In case you haven’t heard already, this Wednesday (April 28th), the Philadelphia Adobe User Groups will be holding a joint event celebrating the release of the Flex 4 framework and Flash Builder 4 at the Wharton’s Jon M. Huntsman Hall, Room G65. We’ll have Terry Ryan, Flash Platform Evangelist for Adobe speaking at the occasion and there will be food and a bunch of giveaways. The event is jointly being organized by the Philadelphia Flex, Flash, ColdFusion, Photoshop and Illustrator User Groups so its a great opportunity to connect with other groups and group managers as well.
The event is free of course but you will need to register here. And if you are into Flex development, make sure you are on the PhFlex mailing list as well.
We know that Apple is trying to keep its developer base isolated from the rest of the mobile world. If you have to choose a platform between iPhone and Android, an indy developer will probably choose the iPhone right? Thats where the people are. This has nothing to do with the Flash Player, but everything to do with making the iPhone a hard ecosystem to leave for a user.
Now Adobe, imagine you release an Objective C library that developers can use that will also cross compile to Flash Player bytecode that can run on Android, web etc. You already have done some work for compiling C/C++ to Flash Player bytecode in the Alchemy Project, and I am assuming you now have a bunch of of LLVM experts in your team. You will have to mandate that developers use only that library since others may not work with the cross compiler (there may be dependencies that are not ported). As an indy developer trying to get to the maximum audience I would use that library in a heartbeat. Now suddenly a lot of games are being automatically ported to the Android platform (with AIR). Except that those games appear on the Android immediately, rather than wait for the few weeks/months of sitting around waiting to be approved. The Android now suddenly looks like a better platform doesn’t it. Meanwhile this works nicely for you again. You need some IDE (maybe Flash CS5) to cross compile the Objective C to ActionScript bytecode so you have a market for a tool again. Get Google to help you by replacing the iAd system with one that uses Google ads, I am sure they’ll get behind that.
[update] This is not really a solution for people who dont know Objective C and dont want to learn it. But it does give iPhone developers more options, unties their dependence on that platform only and makes AIR on other devices a lot more viable.
Hopefully you like this idea, I’ll expect a check from you soon
Great talk by Don Norman, a founder of The Cognitive Science Society, and widely considered to be the first to apply advanced human factors to design via cognitive design on The three ways that good design makes you happy:
The three ways he talks about are:
Visceral: How pleasant things seem to work better.
Behavioral: How good design lets you feel in control.
Reflective: How people prefer design that reflects their personality.
One interesting point he makes is how a happy state of mind is puts the brain in ”breadth first search” mode and is more conducive for out of the box thinking, but tension and some pressure puts you in a “depth first search” mode (as dopamine gets added into the system). Moment of self realization here for me personally: as a programmer I have often preferred tighter deadlines (note: not to be confused with unrealistic) to open ended project timelines. I need the pressure to focus. A bunch of my programmer friends say they feel the same way. Thats why the burn down charts for closed work tickets is almost never the ideal one:
(note the change of slope as projects approach end dates = more pressure)
There is often the temptation (by me anyway) to carry the model of deadline driven development to design, but Don Norman’s talk indicates that this would be a bad idea, especially if you are concepting new experiences. How much pressure in terms of deadlines and deliverables can anyone apply on design teams before you kill lateral thinking thats absolutely required for creative teams. However its just as easy to fall into the time sink of finding the perfect experience. Voltaire’s quote about Good being the enemy of Great comes to mind again.
So concept in breadth first mode, execute in depth first.
The concept also seems applicable to application/web design around browse and consume. Browse pages/screens, where there isn’t an end goal really and a user is out looking for “something interesting”, should put people’s brains in breadth first mode, with more emphasis on visuals, etc, but when the user is in content consumption mode, like say on video consumption pages or web search, pages, a muted design may be a better idea. It certainly explains why Google Search pages, which most of us use to get to something we need and not really browse, work so well, but on all their other applications where users are more about entertainment than work, their designs feel awful.
Other cross compiler solution vendors like Appcelerator, Unity and Phone Gap are not sure what this means for them. Appcelerator’s blog goes down because of dev traffic.
AppStore rejects app because developer implements (from the ground up) a UI feature thats too close to forbidden iPad gesture (seriously? A forbidden gesture?)
The Daring Fireball post talks about how Adobe is screwed now. I dont know about the financial implications, but if nothing else, the CS5 cross compiler has definitely proven how the exclusion of certain runtimes has nothing to do with performance but is a pure power play.
In other news, I am now looking for the cheapest way to get a Nexus 1. Could Adobe and Google please set up something for us refugees from the big A dictatorship?
Fantastic talk by Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President, Product Management at Google on Rules to Success. The talk was so heavy with aphorisms that I ended up watching it twice and noted down his various points. They may be slightly off missing a couple of points here and there, but still pretty educational (for me at least )
Starting note: I loved this statement at the beginning of the talk:
If you want to build a ship
don't herd people together to collect wood
and don't assign them tasks and work,
but rather teach them to long for the
endless immensity of the sea.
Overcommunicate always all the time. You cant communcate enough.
Openly share everything with your collegues. Trust your people and give them this info. Trust breeds loyalty.
Repetition does not spoil the prayer.
Each word matters. Be crisp and direct and choose each word wisely. Its is not rambling: Leave out the parts that people skip. “I would have written a shorter letter if I had the time” : Mark Twain
Great leaders are great teachers and great teachers are great storytellers. Narrative is what that matters.
On Talking:
As leaders you learn more by listening than talking. Listening makes you humble and smart. When you listen you learn how things work, when you talk, you echo how you think things work.
If you must talk, ask questions. People learn more about you from your questions
If you actually know the answer in a business situation, talk, but back up with data.
Try to respond instantly. If you dont respond instantly, everything stalls.
Rules on Culture:
Avoid Hippos: (Highest paid person’s opinion)
You should not be able to read an org chart by looking at the product (for example, you cant look at the apple org chart when you look at the ipod).
Healthy orgs crush bureaucracy in all forms.
Ask for winning strategy and look for good tactics.
People are more productive when they are crowded. Social groups moderate bad behavior.
Empower the smallest of teams. Small teams accomplish more. Read the mythical man month. Create teams about the size of a family.
Knights are knights and knaves are knaves. Tom Peters: There is no momentary lapse of integrety.
Focus on value rather than costs.
Never suggest copying a competitor. You can do better.
Hope is not a plan.
Success breeds the green eyed monster. Take away with surprise and humility.
Do all re-orgs in a day
Rules on Hiring:
Know how to interview well.
Gimmicks like free food, games, etc aren’t that important. People come to google to work with great people.
Managers don’t hire people. Committees hire people.
Promotions should be a peer review process.
Instead of laying off the bottom 10% dont hire anymore.
Dont hire specialists, esp in high tech. Change is the only thing permanent. “I have no special talent just passionate curiosity.” : Einstein.
You cannot teach passion. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. If the enthusiasm isn’t palpable in a room, its not there.
Urgency of a role isnt important enough for a quick hire.
Identify and purge bad eggs.
Diversity is your best defense against myopia.
You cannot punt the management training program.
Life is not fair. Disproportionately reward risk takers and performers. Don’t tell people they did a good job if they didn’t. Real life is a meritocracy. Celebrate and reward what you want to see more of.
Build around the people who have the most impact.
Rules on Decision Making:
Decision making is about concesus and not unanimity. Dont spend hours towards unanimity. Good enough is better. Voltaire: “Perfect is enemy of the good”.
There is no consensus w/o dissent. Patton: If everyone is thinking alike then someone isnt thinking.
If there is doubt about what to do think abt customers perspective.
Choose your goals wisely. If the goals create conflict change the goals.
No-one of us is smarter than all of us.
Where there is harmony there is no innovation. Discuss and arguement leads new ideas and new meaning. Innovation comes from disagreement.
Rules on Fostering Innovation:
You cannot manage creativity to manage risks. Innovation comes from creativity.
Create a culture of yes based on optimism and big thinking.
Never stop someone from a good idea for a better one. Darwinian rule works. Best ideas win and others fail.
A leaders job is not to prevent risk but to recover from failures fast. Good failure happens quickly.
A good crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Nothing teaches like a crisis.
Rules on Humility
Learn something new to remember how hard its to learn. Teach something so you can learn.
Never stop learning. School is never out.
Humility is correlated with age. Arrogance is inversely correlated with age.
You get personal leverage from delegation and inspection. Smart people suorround themselves with smart people.
Judgement comes from experience and experience comes from errors. You learn more from your msitakes. At google screwups are written and archived to learn from for the future.
Smart ppl can smell hypocracy. Make sure you spend ur time on things you say is important. Culture is set from the top.
Don’t burn bridges.
Would you work for yourself?
Write a self review and be critical about yourself.
Communicate and confess when you make a mistake.
Final note:
Develop your own style.Styles that worked for others may not work for you (ends with the story of Cortez’s burning the boats, which may have worked for him, but Johnathan prefers the way of the Isreli tank commanders who lead by shouting “Follow me”)
)