I now know the way to San Jose

Ok, I am sure many people use this same joke… but When I got here, I realized the last time I was in San Jose was 2008 for a Virtual Worlds Conference. It’s amazing how memories cause you to think things look one way, and they don’t really look that way. I guess that is why there are so many problems with eye witnesses. But that’s one why I am here…

Yup.. I am here for WWCD 2018! I have picked up my badge, and Jeans Jacket. A nice, stylish black jeans material..that I can’t wait to wear in about 10 more pounds. Looking at the world of Developers I really don’t understand how companies get away with all the skinny sizes. I would wear it, but I can’t button it up… maybe soon.

I’ve already had a great talk with one of the developers of game, he’s made it to WWDC 6 years running. I wonder if once you go if your more likely to make it thru the lottery. I hope so…

I had to get up really really early to catch my flight to San Jose. So I am sure I will easily stay on East Coast time and get in line early tomorrow to get a great seat for the keynote. Wish me luck!!

Getting Ready for WWDC

After trying for years, I am heading to WWDC this year for the first time. I understand that there are a ton of – non-Apple events that happen at the same time, but I am heading to WWDC not those other events. I will be going to a few events in the evenings, but I really want to experience the full WWDC event.

The two things I am looking forward to are talking to engineers on both AutoLayout and on CoreData. I’ve been working on a new app lately, and really banging my head on understand how CoreData and the UI work together. I find that a lot of the power of Swift is to hide fundamental details of CoreData to let you focus on the application, but to me understanding how the computer is actually processes things is key. One secret that took me years to understand was how do windowing environments work. What finally helped me grasp the concepts was thinking back to how RPG work on IBM’s midrange computers. There was this thing called “the cycle”, where all programs actually ran top to bottom, for every record in a file. The idea of the cycle helped me understand that windowing environments just processed all the messages in sequence – like every record in the cycle. Bingo! I am now pretty comfortable programming windowing environments.

I haven’t gotten that ah-a moment with CoreData yet. Perhaps talking to the sets of engineers will help me make the leap into CoreData. All the great people on the iOS Slack channel, who are familiar with CoreData, seem to be big fans of it. There has to be a reason…. I hope I find it.

The Myth of the Small Business on the Internet

One of the most revealing outcomes of the GDPR over the last few weeks is the number of “small companies” that I support via SW purchases, subscriptions, website usage, etc. that have suddenly revealed themselves to be part of a larger conglomerate.  I am sure this doesn’t come as a surprise to many of you, but I was surprised to see companies that have said in their new policies, “to better serve you as a customer we are helping you better understand who we share your data with… and as part of the the Family of companies under “mega-corp”, we share your data with any and all members of our corporate family.”

Amazing!

MoogFest day 4 and Wrap up

Another year another Moogfest in Durham, NC.  As the conference wrapped up I was able to look back and discover a problem with some of the sessions.  The Moogfest team had a mobile app that allowed me to setup my schedule and plan out each day; one thing I did was print out a copy of the schedule to make sure I could deal with the limited amount of time between sessions.  The print function would add a bunch of VIP only sessions.  Well, when I printed out my plan on the 13th, the app included a bunch of cool things, from LAST YEAR!  This App mistake really messed up the expectations as an attendee. I provided feedback to the team, and hopefully they will “Fix” the app for next year.

I went to a few cool sessions on Sunday including a technical overview of circuit design by one of the engineers at Moog.  Understanding the math behind the Moog 923 really was interesting and educational.  I tend to use MoogFest as one of my “education-vacations”.  I really enjoy learning and taking advantage of technical adjacencies in my life and career.  MoogFest provides this to me.

The second session was a product pitch, show casing a new Eurorack component.  I like these sessions as the guy basically spent 45 minutes making music while talking about how the system worked.

I ended Moogfest watching a movie at the Carolina Theater about Ralph Steadman – the artist who worked closely with Hunter S. Thompson on most of this work.  Very cool and educational.

Overall, another good year at Moogfest, but was it great?  Looking back, I’d say no, the musical selections were fun and enjoyable, but no real headliner.  The technical sessions were fun and educational, but nothing that really blew me away.  Will I go next year?  That’s the big question.  I really wish that the team over at Moogfest would give out more information about what is going to happen next year.  They have already sent a note about getting festival tickets for next year.  Given how little the music festival had any Major headliners, I did not take advantage of the offer.  I will have to think about it when they do “early bird” tickets in Dec.

MoogFest Day 3 – conversations and music

In college I got a degree in journalism, and even before college I was a big 1st amendment supporter. The reason it is the first amendment was to make sure that we have a set of checks and balances that keep our government in check. Today Chelsea Manning gave a keynote event at Moogfest. Unlike most conferences where a Keynote is a speech, here it is a conversation.

Sitting on the stage at the Carolina Theater Chelsea Manning talked about how music empowered her and continues to help in dealing with life as a trans individual.

After the presentation, I went and checked out Michael Stipe’s second video installation, Thibault Dance. Last year Michael debuted “Jeremy Dance” and this was the part of the same series.

After looking at the installation, I went to hear a conversation with Michael Stipe describing the installation along with an upcoming book called “Volume 1”. The cool part of the Dance installations, is how he made them. He would play a 120BPM song, and let the dancer dance. After which he would actually compose a score to go with it. So what you are seeing is a Dance that is interpreted in music, instead of the other way around. The book was cool – a bunch of pictures taken over the years. Seeing some of the behind the scenes of Athens was cool.

But the fun part of the http://g.co/magenta/demos day was the session by Cathy and Adam from google going thru the Magenta projects on using MI for creating music.

You can check out a bunch demos over here: Demos at g.co/magenta/demos

MoogFest day 2 – amazing stories and music

While some of the sessions I had signed up for had disappeared, I was able to hit a few really great sessions. The first was Madame Gandhi (not her real name but the name of her music project). She shared a lot of her musical influences and then showed how she builds up a song, and ultimately then infuses her political speeches into them. Her energy and passion were highly infective. And her music rocked. I picked up her EP voices and it became my jam for walking around.

I then got a chance to see the team of librarians from North Carolina State University, that manage their maker space. I tried to convert my GamesAtWork.BIZ logo to a key chain design. Using a device I printed a dog tag, but it didn’t turn out very good.

It ended up looking like a twisted map of Alaska!

And finally heard a discussion from a musician named Richard Devine, and his music had a lot of Depeche Mode – Remix sounds in it. The “talk” was a 45 minute jam session.. very cool

The rest of the day was listening to artists, and the most amazing was Armin Ra.. who played the theremin.. Pretty amazing stuff!

Moogfest 2018 – Day 1 Review

Well, Moogfest Day 1 is over, and looking back, I had a good time, but it seems that things are no where as organized as the last two years.

Having set up sessions at a major conference before, I understand the complexity of trying to manage sessions, attendees, speakers, etc. And we are you are dealing with a spread out session like MoogFest I bet the issues are compounded. Having said that, the one thing you need to be able to do is communicate. Let your attendees know when sessions cancel or get moved.

I had finished organizing my calendar on the 13th, and the conference started on the 17th. imaging my surprise when half of the things I had planned on day one were no longer valid. Events are cancelled, performers are not here, and sessions have moved. I’ve been walking all over downtown Durham only to find that the things are no longer happening.

I heard two musical acts, one – Sister, Brother – was a the Pinhook. A small bar, that has the vibe of the type of place I my band in college would play at. That is not a bad thing. I also got to see a live scoring of the German silent film “The cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, at the Armory done by Suzanne Ciani. Very cool session.

I was able to go to one presentation, “How to build your own Synth for fun (if not for Profit”, by one of the Moog Engineers. It was interesting and informative.

Today’s big event, the “conversation” with Michael Stipe appears to be cancelled, which is a bit frustrating. As he was the biggest name for this year’s show. I also spent some time looking at my original scheduled (5 printed pages), and it is now not even 2 full pages. I am wondering if there will be a Moogfest 2019.

MoogFest 2018 Starts Today

I am excited to be at MoogFest 2018 for the third year. This year the the artist line up includes both returning acts from last year, and new acts that I am not familiar with. Additionally the CERN team from last year is back and there’s a session on Saturday to allow a group of people to work with some of the data from the LHC. I am on the wait list for that one, but hope to make it in. Will be exciting. More posts and tweets to come as the days unfold. Check out my Twitter feed at <a href=”https://twitter.com/michaelrowe01″>@michaelrowe01</A>.

Is Agile all that it’s cracked up to be?

I believe that one of the biggest fallacies in the corporate world today is that Agile is the way to go for all problems. The mantra goes something like this:

  • There are examples of great startups that got to be huge because they were agile
    • They started down one path, and kept pivoting until they made it big
  • As a giant mega company, we need to get bigger
    • So we should constantly pivot, to address market changes
  • If we do that, we can be successful like those startups we’ve read about

The believe that companies need to react to changing marketing conditions, is not the problem. The problem is that we believe that because some small subset of startups were able to be successful because they were agile. And as along as big corporations are agile they too can be super successful too.

Let’s break this down:

First, the number of agile startups that fail every year, is orders of magnitude larger than the few that succeed. So we must assume that there are other issues that are causing their failure (or causing the successful ones not to fail).

Second, markets change, and with those changes some companies (both large and small) will fail. Others will struggle to deal with the innovator’s dilemma, transitioning to new markets, business models, or technologies, while keeping their existing customer base engaged and satisfied to help fuel that transition.

Third, companies that have a strong and clear strategy (other than just making money), are better able to address those market changes. If we go back to the innovators dilemma, the difference between a Transportation company and a buggy whip manufacture becomes very important when dealing with market changes. Think of how Uber, Amazon, and Apple have all dealt with market changes, and what they believe their strategy is. Each of them has done a great job navigating transitions over time.