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Leadership Technology

Does this Technology Require Discretionary Effort to Get Anything Useful Done?

Posted by Jonathan FriesJonathan Fries on .

Discretionary effort is critical to business success. You need enthusiasm, time, and energy from dedicated employees to make your team or your product a winner.

Knowing how your team spends discretionary effort is important. For this reason, you should ask the question in the title of this post. Ask it before the outset of any significant effort or the adoption of new tech.

There are a lot of reasons why people choose technologies. Carefully guiding selection is an important part of the technology leader's job description. Managing and directing discretionary effort should be part of that calculation.

So, why do people choose different technologies?

This technology is a good fit and here's why ....

Sounds lovely doesn't it? Technology is chosen to meet the needs of the project. Nothing more, nothing less.

Our team already knows this technology.

This can be an excellent reason. Efficient, lots of knowns, starting with some pre-baked design work - very good.

We already know this other technology that looks a lot like the one we're choosing.

This can also be a perfectly acceptable reason to choose technology.

We like where this technology is headed and we believe it will help us meet our future needs.

A little bit riskier - when will the future arrive?

This technology is neat.

Neat is fine. As long as it is also good fit and we can get things done.

This technology is new.

See also, Neat. Beware of the following Trojan horse: everyone will be doing it in 5 years, so if we want to be able to hire people we better choose it.

Here's the trouble with new and neat technologies. You don't know them and you have to learn them.

Will this require discretionary effort on this project? Who is paying for it?

As I said above, discretionary effort is important. Nothing of significant value gets done without it. There are late nights for someone somewhere if this (or any) project is going to be successful.

The trouble with new and neat is that they can use up all the discretionary effort that people have to give.

When this happens, it's bad.

Especially if the value of a product doesn't reside in the new and neat technology that was chosen. If the value is in the logic or time-to-market or ease of use or anything else, then spending discretionary effort learning a new technology is ...

You decide.

I wouldn't necessarily call it wasted effort as it probably benefits those learning it.

But it isn't high business value in the short-to-medium term. It's a long term investment. It may be that the investment is in people or infrastructure that benefit the product or project or business you are building.

Should you make that investment?

Post photo by unsplash-logoTim Gouw from Unsplash.

Featured

Mindfulness Technology

Making a Simple 'I Love You' Button with the Amazon IoT Button

Posted by Jonathan FriesJonathan Fries on .

The article below is specifically about using the AWS (Amazon Web Services) IoT button to create a simple 'I Love You' button that my kids could use to send a text to their mother while they were staying with me.

While that was a specific idea, the concept could easily be extended for children to send a message to a grandparent, a friend who has moved away, or a cousin who lives in another city. It's not strictly limited to the situation I describe.

As a divorced parent, you often find yourself trying to make the divorce have as limited an impact on your child or children as possible.

One thing they teach you as you are going through that process is that your child ultimately views each parent as key to understanding themselves, and any time you do anything to tear down your ex you're really only hurting your child.

So, last summer, shortly after my divorce was finalized I happened to come upon the AWS IoT button, which is basically an unbranded programmable Dash button. I've written about using it at work here.

As I was working on the pitch for that project, it occurred to me that the button could be used to solve another problem. My children are too young to have phones (my opinion), but it would be nice if they had a way, when they were staying with me, to send their mother a text to say 'Hi Mommy! I love you!' or something similar.

This is easy with the IoT button. Here are the steps involved.

Step 1 - Order Button from Amazon All you have to do is order them from Amazon here.

Step 2 - Use the mobile app to configure the button to communicate Download the setup app for Android or iOS. Next, use the setup app to put your button on your wifi and configure a basic function.

Step 3 - Change the message to your custom message The last step is a little trickier. You need to edit the Lambda function created by the setup app. I won't go in to the details, but it is possible for a person with limited technical expertise to pull off. Certainly, anyone with a technical friend or relative could do it with help.

Essentially you change this:

PhoneNumber: PHONE_NUMBER,
Message: 'Hello from your IoT Button ${event.serialNumber}. Here is the full event: ${payload}.',

To make it look like this:

PhoneNumber: PHONE_NUMBER,
Message: 'Hi Mommy, I love you.',

The change itself is as simple as what I outlined above. It's just getting to the right place that takes a little Googling/spelunking if you haven't done it before.

For kids, this is also a nice, simple introduction to coding where a simple change can be made simply, and without needing tons of additional explanation, deployment, or other fanfare. Just make a change and hit the 'Save' button.

Once done, my boys were able to send their mom a short message and have her know that they were thinking about her. In return, I knew I was helping them build connections and self-esteem and not tearing that down. Here is our completed button, plus decorations:

-iot_button_custom

This is extendable to other situations - absent friends, geographically distant loved ones, parents who might be travelling. Even adults could benefit from having a dedicated 'I love you' or 'I think you're great' button to press from time to time.

Who doesn't need the occasional reminder/short cut to tell our friends and family that we think they're great?

Featured

Technology

Carbon Dating a Web Page

Posted by Jonathan FriesJonathan Fries on .

As a side note to this post, I wanted to link to the first person to post such an article. If you search for '3 Types of Fun' on Google you get quite a few different search results back and no one gives anyone else credit (annoying) and none of the top hits had a date-time stamp I could find.

So, I found this article, which was very helpful:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/513996/how-to-carbon-date-a-web-page/

Which linked to this thing:

http://cd.cs.odu.edu/cd/<YOUR_URL_HERE>

And yes, you really do paste your whole URL there, without the pointy-brackets. Here was one the queries that I ran:

http://cd.cs.odu.edu/cd/https://www.rei.com/blog/climb/fun-scale

Featured

Leadership Technology

Art Week - Post 3 - Laika Exhibit at Portland Museum of Art

Posted by Jonathan FriesJonathan Fries on .

Laika is a stop-motion movie studio located in Portland, OR. If you don't know the 4 Laika movies, they are:

Coraline - On Amazon
ParaNorman - On Amazon
The Boxtrolls - On Amazon
Kubo and the Two Strings - On Amazon

The post header image is a large (about 20 feet tall) skeleton that was used in Kubo and the Two Strings. It is, by their account, the largest stop-motion model ever created. It was amazing to see it in person and imagine them using it to create the movie.

These movies have been a cornerstone of our family entertainment since ParaNorman was released. So, when I heard that Portland Museum of Art was hosting an exhibition I knew that I wanted to make the trip to see it.

Laika really opened the vault - providing character models, complete scenery (including the garden from Coraline), detailed break downs of models and processes, and videos with explanation of how they approach various aspects of film making.

A favorite detail was the locker scene from ParaNorman where you can see the scale model junk accumulating on top of and next to the middle school locker room:

20180329_103107

The amazing detail in creating the overhead projector and mop bucket and paper on top of the lockers shows the kind of time and detail that Laika invests in to make the movies feel real.

When you watch the movies, they are full of detail like this.

It's clear from the exhibit that Laika invests a lot of time in money in the movies they make. This investment takes the form of details (as mentioned above), ambition (they don't rest on their laurels or just do things they know work), and technology (their use of 3D printing to create facial expressions is amazing).

Here is an image of a small portion of the 'wall of faces' showing 3D printed details that were used to create facial features for a number of characters across their films:

20180329_102415

It's often surprising how a great stop-motion studio or artist can produce wonderful emotional depth in their characters - think Wallace and Gromit.

Laika have their own special brand of this, and the 3D printed facial features are part of that capability.

That's at least partly a technological achievement in their case.

The exhibition was well put together and enjoyable. I don't think you had to be a fan of the films to enjoy it, though it helps.

I admire the work that they do and I hope for many more films to enjoy in the future.

Leadership Angle: Laika pushes themselves relentlessly in their art. They search for larger obstacles to overcome, better stories to tell, and more exciting ways to overcome them. Check out all 4 movies to see how they've evolved as storytellers, animators, and innovators.

Featured

Leadership Technology Art

Art Week - Post 1 - Art Made Entirely with CSS and HTML

Posted by Jonathan FriesJonathan Fries on .

I recently came across this image created entirely with css and html:

Francine Thumg

This is pretty amazing stuff. You can see the true css/html version here (the image above is just a captured image):

http://diana-adrianne.com/purecss-francine/

HTML and CSS are the guts of the web and they do a lot of neat things. Usually they're used to make menus, position buttons, display data, animate things, and do other heavy lifting tasks of the web.

Most people who wanted to make an image like this would go into a graphics or drawing program (or get out some paints) and draw the picture, which would then be converted to an image file.

What this artist (her name is Diana Smith) has done is to use the same technology developers and designers use to position a 'Save' button on a web page, and she's used it position every single strand of hair (and everything else), as well as color and shade all of it.

If you look closely you can even see veins in her skin.

This is incredible talent with this technology, and a willingness to do something more and see what a particular tool can really do.

It also shows the versatility and power of HTML and CSS to do almost anything when it comes to display and visuals on the web.

Incredible.

As a leader ask yourself, "Do I ask enough of myself and those around me? Am I prepared to put this type of discretionary effort to my own work and art?"

Featured

Mindfulness Technology

Mindfulness, Gadgetry, Quantified Self

Posted by Jonathan FriesJonathan Fries on .

I've been thinking about my earlier post related to mindfulness and gadgetry. And I believe it is possible that gadets and quantified-self measurements really can help us live more mindful lives. There's evidence to the contrary, of course, but that doesn't have to be the path that we follow.

To think clearly about the relationship of mindfulness and gadgets, let's start with a definition of mindfulness. I like this definition from mindful.org:

Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.

Here's a link to that quote.

So, we're trying to be fully present in the moment.

We all know that gadgets can distract us. We've had plenty of experience with important work emails arriving at dinner time and social media posts that draw our attention. Look around most any public place you go and you will see people who are mentally elsewhere.

So, how do we use our gadgets to the best effect to help us be present in the moment?

Part 1

Technology can help us if we are using them to be conscious of ourselves.

What are some things that get in the way of this? If our quantified self goal is about the future. Something like "My resting heart rate needs to be X and I need to make a plan to achieve that." Or "I want to be in a calm state of mind for 80% of the time when I meditate, and I'm not getting there now." Well, then you are not present.

You may be making yourself more healthy, and that's good, but you are not present now. You are looking at now and reflecting on how to improve.

If our gadgets and measurements allow us to be more aware of the body. To lead us to make choices in the moment. "I"m going to go for a walk now because I'm aware of my stress." Or "It's time to go to bed because my body needs rest." Then we are more present because we're aware of how we're doing.

Gadgets and quatnitifed self measurements can help you into this awareness.

In reality, most of us probably do some of both. There's a healthy element to looking ahead and making plans. You just don't want it to overwhelm you or for it to become the only thing that you think about, or to continual make it about goals down the road and never appreciating the moment that you're in.

Part 2

If you are using some type of gadget or device to actually measure or evaluate your meditation practice, then you have an additional way that a gadget can help you.

There are risks here, too. If you are too focused on the gadgetry or the goals, it detracts from the meditation. It's happened to me before.

But if you incoporate into your routine and you don't make it ABOUT the gadget. Then it's worth reflecting on the patterns that you see.

A different kind of visualization of what your mind is doing when you're at rest is interesting and can be revealing about how you are really doing.

I mentioned my own particular challenge in this blog post. I have a challenge sometimes where my mind becomes MORE active when I am meditating. I actually start out calm and relaxed and it's during the meditation itself (when I am not distracted by other things) that my mind activates around stressful things that may have happened that day.

Here is another example - this one the app actually granted me the 'Wanderlust Award' for. This badge was awarded because my 'mind began to wander near the end of this session'. No kidding:

Screenshot_20180406-121530_Muse

Well, someone did a nice job of naming it 'Wanderlust', but that is not as fun as it sounds.

It's not that you don't know that your mind is wandering, it's something that you learn to recognize when you're meditating. It's the pattern:

Start Calm
Mind Wanders
Get Less Calm
Mind Wanders More

The gadget and app aspect has helped me to recognize this, and this is helping me be more aware and think about that situation when it happens.

It's a bit different than the 'I know I am not calm but I'm meditating anyway', because it's a bit sneakier.

Conclusion

I think there are slippery slopes in both of these scenarios. The gadgets can overwhelm you and the apps often inject elements of gamification that I am not interested in and that I think tend to draw you out of the moment. Be wary of those things.

But if you can avoid the traps and stay present, the tools are there and they can help you build your practice and stay focused in the present.