@bbcomCIO

Today I had a chance to read about a new book from Keith Curtis titled “After the Software Wars” which I promptly ordered from Amazon.  In Keith’s book he talks about his time at Microsoft and his movement toward open source and his migration to Linux.  This along with comments and his blog got me thinking about the impact to all things social.  Why is open source and Linux growing so much?  Why is open office finally becoming a competitor to MS Office?  Why do folks build things like Tweetdeck or Adium only to give them away?   What makes social (open source) software better than proprietary (closed) software?  To me the answer is dead simple; it’s all about Social interaction and communities.  Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, and many others are all growing at a rapid pace because they bring people together to share knowledge, stay informed and to feel like they are ultimately part of a community.  Open source software does the exact same thing by bringing developers and users together to support a community which is vested in a particular need fulfilled by the software they write and use.  One of the most prolific open source projects I’ve been around for years has been the Mambo / Joomla efforts and Wordpress

Joomla is a very good example of value software, software that fills a need in the world and it’s all for free.   Joomla has a very large community with hundreds of add-on’s to the stack created by other open source developers in it’s community.  Many of these plug-ins or add-on’s are free as well as some which offer commercial components.  The greats part about the software is the massive community behind it.

Wordpress would also be another great example of mass adoption and growth through social structure.  Wordpress 2.8 download counter show well over 900,000 downloads of the software. Google finds 5.8million sites containing the string”powered by Wordpress”;  Granted there will be duplicates listed and many that have never even been indexed but the fact remains it’s extensively supported by the masses.

In general the same factors that drive extreme growth in social media tools like Facebook and Twitter ultimately contribute to bigger causes such as Linux, Apache, Wordpress, Joomla and thousands of other software applications or perhaps we could call them social applications or social development teams.  Over the years I’ve worked in many teams in many capacities such as developer, designer, manager, team lead, etc and one thing that always made my job fun was the social aspects of working with a team.  Teams are powerhouses if they function properly, and teams are unstoppable if they all have the same goal.  I don’t know that I really have a point to this post and I’m more or less rambling on and on, but if I were to make a point it would be something like this.

• If you work along you really should on board with some team somewhere (opensource or other).
• If your on a team, be a team player with good listening skills and contribute to your team daily.
• If you’ve never worked in a team or you’ve never been a team player, it’s time to step it up because it will be the most rewarding function of your job no matter what your position.

Long story short (Be Social! and give back what you take and more.  Writing great software and giving it to the community is a “giving back” model and thousands will benifit from you and your teams efforts.

Strange title wouldn’t you say, and a shocking one if it’s you receiving the news.  Just for the record this is a hypothetical post of ‘what if’.  What If – you were told today by your boss that he had just hired a consultant who was a previous (your title here) and that person would be working in your area for the next 90 days.

Would you

1. Freak out and assume your days are numbered
2. Go back to your desk and figure out your approach for the next 90 days and what this person might do if they were given your job today?

That is what I want to talk about in this post.  You’re next 90 days on the job and what you’re going to be doing.  So often it seems that when people are in job for years they get complacent and they do the same thing over and over and never really evaluate what their replacement (should one be hired) would do in the next 90 days.  I ask that question every 90 days to try and keep myself progressive and moving with the company, the CEO and the vision as well as constantly challenging my management and teams to keep getting better.  There is a great book from “Harvard Business School Press” entitled [The First 90 Days] this book is a MUST READ for anyone who is leading in a company, no matter what your position is.

When I get to the office (usually early) I sit down and jot out my notes, look at my schedule, read my twitter feed to get a feel for what’s going on as of late and I put my plan of attack in action for the day and to align with the next 90 days of goals.  I know this seems trivial but it’s key to helping build highly effective goals and teams.  Without goals teams and individuals eventually slip into the normal day-to-day grind.  Goals have many forms: creating a completed user story, a sprint task for development, setting up a router, addressing a problem employee, and just about anything else you can think of could qualify as a goal so long as it fits into the 90 day big picture.   Keep in mind people need to have a goal having a reason, this helps create buy-in and a way to collaborate over the goals or taks and collaboration helps accountability.  The trick, is getting the _TEAM_ or the _PERSON_   setting  goals for themselves in 90 day increments (sometimes 30 days are better depending on the team).

I’m currently re-reading for about the 5th time “The First 90 Days” just because I think it’s THAT good.  There are only a few books on my bookshelf that I feel are like that, another one being [Tactical Transparency] which I just finished for the 5th time also last week.  Why read them over so many times?  It’s like a conference it doesn’t all get into the brain the first time so going over it again and again just like the 10,000 hour rule  [Outliers] helps etch it into the brain as a natural habit.

Here is my typical morning:

5:45 – Up and at the Gym (Running or lifting)
6:45 – At the Office with Starbucks on my desk.
7:00 – TweetDeck open and reading, RSS Reader in the other monitor
7:30 – Catch up  on any emails from day before and last night and respond
8:00 – Write goals for the day that should dovetail into the 90 day strategy you setup
9:00 – First meeting.

Notice I gave myself short chunks of time to be 100% ready to face the day, informed, updated, goals set and ready for that first meeting usually with management teams.

Your day may not be meeting with a management team but it for sure should start with your goals for the day, your road map.

What’s on my goal list?
You might wonder what is on my goal list.  Often it’s the items on my previous days goal list that I was not able to complete due to things that came up ad-hoc throughout the day.  This model is OK because it keeps the goals on track for closure in 90 days.

Do I always complete ALL my goals  in 90 days like I planed? Almost never, but any that don’t get done just go into the next 90 days with new priorities.

What would you’re replacement do in the next 90 days is haunting question, but one that you should be prepared for and working to short circuit so you never hear it.

Going to Boise from San Diego seems to be either thru Utah, Denver, LA or SFO. We took the SFO route with united to get home the soonest. While I was at the SFO airport killing some time between flights I decided to catch up on my twitter feed and see what was the rumbling going on out there in the world. Turns out it was good info (as normal) and that there was some great talk, url’s and general info on the new iPhone 3S. I also found out some great world info, creative sites, etc. 20 minutes later I felt up to date and ready to eat some lunch and head to the plane. On the leg from SFO to Boise I looked toward the front of the plane as I was grinding through an audio book [twitter power] and I saw an older fellow I’d guess about 65+ reading a newspaper. One of the headlines on the page he had exposed to the back of the bus was titled “New iPhone details coming soon”. I kind of had to chuckle because before that ink had even dried I’m sure there were tweets going on all about what the article was only then eluding to. I had already seen photos, read comments and articles and this poor man was just getting his appetite for tomorrows ink. This got my head wound up with several thoughts that I’m going to post here. I don’t think they are anything profound but I hope to get a comment or two about them.

1. How can paper companies survive what seems to be one after another going bankrupt? How can they bring in the social aspects (book: Tactical Transparency – A very good read).
2. What age group reads the paper? How many are currently in transition and just need help making the switch? I’d think it won’t be long.

After thinking about that for a few minutes I faded back to my hotel room for the last week. Every day when leaving the motel room I’d have the WSJ sitting in front of the door as if to say “you should read me”. I would pick it up and toss it in the trash and proceed to get real time relevant news, stocks etc on my iPhone. I would have done much of that on my laptop but the hotel did not offer free wifi! Hey Hyatt, I have an idea for you, are you ready to listen? How about you give me the option when I check in to get WSJ or free wifi? How about you give me the option to have my Sheets changed every 2-3 days and knock off 10 bucks from my 20$ parking fee that we know didn’t cost you anything.

Ok I’m ranting. I like the Hyatt, they are always friendly but always seem to stick it to me with parking and that part drives me nuts but that’s not the topic of this post perhaps another day. I guess I’d have to admit I’ve never read the paper and I’ve always found my news and information online where I can read comments and find out other peoples views (much more fun). Let me know what you think about papers survival and if your a paper reader educate me as to why you are still doing it that way I’d love to know.