I also own a two-sided scansnap scanner and I scan everything. If it doesn’t fit in the scanner, I cut it in two. Everything gets scanned and shredded. No more file cabinets. No sensitive data lingering around the office. All the PDFs get backed up online with Dropbox. I can now access my physical mail from anywhere. The new freedom is mobility. I can find anything and everything I’ve ever got, faster. I applied for a new mortgage loan and they were amazed at how fast I could produce every document they required. I have every receipt in case I am ever audited.

Then I have a blog where I post things I want public feedback on, or things I want to contribute to the world.

I keep notes on every call I make in a notepad and save the file with the timestamp for the day and a summary in My Documents folder. I can refer back to every call quickly–a better and simpler system than any CRM software I’ve ever tried.

Then I have a private journal where I talk about things I am not ready to share with others.

Its great to review all these things. Especially when I am burdened. Its a great source of strength, strategy, and a catalyst for creativity. I can totally understand how journaling answers tough questions. Nobody cares more about your problems than you. Nobody has thought more about your problems than you. And often times you already know the answer, you just need someone else [like your past self] to remind you.

Took me 15 minutes to install and configure but it actually saves any changes you make directly to the static files on the server. Albiet, it does not work with PHP, HAML, SCSS/SASS or any of the server-side exclusive scripts, but I still found it helpful for my purposes. I was editing a stylesheet generated by compass, but I can still use `git diff` to see what changed and copy/paste those changes into my original SCSS file.

Check it out. Especially if you do a lot of slicing and themeing, I’m sure it has potential to be a big time saver for you, as well.

Credit: http://addyosmani.com/blog/autosave-changes-chrome-dev-tools/

Just about every week for the past few months I’ve received invitations from startup founders to relocate to CA in order to participate at CTO / Co-Founder level in their venture. This because the Silicon valley VC / Angel investors have some requirement about will not fund unless tech team is a) local to CA, and b) “long-term”. Any of my Angel/VC/Entrepreneur friends know how it might be possible to participate without relocating from UT w/ family? I doubt it would last more than 2 years. So far my offer is to only relocate for $130k salary plus $10-25k sign-on bonus and/or 100% moving expenses paid. But still having trouble convincing the wife on this since I make a better-than-average living working remotely.

The Answers:

Successful Investor/Entrepreneur in Florida who contracted with me remotely in the past for existing Startup:

my advice, with your age and talents, I feel you should def take these offers — no can lose scenario. Make great connections, have a nice income, and the potential to hit a HR and be financially secure
I’d go for it — it’s not too far from your hometown.

Successful Programmer/CTO/Entrepreneur in NC who worked remotely with me in the past on a startup:

ya.   when I was younger the big event was Comdex and I was there every year.   I went to represent companies like Motorola, Microsoft, a bunch of small companies and even Borland (who was my favorite vendor for many years way back when).   I haven’t done tech crunch before.   At one point I did the dog and pony show in 6 different countries in one year, but it got to be too much.  Now I focus more on the family and try not to leave unless I have to.
…
Don’t do it.
Relocation is a huge gamble and if it works there is big money.    Best case, it works and you spend so much time at an office stressed out that your wife and kids have check Outlook to find out when they can see you.   Worse case, you get all the joy and stress of a startup and it fails in a year.  You’re left in Cali hunting for a job to pay for the under sized house right off the crapy freeway you quickly moved in to.
You are far to smart to do that.   You’ll have 30 contractors working for you in 5 years making 1/2 a million a year from anyplace you want.   You’ve got the tech skills already in spades and you’ll have the business savvy soon enough.
Most VC funds require an on-site staff.  When you invest big money, you want to see the faces.

The money should not be tempting to you.  You are swimming in cash right now and you come from a life style and religion (I would guess) that highly values saving.  You can afford to build your own gig.

Programmer/CTO contracting me in CA for his YCombinator startup:

There isn’t much that i know of in ways to get around it.
A startup requires a team,  and the best teams are close together.  Especially early stage… remote just doesn’t work well. It works, but not well.
Big risk. Big reward.
You need to be in the meetings, you need to be able to participate on a very personal level and that just can’t happen effectively remotely. Its been proven often enough which is why there is hesitancy on the VC/Investor side. If you want the startup life, move, or hook up w/ the cofounders in your area.

Successful Recruiter in Utah:

There’s obviously many opinions here, but I wonder if, when it’s right, you won’t need to “convince” your wife.
I’d surely recommend a house-hunting trip if they’re (the co) serious about having you. Find other families who have relocated and talk candidly about the pros and cons.
At the end, if you knew one of these paths would cost you the other one, would that help you choose?
Good luck.
I’m always open to questions. I’ve made the wrong choices myself enough to know I should have asked Take care.
…
I know a few guys that went for the big payout, figuring whatever “debt” they racked up in their marriage, they could easily pay off with the cush life of a millionaire. Most of them aren’t so rich in the end… and even the ones that struck gold lost more in the process than they ever could gain through money, experience or even the thrill of the startup gone perfect. You’re the kind of guy that will seem show up to the right opportunity when its right.  Good luck. Can’t wait to find out how the story plays out.

Investor/Entrepreneur in California, Married to Programmer/CTO for Big Tech Stock in CA who contracted me remotely in the past for CA Startup:

if you think it will last 2 years, don’t do it. If you have to do it for 2 years and don’t want your family to move, then you may have to commute.
Please note that there is NO WAY you’d get better opportunities elsewhere to participate in a venture that can make you millionaires.
You are young enough to take that risk.
I don’t think much happens in UT and you really don’t want to be in UT startup culture. You, in particular, need to move to CA and get involved in an awesome startup idea where you get to really show your chops. You will have lots and lots of opportunities. I assure you that CA is not evil. It really isn’t. You need to put yourself in positions to make millions.
You are young enough to be on a plane every day or every week at least. People usually get an apartment, stay the week and then fly back on Friday. It is a decent compromise and yes people do it.

An Investor/Entrepreneur in Florida who wants me to move to CA with him:

I discussed the situation of only having independent contractors on our team to develop and that we are self-funding the project [with a more experienced FL Tech Startup Investor/Entrepreneur]. He agreed that not having internal full-time tech people is a problem, and would definitely not get funding without establishing some sort of agreement with some of these folks to be “full-time” or with a company title to be part of the team. That being said, contingent upon getting funding, and some sort of profit sharing agreement, and or passive compensation we spoke about, could you see your self in this type of role? Aside from someone with advanced skills, we also need someone who can articulate well to potential investors or in a group of people. I know you said you don’t necessarily know if you are that person, and have posted this type of job on oDesk, but we need someone like this in oder to get funding obviously . Also didn’t sound like [other contractor] would be that person either based on the conversation you sent to me that the two of you had last week.

Successful Programmer/CEO/Entrepreneur in New York who contracted me remotely in the past:

What is the question – How to convince them to let you work remotely? You won’t be able to convince them of that.

NOTE: Regardless of how you answered, I still love you all. But you can see where my hesitancy comes from. I posted these answers because they reflect my own internal conflict and differing opinions. I know all the big money and disruptive companies are in CA these days. I would love to work for Blizzard, Facebook, Twitter, Disney, Pixar, etc. not for the money but for the passion. But there is also modest startup culture in UT that I just haven’t been active in. I am leaning towards weighting-in in that arena. But perhaps one day I will not be able to escape that giant vacuum in CA that is pulling all the world’s top creative talent toward it. If I was single, I would have done it already. Maybe when the kids are older.

Feel free to leave comments below. They won’t be anonymous though. But I can make them anonymous, if you wish.

This is the classic age-old battle of FSF+GNU decentralized vs. MSFT+APPL centralized platform locking strategy in general. Here you see Canonical’s Ubuntu cutting into marketshare of both Windows and OSX http://bit.ly/im7xi0

Cloud computing is definitely going to be the future for private sector. Clasically however, I expect big government to remain firmly rooted in the past except for black budget project cooperatives with Intel+IBM+GM.

In recognition of this fact, I propose a new international annual holiday where we all say thanks to AWS, Akamai, Heroku, and the millions of independent heros burning the midnight oil to dismantle those who seek to imprison information rather than keeping it free.

Thank you Google, Canonical, FSF, GNU, and … ok maybe Apple, sometimes.

“VMWare has a ‘Virtual Appliance Marketplace’ that contains pre-assemblied VM images configured for various purposes. For example, if I want to compared (and learn) django (a python based web framework) and ruby on rails, I could download two images, setup two VM’s and start hacking. No need to configure a LAMP stack, no need to worry about trashing my base system with installs/uninstalls.”

Oh, this is what I have been doing myself internally for a few years now. I build servers generically, then quickly clone them, hack on them until the project is over, then delete them or archive them or revert to a “clean” snapshot. Productivity has been through the roof! Now, it looks like there’s a marketplace for this:

• http://www.vmware.com/appliances/
• http://www.turnkeylinux.org/
• http://virtualboximages.com/

Some of the more interesting appliances:

• Cacti, Nagios
• Exchange 2007
• Openflier NAS appliance

Something to watch, I think.

VCs funding tech startups like crazy these days. I know I personally am spending a lot of money on entertainment; I think that’s proportional with global/national level crises.

One former-client-now-friend from California is telling me I’m crazy not to move with so many awesome companies hiring right now:

• Valve Software
  http://www.valvesoftware.com/jobs/
  “We’re always hiring for all positions. Seriously.”
• Blizzard Entertainment
  http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/
  “YOUR DREAM JOB is waiting for you.”
• Rockstar Games
  http://www.rockstargames.com/jobs/
• iD Software
  http://www.quake3arena.com/business/jobs/index.php
• Epic Games
  http://www.epicgames.com/careers/
• Titan Studios
  http://titanstudios.com/about/

Of course I can’t forget a few giants from my current web development industry also located there:

• Google
  http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/uslocations/santa-monica/index.html
• Facebook
  http://www.facebook.com/careers/department.php?dept=engineering
• Twitter
  http://twitter.com/jobs

So I started looking into it, and turned up some expert industry insider advice:

• “How To Get A Job In The Gaming Biz”
  by Cliff Bleszinski, Epic Games
  http://www.cliffyb.com/how-to-get-hired.htm

Reasons I’m even considering this:

• I’ve always loved gaming. Currently finding myself entertained by Valve’s Portal 2 and Titan Studios’ Fat Princess.
• I can remember playing games as far back as ATARI days and feel like I must have beaten just about every game since.
• I used to make maps for Duke Nukem 3D to play online with both local and remote buddies; so many good times with those.
• Also designed maps for WarCraft II and StarCraft II.
• I have scripted bots for Battle.net.
• I’ve attempted 3D level designs with Quake2, and Half Life but its a lot trickier.
• Tried Blender, Maya, 3DSMax, Lightwave, etc. for product and mechanical design.
• Also tried AutoCAD for architectural design.
• More recently love observing the innovative art, UI, and usability improvements.
• Have successfully engineered hacks for multiple games

Current Employee Resumes and New Hires on LinkedIn:

• Valve Corporation
  http://www.linkedin.com/company/13922
• Blizzard Entertainment
  http://www.linkedin.com/company/5329

NOTE: Many have Computer Science degrees from Universities OR former game industry experience. I noticed a few BYU and Weber State graduates. Was surprised to learn some people in my immediate network know employees at these companies. One is a CS Ph.D. (4-5 years)!

Interesting Presentations by authors from these companies:

• Rendering Wounds in Left4Dead2
  by Alex Vlachos, Valve
  http://slidesha.re/i7le94

Industry keywords:

• Fractals

Whew! This is a bit of a leap for me. Maybe I am better off transitioning through what I am already expert in.

All this heavy C, maths, and higher level education time makin’ me hungry.

Lunch time! To be continued…

Check out the article:

Shedding Bikes: Programming Culture And Philosophy

I have often thought these strategies could be applied to websites. Here are some companies who agree:

Badgeville is a white label Social Rewards & Analytics Platform We make it easy to increase the loyalty and engagement of your web audience.

http://www.badgeville.com/

Gamification for Your Site. Our platform helps you integrate game mechanics and loyalty programs into your site or app through points, badges, levels, leaderboards, virtual currency and virtual goods.

http://www.bigdoor.com/

http://www.bigdoor.com/resources/helpful-tools-and-links/

Your customers have great ideas. Are you ready to listen? Uservoice communities are the easiest way to turn customer feedback into action: 1. Share ideas, 2. Vote up the best, 3. Respond, implement & repeat!

http://uservoice.com/

see also: http://getsatisfaction.com/

NSA picks Utah for data center

The data center is estimated to be 1 million square feet, sitting on 200-acres, and it couldn’t come at a better time for Utah’s economy.

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=7105272&nid=148

It’s a project of $1.6 billion to $2 billion in construction. The company expects to add as many as 350 more jobs with the likelihood of bringing another 1,000 to the state over the next decade.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=12652899

Still, I know a lot of people here in Utah who are out of work even in the IT sector. I also know very few of my clients are in Utah. Utahn’s are very–err, um–frugal. Oh sure, we have angel / venture capital firms, but they’re even more frugal. We’ve had rashes of IT sweat shops from Heritage Web Solutions (now forced to rebrand themselves “Hit Web” in an attempt to shake the slander) to Provo Labs (yes, indeed). There is the Good Old Boys club among the two major universities (BYU, UofU). Beyond that the third-party job recruiting agencies love to tell you that you’ll never make more than $45,000/yr. at pretty much anything but especially PHP. So I wasn’t too surprised to see things like this…

Go West Young Man, Go West

There is a need for engineering, design and ops talent pretty much every where from San Francisco to San Jose. ‘People’ say that you should leave your job when you are the smartest one there. It’s a chance to swim in a big pond, and if anyone from URUG is interested, I can help make introductions and navigate the process.

http://groups.google.com/group/urug/browse_thread/thread/a32c82df059ea878#

I cannot deny I’ve had similar thoughts in moments of frustration, but for some reason–oh wait, maybe because I’m entrepreneurial, resourceful, hard-working, and talented–I always find work. Especially at this age in my life. That’s why I wasn’t afraid to quit my job when I felt like I was the smartest one there, when I felt severely over-worked, and my employers were not fair businessmen. Though the spectre of unemployment bread lines and a Great Depression III loomed, I knew what was best for my health, sanity, and my family–and I was rewarded with double the income in just the first month alone. Sounds like I am not alone in this…

Silicon Valley and the Talent Crunch

whichever way you look at it, these are good days to be an entrepreneur. With newer venture funds coming online by the week. .. job postings related to the IT industry are up over 60 percent for 2010.

The Giant Sucking Sound

• Some large web company tried to hire my engineer, and I had to boost the salary by 50 percent.
• I just lost my key developer to Zynga.
• Twitter just hired two of my employees.
• I have four openings at my startup, and I can’t find people.

Welcome to the harsh new reality of technology and its talent crunch. In the real world, we have double-digit unemployment, but on this side of the country, everything seems like it’s 1999. You can thank four companies for that: Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and Google . These four companies are sucking up all kinds of talent: designers, engineers, marketing people and infrastructure folks. They’re able to do so by offering them above-market salaries, insane perks, food and a cachet that’s nice to have during dinner conversations.

It’s only going to get worse; Zynga has leased 270,000 square feet of space in San Francisco. The same news story also mentions that Twitter is going to be looking for new office space of around 200,000 square feet. Add to this the new offices for Google, and you’re looking at three web giants that are going to be hiring a lot of people to fill the extra space they’re renting.

http://gigaom.com/2010/10/13/silicon-valley-talent-crunch/

The Niko-niko Calendar is a tool for automating this process and measuring abnormalities over time. Like many modern manufacturing innovations, it originates from Japan. The Niko-niko Calendar plugin for Redmine is a modern version of this tool that should integrate easily with our existing processes.

The value I see in this technology applied to my work specifically is in the harmony of business interests and developer’s needs.

Imagine a report containing a single table. Across the top horizontally you see each numeric day of the month, and down the left side vertically you see people’s names. In the center you have a matrix of emoticons.

Real-life Niko-niko Calendar

Each day, each member of the team chooses one of three options: happy, sad, or in-between. Everyone who participates has a voice and a platform; transparency is encouraged.

Although it may seem like a kindergarten approach, it provides amazing power and leverage to help management identify abnormalities and make correct decisions before defects occur.

In applying this technology to your organization, a few of the fundamental benefits you can expect include:

• “How are you doing?” becomes a sincere question.
• “Why?” and “How can I help?” begins to occur more frequently.
• Encourages cooperation and creative solutions.
• Becomes more difficult for management to neglect employee safety and morale.

This is important because it allows us to measure and track “abnormalities” as they occur. The definition of “Abnormality” in this context of means “State that is not normal, although it is not defective.” or “State between normality and the defect”. This system of measurement can benefit any type of project where there is a work product being manufactured.

For example, the developer is asked to work on a ticket but the instructions in the ticket are not clear. The manager is never around to answer questions. The developer keeps developing, trying the best he can, but feels unproductive because he is forced to make several assumptions that could end up being wrong.

Left unchecked, this can lead to defects. Moreover, the state of abnormality shows the symptom to the defect. Suddenly arriving at the defect is not desirable at all. By tracking abnormalities, we are able to resolve problems before they occur.

Also, it is important ahead of the defect to see the change little by little every day. It is important to see the tendency to the change. Because we realize abnormalities are not so abnormal and we are willing to measure them, the defect is not overlooked, and the corrections are realised instead of taken for granted.

See this page for details and usage examples:
“Niko-niko Calendar”, an article by AKATA Akinori