InnerWorkings Blogs

It’s the opening week of the Beijing Olympics, so competition is on the mind of anyone with a sporting bone in their body or a power button on their TV. It’s hard to deny that strong competition brings out the best in us — Rafael Nadal wouldn’t be quite the force he is on the tennis court if he wasn’t competing at every turn with a master like Roger Federer.

Don’t you think that competing against IBM or Google has made Microsoft a better company? There’s little doubt that the sniping U.S. and French swimming teams pushed each other to a thrilling fingertip finish (and new world record) in the men’s 4×100m freestyle relay during the week. In short, competition really works and, to a large degree, that’s why we’re seeing so many new world records at this year’s Olympic games.

What about applying the concept of “friendly” competitions to developers, in that case? Some excellent companies like TopCoder are dab hands at running large scale developer competitions, and InnerWorkings has been known to host a few competitions ourselves in the past.

Well, that’s why I’m writing this post, in fact — at InnerWorkings, we’ve decided to make competitions a part of our core product. We’ve just released a new feature that allows customers and developers to create competitions based on completing our .NET learning tasks.

Drawing on the trendiest principles of social networking and gaming, we’re encouraging developers in our customer base to set up company-wide competitions where they can compete with their co-workers to complete InnerWorkings tasks.

It’s no accident that our previous forays into coding contests have shown that injecting an element of healthy competition into the learning process gives developers that little extra incentive to meet their training targets (and have some fun along the way).

Developers can now use our product to create their own team competitions and invite colleagues to participate, using our leaderboard service to see who’s out to lunch and who’s taking no prisoners! Our customers are free to dream up snazzy incentives and prizes for the contest winners — I beg you to be original with the prizes, I mean what contest doesn’t offer an iPhone or XBOX these days?!? How about a wine club membership or a DVD box set of The Office, for example?

Of course, InnerWorkings is a lofty company that is not tied to purely material rewards — developers who set private goals are rewarded with personal medals (be Michael Phelps for a day). We also award certificates for training milestones achieved and shiny cups are given to competition winners. Go on, be proud of your achievements for a bit…

Even better, all your winnings are displayed in a virtual trophy case for you to polish and enjoy with the grandkids many years from now! I encourage you to check it out — existing customers will find the competitions feature automatically enabled for their organization, and newbies can play with the contest feature using any of our free trials. Let the games begin…

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I have an embarrassing confession to make. I can easily shed a tear while watching a well-crafted movie. I really do. Someone in my family once teased me, saying that I’m so oversensitive that I would probably cry watching Daffy Duck.

There, I said it. Join my close friends and make fun of me. I’m a victim of the power of story to persuade and influence. My defenses are lowered, my disbelief is suspended and I’m vulnerable.

Not long ago, I was preparing for a technical presentation when I started wondering why movies can be so engaging and memorable while most presentations are comparatively dry and unremarkable.

Mainly thanks to Garr Reynolds and his magnificent Presentation Zen approach, I learned how to create slides with strong visual appeal: dense text and worn bullet points were replaced by a careful combination of words and images, creating a fertile ground for powerful metaphors and anecdotes.

Wow. I suddenly realized I entered the world of visual storytelling.

I also recognized, however, that my early work was somewhat episodic, like a movie with great special effects but a weak story.

It was then that I became almost obsessed by one single thought: could I learn the craft of screenwriting and adapt it to elicit emotions in my own technical presentations?

I wanted to become a better visual storyteller, going beyond my self-limiting goal of giving “right” recommendations delivered in a clear fashion. I realized I had a chance to find my own voice and give meaning to facts with my experience, passion, and subjective interpretation.

To my greatest surprise, I uncovered a fascinating world that is affecting my journey through life to no end.

Next week, I’m going to share some of my findings at the legendary Software Architecture Workshop in Crested Butte (Colorado), where some of the most renowned thought leaders of our industry will gather.

This adventure has just begun.
The rest of it will unfold in time.

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So I take a few weeks of family leave to welcome our second child into the world and what happens? Microsoft goes mad releasing new developer tools like Silverlight 2 and ASP.NET MVC. I’ve also returned to tight sponsorship deadlines for the long awaited PDC 2008 in LA this October - the site has a countdown timer as if the pressure to sign up wasn’t great enough!  Talk about making my gentle ramp back into a full working day difficult…thanks for that, Redmondites.

So what is all the fuss about Silverlight 2 you ask? Many have been impressed by the slick demos and hot new features like “DeepZoom” (coming soon to a movie theater near you), as showcased by the excellent Vertigo Software team. Microsoft has given Silverlight the full court press as the next big thing in defining rich web applications, and media companies like Netflix and Fox Television have jumped into the Silverlight showcase zone.

For battle weary .NET developers, I’d imagine this is all very well but how about some basic orientation before letting our web app imaginations run riot? In its own very meager way, my blog is here to help ease the Silverlight anxiety out there. I’ve pulled together a list of my top Silverlight resources, with the aim of giving web developers some orientation in this much hyped software release from Microsoft, including its beauty spots, blemishes, warts and all.

The first stop for a solid grounding in Silverlight is, as always, Scott Guthrie’s excellent Microsoft insider blog. Scott does his usual deep dive (or zoom, if you like) into new Silverlight 2 features, complete with handy screenshots and product team insights. Where does he find the time, I wonder aloud? Is there indeed a band of Microsoft elves that crank out these dense and very informative posts with his blessing? Read it and you decide…

• Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Released

You’ve probably guessed that I’m a fan of the DeepZoom feature in Silverlight 2, so here’s a more balanced real world example of that feature in action. You can always count on Scott Hanselman for some solid working code and neat examples of his latest code meanderings:

• Deep Zoom (Seadragon) Silverlight 2 MultiScaleImage Mouse Wheel Zooming and Panning Edition

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t plug our own learning content in the company of these 2 industry heavyweights. You should absolutely check out InnerWorkings’ new Drills for C# developers in Visual Studio 2008 – we’ve created 6 hours of intense coding challenges for developers looking to learn the nuances of building Silverlight 2 web applications:

• Managed Code in Silverlight 2
• Working with Data in Silverlight 2

For the visually minded among you, take a peek at this MIX08 poster (courtesy of Brad Abrams’ blog) that shows the Silverlight shell including controls, tools, languages, and platforms. Only Microsoft could jam this much information into a single image, but somehow it works for me:

• Silverlight 2 Developer Reference

Dan Wahlin is another good source of Silverlight 2 information, delivered in his usual clear and businesslike writing voice. I’ve selected two of Dan’s articles — how to create your first Silverlight application and moving onto using the Grid, Panel, and StackPanel controls:

• Creating Your First Silverlight 2 App
• Using Silverlight 2 Layout Controls

If you’re still (barely) conscious and following my list, I’ll recommend one final article from Patrick Hynds. He focuses on the impact of Silverlight on IT Managers, who need to support the applications that developers create with each shiny new technology that is released. Patrick is ”objective” on Microsoft to a fault, so his perspective on the Silverlight vs. Flash war (read Microsoft vs. Adobe) is worth considering:

•  The Microsoft Stack: What Silverlight Means to You

OK, I’ve run out of steam with this list…you’re officially on your own. Please add to my shortlist of Silverlight 2 resources if you dare!

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We’ve just finished moving our U.S. office from the East Bay into San Francisco. So long Pleasanton — I won’t miss that grueling commute for one nanosecond. 

While our new office is not exactly in downtown SF with all its fancy glass facades and Jamba Juices on every corner, we do enjoy a “lively” view of Highway 101 as traffic chugs north and south in a relentless stream of metal and fumes. Day and night, it never stops and sheer volume of cars, trucks and coaches passing is incredible. I conclude that our planet is doomed…

When your company is moving its office, I’ve found that the things you dread most go pretty smoothly and the stuff that should be a picnic turns out to be a pain in the ****. For example, moving heavy wooden office furniture from the 4th floor of a corporate office in Pleasanton with unbelievably pernickety building managers would seem to be a recipe for disaster. However, we got hold of a great family owned moving company called Waters Moving & Storage who made the whole teardown and transport plain sailing.

Anything destined for storage got a yellow sticker and items for the new office got a purple sticker — that bit couldn’t be easier except for my agonizing over what furniture should be voted off the island. It took a full Saturday to complete the move, but eventually all the popular furniture wound up in the new office, neatly assembled and exactly where it ought to be. Other junk and accumulated furniture was offloaded into a nearby storage facility.

A lick of paint on the walls, some Pledge to get the forty sets of hand prints off the table tops, and I was ready to kick back and have a beer. Not much more to it, really — just get the phone lines installed and high speed internet access — should be piece of cake. No, no, no…

Enter Comcast Business Class with their digital phone service that sounds great until the technician informs you that it requires a wall mounted battery pack the size of a family suitcase in your office. Service is guaranteed to the office point of entry but not to the actual desks(!), and the famous line “you’ll need a contract technician for that” makes the blood run cold. Just to seal the gloom, I’m told that “those fancy Mitel IP phones you have probably won’t work with our VoIP service either, sir.” Wonderful. Get out.

AT&T Small Business fared little better with all their ’small business saver’ bundles <wry smile>, long distance plans, and phone jack installation fees. I was bombarded with a mish-mash of voice services loosely mixed together — skip the eye-rolling complexity; all I want is a few phone and fax lines, people! “We can run DSL over your fax line, attach a wireless router to the modem, and you’ll just troubleshoot it yourself, right?” Nope. I’m an AT&T DSL user at home and that service goes south with jaw clenching regularity. Get out.

I didn’t really tell anyone to get out (that would just be rude) but the whole experience was a bit like going to the dentist — painful, expensive, but necessary. We finally went with AT&T for basic phone service and Comcast for cable internet service. I’ve learned that you do need to watch out for the little ‘gotchas’ when moving office; often the bigger jobs get done with brute force and many hands on deck, but installing basic telecommunications services can be agonizing.

We should be all moved in by Monday, with just a few loose ends to tie up. At this stage in the week, I’m actually reluctant to fetch the mailbox key in case I lose my afternoon “troubleshooting” it!

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I’m reading Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath at the moment, on a strong recommendation from Michael O’Brien who heads up our R&D teams in Dublin. The premise of the book is to define an idea’s “stickiness” and explain why some ideas survive while others drift into obscurity like the Irish soccer team.

The book is written by two brothers: Chip Heath is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and Dan Heath is a co-founder of Thinkwell — so it’s no surprise that the book presents a nice combination of academic and business savvy. It’s also plastered across every Bay Area bookstore’s business section in an attention-seeking industrial orange hue, so I’ll give the publishers credit for knowing how to make this book stick!

The Heath brothers have employed a relentless anecdotal style, which works to good effect by making the book compelling to read almost immediately. In fact, my wife was so intrigued by the cover leaf description that the book disappeared on a business trip with her for an entire week! Now that the book has been returned to its rightful owner (ahem), I’ve reached the half way point and need to stop for a breather as the brain requires more time for reflection these days.

The subject of what makes an idea stick is interesting enough, but this is no theoretical exercise in pondering the intellectual qualities of certain ideas. In fact, the authors take great delight in discussing earthy examples of ideas that have thrived as urban legends (the classic kidney heist) or political one-liners (”it’s the economy, stupid” from Bill Clinton’s campaign).

They go even further by creating a checklist of six qualities that comprise a “sticky” idea — qualities that anyone can apply to their most precious or preposterous ideas:

1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotional
6. Stories

I’m only about half-way through the book, but already it has got me thinking about why some of the most successful ideas in the past decade have really thrived beyond all expectations. The authors reference Southwest Airlines, whose determination to be “THE low fare airline” kept the company profitable for over 30 years. It’s a “core” idea that fits well into all 6 categories and has helped to guide the actions of Southwest employees for many years. 

Compare that with Google’s carefully crafted mission statement ”to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. I’d give Google high marks for simplicity, concreteness, and credibility but I don’t find it particularly unexpected, emotional, or storied. Certainly Google has been spectacularly successful on the strength of that core idea, nonetheless.

What characteristics distinguish Amazon’s online store, eBay’s web marketplace, or Facebook’s social network – do these giant web companies share a common creative bond? Each of these ideas was disruptive in its own right and it has transformed how people act, but how many of the Heath brothers’ six qualities can you apply to these innovations?

I don’t know the answers to be honest, but I do find it fascinating to explore what makes an idea really stick. Maybe I should just finish the book!

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I have really enjoyed doing some public speaking this year. I’m just back from the DDD Community Event in Galway and, once again, the feedback on my talk has been very positive. I always feel the responsibility of fulfilling people’s expectations, so hopefully I didn’t disappoint anybody. I must be doing something right though: 2 weeks ago I’ve been invited to present at Øredev, a ~1000 attendees conference in Sweden in November!

| View | Upload your own

As promised, I put my slides on Slideshare. If you haven’t had a chance to attend, at least you could get a fair idea of what the session was all about. Let me know what you think! Don’t be fooled however, the slides are just a tiny part of the whole story.

In my exploration of how to design a better presentation, I used key books such as Presentation Zen and Beyond Bullet Points. I loved the ideas and approach of the first, the Hollywood-style methodology of the latter.
In my quest, I also came across Made to Stick, an eye-opener book which gives amazing examples of how simple, unexpected, concrete, credible and emotional stories can make ideas memorable.

So, what is this new presentation style about? While PowerPoint has been fundamentally the same for almost 20 years, our use of it is beginning to change. Slides are finally becoming more visual and essential, with a renewed appreciation of how people learn. I am particularly interested in the focus on stories and movie structures to make our messages more compelling.

It’s a fascinating idea isn’t it? In fact, I want to develop it further. Content matters more than ever. Pretty pictures that don’t carry a compelling story are just (annoying) pretty pictures.

In preparation for my next presentation, I just received 7 books on screen writing and more are on the way (speed-reading is handy, isn’t it?). No, I won’t be the next Stephen Spielberg and I don’t see myself walking down a red-carpet event any time soon. But I want to learn as much as I can from that industry to be better at mine. My challenge will be to present a potentially dense technical topic in a dramatic and captivating fashion. Who said it is going to be easy? It will be my pet project for my next few months, 48 minutes at a time.

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Yesterday I attended the ReMIX08 mini-conference at Microsoft’s Mountain View campus, which is organized every year by Dan’l Lewin’s Emerging Business Team. Due to travel plans, I missed the increasingly popular MIX08 event in Vegas this year, so I was looking forward to a condensed recap led by Scott Guthrie.

The agenda never drifted very far from Silverlight 2 (4.38MB download) which has just been released in Beta 1 (stay awake now, this stuff changes in the blink of an eye). Scott Guthrie’s keynote was the usual mix of grounded enthusiasm delivered by a guy who clearly stays VERY close to the products under his remit. Despite the Corporate VP title and all that must bring at Microsoft, I can picture Scott nosing around his team’s research labs in the wee hours tweaking every product feature and pending release. Well, either that’s the case or he’d make a very good poker player…

We were treated to a really entertaining demo of a working Silverlight application courtesy of Scott Stanfield, CEO of Vertigo Software. Scott’s presentation of the superb work completed by his team at Vertigo showcased Silverlight’s amazing “deep zoom” feature, which sounds cool enough but wait until you see it in action. Hop over to the Vertigo site for a project description, which provides fine-grained access to The Hard Rock Cafe’s varied collection of rock and roll memorabilia. The online collection includes 55GB of raw images comprising 250+ pieces of valuable music history, including sarcastic letters from Paul McCartney, guitars worth more than a 3 bedroom house in San Francisco, and other examples of stunning visual detail. Absolutely brilliant…

Another highlight of the ReMIX08 conference was the panel discussion about what “open” really means to developers, software companies, and entrepreneurs. Moderated with insight by our old friend Sam Ramji who runs Microsoft’s open source and Linux team for kicks and giggles, this was an excellent session with some very clued-in contributors. In particular, I thought Anil Dash from Six Apart and Jeff Attwood of Coding Horror fame had much to say about what defines open source development, community participation, and the messy tangle of software patents and copyright limits.

Apart from learning that Jeff’s developer centric blog has over 100,000 subscribers (and tasteful ads, mind you), he made the excellent point that developers today need to educate themselves on the basics of software licensing and patent laws in order to protect themselves and their work. Like the IRS model of personal responsibility, “Eh, I didn’t know that” isn’t much of a defense when the proverbial knock comes at the door on copyright or patent infringement. Not one to leave the audience hanging, Jeff kindly suggested that every developer should read Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor who talks about the intellectual power grab of large corporations while creative types plead ignorance and stand in the sidelines. Lessig’s published work includes The Future of Ideas and Code: Version 2.0, hardly light reading but ignorance is not bliss when it comes to protecting yourself and your work.

Lastly, the day closed with a very lively and entertaining panel on the future of social networking — lots of raucous comments about how Plaxo burned their users’ trust only to regain it, rampant disagreements about how important profile portability is to the average user, and the stupidity of big companies who came late to the social networking game. If it was a title bout, I’d call it a split decision on points between Dalton Caldwell of imeem, Joseph Smarr of Plaxo, and Dave McClure of 500 Hats (who kept stirring the pot with relish). I had to leave before cocktail hour in order to brave the traffic and collect my son, but I’m hoping that I didn’t miss an old fashioned bar fight between the panelists. I would have volunteered to hold someone’s coat near the portable bar, of course!

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I’m just back from Stockholm, where I presented a session titled “Passionate Teams and Cooperative Customers: Agile tales of creative customer communication”.

Based on my direct experience, I offered some concrete suggestions of how to revert seemingly impossible (but common) situations in IT projects using a combination of agility, effective communication and deliberate creativity. All of these are skills that I’m firmly convinced we can learn and improve upon, and I was committed to do my best to push the boundaries and bring the message across.

What can I say? The feedback has been absolutely tremendous, both on the core message and delivery style. I knew I had prepared something good, but boy, the response went far beyond my best expectations. I will follow Tom Raftery’s excellent advice and publish my slides on slideshare in a few weeks, right after my next presentation.

I will indeed repeat my session here in Ireland at the DDD Community Event in Galway on Saturday May 3rd. If you happen to be around, you may consider coming over and join the action; there are plenty of interesting sessions, the event is totally free and you can register here.

At the Swedish event, there were lots of speakers from ThoughtWorks, including my good friend Dan North who, a few hours before my turn, helped me refining a couple of messages I wanted to convey on Behaviour-Driven Development.

I’ve also been really privileged to meet ThoughtWorks’ founder and chairman, Roy Singham, at dinner. His fervour, values and clarity of intent are simply remarkable and totally explain why ThoughtWorks is such a unique and respected consultancy company all around the world. He confirmed that he is seriously considering opening an office in Sweden within this year, an opportunity that the best talents in Sweden should not miss!

There would be so much more to say about the event and the stories behind the new and old friends I met, but unfortunately I just exhausted my small quota of writing energy! Let me conclude by saying that the event has been a great success and was extremely well organized by Cornerstone. I’m really, really delighted that InnerWorkings has such a good partnership with Cornerstone in Sweden. Well done guys!

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At InnerWorkings, we see daily evidence of a thriving .NET community in the United Kingdom. Many of our web customers are British developers and .NET teams who wisely take full advantage of Sterling’s commanding position relative to the weakening U.S. dollar. But that’s another post and I’m no monetary policy expert — just ask my wife!

VBUG is a good example of the real strength of the UK developer community in action; its charter is to serve professional developers with regular local conferences and events.

VBUG also operates a membership plan for both corporate and individual developers, providing additional value in the form of a free newsletter and member discounts for developer tools and training vendors.

In support of VBUG, we decided to become a joint sponsor of the upcoming VBUG Birmingham Spring Conference on April 24th, 2008. The agenda for this conference looks great, so I’d encourage any local .NET developers and software managers to check it out:

• Visual Studio 2008
• Workflow Foundation 101
• WPF Business Apps
• Silverlight Showcase
• MOSS

As a sponsor, InnerWorkings is throwing in some Silverlight and WPF training for conference attendees. If you’d like to stay in touch with the VBUG team, signing up for their free newsletter is the way to go. For those UK developers who attend the VBUG conference, I look forward to getting your feedback on the event. All in all, it looks like a very useful way for developers to spend a day learning the latest .NET tips and techniques.

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We’re always on the lookout for slightly madcap events that support the developer community. Imagine our wry smiles when Tim Heuer approached us about backing the latest brainwave from Microsoft’s Developer Platform Evangelists (DPEs).

The Code Trip is basically a two month tour of the West Region in the U.S. where they’ll be showcasing some of the latest Microsoft technologies (like Silverlight 2.0, LINQ & IE8) at local community events.

Check out Chris Koenig’s blog, which outlines the schedule and list of destination cities pretty well. There’s also a short video piece about the whole concept on Channel 9 if you’re interested in learning more about it.

Imagine selling that business trip to your Better Half! I can only guess that the phone conversation would go something like this:

DPE: Listen, I’ve got a work trip coming up in March. It’s a big event with several folks from work.
BH: Sounds like fun…
DPE: Definitely. How does your schedule look around mid March?
BH: OK, actually…I haven’t much on then.
DPE: Excellent!
BH: How long is the trip?
DPE: Well, I’m off on March 14th.
BH: When do you get back?
DPE: Let’s see…hmmmn…it looks like I’m back in 2 months.
BH: <STUNNED SILENCE>
DPE: Hello?
BH: Is this a joke?
DPE: Eh, no…
BH: <HANGS UP>
DPE: That could have gone better….

I’m sure the brave souls on the bus are swapping in and out of the trip, but I’ve got to admit the company road trip concept is a funny one. To show our support, InnerWorkings is offering a bunch of free subscriptions to our entire learning catalog (valued at $1,500 USD). Microsoft has spiced the offer up by kicking in an XBOX 360 for selected winners in each city. You can follow their daily trials and tribulations on the Code Trip blog, which is updated regularly — what else can you do on a bus traveling thousands of miles?

By the way, be sure to check out The Code Trip itinerary if you’re based in or around Denver, CO — there’s a big launch event there tomorrow and Tim tells me that several thousand people have registered to attend. I plan to meet the team during their brief stop in San Francisco on April 3rd, provided the bus makes the long journey without mechanical failure. The Code Trip team is plotting their every coordinate with an onboard GPS unit and Virtual Earth, so you can follow their progress along every bump and turn in the road. Good luck, folks!

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