Presentation Presence

A software vendor gave a sales presentation at my office today.

The vendor sent two people to present – a sales guy and an engineer.

The sales guy started the pitch with an overview of the software. Sounds great, says us, but we need a bunch of technical details to know if it’s worth pursuing. This is a critical piece of software, it will interact with a lot of internal systems, and so we need to know what we’re getting ourselves into.

So we ask a bunch of questions which the engineer answers to our satisfaction. Probably 30 or 45 minutes go by, mostly a back-and-forth between us and the engineer. He knows his stuff, and he seems to enjoy telling us about their technology.

The sales guy doesn’t have much to contribute, which is fine. Or rather, it would have been fine, if Mr. Salesguy would have appeared to be paying attention, or at least not acting distracted and bored.

Instead Mr. Salesguy checks his email. Checks his voicemail. Fiddles with his pen. Fools around on his computer for a while. Does a lot of things that tell me he doesn’t care about this sale. All with a look of “Get me out of here” on his face. Which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence or help the sale at all.

What’s the lesson here? When you make a sales pitch / presentation / demo / whatever, make sure that every single member of your team is devoting 100% of their attention to the customer. Even if you’re not currently speaking, even if you’ll never speak – act interested! Better yet, BE interested! And if you can’t get interested, then you probably don’t need to be there in the first place.

How to tell you’re a bad programmer

How to tell you’re a bad programmer:

1. You think you’re an awesome programmer.

2. But no one else has ever told you so.

3. You’ve never looked at old code you wrote and thought, “Ewwww! That is horrible code! What was I thinking???”

4. You’ve never looked at someone else’s code and thought, “Dang, whoever wrote this is a freaking genius.”

Note that this also works if you substitute <other profession> for “programmer,” and <output of other profession> for “code.”

If you don’t see growth, it probably ain’t happening.  If you don’t see growth potential, it probably ain’t happening either.

Disney World has it all wrong

Exxon commercials during the Olympics try to make science and engineering look attractive to kids by showing nothing but equations. Okay, there’s a few semi-hip looking scientists and engineers talking about how they grew up being curious, taking things apart, figuring out how stuff works. Oh yeah, and equations. And then some more equations.

Disney World has it all wrong.

C’mon kids, it’s fun! Look – EQUATIONS!!!

Edit: Originally I wrote that it was Chevron’s commercial, but it’s actually from Exxon.  You can tell the commercial had a big impact on me.

Microsoft should buy 37 Signals?

Big company, creator and master of much complexity, envelops small company, exhorter of keeping things simple.

I see 2 possible outcomes:

  1. 37 Signals simply disappears forever.
  2. 37 Signals simply disappears for a while, but encourages small pockets of simplicity throughout Microsoft. A few projects change slightly. Exchange meets Backpack, perhaps.

I have no idea how that would play out, but it certainly would be interesting.

EDIT: I should point out that I don’t really think MS should by 37S, I just think it’s an interesting acquisition to consider.  And so I added a “?” to the post title.

Looking for coffee shops in NY

I’m looking for great local coffee shops in New York, specifically around Manhattan.

Desired features:

  • Good coffee.
  • Good people watching.
  • Not a Starbucks or other chain, please.
  • A place that says “I’m a local New York coffee shop.”
  • Not literally though.
  • Talking buildings freak me out.

Please post a comment if you have any suggestions, thanks!

Baby Steps

A few seemingly unrelated thoughts, and then a tie-’em-all-together thought:

1. Rands’ recent post on “Saving Seconds” really resonated with me. I forwarded it to my wife and said, “See, this is how I think!” so that she could better understand why I optimize the shortcuts on our PC, or the way I load the dishwasher, or the other thousand seemingly-OCD-inspired things I do. (Thankfully she understands me very well already!)

2. I think it’s incredibly important to be good to “the environment.” Whether you believe in the global warming story or not, it needs to be done. I recycle everything possible (and I got really excited when I found out that Ecology Action, our local recycling place started recycling #3 – #7 plastics!), am a vegetarian, use reusable grocery bags (and don’t use individual plastic bags for bagging fruit or veggies), use BioBag compostable trash bags, and the list goes on.

3. Joel’s “Fire and Motion” post also resonates with me. Forward progress, even if it’s just a tiny bit of progress, is good. And necessary, in fact, to getting anything done.

If your goal is to save the Earth it’s easy to get overwhelmed because you can’t do it all yourself. What possible difference can a single person make? There’s too much to do!

If your goal is to improve some software or improve a software development process itself, it’s also easy to get overwhelmed because you can’t do it all yourself. What possible difference can a single person make? There’s too much to do!

Guess what? Maybe you’re right. Maybe you can’t save the Earth by yourself, or single-handedly improve the festering swamp that is your team’s software development process, but there is something that you can do – you can take baby steps.

Recycle something. Get a reusable bag or two for your groceries. Turn off the lights when you leave the office conference room. Ask a coworker to look over your code for bugs before you checkin a change. Create an automated test suite for your software, start with a single “does it compile?” test.

It will require an intentional change in your thinking and behavior to do these things the first time, and the second time, and the seventh time. But soon enough doing a little bit extra for the environment or your software will become a habit, and those small bits of effort will add up into something meaningful over time.

And you will be motivated to keep adding more good habits over time because you will see the internal (“Yay! I feel better about myself!”) and external (“Yay! I found a bug!”) benefits from those habits you’ve already adopted.

And as you develop those small habits, you will be noticed by others around you who may even join you in small improvements – “viral marketing” at work.

A Couple Of Resources:

Joel’s “Getting Things Done When You’re Only a Grunt” post has more software development improvement ideas.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/save-earth-top-ten.htm has a few Earth-friendly things you can do.