GeekGirlBlogs Podcast about Girl Geek Dinners Sydney

Check out the podcast with me about How to set up a GGD.

Scrabulous completely gone from Facebook

It's official, I hate Hasbro.

Yesterday, Scrabulous disappeared from Facebook completely after Hasbro sued them. It's been suggested that I sign up to the Hasbro application on fb but I'd rather light fire to my newly painted toenails. It was a good fb community and was well written and presented.

This is a terrible shame. Big companies triumph again. Why can Hasbro do this in Australia?

Apart from status updates and photos, that only reason I went to facebook was to play Scrabulous. Twitter and flickr can replace the others for me. Maybe this is the end of facebook, at least for me.

Spam A LOT

Photo by cursedthing used under the flickr Creative Commons license

Today I unsubscribe from Australia's biggest ticketing agent after they sent out mine and tens of thousands of other people's email addresses in a broadcast email.

I opened it thinking "cool, I might go see the Dandy Warhols" and was pretty unimpressed to see the body of the email with a listing of their subscribers. Apparently I am in the lucky 0.01% who had their email address shared with their entire mailing list and any spammers who get their hands on it.

First thought, can I trust a company with my credit card details if I can not trust them with my email address? Second thought, where do I complain about this? Go here and do complain because in Australia you can't be defended if you don't put your hand up and complain.

Degoogling My Life

Photo by markknol used under the flickr Creative Commons license

I've recently started using Google Analytics for my blogs. Yes, I'm watching you watching me.

A few interesting things have emerged from setting this up and from looking at the data it produces. The first is that Google applications are easy to register for, own and use. They make it easy to let them host your data. The second revelation is that a website can collect a surprising amount of information about you as you meander around the Interblag.

Let's go backwards and look at second things first - collecting information about the people who land on your site. Here is a quick summary about what I know about you when you visit this blog:

• your browser and OS;
• screen colours and resolutions;
• flash and Java versions;
• network location and host name;
• connection speed;
• the length and depth of your visit (the pages you read and time you spent);
• language used;
• referral sites (search engines, other sites or if you came directly to my blog);
  
• and where in the world you are.

There are many valid reasons for wanting to know this useful information. It makes it easier for software engineers that build web applications to know about and cater for the different technologies in use out there. It helps us serve the majority when building a site by knowing what is most commonly used.

This information is collected using a simple script call that looks something like this, which is generated for each of your sites:



<script> type="text/javascript" var="">gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'


<script>pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("xx-xxxxxxx-x");
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>


Now back to the idea of making it easy to give your data to Google. I often roll my eyes at friends (geeks mostly) who avoid getting a Google account at all costs. They don't want a huge company to have so much information about them. Another good friend of mine believes that no matter why information is collected, it will be used for evil. Combine those too ideas and even with a company that promises to do no evil, you may get a little nervous.

Google knows a lot about me. I use their email; docs; feed reader; blog hosting and editor; photo library; web analytics tools; webmaster tools; and their oxygen. OK, not the oxygen but they might own shares in it. They use this information to provide advertisers with targeted advertising. I imagine they have a setup like Gringots, with the servers that store the history of all our virtual wanderings. I like to believe it is protected and will not be used in a bad way.

Of course, I'm not going to jump up right now and stop using google apps due to a passing over-thought paranoia. They are easy to use. Easy to start using. They use one id and one password. They let you do what you want to do without worrying about how. They are free.

As for how easy it would be to degoogle my life, I'm not sure. What are the alternatives?

Email: I could get mail through an ISP and bring it down to my laptop. It already comes to my crackberry;
Docs: Easy, Office on laptop. Everyone has that these days. How would people collaborate on the documents though? hmmm...
Feed Reader: Use Firefox but that doesn't move with me. Maybe another web reader.
Blogging and Analytics: Easy, host a web server running WordPress or use a hosting site and track everything through feedburner.
Photos: I already use flickr and facebook for that too.
Oxygen: It's free.

Will I be doing this any time soon? Probably not, it all seems like a lot of effort. Maybe one at a time. First I need a universal id. Let's see how it goes.

The Extroverted Minority

Photo by PeterForret used under the flickr Creative Commons license

I am a member of many minorities and rather than complain about disadvantage, I find it is better to understand how other people think. That way I can explain why things are the way they are and like a good geek understanding is the bomb.

Since a friend introduced me to the oracle that is Myers Briggs, I have been entranced by the idea that people have a preference for how they think, are energised and how they prefer to behave. Let's not be ridiculous, it's a little more accurate than astrology but does not define you or me. Understanding the basis of behaviour is always revealing.

Over the years, I have spent a lot of time being the lonely extrovert in the sea of IT introverts. I won't complain because introverts are my favourite people. I do realise though that they often see me as the excited puppy or the open book.

In a fascinating conversation today with a group containing an even number of introverts (Is) and extroverts (Es), I discovered the kind of thresholds that people can handle before they feel uncomfortable in a group. According to Jung, extroverts get their energy from people while introverts are energised from within. To me, that makes introverts like superheroes and extroverts... well not. Being in a group and interacting with people makes me feel charged. Sometimes I have to stop hanging out with people or I feel I'll explode.

So back to the thresholds... the Is in the group and some of the Es found that they were comfortable with groups containing 1-6 people. Once they had interacted with these gatherings for a few hours, the Is had to have time on their own to recharge.

As a good puppy, I thought long and hard about my threshold because I wanted to contribute to the conversation. As a good extrovert, I waited for the person speaking to stop and spoke up with my number. This is the number at which I get uncomfortable dealing with that many people at once. When I said "My tipping point is around 50", there was great laughter and smiles. That was the honest truth though but it may be higher in larger rooms.

Even while I'm surrounded by introverts, I still don't quite get how they work and think and recharge but I do love the variety of people in the world. It's probably best we keep on trying to understand each other and just accept everyone for the beautiful unique snowflakes they are :)

Sincerely,
Your ENTJ

Stop. Collaborate and Listen

Photo by Tio used under the flickr Creative Commons license

As a crippling head cold ends and I roll off my couch and on to a new project in the far north of Sydney, I've taken my sick days to think through what happens when I start a new gig. Doing this at ThoughtWorks is no different to the decade I spent contracting. It's all about walking in to a new space with new faces and working out how to make a difference.

Although I may be the first person to realise, it is now clear that Vanilla Ice was talking about consulting when he sang the wise words...

Stop. Collaborate and Listen.

There is no better set of rules to follow when you are entering unknown territory, whether they take you with open arms or have been told to have you there. Let's break it down...

Stop.
No matter how brilliant you are or how much you know you can contribute to a client, don't open with that line. Stop yourself from walking in to the room and telling everyone they are wrong and that you know a better way. The fact is that until you have a good understanding of what is going on, you have no idea how to improve it. Some people are able to understand this better and get going pretty fast. You will still notice that they hold back, even for a split second.

Collaborate
If your situation is like mine and you spend your entire working life on teams then collaboration should show it's face in your working ethos. Work together with people to change the landscape, achieve the goals or to teach and learn. You have a common goal. Work together with others to get there. If you pull in a different direction to those around you then you'll hold everything up or go nowhere. Of course, none of this means that you should not say what you think is right or suggest ideas but do it with the common goal in mind.

and Listen.
Listening to people and reacting to them as you work with them is the key to gaining trust and influencing any situation. Listening does not mean saying nothing until they stop talking and then talking about what you want to say. Listening means hearing what people say, even if you don't agree with it. In order to change minds, you must first understand what you are trying to change.


None of this means that you shouldn't try to make changes. If you know a better way to do something then it is your professional responsibility to make that heard, even if no one listens. The thing is that no one will listen to you if you walk straight in the door and start telling everyone how stupid they are. I've witnessed brilliant people go down in flames because they couldn't build trust. They insisted on being given control. Influence and trust are gained through building relationships. Think about the people you listen to. They will all be people you know and trust. They will rarely be the stranger who just walked in the door.

Be sincere, if you are really there to help and not just score genius-points then people will see that. You lose nothing by taking the time and effort to show them that you are a good person who they can rely on.

If Vanilla Ice doesn't work for you then maybe you could continue listening to Eminem's Low, Down, Dirty.

Physics is to Maths...

xkcd from last week. As a mathematician, I agree with everything but the on hover comment.