It’s easy to point at Reality TV and call it the end of civilization, but that hasn’t stopped the office betting pools and water cooler analyses that pop up with every season of Survivor. And we think, why do these people get to be on TV? How can someone be famous for having no shame? What do they have that I don’t have? Besides extreme narcissism? It turns out that even in the infinite video universe, there is something to be said about being simply present for your 15 minutes of fame. You can garner a grudging respect for doing something spectacularly stupid because people have noticed it, and are making remarks. You become remarkable. We actually avoid taking risks and doing what needs to be done in our work because we are afraid of being noticed and criticized.

Fortunately for those of us who are not reality TV stars, we can take advantage of gifts that we actually have, like education, experience, and perseverance. It is not a foregone conclusion that we’ll be picked apart like those poor souls on The Jersey Shore. Being noticed, being worth criticizing puts you in front of more people, and gives you more chances to connect. Sure, you’ll have your detractors, but you are just as likely to find people who will cheer you on too. So tell people about yourself and what you do. Write that blog, record that youtube video, and post those photos. It’s your story.

There was an interesting little round table discussion at Wednesday’s Fraser Valley Ruby Brigade meeting. What is the greatest knowledge resource for programmers? The answer was a unanimous, resounding “Google”. I did say the discussion was little.

It’s well known that the freelancer’s greatest enemy is self-doubt. Anything less than a Tony Robbins level of enthusiasm can leave you with small wages, dull work and a series of hanger-on, dead-beat clients. I find that the problem of self-doubt in programmers is quite peculiar. Because our field is constantly changing, the result produced by 10 hours a year ago can be done in 5 today. In another 6 months, the task will be able to be completed in seconds. On last year’s digital watch.

Now, some programmers will look at this wonderful ability to look up code on google instead of slogging through a problem via trial and error and think, “my god, my skills are becoming obsolete!”, when really they are just able to do their jobs better. The carpenter was not undone by power tools and the dentist (thank god) was not undone by the pneumatic drill.

The ability to make software work, to ask the next question the user may have is something too nuanced to be left to machines. Software is little more than decisions we’ve already made carried out by a series of tiny blinking lights. Even after 50 years of the electronic computer, there are still many, many decisions that still need to be made.

Is it just me, or do open source software packages have this tendency to overload features until their control panels look like the dashboard of a 747? Granted, there are some open source products out there that are truly great. Simple to use, easy to customize and a cinch to navigate. But if you’re looking at what looks like a casualty of the feature creep wars, chances are it’s an open source product. Most of the setup involves turning off all the various features you are never going to use. It feels like the product of the same insecurity that informs Microsoft’s attempts to catch up to Mac OS. Someone ought to tell the developers of Blender or Zen-cart that people aren’t turning close-source products because they have more features. You don’t need to find a new user interface paradigm to wrest control of the market from Microsoft and Apple. All you really need is to stay open source, free to download for all.

Criticism. No one likes getting it, and no one likes to give it unless they are hiding behind an internet handle like “superdouche69″. Still, it’s vital to maintaining standards of quality in every field of human endeavor. All of our science comes from articles that are peer-reviewed and criticized. We defer to critics to decide which movie to go see or where to have dinner. Unfortunately, we have reached a point in our civilization where it’s rude to claim authority. No one’s going to criticize anybody if we’re too afraid someone will think we’re “The Man”.

Teachers are often in the uncomfortable position of having authority in a society that abhors it. My wife learned this wonderful axiom in her teacher training that she has passed on to me. It’s called PQS: Praise, Question, Suggestion.

Say there’s a fly in your soup. You could say nothing and appreciate the new garnish. You could threaten to deprive the overworked waitress of her 5% tip. Or, you could simply say, “Excuse me, this soup looks really good, but is that a fly in there? I was hoping I could get another bowl of soup.”

Less aggressive than, “Hey you, stop that!” and less patronizing than the compliment sandwich, PQS can soften the blow of criticism, even when the recipient expects it. It also saves the critic from the tautological mess of trying to find a nice way to express dissatisfaction. Criticism is an intellectually difficult form of inter-person confrontation. It’s so much easier to burrow into one’s cubicle and avoid making any one feel bad, ever. In an age where we are all “individuals”, and social mores don’t count for much, sometimes we still need those customs to get through those unavoidable little battles of life.

This voice acting makes so glad I never bought a PS1. Enjoy!

Found Via Jing

The best minds of my generation are being destroyed. Not by madness, but by waiting. We are all bright, educated, and industrious. We’ve paid our dues and prostrated ourselves on the altars of “Seniority” and “Hard Work”. Still, we wait.

We wait for permission to use the skills we have been trained for. We wait, languishing in jobs we learn nothing from, being managed by people more interested in preserving protocol than making a difference. We wait, sending out resumes to companies without the simple grace to acknowledge us with a polite “no”. If only someone, anyone would realize that we are not a mere fiscal liability, that we are here to solve the world’s problems. But we can’t just ask for that kind of  opportunity, they tell us. And if we are not allowed to work on it? Well, you obviously didn’t work hard enough, you didn’t wait long enough for your opportunity. Don’t like it? Well, that’s just the way the real world works.

This is not right.

Notice I did not say that this is not fair. This is not right, as in not correct. Up is down, and black is white.  The idea that this is the way the world works is an illusion, a construct of a society that wants to be blind and deaf to us. The world doesn’t work like this. Never did. It was not built by the cogs of a grand bureaucracy. It was built upon bravery, risk, and sacrifice.

We do not need permission to work hard. We do not permission to use our ideas, save the planet, or make a profit. There is simply too much work to do in the world for us to be worrying about where our next paycheck is coming from. We should be making our living today, not waiting for it.

You might look upon this post as idle ranting. At worst, I’m ruining my chances for future employment by establishing myself as a troublemaker. You might even think I need to be more realistic. If I want to be realistic about this, I can’t just keep edging back my expectations. Every business has its own metrics for success. I have two. Either I get a full-time position in my field for at least one year, or my freelancing business revenue exceeds $5,000 a month. There are two widgets at the sidebar, one tracking the revenue, and the other tracking the number of resumes I’m sending out. I don’t know how long it will take to reach either goal, but I think those two statistics are a better measure of the economy that affects you and me better than the Dow, GDP, or what have you. I will also use this blog to tell you about the strategies I’m using to get where I want to go.

I’m not saying I have all the answers, but what I do know is that we need to stop pretending that this is okay.

Miles Forrest tweeted this Mixergy interview between Seth Godin and Andrew Warner a little while ago. It talks about the “Lizard Brain”, the biological impulse towards safety and security that hampers our creativity. Godin’s secret to success is to test out lots and lots of ideas, bad ones, even. You might say he just throws crap against the wall and sees what sticks. The trick is to keep throwing the crap. Better yet, get a shovel.

The internet allows this process to happen at a vastly accelerated pace. You have your ideas out there and find out if they work in a matter of hours. The problem remains, what’s the difference between a failed idea and a successful one?

Take this blog for example. One could call it a failure just because it doesn’t bring down the traffic or revenue of John Chow or ProBlogger. However, I enjoy writing it. It’s a great space for self-talk. If anyone comments, hell, I’m over the moon. It doesn’t take much time, and I can write off the hosting.

In the end it doesn’t matter whether you pass one metric or another in your ideas. What matters is the action, even it’s small as getting someone else to say “Yeah, someone should do that.” Most important of all, it should make you happy in some way. Even if at the end of the day, all you have is some crap sticking to the wall.

Image Courtesy Gizmodo

The Apple Tablet was presented yesterday, providing the It workers of the world with a much needed extended coffee break.

No sooner did Steve Jobs hang up his turtleneck for the day when all the complaints started rolling out. It doesn’t have a camera, it doesn’t have a phone, it doesn’t have HDMI. Would you get a load of that closed software architecture? You’ll have to blow a raspberry on Steve Wozniak’s tummy before you can even look at the sdk! On and on and on.

I’m not going to be lining up for this gadget any time soon, no matter how Starship Enterprise-like it may or may not be. I also realize it wasn’t made for someone like me. This is for people who have money, but can’t be bothered to futz with the iPhone’s rate structure or are intimidated by a MacBook. Unbelievable, I know, but they exist.

When you are in the computer industry, it’s so easy to forget no one has any idea what we’re talking about when we say something innocuous like “spreadsheet cell”. The more our trade is arcane and exclusive, the more our world is held back by people who don’t understand the potential of the devices they sit in front of every day at the office. It’s the reason we don’t have things like 3G voip services and voicemail boxes that “fill up”. I don’t care how many features this tablet doesn’t have. If it teaches people how to use and trust technology, I’m all for it.

Sometimes I think I was born at the wrong time. Anybody reading who was born in ‘79, back me up on this. Doesn’t it seem like you show up late to the party on every crazy economic boom of the past twenty years? When I went to university, the dot-com boom was flying high. Anybody with a pulse and a little HTML knowledge was getting hired. Once I graduated with a CIS degree, the boom was long bust and I was supporting wi-fi for truckers. When I got into GIS, the industry was starved for workers, and business was good for a while. Then the sub-prime mortgage crisis happened, and I suddenly was competing with everyone else who had been laid off for my next contract. Now that I’m looking into getting a house, when I hear what prices were even 10 years ago, I feel like I should punch a hole in a wall or something.

I want to tell myself that it’s just gambler’s fallacy, that I’m just making crazy patterns in my mind, but something tells me I’m temporally cursed to be consistently foiled by the Gordon Gekko types that start these mad dashes of investment.

When I was reading this Penny Arcade strip, I thought to myself, “A reality show where the contestants win a position as a games tester. Oh, ho, ho, ho, what fanciful jesters this Gabe and Tycho be. No one would be as daft as to compete for such a non-wager. No one indeed! Ho, ho, ho!”

And then I clicked on the link. This. Is a real thing. With hosts. And contestants. The hapless fellow you see in that strip is an actual contestant, Anthony “Nauseous” Brown. WHY IS THIS A REAL THING?!

It appears that in 2010, the game industry still has too much glamour for its own good. Sure, you can get ahead in the games industry by starting as a games tester. But instead of being recognized for your talent or creativity, you go through a glorified hazing ritual that tests your ability to deal with a lot of organizational BS and getting fired every Christmas. That can be difficult if you’re hampered by things like a love of life and a human soul.

This might sound like I’m bitter about my experience of being a games tester. Far from it. I learned a few things. Working a boring, repetitive, high pressure job can motivate you to find a better one. Giant, faceless corporations aren’t exactly as malevolent or even as competent as they seem. I hope any future job I take will be awarded to me based on my skills and education, not on my ability to take mental punishment.