No Longer with Shaw

Last week the Practice Leadership Team was disbanded and the two remaining members (myself and the BA PL) laid-off from Shaw. It came as quite a shock. I have some theories on what happened, but nothing simple enough for a blog post.  The FB relationship status of "Its complicated" probably covers it.

Thank you to everyone from Shaw who reached out to me after hearing the news.  Your support was amazing and deeply appreciated.

Trying to figure out what's next. What mix of writing code and helping other people write code is appropriate for me, while still being viable in the market place? That's the question.

Will update when I land somewhere.

- Peace

I wrote software and helped others write software

One of the difficult things about writing software is describing what you do to other people.   If you mentioned Web development, you'll get "oh I have a 12 year old nephew who does web pages."  Mention Java and for years even some people in IT thought JavaScript.  Back in the day if I was feeling difficult I'd describe what I did as "Writing software for computers that don't exist."   Best response from that was: "Is there a market for that?".  Oddly enough there was.   

It only got worse with a job titles like Application Architect.  Most people understand that software needs to be written, but Software Architecture?  What's that?  Must be how you format all that text.  So eventually I landed on "I write software and help other people write software."  That really covered the best of architecture, as well as the teaching and mentoring I'd done. 

After 15+ years of writing software, I've taken a job where that's not the job, in fact I've been told to resist when I'm asked to write software.   On Monday, I start as Shaw's Development Practice Lead.  With zero hours on the job, my understanding is I'll be the internal coach / advocate for the development team.

While I still expect to be writing software, it's no longer my job.  My new description: I help other people write software.  Let's hope there's a market for that.

- Peace

Last Day at Blackboard Collaborate

Today's my last day at Blackboard Collaborate. It's been a tough three weeks, letting go of a place where I've grown to love the people I work with. But I covered that in my last post.  So let's talk RC Helicopters.

My parting gift to the Calgary Office is pair of Force RC Battling Helicopters. We've been buzzing around our large meeting area, and shooting one another out of the sky all week :)

For the price the Force RC helicopters are very easy to fly and the combat system is a ton of fun. These are the RC toys I dreamed of as a kid.

Only complaint is they're not the toughest things in the world, even with adults it's easy to break the plastic frames. Still lot's of fun for the $$$. Got them as a set from PM Hobby Craft.

Oh and before I get accused of trying to lower productivity via gift of RC goodness, I cleared the idea with the appropriate VP before getting them. OK so said VP announced his retirement a few days later, but my conscience is clear.

Thanks to Doug for taking the picture, while I flew past the Bb collaborate poster. Thanks to Andy for helping with the initial experiments.

Thoughts on the new gig still to come.

- Peace

Hardest Day at Work in a Long Time

As I mentioned back in 2007 I don't blog that much about work, though I see the work label is #20 on the list of labels, so more than I thought?  Yes I've blogged about having a Tough Day at Work before; but that was ironic.

Yesterday I gave notice that I would be leaving Blackboard Collaborate.  I've left companies before, over differences over direction, lack of funding (they stopped paying us), that sort of thing.  None of that applied in this case. 

I love working on a product that enables global education.  While working on it I've met people who are fans of our product from around the world.  I've met people in my corner of Calgary who's daughter uses the product to learn French as part of her home schooling.

As development shop we've embraced an Agile process and are getting better at it. 

We're in the same space as our level 2 support people, so they wander over and ask questions, and we ask questions of them to get an idea of how things are working.

I'm part of dev team with history.  They worked on Multix, they took a young developer out for lunch with a buddy from college and the friend turned out to be James Gosling.  They tell stories about how they nearly got James kicked out of a favorite restaurant on Talk Like a Pirate day.

I love the team I'm on.  We've gone camping, biking and done photography together. 

It's been a amazing place to be and I don't expect to encounter anything like it again.  So announcing that I was leaving was really hard. 

I have a new gig, it fell in my lap, it was too interesting to turn down.  More on that latter.

- Peace

Tough Day at Work

Some days are better than others. Today the Director of QA sprayed me with mud. I may or may not have helped organize a group of people to spray her with a large amount of water. Oh the joys of office politics.

- Peace

I help build Virtual Classrooms

I work for Blackboard Collaborate; part of what we do is build Virtual Classrooms. So What Does a Virtual Classroom Look Like? is a post from Lucy Hammel describing her job as a online teacher using our Elluminate classroom. Elluminate being one of the companies that was merged into the new Blackboard Collaborate last year.

- Peace

Now working for Blackboard.

Elluminate is being acquired by Blackboard. We're all just finding out what that means.

- Peace

Our New Copmany Song

We'll be singing this each morning.

- Peace

Code Monkey Music Video

Missed this when it made the rounds on the net the first time. This was a big hit in our cube farm yesterday. We're all married guys but we can relate. The song is by Jonathan Coulton.

- Peace

Zen and the Art of SVN

Noticed this in the commit log for subversion:

[Ken] Removed module that did not yet exist

So either Ken has gone all "one hand clapping" in his comments or he's invented time travel.

- Peace

Watch Me at Work

You can catch glimpses of me at work on the Cambrian House Web Cams.

- Peace

2500 KM

Passed the 2500 KM mark after work today on the way to Tims. Started my new gig today, more on that once they get my profile updated.

- Peace

Last Day Keeping the Lights On

I don't blog a great deal about work. In fact in four years I've only mentioned the AESO by name once. I talked about my code setting the price of power back in 2004. I made on oblique reference to keeping the lights on in a poem. Today is my last day working to keep the Alberta Power Grid on line at a fair price. I'll admit I quite enjoyed knowing that there are people who's entire job is tracking and reacting to a number my code calculates. After today friends won't be able to bug me when their power goes out. I'm going to miss looking at the lights and telling people my code must be working.

- Peace