Robert Stackhouse

An acquaintance of mine posted a link to this site this morning. As I was reading through the blog, I stumbled on this story. It almost immediately made me recall an experience in a college 3D rendering class. When the other students in the class found out that they would be using open source software instead of commercially available 3ds Max or Maya (which are both incidentally owned by Autodesk as a result of buyouts—the packages were owned previously by Discreet and Alias), they were very close to outrage. Fortunately for him, this professor has a fair amount of diplomatic skill and convinced the students that the theories and techniques of computer graphics are portable across software packages (I am case study in the truth of this statement: I work equally well in Photoshop or Gimp and Illustrator or Inkscape because I understand the underlying technology). Out of curiosity, I googled “extending Gimp” and “extending Photoshop”. There seem to be more articles about extending Photoshop, but I would argue that has more to do with name recognition and bandwagon jumping than the number of well advertised/documented ways of extending the platform. I think I should mention that Gimp can be extended by Python (a language people have a chance of knowing before they encounter the platform) instead of a proprietary scripting language.

That I’ve seen, ways to extend (or even understand) the inner workings of software packages are unfortunately almost never mentioned in software training (even in university classes). Most often such training consists of pushing buttons in the right sequence or remembering hotkeys.

Our society has commoditized (or at least tried extremely hard to commoditize) our creative people and knowledge workers. The underlying management theory is graphic designers, engineers, programmers, etc. can be substituted one-for-one as long as they “know” the right software packages. In my experience, many managers seem to be convinced of the sanity of this approach (even after firing more than a handful of people that weren’t worth their salt—more often a result of a shoddy work ethic or a lack of creativity than a lack of software proficiency).

This stinks to me of the “I don’t give a crap about people” way of being that most companies and corporations seem to have fallen victim to. The worst part is that our workers (and workers in training) seem to have bought into this nonsense hook line and sinker. I can’t tell you how many students I’ve crossed paths with that want to go to work for a software, engineering, architecture or entertainment giant. The thinking is that bigger is better. Although I’ve never worked for them, when I think of Google, IBM, Microsoft, etc. I think more of the faceless masses of the proletariat in 1984 than I do of a better life. I’d actually like to meet my customer in the flesh and shake his hand.

When I think of companies that I’d like to work for, I usually think small (perhaps smallish) like: Always Creative or Improving Enterprises.

In schools, we should be training people to make tools, not just use them. We should teach people to be platform independent, to give them the ability to choose the right tool for the job (or build it from scratch if necessary) rather than ever only always going with the devil they know.

In this day and age, every high school aged student should be taught how to program. After all, it is not rocket science. Domain experts than can program (scientists, engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc.)  have more societal (not to mention economic) value that those that can’t or won’t.

In addition to programming skills, students should be given the opportunity to learn mechanical skills as well. As our world continues to embrace technology, the designers of the future are going to have to understand way more than just aesthetics (oh yeah, we should encourage our kids to draw too).

I agree with Rushkoff in that technology should be used to extend our humanity rather than diminish it. Technology isn’t the issue. Technology just is. We are the problem. Let us train and employ and lead whole people rather than bulleted lists of proficiencies.

O’Bannon’s Taphouse tried to friend me on Facebook. I’ve never been there before, but I know they are a local bar. Obviously, this touched a nerve, so I sent them the following message:

Trying to friend me when I have never been to your establishment is a bad idea, and more to the point a misuse of social media.

I suggest instead, creating a Twitter account, following some of your regulars, tweeting about events and specials and the like, and then following locals you don’t know (including me @rstackhouse) using LocalTweeps. But don’t just tweet about business stuff. Follow the 80/20 rule. 80 percent of your tweets should be about human interest stuff that you care about (i.e. road closures, local gov’t proposals, lost doggies, etc. whatever). 20 percent of your tweets should be about your store front. Use a human voice and people will follow you.

If people like what you are saying on Twitter, they will follow you. Some of them will like you enough that they will come to your bar the first time. After all, you are really trying to attract people that did your bar’s particular atmosphere and not everyone who will tip a glass in B/CS.

If you do this, you won’t have to employ any of that 2004 style push marketing crap anymore. Eventually you may be able to drop all your radio, newspaper, and tv spots (if you’re running any) and put that money back into your business. No one listens to that crap anyway.

Your business should grow through reputation, not strong-arm old school marketing tactics.

By the way, if you do get on Twitter, don’t send unsolicited Direct Messages. That’s just bad form. If people want to be alerted to your specials or whatever, they will turn device updates on for your account.

One way that you can actively engage people on Twitter that is above board is to search for people in your target area (B/CS in this case) who are tweeting things like “I’m bored”. See what their interests are. If you are hosting a live band, and they like live music, you might tweet them an @ message with something like the following, “@imaginary person, @imaginaryband is playing at @obannons tonight. Come join the fun!”

Thanks for helping me write a blog post by the way: http://bit.ly/9BSZo

At the last AgileBCS meeting, a really good conversation about management and/or marketing creating tasks without the appropriate resources to back them. This creates a situation I like to call “Promises and White Elephants”. In this situation, someone has promised something to some stakeholder that development knows it can’t possibly deliver on. Development exercising its due diligence tells the person who has done the promising, “Hey, we can’t possibly deliver this along with everything else you’ve asked us to do.” The warning gets ignored, and ultimately someone gets disappointed, the stakeholder, and someone gets demoralized, the developer.

This is a really sinister tactic for trying to accrue maximum potential reward and minimum potential risk on the part of the seller. The promiser, by refusing to prioritize and by refusing understand the constraints that development is working under, can always point the finger at development. Even when confronted with statements like, “We told them that this feature would take 2 weeks to implement and we didn’t think there was two weeks in the schedule to spare,” the promiser can say something like, “I thought they were just being lazy,” or, “They didn’t try hard enough,” and presto blame is expertly shifted back to development. The less I know about what is actually going on, the more I can pass the buck. More than likely, no developer will loose their job as a result of this, because management knows they have a great deal of difficulty finding good developers in the first place. The developers know this, but the damage is already done. The turnover wheel is spinning, and it won’t be long before a developer that was involved in this debacle will start looking for greener pastures.

So the result of this promising and not delivering is that, while the salesman looks good for all his hard work in chasing down leads, the company has burned a bridge and lost a potential stakeholder and will probably loose a developer in whom they’ve invested time and money grooming and training in the relatively near future.

The solution to this mess all boils down to two things: the management and the marketing department knowing the business and clear and effective communication. I’m sure there are managers and marketers out there selling orange juice that know everything in the world about orange juice. Why, I ask, then is it that I keep meeting software development managers and marketers in software development agencies that know next to nothing about the craft that they are selling?

Some might say that we arrive at this conundrum because oranges are simple and software isn’t. I ask, are oranges really that simple? Don’t they have a growing season? Don’t they have a particular type of soil that they prefer? Don’t oranges have particular nutrient and water needs? Can’t they be damaged by storms? Don’t you have to get the oranges off to processing before they go bad? Aren’t there local, state, and federal codes about the handling of foodstuffs? Don’t you have to know something about supply chain management to keep your juice from going bad on the shelf. Don’t you have to know something about your demographic to get the packaging right? I could probably think of a few more, and I’ve never had anything to do with the production of orange juice in my life. Ranching cattle in Texas is riskier than producing software if you ask me, but people do that successfully all the time. So what gives?

“If you build it, they will come,” does not work with software folks. First you have to determine a need. Then you have to set a mission. From that mission, you need to derive a vision. You need to know what needs of your users need to be met in what order. Is it more important that you have a way to login securely or have a billing system in place first? 37 Signals would defer building the billing system to get the functionality that actually matters to the user out the door first.

We all have a natural tendency to plant our heads in the sand and defer questions that make us uneasy. There have been countless articles on failing fast and doing the high risk thing first, so I don’t have much to add. We need to fight our natural tendencies, and try to answer those difficult questions first if ever we are to succeed.

Knowing the business does not come from not asking difficult questions.

A student I know penned a very eloquent article on the failures of communication between development and management. The only thing I have to add to her words is the notion that being able to stand in the other person’s shoes, trying to put their views and values before your own, greatly aids in easing communication. So does cross-training. Have someone from marketing shadow a developer for a few days, and vice-versa. Someone may argue, “But we can’t afford to do that!” I would argue, how can you afford not to. Left hand not knowing what right hand is doing rarely ever ends well. Is it better to let the schedule slip a week or to never deliver anything of value at all?

Not all features are created equal. One person should be in charge of prioritization. That person should ideally have some training in how to prioritize. I’m sure several agencies run a Product Owner bootcamp of some sort. Marketing and Management need to understand and respect this. We can’t quiet all the chirping birds all at once all the time. We can however promise everything to everone and fall down on our promises to everybody, but that only benefits the person doing the promising in the short term. People remember broken promises. You reap what you sow.

The answers may not be simple, but they are plain. Invest in figuring out how to succeed, or run the risk of failing every time.

I was watching a video of the Google I/O conference. In it, one of the speakers said that, “It’s our natural instinct to try to be a genius, but we need to try to fight that.”

They were speaking specifically about the tendency of developers to try to code in isolation, to try to cover our failures, to be closed to feedback, to try to eliminate the possibility of vulnerability, and to try be heroes (a.k.a rockstar developer).

In this video, they touched on a whole host of natural tendencies: getting defensive, hiding your code away from the world, trying to exert ownership, and trying to do it all ourselves. All of these actions have very real very negative consequences for the team.

If someone points out to you that you have a piece of code that could be improved upon, your first impulse might be to say something like, “I was working from the best information available at the time.” That would be counter-productive though. It would be better to realize that the person performing the code review is trying to be helpful and take their suggestion at face value.

We as logicians have a tendency to blurt out whatever we see when we see it. People are much more likely to take criticism well one on one or via email than they are in a large room in front of hundreds of people with their code projected on a wall. Dealing with emotions is part of working with other people. Even very logical people act irrationally from time to time. Just ask my wife.

The key to becoming better at anything is behavior modification. Do what you do. Seek out feedback from others. Think about how you did it last time, and do it differently. Then, repeat. This is the basis of Scrum.

The other day, I was reading this article entitled “What to Do if Your Name URL on Facebook is Gone - And Why You Don’t Want One”.  The basic premise was that you could redirect from your site to Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. to establish consistent branding if you were unable to secure the same user name across all the sites.

I thought I’d give it a shot.  So I added the following to the .htaccess file for my site in Apache:


<IfModule mod_alias.c>
Redirect /facebook http://www.facebook.com/robert.stackhouse
Redirect /linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/in/rstackhouse
Redirect /twitter http://twitter.com/rstackhouse
Redirect /delicious http://delicious.com/rstackhouse
Redirect /stumbleupon http://robertstackhouse.stumbleupon.com/
</IfModule>


It worked, so I added the following to my email signature line:


Robert Stackhouse

http://robertstackhouse.com
http://robertstackhouse.com/facebook
http://robertstackhouse.com/linkedin
http://robertstackhouse.com/twitter
http://robertstackhouse.com/delicious
http://robertstackhouse.com/stumbleupon


I figure there has got to be a way that I can run a script across the server log files to give me numbers on who is going to my various profiles from my email signature. Any other ideas along the same lines? An Apache hook that I don’t know about? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Establishing an online presence is not like Armstrong planting the flag on the moon. Hopefully, if you are interested in establishing an online presence, you are interested in carrying on online conversations.

Know What is Acceptable Behavior in Each Platform

Following people you don’t know on Twitter isn’t creepy. Friending people you don’t know on Facebook is. Learn the lingo. Using Twitter and don’t know what “RT” or “OH” means? Figure it out at a site like twittonary.com. People have written whole articles about retweeting

Don’t Just Throw Something Out There, Contribute to Existing Discussions and Give Feedback

Or don’t just be one-way. With as many of us as there are online, very rarely are you going to be the first to start a conversation. Seek out the places that people are already discussing the things you want to talk about.

There are No Letters After Your URL

I haven’t seen “Ph.D” in a URL, yet. The web truly is the great equalizer. The price of participation has been reduced to the cost of the equipment. This can be nil if you are using the computer at a public library. Online, the quality of your content means more than your qualification to write it (for better or for worse). Be progressive, if you are a university professor, comment on your students’ blogs. If you really want to engage people, you have to go where they go.

Seek People Out

If you are the new kid on the block, no one is going to come flock to you just because you put your name out there (with the exception of professional sports teams and big universities perhaps). If you get on Twitter, use search.twitter.com to find people with similar interests. Follow them, and they may follow you back. Answer questions for people who aren’t following you, and they’ll be more likely to follow you. If you have a close business or personal relationship with someone on Twitter, ask them if they would feel comfortable introducing you to the community. Some people will do this without prompting if you follow them.

Applying Branding

For a second, I want you to think about the origin of the word “brand”. Iron firebrands were used in the 1800s for branding livestock for the purposes of identification. Livestock theft is still a problem in the U.S. but most ranchers have moved on to tagging, tattooing, chipping or freeze-branding to identify their animals.

Corporate branding is still about identification, but for a different purpose, to show ownership of product designs or content.

As someone interested in establishing presence, you should be interested in creating your own brand, or borrowing your institution’s brand. If you are part of a larger institution, consult with your in house graphic designers about icons, logos and backgrounds (in the case of Twitter or MySpace). The degree to which you want to differentiate your icon or logo for your various accounts from that of your company is probably going to depend on your organizational culture. Consult your superiors.

If you are trying to create an individual presence, consult a graphic designer about icons, logos and backgrounds if you have the resources.

Your Twitter or Myspace background should be similar to that of your website. Similar but not necessarily identical. An example of this can be seen at chrisbrogan.com and twitter.com/chrisbrogan.  When someone clicks an icon for one of your accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. from your website, you want that consistent branding to be there at the destination URL for them to see that they are still talking to the same person.  If someone is already connected to you on LinkedIn, don’t make them guess if its you when they come across your Twitter account.  Use the same profile picture, icon, or logo across platforms.

Creating Presence for Work

If your company or institution has social media guidelines, know what they are before engaging this type of activity. Don’t know if your company or institution has social media guidelines? Contact your marketing, communication, or public affairs office.

Know what your company’s policy on responsiveness and transparency are. Unfortunately (well to me at least), not all of us are comfortable telling it like it is all of the time.

Know where to send people for help. Does your company have a customer support forum? Does your business have online help (hey, wait, isn’t that you?)?

Conclusion

This has been a short introduction and represents only my understanding of online presence. Hopefully it has been a nudge in the right direction.

Edit:

It looks like Chris Brogan wrote a post along these same lines this morning before I did that I didn’t catch until after posting this. It looks like his is more focused on the tactical; i.e. picking your social media instrument of choice. It also looks like his post is going to turn into a series. Looking forward to reading the rest of it.

I was talking to another member of B/CS Bloggers today and telling her about the Twitter tools I use. I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to persist that conversation here.

For those 3am epiphanies that I actually want people to read, I use hootsuite.com to schedule tweets for a time when reasonable people in my hemisphere are awake.

To track who’s clicking on what, so that I can tailor the way that I’m posting links to fit the audience, I use bit.ly. Incidentally, I also use bit.ly, as my url shortening service of choice.

For brand management, I am checking out splitweet.com. So far so good.

For searching for particular tweet topics I use a combination of hashtags.org, search.twitter.com, tweetgrid.com, and Google searches starting with “site:twitter.com” (i.e. google “site:twitter.com Aggie Football”).

My desktop Twitter client of choice is currently Seesmic.  It took a while to figure out how to follow and unfollow people, but once I did, it’s way better than going to twitter.com.  You just select the profile you want to follow from.  Then at the bottom you click the little button with a ‘?” on it.  Next a text box will pop up above the “?” button. Then you type in the person’s name you want to follow (I have email notifications on and they show me the usernames of new followers).  You can then hit enter or click the magnifying glass button.  Then the person’s profile will pop up with four little buttons next to it.  Click the “+” to follow.  Click the “-” to unfollow.

We also talked about Retweeting.  Generally when someone mentions you by name in a tweet or related blog post, its good to retweet that.  Or if you really agree with what someone is saying, retweet that too whether you know them or not.  It is always a good idea to spread good ideas.

A little side note about self promotion.  If you ask yourself whether or not your blog post or whatever is really adding value to the conversation, if it contains information you’d want your friends to have and if it was information they’d thank you for, promote away.  My weapons of choice here are StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us.

What tools do you use?

Yesterday at a monthly event hosted by Mayor Ben White of the City of College Station called “Coffee with the Mayor”, the mayors of two cities talked about one potential future of high speed rail in Texas. The two mayors were College Station’s own Mayor Ben White and Temple’s Mayor Bill Jones. The plan they talked about is called the Texas T-Bone. The T-Bone would run north to south along the I-35 corridor and east to west from the Port of Houston to Killeen.

Mayor White started the conversation by stating that in the past there had been several bumps in the road along the way to high speed rail becoming a reality in Texas, but that those bumps were being smoothed out due to the attention of some folks in Washington D.C. Mayor White then introduced Mayor Jones from Temple who spoke for the majority of the rest of the hour.

Mayor Jones started out by stating that he had gotten involved in the effort to bring high speed rail to Texas due to the involvement of former College Station Councilman John Happ. He then went on to say that since the population of Temple is similar in size to College Station and since Temple is located along the I-35 corridor, the people of Temple understand the need for transportation.

Mayor Jones then went on to talk about the large impact that the interstate highway project beginning with President Eisenhower in the 1950s had on this country. He then said, “I think high speed rail can have the same impact on the state of Texas as the Interstate Highway System has had on America.” Mayor Jones also said, “Elected officials all over the State of Texas are spending time, unpaid time, working on high speed rail for the benefit of the State of Texas. High speed rail will shrink this state, and make it more accessible to all the citizens of Texas.”

Mayor White mentioned that the interest in high speed rail started about 20 years ago in the State of Texas.

The first high speed rail effort in the State of Texas was the Texas TGV. This project began when the Texas High Speed Rail Authority awarded a franchise to last for 50 years to a consortium of American, Canadian and French companies (Morrison Knudsen, Bombardier, and GEC-Alsthom respectively). TGV literally is french for “high speed train”.

Mayor White said, “I’ve gotten to ride that high speed rail over there [Spain and Germany], and its a really great system.”

The Texas TGV project was cancelled in August of 1994 amidst financing problems. The Texas TGV, also called the “Texas Triangle” was supposed to cover about a 760 mi route connecting the three major metropolitan areas in the State of Texas (DFW, Houston, and San Antonio). According to Mayor White, in late 1999 and early 2000 the high speed rail effort in the State of Texas was ressurected by Harris County Judge John Eckels and others. So the Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corporation was formed. It was to be a grass-roots effort to bring high speed rail to the State of Texas. Mayor White went on to say, “[Kay Bailey Hutchinson] is a champion for passenger rail, Amtrak, in the State of Texas. It’s not efficient here. It is profitable in the north east corridor. It can go 130-140 mi/h there. Some consider that to be high speed rail, but purists know otherwise. It doesn’t have the equipment, the safety that we need.”

It was then mentioned that the T-Bone plan is planned to be a 440 mile route as compared to the 760 miles that was to be covered by the Texas Triangle. A 320 mile difference. Also, the T-Bone plan would pass through areas in Central Texas that would not have been serviced by the Texas Triangle, Bryan/College Station among them.

Mayor Jones continued by saying, “I will give President Obama credit for this. He said he wants high speed rail. He wants high speed rail european style, 200 mi/h. Texas is different, we all know that. This is a place we can build a model for high speed rail in the United States. The population in Texas is pushing 24/25 million people. They are saying 1,000 people a day moving to Texas. So the state demographer, stated that the modeled projection for the population of the State of Texas in 2040 is about 50 million people. In the time that the population is in that range, 78%, 38 to 39 million people, will live in the T-Bone mega region. It is the state and congressional leaders’ job to make sure that we have safe and effective transportation for that time. We don’t want to put more vehicles on the road that pollute. Especially in large cities where air quality is already a problem. Both passenger rail and freight rail are needed in this state.”

Mayor Jones then went on to talk about the political process already in action to support high speed rail in the State of Texas.  He then said  that, “Congressman Edwards has expressed support for the high speed rail plan that we outlined as the Texas T-Bone.” Elected officials are working towards the formation of a local government corporation called the South Central High Speed Rail Authority. He then said, “We should receive good support for our request from the Texas Caucus, as we have a good Congressional caucus that has been built over the last several years of representatives in Texas.”

Mayor Jones mentioned that funds coming from the stimulus package would have to be commited within three years.

Mayor White then interjected, “Speak to the military component of the configuration.”

“The T-Bone we were able to push because of the connection to Fort Hood,” said Mayor Jones.

Mayor White then encouraged Mayor Jones to speak about the physical footprint of the rail system.

Mayor Jones then stated that necessary strip of land forthe track would be about 80-100 feet wide. He said, ” It’s gotta be a dual track. We’ve ridden a lot of rail that’s elevated. We can do the same thing right here in Texas. We can elevate that thing and life can go on as normal.” He was speaking specifically about cattle ranching and the ability of the cattle to graze around the pylons holding up the track.

Mayor Jones also said, “The Port of Houston is a supporter. Through the Port of Houston some comments have been made that some of the cruise lines would like to have this as a feeder system. We see it connecting the major airports of the cities of Texas.”

Mayor Jones then mentioned the projected cost, “The main thing we’ve got to do to justify this expense, 12-20 billion dollars.”

Mayor Jones suggested that the track costs could be between $30-50 million dollars per mile. Those estimates were based on figures from some of the existing projects in Europe. The technology used to implement the rail system along with other factors will influence those numbers going in to the future.

In talking about the construction of the track itself, Mayor Jones mentioned that at this stage the T-Bone supporters were technology neutral. Meaning they have a preference to neither mag-lev nor steel rails.

In response to a question about the status of I-35 construction, Mayor Jones then said, “Temple will be the last component [of I-35] built to 6 lanes, and that is projected to start 2013. Six lanes is the maximum capacity.”

Talking about financing, Mayor Jones said, “We’re not looking to do this on the back of the taxpayers. We want this to be an operationally profitable system.”

Mayor Jones then talked about tax increment financing through the creation of a tax increment financing development zone. Mayor Jones talked about one possible scenario where 50% of the profits from the system might go to the company to maintain the infrastructure and the other 50% might go to the localities to support the infrastructure there.

Mayor Jones gave a short history of the demise of the Texas Triangle, “Southwest airlines and the landowners killed the last high speed rail effort in the state of Texas.”

Mayor Jones also mentioned that during nighttime hours, some European high speed systems were repurposed to handle small parcel delivery.

Towards the end of the discussion I asked, “What are you doing to involve young people? Especially young people in rural areas?” They basically stated that they were weak in that area and were looking into it.

I also wondered what the projected maintenance cost would be of such a system per year.

Since they didn’t get to far into technology and since I like to call myself an environmentally minded guy, I wondered, what are they planning on using to generate power for this system?

Since Mayor Jones indicated that the military had no plans of using the system for troop transport, I wondered what good could this do for the military community in Fort Hood? Later on a started thinking that such a system might make PCS moves easier for soldiers and their families. I also thought that this might be particularly helpful to the single soldier who doesn’t have a car while changing duty stations.

I also wondered, since this is about moving people not cargo, how does this help the folks in the rural areas between Fort Hood and the Port of Houston?

Since most of us don’t want to pay to park our cars in extended stay lots, I wondered how are people going to get to the train station?

I also wondered what this might do to increase or decrease the effects of urban sprawl, sprawl that you can see in the form of half filled office complexes and strip malls in Bryan and College Station.

A friend and neighbor of mine I talked to after the event expressed some concerns about what such a rail system would do to property values in the area.

All good questions I think. Ones I’m looking forward to seeing answered.

High speed rail in Texas sounds like a great idea to me. I think we just have to keep our eye on the ball to insure that it holds a profitable future for all of us.

Teresa Brazen gave a talk at the Big (D)esign Conference in Dallas on Saturday. At the end, someone asked a question asked a question to the tune of, “Do you think there are still so many bad interfaces out there, because not everyone knows that Interaction Designers even exist”?

I tend to think that these interfaces exist because no one is holding these people accountable for shoddy work. There is a lot that corporate America can get away with in terms of bad usability all in the name of doing business. This is a shame because I don’t believe doing things the “right way” would require a significant additional investment in time or money. This leads me to believe that most businesses are short sighted. They don’t see the long term cost of bad usability. Namely, abandoned contracts, failed projects, lack of ROI, poor reputability, etc., and I’m sure that in extreme cases lawsuits and bankruptcy are included in that set of long term costs.

While the consumer may not be aware of the masses of UX people out there, people building software have probably at least heard the term “Usability” before. So for all those crappy interfaces out there, someone somewhere probably made a decision to ignore the user in favor of “the business”.

This leads me to think that maybe if the cost of shoddy business practices isn’t a big enough albatross to force people into making the “right” decisions. Maybe we as UX designers and developers should be publicly holding these people accountable. An IxD version of the Better Business Bureau?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about damning people here. Some people have probably heard about UX and really don’t have a clue what it’s about. I’m sure that most people who relegate the user to a third class citizen below “the business” and “the system” don’t have the experience to know that those decisions are going to come back to bite them in the long run.

I think that a service similar to consumerreports.org for webservices and websites would go a long way to bringing usability into the mainstream consciousness. I wonder if the existence of the UX community is causing the delay of this advent. Google “product reviews” and the Consumer Reports site is like the fourth result. Google “website reviews” and you get a bunch of results for usability consultants. We all know that most people give up after the first page of search engine results, so it would be hard for a service that ranked websites to thrive under those conditions if one even exists. If it does, it is a well kept secret. I think that bad usability will continue to be a problem until those that know better become less concerned with making money than living in a better world.

Probably flogging the proverbial dead horse here, but I strongly believe that employers should pay for their employees to go to conferences. Here’s why:

Inspiration/Passion

Let’s face it, no matter how good your job or how great your boss, work can let the air out of your tires from time to time. Passionate people are like magnifiers for each other. Otherwise passionate people who may be a little down in the mouth about work/life get around people burning with passion, and presto, we have flame again. Conferences are great sources of re-invigoration and re-inspiration.

Knowledge Transfer

What we know, especially about working on the web is growing at a rate faster than any of us can possibly consume it. If we are gaining expertise in one area, it means that we are losing it in another. Meeting someone in a conference and listening to them talk about their technique/process is great way to bridge the knowledge gap. They may have tried things and succeeded or failed at them, and hearing about the experience of others can give you some insight as to whether or not you want to try those things yourself. That way, you can leverage the knowledge and experience of others to your own advantage rather than trying to glean that same information from a book. Reading is after all the most inefficient means of learning available. Authors are always trying to sell you something, their book. Someone you engage idly in conversation stands almost nothing to gain by telling you what worked for them or what didn’t.

Conclusion

So if you think the money saved on not sending workers to conferences is worth having hordes of post burnout hum-drum cubicle commandos on payroll, then by all means, avoid the expense.