logistics from here on the East Coast. I’ll be coming through Wisconsin in early September on the way back from Burning Man and I’d be happy to meet with people if they are interested.


Thanks for sharing your thoughts on how to repair the broken job market, Brooke!

*****

2015/03/30

Hacking Science: TIME Community and Democracy of Developers

An interesting dissertation serendipitously popped up on my laptop screen this morning -- "Hacking Science: Emerging Parascientific Genres and Public Participation in Scientific Research."

The dissertation appears relevant to a number of my activity areas, stating in its abstract:
Safecast Radiation Monitors
"...I trace the history of this distinction between expert and public science communication, looking back to early scientists, amateur scientists, and forward to the emerging trends in citizen science. I also uncover an emerging sphere, both within and beyond citizen science, where hackers have become involved in scientific research. I trace this phenomenon to the emergence of “hackerspaces.”...boundaries between expert and public spheres of science communication are eroding..."
A central figure in the "Hacking Science" paper is the Safecast radiation monitoring project, a high profile citizen science effort that emerged from a critical mass of people in the TIME community (tech, innovator, maker, entrepreneur). One of my activities is connecting and building the TIME community of northeast Wisconsin (and other places, like Humboldt County, CA). The TIME community consists of like-minded and complementary-minded people who can also be described as doers and are sometimes called creatives, people who don’t watch much tv or participants, not spectators. The "Hacking Science" dissertation very directly speaks about many activities in which the TIME community is involved.

Ashley Kelly's "Hacking Science" dissertation also appears highly relevant to the democracy of developers concept being promoted by Wearable World, as described in this post on ReadWrite:
"If software is eating the world, as Netscape cofounder and technology investor Marc Andreessen likes to say, then hardware is the plate from which it feasts. Devices are the best expression of the ethereal services that spew data into our increasingly digital universe. And increasingly, they will be as hackable and fungible as software code. For this world, we will need vastly more people who are proficient in code, and we will need people who look nothing like the bulk of the software profession today. Redg and I call this emerging group the "Democracy of Developers." ReadWrite will champion them. In 2014...professional software developers outnumbered hobbyists 11 million to 7.5 million. I believe those numbers will soon flip. I predict that we will have vastly more practitioners of code who pursue it out of passion, as a sideline, as an entrepreneurial dream, or simply as a skill they use to make their way in the world."
I was thinking about the democracy of developers issue this past Saturday at the NEWCodeCamp. The camp had over 250 registered participants, most of whom were coders who work primarily in the Microsoft world. One of the sessions at the camp was about the Internet of Things (IoT), and Jason Young talked about many different aspects of the coding he has done in the IoT. While I was listening to Jason's IoT session and a couple of the other camp sessions, I thought about how Microsoft's dominance in business and general computing is becoming less of a monopoly stranglehold and how Microsoft and developers who focus on MS coding tools are starting to become more open and more involved with non-MS code. Many of the non-MS coders I know weren't even aware of the NEWCodeCamp or NEWDUG, a northeast Wisconsin organization which previously labeled itself a .NET user group. The reverse is also true, because people I talked to at the NEWCodeCamp had no idea what BarCampGreenBay or Startup Weekend Green Bay were, and probably don't know about Digital Fertilizer or OpenCoffee. So connecting those two separated communities will help make the northeast Wisconsin developer community more open and more aware of opportunities to learn, share and collaborate. As those MS coders get involved in more events that are participant driven and open, the democracy of developers will get bigger, better and more interesting.

I'm also interested in "Hacking Science" because it appears to relate to:
  1. The Distributed Hacker/Maker Network (DHMN) and Appleton Makerspace
  2. Civic hacking and the upcoming DHMN Civic Hackathon -- Appleton 2015
  3. Coworking spaces that engage with civic activists, like Gangplank
  4. Connecting professionals and work in "the new world of work" with activities like Staffup Weekend and Reverse Pitch
Well, back to reading "Hacking Science" -- so far I've only read the abstract and beginning of the dissertation, and it appears to be 485 pages long...

*****

2015/03/17

Connecting Professionals And Work: Reverse Pitch Events

A reverse pitch event for entrepreneurs is generally seen as having corporations pitch project proposals to an audience of entrepreneur interested in developing solutions that meet the corporations’ needs. This type of event helps entrepreneurs focus on solving recognized problems in their regional market, problems which companies will pay entrepreneurs to solve.

In the entrepreneurial world, a pitch competition is an opportunity for selected startups to pitch, or present, their company’s concept and business model to potential investors in hopes of securing investment in their startup. The concept of entrepreneurial reverse pitches seems to be young enough that it’s not yet well-defined. The specific goals and format for reverse pitches will evolve over the next couple years as the established companies and entrepreneurs figure out what works best for each of them.

One reverse pitch event from 2013 was described as an opportunity for startups to secure sales or investment from established large corporations.
“...The reverse pitch event is intended to help start-ups in the critical effort to find sales channels and to provide a way for established companies to engage with the entrepreneurial community...Start-ups will be chosen to participate through a competitive application process. Those selected will have 20-minute pitch meetings with the companies. Each large company has agreed to send a senior executive or manager, and to purchase from, mentor or invest in one of the start-ups…”
A 2014 reverse pitch competition in Chattanooga had funded project proposals.
“...corporations will pitch funded project proposals to an audience of entrepreneurial problem solvers — the reverse of the usual scenario...AC Entertainment/Aloompa, The Blackstone Group, the City of Chattanooga, EPB, FedEx, PlayCore, Smith & Nephew and Unum...will present projects, which all have assigned budgets attached to them, that address their enduring pain points or emerging challenges…”
One alternative direction reverse pitches could take is an event where entrepreneurs help established companies develop the request for proposal (RFP) for projects the companies want done by third parties. The established companies may not even be aware of potential solutions and might unknowingly structure their RFPs in a way that excludes those solutions.

I hope to identify some of the reasons companies have participated in reverse pitch competitions, or why they might in the future. I'll also write about other emerging or non-mainstream tools and concepts for connecting professionals and work.

If you’ve participated in a reverse pitch event, whether you represented a startup or an established corporation, please contact me at bwaldron (at) gmail [dott] com. I’d like to learn more about your experience and how you think reverse pitch events can be improved.

*****

Here are links to a few past and future Reverse Pitch websites:

Videos from KCNext Reverse Pitch 2014: http://www.kcpt.org/reverse-pitch-2014-kc/#

 Videos from LaunchTennessee Reverse Pitch 2014: http://launchtn.org/ReversePitch/

SwitchPitch; Washington, DC, NYC, LA and Miami: http://switchpitch.com/

LaunchWisconsin 2015: http://www.launchwisconsin.com/reverse-pitch/

*****

2015/02/02

Raspberry Pi 2 Launches: Faster And Stronger

The Raspberry Pi 2 Model B single board computer launched today with a quad core ARMv7 CPU and 1 MB SDRAM.
Raspberry Pi 2 Model B -- Top

Compared to the B+ version, the new Pi will be more capable as a primary or secondary desktop PC and should give users:
  1. Smoother web browsing
  2. Better viewing of videos
  3. More responsive experience when writing computer programs
  4. Smoother operation when running multiple programs at the same time
  5. Ability to run a wider variety of operating systems, with Ubuntu distro likely to be developed in the near future [Update: Snappy Ubuntu Core is currently available] and an Internet of Things version of Windows 10 (not the consumer x-86 version of Win 10) in late 2015 or early 2016
The primary technology changes in the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B (Feb 2015) vs its predecessor, the Raspberry Pi Model B+ (June 2014), are:
  • 900 MHz Quad core ARMv7 vs 700 MHz single core ARMv6 CPU
  • 1 GB vs 512 MB SDRAM
Pi 2 is backwards compatible with earlier Pis, has the same form factor as the B+, the same 5V power requirement and is still only $35.

The Arstechnica article gives a pretty good overview of the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B tech specs:
SoC: Broadcom BCM2836 (CPU, GPU, DSP, SDRAM)
CPU: 900 MHz quad-core ARM Cortex A7 (ARMv7 instruction set)
GPU: Broadcom VideoCore IV @ 250 MHz
More GPU info: OpenGL ES 2.0 (24 GFLOPS); 1080p30 MPEG-2 and VC-1 decoder (with license); ​1080p30 h.264/MPEG-4 AVC high-profile decoder and encoder
Memory: 1 GB (shared with GPU)
USB ports: 4
Video input: 15-pin MIPI camera interface (CSI) connector
Video outputs: HDMI, composite video (PAL and NTSC) via 3.5 mm jack
Audio input: I²S
Audio outputs: Analog via 3.5 mm jack; digital via HDMI and I²S
Storage: MicroSD
Network: 10/100Mbps Ethernet
Peripherals: 17 GPIO plus specific functions, and HAT ID bus
Power rating: 800 mA (4.0 W)
Power source: 5 V via MicroUSB or GPIO header
Size: 85.60mm × 56.5mm
Raspberry Pi 2 Model B -- Bottom
Weight: 45g (1.6 oz)
The ARM entry in Wikipedia gives an overview of the ARM family of microprocessors. For more info on specs for the various Pi models, see the Raspberry Pi hardware documentation webpage.

Pi B+ production is planned to continue because of a significant commercial sales volume. The Model A version is expected to be upgraded to the new Broadcom SoC, but that will likely happen in 2016.

You can order the Raspberry Pi 2 now from element14 / Newark, from RS Components and from Adafruit, but other Pi vendors such as SparkFun and Amazon didn't appear to have it listed yet.

*****