Today, I’m delivering a presentation on understanding the cloud and Windows Azure for PartnerPoint members. The video and deck will be made available at a later date, but the key resources I discuss can be found on my Windows Azure Resources page (I will keep that page up-to-date).
Since I work with partners, I like mentioning specific partners I’ve work with whenever possible. Here are a few interesting ones I mention today:
Lately I’ve been struggling with Yoda’s immortal words, “Do or do not … there is no try.” So many startup/tech writers have referenced that quote: Jason Baptiste … 37 Signals … half the people on twitter. Brad Feld even wears an uber-nerdy version of it on a t-shirt.
I think Yoda’s trying to tell me not to give myself permission to fail, but I don’t think I do that much. I have a bigger problem restricting myself only to activities where I know I’ll succeed. An aversion to risk aversion even led Seth Godin to question Yoda’s wisdom in Poke the Box. There is something about trying that’s important; it moves us forward.
Maybe Ash Maurya has figured out the riddle. After reading Running Lean and talking with Ash recently, I started to realize that everything Ash does is an experiment. He doesn’t say, “I’m trying to start xyz” – instead he says, “I’m running an experiment to find out something about xyz.” In his businesses, in his blog, in his book, even talking on the phone, Ash really appears to think and act that way. Oh … and Ash channels Yoda, too.
This is changing the way I think about change. An experiment is not a “try” – it’s a “do.” Running an experiment is an affirmative action. The result may or may not be what I wanted or expected. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that I did it, that I ran the experiment and gathered information about the world as it really is.
I recently noticed that eating better makes me feel better. I could get caught up in thinking “I will try to eat better” (or even worse, “I should eat better”) … or I could just eat better, as Yoda would undoubtedly suggest. But “just do it” sometimes leads to a distracting battle of will with myself, so instead of testing my willpower, I’m looking at my diet as a long-running experiment. What happens when I eat a grapefruit as a midafternoon snack instead of chocolate? Does a single beer at night really affect the way I feel in the morning (dammit)? Drinking water instead of soda at lunch feels less like giving up something and more like “doing” when I think about it as an experiment.
How about my career? There are lots of things I want to do that I haven’t done. Write more. Present more. Create a “MicroISV” like Patrick McKenzie or Rob Walling. Have a big impact within Microsoft. All of these “goals” are too vague to act on. So I’m starting to ask, “What experiments can I make to move forward, to help me learn something about these points on the horizon I seem drawn to?”
Take writing – at the beginning of the year, I told myself I would (should) write every day. I have not. For a while, I thought it was merely a matter of will or time management, but I know that’s not it. It’s fear – fear of finding out that I’m not a good writer. Who cares? If what I write sucks, then nobody will read it. Simple as that. Nobody will be hurt in the process, and I will find out something. I may even get better.
I’m consistently reminded about a story I heard on NPR a few years ago about Quantity vs. Quality from the book Life is a Verb:
A college ceramics teacher decided to do an experiment with his two fall pottery classes. He told one class they would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced that quarter and their grade depended on the number of pots they threw — so the more the better! The second class was told their grade would be determined by the quality of their work and they only needed to produce one “perfect” pot.
Who did better work? The better quality pieces came from the class that was graded on quantity! As they were making all those pots, they couldn’t help but get better at it. They were doing, not thinking or trying. People are naturally curious. I suspect that each pot a student made became a little experiment in pot-making, whether they knew it or not.
I do a podcast with Bob Walsh. We just published our 103rd show. A hundred and three! And I still think it’s no good … thank goodness Bob keeps pushing us forward. If I did the show on my own, I probably would have 3 shows done. Every time we publish, all I can think about is what’s wrong with it or what needs to be better. Yet we have more than a thousand subscribers, and people I really respect tell me they listen to it and get value from it. Yes, there is still work to be done, but maybe it’s time to stop worrying about being a good podcaster and start looking at each show as an opportunity to run an experiment in podcasting. We can’t help but get better if we give our best, evaluate honestly, and keep doing it.
Isn’t play just a series of experiments? Kids don’t think about it, but they’re running experiments constantly. What happens when I poke this box … or when I stomp in this puddle? I’ve never considered myself a particularly playful person. Maybe being more experimental will induce some playfulness.
Heck, it even applies to romance. I’ll never forget a conversation I had with a friend way back in college:
Bryan: Foley, how many times have you ever been slapped?
Me: I’ve never been slapped!
Bryan: Well, then you’re doing something wrong …
I never understood what he meant, but I think I’m beginning to. Turns out that women don’t generally like pigs, but they don’t usually like men to ask for a permission slip, either. A little experimentation with your partner or potential partner can take you a long way. Of course it can get you slapped, apparently, but the point is … you have to be willing to take some risks.
Tomorrow I’m running a dubious experiment. I’m going to find out what riding a time trial with zero training does to my body. It’s dubious because there is a large body of evidence from other riders pointing out what will likely happen. It would be a more interesting experiment to find out how training effects my personal performance. Instead of getting mad at myself for what I haven’t done yet, I’m just going to have some fun in the saddle and watch the experiment unfold.
As Yoda says, “Try not! Do or do not … there is no try.” When you find yourself merely trying, consider running an experiment instead.
As I mentioned in previous posts, delivering a Lightning Talk at the Business of Software conference was an amazing experience for me. It appeared to make a big impact on my peers who delivered talks as well.
At least that’s what Patrick McKenzie says … his winning talk is now up … take 7.5 minutes and just watch it. It’s great – very funny, and you’ll learn something, too.
Patrick is a hero of mine. Ever since I moved away from being a musician to being a professional nerd, I’ve wanted to make a technology business I could call mine AND fit into a balanced lifestyle AND do things MY way. For various reasons, I haven’t succeeded with all of that yet. Patrick has succeeded – and he’s left a trail of breadcrumbs for people like me who want to learn from his experiences.
On top of that, he’s just a really nice guy. Go watch his video now!
Patrick having fun with his talk (photo by Betsy Weber)
If you want to give Windows Azure a spin without having to provide a credit card, go to this link and enter your country and the promo code PFOLEY. This is a great way to experiment and prototype, but after 30 days, all your deployments and data will be erased, so make sure you don’t put anything into production using this pass.
Questions? Leave a comment or send me an email.
I went to lunch with a friend yesterday who told me that his company is turning away business because they can’t hire software developers fast enough. If you live in the Grand Rapids area and are looking for a software development job, send me an email to Patrick.Foley@microsoft.com and I’ll make an introduction. SharePoint developers are in particularly high demand.
My first article with MSDN Magazine has just been published: Use Multiple Visual Studio Project Types for Cloud Success.
This was a fun and interesting challenge for me. I hope to write more articles like this in the future. I welcome your feedback here or at Patrick.Foley@microsoft.com.
I’m in the process of uploading a set of companion pages that give really detailed step-by-step screenshots – my blog might have some funky links for the next couple of hours until I’m done.
There is a wonderful incubator, Momentum, based in my home town of Grand Rapids, MI, that encourages software developers to join the program, even if they don’t have a specific business idea to pursue. At least in our market, there are more ideas than developers, so this is a way to help match match entrepreneurial developers with founders needing their talents.
If you are based in Grand Rapids, you might even be able to participate in the 12-week program without quitting your day job. Even if you are not based in Grand Rapids, it could well be worth it for you to take a sabbatical. I sat in on some of the sessions last year, and I learned a lot. The education provided by Momentum is very valuable.
If you are a developer looking to join a startup, sign up at http://momentum-mi.com/apply/single-developer/. If Grand Rapids isn’t your thing, be on the lookout for similar programs from other incubators. It makes so much sense that I suspect more and more incubators will do it.
In our last podcast, Bob and I interviewed Lisa Gansky, author of The Mesh and founder of http://meshing.it/.
The idea behind “the mesh” is that businesses are challenging traditional models of ownership in new and profitable ways. Think Netflix or ZipCar or even Groupon.
During our conversation with Lisa, I remembered a “meshy” idea I came up with a long time ago – one that requires extensive domain knowledge about real estate that I don’t have …
Why is it that our only options for home ownership ultimately come down to own or rent? Why can’t we find a middle ground between these two options? Owning your own home has traditionally been part of the American Dream, and for many, owning your home is a fine investment. However, some financial advisors are challenging the conventional wisdom about home ownership, especially after the recent housing crisis. Is it really sound to have the vast majority of your personal wealth tied up in a single investment? And that investment turned out to me more volatile than everyone assumed.
I’d like the option of having a looser connection between the home I occupy and my real estate investment. Essentially, I would like the option to invest in a real estate investment trust (REIT) that agreed to purchase my house and rent it back to me. Assuming all the legal and managerial details could be worked out, this would give me many of the advantages of home ownership and eliminate many of the disadvantages. I would have the universe of “for sale” homes available to me, and I would have the pride of ownership associated with calling my home “mine.” However, the investment vehicle could be set up in such a way that I would not be subject to the same liquidity issues associated with traditional home ownership – I could move more easily without being stuck with a house (there should still be financial consequences to this, but they would not be so severe). Also, if I wanted to move back to San Francisco to be near a good baseball team, I could live in a “modest” $500,000 house but invest a smaller amount toward my ownership of that house – an amount that was more appropriate to my personal financial situation.
Note that I’d still have to pay appropriate rent, management fees, etc. based on the actual cost of the house, so this wouldn’t be a golden ticket to live beyond my means. In fact, it would have the opposite effect. During the housing crisis, many people gambled on jumbo mortgages under the assumption that housing prices would continue to go up and they’d get to cash in on a high-leverage investment. This worked for many people, but when the bottom fell out of the housing market, it devastated our economy and many families’ lives. A combination REIT/RENT living arrangement would force you to acknowledge how much you are paying for your current accommodations while spreading the investment risk across hundreds or thousands of homes, presumably across multiple communities and regions.
Here’s an example, heavy on arm-waving (remember, this is squarely outside my area of expertise): if I buy a home with “no money down” resulting in a mortgage that demands a $1,000 payment each month, I’m only “investing” a tiny amount of principal each month (most of my payment goes to interest at first). On a thirty-year fixed note, my equity – my actual investment – is going to be close to zero for several years. If I decide to move after five years – barring a distinct jump in my home’s value – I will be lucky to break even, and I might even lose money (since it costs 3-6% in fees to sell a home). If I really wanted to treat that home as an investment (especially if I don’t intend to live in it for thirty years), I would need to pay more than the minimum payment each month, let’s say an additional $100/month toward principal. If I did so, then after five years, I’d at least have $6,000 (plus or minus the fluctuation in the value of my home) – this would probably cover my fees if I sold the house, assuming it didn’t fluctuate much in value.
Now imagine a business existed that could buy that same home for me and rent it back to me for $1,000/month (more likely it would have to be $1,200/month or more to account for managerial fees and my greatly reduced exposure to real estate market risk). In addition, in order to “use” this service, I’d have to invest in it – let’s say another $100/month. After five years, I’d have a $6,000 investment in the REIT, plus or minus the fluctuation of the value of all the homes in the REIT. If I wanted to move, I’d have to pay some sort of service fee, but it wouldn’t necessarily wipe out my investment, and it would be a heck of a lot more convenient than having to sell my home. It’s like a 100% timeshare on my home.
The “co-op” nature of this is key to making it work … plenty of REITs exist already, but I don’t know of any that take advantage of the magic that happens when people feel ownership for their dwelling (i.e., they tend not to trash it). In fact, this idea came to me about 15 years ago when I moved into a really nice apartment complex in Las Colinas (outside of Dallas, TX). It was so nice that I wanted to own part of it, so I looked into investing in the company that managed the complex. It was too much of a hassle, so I abandoned the idea, but I couldn’t help but think that such a nice place should encourage its residents to invest in it. Everybody wins – the ownership company would get more capital (presumably at a premium) and residents would get to participate as owners in their community.
There is probably a good reason nobody’s done this, but our conversation with Lisa reminded me of this idea and convinced me that it’s worth challenging assumptions about ownership. I don’t know if this one is a good idea – but it’s certainly meshy! It’s also an idea I have no desire to pursue and no background knowledge to make work. Maybe it will inspire a meshy idea that works for you.
This morning, I repeated my “give more than you take” talk for Grand Rapids Day of .NET. This event is not put on by a company or a university – it’s put on by “the community” … a bunch of dedicated people like my friends Bruce Abernethy and Chris Woodruff who love developing software and want to share their knowledge with others. This is an all-day event with four independent tracks of sessions from 20 different speakers, and nearly 200 people gave up their Saturday to share and learn about their chosen craft. Microsoft stars like Jennifer Marsman do some of the sessions, but most of the presenters are themselves simply active members of the software community. I’m always humbled and amazed by the quality of events like this one – useful, vibrant events thrown by a community of volunteers.
I didn’t get a great vibe from my little talk. Chatting with some new friends afterword, I tried to figure out why … I think my home town inherently has a roll-up-your-sleeves attitude, so my exhortation to give more than you take probably inspired more of a “duh” than the “hmmm” I was going for. Ah well, nobody got hurt (which reminds me … I forgot to do the cartwheel at the end – dang).
The hallway conversation afterword was awesome, though. We talked about our industry and what makes Grand Rapids a great place for technology. We have strong universities. We have low turnover. We have low labor costs, housing costs, office costs, and bandwidth costs. And we have a passionate software community. Every business community wants to tell the world why its town is the best place to set up shop … vibrant software communities need to make sure that they let their businesses leaders know what an important role technologists play in making that true. A great software community is really good for business.
We also talked about failure. One of my favorite kids movies is Meet the Robinsons, because it celebrates failure … every time you get another failure out of the way, it brings you that much closer to success! Think Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb … it’s also a tenet of agile (test driven development) and lean startup thinking. Don’t fear failure – meet it head on, get it out of the way, and move past it toward success.
That sounds simple, but I really struggle with it. Frankly, I hate the way failure feels. Now I’m trying to move past that …
Today felt like a bit of a failure. Fine. As much as I love this community, it was the wrong audience for the message I came prepared to convey. Lesson learned – next time, I’ll bring a message of more direct relevance to this audience, because I genuinely want to contribute. Done. I guess that doesn’t feel so bad …
But it feels like two in a row. Last night, I played violin with Amy Young at Baker Book House, and I wasn’t “on” … I thought it was the worst I’ve played at an Amy Young gig (even though my family said it was fine). I lost my confidence at some point, and I felt absolutely awful … I just wanted to crawl under a rock but had to plow through – I had to resort to playing extremely simple licks. Oh well. It happens. In retrospect, I’ve been improving so much at improvisation (finally) that I think I got cocky. I missed a rehearsal and thought I could still be great, but I wasn’t. There’s an obvious fix – don’t miss rehearsal next time. Do the work, kid.
Done. Next?
In the past, failures that felt like this to me would have been debilitating. I’ve had a tendency to abandon things that I’m pretty good at, just because they’re getting hard. That doesn’t make sense to me anymore … I don’t want to live the rest of my life only doing things I was born knowing how to do. I keep mentioning Toastmasters … once I got my chapter to about the half-way point of members required to be chartered, it started getting hard. You mean, I have to WORK to get people to join? Yes, I do. Facing that work is turning out to be the most valuable part of the Toastmasters experience for me. It’s useful to me because it’s arbitrary – it doesn’t actually matter much to the world (to my career, to my family, to my friends) if Toastmasters for Techies succeeds or fails. It might fail – I might fail – but it’s a safe failure for me. That practice is invaluable.
What does matter to me is helping software companies succeed and helping software stories get heard. If I’m ever going to have a real impact there, I’m probably going to mess up multiple times every day. Might as well get used to plowing past the petty discomfort of failure and get back to the work of succeeding.
On the way home from the Best Conference Ever, I missed my connection in Chicago. I decided to have a beer in a dreary ORD bar and found myself sitting next to an obnoxious salesman. He wasn’t the worst guy in the world, but he used those fake sales guy techniques like saying the bartender’s name a bit too often, and he was beginning to get drunk. Tedious.
After my beer, I got up to leave, and as I gathered my bags, this guy was holding court with the people on the other side of me, getting more and more boisterous. Finally, in response to some minor slight, he playfully bellowed, “OH … so all of a sudden I’m an asshole?!?” and I couldn’t hold myself back – the words just slipped out, “Well, it wasn’t exactly all of a sudden!” Everyone around laughed. The guy grimaced and gave me the finger. I reached out to give him a high five (he accepted) and a manhug and explained that if he throws a lob like that, I’m obligated to hit it (for once I managed to say the line that usually only comes to me two days later). It all ended well.
In my own way, I’ve been that guy (“my name is Patrick Foley, and I am a recovering asshole”) … not that I’ve always been particularly boorish or flagrantly inconsiderate … but like 89% of the people in this world, I have spent most of my life thinking more about myself and what I’m going to get out of a given situation than thinking about others and what I can give.
Marriage trouble helped point this out to me. I’ve been married to my beautiful wife Paula for 19 years, and about 5 years ago, we started having some serious problems. I thought it was her. I found out it was me. Better yet, take blame out of the equation altogether: I love my wife deeply and want to keep my marriage and my family together … I can’t control my wife or any specific outcome, but I can control what I put into our relationship. I can give more.
This insight came to me while reading a wonderful book called Nonviolent Communication. It had me take stock of what I give and what I take, and in the stillness of my heart, I discovered I was a net taker. I discovered that I mistook the feeling of love for the act of giving love. I discovered that when I said “I love you” to my wife, I was really asking a question.
I don’t want to live like that. Where did I go wrong? I grew up Catholic, but I got more from reading Atlas Shrugged than the bible. I generally subscribe to the concept of “enlightened self interest” that Ayn Rand espouses, yet embodying selfishness was causing my world to fall apart and leaving me unhappy. I have to understand things, so I spent a couple of years analyzing my behavior and trying to reconcile a philosophy that made sense to me intellectually but that wouldn’t leave me feeling so shitty. I won’t go into all the details here (this is the short version!), but the preaching of Rob Bell at Mars Hill church was important to my journey, as was the writing of David Deida … along with the support and kindness of so many people.
I still believe in the merits of enlightened self-interest, but what I want more than anything else is to experience love (and I suspect most people share my desire). Before this crisis, the only way I knew how to experience love was to be loved. Now I know that it’s far more effective (and ultimately more rewarding) to give love. I can’t control someone else loving me. But I can choose to give love to others.
That’s a neat summary, but it’s not the sort of thing where I can do a face palm, yell “now I get it!” and be done with it. It’s more of a “one day at a time” thing. Giving love is actually quite hard, and I fail at it every single day. Lucky for me, I believe that nobody is irredeemable. I’ve made enough sincere improvements that my wife still chooses to be with me, and we spend more happy days together than I could ever ask for. My 7-year-old son, Gus, gets to wake his parents every day by snuggling between them. That’s a pretty huge reward. Every day we spend together as a whole family is a gift. One day at a time.
The same concepts apply to work. I do a podcast for startups with Bob Walsh, and he manages to book some really cool guests. One that had an enormous impact on me was Seth Godin. Reading Linchpin, I realized Seth was imploring people like me to approach work with the same passion and spirit that I learned to approach my marriage. I summed it up as “give more than you take.”
The first example Seth talks about is Annie Leibovitz shooting for Rolling Stone. They paid her to take pictures of celebrities – a transaction. She fulfilled the obligations of the transaction but went well beyond it … she gave more. She gave her vision, her art, her unique gift for capturing people on film. She gave Rolling Stone and its readers a timeless gift.
This made me realize that the same thing holding me back at home had been holding me back in my career as well. I’ve been given so much – brains, talent, creativity, chutzpah (if I were tall, I’d be completely insufferable) – but I’ve never quite reached my potential with those gifts. Reading Seth’s book, I realized it was because I wasn’t actually sharing them. What good is my creativity if I don’t do the work required to allow people to consume that creativity? I walk around with operas in my head. Shame on me for not learning how to compose so that I can share them.
To a certain degree, it doesn’t matter what your gift is. I love the climax of Three Amigos (spoiler alert, but come on …) where our heroes ask the villagers what they can do to defeat the villains; what are they good at, what’s their gift? “We can sew!” they reply. The rest is history (they “outnumber” the villains with replica gunfighters that they sewed). It’s very silly, but I often think of that phrase when I’m trying to help with an oddball situation or figure out how someone else can help. We can sew! You never know, it just might work … all you can do is give your gift.
Why am I sharing this? Two years ago, this would have been therapeutic (like Robert De Niro’s character in The Mission dragging his penance around), but that’s not my motivation now. I guess I’m starting to believe that the greatest gift I can give is myself (and that the same holds true for you). I have an interesting story. I suspect others struggle with similar things. Maybe I can help. I work for Microsoft. We do big things, and we’re inherently relevant, but we’re sometimes “transactional.” Maybe I can help take my company beyond transactional, at least for my small corner of the world.
This was the subject of my lightning talk at this year’s business of software conference in Boston … give more than you take. Seth opened the conference, so I knew I would be “on topic,” and I figured many of the other speakers at the conference would also demonstrate the efficacy of giving more than you take with their real-world experiences. Joel Spolsky inspired a movement when he gave us his blog. Derek Sivers gave away his company to help more kids get exposed to music education, which was so important to him. Entrepreneurs like Neil Davidson, Patrick McKenzie, Jason Cohen, Rob Walling, Dharmesh Shah, Peldi Guilizzoni, and so many others … maybe they’re just smarter than the rest of us, but I think a key reason they’ve all succeeded is that they’ve focused more on providing value to their customers – focused more on what they GIVE to their customers – than imagining how their customers are going to bless them with a big pile of money.
Giving more than you take doesn’t necessarily imply altruism. If you’re like most business owners, you want a big pile of money for your efforts, but if you focus on that pile of money, you’re not going to get it. If you want customers to part with their money, you need to focus on giving them something of value. What do your customers want? Quality? Great customer service? Solutions to their problems? Shiny things that delight them? None of these are trivial to deliver. All are worth working hard to give to your customers. If you provide significant value to your customers, there is a pretty good chance you’ll get rewarded for it, but you have to genuinely focus on providing that value, almost as if you were not concerned about the reward.
Almost. You can’t completely ignore the money side of the equation, especially at the beginning. If you create something “valuable” but nobody wants to pay for it, you’re not going to be in business for long. The lean startup movement has a wealth of guidance for figuring this out as quickly as possible so that you don’t go broke on an idea that’s not going to work. Read the works of Eric Ries, Rob Walling, Dharmesh Shah, Ash Maurya … there are so many great writers in this area; there’s no excuse not to learn from their experience and wisdom!
I’m basing these thoughts on my observations of other companies. I’ve never built a successful startup myself. I’ve worked on a few failures, and I learned a lot from those experiences. I wanted to build a consulting company (in retrospect, I wanted to build Atomic Object), but except for a few isolated cases, I never really grew past being a solid independent consultant.
Why? I didn’t give enough. I didn’t create enough value for my customers. I didn’t do the work. I didn’t share my gifts.
A company is a reflection of its founders. Balsamiq rocks because Peldi rocks. Hubspot is visionary because Dharmesh is visionary. Smart Bear blazed its own trail because Jason is a trailblazer. Your business is a reflection of you. If things aren’t working out the way you want, it might be because of you! That doesn’t suck as bad as it sounds … you have the ability to learn, to improve, to change … some things (like learning lean startup techniques) are just about erasing ignorance, but improvements you make in your personal life – in your character – might also improve your success in business. I think it’s all tied together. I can’t say for sure, because I don’t think I’ve realized my own potential yet, but I have made massive improvements to my character in the past few years (one day at a time), and I believe my career is beginning to show direction as a result. At least I like hanging out with myself more now. That’s something. And I’ve developed a genuine passion for helping software companies succeed. I am embracing that mission like a startup (a la Eric Ries), even though I have a six-digit employee number.
As for the spirit of “give more than you take” … I think some people do this naturally (my wife, for instance). My new friend and fellow lightning talker Portman Wills told me about being a mensch. Boy Scouts talk about leaving the world better than you found it. Joel Spolsky mentioned a Hebrew term for a similar idea that shaped his beliefs and actions. This is not a new concept, but it’s new and profound to me. I’m learning as I go. As I mentioned, I fail every day, because I do in fact want very much to be successful and praised and loved. I want those outcomes. Every day I have to remind myself to return my focus to the other side of the equation, to what I can give. And just to make it even more tricky, I’m pretty sure I have to give my real self – warts and all – not some pastel picture of myself (I can’t explain this – it’s just an instinct). One day at a time.
All this from a lightning talk? I really tried to give more than I took, but the conference was so amazing that I still think I got more out of it than I put into it. The more you give, the more the world gives back, I guess.
A lightning talk is like a little piece of performance art. You have 15 slides that auto-advance every 30 seconds for a total of no more than 7.5 minutes. They pick a winner just to add more pressure. If you care about public speaking, it’s wonderful practice. The format requires a great deal of preparation and total confidence in your material. Humor and a certain edginess are valued almost as much as useful content.
There were five talks on each of the first two days of the conference. I was third on the first day. That meant I barely registered Joe Corkery’s talk, although I could tell it was good from the crowd reaction. Also, when they voted a couple of days later, we all got a couple of seconds to summarize our talk, and I remember Joe’s summary was particularly good. I can’t remember specifically what it was, because I had to think of something to say right after (and ended up producing gibberish).
Alyssa Dyer went next and talked about marketing and Kamikazes. I was too nervous for my upcoming talk to pay much attention, but I later commiserated with Alyssa about the whole experience.
Then I was up. I put many hours of prep into the talk, even practicing it twice at my Toastmasters chapter (rewriting it after each time). I normally talk quite fast, so I thought I’d have to be careful to have enough content … I prepared “stretch” material for the end of each slide (last year’s winner, Mark Stephens, gave me that idea the night before). I included a lightweight joke on the first slide and was completely unprepared when people actually laughed! I never planned for that possibility, so right from the beginning my timing was thrown off. I had the opposite problem I normally have – I was struggling to fit all my words in. Luckily, part of my prep was writing out the summary point I wanted to make on each slide, so I dumped the canned words and instead just focused on talking up the point of each slide.
One of the brutal challenges of the format is that you become distracted by minor things. There was a 7.5 minute countdown timer, but my slides didn’t advance at :00 and :30 … they were 2 or 3 seconds off. I am NOT fast enough to figure out that math while panicking (an interesting detail to learn about myself). I had my fair share of “uhhhh” time. I could tell all the other LT’ers were aware of that little distraction as well. Someone should write some software for that.
I noticed my throat tighten up when I got personal. I also got the sense that people gave a shit about me. That was nice.
I finished with a cartwheel, simply because I can. It’s a competition … you gotta pull out all the stops, give ’em all you got, and all those types of clichés.
Relief does not adequately describe how I felt completing this talk. I could barely watch the remaining two talks of the day, which is a shame, because I enjoyed meeting Ellen & Adrian and Brydon. You’ll have to get details of their talks from someone else. I was just too spent.
There was a moment at the start of the next day’s lightning talks when I actually thought briefly about the possibility of winning … but watching Portman Wills and Patrick McKenzie completely removed any worry about that. Their talks were both on another level in my opinion.
I think Portman was first … his talk was funny (I don’t want to spoil the video for anybody, but I bought his setup routine hook, line, and sinker), he gave information I wanted to know (about monetizing web apps), and he wrapped it up into a URL for later consumption. ON TOP OF ALL THAT, he somehow managed to completely nail the timing. I need to study his video when it comes out, because I think he used a simple technique I could emulate … whatever it was, his delivery was flawless. I knew I would have to vote for him. Bravo, Portman!
Then Patrick went, and he was amazing, too. He was so funny, I remember bursting out laughing at his hook (nope, not going to spoil it), and his message was equally insightful (why are you ignoring markets for women?). His overall delivery was incredible, but he was mortal like the rest of us at the timing challenge, so in the spirit of Toastmasters, I gave Portman my vote. Most people were not so uptight about the format as I was, however, so more people voted for Patrick, and he won the contest. Bravo, Patrick! Well deserved!
At this point, I was pumped up from Portman’s and Patrick’s talks and so dialed into the conference in general that I was buzzing with enthusiasm (in a way that makes me kind of annoying to be around, unfortunately, but I was truly present). The next lightning talk was Corey Reid’s, and I watched it eagerly and intently. His talk was on the similarity between Kung Fu movies and software development. Another clever topic! (I’m just going to go ahead and spoil this one …) Corey roped me in when he used the example of a Kung Fu master who took out the perfect villain with a wet willy – a reminder to think outside the box. Things were going well, but then, on about the fifth or sixth slide, Corey experienced a dreaded technical glitch – his image didn’t show up. I believe the caption was “Bruce Lee gets kicked in the nuts,” so it was reasonably easy to imagine the missing picture, but Corey was clearly disappointed. We’ve all been there … I found myself tightening my own stomach muscles in “you can do it” solidarity. The next slide’s caption was “sometimes you get hit” … and yes, the image was missing again. At this point, I began to marvel at the relationship between what the slides were saying and what Corey was experiencing (some people thought it was staged!) … I was thinking that this was a pretty cool opportunity for Corey to show his true Kung Fu self.
The next slide’s title was “poise” and Corey was just about to call it quits, but the crowd would have nothing of it. I remember motioning to the title of the slide with a questioning look at Corey, thinking “dude … this is your moment!” (later, Corey told me he noticed my gesture … cool!). At this point, with the support of the crowd behind him, Corey steeled himself … he was going to finish his lightning talk no matter what. Everybody cheered as he continued (and the A/V person fixed the glitch a slide or two later). I’m getting goose bumps just writing about it. It was awesome … that was some serious Kung Fu, Corey – bravo!
Corey’s interest in Kung Fu reminded me of a friend from summer camp years ago who was similarly crazy about Mahler. I had just experienced my first Mahler – Symphony #1 with Benjamin Zander conducting at Interlochen – and was blown away by it. My orchestra- and cabin-mate explained that there were 9.5 more symphonies (counting Das Lied von der Erde and the unfinished 10th) and listened to each one with me over several weeks until I had heard them all. He helped make me a Mahler fan for life (new to Mahler? Start with the Adagietto from #5). Corey recently shared his list of essential Kung Fu movies with me, and I look forward to watching them all (none is available via Netflix streaming, unfortunately, so I haven’t even managed to watch one yet). I suspect he’s going to turn me into a Kung Fu fan for life. As my wife says, “when you find a goose bump, share it!” Thanks, Corey!
Down to the last two lightning talks. Mark Watts did a pretty good talk on how to succeed in life as a bum … but he didn’t use auto-advancing slides – so he didn’t get credit for the same “degree of difficulty” that the rest of us did. Sanjay Singhal didn’t go for that either, but his experiences with his company, Fusenet, were compelling enough to me that I would have been happy to listen to him for well more than 7.5 minutes. Maybe next year.
That’s my lightning talk experience at BoS2010. A silly 7.5-minute presentation led to one of the best weeks of my working life. Thank you, Neil! I came up with an idea for another lightning talk on the way home, so I hope I make it back to share it for BoS2011. Maybe you should think of one, too! You can practice it at your local Toastmasters chapter. As I’ve mentioned many times, I’m a big fan. I’ve learned so much by practicing my speaking and also by creating and leading a geek-focused chapter. A credo of Toastmasters is “learn by doing” … I can’t say enough good things about it. It’s all volunteer, so taking a leadership position is a great way to practice giving more than you take.
At a recent Toastmasters meeting, my friend Amanda revealed the key to being an effective networker. When most people meet someone new, they inherently think, “What can this person do for me?” … but if you want to be effective, you have to turn it around and ask, “What can I do for this person?” What is your gift, personally or professionally? What can you share – not in a quid pro quo way but in a genuinely giving spirit? The people who think this way are apparently demonstrably better at networking. I believe that if you live this way – if you give more than you take – you will be more successful at business and happier as well. I only have a “data point of one,” but it’s working out better for me so far.
Please remember that it’s my passion to help software companies succeed. If you think there is a way I can help you succeed (personally or professionally), please email me at Patrick.Foley@microsoft.com pf@patrickfoley.com. I might not be able to help you directly, but I’ll give my best to help you find the right resource who can.