Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Titanic Global Economic Battle

Rainy day in the city, and several more of those to come. Weather has turned cool, averaging 15C for highs, and it's all feeling decidedly autumnal. It was around this time last year, give or take a couple of weeks that I embarked on this start-uppy crusade, and the economy quickly took note and fell apart because of it. Much like the Tech-bubble burst was in reaction to my last start-up launch.

Oh sure, the Goldman Sachs, AIG, FannieMae stuff is all well and good, but they were all in reaction to my endeavour getting on its feet.

So once again it's a battle of wills. Me versus the global economy. Who can hold out longer? Will I give in and take a job somewhere before the recovery hits, or will recovery happen while I'm still hammering away on my architecture and looking for angel funding?

Researchinator grits teeth and vows to beat this thing...

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Managing Difficult People

From the annals of my people management skills, here's some guidance on managing an employee exhibiting a bad behaviour. This is actually from an exchange with someone who was asking for guidance with one of their kids, but in conflict resolution, it's mostly about people, regardless of what role they are in employee, friend, child, spouse etc...

A helpful concept from conflict resolution suggests that trying to ensure your 'opponent' has an easy way out is an important consideration in your actions. Sometimes you can make a problem bog down because you haven't given the other side an easy way to capitulate to your position without losing face.

They also say you shouldn't use the word 'opponent' - but whaddaya gonna do.

Given a person who is compulsively lying, for example, it's tempting to try and repeatedly catch them in lies, preferably totally undeniable lies. In reality, once you've confirmed that they are lying, there is no additional value in attempting to continually hammer them with further examples.

So while the lying is a problem, focussing on it too much, or always trying to set up the situation to see if she lies could fail by trapping her too much, as she gets into the lie then has no way out.

Think of the example of a grounded daughter, prohibited from using the computer, but who you discover has gone online to tell her friends the score.

While it's tempting to ask "were you on the computer last night" to see if she takes it to a lie, it might be more constructive in the long run (ie to get away from lying behaviour) to say, "I see you were on the computer last night - If you needed to let your friends know you're grounded, you should have asked first. We're serious about not using the computer."

By setting the other side up to repeat their bad behaviour, it entrenches the behaviour. If you can set them up to "model" or "act-out" good behaviour, it ends up building a path towards doing it on their own later on. Also, reinforcing the prohibition, indicating that there are plausible options around it, yet pointing out the right way to determine that, also helps to avoid trapping the person in a no-win situation.

For what it's worth, a bit of advice from the people-management lexicon.

Researchinator been there, seen dat...

Yep

Yep.
Researchinator sez, yep...

Monday, September 21, 2009

Getting The Week On

Some unexpectedly pleasant September weather, following a weekend with lots of outdoors time. A nice way to start the week. On the sched this week is progress on guiding a team of students, meeting up with a pseudo-colleague, and making progress on my app features. I wonder how many years will go into this, as I'm well past the first anniversary of initial exploration, and nearing the first anniversary of hard-core fulltime work on it.

Anyway, not going to blog all morning, so let's get down to it.

Researchinator is shovelling coal into the furnace and watching the pressure rise...

Friday, September 18, 2009

First Impression Management

It seems like every social networking service is full of bugs today. There seems to be this approach afoot of making changes on the fly without testing. Twitter seems to just throw up new loads willy-nilly to see if they work and pull them down when they don't. Suddenly text will be garbled across the screen, then it goes back to normal.

I'm not sure how I feel about that - coming from a "bullet-proof is the only option" background where we made sure our products were strong before showing them off, it seems very haphazard. Then again, nobody is scheduling surgery or controlling aircraft through twitter (yet) so perhaps you can get away with it. But it does erode the sense of a smooth, elegantly crafted-by-pros brand.

Then again, my service isn't even ready for prime-time, so I should talk. Fail early and fail often is the new mantra, but there is something to be said for making a good first impression as well.

Researchinator is a long way from a first impression, still...

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Collaboration Time C'mon

Have some collaborating students that should help to move things along a little in my project. It's a good deal, but isn't free - takes a bit of my time moving forward as well. They seem eager, hope that keeps up.

Making some progress on my coding lately, for a change. Had some routine disruption with change of venue. A bit tough to adjust to the home office space again... but I'm persevering.

Plus the weather has changed. Cooler days mark the passage of time, and the passing of the nice summery time. Wearing a coat again today - yikes.

I'm shopping myself around a bit as well. Thinking about finding some paying employment, and moving the venture into the background. Need to both keep connected and would like to contribute to something funded again. My venture stuff can still progress on the side for a while. Hope to go-live with some features near the end of the year, in a very low visibility testing sort of way, with a handful of users.

Researchinator enjoyed the cool, schooly feeling day visiting students...

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Diffuse Effort

Changing gears between consulting work and my venture development is a very inefficient time. As well, my shifting from leased office to the home office hasn't done me any favours, though I am progressing. The consulting stuff has very rigid deadlines, which motivates me better than a flexible, long term goal does. I really must return to my typical approach of setting some short-term goals for my days and weeks.

I've had people compliment me on my ability to be productive in a home office environment, but I'm afraid I'm still not very good at it. There are a lot of distractions, and for an unstructured project like mine, it can erode your effectiveness.

Still, I've done it successfully before, and will get back into the routine again. I need to invoice my previous work to get some cash coming in though. Oh and should check my investments to ensure I remain reasonably solvent.

I also have half a dozen other wanna-do simulation projects... but I will resist. When the urge overtakes me, I instead work on a description document for those other projects. That way I can capture the thoughts, but avoid getting into the rat-hole that is starting to render the code.

Researchinator tries to focus.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Distraction For Cash

Some contract work is providing income... well, it will in a few months when I can complete the billing payment received cycle. For now, it's mostly a drain on my energy, since it involves reviewing someone else's work. That alone isn't an issue, it's reviewing someone else's work anonymously, with no means to do a close inspection, and without any means to fix the huge gaping holes. Tough for a manager of complex technical projects to look at one from the outside and critique without opportunity to propose the repairs. But such is the life of a venture funding contract reviewer.

Making it tougher is that these venture folks tend to fund stuff regardless of the review process, so all I can do is stick to my principles, process, instincts and experience and let them do what they want with the info. I'll likely get the last cringe (not, laugh, I hate to see tech things fail) down the road when the venture fades away.

Meanwhile, my venture is fading into the background, but only as I'm distracted with this project. I think I'll be finished with distraction today, and be able to turn my attention back to my stuff tomorrow, finally. I'm eager to move forward under a new routine. I can again see a nice path rolled out in front of me. Even though it likely means funding opportunities for me are over a year away, I can at least conceive of a path that gets me there.

For now though, it's distraction for cash, and I should get onto it. The quicker I start the quicker I'm through with it.

Researchinator turns researchy eyes to someone else's mess, neglecting one closer at hand...