octāvity » Technology

The Definitive Guide to Search Engine Optimization Myths – 80 plus invalid facts.

scott — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:05:37 +0000

source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pranavsingh/999580726/

Remember, myths are not true. In no particular order:

myth: SEO is a sham
src: 9 Web Site Optimization (SEO) Myths Debunked
myth: Black Hat SEOs are Unethical
src: 7 SEO Myths Dispelled | Internet Marketing Strategy: Conversation Marketing
myth: White Hat SEOs are On The Side of Good
src: 7 SEO Myths Dispelled | Internet Marketing Strategy: Conversation Marketing
myth: SEO requires continual tweaking to keep up with changes in the search engines’ ranking algorithms
src: 9 Web Site Optimization (SEO) Myths Debunked
vs.
myth: “£500 one off SEO fix and your website is good forever” – SEO and search engines move forward all the time, so should you website.
src: What’s The Biggest SEO Myth? | Shark SEO
myth: Once Gained, Easily Maintained.
src: 5 Most Annoying SEO Myths | Blog | Econsultancy
myth: You Never Need to Redesign Your Site.
src: Page 3 – SEO Myths
myth: Google is always changing its search algorithm
src: Common SEO Myths – Free SEO Tutorial (Part 5)
myth: Search engine technology is moving too fast: I can’t keep up!
src: Top 10 SEO myths revealed
myth: Rankings are absolute.
src: 7 SEO Myths Dispelled | Internet Marketing Strategy: Conversation Marketing
myth: SEO is a one-time event.
src: Blogging from the Brave Programmer – 10 SEO Myths to watch out for in 2010
myth: SEO is a one month process. Do it and get it done!
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: SEO is a once and done project: when website is optimized then job is done.
src: Top 10 SEO myths revealed
myth: If you did all the ten things for SEO, there is no beating you and you’ll remain on top forever.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
Scott’s Take: Yes, you need to keep redesigning your site and keeping it fresh with your users. However, the fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization has not changed since Google has won the market. That does not mean it will not change in the future. In fact, Google now employs Personalized search. So, the results you see will likely be different than the results I see.
myth: You cannot predict the success of SEO
src: 9 Web Site Optimization (SEO) Myths Debunked
myth: SEO is easy to learn.
src: 9 Web Site Optimization (SEO) Myths Debunked
vs.
myth: You need an Expert to help you succeed in SEO.
src: Free SEO Tutorial (Part 5) – Google, Article, Content, Myths
myth: SEO is a hand off project. Let the consultants take care of it.
src: Top 10 SEO myths revealed
Scott’s Take: The advanced topics of SEO may not be easy to learn. However, the majority (80%) of the websites are fine without the advanced topics. Consequently, I agree with you don’t need an expert. You can do it yourself. However, Just as you can paint your house yourself, sometimes, you just want an expert to do it for you.
myth: The goal is to be number one or on page one.
src: 9 Web Site Optimization (SEO) Myths Debunked
myth: I should focus on getting great rankings rankings rather than making sure my visitors become customers.
src: SEO 101: Myths and Facts about Search Engine Optimization
myth: SEO firms that offer guaranteed placement eliminate your risk.
src: 9 Web Site Optimization (SEO) Myths Debunked
myth: Search Engine Positions are guaranteed.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: We guarantee no. 1 on Google.
src: Blogging from the Brave Programmer – 10 SEO Myths to watch out for in 2010
myth: My competition has taken all the top spots in the search engines.
src: 9 Web Site Optimization (SEO) Myths Debunked
myth: SEO mainly consists of submission to (many) search engines.
src: 9 Web Site Optimization (SEO) Myths Debunked
myth: Unscrupulous competitors cannot directly hurt your site’s position after it has ben SEO’d.
src: 9 Web Site Optimization (SEO) Myths Debunked
myth: “Nothing that a competitor can’t do to harm you” – There are people that make a living destroying other peoples websites
src: What’s The Biggest SEO Myth? | Shark SEO
myth: Meta keywords are still useful (they’re definitely not). & If you want a real myth, though, it’s that the meta keywords tag matters. It makes so little difference. Only Yahoo takes any real look at it, and even there, it’s virtually useless.
src: What’s The Biggest SEO Myth? | Shark SEO
myth: Just Put Up Meta Tags to Get Your Ranking
src: Page 3 – SEO Myths
myth: Words in your meta keywords tag have to be used on the page.
src: Top Ten Organic SEO Myths
myth: Meta description deisplayed on the SERPs is always the few lines of text you supply.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: Meta tags don’t matter
src: SEO myths and the power of repetition
myth: Having Meta tags will my rankings.
src: SEO 101: Myths and Facts about Search Engine Optimization
myth: Meta tags are the key to high rankings.
src: Blogging from the Brave Programmer – 10 SEO Myths to watch out for in 2010
myth: Jam-packing your meta tags with as many words as possible is going to make you rank higher in search engines.
src: SEO myths de-bunked: Myth #3 – Jam-packed meta tags – S.Joy Studios
myth: Keyword and description META tags are the most important part of SEO
src: Top 10 SEO myths revealed
myth: Adding keywords to meta tags give you a direct push on the SERPs.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: Meta Tags have no Impact on Rankings.
src: SEO Myths: 5 Myths About SEO Busted | WordStream
Scott’s Take: Google in their documentation recommends to use meta description. So, don’t take this to mean don’t use meta tags at all, this is just meta keywords. Although, I do agree, that there is more to SEO than just meta tags.
myth: Keyword Density is a factor in rankings (it’s definitely not.)
src: What’s The Biggest SEO Myth? | Shark SEO
src: SEOmoz | YOUmoz – SEO Myths That Persist: Keyword Density
src: SEO myths de-bunked: Myth #8 – Keyword density
src: SEOmoz | Rewriting the Beginner’s Guide: Part 4 Continued – Keyword Usage & Targeting
src: Page 3 – SEO Myths
src: Common SEO Myths – Free SEO Tutorial (Part 5)
myth: Once you’ve settled on a keyword, use it throughout the text without variation
src: Five Myths About SEO Copywriting Debunked | WordStream
myth: Following a 4% Keyword density will help in optimizing the content.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: It’s a good idea to make my keywords invisible, such as having white letters on white background.
src: SEO 101: Myths and Facts about Search Engine Optimization
myth: Use as many keywords as you can. The more the better.
src: Blogging from the Brave Programmer – 10 SEO Myths to watch out for in 2010
myth: Adding more keywords to the page title will always help you in seo.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: Submitting your site to search engines is a critical part of SEO. It hasn’t been since the 1990′s, but like meta keywords, this one just won’t die.
src: What’s The Biggest SEO Myth? | Shark SEO
myth: Sites Must Be Submitted to Engines
src: 5 Most Annoying SEO Myths | Blog | Econsultancy
myth: Resubmitting your URL Repeatedly to Search Engines
src: Page 4 – SEO Myths
myth: Search engine submission doesn’t work. (notice someone says the opposite of others.)
src: SEO myths and the power of repetition
myth: I have to submit my site to a search engine for it to get listed.
src: SEO 101: Myths and Facts about Search Engine Optimization
myth: I have to periodically re-submit my site to the search engines.
src: SEO 101: Myths and Facts about Search Engine Optimization
myth: Submit to as many search engines as you can as often as you can.
src: Blogging from the Brave Programmer – 10 SEO Myths to watch out for in 2010
myth: Submitting my site to search engines takes forever.
src: Top 10 SEO myths revealed
myth: Submitting to search engines is the only way to get indexed.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: You should submit your URLs to search engines.
src: Top Ten Organic SEO Myths
Scott’s Take: I disagree a little with this. Submitting Sitemaps and Pinging Services for constantly changing content are still very valuable for Google News and others aggregators and search engines..
myth: Click-through rate is a major part of search engine rankings. The engines have said publicly that CTR is a very noisy and un-useful signal, and not something they’d rely on.
src: What’s The Biggest SEO Myth? | Shark SEO
myth: The search engines penalize you if you do active/obvious SEO (they don’t). The engines themselves promote SEO best practices, and Google’s gone as far as to endorse and promote SEO events, a guide and an SEO toolset.
src: What’s The Biggest SEO Myth? | Shark SEO
myth: SEO is dangerous and can get my site taken off the search engines.
src: Top 10 SEO myths revealed
myth: Participating in PPC campaigns (and spending more) will help you rank better in the engines (it doesn’t). The engines have very real Chinese walls between their business divisions and never let paid campaign spending affect organic rankings directly.
src: What’s The Biggest SEO Myth? | Shark SEO
myth: SEO is Influenced by PPC (not true)
src: 5 Most Annoying SEO Myths | Blog | Econsultancy
myth: Buying PPC ads will influence your organic rankings.
src: 7 SEO Myths Dispelled | Internet Marketing Strategy: Conversation Marketing
myth: PPC ads will help/hurt rankings.
src: Top Ten Organic SEO Myths
myth: It is all about rankings and traffic, rather than conversions.
src: What’s The Biggest SEO Myth? | Shark SEO
myth: “Link Bait won’t get you penalised” – Maybe not today
src: What’s The Biggest SEO Myth? | Shark SEO
myth: The biggest SEO myth is probably that of “quality content”.
src: What’s The Biggest SEO Myth? | Shark SEO
myth: Instead of focusing on building a quality site with good, useful information, I should try to find some “trick” to make my site rank well.
src: SEO 101: Myths and Facts about Search Engine Optimization
myth: SEO is about tricking search engines into ranking my site high.
src: Top 10 SEO myths revealed
Scott’s take: The idea behind this myth is that Advertising and other campaigns can push less quality content above higher quality content. There is no doubt about that. However, I think this is the outlier case. More often than not, the higher quality will win.
myth: The biggest is the duplicate content penalty. People think that just because you publish the same content as somebody else you are going to get some kind of penalty, not the case at all.
src: What’s The Biggest SEO Myth? | Shark SEO
myth: Multiple Domain names for the same website or content interlinking together
src: Multiple domain names
myth: Multiple Domain Names Pointing to the Same Site Increase Rankings
src: Page 4 – SEO Myths
myth: Google penalizes websites with duplicate content.
src: Common SEO Myths – Free SEO Tutorial (Part 5)
Scott’s Take: Google has stated publicly, that duplicate content will be merged together and you will lose the value of the content. So, although this myth is strictly true in this example, because the first google will determine which of the duplicate content should rank, it is much better to have unique content.
myth: The biggest myth of SEO is that everyone is treated equally by the search engines.
src: What’s The Biggest SEO Myth? | Shark SEO
myth: SEO is a level playing field.
src: 7 SEO Myths Dispelled | Internet Marketing Strategy: Conversation Marketing
myth: One myth I frequently see on SEO websites is ALT tag abuse. The ALT element on an image is useful, but only of the image is linked.
src: What’s The Biggest SEO Myth? | Shark SEO
Scott’s Take: Google states in their own report card and own guidelines that the ALT attribute is useful, although I agree you don’t want to just stuff it with all keywords.
myth: The Most Annoying SEO Myth: Optimisation is Underhand
src: 5 Most Annoying SEO Myths | Blog | Econsultancy
Scott’s Take: SEO is definitely okay. Even google has a SEO guide.
myth: One Tactic, Done Enough, Works
src: 5 Most Annoying SEO Myths | Blog | Econsultancy
myth: Linking is Everything
src: Page 4 – SEO Myths
myth: Links are the most important factor
src: SEO myths and the power of repetition
myth: Getting put on someone’s “Links of people who link to me” page is going to make Google happy.
src: SEO myths de-bunked: Myth #2 – Link Exchanges – S.Joy Studios
myth: Having tons and tons of links will surely send my rankings straight to the top.
src: Website SEO: Link-Building Myths and Illuminating Facts (Part 2)
myth: Links, links, links, and more links. The more the better.
src: Blogging from the Brave Programmer – 10 SEO Myths to watch out for in 2010
myth: One Good Link outweighs content.
src: SEO myths and the power of repetition
myth: Sculpting Your PageRank
src: SEO myths and the power of repetition
Scott’s Take: This is an advanced technique, and Matt Cutts of Google recently stated, if you gobs and gobs of pages, then yes, Sculpting Page Rank will work, but for the majority of people, it does not help and maybe even hurt.
myth: You Need Latent Semantic Analysis Optimization
src: SEO myths and the power of repetition
myth: Toolbar PR is tied to crawl rate
src: SEO myths and the power of repetition
myth: You should use nofollow for any links you sell
src: SEO myths and the power of repetition
Scott’s Take: Note, google recommends this. Its not required, but I’d agree that if you sell links, you generally want to nofollow them.
myth: nofollow tags prevent a page from being index.ed
src: SEO myths de-bunked: Myth #7 – No-follow tags – S.Joy Studios
myth: Google is the only search engine that matters (because it controls 70/80/90% of search traffic.
src: SEO myths and the power of repetition
myth: Google not only looks at your domains whois info (and past history, etc), but Google looks at other domains that are owned by you to see how trustworthy you and your domains are.
src: Few SEO Myths I am Researching – JonWaraas.com
myth: Use Subdomains for SEO and for your site structure.
src: Few SEO Myths I am Researching – JonWaraas.com
myth: You need to post new articles to your website regularly
src: Common SEO Myths – Free SEO Tutorial (Part 5)
myth: You need to update your site frequently.
src: Top Ten Organic SEO Myths
Scott’s Take: I agree it is not a need. However, google does sometimes look to see if content is updated. I agree though, that google likes people who are first with content rather than newer. So, this one is inconclusive.
myth: You need ‘quality’ backlinks to succeed in SEO.
src: Common SEO Myths – Free SEO Tutorial (Part 5)
Scott’s Take: Again, google recommends you build links in its own guide. So, agree its not a need, but it definitely does help.
myth: You need to post ‘quality’ articles on your website.
src: Common SEO Myths – Free SEO Tutorial (Part 5)
Scott’s Take: Google’s own guide recommends to have grammatically correct articles. The benefit of quality articles is who would people rather read? a poorly written, hard to understand article vs. an easy to scan easy to understand article? I think people go with the latter, and then ultimately Google will index that way as well.
myth: Search engine traffic is free.
src: Common SEO Myths – Free SEO Tutorial (Part 5)
myth: Optimize your site for Search Engines, Spiders, and Crawlers.
src: Write For People, Not For Spiders
myth: SEO copywriting sounds forced and Mechanical.
src: Five Myths About SEO Copywriting Debunked | WordStream
myth: I should optimize my site for search engines above users.
src: Top 10 SEO myths revealed
Scott’s Take: The myth here is we should write and optimize for our users’ first and search engines second. Be Natural with your writing.
myth: Be brief – online readers have short attention spans.
src: Five Myths About SEO Copywriting Debunked | WordStream
myth: The age of clever headlines is over.
src: Five Myths About SEO Copywriting Debunked | WordStream
myth: When doing a list post, write an introduction.
src: Five Myths About SEO Copywriting Debunked | WordStream
myth: Search engines can now crawl Flash.
src: 7 SEO Myths Dispelled | Internet Marketing Strategy: Conversation Marketing
myth: A flash page means bad SEO.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: Google now crawls javascript.
src: 7 SEO Myths Dispelled | Internet Marketing Strategy: Conversation Marketing
myth: Trading links with any site which will link to mine is a good idea.
src: SEO 101: Myths and Facts about Search Engine Optimization
myth: Search engines can’t deal with framed sites, or they penalize framed sites.
src: SEO 101: Myths and Facts about Search Engine Optimization
myth: Sites that use Javascript get penalized.
src: SEO 101: Myths and Facts about Search Engine Optimization
myth: I should try to rank well for a single-word term instead of the 2- to 3-word phrases that searchers actually use and that I actually have a hope of ranking well for.
src: SEO 101: Myths and Facts about Search Engine Optimization
myth: Most of my traffic should come from one or two search phrases, rather than hundreds, most of which haven’t even occurred to me.
src: SEO 101: Myths and Facts about Search Engine Optimization
myth: All keywords are created equal.
src: SEO myths de-bunked: Myth #4 – Keyword Equality – S.Joy Studios
myth: Any time my rankings go up or down, I should assume that it’s the result of some change I made. Even better, if my rankings drop I should assume that someone at Google manually looked at my site and penalized it.
src: SEO 101: Myths and Facts about Search Engine Optimization
myth: Any time my rankings change, or even disappear from the results, I should consider that change permanent.
src: SEO 101: Myths and Facts about Search Engine Optimization
myth: All visitors start at the front page of my site.
src: SEO 101: Myths and Facts about Search Engine Optimization
myth: I should consider another site’s PageRank when deciding whether to link to them or whether to ask for a link.
src: SEO 101: Myths and Facts about Search Engine Optimization
myth: You should only link with sies that have a high PageRank.
src: Website SEO: Link-Building Myths and Illuminating Facts (Part 2)
myth: The sites with the highest “PageRank” will always rank higher in the SERPs.
src: SEO 101: Myths and Facts about Search Engine Optimization
myth: It’s all about PageRank.
src: Blogging from the Brave Programmer – 10 SEO Myths to watch out for in 2010
myth: A higher PageRank means better chance of ranking.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: Toolbar PageRank is Meaningless.
src: SEO Myths: 5 Myths About SEO Busted | WordStream
myth: Pretty, Keyword-specific URL’s don’t matter.
src: SEO Myths: 5 Myths About SEO Busted | WordStream
myth: Google Favors Old Domains
src: SEO Myths: 5 Myths About SEO Busted | WordStream
myth: Links from Article Syndication and Press Release Distribution are Worthless.
src: SEO Myths: 5 Myths About SEO Busted | WordStream
myth: Your site will be banned if you ignore Google’s Guidelines
src: Top Ten Organic SEO Myths
myth: Your site will be banned if you buy links.
src: Top Ten Organic SEO Myths
myth: All paid links are evil.
src: Website SEO: Link-Building Myths and Illuminating Facts (Part 1)
myth: H1 (or any header tags) must be used for high rankings.
src: Top Ten Organic SEO Myths
myth: Adding H1 tags to keywords directly help in SEO
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
Scott’s Take: Google does recommend header tags, and think it helps, but of course it is not a requirement.
myth: SEO copy must be 250 words in length.
src: Top Ten Organic SEO Myths
myth: You need to optimize for the long tail.
src: Top Ten Organic SEO Myths
myth: Submitting your links to directories is the best way to improve your ranking.
src: Blogging from the Brave Programmer – 10 SEO Myths to watch out for in 2010
myth: Submitting your site to hundres of general directories will increase your rankings.
src: Website SEO: Link-Building Myths and Illuminating Facts (Part 1)
myth: Dynamic URLs are bad for the site.
src: Blogging from the Brave Programmer – 10 SEO Myths to watch out for in 2010
myth: Dynamic URLs are bad for the site.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: Nofollow incoming links from other sites are no good.
src: Blogging from the Brave Programmer – 10 SEO Myths to watch out for in 2010
myth: I’ll see results from SEO quickly.
src: Top 10 SEO myths revealed
Scott’s Take: quite contrary. SEO results often focused on the long-term horizon.
myth: Visitor numbers to my site is an important element of SEO.
src: Top 10 SEO myths revealed
myth: Internal Links don’t matter.
src: SEO myths de-bunked: Myth #6 – Internal links – S.Joy Studios
myth: The more internal links the better.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: Google Adwords are an easy alternative to search engine optimization. Also, they’re more effective.
src: SEO Myths De-bunked: Myth #5 – Google Adwords – S.Joy Studios
myth: If I click on my own links a bunch of times, Google will be tricked into thinking that my site is awesome.
src: SEO myths de-bunked: Myth #1 – Link Clicking – S.Joy Studios
Scott’s Take: This is a myth. However, google does use the bounce rate as a search ranking factor. So, if you click on your site and stay a while, you can impact your bounce rate a little which in turn can improve your ranking.
myth: Leaving your website’s link in blog and forum comments is great for SEO.
src: Website SEO: Link-Building Myths and Illuminating Facts (Part 1)
Scott’s Take: Most of the links in blog and forum comments are nofollow-ed. Consequently, google does not give those much pagerank value. However, if you leave thoughtful comments, you will actually see your traffic increase. In addition, you will likely see more people linking to you. However, if you leave bogus comments, people will think you are spam.
myth: WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, etc. Themes are/are not optimized for SEO.
src: Some thoughts on SEO | WPShout.com
myth: You need / don’t need a plugin for SEO.
src: http://octavity.com/
Scott’s notes: Some themes come already optimized with SEO, Some themes need the plugin. Also, too many SEO plugins and are worse than having no SEO in your wordpress at all.
myth: Using Robots.txt is the safest way to keep a page/site from being crawled.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: Adding Canonical URL tag to a page will stop the bots from scanning the page.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: Using a meta nofollow header tag on the page will “block” the search engine from crawling the page.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
Scott’s Take: the safest way is just don’t post it on the internet.
myth: Adding a plugin like the AllinOneSEO puts your blog into auto SEO mode.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: Changing the crawl rate settings in Webmasters tools console will change the Google Crawl rate once and for all.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: Linking to authority websites will help your reputation.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: Adding a WordPress (or any) Blog will automatically fix your site’s SEO.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: Sitelinks appear only for websites who have a high PageRank.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: A deep directory structure is bad for SEO.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
Scott’s Take: Google does recommend against a deep directory structure unless it is really required by your site.
myth: All external links should be nofollowed to protect your pagerank.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths
myth: Bolding out keywords on the content helps.
src: Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths

Scott’s Final Take:

Obviously, not all of these myths should be taken as Gospel. As with normal fictional stories, there is often a grain a truth that can be found in the myth.

For 80% of the small and medium business websites out there, Search Engine Optimization should be 20% of your web activity. The rest of your activity should be concentrated on generating the absolute best, unique, and new content for your targeted market niche(s). I know one of the Myths of SEO is about quality. However, I have found in my experience that most websites are just not producing enough new, unique, fabulous content. Start there. As long as you follow the major beginner guidelines for SEO, you will be fine.

What are those guidelines? I’ll leave that for another post. In the meantime, you can look at these other important references used to verify the myths above.

Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

Google’s SEO Report Card – Google Webmaster Central

YouTube – GoogleWebmasterHelp’s Channel

SEOmoz | Beginner’s Guide to SEO – Single Page Version

Search Engine Ranking Factors | SEOmoz

SCNA The path to craftsmanship as a software developer and more.

scott — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:24:32 +0000

Well, I am attempting my first live-blogging session. I am at the Software Craftsman North America conference in Chicago.

Here are my notes, I’ll refine them later and and plan on updating them as I go.

Updated 2009-08-27. I added bookmark links to the different sessions. Still plan on editing some of this to make it more readable.

Here’ are the sessions I attended and took notes for:

4:30PM – Craftsmanship Under Pressure, Uncle Bob Martin

CD sent to him. Macintosh 128 screen.

Let’s talk about the Universe Ends. Where does it go? How does it end?

-Heat Death. Entropy always increases. Comes out of hawking radiation. All the heat disappears. Universe rate of expansion is increase. Kinetic energy is increase. Conservation of energy. How can kinetic energy increase if energy is conserved? Dark Energy.

Dark Energy is not mysterious. It’s negative energy. Cards. What is the mass of the cards? Its the energy content. As it grows into potential energy grows. The mass measurable as the cards lift up. Take all the rocks floating around in space into the Earth. Earth weighs less than the sum of the parts, becasue potential enery. The earth weighs less . It went into E = mc2. — Where it is a negative energy. — Enough of that.

Professionalism. Abandon all hope. ARe you a professional? What is a professional? How do we define the term? This is the craftsmanship conference. Professional vs. Craftsman? A professional has a different connotation. Not always the same. Professional carries a note of responsbility. A professional is always responsible to someone. What is a professional?

Defined (at least one aspect) AS someone who is cool under pressure.

What is pressure? Why do we feel pressure? What is a big definition? People want things from us? What we want to do code? We want to code, we don’t care what we code. they don’t care what we care. They want somehting else. In order for us to practice us our art, we have to make promises.

Pressure is the fear we will break those promises. The commitments that were made on behalf without our input, we will miss.

Ugly truth, we have to make commitments. You are going to have to make commitments. You can just waive the agile flag. We have to make commitments. We have to eat. YOu can waive the agile flag or the xp flag. When you make commitments, you will be under pressure.

How do you manage pressure?

-Under commit, over deliver

-Drink (from audience) LOL. Uncle Bob:

Learn the trick, always commit to less, and over deliver. YOur boss or customers. YOu will make your committments and more. One little bit of strategy: Technique:

HOw do you estimate? ”badly” from audience. We must estimate. Add 10, multiple 3, goes to the next unit (day, week, month, year, century). PLanning poker, etc.

Notion: don’t provide a number. Give several numbers. Give a mean and a standard deviation. We will be done: the mean is Jan 12, standard deviation of three weeks. 60% chance to fill three week window.

Estimate means Guess. crowd LOL.

1950′s purt techniques. forget the diagrams. the interesting part is the estimation mechanism. Assign it three numbers. Estimate Best case (incredibly) Then do the worst case, if everyone is destroyed in the reborn a century later. Then the nominal case. Everything goes about the normal way. It will take. With the three numbers, look up purt. Calculation will give you a mean and a standard deviation. you add them all up the probabilistic variables. We are then get a nice spread. Spread should be pretty wide. Give the measurement of what you don’t know. AS we go back, we can narrow it through the different iterations, we have a better estimate of deviation and mean.

In the problem, In almost every case, you are always on the wrong side of the mean. Even if you iterate, move the mean, move the mean, you will be on the wrong side of the mean.

What do you do? Manage the expectations down. —Reaction of most developers: as the pressure mounts, we rush. Everyone wants us to rush. Think about it, very carefully. is there some way to go faster. Deliver less. Work more. Decrease Quality.

If you rush, Rushing really means, you have to leave something out. Something you were doing before, you have to leave. YOu can not write code faster. You can not increase the rate of typing. Something has to disappear. Work more hours, recreate time goes down. Deliver less, fEatures goes. Dropping Disciplines, quality decreases. AS you rush, caring disappears. When you rush, you are careless.

A professional does not rush. a professional can move the mean in the correct direction. We can drop features or scope, but not by reducing quality. Sometimes, you just have to buy the debt. Code is not money. There is no bank you can borrow code from. Technical Debt is a silly notion. We’re not in debt. We’re just made a mess. A mess slows us down. WE can not go fast by slowing down.

As soon as you go down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. You can not rush, and think you’ll go back to the code where you dropped exception tests, if tests, analysis. YOu will respond to bugs, but you will not go back. you will always be rushing.

So, stay professional, No Rushing.

Principles:

If we are principles: Principles of Professionalism or Craftsmanship. Borrowed from doctors.

First, Do no Harm.

First, Do no harm to your code, to the code’s behavior, to the structure, to the customer, to the client, to the product.

Use the powers that you have for good not evil. Use the powers for defense not attack. You should know. QA should find nothing. If you work your code correctly, they should find nothing. Our expectation should be no harm. If QA finds bugs, we’ve harmed the system.

How do we prevent doing harm to function of our code? How do we know if it works?

Tests: Unit Tests, Coverage Test, Regression Test.

Every line of code, should be test with another line of code. Every function should have a new test function. a 1 to 1 ratio. wE do not manually test code. We automate those tests. Tester in Development. We can apply this as do no harm. Uncle Bob school of programming: TDD is critical.

Do no harm to the structure of the software. Just because it works, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t connasence needs to be properly tuned. We must be able to make changes to software without exorbitant costs. No software that lives, stays the same. The software changes over time. The customers evolve, the purpose evolves over time. The software is doing things utterly different things than the original deployed.

How do you make something easy to change? DRY, Clean, Simple, TDD. HOw do you make software easy to change? YOu change it. WE design it in small bits. Force us to make constantly changes. If it is difficult to change, then we change it. Changeable software is something that has been change. Mercifully refactor the software. We keep changing it. The very act of refactoring is what makes the system flexible. The very act of changing is what makes it flexible.

If we are going to change it, we must test it. Try to attain 90% to 100% tests. There is no outsourced QA. 1000′s of users, the tests keep users.

Leave it better than you found it. (Boyscout rule). When you check out code, always check in code that is better. Never check it in dirty. If you have tests, if you clean it. You can keep it flexible. YOu will have done no harm.

Can you do your unit tests after? Sometimes, it can be done that way. testing GUI’s can be done afterwards.

The time between the code and the test, should be very very small, should be hopefully negative. (write the test first). How do you know if you when your tests are done? When all the tests are done? What the user smiles? When people in the back to be smiling (QA, Business Analytsts)? Automated Acceptance tests. If you ship a product, because you say, i think we are done, you have lost.

NO HARM.

When are you most likly to harm the system?

When you are under pressure, rushed. So, the professional: sits back and will not stop refactoring, will not stop testing, and will have to lose something else. Is it acceptable to work overtime? Of course, if it is a small time frame? a week. 60 hours a week for two months, you are entering the not caring, tired, careless mindset. What do you make at this point? Too late. What do you change? Cut Scope. —Professionals know how to have uncomfortable discussions. They understand it, and they understand the constraints, you will take some lashes. Move the Date. — Miss the date, Have the discussion early about the date being missing. Have it as early as you possibly can.

Kent once said: when I am feel pressure, I slow down. I focus even more on my disciplines and be even more careful, write more tests, because of the temptation.

Principle #2 Work Ethic

Not just coding for our own joy. We will work for our employer and deliver value to our employer. People focus on how the software is written, beautiful, pretty, clean code. The temptation is there on the technical. Deliver value to our customer. How much time should we devote to our employer or customer? As much as you are paying for. 40 hours a week. That’s kind of the number. Those 40 hours a week is the work ethic. That’s the property of the employer. What about learning time? Employer is not responsible for buying books, sending you to conference. That’s your responsibility. Cory Foy – The core of craftsmanship is developers taking responsbility for your own career. You are absolving your employer to guide your career path. They don’t buy yoru books, training time, conferences. YOu should set aside 20 hours a week to work for yourself. — If you didn’t buy into this, you are not a professional and not in the right career.

Should the doctor go buy books on his own dime, extra hours, going to conferences on his own dime? If they do that, then we need to do that.

Work Ethic under pressure. What do we do as the pressure mounts? 40 hours. Professionals do not abandon their ethic. You carefully manage your overtime. If you putting in 50 to 60 hours, then you are losing

Principle: Know your Field: Software Developers. (SOLID) Mike Feathers. HOw many do you know the 21 design patterns? Do you know your field? If I pull out a doctor? Can you write down the major bones of the body? Even if the doctor was a psychiatrist, we would expect. We should know several languages, static type langugag,e dynamic language, functional language, logical language. (fourth, everyone should learn fourth) Structure and interpretation of computer programs book, Must go buy that. The lectures are all online. You can see the original authrors, you should know your field, this stuff of software developers. WE associate the waterfall method. It was a godsend during the 1960′s and 1970′s. it added structure to projects, and it kind of worked. Things in waterfall that still are valuable. It’s not all evil. How many do you know: Book: structure design – Meiler pages jones book. Book: STructure systems analysis. What decisions got us here. go back and learn the field to help you know what is next and

Data flow diagram. Ainse Schneiderman chart. UML diagram. Functional decomposition (structured systems analysis). David Parnise, Accepted testings, 20 years ago (or more) use tables to describes systems. How many of you can write Fundamental algorithm write it down. quicksar?

Principle: Continuous Learning. Professionals have a tendency to never stop learning. Much more beyond that. WE live to learn. wE love to learn. its a passion. It’s a passion. We practice software due to learn. There is a correlation between software development and musician. It is over-represented by musicians. Jugglers are over represented in the software development group.

Different kinds of learning all important.

READ. Read books, blogs, articles, twitter. Read all the time. Constantly reading. Doing Lunch and Learns. Do them all the time. Pick something strange. It could be something that was completely different. clojure. Learn clojure. Don’t do anything, fiddle with it. Step outside your comfort zone. Leave your comfort zone and broaden it. How many java, ruby, c, smalltalk programmers? Learn lots of languages. We’re not java programmers, we’re not ruby programmers. We are programmers. Imagine artists that purposely chose horrible media to practice their craft.

Video described APL of the words for the game program. Runs the tests. Within 5 to 10 minutes, conway’s game of life. The expressive power in the APL language must be enormous.

Principle: Practice. How do we practice? Musicians. Most of the time, practice is spent at home, spent doing little parts, scales, etudes, backwards, forwards, exercises. to make them better. Doctors practice. You practices. How do we practice as an industry? WE haven’t really developed. We’ve begun. Kota around the coding around the dojo. Coding dojo dot org. Learn some pratice algorithms. Write the algorhtims. for the list reversal. do the bowling game. Do these pratices. Game of Life. TDD as if you meant it. three or 4 hour.

Martial artists, muscians, athletes, doctors, lawyers. They all partice. So should we.

Question: if we are doctors, who hold oursleves responsible instead of AMA, BAR Associations. Hopefully, we don’t need the big groups. Maybe we Create small groups, reference groups, tell the truth about each other.

Question: why learn quick sort. It helps and you know your carft. know your domain.

3:00PM – Test-Driven Learning, Getting out of the Shu box, Bobby Norton

DRW Training Group. Bobby Norton

How can we make accessible as possible? By using a learning test approach instead of throwing the pick axe book. Let’s look at some Ruby code. I didn’t started at the top.

Starting at the top: Metaprogramming Ruby.

Starting level one down. “How long will it take me to master aikido?” Answer: ”How long do you have to live?”

Book: Mastery: The keys to success and Long-term fulfillment, George Leonard.

Start at the lowest level. Path to mastery. Ho

Know there stuff really well in their own world. Theemes: Practice

Pratice isn’t just a verb. It’s a noun. Its an accumulation of practice is a results of work. Practice is something you have. Something you are.

The Long Road: The master and the master’s path are one. So, there is a mastery curve. Series of plateuas with learning. happening at new context. New languages, new companies, new projects. – The Andy Hunt Pragmatic Learning book. The Dreyfus model. Bobby Norton’s impelementation:

People tend to over emphasis their own learning.

Shu Stage:
Novice – Advanced Beginner: Follow rules and recipes. Learning foundations. Advanced Beginners: applying practices. together.

Ha Stage:
Competent developers: troubleshoot on their own, Can solve problems they haven’t faced before. Not inventing new frameworks.

Proficient: Can reflect on their performance

Ri Stage:
Expert: Continually looks for better ways of doing things, Advances the state of the practice, works from intuition, not from reason, doesn’t need rules. How would you advance the practice of software craftsmanship?

Repeated study is not enough.

Science, Feb 2008. Critical Importance of Retrieval for Learning, Karpicke and Roediger.

Keep the pair in the study session and drop from the testing. Or Drop from the Study session, keep testing session. Clearly show, testing is not passive. It’s active thinking which reinforces the learning and more engaged rather than plain repetition.

How you practice is very important more so than just practicing? Practice means repeated testing and recall, not merely repeated study.

Seeing working code doesn’t lead to mastery. “Search-driven development” and cookbook programming without testing or without reflection results in career novices.

Reading code does not make one a master. How much code can you write, from memory? That’s the real test following instructions from the test?

How can you move from Shu to Ha more quickly implemented? Recreate the Karpicke and Roediger study in software.

Enter the Shu Box:

http://www.github.com/bobbyno/shubox

Similar generator

shubox learn_ruby

spits out a sandbox, that can be used to learn ruby. Use the Pick Axe book. API documentation: Look at the api, A test driven learning.

rake

tree .

mate .

The idea is to give someone new to ruby to learn about it. both the built-in libraries and new classes. Create a bunch of empty testing declarations. Set some goals for youself. Arrays of strings. ranges, Call the API’s, The idea is to drop dead simple test driven learning. We now have our own knowledge repository. We can save this sandbox. Check in to git or svn to see that repository of test driven learning code. Experiments. Exploratory tests. It’s not just ruby. We could use this a different language. Try to revisit the test in a week to see if you can re-do it in a week. Code it from memory. Often times, unit tests are pushed at the back of the book instead of pushing it in the front of the page. The idea is to build a new generators. Java/ruby generator.

Comments from the Students:

Gave you these 9 questions. Know way to know the way to solve how to solve the questions. Reinforcing the how to solve the problem. Can you go back without referencing documentation? Wise person knows where to find the right answer. Know what you need to know or master essential skills.

Barriers of entry for students? with multi-languages? Is it difficult?

shutting down for battery saving.

2:45PM – The Business of Craftsmanship, Kevin Taylor, Micah Martin, and Carl Erickson

Kevin Taylor, Obtiva
Micah Martin, 8th Light
Carl Erickson, Atomic Object

First up. Kevin Taylor. Obtiva. started as an Extreme Programming Shop. When Dave Hoover onboard, Dave brought on apprenticeship. Professionalism, Passion, Learning.

Micah Martin, 8th Light. 3 years. Consultant to help companies to teach people to write code. Started 8th light structured, He was a martial artist. Followed philosphies. Constatntly learing about the craft of martial artist. Jujitsu. Wanted to do software as a way to practice from martial arts. When you study martial arts, you study from a master. Learn from them everyday for years, then you try different martial arts from different masters. Hire apprentices that are devoted.

Carl Erickson, Atomic Object, started summer 2001. 24 people. Started with Extreme Programming practices. University software development was ineffective. All of the stuff that needs to be done right that is independent of technology and domain. User Experience is not extended. Pride in craft, learning through doing.

Questions: Caring about the craft, continuously improvement. How do you continuously learn new technology as a return on investment? Micah says learning is critical, lunch and learns, send to workshops. Carl states that you rotate clients, rotate types of technology. There is a struggle between utilization and fun time for employees. Kevin looks for people who already learning who are passionate about technology. As far as conferences, standing policies, with experiments, journeyman swaps. Instead of setting them to a conference, send them to a different company with mutual swap. Chicago Tribune ran a program, swapped two employees.

Questions: How beneficial was that to the business? Why do it? Kevin. cross-pollinate. Is the side conversations that make fun and learn. Micah sent someone to obtiva. Lost money on the deal, but that was a good investment on the project.

Question: Craftsmanship, How do you sell clients with apprentices working on projects? Fake until you make it. Built a company. Carl, then said that as you go, they got busy, the apprenticeship, you need to find a journey or master. A model that makes a master or journey attach them personal responsiblity apprenticeship. Micah doesn’t charge clients for apprenticeships. Clients were easy sell. Kevin @obtiva said these tips: it has to be structured. If no ownership from the master/journeyman with an apprentice. There is not a value. The second step is hire the appropriate apprenticeships. Often times, the apprentices have been in the program that is hired out.

Question: Apprenticeship, How does someone senior in one area branching into a junior area? Kevin – Obtiva states: No matter where you are in your career you can be an apprentice. To be successful, you need to let go of your pride. Surrender your pride so you can learn from the master. How is apprenticeships different from intern? Apprenticeship is part of the team. Apprenticeship is more like a junior developer. What’s more of the potential versus credentials? Look for diamonds in the rough that obtiva can be polished. Junior developer is ready to hit the ground running with tasks ready to run.

Question: How / When is an apprenticeship a failure or success? Micah: Evaluated: not getting results. Carl says we’ve had about 25 or so apprenticeship.

Question: Use Apprenticeship, as a community outreach, to open a development world? Academic is a good thing to do for the students even if they are not hired. Even the ones that are not worthy, they go away happy. Micah, learning.

Question: Directed learning: How is it different from paired programming? Is the directions? Joel on Software, the stack of books for the internship. What is more formal? There is making coffee (joke). Carl: Given apprenticeship reading and writing assignments. Bring it together. Try to experience the embedded, web, work. Micah: tries

Question: Shop that isn’t shy about software craftsman. How do you compete with other shops? What’s the face to your clients? Kevin says: I love outsourcing to India, because they often come back to the U.S. looking for work here. It’s more of a team dynamic. Micah: a lot of a their clients come from failed projects. Craftsman gives them competitive advantage.

Question: Do you do work offsite? Carl: do everything in-house if we can. One of the reasons the apprenticeship program works well. Does the master then review the work. What’s the ratio of Masters to apprenticeship? How much does non-billable time to master? No permanent pairing. One Mentor for each apprentice. It’s the mentor’s job. Carl: someone is mainly responsible. The transition of someone out of apprenticeship.

2:00PM – What if Bacteria Designed Computers? , Ward Cunningham

@wardcunningham

What challenge is? What can I show you that is new? Playing microprocessors. Multi-processors out of microprocessors. New Way to programming, even if the old way is programming is good. This is different.

Inspired by Biology. Any cell has a bio-layer. Receptors that receive signals and then mechanical shift and catalyze a reaction. One receptor will then trigger a signaling cascade. Instead of wires. It does it by chemical concentrations in fluids. Wired up little computers with simple. Signals on the outside of the wall. Computers will work on receptors.

Graceful motion of motors of a flag waving.

Cybords. All the chips are the same, just different programs. Powered by batteries. Any parts can use electricity. Wires are prototype.

Bynase. Invented his own protocol. Example.

send noise. : while true if value < random pulse low else pulse high wait for some micro second.

receive noise: result = 0 for 100 times if input is high result = result + 1

In tenth of second, I can pass large values into kinetic art.

Want to work quickly. One Day Projects. Construction Technique: Skin wire twice the bare wire you need, then slide the insulation.

Very interesting slideshow on the soldering of light, magnet, 8 pins, Have more good fortune to Build small, because 8 pins come together.

How to show three pins to show numbers to make interesting puzzles to solve.

He has open sourced arduino’s. Recommends reading Science magazine. article, March 2008. Pulse generator. blinking LED. Chemical reaction of dynamics, engineered circuit of concentrations of a biological inspirations.

Question: How similar to Fluent interfaces? Not sure. But from explanation, the cascading nature of biology sounds similar to fluent interfaces.

Question: How to find the chips for a buck? digikey. Dorkbot. Build out of radio shack parts.

—Second, Why do it? For the experience. Love XP programming. When you are resource poor, its not about algorithms. Created a new assembly technologys Codosome-2: Java program, models adar programs. Bring Agile development and TDD with junit, applications that run on a $1 part. that simulates the code out to the part. Not running java. Build model, test it run it java. Then burn onto the part. He reinvted Lisp into java. Refactor into intellij to simulate the part of the sync pules. Instead of writing output bits. Its just writes to printscreen. Then, he converts it to the bits of the piece.

—Next? Mu-fourth Prototype. Wiki for building programs for these minimal hex code.

11:30AM – Grand Unified Theory of Software Design, Jim Weirich

@jimweirich Edgecase LLC Slides Jim Weirich

Caring about your code. Technical Interviews over the phone to come up with level of technical knowledge. Looks for passion.

What do you look for in a good design? What criteria do you use between design a and design b. —Most answers are ummm? Articulate the design.

Starts to talk about Light, Electricity, Magnetism. electromagnetic waves in Maxwell’s equations. Advising people not to go into Physics in 1800′s. Everything is figured out. Crowd LOL’s. We have a good understanding of matter. Describes the matter. 1 in 3000 particles tended bounce in radically different angles. Totally unexpected. Matter as not perfect. Raisins in the oatmeal. Description of Atom. Proton surrounded electron cloud. More forces Strong Nuclear force, Weak Nuclear force, Gravity, Electromagnetism. Can’t we combine them into a single theory? Search for this theory: Grand Unified Field Theory of combine the four forces. The Goal of Physics.

Back to “What do you look for in a good design?” Simplicity. No surprises. Readability. Satisfy Functional Requirements. Good collaboration between implementation. Beauty, Flexibility, Reusability, Sensibility. Separation of concerns. Some principles: SOLID, Law of Demeter, DRY, Small methods, Design by Contracts. Way more forces. Is there an overall theory that brings these principles. What atoms are underlying all good software designs?

Sheldon Jordan.

Control Coupling

Sheldon, Would drop by books. Coupling and Cohesion. Types of Coupling: Less Coupling (good) no coupling vs. More Coupling (bad) Content Coupling. Control Coupling. Method has a “flag” parameter. The flag controls which algorithm to use. Symptoms: Method has an or in it. Example: Array.instance_methods (returns the list of instance methods). Control Coupling – Examples: Include the superclasses? Array.instances_methods(true) Array.instances_methods(false)

Failed to extend well to Objected Oriented solutions.

Connascence

What every programming should know about object-oriented design, By: Meilir Page-Jones 1996. — Third section got into what is a good design. Connascence. Two pieces of software share connascence when changes in one requires a corresponding change in the other.

CoN -Connascence of Name. Agreement between the name of the definition of the name of method. Locality is important. Rule of Locality. Modules/Classes vs external.

CoP -Connascence of position. Order of elements matter. Small number not a problem. Large number. A solution is convert a Connascence of Position to Connascenceo f Name.

CoN < CoP Rule of Degree convert High degrees of Connascence to weaker forms of Connascence. Convert. Rails work. Finders takes keyword arguments.

CoM -Connascence of Meaning. Example: Method of Value 1 or Value of 2. If “1″ then given, If “2″ then not given. Must be consistent. Easier solution is convert CoM to CoN. Use Constants.

Contraneascence. Mutual Exclusive values. example: XML Class library – Node class. Graphing Library. Node class. Namespaces to help avoid name conflicts. No answer in ruby. Selector Namespaces.

Connascence of Algorithm — Example of DRY: or using remote library. Oops, I missed this, checking email.

CoT – Connascence of Timing. Racing of Timing. Mutual Exclusion. Lock Threads. Transactions.

CoE – Connascence of Execution. Example: swapping of lines of execution. Orders of execution are required.

CoI – Connascence of Identity. —Two copies of an object in memory. Two different instances that are synchronized. Objects that you are operating is important. Rails doesn’t offer identity mapping.

CoV – Connascence of Value — Values are related within class. Constraint programming. example: Rectangle.

Lots of Rules of Connascence

Static vs. Dynamic Connascence

Summary: Connascence can possibly be the start of a Unified Theory of Software Development. This slide is on gituhub.

10:45AM – Demonstrating Responsibility: The Mindset of an Agile Leader Craftsmanship, Christopher Avery

@ChristopherAver

ChristopherAvery.com Slides:

Technology Transfer. How to move from basic research to application. Rapid High Technology. Relationships between everyone and facilitating from basic research to industrial strength.

Accidental Expert. Shared Responsibility. When a team really clicks, or any relationship, There is a felt shared ownership of the outcome of the project. If shared responsibility is not there, We’re not sharing, helping, trusting. If the shared responsibility,

His Career has been how to teach smart people to learn shared responsibility?

What is personal responsiblity and how does it work? How the Mind works. Background processing that goes on behind the scenes. something we don’t normally pay attention to.

Quote: No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. –Albert Einstein.

We create our own problems. We usually live in our intellectual mind.

The Leadership Gift – Unlocking your minds power to.

How you respond to a problem. What happens when things go wrong? When things are going really good. we don’t ask ourselves: Who did this to me?

Estimates to 100′s to 1000′s times a day does your mental process goes on.

Step 1: Trigger. Problem – Anxiety, Uh-oh, Crap, Doh! we’ve got a problem.
Step 2: Lay Blame. (Attribution process). The first step: mind offers an answer. it’s not my fault. its someone else. There’s nothing we can do to fix it, because its someone else. The problem stays, until the other changes. This is merely a mental state that is transient. It comes everytime something goes wrong. —Where’s my keys. First thought? Who took my keys? The milk is empty in the fridge, Who emptied the cartoon? Who did this to me?
–Its not resourceful. You can either get stuck there at blame or get off of it (blame)!
Step 3: Justify. Story, nothing to do. Victim of circumstances beyond my control. Cause effect scenario. Come up with excuses. The reason we blame and justify is because we’re human. There is nothing wrong with this process. This the way our ego protects ourselves. It’s not a resourceful state of mind. Its a coping state of mind. Research says: our emotional mind. The smarter you are the better stories you weave why there is nothing they can do with this problem.
Step 4: Shame. I must have done this to myself. You feel bad. ”I’m stupid. I’m a dumby.” Negative self-talk. It’s a transient state. We can get off of this state. We should spend very little time. The personal shame says that we’re something wrong with me. The assumption says if you think there is something wrong with you, there is nothing wrong with you. You’re human. Normal conditions for everyone.
Step 5: Obligation. You have to do this. You are required to go to meetings, paperwork, some thing you have to do. Shame and obligation gets things done. It’s barely adequate to get it done. Want to vs. Have to mode. Barely adequate to get a pass. These are all coping states of mind.
Step 6: Responsibility. We feel resourceful. We feel at cause. On top of our tasks. a sense of ownership. We don’t get to responsibility until we get through these paths.
Other Steps:
- Quit: when shame and obligation are too big. you just check out or just quit. When you are on your conference call, you are just not getting what you want. you don’t know how to check in. So, you simply check out. if you have highly engaged customers. Will predict profitability, stock price, — To get Highly engaged customers is to get Highly engaged employees. Engages. 5 point lickert scales. 20 employees will 5. 50% will do 3 to 4 (show up for paycheck). 25% are checked out employees not engaged in there business.
- Denial: Blissfully ignorant of the problem.

Growth only happens in the space between the Obligation and the Responsibility. Refuse to blame, Refuse to justify, you Refused to Shame and beat yourself. Learning and growth happens at Responsibility.How to

3 keys to Responsibility (Tool)

Intention – The Winning Key
Intend for the rest of your life, Get to a position of responsibility.
Awareness – The Change Key
Simply aware of when you are in Blame, What language are you using? What is it like to be you in each of your mental states. Catch yourself) Copy of the poser. Wallet Card. Hang the poster. Figure out your
Confront – The Truth Key
Admit, that you are stuck in your own perspective. It is a point of view. Face yourself. What is true that you are not saying. 10,000 times more difficult than the first two keys. We avoid this like the plague. This is where the real growth lies. When you are willing to do this, you can create positive anxiety. Pertubation (spelling?) See things in more complex.

Growing anxiety vs. Coping Anxiety. Growing.

Every upset is an opportunity to learn.

See Results slide.

10:00AM – “There and Back again” (Staying technical throughout your career), Dave Astels

“How to Mix your Metaphors”

Twitter@dastels - dastels at engineryard.com

The tweet of SCNA presenters looks like Software Jedi. Themed Sta Wars intro. Excellent theme.

“Then you were asked to lead a team. …. this is the path to the dark side”

Coders who love to code.

Managers who love to manager.

Don’t Mix them Up! Do what you love. Stay Technical.

In and out of Technical Roles. There and back and again.

Overview of Dave Astels Career

(TDD Book)

Big Financial Client, Money grab.

Not Fun to work at Google, Internet Search Giant.

Craftsman – Understand the Fine Details & Big Picture.

Craftsmanship, builds people up via Apprenticeship, Journeyman, Master

Mentoring:

Skills need: Mad Technical Skills & Mad People Skills. Uses Obi Wan Kenobi Wan: helps with resistant programmers and clients

So what do I do to stay technical?

Stay Current: Tons of books, Pick your area. Ruby and Rails. its hard to stay up.
Side Projects: Know your day job that you really know well.
Form a community: that you are growing inside of. Be the worst person in the band, that you can learn from the community. People better than you and worse than you.
Open Source: Find mentors, learn code.
Go to Conferences: Learn alot, Speak at conferences, Networking. activities in the halls thats what makes or breaks a conference. Hang out in the lobby to talk to peer groups.
Learn New Languages: Pragmatic Dave: Learn a new language every year. Learn something totally outside your comfort zone. Even if you dont’ apply it. It helps you think about programming from a new perspective. C3P0
Deep Technology Dives: Know what are doing inside and out.
Seek a mentor. Want someone to learn from. Be the worst person on the team. It could be someone you work with, Remote pairing, Code Reviews in Open Source.
Be a mentor: The process of explaining something enhances or solidifies. It also helps when the mentoree pushes back.
Learn to say no: Trend of companies (enterprisey). You’ve been here 5 years. Do your code.
Change Jobs as Required: Give what you can, Get what you can. Move on when you feel its time to move on. If you are good, it doesn’t matter about the economy. Don’t be afraid to change. If you are stagnating, Look for another opportunity.
Change your Organization or change YOUR organization
Resistance is not futile: If you want to code, the code. We need more patinent coders.
What would you rather be doing? -Chad Fowler (Passionate Programmer Book plug)

Questions:

Why did you leave google?

I wasn’t being as technical as he wanted to be. He couldn’t use ruby. Read post. what would you rather be doing?

Who are your mentors?
Kent Beck. Ward Cunningham. Pete Code? Aslak? Dave Hoovers, Obie Fernandez. Team at Thoughtworks.

Who are your mentees?
Presumptions, taught Dave hoovers Coaching on teams.

Language of the year?
–Brushing up on Ruby skills. Merb project. Data mapper. Haskell or Clojure.

09:00am – ”Opening Keynote: Swimming Upstream, Sprouting Legs, and Running Free”, Ken Auer

sidenote: I showed up late. So, I missed the first 20 minutes. Chicago Rainy weather traffic weather, but it was worth talking to my son and daughter this morning for five minutes longer.

Old Gaurd: Using Smalltalk in real applications when others say they can’t do it. The Old Guard saying “you can’t”.

Visonary: Reaching out and going out for the Ideal so much, that miss the boat on the end goal.

Pioneer: Considers himself as a pioneer.

Interesting side take: Is that In the Bible? — slides include picutres from freefoto.com In his career he starts reading the bible. Thinking to himself: By what standard are we to live?

1983 – 1988: Kent Beck, Ward Cunningham, talks about Design Patterns. These have a clue. Career advice. Listen to Ward and implement.

Reed Philips: Talks about how to provide value for the customer. The customer matters. He valued his employees more than customers.

Sam Adams: Any idea you had given to the cosmic cube, and only implements the good stuff. equating that to coding in smalltalk. Write code in front of people, you don’t have to perfectly in front of the customer. Make it Run, Make it Right.

Lynn Fogwell: Began his adventures in Pair programming,

Josh Mcdowell: Examine evidence of Christ historically.

Tim Bunn & Donald Dickens: Elders: What does the bible say?
Go back to the bible says. Actually follow what the bible. Many churches and people do not do that.

Dave Thomas: Object Technology International: Smalltalk, lets have it run everything from watch to a mainframe.

————–
Training Upstream

-Train other people to implement. Not impressed by college educated gradutes except Carleton University and UIUC.

Has learned more by code reading, reviews, mentors & pair programming.

One week classes weren’t enough.

implemented: Smalltalk apprentice programs: 2-3 “apprentices” worked with 1 mentor. Learned while working on their own project. One week training class

—–

Hope changed my life: (daughter)

Learned to Question: college education, government’s role, traditional church views, Mainstream worldviews.

What does God have to say about it?
Training in the ministry, not for the ministry.

Realized: MY responsibility to train my daughter vs. External Teacher. What do we do? I was brought in the stream. How do I teach differently?

Greek Model education: Take out of them regular environment doing it with 30 people at a time. Make it kind of work for everybody. Versus Homeschool which is individualized.

Old Test Culture: Duerotnomy 6:

Family Time is BIG. No conflict between education, work. Family Time is integrated into everything. Children learn at Parents work.

Vs.

Modern American Culture: Family Time is an after thought. Work is separate. Education is separate
Go to School at Night
Don’t bring Kids to work.
Work? and Spiritual?
Family Time is not central.

——

Striking Out on my Own.

“Professional Business people” – Turned a company that had zero turnover into High turnover that “make a profit, lazy people”.

1996 – 1997: bought computer at home. Create a more integrated life. A great buyout opportunity from KSC… waited. waited. –Deal fell through. “Your kidding” I wish I was. —-

Got Advice:
Four Metrics: (to measure your success of business, only one is about money)

* $tandard of Living
* Time for Family / Ministry (30 hours / week of work)
* Travel <= 12 Days / Quarter
* Work w/Innovators (Entrepreneurs & Intrapreneurs) in close teams.

How did it do?

—More money than before. Met his metrics. However, not How do I get the close teams things happening?

Apprenticeship Experiment:

— Bring up classroom-trained High Schoolers. Realize doesn’t work who don’t know how to teach themselves without motivation:

-Motivation / character
-Willingness desire to server
-Ability to Learn
-Fundamentals of Programming

———–
XP Experiment:

Software Studio: OOPSLA

Find Perfect Apprentice: Any homeschoolers looking for programming?

1999 – Opporunity: XP progroject. Lots of Training. Performance issues. Classroom, Explain, how collection worked under the seems: Taught entire data structures course in one hour and everyone got it.

————–
Continuous Learning

— Idustrial Revolution: We let the technology decide how we’re going to live.

pre-industrial resolution looked like Time.

TRY IT: Make it Happen:

Change the culture: One Step, one person.

—
String of apprentices.

When It Gets Tough: What do you do? Swimming up stream:

Examine your motives. If they are wrong, fix them. If they are right, keep at it. Fight through it. Take a step back in one direction, to go forward in another.

Role Model Studios: Work together as a family.

rolemodelstudios.com

Built a house that worked towards integrated home.

12 year old. 15 year old apprenticeship. Running Free on Rails. —

(Introduction to programming) (white belt)

Learn to Program (yellow belt):

I don’t believe we Came out of the mire, but we need to!

Other Notes from other Attendees: http://www.somethingunimportant.com/

Sparse-ness Where are you?

scott — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:28:43 +0000

While teaching web classes, I often get the question about my own website and business:

So Scott, you’re an Internet Technology Trainer and Expert, What’s your website? Where can I check out your portfolio?

I always respond with there is an old French proverb:

Les cordonniers sont les plus mal chaussés.

The cobbler’s children go barefoot.

In other words, the web consultants’ portfolio is always empty. Why is that?

Then I think to myself, when do I have the time to update my own websites?

I tend to focus my time either on my family, on research and development, or on my client work. That leaves very little time for my own site.

In addition, my own public websites (currently): scott.stawarz.com, consultchicago.com, and octavity.com, have always been used as experiments. I throw different iterations up, I try different items. I take the site down, wipe it clean, try a different approach. Many times, the experiments don’t even make it into the public record.

As I stated in my first post, I have decided to eat my own dog food. The first time I heard the eat my own dog food phrase was at a Microsoft Solutions Framework Certify the Trainer (MSF) event. The Microsoft Master MSF trainer, said in order to certify you as an MSF trainer, we want you to eat your own dog food. It was a great experience, and since that time, I have tried to follow the dog food edict ever since.

Although, as Yoda would say,

Try not… Do or Do not… There is no Try

I have basically been not doing. Stay tuned: next time, I will talk What are the steps for coming up with a Portfolio, business site, or blog?

The Journey Begins. – Eat your own Dog Food!

scott — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 03:37:44 +0000

Welcome to octāvity.

This site is a work in progress place for me to write, test, experiment, and show my wares. Of course, its a place for my clients, customers, and prospects to learn about my services. Add to that A place for the occasional reader, avid fan, or passerby to learn something new or different about Technology. The look will be changed and content will be added, but I’m not about to let getting settled into a new office and new webhost get in the way of starting. I’ll clean the about page up, and I’ll post some certification materials soon. Classes I teach, etc. In the meantime, sit back, read, learn, enjoy, and come back often.

As for a quick why of octāvity, I give lots of advice as a trainer and consultant. It’s time I eat my own dog food.