Rocket Science

Well, I’ve got some big news. Today I accepted a position in the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology (OEIT) at MIT. My initial appointment is for 6 months to work on dissemination of the iCampus Project, in particular the Spoken Lecture project.

iCampus was a research collaboration between Microsoft Research and MIT whose goal was to create and demonstrate technologies with the potential for revolutionary change throughout the university curriculum. It’s development phase ended in 2006, and it is currently conducting dissemination and wrap-up activities scheduled to complete in the next two years.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the folks at OEIT over the last couple years, so this isn’t a departure into the great unknown. I’ve always been impressed by the projects they’ve worked on, and the team they have assembled. So, just like my move to Utah State in 2004, I go to work with folks that I know and respect.

What does this mean long term? I’m not sure. I hope that I can work at OEIT for years to come. But in the short run, the great adventure continues. To paraphrase, “Go East, young man.” Go East.

…these history-worth events happened?

These are some of the events where I have a specific memory that I thought I’d share. (I write this while watching Barack Obama’s inauguration.)

Space Shuttle Challenger (April 4, 1986): I remember being herded into a classroom at Pinecrest Van Nuys watching the news coverage of the explosion. Fast forward to college where I was able (in 1992 or 1993) to hear Roger Boisjoly talk about the management failure (to recognize an engineering problem) that lead to the Challenger disaster. (See Wikipedia: Space Shuttle Challenger and Roger Boisjoly).

Loma Prieta Earthquake (October 17, 1989): It was a beautiful fall day and I was in my dorm room at UC Berkeley on the 5th floor of Ehrman Hall. I had the Bay Bridge World Series on the TV as I was sitting at my desk doing some homework, when the room began to shake. Now, growing up in California, I’ve been through my fair share of earthquakes including 7.0+ earthquakes in Southern California. So no big deal. Well, ok maybe it was. What struck me at the time was, “Wow, this is really going on for a long time.” And, “It’s probably not a good idea to keep sitting at my desk, basically trapped in.” So I got up, turned off my TV (the TV stations had stopped broadcasting) and deliberately put the TV on my bed. You may think this is weird, but if you know me you’ll understand when I say, “There’s no good point in having the TV break!” After the shaking stopped, and it seemed to go on for a very long time, what should I do now? Hrm, TV stations aren’t broadcasting, I guess I might as well go down to dinner. Afterwards, I thought, boy that was really smart, go down to the dining commons surrounded by plate glass windows. (See Wikipedia: Loma Prieta Earthquake)

9/11 (September 11, 2001): I remember lying in bed listening to my alarm go off and hearing “a plane hit the World Trade Center” and thinking, well I guess I’m not gonna be able to go back to sleep. For the next hour or two, I sat watching the news wondering if I should call our staff to cancel work for the day. But then deciding, some sort of normalcy might be good (and clearly not holding it against them if they didn’t come in to work). (As an aside that was the beginning of the now ubiquitous “bugs” or “crawling text” across the bottom of the screen on TV.) (See Wikipedia: 9/11)

Death of Princess Diana (August 31, 1997): I remember sitting at my step-mom’s computer reading the news (CNN I think) while on a visit to Southern California when I read the story about Princess Diana’s death. As the evening and days and weeks went on it was interesting to watch the media spectacle and see and witness much of what’s wrong with the world with its focus on celebrity and fluff (ok I am an engineer after all). (See Wikipedia: Princess Diana)

Election of Barack Obama (November 4, 2008 and January 20, 2009): On election night, I remember sitting playing Warcraft listening to the election results just as the news stations were predicting that Barack Obama would win. And continuing to watch when John McCain gave his concession speech–and thinking, wow, that’s a great speech. The man that gave that heartfelt speech is the man that should have been running for President–not the one that his advisors turned him into, and ultimately lost the election for him. It’s still too early to understand many of the ramifications of his election a President, I’ll have to revisit this topic in the years to come. (See Wikipedia: Barack Obama)

What local, national or international events did you witness/experience that are strong memories?

I’ve had enough mint chocolate chip ice cream to last a lifetime.

The back story? One day during summer camp in elementary school we had an ice cream party. After all the kids ate their fill, there was ice cream left over. So, what did the teachers do? Ask for volunteers to take the ice cream, of course. Well it was a hot day, so I wandered around the school eating mint chocolate chip ice cream. I got a half gallon of ice cream and made a sizeable dent in it. And that is the last time I ate mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Since 2003, I’ve been creating custom Holiday/New Year’s cards. This is my take on the completely custom cards that my friend April does, and on the family photo cards that my friends do. Since, I don’t have a family, and a photo of me seems a bit pretentious I thought I would share photos of some of the places I’ve been in a given year.

I usually make a photobook for myself of each year’s cards. Most of the time, if you receive a card from me, all you get to do is see your card.

So, I thought I’d share the albums of all of the individual cards to see which ones you missed–and so you can compare the one I sent you with the ones you might have received. (Once you get to the Shutterfly site, click on the View Album button under the photo or let the slideshow start.)

• 2008, Slideshow
• 2007, Slideshow
• 2006, Slideshow
• 2005, Slideshow
• 2004, Slideshow
• 2003, Slideshow

I was reading an interview in Computerworld with Christophe Louvion (see page 2), the developer of Scrum programming, where he talked about “agile” programming and teams.

A couple points he made really struck a chord with me.

Programming Practices

Has agile become so mainstream that it’s become a trendy, meaningless buzzword?

The term agile is being used by [some] people to justify poor programming practices such as cowboy coding.

“We don’t have to write documentation; we’re doing agile,” they’ll say. Like with everything else, people are bending the rules to accommodate their personal preferences.

I’ve lived this. I won’t name names or projects, but I definitely think Christophe’s opinion has merit. I’ve been on a project where “agile programming” was “used”. Or at least elements of it like team programming and rapid iteration. However this technique was technologist-/programmer-driven, not customer driven. And therein lay the problem. The technique seemed to be as much a means of removing the programmer from good communication and customer interaction, as a means of developing the product. Unfortunately for the project, it took me a long time, working a number of different methods, to try and address the issues at hand. I think we had some limited success in the near term, but I can’t help but wonder what we did to the long term potential of the project.

The phrase “cowboy coding” also struck home. “Cowboy coding” is described by Kent Beck in another Computerworld article (see page 2) as:

In cowboy coding, you go off and you do heroic stuff, and you feel good about yourself because you figure there’s nobody else in the world that could have possibly pulled out something like this.

I’ll agree that there is a time and place for heroics and all that. But, when every release seems to rely on heroics to get it out the door, there’s something wrong.

And for the love of pete, document what you’re doing. Documentation’s not fun, I know I’ve done it. But, there are strong merits for doing it. (One of these days I’ll have to write my story about developing a video player for my Master’s project.)

Teams

Christophe goes on to say:

There is a good quote from the chairman of Toyota. Someone asked him, “What is Toyota’s advantage?” He replied, “It is our ability to get normal people to do outstanding things. Other companies try to hire outstanding people to do normal things.”

I have a corollary to this thought…we (I) try to hire outstanding people to do outstanding things. I’ve been blessed to work with some of the brightest people around. I’d like to believe that by hiring outstanding people, we’ve been able to do some pretty remarkable things.

It’s also probably true, that the chairman of Toyota was also cautioning about expecting outstanding people to only do “normal things”. Everyone at some time has to do “normal things”, and it’s definitely something to be concerned with if they’re expected to do outstanding as the norm. I think this is where it’s my job (I’ve been the manager) to enable the individuals and the teams to do the outstanding work, while still making sure all the “normal things” gets done.

Another thought comes to mind–definitely hire the person not the skills. Skills can be taught or learned, the intangibles that define the person cannot. Perhaps I’ve been extremely lucky in each of my jobs, but in many cases we’ve been able to hire the right person, and as a result have had some outstanding teams that did some outstanding work.