Adriano's Blog

Moving the blog

2009-01-30T07:12:00.002-03:00

I decided to move my blog to my own domain, and now using wordpress. I really liked the experience with blogger, but I decided that it was time to start having more control over my blog. This is going to be conducted as a test for some time, and then, when I see that wordpress is what I wanted I'll be moving completely. Therefore, I'll keep all posts synchronized during this time.

Here is the address: http://www.thoughtspad.com

The Mormon Way of Doing Business

2009-01-17T06:52:00.005-03:00

"The true definition or true defining situation for a person is what they do when they are alone and don't have to do anything else" - Dell's CEO Kevin Rollins

Isn't it right? Have you ever noticed what do you do whenever you find yourself idle? Start thinking of it.

This book is based on iterviews to prominent members of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints. Some of them are the CEOs of JetBlue Airways (former CEO ad founder, actually), Dell Computers, Deloitte & Touche and Madison Square Garden. As their lifes are retreated and analysed, several principles and behaviors that have lead them to success are actually based on their religion, faith and family values.

It is certinly a must read for members and non-members of the church, as it clearly draws and clarify the benefits of living the principles of the gospel in everything we do and knowing how how to value our families and marital relationship. This book has helped me a lot to identify what I was doing wrong in my live, and I'm pretty sure it may help you as well to take the path to success.

One of the chapters explains what is the secret of success, and it clearly highlights the family as the most favorable factor. Some people keep thinking that getting married and having kids is a show stopper, but I keep saying that there is no such show stopper as avoiding them and the happiness they bring to life. The experience we get as familly leaders we can't get somewhere else, and they certainly mold us for other challenges we face in life.

Perhaps a starting point?

2008-11-20T03:41:00.004-03:00

Last post I wondered a little bit about how could a company give enough freedom to their employees so they can create their creative environment and do a better job. After posting, I began pondering some starting points, or directives, which could help a company walk in that direction.

First, I would like to bold that in the creative process, there should be no deadlines or that will kill it from the root. But, I didn't forget that in the real world, we need to interact with other companies and people with which we must sign contracts, and that they unfortunatelly have deadlines. What a paradox! Companies need money to survive. They get their money from their contracts. The contracts sets deadlines to the company's works. The creative process that leads to a great product demands that deadlines should not exist. So, how could we tackle this issue and have at least a better approach?

As I said before, I tried to set some starting points or directives based on the kind of work I'm into, and wondering that it could be totally or partially applied to most other areas.

So, lets state now that inside the company there should be no deadlines. Deadlines are capital ofense, as John Cleese has stated.

Then, instead of setting a deadline, what about setting quality goals? Sometimes, with a tight deadline people tends to chose the "enough for the moment" approach on solving problems. Maybe, if we begin by setting quality goals, then we are virtully setting a deadline. How is that? With a reasonable quality goal, you can deliver a great project without the need of having people wondering of better possible solutions for ever. If you set a quality goal, people will try their best to reach that, with no deadline. But, to make then deliver on the deadline, you set an ambitious goal that you think can be archieved in the time frame you've got. But please, don't do contracts with tight deadlines. If you do that, you're shooting your foot anyway, and the whole theory for creativity process is not for you.

Then I wondered: That is not the solution by itself. Otherwise, it would be too easy, uh? ;-)
How to avoid the employee from getting stucked somewhere, and help him on his creative evolvement? Perhaps starting the quality goals definition by brainstorming the product and it's requirements. Then, that could already leaverage some ideas that would inspire the employee and put him in a nice stand to begin his work and save some precious time.

But, that is just the beginning. During the project, the employee could get stucked in something we didn't wondered in the beginning. At this moment, is where I think that two (or more) heads thinks better. Never found yourself deep in something, and got stucked lacking more ideas? What you need is fresh air, and fresh ideas. Perhaps just steping the next door and share the difficulties with the neighbor would help give the person that fresh air and ideas needed. Perhaps a coaching team could also come by and help by providing some more brainstorming, ideas... Perhaps the coaching team could find out that the person went the wrong way, and could put him back on track. Perhaps, a walk in the park or a nice sleep could help on that also. If we can't set a deadline, then all we've got left is improving our capabilities, save time on the process and create a clean and free highway to creativity so it can come as better and quick as possible.

Another essencial thing to have a nice job done: information. If you're willing to delive a good product, leave your employees absolutely aware of what you need, or what yor client needs. All the documentation, charts, goals descriptions, requirements, meetings, brainstorming, etc just looks like not enough when we want to get everyone perfectly aware of our needs and engaged on that goal. Here you must use your creativity to have the information delivered as expected to all people related to the product creation.

I know this is not enough to change a company culture, but perhaps this could make someone think and thus it would serve as a nice starting point ;-)

First thoughts about the event...

2008-11-19T09:37:00.003-03:00

I went through the first morning of the event, and it was very inspiring. The speakers quality is very ok, and the event very well organized, but the catering service... Ok, we're surviving that and in the end, we came here for brain not stomach food.

John Cleese mainly talked about ways of leting and insentivating your creativity come out from your unconscious. Not a surprise to most of us, interrupting the cognitive process can be a disaster as he said. I believe that, and always tried to find a calm and quiet place to let my ideas flow. But that is nice when we're under control of the situation and we can manage to set a good slot of time in a peaceful place to let our neurones work as they like. But, how to produce such an environment inside a company? How to let your employee in charge of creating their creative environment in which they can feed their minds with what they need to come out with innovation? Is it good or is it bad for your company?

That is hard to say. A later speaker, author of the book My Company is a Jungle, claimed that culture is vital inside a company. If your company doesn't have an inner culture, you're going out of wings. Maybe, that could relate our former need: How to let our employees in charge of creating their perfect creative environment and not mess up with your company? Maybe, setting a culture could be the answer.

Yeah, that's not something new or ground breaking. We hear all the time people saying about companies trying to set a creative culture, and you shouldn't take more than 1 second to remind the name of a couple of them.

What are the other companies missing then? Is that fear which motivates then to keep thenselves in the age of iron when it comes to creating a culture inside a company? Is the fear caused because it is expensive to afford such a freedom to their employees?

We clearly see the benefits of providing time and a good environment for criativity, so why do we keep pushing and pressing people to keep in track of deadlines, and do more things in less time? We are so used to this culture, of pushing and pressing and delivering things in very tight deadlines, that we feel afraid of trying the disruptive aproach of not having a deadline and not pushing things arround.

So, from were I can see, things must change both internally and externally, and as Jef Staes said: it must start from the edge.

Creativity World Forum ( CWF ) 2008

2008-11-19T04:50:00.003-03:00

After a fews months in a rush, I finally started to settle down and had the time to return to my blog. Soon, there will be some changes arround here, and I'm also moving to another domain which I'll be announcing pretty soon.

The news is that I'm writing from the Lotto Arena, Antwerp, Belgium at the Creativity World Forum, 10 minutes away frowm watching a speaking of John Cleese. During the event, I'll be taking notes and will be bloging about interesting bits absorved from the speakers.

Stay tunned! ;-)

Seeing What's Next

2008-05-26T15:07:00.004-03:00

This book features some in depth study of real world industry changes, and how they happened, explained from a point of view that most of us have never thought before.

I found it very usefull in several subjects of study. Seemingly "Crossing the Chasm", Geoffrey A. Moore, it's first chapter explains some qualities of consumers, and how to feed them with what they need. Actually, it takes a different approach when compared to Crossing the Chasm, because it preaches that some business have their own niches of consumers, and that every nich has it's own quality when it comes to a given product, while Geoffrey preaches how to scale through consumers to reach mainstream.
Nevertheless, if you want to understand more about your consumers, both books are a must read anyway and both concepts works together.
The most important thing about all this is that you not always need to overshot your customers. Some customers are just doing fine with what you provide currently, and maybe trying to overshot them with fancy additives can drop your profit range or even incentivate them to go for another undershot product that fits their needs. Basically, that's the point of view from which most part of the cases studied in this book are seem, and I believe that should be the point of view from which you should analyse your business. Good reading, I recommend.

Breakthrough: Stories and Strategies of Radical Innovation

2008-04-08T07:32:00.005-03:00

This book was in my wishlist for almost a year before I had the opportunity to acquire and read it. As I couldn't find it here in Brazil I had to wait for an opportunity to acquire it abroad or buy it from a foreign website. I did the first, and bought this book while travelling to USA for the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit 2007. Unfortunately, even with the book in my hands, I wasn't able to read it by that time and had to wait a little bit to delight myself reading it.

As a scientist, I'm a big fan and enthusiastic of breakhroughs, and the processes, environments and stimulus that leads to innovation and disruptive technologies. Today, it is very hard to imagine a world without cars, computers or telephones. Each one of these inventions are pretty young compared to the time we've being dwelling in this Earth since we've been created.

Also, it is not hard to conclude that in some years, we're going to have more disruptive innovations that will make part of our lives, and that we neigther our ancestors have never thought about, and it will certainly be very hard to imagine a world without those innovations at that time in the future. We are doing the future now, and seeding the stimulus, environments and processes that are willing to trigger disruptive innovations that will certainly change our lives in such a way that we will not imagine ourselves in the future without them.

As the ones in charge of creating the steps to inspire future innovations, and provide our shoulders to stand other giants we have to share knowledge and experiences without the biased behaviors that we're used to witness. The overall welfare is provided by the efforts of each human being towards the progress of humanity, "being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous and in doing good to all men"[0].

The book itself doesn't preach any of those thoughts I have shared, but if you read it and read my thoughts you're going to see how one complement the other. The book does tackle subjects like how breakthrough happen, how can we feed ourselfs with the right stimulus to increase the chances of having ground breaking ideas, how to see differently and keep innovating after the years. That mainly depends on process, environment and stimulus. Continually seeking for the behaviors cited[0], and not being biased, is the main step towards overall welfare and continuous improvement of human beings. That welfare and improvements, leads to better process, environments and stimulus. Then, here it comes the bits I found in Stefik's book. After achieving that behavior, we are ready to start innovating.

The book is mainly based of interviews made with the brightests minds that are innovating today. All of that is about sharing knowledge, and not being biased. When you hide and protect the knowledge from being spread, you're probably doing that with one thing in mind: creating a monopoly. That is a biased behavior, and that doesn't lead to innovation, but to the stalling of it.

The book is a good reading, and shows us the backstages of disruptive breakthroughs and how to provide the meanings to better the processes, environments and increase stimulus in your place to have innovations likely to happen. Also, keep in mind that sharing knowledge is good and that the knowledge you share might come back to you improved. Good reading ;-)

[0] - SMITH, Joseph. The Articles of Faith. History of the Church, Vol. 4, pp. 535-541.

P2P: How Peer-to-Peer Technology Is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business

2008-03-29T09:23:00.013-03:00

Although it might not look like a must read book in a social network focused world, it was an interesting read for because of it's deep relation with my undergraduation monography and the effort I've put studying that matter.

Some may think that today, P2P is old fashioned while they relate the acronym with P2P networks of old days like Napster, Edonkey and Gnutella. Don't feel like that. P2P is not a acronym for file sharing. P2P is a acronym for new ways of making networks, sharing spare resources and communicating.

Fortunatelly, this is not yet another book about Napster, Gnutella or any other file sharing P2P network that ever existed, but a book about P2P potentials and how to use it to archieve real world companies goals and needs.

I've been studying deeply the matter for about 2,5 years, and still found some useful information in this book. Though, I warn that it is not the kind of book that a technician is ansious to read, but the kind of book that a manager would like to read in order to figure ways of using P2P to improve it's company business capabilities and enhance revenues.

It is a pretty straigh forward and quick reading book, and tells some interesting cases of business that used P2P and archieved good and bad results from it. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media, and Technology Success of Our Time (Book review)

2008-03-25T17:53:00.007-03:00

A few weeks ago I have read the book "The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media, and Technology Success of Our Time" (Portuguese version) and later I decided to share my thoughts about that reading experience.

The first bit about this book is that it has an easy language, and thus the book fits non-high tech readers. The second bit is that although it is a more interesting book for those of us interested on Google and high tech, it might be a good reading for those interested on getting inspired.

In the first chapters you'll find some details about Google's founders and it's very beginning as well as some detailed informations about that epoch that you're not willing to find easily googling :)

As you keep reading, you're driven to a tour explaining how Google works, and how they make decisions. Before reading this book, I have never realised how unique was the Google's IPO and how they changed some paradigms at that time.

You'll also find some cool details about 1st April, Google doodles, the no name restaurant and even find an easter egg in the middle of the book (a famous cook recipe).

Summarizing, this book is a nice reading for both tech and non-tech people interested on getting inspired by the Google's history.

Umit at "The Bourne Ultimatum"

2007-12-15T07:34:00.000-03:00

Look mon! Umit has featured "The Bourne Ultimatum" movie!

Movie Directors are going to love UmitMapper and the NetworkInventory for their high-tech movies when we get it integrated into Umit. And we're going to love to see them using it. Lol ;-)

Game theory and Summer of Code

2007-07-16T09:34:00.001-03:00

During my last year at University, I spent about the whole year studying economics game theory, in order to make my thesis about friend-to-friend networks and best pratices for overlay and sharing networks. Game theory is a very interesting topic, and can lead us to choose better strategies based on the problem enviroment, rules and possible odds (or rewards) you can get from each possible strategy. Unfortunatelly, some games doesn't have good odds for every player in the game, and when we can't change the rules nor the environment that enforces the odds, we have to take the least worse strategy even when it is far from been optimal. Fortunatelly, sometimes we're able to change the rules in order to create an environment capable of giving good odds for every player in the game (at least for fair players...).

That's why the odds stands for: reward the fair player, and enforce bad ones to play fairly.

During this GSoC mid-term evaluation of students performance, I've been thinking about the odds of the game we have to play here, and realized some rules that could improve the competition quality and reduce project failures.

I know many mentors will feel familiarised with this situation: One of the students disapper for 2, 3 weeks and appear right before the mid-term evaluation saying that he is way behind the schedule because of problem x and y, and asks for a chance to continue working on the project. But, It is not possible for mentors to know for sure if he is going to do something
if he let Google pay him. This totally looks like a problem we can solve with game theory.

Here are the goals:
- GSoC is intended to help the open source community, by affording students and mentors to create and improve open source projects
- Mentoring orgs want that help, because money is what moves any project forward, and GSoC is a huge help
- Students want to have their names associated with Google, with their own killer open source software and get paid for that (money and t-shirt ;-)

And the odds:
- If a student works hard until the midterm, he receives the 2k
grant, and continues his work
- If a student doesn't reach the midterm eval with a good status
(behind the schedule), two choices are left to mentors:
1 - Trust on student and let google pay him, hopefully that the
student is going to make until the deadline
2 - Drop student, and avoid his midterm payment

The problem is that many students are on GSoC seeking for the money only (that's why so many are so desperate about the payment delay), and when they reach the midterm and see that they are not going to make it, the best strategy they have is begging for another chance,
get the 2k and give-up his project. This strategy is the best for him, but the worst for Google, Organizations and other students, because:
1 - Google doesn't want to pay for nothing. Google wants more open source. That's the main goal of the GSoC
2 - Organizations will be left without the project and the student contributions, and the mentor will have spent his time almost for nothing (almost, because the US$500 counts a lot)
3 - To accept this student, I had to dismiss another that know would give anything to be were this student stands. The bad student wasted his chance, wasted another student chance and wasted the money and time of you guys at Google for nothing.
4 - The bad student receives 2,5k for nothing and is happy because of that

Mentors also tend to choose this strategy, because there is a little chance that student is going to make it until the end of GSoC. Actually, mentors wants so much to have the project the students were allocated, that they give that chance because the strategy of dropping him is even worse than trust him.

My sugestion, based in this analysis, is to change the rules to avoid this strategy, and still
guarantee the goals of Google and Mentoring organizations. But, how can we manage to achieve that?

At midterm eval, if a student is dismissed because he didn't made his work, the mentoring organization receives his money in order to use it to improve the software design, usability, buy equipments for testings and improve the software, offer that money as a bounty for another person that is willing to solve the problem the bad student left behind, etc. If mentors had that choise, here are the odds:
1 - Students will be afraid of don't be aproved at midterm, and will be encouraged of working hard before it. As they want the money, they will work harder to have it.
2 - If a student still didn't make enough to be aproved at midterm, mentors will have another strategy that is better for Google and Organization that is dismiss the student and use his money to make better open source software for the whole community, and the Google's money served his purpose even with student failure, and mentors will have the opportunity to give another chance to a studnet he dismissed to get the bad one.

I can think about a lot of things that the project needs and can benefit with this money, and the whole community can also benefit from it instead of wasting it with an unresponsive student that wasted his chance to change something in the open source world. With this
student's money organizations could pay for design, books, website, servers, offer the bad student's money as a bounty to have the problem solved and a whole load of other things that the project needs.

I don't know if the Google folks are going to agree with my point of view, but I just wanted to share my thoughts and maybe help improve GSoC rules, reducing the amount of projects that fails. Agreeing or not, Google is still rocking a lot with Summer of Code, and I only have to say thank you for the opportunity I've been having these years.

Cheers!

Software is not about code, but people and their desires

2007-07-10T11:20:00.000-03:00

Thinking that with a really optimized, organized and structured code you'll make your software the newest killer app ever? Been fast and stable is just a couple of the requisites users look for while choosing their software. Among all the requirements that users instintivelly looks for in a software, usability is the most decisive of them.

A software with poor usability makes user feel angry and disapointed about the software. Imagine that someone is trying to use your software in a low profile machine, and he starts missing some clicks because a process he is trying to do is very confusing and has many steps based on clicks and keystrokes to be accomplished... Gather this with the fact that he is in a hurry and his boss is mad about the time he spents to do something with the software. I don't believe this person will ever love your software, nor he is going to indicate it to his friends, even if the underlying code of this software is well structured, organized and optimized. (This kind of software is not recomended for persons with cardiac problems)

We have a lot of effort trying to spread software development techniques all arround, but few trying to spread usability, acessibility and internationalization techniques. Keep in mind that your software is used by human beings, and usability really matters.

Spend some time reading some Human Interface Guidelines, choose one and stick with it. Also, make interface test suites and watch how your users work with your software. Try to count how much time they spend doing some tasks, and how can you decrease the time spent on each task. Try to make your interface as clean as possible, and keep in mind the KISS concept.

Some of these advices I didn't have time (yet) to make on Umit, like interface test suites and watch how users are working with Umit. But I had some experience on interface test suites at my job and realized how important they are for software development and software usability improvement.

Although I'm not an expert on usability (yet), trust me: your software is not about code, but people and their desires...

Google's Summer of Code Podcast and Umit@Nmap

2007-05-25T08:19:00.000-03:00

For those of you interested on taking a look (or should it be a "hear"?) on the podcast I had with my friend Leslie Hawthorn[1], here goes the link[2]. Yeah... I was a bit nervous, and I missed some words... Also, we had a problem with skype at the time of the interview, and was kinda hard to come out with it. Anyway, hope you have good time with it! ;-)

There is another post at Google Summer of Code blog talking about some stats arround the Brazillian comunity[3] on open source and GSoC.

The last weeks, I've been playing on Umit trying to improve a little bit it's usability and hunting some bugs for the next stable release which is going to happen at the same time Umit is getting integrated with Nmap officially[4]! Level Up for Umit!

Next Monday (28th May), the Summer of Code will officially begin, and keyboards will get really hot all arround the world. It won't be different with us at Umit, and students didn't wait until the official beginning of Summer of Code to start hacking their projects! Stay tunned to the Umit Project blog[5] to get some update about their projects. Soon the community will have brand new toys to play arround with Umit.

Cheers!

[1] - http://www.bengoodger.com/hawthornlandings/index.html
[2] - http://googlesummerofcode.blogspot.com/2007/05/umit-project.html
[3] - http://googlesummerofcode.blogspot.com/2007/05/brasilians-in-google-summer-of-code.html
[4] - http://umitproject.blogspot.com/2007/05/umit-as-official-nmap-frontend.html
[5] - http://umitproject.blogspot.com

The Secret?

2007-05-15T09:25:00.000-03:00

Yes... That's the name of that almost best seller book (I said best seller, but I didn't mean best book), and I used it as this post's title. Actually, I don't mean to talk much about that book, neither I mean to read it.

Most part of those who look forward to read that book, do that with the hope of finding the answer of how to have a money tree in the backyard. First, I would like to state that I believe that money doesn't come without hard work. You can work hard, and make something that give you loads of money after that, but not with the initial hard work stuff. So, even if that book can tell you the secret of making some money grow in a tree (and I tell you in advance that this is not the secret inside that book), I would still believe that there are better ways to earn some money. The best of them (and the only one I know so far) is working. :-D Impressed?

Now, what about earning more money working the same? That's the secret (not the secret of "The Secret", but the secret I'm telling you right now by my own)!

Think about it... What if you could do more work in less time? You could work more, and make more money. Too obvious, uh? Sure it is!

Now that you know that, start thinking: are you working fast enough? This is a boolean question, which can return only True or False. So, here is how we should handle the output:

True - "Yes! I'm working fast. Thanks": Ok! You're a fast working guy, but you still should consider stay tunned to stuffs that can make you work even faster.
False - "No! My work goes like a slug.": Well... you need to analyze your environment, machine and tools. That's all about increasing your work rate. And, IMHO, tools are decisive on that matter. You can work in a nice and fresh aired place, with the Mac Pro of your dreams and still wonder how you could make your job faster. That's true that you can go really fast with a good tool, and awful machines and environment (my case), but think about working in a nice place programming C++ with notepad...

So, "The Secret", for those of you thinking about earning money with more work, is working more in less time. Find a way to get a better environment, machines and tools.

Finding or creating a better environment, means setting up a place in which you feel confortable, with a good desk, chair, etc.

Well... Finding a good machine is up to you! Try to find one with specific features that are favorable on increasing your WORK speed, not a machine that is favorable on increasing your GAMES speed. First, try to earn money, and than, try to find something to waste your money with (after you have it, please! And pay cash!).

About tools, I can suggest Umit if you're a network admin trying to find a better way to keep track of your machines in your network (lol ;-), but if you're a programmer, try Python and related frameworks (Zope, Turbo Gears, Django, etc.). That's what I'll try to share on a speech I'll give at UNIVERSO with some Information System students.

Maemo

2007-04-25T17:02:00.000-03:00

So it came the time which I decided to dedicate my time on porting Umit to Maemo, and make a package for it. This is a long time history, which started about a year or so and which I want to see it concluded for two reasons:

I want to be able to run Umit on my Nokia770 (which is getting old now with the N800 release)
One of the Umit's main goals is portability. I believe that a Maemo porting is another step forward to accomplish this goal.

If you are thinking about acquiring a handheld, I urge you to take a look on Nokia's internet tablets. Those devices run Maemo (which is Linux). I know it's needless to say, but I'll do anyway: it runs Python 2.5 and Gtk... and soon, you'll be able to run Umit on it also! ;-)

This week I created a new branch at Umit's repository, called hildon in which I'll be making the necessary modifications. Contributions are welcome!

If you don't feel like exporting the branch to check what I've been making there, and run it on your device to see how is it looking now, I can list what I've done here:

Made a really simple function to detect if the program is running on Maemo or not
Converted the main window to HildonWindow (when running the app on Maemo)
Put the main menu and the main toolbar in their right places

Few work done until now, but soon it will be over. Also, I would like to announce that soon I'll be releasing Umit 0.9.4. It will feature some bug fixes and installation process improvements. The new windows installer will also come with updated dependencies, including Python2.5 and latest Gtk version. These fixes should ease the task of creating packages for Umit.

Currently, I won't be able to release a Mac installer, but I'm looking forward to have a chance to do such installer soon (please, consider soon as been "until the end of this GSoC").

The awaited result

2007-04-12T11:19:00.000-03:00

Finally I could release the list of selected students for this Summer of Code. Unfortunately, I couldn't select everyone I wanted, and I had to let go many talented students.

I hope that the selected students have conscience of this matter, and work hard to show the world that they really deserved that slot in the Summer of Code, returning really good and useful stuff to the community. I really believe they're going to rock this Summer, and that's why I chose them.

BTW, the list of accepted students can be found here and here.

Soon, I'll be announcing the address of the mailing lists and the IRC channel I said I was going to create for project discussions.

Cheers!

Very first post...

2007-04-11T13:24:00.000-03:00

This very first post is intended to:

Start this blog with something
Say that the final result of the Google Summer of Code is almost ready. I'm just waiting for one remaining student. Stay tunned...

Cheers!