The Cheese is Moving (Yet Again)
I enjoyed the little fable of Who Moved My Cheese when I read it years ago. While I didn’t find it new or life changing, I liked the message that we should always be ready for new things. Even though I no longer eat cheese (I went vegan this year), I try to be prepared for when the metaphorical cheese starts moving.
Yesterday, my manager and my team lead sat down with me in a conference room to tell me that my contract had been cut from the budget as of May 1, 2009. I was not surprised at all. I had been asking about the status of my contract for over a month. My client had lost nearly half a billion dollars in the first quarter of 2009. I could read the writing on the wall.
Still, I had been lax about preparing for the transition. It is easy to be lulled by the familiar. As a result, I had to scramble to update my resume last night and get the word out that I was looking for a new opportunity. I was better prepared than I have been in the past, but I’d still like to keep my resume more up to date.
I’ve already had several leads come my way from my Twitter tribe and the extended developer community. If I have any down time, I expect it to be brief. If you have the time, please review my resume and provide any feedback or suggestions in comments or using the contact link at the top of the blog.
++Alan
Southern Ohio User Group Tour
This week, I’ll be traveling around Southern/Central Ohio giving talks at User Groups and at least one corporate office. The schedule is:
- Tuesday, March 24th 6:00 pm Cincinnati .NET Users Group location
- Wednesday, March 25th 6:00 pm Dayton .NET Developers Group location
- Thursday, March 26th 6:00 pm Central Ohio .NET Developers Group location
Here’s the abstract to my talk. I’ll elaborate on the content more below:
Come learn about the idea of deliberate practice as applied to the craft of software development. Alan Stevens will perform (less than) amazing feats of coding and he will do it for your enjoyment in real time.
OK, I admit, that’s a pretty lame abstract. The explanation of the lameness is that I didn’t really know what my talk was about until a few days ago. I’ve had a lot of ideas in my head that I’ve been trying to put together into a consistent theme. It was only after explaining to my wife recently what I wanted to talk about, that I saw the unifying theme.
And so, dear readers, I present you with the unifying theme of my talk this week:
In order to get better, you must be willing get worse.
This means that if you want to constantly get better, you have to be willing to suck, at least for a while.
So, come to my talk if you want to learn how to suck with gusto, and as a result become a better developer. If enough of us take this approach, we might just improve the industry, at least a little.
See ya’ in the Buckeye State,
++Alan
Speaker Idol Talk at TechEd
While I was in Orlando for TechEd developers earlier this month, I participated in competition called Speaker Idol hosted by Carl Franklin. Contestants had to give a five minute presentation on a topic of their choice. I chose to explain Test-Driven Development (TDD). I also made the decision not to give a demo in such a short time.
I made it to the finals where I came in as the runner-up and won a BlackJack II Windows Mobile phone. Eric Shupps won a speaking slot at next year’s TechEd with an excellent talk that included a well executed demo.
I have embedded a clip of my talk below. You can watch the entire Speaker Idol finals here.
Cheers,
++Alan
