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On Internships

August 25th, 2009

As we all (?) know finding good, senior people is relatively easy but finding good junior ones is not and takes a long time (and money). I see two strategies to tackle this issue:

  1. never stop the recruiting effort even when you don’t need new people. If you stop, it then takes too long to restart it and because you usually restart it when you have a need it’s kinda too late anyway
  2. have a proper internship programme in place.

While point 1 is, again, relatively easy although time consuming, point 2 takes a bit more effort but I think it’s worth it. The problem is: everyone is looking for good interns! In a competitive market I believe that having an Internship Program at the European level (in Sourcesense‘ case) gives us an edge.

Of course our values, principles, and commitment to OpenSource are great for attracting already experienced people but works somewhat less well with graduates who don’t necessarily have an opinion on Open Source or might not be that interested in our unique selling points because they are at the beginning of their career and couldn’t know better. At the same time graduates often shoot for the (very) big names so that at least by the end of the internship they will be able to put that name on their CVs.

What can we provide to a prospective intern that others cannot? As I said there are our unique values, principles and our strong commitment to Open Source, the fact that we don’t exploit interns by making them billable on customer projects and more. But I still think it’s not enough as other companies have that as well (not sure about the not exploiting bit…. :-D ).

So here is what we do on top of everything else:

  • an internship with Sourcesense means the interns will have a chance to work in multiple offices across Europe. E.g.: Peter, the first Sourcesense UK intern, started 2 weeks ago and is spending sometime with us in London but will be flying to our Milan office on Tuesday to spend 4 weeks there. This will give him exposure to Sourcesense as a European company rather than just a UK one and will give him the opportunity to build a relationship with colleagues there.
  • an internship with Sourcesense means spending sometime on a customer project/site and sometime working on and contributing to some open source project. As I said we are not going to bill an intern, it wouldn’t be fair neither in his regards nor in the customer’s. It’s a way to expose the intern to a real life situation rather than just keeping him away
  • an internship with Sourcesense means, if there is the opportunity, the intern can then ask to move permanently to another office/country. In my experience there is nothing more invigorating than working and living in a different country.
  • an internship with Sourcesense means we want to hire you rather then just exploit you for a while and then let you go :-)

Are you looking for an internship? Let me know ;-)

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Posted in Business, General, OpenSource

TwitterSheep 4 months later

July 19th, 2009

On March 6th I posted my TwitterSheep tag cloud and today I generated a new one to see if and how my use of twitter has changed in the last 4+ months. Here are the two results side by side:

March 09 July 09
TwitterSheep July 09

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Posted in General, Not that interesting

Managing TO DOs

July 18th, 2009

Over the years I’ve tried almost any system I’ve come across to manage my TO DOs and my time. Off the top of my head:

  • nothing, just a big mess :-)
  • a text file with all my TO DOs and notes
  • multiple text files, one for each area of interest
  • a calendar
  • a structured spreadsheet (resembling a product backlog + sprint backlog in Scrum style)
  • Inbox Zero
  • the Getting Things Done approach with pen and paper
  • the Pomodoro Technique by my friend Francesco
  • Google Tasks
  • various tools GTD style the best of which is Things for Mac (that I bought and is really a great tool)

I went back and forth a few times adding and removing tools and looking for the best combination for me and this includes not only the system but the supporting tools for someone like me who alternates days in office with days taking 6 tubes, 5 buses, a couple of trains and a flight here and there.

This is my current setup which seems to work better than others:

  1. Inbox Zero
  2. Google Tasks
  3. Google Calendar
  4. All Sync’ed up and pushed to my mobile (and the other way round of course)

Inbox Zero

I strive to empty my inbox as soon as possible and GMail labels help a lot here:

  • as soon as I get an email I apply the relevant labels
  • unless it’s really urgent I then leave it there for whenever I’ll be able to tackle it
  • depending on the importance of the task associated with the email I leave it in either unread or read state. This gives me a visual sense of how much important stuff is still in my inbox (unread) and how much is stuff that can just wait
  • an email stays in my inbox until I have done whatever needs doing then I remove it from the inbox
  • if I’ve done whatever needs doing but I want to make sure I’ll remember to follow up I’ll star the email before removing it from my inbox. Starred emails are therefore emails I’ve answered to but I should really keep an eye on (e.g.: if I don’t get a reply back in due time).
  • If an email requires both a reply and some other activities I’ll create a new Google Tasks linked to that email (More Actions -> Add to Tasks

Google Tasks

Google Tasks is where I dump all the tasks I’ll have to tackle. I like the fact that it can be as structured or unstructured as I want it to be. Some tasks can be very structured (due date, notes, links to an email, nested children and so forth) while others can be just a line.

Google Calendar

I do realise my use of the calendar mixes things up a bit: of course I put all my meetings, calls, conference calls, trips and the likes but I also use it to remind myself of deadlines for very important things. Hence it is a mix of things I need to do with other people and things I want to be sure I remember myself.

All Sync’ed up

I’m a push addict: everything must be pushed to my mobile and the other way round: email, calendar and tasks.

On top of that I like to have a dashboard-like view whereby everything is visible from one single web page and for that reason I’m missing more than ever the old Better GMail feature of having my email and calendar in the same (please bring it back!!). As a workaround I’m using the little google widget in the left column but it’s not the same (and it also pushes the Google Docs box down below the fold of the page):

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Posted in General, Not that interesting

2.5 months in Sourcesense…

May 26th, 2009

…and nearly a couple since my last post: either I don’t have enough time to post or I don’t have anything interesting to say. Probably a bit of both :-)

The truth is that I’ve been very busy (and happily so) with my new challenge and even though I started writing this post with the intent to do a quick recap of the story so far I’ve realised it would take me too long and wouldn’t probably be that interesting for most of my (few) readers. So I thought I’d share only a few things that I found interesting about the business climate nowadays (at least in UK).

The biggest differences I’ve noticed first hand in comparison with only 1 year ago are:

  • high interest in Open Source and Open Development at C level: in the past few weeks I met 15+ C level people in Fortune 500 companies and all of them showed an active interest not only for the usual tactical reasons (a.k.a. cutting cost) but also for the more farsighted strategic ones. OK, I met them because OSS was high on their agenda in the first place but still! :-)
  • sales cycles aren’t longer than usual but companies are willing to commit only to shorter engagements (with likely extensions). This looks to me like an incremental and iterative approach and having preached it for years I’m only glad to see it spreading even though it’s driven by external factors (you know, the global downturn).
  • for the first time in ages companies are not that happy to pay NET 15 or NET 30. Coming from Italy where NET 120+ is the norm – if you are lucky – this doesn’t bother me at all. I know how to deal with it.
  • budgets are being slashed but there are still companies who get that investing in training is one of the things that will get them out of the downturn ahead of the curve and we are in fact improving our offering in this space. See the upcoming Maven Training with Jason Van Zyl Sourcesense and Sonatype will be doing in London on June 15-16 (shameless sales plug, I know…)

Back in a couple of months! :-D

2 comments »

Posted in Business, General

Productivity and Quality effects of TDD

March 18th, 2009

In the May/June 2007 issue of IEEE Software magazine there was an awesome series of articles about Test Driven Development and I’ve just discovered that one of them – the main one – is now freely available: Guest Editors’ Introduction: TDD–The Art of Fearless Programming by Ron Jeffries and Grigori Melnik.

Go get it, read it all and spend some time studying Table 1 on page 28:

In particular the last two columns: Productivity effect and Quality effect

2 comments »

Posted in Agile, Business, General

Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use: UK Government Action Plan

March 17th, 2009

It gives me great pleasure seeing the UK goverment putting together some serious and thought-out plans for Open Source and Open Standards.

Directly from the Chief Information Officer Council website:

“Open Source has been one of the most significant cultural developments in IT and beyond over the last two decades [...]”

“[...] it has shown how giant corporations themselves, and Governments, can become more innovative, more agile and more cost-effective by building on the fruits of community work [...]”

“[...] Over the past five years many government departments have shown that Open Source can be best for the taxpayer – in our web services, in the NHS and in other vital public services.

But we need to increase the pace: [...]“

Check out also the action plan and this cool public page set up by the cabinet office to track blog posts, news and tweets about Open Source!

Update: some data taken from here:

“50 per cent of main departmental websites use Apache as their core web server; the NHS spine use an open-sourced operating system; 35 per cent of NHS organisations covering almost 300,000 users, will soon be supported on Linux infrastructure; open source components are used in major systems such as Directgov and electronic vehicle licensing.”

#ukgovOSS

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Posted in General, OpenSource

A new challenge

March 16th, 2009

As I wrote here my professional life boils down to a couple of things: Agile and Open Source. Within these I’ve done almost everything from software development to programme management, from coaching to facilitation, including a couple of ventures as owner and CTO.

I’ve spent the last 3+ years mainly in London working for ThoughtWorks and that has been the most mind-opening experience both professionally and personally. It’s mind-opening to work with people from all over the world (in my first project with ThoughtWorks we had 15 different nationalities) and to realise that there are enlightened people who really care about values and principles and doing the right thing. I learnt so much!

But the time has come for me to move on to new pastures and as of today I’m the managing director of Sourcesense UK, a European Open Source systems integrator providing consultancy, support and services around key Open Source technologies. Go check the website :-)

The sadness for leaving the greatest company I’ve ever crossed path with is today replaced by the excitement for this new opportunity and I honestly hope I’ll be able to bring with me everything I’ve learnt in these past few years.

7 comments »

Posted in Agile, Business, General, OpenSource

TwitterSheep: a tag cloud from the ‘bios’ of your twitter flock

March 6th, 2009

Thanks to Peldi’s post I’ve just discovered TwitterSheep. This is my tag cloud:

Cool! :-)

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Posted in General

Open Source, Agile, technology, business and me

February 27th, 2009

Warning: rambling thoughts with loose connection :-)

I’ve recently come to realise something that, in retrospect, is quite obvious. Long before my name got associated with the Agile movement back in 2001/2002, I was known (friends, colleagues and business acquaintances) as an Open Source enthusiast.

My first experience with OSS goes back to 1994 when a software development magazine I used to buy had a Slackware 2.1 CD in boundle. At the time I considered myself a hardcore C and C++ developer (so much so that my first website in 1996 was called C++Warriors, hosted on Geocities) and I couldn’t believe my eyes when such a wealth of interesting, complex and freely available source code got into my hands.

After that enlightening experience my relationship with OSS kept growing so much so that I founded a company called OSWay – The Open Source Way – back in 2000. We did all sorts of things from partnering with SuSe Italy, to develop the world first Kylix enterprise-grade POS application (there used to be our case history on Borland‘s website before the CodeGear split). We sold part of the company to a publicly traded Italian company to raise funds and develop products but this is another story :-)

Over time I got more and more into not only the technical side of OSS but also the approach and reasoning behind it. In fact when I started delving into Agile it struck me how many things in common it had with a typical OSS approach to software development. In particular with what EricRaymond‘s TheCathedralAndTheBazaar described. I also created a page on the c2 wiki titled Open Source As Agile Process back in 2003 highlighting what was IMHO in common.

After that though I kinda stopped talking and writing about OSS. Does it mean I don’t care anymore? Absolutely not! but somehow I stopped making it visible, it just became second nature. And this has already been happing with Agile as well. I guess the only reason why I’m still actively involved day in and day out with the Agile community is because I organise the Italian Agile Day and the Italian Agile Movement and this forces me to be proactive because I care so much about them. And probably that’s why I try hard pushing intermediate members of the community to be more involved for all the good reasons nicely explained by Kathy Sierra in her 2006 post How to Build a User Community.

Now finally both my passions (that is: Open Source and Agile) have or are about to cross the chasm (with all the watering down involved but still!).

2 comments »

Posted in Agile, Business, General, Not that interesting

How to fund a conference with donations – part 3

December 15th, 2008

This post is long overdue. After the previous two in this little series (Part 1: context, total costs and donations, Part 2: attendees-donators ratio, donations break down and average donation) I meant to write a third post about costs per attendee and their break down plus some hints at how to improve the situation but I’m here going to concentrate on the latter: simple ways to improve the situation.

Transparency

Let’s start from the single most effective action that can be done to increase the number of donations: transparency! I was hoping on this and it did happen: being transparent and publishing all the numbers gently invited more people to donate :-)

In fact since my first post and because of it I got 14 more donations for a total of €313.73 (as usual this is net, subtracting PayPal charges). This brings the donators/attendees ratio up from 14% to 17%:

but it also brings the average donation down from €43 to €38

That is lower than the 2007 edition average but I believe it’s fine: I prefer lots of small amount donations rather than just a few high amount ones because losing donators wouldn’t have a big impact, it’s not like the conference depends on a very small group of people (which is the main reason why I decided to stop looking for commercial sponsors in the first place).

Visibility

The second most effective thing it’s something so simple it’s easy to forget (and indeed I didn’t pay enough attention to it): the fact that you believe everyone knows the conference is funded by donations doesn’t make it true! :-D

I think I slacked a bit on this because it was the third edition funded by donations and I just assumed everyone knew about it by now or, if they didn’t, they couldn’t possibly miss it. I was wrong and even though:

  • it’s clearly stated on the conference homepage
  • it’s repeated on almost every page of the website
  • when someone registers to the conference the confirmation page presents the PayPal button
  • the confirmation email includes a link to the PayPal page
  • during the opening of the day I thank the donators and project their names on the wall

no matter all this I shouldn’t just assume everyone reads everything. Most of the people are probably filing out the form as quickly as they can and then forget about it. Will need to think about new strategies for next year to make sure everyone knows about the donation without annoying and spamming (too much at least….). There is lots to be learnt in the field of fundraising and luckily I have a few friends who do this for a living.

Pay-for activities

I want the conference to be free going forward and I don’t want to consider registration fees no matter are low. At the same time I don’t want this position of mine to constrain the conference knowing that there are things that need more money to be done properly.

An example are the workshops we organised this year: they were hugely successful and because I limited the number of attendees to keep them effective they sold out in the first 3 hours (yes, you read it right: we organised 6 workshops with a maximum of 14 people each and they sold out in the first 3 hours!).

One thing I’m considering is to charge a low fee for the workshops only. It would allow me to reimburse the workshops speakers a little and use some of that money to fund the conference. This would also make it possible to organise them better, with more time and facilities.

Conclusions

What started as a way to gather a bunch of people who shared an interest (a hub!) has become a major effort and it would be easy to give up and just start charging for the conference, afterall I keep getting emails saying this is the best conference of the year in comparison to both free and non-free ones :-)

But the main goal of the Italian Agile Day is to allow as many people as possible to spend a day together sharing knowledge and experience and I still feel it must be free.

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Posted in Funding, General