360 Flex

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Monday, February 1st, 2010

Rain is a big fan of the 360 Flex conferences. We send developers every time, and have noticed the conference quality increase with each year. We are pleased to announce that we are sending 5, count them 5 speakers.

If you are considering going, I highly recommend taking part. If no other reason than to see our beautiful faces. Here is the link to register.

Here are the individuals we are sending, as well as the sessions they are teaching:

Speaker: Aaron Hardy
Title: Queue N Cache
Description: Take control of service calls by creating your own queue and dynamically shifting priority based off user interaction. Load what users are looking at first and and delay the rest for later. Show progress indicators in multiple locations for a single request. Once loaded, cache images in such a way that they can be displayed immediately anywhere in the app.

Speaker: Bryce Barrand
Title: Golden nuggets: How to find and keep top developers
Description: Part I. Even in a down economy, finding top developers is quite a task. For the most part, good people have solid jobs they love. Should you cross train? Pay hefty fees for head hunters? Monster.com? In this session we will go over a couple of options, and what we’ve found to be successful for procuring those “golden nugget” employees.

Part II: Once you have them, what makes them stay? How much does company culture make a difference? How about work load? What type of environment is cost effective for you as the employer and awesome for everybody around? We’ll also cover tips on keeping developers happy, and around for years.

Speaker: Garth Braithwaite (teaching 2 sessions)
Title: Flex 101
Description: Get up to speed on Flex quickly.  We’ll be taking a full day of training to cram as much Flex 4 goodness into your head.  This training is designed for those who have never used Flex.

Title: Your Flex App Looks Like Poo
Description: There is absolutely no excuse for not skinning your Flex 4 applications.  We will be exploring skinning Workflows, skin requirements, and creating custom preloaders.  Ultimately overhauling the interface.  Although user interface design principles will be discussed, this session will not teach you how to design.

Speaker: Chase Brammer
Title: Analytics Throwdown
Description: Clients will ask, and you will be forced to choose your analytics weapon. Learn about Adomniture’s and Google’s analytics tools and how you can use them to drive business. The session will be divided up into three sections. First, the high level details about the qualities and business benefits of each. Second, a simple walk through of how to use the tools. And last, how to implement and deploy those tools in your applications.

Speaker: Gary Rogers
Title: Automated Build and Deployment Processes
Description: This session would encompass the often misunderstood methods for automating flex build and deployment cycles. Several options and examples would be concisely presented including java ant, php phing and others, as well as how to wield the power of the command line flex sdk. I would present a brief tutorial on how to get started with these methods. Also, a sophisticated GUI based build server concept would be discussed. I would also weigh the pros and cons of nightly builds and scheduled deployments and how these impact various architecture phases of an application. Also arguments discouraging the use of SVN/CVS for deployments would be presented.

In case you missed it at the beginning of the post, here is the link to register.

The Formic War Model for Interactive Application Development

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Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Before we get too far into this blog post, you’ll need to present your Geek Card™ at the door for verification purposes: if you’ve never read the sci-fi classic Ender’s Game series, it’ll be hard to keep up. In any case, this story is a favorite of mine, and as with many war stories, there’s a hint of software development wisdom in the plot that can be peppered across almost any important effort. After a recent re-read, here’s my war plan for galactic domination, interactive agency style.

Craft Your Team Carefully

One of the main characters in the series, Colonel (and later Minister) Graff is a ruthlessly efficient planner. You can question his motives and ethical underpinnings, but you can’t question his results. He masterminds the Battle School experience, hand-picks child warriors, and shepherds the experiences of each of those children in a very specific way to meet his end-game goals. Ender and Bean are even genetically engineered, more or less. Agencies, especially smaller groups, must craft perfect teams, and create and protect their culture.

Crafting a perfect team does not mean you always hire the best people for the job. It means you hire the Bean to complement the Ender. Too many alpha males, a prima donna, or a weak link in a team group can cause disaster. Hiring is difficult master, especially in organizations where teams live and die like the projects they complete. Not only do you need a great employee, but that person needs to perform well in any ad hoc team they end up working inside of.

Practice Formations

If you’re doing the same thing everyone else is, you’ll probably not get very far. One thing I love and hate about working at Rain is our tendency to take on impossible projects. You really have to innovate and approach problems differently to succeed. We’ve all heard about out-of-the-box thinking, but what percentage of the day do you spend in that mode?

It may also be important to realize that there are entirely different levels of thinking that you can apply to a project. In the novel, Ender uses one brilliant strategy after another to win his battle room episodes. He spurns tradition, focuses on the game’s win conditions, and outsmarts more experienced teams, even when crippled and outnumbered. That’s one level of innovative thinking. The super-level is the fact that he’s playing these games as part of a master plan to eradicate a hostile alien enemy. The over-arching strategy is brilliant in and of itself.

Software Development Requires the Thorough Victory

While Ender’s extreme victories are an ethical and philosophical topic that underlies the series, the principles really can be brought across to software development. Every software bug must be treated like the invading buggers. Every miscommunication to the client, every imperfection in the final delivery needs to be wiped out like a Bonzo Madrid or Stilson on the attack. Ender really is right about one thing—allowing the enemy a second chance to attack may be your last decision.

While crafting the perfect team is a part of this, developers and managers need to maintain a vigil against bleeding problems. A performance issue that goes ignored, a sidestep from your tried-and-true process will almost always end in disaster. From a technical standpoint, every shortcut or sloppy implementation is a withdrawal from the glory fund you plan to cash in at the end of the project. You won’t get a second chance with an important client anymore than you would mercy from the invading alien army.

Protect the Children from the Horrors of War

As a project manager, I try to take a Graff-like stance on protecting my team from the pressures surrounding the project. Client complaints and inter-office politics should never be a worry for the development team. If you can turn development into a game, your team will be much more happy and productive in the long run. Unless you happen to be in the xenocide business, I think your developers will be pleasantly surprised to know about the war they accidentally won after the project is complete.

Summary

Should you be unfortunate enough to find yourself in a Rain-sponsored Call of Duty 4 match, you’ll find me shelling and bunny-hopping under the callsign “Bean”. I do that for a number of reasons, but the main reason is to help me remember one important part of doing something well: trying harder isn’t enough. Too many people who aren’t doing well at something seem to try to apply positive mental attitude magic to their workday, hoping that somehow the extra effort will make a difference. One important part of the Ender story is his focused, analytical approach to getting better at a game. Folks, if you can programatically and purposefully get better at the game, you’ll end up winning the war.