April 2008 - Posts

• Funding Open Source with Donations

  Read this post! I'm challenging you to make a difference. I was part of the Funding Open Source Projects discussion at the ALT.NET conference. Oren has a good summary which can be found here. He mentions that donations sound good, but really don't work. I think that's a shame. I have these thoughts that we as a community could do some really cool things if we work together get things done. I want to try a little experiment using the current buzz around the ALT.NET conference. I challenge 5+ volunteers to donate $$ to their favorite OS project and say that they did so on their blogs and then challenge 5+ more volunteers to do the same. If you don't have a blog, then post a comment here saying you donated. I donated to Oren's Open Source efforts. Don't put it off. Do it now. Blog it. Tweet it. Spread the word! Donate! UPDATE: Donating time to Open Source Projects counts too! UPDATE: One thing that $$ could help out with is hiring someone to do documentation. Oren said that working on open source projects is his hobby and that's why he does it. He also said that he doesn't like to do documentation and that is not his hobby. I don't know any developers that like to do documentation. ALT.NET, Open Source Posted Apr 22 2008, 09:06 PM by Ray Houston with 5 comment(s)

• Thanks ALT.NET Seattle

  The ALT.NET conference wrapped up yesterday afternoon. I wanted to say thanks to all the volunteers, organizers, and sponsors. Thanks to all the other participants who made up the conference. I got to meet a lot of folks who I had only previously known online and I got to be involved in many interesting conversations. I even got to see some snow coming down. It was a very productive conference. I wanted to give a special thanks to all the Microsoft folks that attended the conference. Those guys get beat up a lot sometimes and I am very impressed by how well they respond to criticism. My hat goes off to those guys for taking the criticism and responding in positive ways. I have a lot of respect for those folks. Software is hard. Perhaps we will eventually evolve software development into something that's not hard. Perhaps there will be some completely new radical idea which makes the software development we do today become part of history books. Until then it's all really about striving to suck less. It seems that whatever gets labeled as the right way of doing things is really just a way to suck less. So here's my definition of ALT.NET - People helping each other to suck less. ALT.NET Posted Apr 21 2008, 07:27 AM by Ray Houston with 3 comment(s)

• Influence Change

  It's easy to get bogged down in our jobs and forget that we have the power to make changes. You may not have the authority to make changes yourself, but you always have the power to influence other people. Part of working at a company is working with others and that often means that you'll have ideas that you'll need other people's help to execute. I've worked at a lot of places where people are reluctant to change, but there have been very few places that completely refused to change. In order to get people to change, you have to educate them on how the change will make their jobs better. Nobody will want to change if they think it will cause them more work. Listen and get to know other people and find out about their work. Find out what things are important to them. How will your ideas help them? Persuade people by showing real value. Convincing people often takes more than one conversation. Sometimes it takes years! Some folks are more influential than others, but we all possess the ability. You won't always be successful in influencing people to come around to your way of thinking, but you'll probably be more successful than you think if you're mindful of it. Think about how you are influenced and use that as a tool to influence others. Posted Apr 03 2008, 05:32 PM by Ray Houston with 3 comment(s)