Hometown Unicorn

Ok I think it's time to step in for developers.   In http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/21/financial_software_disasters/ ,  Dave Mandi amuses us and points out that much code quality is low.   And he - largely - beats up on the quality of developers for it.   I have some sympathy for some of his arguments : in my experience, most developers have programming-language knowledge, but few know how to write applications using that language.   I know many who have Development certifications but I would not "trust" to develop re-usable software components - too often, they just aren't interested enough in software design to go from programmers who can drive languages and APIs to developers who can implement software of real and lasting value.   But, in my experience, many good developers don't write bad software out of ignorance : they do it because, as the author (later) acknowledges: "In the real world, tight budgets, shortsighted managers, and unreasonable ex

My next event is the February Ballbuster Duathlon .  I've never done a duathlon before, but I like a challenge and this is a biggie.   An 8 mile run, 24 mile bike, and then another 8 miles of running to close it out.   The key thing about this very popular race is that each of the 5 8-mile laps includes a climb of Box Hill in Surrey. Box Hill has a bit of an iconic status as a "challenge" but it's basically a pussycat in road cycling hill terms.  There are far more aggressive, far longer climbs in the North Downs (looking at you, Ranmore), and even I've been able to climb it out of the saddle, in 42x16 on my single speed - and I'm no monsta. The stats don't lie : the road is a steady climb of 120 metres (390 ft) over 2.5 kilometres (1.6 miles) but won't have you hallucinating. What it does have is fabulous views on the way up, a couple of "pretend we're on Alp d'Huez for a moment" hairpins, and a decent tea and cake stop at the top

Aside from the buzz and enthusiasm of social software deployments, there's sometimes a back-story.  I've been wondering about how well organsations deploying social software plan catch to on-boarded users before they fall back to old habits. Here's the scenario that I am thinking of. When we deploy business change technologies, we tend to measure on-boarding as a one-off activity (we measure stuff like that partly because it's easy to measure, which is a bit of an anti-pattern in itself).  So, once a user has been trained, posted, edited a profile, added people to a network, we cross them off a list.  However, this fails to recognise what, from my experience, is the strong influence of learned-behaviour of the non-social user, and how these users' inertia can reset interactions to levels of lower social value. The reasons we fall back to old ways and habits are many: The derived social value of an interaction obeys the "Convoy" principle The answer

Today I start a new challenge,  working for an IBM Premier Business Partner called Portal in Bracknell, Berkshire.  I'll be helping their customers make, and get value from, their investments in IBM Collaboration software of all types : from transactional portal application dressed with user managed web content, through Social Software for organisations on the road to becoming a social business, and not forgetting along the way our Notes/Domino customers who've been getting value from Notes, Sametime and other Lotus products for over 20 years.  Today's the day to meet the Portal people and get connected - many of these people I have known from project work over the years and it's a great pleasure to be linking up with and working with them again. The main thing on my mind today : the decision to embed Lotusphere 2013 inside the IBM Connect event . I have two contradictory thoughts on this : "It's not a moment too soon" : customers are confused about t

Like all triathletes and semi-serious fitness types, I like to record my sessions and for my recent IMUK I made a big effort to plan and record my sessions against my plan.  This is for me was doubly motivational on a rainy morning, the fact that there's a big fat zero in the "actual" column might - just - get you out for the session on the start line, you can only remember all the work you've done that got you to that point if you bothered to write it down I am going to blog separately my overall approach to Ironman training (it's not going to cause a revolution in methods), but I wanted to document here how I recorded it, in case others find the level of detail and overall approach useful. For planning and retrospective analysis, I created a spreadsheet with a main sheet for the whole training time (1 row per week, with single columns for targets for swim, bike and run for the week separate sheets for each 4 week "iteration" (next post wil

Driving back to Shepperton - mid Monday, school holidays - was pretty uneventful, except for a stop for food at Warwick services, where me and Olly met up with a few IMUK competitors “refuelling” in Burger King. Nice to bump into the couple who crossed the line together the previous evening, and a guy in a woolly hat who I'd chatted to in the hotel car park. We got back mid afternoon, and being the sort of guy who likes to get things squared away, I spent a relaxing our getting kit put away, my foul-smelling wetsuit rinsed, and over-ripe bananas consigned to recycling. Then a relaxing evening, before back to work Tuesday. My physical state over the next few days was quite interesting. I'd got some sunburn on my right shoulder (missed that bit in T2), and my quads were sore off and on over the next few days, but to my surprise, my feet were in excellent shape : no blistered or chaffing. Coming downstairs Tuesday morning was harder than it had been Monday, and I re

I am sure this is a common feeling but immediately after the race - by immediately, I mean for a few seconds - I don't actually feel that my race and day was over. Medal and official race photo, then a sort of limbo – my brain is still going, but my body isn't. Massive hugs with my wife and son in the sort of U-bend, then into the tent to be subtly eyeballed by some medical staff , collect my Finisher t-shirt (oh YEAH), and grab two slices of pizza and a slice of orange.  I sit down on a white plastic chair in the finisher's area, feeling a bit like a lab rat, being peered at in a friendly way by spectators through the fencing. Perhaps they think I am going to die, but actually all I do is sit there and for about 2 minutes silently chomp my pizza, swig from a bottle of water and (this sound self-indulgent but, give me a break...) marvel at what I have achieved over the past day, weeks and months. I look around and there are four or five other newly-minted Iro

The big day begins So. It's 02:45. I get out of bed, jump into my tri suit and calf guards, and head off to the bathroom to stare at my bleary face and apply my tattoo. Hold on, is it left arm or right? It's right. After a minute or so I have “1234” going down my right arm. I pop on a T and some Ron Hill legs, grab my car key, and white swim bag with wetsuit, bodyglide, and goggles, and head off to breakfast. The only people eating at this time are, of course, IM athletes, so I sit and chat to a nice guy called Michael (all the way from Copenhagen) about the day to come and stick a plate of porridge down my throat. He's got previous experience : Challenge Copenhagen. That looks like a franchise to watch. Sitting in the restaurant, looking out of the window into a still-very-dark Bolton night, finishing the race seems a long way away. We wish each other luck, and I go down to the car park, find my car and drive the 15 minutes to the Reebock Stadium where

During Friday afternoon I laid out all my kit in the hotel room, and bagged. Sad to say I even rehearsed the changes, just to make sure I had the right stuff in the right bags. Then I bagged up Red and Blue bags and put them to one site. Friday night was pretty grim – a tip to others : if you are planning to stay in the Holiday Inn, book very early and demand a room on the third / fourth floor or higher, because otherwise you'll lose even more sleep from the wedding parties (they can run two at a time) which occur, noisily, on the ground floor till 1 am. I managed a few dozes till the partying stopped around 1 am and then Saturday was set-up day : a first look at the lake, and T1 and T2. But first I went down to check out the Ironkids event in the town centre  This was basically a run event for 6 yro and up kids who had a blast running around the last km of the run route and under the Ironman Finish banner. Fun to see them and hear the parents and friends cheer

I thought I'd blog the experience of doing an Ironman event, as it has commanded a lot of my time and attention in the last few months, and I really wanted to capture my thoughts and feelings as the big day approaches.  For those not in the know, Ironman UK is a long distance triathlon - 3.8km swim, 180 km bike, an then a marathon run, which is held yearly in Bolton, NW England. I travelled up today, a long but uneventful drive in the faithful Peugeot 308, and I've managed to get all the logistics sorted : register for the event, find and check in at the hotel, and attend the mandatory race briefing.   The briefing was basically a talk thru of the rules, course and overall event plan, and the audience was about 600 wasted-looking athletes.  I guess we've been doing some training!  I was chatting to a nice guy from just down the road (Altrincham) who, like me, just wants to hear those words "You are an Ironman!" Looks like we'll be getting dry weather on r