This last year was a big one for me in one major way: it was a redefinition of my professional existence. Since the end of 2009, I’ve transformed from a professional manager to a … hmm … well, my title (however formal it needs to be) is “Solutions Lead”, but that belies a lot of what I do every day, and just using “web developer” or “programmer” — even with a “Senior” prefix — completely understates the reality. This year was really about taking all the skills and knowledge I’d acquired as a leader, and merging that back into my day-to-day development practices.

And that, as the saying goes, was only the tip of the iceberg…

I did a LOT of work. I did so much, in fact, that my contracting business is gone. Doors closed, windows shut, lights off. Permanently. I had to make a very painful call to realise that I need to focus on the three most important things in my life: my family. (There’s three of them, in case you were wondering.) To focus on them means to remove all other distractions inasmuch as is possible, and still earn a paycheque along the way (helping to support said family, of course).

Add to that Alex’s return to work after nearly four years off as a Professional Mom, working evening shifts. That meant more time as a Professional Dad, whether I liked it or not. (And I like it, really. Except for dinner time. Suddenly, I have nothing but sympathy for my parents when I was a kid.) It’s adjustment, it’s growth.

As a result of all of this, many things suffered. My hobbies (what few I have) were shelved — even my desire to blog waned dramatically, with more than a couple of blogless months. My TV watching fell to an all-time low, and I can count on one hand the number of movies I saw in the theatre (coincidentally, also the number of movies I watched during the Christmas break at home through iTunes). My health has also been … unattended, with a noticeable increase in girth and an unhealthy increase in my beer consumption (since decreased, thankfully).

But if you were to ask me if I was “unhappy”, I’d have to say “no”. Every day, my kids remind me why I’m proud to be their dad. Every day, I get a challenge in my job. Every day, I enjoy life, even if it’s only for a few moments. To say I’m “unhappy” would be a disservice (if not an outright insult) to my daily existence, and those around me.

To that end, I can safety state that I’ve:

• Been into Banff National Park on a few occasions — both warm and cold — but nowhere near enough for my liking
• Picnicked as much as we could, but again nowhere near enough for what we could have done
• Enjoyed the first brew from Calgary’s new Village Brewery
• Did some renovation work in the kitchen (and planned more renovation work for this year)
• Retaught myself the fundamentals of being a (web) developer, and merged that with the skills and knowledge of a technology director
• Lamented as I saw Choo Choo seem to grow by leaps and bounds, going from my little baby girl to a walking, talking toddler
• Finally accepted the truth, and got glasses
• Came to understand my father in ways I never thought possible, and really wished that he could be here today to see how his son (kinda) grew up
• Accepted the reality that I will only ever be a father of two beautiful girls — there will never be a third offspring
• Watched in horror as Canada succumbed to fear mongering and elected a government that refuses to listen to its own people (a terrifyingly global trend in 2011)
• Mourned the loss of one of Canada’s best politicians since Pierre Trudeau, the Honourable Jack Layton
• Experienced my first general anesthesia to get my hernia repaired … boy, I do not want to go through that again!
• Drank way too much coffee (yes, folks, that is possible)
• Similarly, also drank too much beer (yes, also possible, though admittedly it tasted really good at the time)
• Launched more projects in one year than I had launched during my busiest five years (combined) at my previous company
• Took Monkey on the SUPER SECRET MONKEY SURPRISE — a short trip on CP 2816
• Took Monkey to the Stampede, and realised to my delight (or possible horror, not sure yet) that she loves rides, especially roller coasters
• Also got the Mother of All Headaches while at the Stampede…
• Travelled to Ontario to visit with my family
• Spent a lot of time swimming in the lake with Monkey and my nieces
• Rode another steam train in Huntsville
• Visited with some old and dear friends (especially Stuart and Therese)
• Celebrated Monkey’s 4th birthday, and Choo Choo’s first birthday
• Also rode on the Heritage Park steam train
• Travelled to Red Deer to see the Backyardigans live (oh, the things parents must do…)
• Travelled once again to the West Coast for post-Christmas and New Year’s celebrations

I’m sure there’s other stuff I did, but my blog was so light on content in 2011 that … well, I’m not sure. Sure, I can try to read Twitter, but I used that in lieu of my blog, so there’s a few thousand tweets I’d need to go over. That’s a little too much. So if I’m making any resolution this year, it’s to write more blog posts.

So why now? Well, let’s go back to that second point. Today is my first anniversary of (full-time) work with Evans Hunt. While I had been kicking around here since January of last year, the full-time aspect is more recent, and in this case, also important…

…it’s Annual Review Day.

Unlike in my previous company, reviews here are very informal. Basically, you go to lunch with your department head (in my case, Allard) and one (or both) of the principals (Dan and Bill). You talk, you listen, you chat, you reminisce, and if it’s a particular bad review, I imagine you’d slink off to a bar following lunch and promptly get hammered…

After the requisite mock-disparaging comments, we engaged in what I would have (in my previous company) described as the single most glowing review I’ve ever received. And considering what I’ve done in the last 12 months, that is actually a point of note: I’ve gone from being a high-fallutin’ managerial-type who used to do real work and who spent most of his time in Outlook, to someone who was setting up web servers, writing XML parsing code, and pulling together disparate data feeds into a unified views. In short, getting shit done.

For the record, I highly value and appreciate Bill and Allard’s commentary and feedback. But I was suprised — if taken a bit aback — that there wasn’t much in the way of “constructive” feedback. In ye olde days, that was the list of things you should really “stop” doing, and start doing differently. The one that would stand out for most around here is my “passion” (I use the term loosely) towards the things I believe in. I tend to come across … well, kind of like Nicholas Cage in some of his more livid moments. But around here, it’s an asset.

There’s a point of comfort in that. I’m ancient in this business. I’m 39, and been doing this sort of work for nearly 17 years. If I haven’t done it myself, I’ve seen it and probably know someone who helped build it. I’ve gone from custom-build-everything to near-LEGO™ assembly of projects. I, like nearly everyone here at Evans Hunt, am a veteran. And veterans, as it happens, really have no time or patience for the crap that often occurs in our industry. Because we’ve dealt it. We’ve swam in it, in many cases, and somehow we’ve emerged, perhaps not smelling of flowers, but definitely not of the very effluence in which we felt we were drowning. So for a company to tolerate my idiosyncracities as a benefit (or at least tolerate it) is pretty significant in my books.

And yet, the lack of the kind of criticism I used to receive seemed … odd. I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. I suppose, in part, it’s due to our size — we’re a small company, only about 36 people, so our fewer individualities tend to stand out better against the noise that comes from having many more personalities. We have to accept them, even encourage them, because that’s what makes things tick around here. Personalities go a long way to defining your working relationship with someone. Normally, I’d be getting input like “work better with project managers”, and “say ‘yes’ more often to designers” (that’s a paraphrase, by the way — the actual feedback was more along the lines of “constructive dialog”). Here? “Please, keep on being you.”

Chalk up another phrase to add to the “Ways To Make People Feel Awesome” list.

It’s been a long year here. We’ve done a lot, and there’s still a lot to do in the remaining two months. And that’s a good thing — better busy than bored, I say. And somewhere in all of that, maybe there’s room to push a bit more.

‘Cuz, really, I just don’t feel like I’m doing my job right until someone’s calling me names.

The sun was getting low in the sky, and the horizon was nearly completely obscured by haze (likely due to the city drying out from a few days of light-to-heavy rain). The shadows cast through the downtown were fantastic, the trees (most of which now have leaves) and the fields of grass were bright green, and light glinted off the glass of a hundred skyscrapers.

And I realised — almost surprisingly — that from way up there, Calgary really does look quite beautiful.

It seems like a weird statement, so let me elaborate. Like with over 95% of Calgary’s population, I’m not usually afforded a high-level view of Calgary — all I ever see is the dirt and chaos present at the ground level, where the work is being done. It’s messy, things don’t always go right, and I sometimes find myself wanting to scream at brick walls (screaming at actual people would have the same overall effect) for things to get better. Progress is hard to see, and my little corner(s) of Calgary seem just as ugly and insignificant as they always do.

From on high (a bit of a joke, admittedly, since there are plenty of buildings much higher than Calgary Tower, now), it’s very different. Calgary looks different. The choking dust of construction is harder to see, the traffic mayhem isn’t as prevalent (it was also 20:45 on Saturday evening), and even the barebones of The Bow building (Encana’s new headquarters, still under construction) have a certain industrial appeal.

Yep, there’s a business angle to this, too. “The Big Picture” is one that is often used, as is “Forest for the Trees”. It’s the same principle — at a low enough point, you can’t see the larger collection. You’re in the proverbial weeds, dealing with the problems that need to be solved. It’s ugly and often frustrating work, and down there it’s almost impossible to see how things will get any better.

I think that’s why it’s necessary for everyone — not just management — to take those necessary steps backwards/upwards to see what they’re doing contributes to the whole. To see what’s going on, how everyone’s tasks feed into a larger entity. Especially in cases where there are dozens or hundreds of people involved, those on the ground need to witness for themselves what else is going on around them.

Why? Two reasons, I think. First: understanding. People get tired, people get complacent, and often people end up getting angry because they can’t see past where they are. Knowing how others are doing, and how their own personal work may affect others can help focus tasks more effectively. Second: job satisfaction. Similar in nature, yes, but a separate effect — it’s almost surprising how much someone can feel that much better knowing how even a seemingly menial task can achieve a milestone.

For me, right now, I can safely say that it’s easy for me to see the big picture at Evans Hunt. My project teams are less than 10 people in total, and often under 5. It’s very easy to take a step back and see what’s going on. Heck, I rarely even need to get out of my seat for that!

In former lives, it was much more difficult, and I remember the struggle to see what was happening around me, let alone across the company. And I know I wasn’t the only one in that situation — the gossip and rumours (however accurate) often spawned around a need to fill in the missing gaps.

So I offer this to you, dear readers: if you feel stuck, struggling to understand, maybe even lost, take time to find the highest possible observation deck in your town or city (most have something). Plan to go there about an hour or so before sunset, and take the time to look around. Look at the buildings you pass every day, look towards your home (even if you can’t see it), find the place you work. Look for the things that you see each and every day and tend not to give them a second (or even first) thought. See how different they look from up above.

Reflect on that perspective — it’s an important one. On the next work day, see if you can find something similar in your daily life. Talk to a manager, to an executive (if you can), other people in other departments. Try to recreate that sense of wholeness that you felt looking down from above. Understand not only how you play your part, but also how everyone else factors in as well.

Maybe then, things won’t seem so haphazard and chaotic.

Even before we moved back to Canada (Alex knowing she was pregnant), she had started to plan her return to work. She wanted to do her job again, not just because it’s something she’d spent many years training for, and not just because it helps the family income-wise. It’s also a value aspect — anyone who’s had a job feels a certain amount of ownership and responsibility about what they do.

And besides, it gives her a chance to get away from the kids…

(Okay, I jest on that last one. Well, a bit — there is some truth to it. But it was a major consideration, too — what do we do with the kids? They had to go into daycare if this was going to work.)

Today, Alex completed her first week of paid, non-mom/non-house work in almost four years. This was a week that I was actually dreading for quite some time; I feared the chaos. Monkey has become quite the handful at times (especially with Alex and I), and Choo Choo’s now walking and in a very clingy stage where she refuses to let go.

Frankly, I expected this week to be abject hell. I expected that we’d have to order dinner almost every night, the kids would be confused as hell and downright unmanageable, that there’d be tonnes of stress, and I’d be wanting to sleep at the office. That’s what I expected.

Plan for the worst, hope for the best. Kicker is, I forgot to actually hope — I just planned, but not remotely as well as Alex did. She planned our meals, made sure dinners were made in advance, arranged for the daycare for the kids (I dropped off in the morning, she picked up in the afternoon; Alex’s mom will come on Fridays), and so forth. I probably worried more about myself than anything else; Alex had handled it all.

So here we are, end of that first epic week, and Alex was happy each and every day. No missed buses, no late starts, no tears except for when I handed Choo Choo over to the daycare (on her first day, there was an intense grabbing combined with something that sounded like JEZZUSCHRIPESDADWHATTHEHELLAREYOUDOING?! and a small river of cascading down her pudgy face. Monkey, on the other hand, disappeared almost instantly. I only knew she was in the daycare because I heard: “I found a doll!”

Alex, to her vast credit, made it look almost effortless, like it was a recipe she’d made dozens of time and rolled it out with no more effort than scrambling an egg. For someone who hadn’t turned an hour in a few years, it looked beyond old hat.

If nothing else, it’s a chance to remember that no matter how well you think you know someone, they can still surprise you. I’m proud of you hon, you continue to amaze me.

Evans Hunt looked like an ideal little home for me. A place where I didn’t have to worry about establishing myself, having to build up major amounts of credibility, and not really having a clue where I stood. Not to mention that when working in the contract field, it was always good to know that you were going to get paid, eventually. It was, for all intents and purposes, as close to “perfect” as I thought it could get.

Then they made the most grievous of errors: they hired me full-time.

I kid. I can do that, because they know me, and I know them. I’ve mentioned it before, but of the 35-ish people who work at/for/with Evans Hunt, more than 2/3s of us had all worked for Critical Mass once upon a time, and most of that 2/3s had worked with each other, to boot. That’s kind of the premise of Evans Hunt, though — hire who you know, and who you can trust.

Trust is a major part of the office. It’s unspoken, but clear from the way things happen. My favourite example of this was a day back in the summer (when I was still a contractor) when I realised that three of the four principals of the company were all out on vacation. There wasn’t a single worried frown in sight. Everyone knew what had to be done, and life went on.

I’m one of the senior technology people, now. My official title is “Solutions Lead”, but if anyone asks me, I’ll just say something like “Resident Know-It-All” or “The Geek” (think of The Gimp from Pulp Fiction). It makes more sense, I think. I’ve been around the block too many times to fit into the confines of a title.

But, then, that’s a great thing about working for a small company again — the title is only what’s on the business card. My job, simply put, is to get things done. Whether that’s coding CSS, or doing content entry, or prepping images for use on the site, or writing user guides, or talking to clients about how to solve their problems, or poking holes in approaches to make things better, it doesn’t matter. Nothing’s above or below me, and there’s a huge amount of freedom in that.

So it’s no end of irony that I almost didn’t stay with Evans Hunt. A few months ago, I was a debatable point. I wasn’t a developer — I was the rough equivalent of an unskilled lead. Until then, all I had done was attempt (and could be argued whether or not I succeeded) to help guide a fairly complex website. And that, in the grand scheme of things, wasn’t much. Evans Hunt knew it, and so did I.

Second chances are good things. I’ve had a few of them, and I’ve been thankful for each and every one. My second chance was in October. The question, simply put, was: “Do you want to develop?”

It wasn’t an easy question for me to answer. Truth is, I didn’t know. I had led myself to believe that I wanted to direct. I had done it for a few years and had come to like it a lot. I had developed, of course, but hadn’t really found the pleasure I had once known, so I had assumed I didn’t like programming anymore and had strayed away.

So being asked to “go back”, admittedly, scared me a bit. No, that’s not right — it scared me a lot. What if I failed? What if I couldn’t do it anymore? What if the ability was gone and … and all I was good for was drawing pretty diagrams and telling people to “have faith” that we’d find a way to implement the unknown and near-impossible? Okay, slightly undercutting what I used to do, but I couldn’t go back to doing that.

Second chances are a good thing. A little lost sleep, more reading than I think I’ve done since university, and more than a few late-night pots of tea (I avoid coffee after 15:00, if I can help it), and things began to click again. And, more importantly, I found what I thought I’d lost — the love of what I do. Better still, it was stronger and more polished than before, because years of looking down on the process has helped me really understand and appreciate how to make things better.

It’s now almost the end of January, and I’ve been full-time at Evans Hunt for nearly three months. I’d like to think that I’ve made a positive influence on things, and that my depth and breadth of experience is paying off not just for me, but for the company as a whole.

So what’s in line for me? A lot, by the looks of it. I’ve got my hands in nearly ten different projects, nearly half of which are either new projects, or significant work on existing clients. I’ve been asked to consult on things that I might not even be working on, just because I have that experience. I’m even given trusted information, with the knowledge that I immediately forget what I saw or heard.

Trust, as they say, is a two-way road. You can’t give it if it isn’t received, nor can you accept it if it isn’t given, and the lack of trust in either direction pretty much ensures a lack of faith.

I have trust. And I have faith. Especially in me.

2010 was the year we made contact … wait, sorry, wrong catchline. 2010 was the year my family welcomed new members, notably my youngest, a daughter (code)named Choo Choo. It was a year I changed my career outlook (yes, again), and found that I’m not (completely) useless. This was a year of family, for me, and that’s perhaps the most important aspect.

But despite all that, I hesitate to call it “a year of change”.

Got me as to why, though. Let’s be honest, there were a lot of changes, not the least of which are the ones noted above. But at no time did I feel like this is a sudden (and possibly unwanted) shift in my life. It actually feels like things are more settled this year, despite the apparent upheaval, than in previous years. Maybe one day I’ll make some sense of that little quandary.

In the meantime, let’s review 2010:

• Began the year with tea at the Banff Springs, seeing my friend Sonny for the first time in about 15 years
• Started working with some old friends at a new(er) company, Evans Hunt
• Went to Edmonton for a “surprise” weekend (mostly for Monkey) and spent a great morning in the waterslides with her
• Celebrated my Nana’s 97th birthday, which would also sadly be her last
• Found out that I’m K+, my kids are K+, and my wife is anti-K
• Spent many a sleepless night worrying about Choo Choo before she was born
• Though originally disheartened, came to love and be thrilled by the 2010 Winter Olympics in Canada, and felt the massive pride for the successes of our athletes
  • Yes, I Twittered obsessively during the Men’s Hockey gold medal game
• Bought our first flat-screen TV, to go along with our Apple TV
• Welcomed my youngest, (code)named Choo Choo to our world
• Watched Monkey’s first Easter egg hunt
• Found out I’ve got something called “narrow angles” in my eyes, and got laser surgery in both of them
• Went to Drumheller, and visited the Royal Tyrell
• Guided (albeit not as well as I could have) the technical launch of my first all-Drupal website: VisitCalgary.com
• Experienced the abject terror of losing your child in a mall
• Said “thank you” to my Nana — I never say “goodbye”
• Went on my first train chase with Monkey
• Went to dim sum a couple of times, but not nearly enough
• Introduced Monkey to sushi — I think she likes it
• Went to Heritage Park a couple of times, and even saw Thomas the Tank Engine (hey, I’m a parent and I like trains, it’s a win-win)
• Went to the Zoo lots (it helps to have a pass)
• Saw a few movies, but not enough for my liking (the favourite of the year was Toy Story 3, and no, not just because I’m a parent)
• Went on the first Great Family Roadtrip:
  • Overnighted in Medicine Hat, AB; Whitewood, SK; Moosimin, SK; and Swift Current, SK
  • Went to Winnipeg
  • Went to some place east of Camper, out in the middle of nowhere, as part of Alex’s family reunion
  • Stopped off in Regina, Moose Jaw, and Portage La Prairie
  • Drove the whole way and back again, and the kids didn’t seem to mind at all
• Got diagnosed with a hernia (yay, me)
• Celebrated Monkey’s 3rd birthday, her first in Canada (beyond the day she was born, that is)
• Finally got right ticked off with Shaw’s horrid home internet service, and switched over to Telus … we’ll see how it all goes
• Did some kitchen renovation:
  • Installed a new sink and tap
  • Tore out the Florida ceiling
  • Installed new lighting
• Had new windows installed in the house
• Returned to being a developer, rather than a pure manager (I’m still adjusting to this one)
• Took Monkey out on her first real Hallowe’en
• Grew a moustache for Movember (my first, and last time)
• Went to the Currie Barracks location of the Calgary Farmer’s Market almost every weekend for a year, until the location finally (and sadly) closed in December
• Went on our first family flight out to Abbotsford, to spend Christmas in BC
• Visited with some old friends from Radical Entertainment
• Went to downtown Vancouver for the first time in about five years, and remembered how much I love it there
• Had my first green Christmas in many, many years
• Didn’t ride nearly enough trains

Whoof. That’s a lot for one year. Can’t wait to see what 2011 throws at me. Bring it, New Year — I’m ready for you!

A year ago tonight, my family returned to Canada from Costa Rica. We had lived abroad for a year and a half, and had done our best to make a go of a new life in a new country. But it wasn’t to be, and we finally came to the reality that we had to move back home.

So, a year ago, we packed up a highly uncomfortable hour of the morning, boarded our airplane, and spend nearly 16 hours travelling north. We arrived late in the evening, with an irate kitty, to the most amazing -18C weather I’d ever felt. Within days, we’d tried to reinsert ourselves into a society that we’d — at last in some part — tried to forget.

A year later, I’m starting to forget that we ever left.

Don’t get me wrong. I have the memories. I have a few thousand pictures (remember, this is me we’re talking about). My life changed quite a lot when I get back. We had to relearn to live like Canadians in our own country — while you might try to retain your identity when you’re somewhere else, eventually your habits change. And yes, there was reverse culture shock.

A lot happened since then, not the least of which was the arrival of our second daughter. During the last year, I’ve looked back at the things I’ve done, both here and in Costa Rica, and tried to reconcile my present. It’s not as easy as it sounds, and more and more I’m having to remind myself that I did actually live somewhere else, that it was actually a dream that came true.

Just prior to leaving Costa Rica, I felt fairly bitter. I was disillusioned, having long-held the view that living in a tropical country was a wondrous fairy tale. I felt that I hadn’t lived that dream fully, the needs of my life seemingly having stolen the preciousness of the moments. For a time, people telling me they were jealous of my experience were usually met with a somewhat brutal response, where I dashed their dreams as harshly as I had felt my own destroyed.

The kicker is, I knew that would happen. I knew that I would be far more negative than I really should. I knew damn well that it had been an experience I will likely never be able to experience again in my life. I knew that the things that I viewed as sub-par were still far better than others ever got to experience. I knew that despite my supposed troubles, there would always be others jealous of my opportunity.

Today, a year later, I finally feel nostalgic — a  ”time heals all wounds” sort of thing. I’m able to see past the trouble, and focus on the good. In effect, I’m able to finally live up to a personal favourite adage: it’s all worth it if you come away with a good story. I can safely say that I’ve got some great ones, and they start from virtually the very first day we arrived in the country.

Way up here in the Great White North, I have something else to be proud of. For the first time in a very, very long time, I finally feel like I have a home. Not just a place to live, but a place where I feel comfortable, where things seem to make sense, where I feel I have a chance to form roots. My last nearly-20 years have been pockmarked with moving between houses, cities, provinces, and countries, changing lifestyles, and growing families. This year — this last year — seems somehow more formative than any year I can remember in a long time. It holds hope, it holds promise, and allows me to consider the future far more brightly than I could have hoped.

And that’s a Good Thing™.

One thing I always cautioned more senior people was the “fork in the road”, the point at which you decided on your “next” direction. One avenue would take you down the road of the specialist, the code ninja who could seemingly pull miracles out of thin air. The other avenue was expanding one’s view beyond the initial skill to encompass the Big Picture™. In other words, management.

Watch out for that wrong turn — here be dragons.

The fork will hit many people over the course of their careers. Companies prefer to rely on known quantities — they’re trustworthy, they get results, and have proven themselves time and time again under stressful circumstances. In theory, that sort of person would make a good leader, and someone who could “look after” teams and projects. That’s usually how a specialist finds themselves taking on the responsibilities — in effect taking the turn at the fork — and going down Management Lane.

At a high enough level, you could almost see it as “six of one, half a dozen of another”. The person still has a job, and new opportunities are a good thing. This makes a person more valuable, and ultimately provides more benefit to the company. But there’s a catch (of course) — at a high enough level, you don’t see the complications that come with taking the wrong fork.

Not everyone should be a manager. In my career, I’ve only met a small number of people who do it well (and despite my history, I’m reticent to include myself in that group). The right person is patient, attentive, trustworthy and trusting, and protective of their team. The right person instills faith in the larger group, makes sure that unnecessary noise (such as problems that do not affect the team directly) are kept silent, and can help solve the team’s problems when they arise. All while understanding the team’s work, the plan for the team, and the long-term vision.

With all of that comes a necessary need to relinquish the practices that they used to, such as programming. Why? Because both require considerable focus and attention, and any attempt to split across both will ultimately cause trouble in both — you can’t do two full-time jobs at once with the same level of quality.

And that’s where some managers fail. They try to do both, to the detriment of their work, and (in really bad cases) their team. It’s certainly not the person’s intention (“the road to hell…“) — no-one ever intentionally plans to fail. But it does happen.

The trick? Well, there lies the rub. The person reaching the fork — and it isn’t always obvious when you are — needs to think long and hard about what they want to do. Are they willing to give up the previous job for a new one, to operate at higher levels? Or do they want to become the expert, the person who can deliver anything that’s asked.

There are always avenues for the specialists, too. I’ve yet to see a situation where someone has practiced their trade so well that they’ve effectively taken themselves past the point of usefulness (dying trade/technology, or pricing themselves out of the market, notwithstanding). In my many years in the technology industry, there have been the “experts”, the people who know a technology, practice, or methodology so well that they are able to execute a solution almost asleep. Those skills are highly valuable and should never be discounted. I know plenty of developers who are still developers after many years, taking only promotions within their particular expertise, practicing a level of skill the likes of which I can only imagine.

Me? I took the management fork, to the detriment of my development skills. I’m kind of paying for that decision now, but that’s the way life goes, sometimes. Do I regret it? Not one bit. The experience is incalculable, and I think also helps me be a little more critical of the directions I take in the work I do now. Would I do it differently, knowing what I know now? Possibly…

(Yeah, cop-out answer, I know. I’ve learned not to dwell on “what if” situations. They’re painful spirals of doom.)

So I leave this as a cautionary tale for those of you on the way up: think carefully about what you want to do, and where you want to go. Be careful of the road you choose, and know the potential dangers of going down the “wrong” path — sometimes, it is far less pretty than it appears.

During these last ten years, and notably the latter five, I trended more and more away from programming and more into management. I managed people, I managed projects, I managed implementations, and pretty much managed to avoid coding of any kind. I convinced myself that it made more sense for me to focus on the higher-level technology planning than it did on the actual implementation — there were others who did it better than me, and it was a waste of effort to try do it all.

And suddenly, I found myself checkmated.

In June, it became painfully clear that my role as a technical architect was going to run out, and soon. (I ended up taking all of August off — partly because I’d planned to do so many, many months ago, but also because work for my role had run out.) And despite looking around, there just didn’t seem to be a demand for mid-level technology managers with an emphasis on internet applications. I’d managed to — quite literally — position myself out of a career.

My father ran into something like this himself, after his company rather callously raped him of his respect after a great many years of service and profit. He, had risen from a junior employee to a manager after many years (even running an entire division of the company), and his fall was painful. He was 50 at the time, and starting out new again ain’t easy. After the shock wore off, however, my father strived to reinvent himself, doing what he did best: sell. He went from construction equipment to selling oil-absorbing peat moss (in effect, going green long before it was common knowledge, let alone trendy).

I now face a similar need to reinvent. I’m only 38, so it should be easier, right? (Right?) But I have a problem. Unlike my dad, I’m not a specialist anymore. I was, about ten years ago, but I’ve since become a generalist — in both the best and worst cases. I know a lot about my industry, but in most cases I don’t know quite enough to be truly useful in specific situations. And add to that, my specialist skills have rusted. They’re out-of-date, and some of my knowledge includes developing for now-unsupported platforms.

The newer libraries are unknown to me, and I’ve never been particularly good with object-oriented programming (the OOP style was not harped on when I was in school, so I’m a functional programmer). But today’s environments require me to know how to use these tools. The guys I work with can make them sing and dance, and I feel as if I’m lucky to get them to just stand up.

I still plan to use my management years for their wealth of experience — there’s a lot to be said for the things you learn while trying to make sure everyone else has an easier time fo their job. Those skills, however, don’t offer me a current job as a manager. Going back to my older skills is proving quite a challenge. I gotta tell you, it’s been like watching someone restore a rusted engine, and try to get it to turn over for the first time.

I also can’t help but see the irony that the very same interview questionnaire that I helped write over a decade would now exclude me from being hired. I almost feel like that guy you’ve hear about, laid off from a job he had for 30 years, whose industry has waned, having to do something totally different now.

Make no mistake, I am retraining — relearning something I knew how to do (and do well), to keep my skills strong enough to keep me employed. Unlike formal programs, I have to do this on my own, without a teacher. I have only the contacts I’ve made over a decade as assistance, and more RSS feeds and Twitter accounts than I care to think about. Ultimately, I have to rely on my aged brain to do things it used to find trivial, and now finds difficult.

It’s stressful. I feel like I’m having to learn to walk again. I’ve had to do the simple projects, to re-master the basics. (You gotta walk before you can run.) I’ve spent many late nights reading all forms of documentation and standards, and in particular, I’ve been reading Drupal documentation voraciously (helped in part by my much-stronger colleague Brian) — the concept of a CMS I understand; it’s the implementation I need to know. It’s also learning deeper PHP (and PHP frameworks), jQuery, more complex SQL, and learning the newer tricks found in HTML 5, and CSS 3. If I had the time, I might even try my hand at ActionScript. But I already feel overwhelmed. There’s just not enough time in a day.

It’s a different mindset, too, and refocusing it onto code has been a challenge. I find myself planning out implementation strategies, and not focusing on the current need. I try to do a simple implementation, and I’m soon debating whether I should build an XML parser, or go straight to a simple CMS build to side-step some of the issues. I’ve had to rely on friends to help fix implementations, only to see the fix and slap myself in the forehead for not thinking of it myself.

It’s coming, though. Every day makes greater strides, and working under others with deeper experience is helping rebuild the skills I had feared lost. It will take time. But I’m strong. And I will survive.

Things changed, and I went the route of contracting, something I hadn’t really done since I left university. Initially, it was with my friends over at Evans Hunt Group. The result was VisitCalgary.com. Since then, I opted to take a vacation, and now it’s time for me to get my own little consultancy off and running.

It’s time for me to Get Geeqee.

Yes, it’s pronounced “geeky”. I could have done the 1337 thing and spelled it like “G33k” (already taken, I might add), but I liked the way “Geeqee” actually looks. (True story: the idea came to me while I was sitting in a meeting discussing need to get “visitcalgary.com” for the website project.)

I didn’t do much with it right away — I was already too busy with my existing projects, and I wasn’t in a rush to spend my vacation working. So, some nine months after purchasing the domain, I’m proud to announce…

Geeqee is my professional side. I’m leaving Sowrey.Org as my blog and general havoc-wreaking area. I need something a little cleaner, a little more polished for anyone who might wish to use my services.

Speaking of services, there is the question of what I do. Well, let’s keep in mind that, as a geek, I tend towards technical services, and generally related towards interactive marketing (namely, websites). Over 15 years of experience in this business has given me a lot of experience, and thanks to an exceedingly long list of teachers and mentors, I have a lot of skills I can throw at a given problem. I’ll free admit that I’m not an expert in everything (rather difficult to do that, if you ask me), but I’d like to think that I’m more than good enough to do the job.

What job, you ask? Well, try these on for size:

• Development / Programming
• Technical Direction, Strategy, and Architecture
• Technical Documentation
• Business and Functional Analysis
• Website Analysis
• Team Leadership
• Offshore Development Management
• Hosting Administration
• Release Engineering and Code Management
• Systems Administration
• Technical Support

Think I might be able to help you or someone you know? Drop me a line, I’d love to chat!

Geeqee. No bull. Just what you need.

A few years ago, this probably would have put me into a panic. And a few years ago, it would have been just me to worry about. Now I have a wife and two kids (well, one at the time, and one on the way) to support. Really, that should have put me off the deep end. Having lived through a significant amount of adversity over the last couple of years, though, I found myself not even concerned about the prospect of unemployment.

I attribute that to having kept contact with just the right people.

And so it came to pass that on 5 January, I walked into a meeting room on the 2nd floor of 805 10th Ave SW, and sat at a table with nine other people. Nine people I already knew. Nine people I’d already worked with before at another company. I couldn’t help but smile.

I was working — and still work — for the Evans Hunt Group, a small interactive marketing agency made up, largely, of former employees of Critical Mass. The principals of the company, Dan Evans and Bill Hunt, were both my managers at Critical Mass at one point or another, and Bill had been the one who started up the Costa Rica operation. My long-time mentor and also former Critical Mass manager, Allard Losier, is the technical lead, and the one who really convinced me to come in.

That conversation had occurred at the Cabin Cafe on Bow Trail and 45th St. SW, on 22 December. He and I had sat down over a coffee (two, in my case), and had a long conversation about events of the last 18 months, and potential events for the future. I hadn’t made any decisions at that point, although there had been heavy hinting at coming in to work for Evans Hunt, and I was rather enjoying the not-working aspect of my life.

The conversation had really shown me the things that I had really missed over the previous 18 months: mentorship and trust. I had lost my mentor when Allard had left Critical Mass shortly before I went to Costa Rica. And I had felt since about that time that there hadn’t been much trust in me, and always felt on the defensive. Going anywhere else was … well, it needed to be the right place.

My project — the reason I was brought in — was to help Tourism Calgary with their website. The project, at least at a high level, was pretty simple: site overhaul. (Yes, at the high level, that’s all it is. Once you start going down in the levels, you really find out what kind of trouble you’re creating for yourself.) My job? Lead the tech team, work with the PM, and help deliver the final product. Time was originally pegged at about three months, and we’d see where things would go from there.

I didn’t get a consulting agreement for three weeks. Normally, that would probably freak most people out entirely, my Mom being one of them. From her perspective, which I totally understood, I was working without any legal backup, and was likely to get screwed somewhere along the line. From my perspective, I wasn’t working for a company — I was working with friends. Friends I trusted, and who trusted me. People I knew wouldn’t pull anything shifty, so long as I didn’t do the same.

That level of trust has permeated my now five-month tenure here at Evans Hunt. Knowing that the right people are there, that the right things will happen when they need to. All of that led us to the launch of our newest little baby, VisitCalgary.com. Today, I supported Jim at a presentation by Tourism Calgary to the tourism industry at the Glenbow Museum (chosen because of Calgary’s recent bout of inclement weather — originally, it was supposed to be outside), and got to see the reaction first-hand of the very people we’re trying to support.

And that’s when it really hit me. I’m not working for some massive multi-national conglomerate. I’m working for a group who’s trying to bring in tourists to the city I live in, to bring in money to the businesses that exist in the city I live in, to support the families of the people who work for the companies in the city I live in. I had disconnective issues working with American and European vendors for a very long time, partly because they never really affected me in any way. But this? This, I can get behind.

It’s been a long project, and a little harder than I’d thought it be. The site, for the record, runs on Drupal. (For those of you unfamiliar, I suggest checking it out. Very powerful tool, Drupal.) I approached the project with a lot of confidence, believing that we’d be cruising along in no time. That’s when reality hit me.

Drupal wasn’t at all like any content management system I’d ever worked with. And as a result, I was giving bad directions. It wasn’t until we started to engage Brian, one of Evans Hunt’s developers, that I began my Drupal education. A content management system, it is not. As Brian put it, it’s a content management framework. Yeah, I know, I know — splitting hairs, right? Not really.

In every other CMS I’d spent significant time with, the rule of thumb was to build your templates first, and then embed the CMS functionality into them to build out the site. But with Drupal, you do it the other way around — let Drupal define the structure, and then make it look pretty afterwards. We lost time because of my direction.

Thankfully, we also had some very talented developers. The first up was Lorne of Open House Concept, who was the initial developer, and was the core layout guru. Kalen jumped on not long after to work on templates, and then buzzed back in towards the end of the project in a weird little game of leap-frog. Brian joined the project, which got us pointed in the right direction again (notably, correcting my oversights), and we brought on Boris to help us with the backend data synchronisation.

It sounds like a lot of people, but in truth we only had three developers running at any one time. And considering I can barely code my way out of a paper bag, I am truly amazed at what the four of them did to get this site out the door. Especially considering that the office is just finishing a near two-month renovation, which had us working remotely from our PM-extraordinare January’s house for over a week.

And yes, there were a lot of hours put into this project. They kept us working late, and more than a couple of weekends. This is where, in the past, I would lament the time away from my family. But this is also where that aforementioned trust comes in. Working from home is encouraged (assuming you don’t need to be in the office), and working at hours that suit your schedule is not a problem (provided you get your work done). End result: long hours, but still got be a family man.

So, damn right I’m a happy camper. All told, I would say this has been one of my more favourite projects, and I’ve had a few doozies to compete with, too.

And, really, you can never go wrong working with friends. (And yes — with, not for.)

We need teachers to help us move past mere instinct towards self-sufficiency, and self-learning. They teach us mathematics, communication, sciences, and art. As intelligence grows, we shift away from teachers, and look more towards peers — people who are similar, but have more experience. They are our mentors, ones who offer their abilities as examples for us to learn from, and models upon which we can hope to improve ourselves.

And anyone who thinks they can survive without a mentor has truly never had one.

Mentorship comes in many forms. As previously mentioned, we have teachers or professors. These are the ones most readily identified, and the ones that we often credit with success. Interestingly enough, they’re also the only “professional” mentors — ones who are trained for that very task. Also consider:

• Your manager, be it the one from your high school days at the local burger joint, or the one sitting in their office across your cubicle at work
• If you work in trades, it could be the one who’s helping you through your journeyman’s ticket
• The clergy of your church, mosque, synagogue, or temple
• Your best friends, who won’t shy away from telling you when you’re wrong
• And lest we forget the most underrated and undervalued mentors of all: our parents

In the industry that I work in — interactive marketing, with a particular focus on technology — there is always the need for mentorship. No business can truly operate without mentorship, at least not without a hope of guidance or improvement. Without mentorship, you might as well be flatlining, in all connotations of the word.

Mentorship, in its simplest form, is guidance. Every human is capable of thought, of decision, of education. But on their own, every human is going to lack the lifeguard that will help them when they start to drown. The mentor is the one who’ll guide them back to shallow water, or offer the hand to pull them to safety.

Note something particular with that analogy, too: mentorship is a two-way street. It only works if there is someone offering, and someone accepting.

Mentorship does not exist if you are looking to someone for help that they’re simply not willing to give, or have enough care to give decently (it can be argued that too little guidance is no guidance at all). Similarly, someone willing to offer guidance has no impact to someone who doesn’t want to listen (there is a blinding effect, usually tied to ego, that can drown out a wise voice). Failed mentorships can lead to breakdown in team structures, loss of confidence in team members’ abilities, and usually poor performance.

A mentor should be someone who offers insights that a person does not have. Since insights can come from virtually anyone, mentors are not bound by age, sex, creed, religion, ethnicity, career direction, relationship, educational background, time zone, or any other possible criteria that could potentially be considered a detriment or block. And there is nothing stopping someone from having more than one mentor — in fact, multiple mentors allow a person to gain multiple insights in different things.

When I moved over to Evans Hunt Group at the beginning of this year, I regained my long-time mentors Dan, Bill, and Allard, as well as one of my more recent mentors, Tori. All of them have been crucial in teaching me not just the hard skills of my job, but also the things that help my day-to-day life: organisation, calmness, focus, direction, caution, daring, courage, and even bravery.

Today, for example, I had particularly good reminder of why I need a mentor. I’m the technical lead for a large project that we’re due to deliver in about a month-and-a-half. As part of my operating procedure, I like to keep Allard in the loop of what’s going on. It’s a good practice for redundancy, but also because it’s good to get a sanity check — if nothing else, make sure that your “solution” is sound, and not going down the wrong road.

Allard (proverbially) whacked me over the nose with a rolled up newspaper and said “bad dog!” for part of an architecture. At the time, naturally, I objected to the accusation, feeling that the direction was sound and would offer the best chance of success. But — and this is where my previous note really applies — I remained open to Allard’s thoughts. It took us a while of discussion (partly because it was Allard’s gut check went off first, and it took a little while for his elocution to catch up), but ultimately I could only see that he was right — I’d made a fundamental flaw in my own logic, and actually introduced risk.

Truly, mentorship need not be a full-time occupation. A competent person will not always need guidance, and not always from the same person. Likewise, a mentor doesn’t always have time to offer. A good relationship will usually balance itself naturally.

And if you don’t have a mentor, or are at least readily able to identify them, don’t worry. Often, all you need to do is merely start talking with someone. Eventually, you’ll talk to the right person, and you’ll find the guidance you need.

Yeah, I’m having a good laugh at this one, too! But since I am a Know-It-All, and someone asks, it’s really hard for me to say “I don’t know”. I mean, it’s not like I don’t have an opinion on it or something…

A Senior Developer is more than just a developer. They encompass several traits and abilities that make them very important to small and large projects alike. They are looked at as a skill centre, teacher, standards guru, and programmer all at the same time (often by different people). The catch is to ensure that a Senior Developer is anointed appropriately — bestowing a Senior designation without due diligence is just asking for trouble.

Hard Skill vs. Soft Skill

Okay, let’s get this elephant out of the way, first.

Any job, and I don’t care if it’s building video games or sewer maintenance, requires two key skills. The first is the “hard” skill — the one needed to actually perform the task at hand. Different jobs require different levels of hard skill, and some of them (such as, oh, brain surgery) require a lot more skill than others. The other key skill — “soft” — is what allows you to interact with others, to see yourself (with ego removed) for who and what you are, and assist you with your growth and education.

The former, for most people, is easy. The latter is the one that a lot of people fail at. You know those people: the jerks, the guys who yell at others, the people who “don’t listen”. Soft skills are hard to learn, and are almost always what hold people back.

And no, this is not a trivial point. Hard skills are needed to be able to manage the work, and soft skills are needed to manage the people. A failure on either is a failure of the whole.

Programming Omnipotence

A Senior Developer needs to have near god-like understanding of their given programming environment. This is because the Senior Developer is often the key resource for that environment, and the one people will look towards to set precedent, and ensure correct habits.

• Know (and often off the top of their heads) a dozen different ways to implement (and know which one is the best approach)
• Know the language’s methods, syntax, structure, parameterization, memory leaks, and looping methodologies without the need to regularly consult the documentation
• Know the best practices for development with authority
• Know when a framework is required, a nice-to-have, and when to avoid

And yes, I do expect some ego along with omnipotence — it goes pretty much hand-in-hand. To some degree, I also encourage it, because that Senior Developer should know more than I do about their given language, and I want them to express that knowledge.

Understand External Dependencies

In my world, technologies rarely live in their own. Just because you can reproduce a complicated Photoshop design into HTML, CSS, and JavaScript means nothing if you can’t get the design to work with the equally-complicated database.

The trick here is that I don’t need a Senior Front-End Developer (be they masters in Flash or HTML/CSS/JavaScript) to also juggle the backend processing tasks. But you’d better expect that I need that the developer understand the process for passing requests to the backend, and how to handle the backend’s results.

Similarly, I expect the Senior Applications Developer to know what sort of information he should expect (or need), the APIs or ASPs he can use to implement the solution (without having to write the entire thing by themselves), handle database requests (without necessarily doing the database work themselves), and the best way to return a result to the front-end.

Likewise, a Senior Database Developer shouldn’t care about the presentation of data, only the best way to organise it to provide optimal normalisation and long-term data management, the correct methods to store  and recall data (via stored procedures, views, queries, and so forth), and managing the database software’s operation.

This also assumes a more granular breakdown of tasks, and having the people available to handle said tasks. Naturally, smaller places will combine roles into a single person. Mind you, they might also eschew titles for simplicity.

Solutions Design

While a Senior Developer isn’t necessarily responsible for an entire implementation, I have the expectation that a Senior Developer can adequately specify the pieces of the puzzle for which they are responsible. Furthermore, they should know how those pieces break down (for assignment to others, if needed), the time it should take to develop those pieces, and ensure that the pieces will integrate.

Fair Communication

Rarely will a Senior Developer work on their own. Almost always, they need to work with others on their team: junior developers, project managers, and creative staff. All of these people require the same amount of respect, even though the messages will differ between them.

This is often a major failing point for people who think they are Senior Developers, but have not yet been granted the title by their company. Inability to communicate properly leads not only to breakdowns in communication, but can cause personalities to clash, further muddying the waters. Technical mastery means nothing if you’re a jerk to others — it means people won’t want to work with you.

People who fail at communication often believe the problem is not with themselves, but with others: “I told them what they needed, it’s not my fault if they didn’t listen.”  The real test is convincing someone else of what you want to do. The inability to convince someone else is not a fault with the other person, but yourself.

• Junior developers need a mentor: a resource and a teacher. Someone who will help more junior staff see mistakes and learn from them, who will help people with difficult problems, all the while not talking down to a weaker skill.
• Project managers require concise communication that does not involve a blizzard of jargon. Project managers rely on numbers: estimates, dates, times, milestones.
• Creative staff think in pictures and possibilities, whereas technical minds live for logic and limitation. They can live together very easily, so long as people keep an open mind and give each idea the respect that is due.

Consistency in Deliverables

A key trait amongst Senior Developers is consistency throughout their work. Opening three or four random projects reveals the same programming style, the same general approach, the same naming conventions. A Senior Developer influences these same traits amongst those on a team, ensuring the entire team’s deliverable contains similar consistency.

This is not to preclude change. A good Senior Developer is also a researcher, always looking for better ways to handle a given problem.

Accept Responsibility

With great power comes yadda yadda yadda — you know the story. Being a Senior Developer means taking on the responsibility for part (or all) of a project. You’re the one who’s being asked to deliver something, and possibly lead others in that delivery. Ultimately, if something goes awry, it’s you who made it that way.

“It wasn’t my fault” isn’t something you get to say anymore, even if you handed that task off to a junior developer. When your project manager / lead / boss comes knocking, you’re the one who has to stand up and explain what happened. It’s your neck officially on the line, and you’re the one who’ll be held accountable. (Incidentally, that applies for everyone else above you, too.)

Side-stepping responsibility and putting someone else into the firing line is not only disrespectful, it’s a guaranteed way to strip trustworthiness. One key aspect of responsibility is someone’s trust in you to handle something. Shirking responsibility is the same as saying: “you can’t trust me”.

Open-Mindedness

Finally, here’s where I’ll flip-flop a bit. Earlier up, I said I want a Senior Developer to be egotistic (to a degree) and tell me what they know. I still want that, but I also want to eat my cake, too. I won’t expect a Senior Developer to be immediately open to other ideas, but I do expect recognition. As the Senior Developer progresses to higher roles, open-mindedness becomes a significantly more important factor.

This also helps prepare the Senior Developer for one inevitability in life: even if you have all the chops, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get the meat.

Truth be told, I had been planning my “goodbye” message for years. (As my dad used to say, if you’re going to do something, do it right.) If nothing else, it would have been fun to make: a video that would cover my time at CM, complete with a snazzy soundtrack, and some bogus story about going to teach at an all-girls school. But planning means nothing without execution, and I never got around to it. I’m sure I will come to regret that.

Some of you won’t have a clue about who the fark I am. Some of you know me all-too-well. No matter where you sit in the spectrum, do yourself a favour and look around at all the people sitting near you. They, and you, are the people who make up Critical Mass.

As many have said before me, it’s the people I will miss most.

It’s been said — often by the spouses of CMers — that Critical Mass is a cult. I don’t know if that’s really true anymore (I can’t honestly say — don’t forget I’ve been in Costa Rica for a year and a half), but it was certainly fact in my earlier years. We worked together, we ate together, we drank together, we played together, and in more than a few cases, we married and had kids together. You make your own decision on the definition.

In those years, I met (and drank with) a lot of amazing people. And if you’re reading this, you’re one of them. No matter what you think of me now, or what you believe I might think of you, here’s a little unvarnished truth: I admire you. I do, really. I admire you for any number of reasons, not the least of which would include your creativity, your logic, your passion, your leadership, your wisdom, your calmness, your insight, your humour, your kindness, your tolerance. This list could go on quite a lot longer, but hopefully you see where I’m coming from.

Yes, I like you. And I will miss you. All of you. I will miss seeing you daily (or at least weekly). I will miss the banter. I will miss the feeling of inclusion. I will miss the challenges, the victories, the discussions, and especially the arguments. I will miss the Bistro. I will miss the frontline of the front desk.

I miss it all already.

But change is inevitable in life. You can’t avoid it, you can’t cheat it. When change comes, the only thing you can do is embrace it and move with the beat — fighting change just incurs injury. My time to change coincided with my return to Canada, for better or for worse. Change is also chaotic, which is why I haven’t really had a chance to say anything. Better late than never, right?

So this is my chance to tell you, the best of luck in your future endeavours.

I also have to say “thank you”. When I started in April 2000, I was pretty green. I’d had some experience in my own projects, but I quickly learned that I had a lot to learn. And you were always willing to teach me, from every department, from every level. You gave me access to the best minds, and the opportunities to test those learnings and prove my own worth. You allowed me to take more responsibility, and allowed me to guide others as others had guided me.

I hope that whatever legacy I’ve left behind either helps, or is duly forgotten (there’s nothing like a roadblock to mess up your day). I hope that the friends I made over the years don’t mind me popping in every now and then to visit. And I hope I can make off with the mulligatawny soup recipe — that one is worth killing for.

And yes, I’ll still be watching. I want to see how my friends are doing, and see their successes. There’s no point in an award if there’s no-one to congratulate you on it, right?

Until when next we meet…

The year closed out on a more sombre note for me, in many ways. Much quieter, and I got to spend a lot of time with my family (which I cherish now, and cannot regret in anyway), but the future is a little less certain. I’m less concerned about that fact than I thought I would be, however.

On with the year that just was…

• Rang in the new year watching fireworks go off all over the Central Valley in Costa Rica (a spectacular sight, if you ever happen to be in Costa Rica at New Year’s)
• Had numerous run-ins with illness between The Monkey, myself, and Alex (and some far less pretty than others, lemme tell ya!)
• Experienced my first, bonafide, scare-the-crap-outta-me earthquake, measuring in at 6.2 at its epicentre
• In Costa Rica, travelled to:
  • Villa Blanca (Los Angeles Cloud Forest), three times
  • Arenal (for my very wet birthday)
  • Parque de Diversiones
  • Playa del Coco
  • Playa Hermosa
  • Playa Chiquita
  • Puerto Viejo
  • La Paz Waterfalls
• Had a few troubles with our trusty Suzuki, Dave, and spent more than a few bucks getting ‘em all fixed
• Managed to avoid becoming totally addicted to coffee, but still drank a lot of it
• Took pride in The Monkey starting school (yes, even though she wasn’t even 2 years old yet)
• Worked through the challenges of getting a startup business up and running; the stress took its toll on me and my family, and likely all lead to where I am at this very moment
• Travelled to Canada for a visa run, though it was originally planned as a family visit:
  • Barrie
  • Bolton
  • Oakville
  • And wee bit of Toronto (I had to go into the Toronto office) just for flavour
• Saw far too few sunsets on beaches
• Discovered great Indian food in Costa Rica
• Moved from our first apartment to a new apartment, after our condo management company couldn’t come to an agreement on a contract extension
• Got utterly screwed by the aforementioned condo management company, to the tune of about USD$1,500
• Celebrated 20 years of journalling/blogging with post #1,000 (total coincidence, I swear!)
• Did a Stampede-style breakfast for my co-workers
• Finally acquired my Temporary Residency visa … after realising that staying in Costa Rica long-term wasn’t an option for my family, and we’d decided to go home
• Waxed poetic on management and management style (perhaps too much so?)
• Cringed as The Monkey crossed into “The Terrible Twos” (which, thankfully, haven’t really been that bad)
• Finally snapped after running into a “Perfect Storm” of difficult project, dealing with the relocation company, organising the family, trying to sell the car, cancelling services, and making sure that what little money we had saved was properly moved out of the country before we left — I was an utter wreck at the end
• Ate far too many of our last meals in Costa Rica in a Denny’s
• Managed to survive the 19-hour ordeal of moving from Costa Rica; flying through Houston with a few bags, an irate cat in a bag, and a toddler hell-bent on doing her own thing; finally arriving in -18 degree weather in Calgary after 22:30 at night
• Moved back into a house we hadn’t seen in a year and a half, finding things we hadn’t seen in probably over three years
• Bought a 2006 Jetta TDI
• Critical Mass and I parted ways after about 9.75 years
• Landed a wonderful case of Benign Positional Vertigo on Boxing Day
• Realised that, yes, there are many things that Costa Rica has better than Canada … beyond the weather
• Rang in the new year year to come with a visit to the Calgary Zoo’s “Zoo Year’s Eve”, at -22 degrees Celsius

I’m missing easily a couple of months’ of detail in there, but the simple fact is that most of Q1 and Q2 last year were chaotic, busy, and stressful. I’m proud of what we all achieved, and I miss the people I left behind in Costa Rica. Time changes, and people have to change with them. As such, 2010 will be a year of change for me. I don’t see that as a bad thing, just that as with any human, change ain’t easy.

But change is exciting.

When my father died in 2002, the term gained a whole new meaning for me. Suddenly, I couldn’t even go home. My home was where my family lived, which was now only in the past. When my mother moved away, my home became a sightseeing stop.

Then I moved home from Costa Rica, to a house we own. Man, talk about change of perspective.

Okay, let’s get the obvious one out of the way: It’s farking cold. In Santa Ana, the temperature stayed between 15 C and 27 C. Every day. Every single solitary day. All year long. That’s a level of consistency that Canadians find as hard to understand as … well, as hard as it is for Costa Ricans to understand the idea of -40 degrees. It’s not easy to from shorts and sandals and lush green, to thick heavy coats and gloves and a foot of snow.

I was rather amazed that I found the house. I hadn’t driven to the house for a year and a half, and there was a moment when I thought I might get lost. But it was still there, the lawn covered in pink flamingos (a “welcome home” present from my sister, Cathy). Inside, the house looked — at first — almost exactly the way we’d left it.

But there were a few issues. Therein lies the problem with tenants — they never really treat the place the way you want them to. The downstairs heating had been out for a year — a YEAR. It’s a heated floor (heat was supplied via forced air, which does the upstairs), controlled by battery-powered thermostats. The batteries were dead. For some reason, no-one had bothered to THINK about replacing them. Heat was running again after a few hours (the system had to bleed air out of the lines again).

Then there was the handrail into the basement, just about entirely dislocated from the wall. Gashes in a couple of places. And the reality that despite a clear instruction to not allow smoking in the house, someone had smoked. I couldn’t smell it, but Alex could. Allen and Alex made a variety of repairs in those first few days.

I’m actually having problems believing we’re in our house. And I don’t have to be a renter anymore.

The city’s changed. Downtown is bigger. There’s more traffic lights in a few places. A line of houses, stores, and a church are gone from 17th Avenue, where the West LRT will be built in the next couple of years. Stores we went to are gone, and new ones have appeared. (Interesting, the lane reversals on Memorial are still in testing.) It’s almost like walking into an alternate universe version of our home.

Our stuff arrived moved into the house the same day we did. We’ve got a zillion boxes, some of which we haven’t seen since before we moved out of our house in Garrison Woods back in 2007! We’ve got things we’re pulling out of boxes, wondering where we got it … and in a couple of cases, what the heck it is.

For the last year and a half, we lived minimally. We rented a furnished apartment. We had next to no kitchen gadgets (although we did have an espresso machine), very few clothes (you have only one season: warm), not a lot of books, and a single flat panel television. We’ve now got several times that unfolding into the house, and it’s not easy to figure out where it’s all going. At least we have full access to the basement, now.

We bought a car. Calgary’s not a pedestrian-friendly city, unfortunately. Although Calgary Transit does cover a lot of ground, things are far too spread out to use a bus effectively, especially when a toddler is involved. Besides, we want to go out to the mountains without having to book charter tickets. There’s a certain amount of flexibility that is required.

We started looking before we left Costa Rica. Our goal was fairly simple: small, and fuel-efficient. Alex found a black Jetta TDI at Shaganappi Motors, now the only GM dealership in town. It was a used 2006 model year, with about 75,000 clicks on it, but it was a diesel, and in good shape. We put down a deposit, just to make sure it was still around when we got there. The car was purchased in a single day, from the actual test drive all the way through registration, plating, insurance, and financial.

It’s our fifth car in two years. Hopefully it’ll last us a long time to come.

The one thing that has been most consistent for us are the people we know: our family and friends. Even though we haven’t seen some of them in a year and a half, it’s almost like we haven’t left. Like putting on your favourite pants.

Be it ever so different, there’s no place like home.

Schedules change. No-one can predict the future. No-one can see the out-of-left-field problems, the people unable to work due to sudden illness (or worse), or the sudden changes in project direction. When a project’s schedule starts to go sour, time management rapidly becomes extremely important. In a world where deadlines are fixed and resources are limited, one of the most common solutions is to work overtime.

However, overtime is not a solution. Overtime is a problem.

Let’s be honest, “overtime” is easy to say. Overtime is so easy to offer as a suggestion, but people don’t always know what it means right away. I personally find using overtime sort of like going through the five stages of grief:

1. Denial: The project doesn’t need overtime. We can achieve the goal without it.
2. Anger: Why is someone else demanding that I or my team work overtime?
3. Bargaining: What can we do to minimise the amount of overtime?
4. Depression: Shit.
5. Acceptance: We have to do overtime.

In the end, overtime can only achieve a partial success. It can never achieve a complete success, because the use of overtime ultimately masks the original problem: something went off the rails. And because of that incomplete success, it remains a problem.

Overtime is not a problem in mere logistics. The act of asking (no matter how difficult it may be), accounting for the overtime (most operations dealing with overtime have tools to track it), and payment (at least where applicable — our industry often ignores this aspect of overtime) are trivial. The impact of overtime, however, is substantial.

First, overtime ignores the original problem. In my experience, better than 4/5 of the issues stem from the project scope: poorly-defined, insufficiently investigated, or simply allowed to accumulate without recognition of additional time (simple reality: adding even a single edit beyond the previous accepted work incurs more time).

I’m guilty many times over of scope-creep. One little change becomes 10 little changes, becomes 50 little changes. That’s why it’s called “creep”. It’s a gamble: you hope your changes have little or no incremental affect on delivery time. Sometimes you win, and the work blends in well. Other times, your schedule mysteriously extends by days, or even weeks.

Second, overtime places additional stress on those who now have to spend the extra time. Even if someone is willing to work overtime (especially in cases when there will be compensation), there is the additional mental and physical toll. Over short periods of time, the effect is within reason. However, over longer periods of time (even as little as a week), stress can mount quickly and the effectiveness of that extra time will decrease significantly.

In my career, I have worked countless thousands of hours of overtime. And I have paid for that overtime with weight gain, blepharospasms, cavities (from too much Coca-Cola), an inability to sleep, issues with personal hygiene (showering at the office isn’t always possible), which ultimately led to mistakes in my work.

Finally, overtime goes beyond to affect others beyond the company: families, friends, and social circles. That person (or people) often has others who depend on them for a variety of responsibilities, even if as simple as reading a bedtime story to a child. When a person is not present due to overtime, it can lead to other difficulties beyond the office. Sadly, these are the effects most frequently forgotten or ignored.

So how do we avoid overtime? Therein lies the ultimate dilemma: in most industries (not just interactive marketing), you can’t.

Western society, and especially North Americans, have an inherent inflexibility when it comes to altering deadlines. Even slipping as little as a few hours can cause significant issues in terms of money, and often has a ripple effect that can extend far beyond a single person. But even in situations where no dependencies exist, people are loathe to accept flexible end-dates for fear of the never-ending project.

Truth be told, I’m both against and for overtime (in that order, I might add). As a father, any time spent away from my family (including the average work day) is difficult. Working additional hours only acerbates the situation. As such, I avoid asking for overtime, as I cannot ask of others what I cannot ask of myself.

However, as a company man, I look to overtime to solve the inevitable problem of scheduling: somehow, a specific deadline must be met, and I know that merely adding people to a project does not allow a project to move more quickly (it can be quite the opposite). The basic formula is simple: overtime means project delivery; project delivery means happy clients; happy clients means more work; more work means more money to keep people employed.

Contradictory? Darn right, it is.

Ultimately, overtime is still a Bad Thing™ that should be reserved for critical situations. It’s a “break glass in case of fire” sort of thing that should never be wielded casually, and always treated with the utmost seriousness and respect. And in all cases, anyone calling for overtime should recognise exactly why overtime is needed, and recognise what could have been done differently in the past to have avoided it, so the same mistake isn’t made twice.

The problem, however, is that programmers like to create. It’s what makes a programmer a programmer — I know, because I used to be one. (Then I turned to the Dark Side, but that’s another story.) Programmers like to do things themselves.

But good programmers — at least in this business — try to as little work as possible.

That statement is going to get me in a lot of trouble with a lot of people, but hear me out. There is method to the madness, and I swear I’m not as insane as I sound. (Okay, maybe only half as insane.)

I say this because I want to encourage the developers I work with to think about the best approach to the work they do. Many, many, many times (including myself, I should add) I have born witness to seeing work duplicated, people running in silos (a euphemism for not talking with other people), and taking on too much work when others are sitting idle. All of this because people are trying to be over-achievers when they should really looking at emulating a couch potato.

Reuse Your Code

It’s a simple problem: you’re asked to develop a solution, and that’s exactly what you do. But you don’t look through snippets of code you’ve got (carefully organised from previous projects) to quickly slap together a jigsaw puzzle of previous work. Instead, you use a few extra hours to deliver something you’ve basically done before.

Most coding projects can be broken into modules, snippets, and libraries: ones you’ve used, and ones you’ve built. As much as possible, reusable code should be identified and tucked away in your programming bag of holding.

End result? More done, less time spent.

Libraries Are Your Friend

One thing developers generate hate: using someone else’s code. Why? One simple reason: developer want to do things themselves. (See the above note about creating.) It’s also, to a lesser degree, a trust thing — how can you really trust something you didn’t build yourself?

But it’s not about trusting others’ products — it’s about trusting yourself to implement them to the best of their (and your) ability. It also means that time you spent trying to get something to work properly across all browsers (especially the ever-dreaded IE6) is better spent by doing something more fun … like having a beer on the patio because you finished early.

I always encourage developers to use tools that already exist, be they open source or off-the-shelf. There’s almost always a solution to the problem.

Document Effectively, Not Completely

Now keep in mind that this is coming from an old technical writer — I used to make a living by documenting everything in excruciating detail. In some businesses, especially if you’re producing a production-ready API, you’ll want to make sure there’s lots of detail, not just in real documentation but also in the code.

In this business, I’m quite happy to see two things:

1. Variable, class, method, and IDs that make sense. Not entire sentences (believe me, I’ve seen that), but something more than just “obj”.
2. A quick 1-line comment above methods that help explain something that’s not obvious.

Why only this? Because it’s quick, and any competent developer should be able to trace through a well-written set of code. Extra documentation is rarely read, and rarely needed.

Simple is (Almost) Always Better

Ever seen Scrapheap Challenge (known as Junkyard Wars in North America)? It was a really neat show. Basic premise: two teams of gear heads are given a simple task (e.g. build a device to throw a car as far as possible), and then set loose in a junkyard with eight hours to build it. Entertainment at its finest, and you got to see some really great out-of-the-box thinking.

One thing that was almost a universal rule with that show: the simplest device almost always won. Why? Less things to break, faster to complete, and quick to fix if something went wrong. (Incidentally, I see similar things happen on MythBusters.)

Moral: Don’t over-complicate things.

Google is Good

And no, I’m not talking about Google not being evil — I mean use Google to your advantage. The amount of things that are posted on the internet is truly staggering — and immensely helpful if you get yourself into a bind.

While a lot of companies seem to pooh-pooh the idea of people using Google to find an answer to a tricky problem, I’ve found that Google can shave of days of monkeying around.

Google is also great for looking up programming references. And before you ask, no, I do not expect developers to know a given language inside and out. That’s just insane. Any sufficiently solid language has too many methods and functions for someone to adequately remember.

(I do, however, expect someone to know how to use that language well enough that looking up a reference is only to check things like parameter definitions. If you know one (good) language really well, a good programmer can learn another one in a weekend or two.)

That’s not to suggest you should ask someone else first…

People are Faster Than Google

Quick question? Tap the guy next to you. Any good developer asks another good developer before doing their own research. (On corollary, any good developer will also gladly help instead of giving any indication of being inconvenienced in any way.)

Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

If you have the ability — and you won’t always have it — turn over simple complex tasks to more junior developers as soon as you can. First, it makes them feel more useful, and it allows you to focus your efforts where they’re most needed — on things that require your skill and experience. Besides, the more you can hand off, the less you have to do.

Make Yourself Redundant

I’ve seen more than my share of programmers (cough myself included cough) who hang onto key pieces of information and not hand them off to anyone else, for any number of reasons such as trust, job protectionism, and (my personal favourite) supposed superiority.

Only problem: You look like a Class A Jackass when you’re not in the office and that key piece of information trips up an entire team.

So make yourself redundant — hand that information out to others (write it down, email it, whatever), people you trust if need be, so you don’t have to be the key master.

Why is that being lazy?

That way you don’t get any phone calls on your day off…

1. I currently live in Costa Rica.
2. I’m Canadian.

One of those things is about to change.

Almost a year and 2/3 ago, I caught a rumour about Critical Mass thinking of opening an office in Costa Rica. That soon evolved into fact, then into reality, and led to me sitting where I am now. The conditions under which I came down here were set up for business purposes, but all led to one fact: I was leaving my home, moving away from all that I knew, to live somewhere else.

In my life, I have moved over 40 times. (I’ve lost count.) And I don’t mean just between the home where I grew up to university and back. I mean moved: picked up the things in my life that mattered, and transferred them to another location to continue my existence. I knew at the time that some of those moves were temporary — indeed, some of them were for school, but if I’d been told “stay put”, I’d have been quite content. Naturally, some moves — moving to Vancouver, moving to Calgary, and especially moving to Costa Rica — have been much more significant, but the basic intention is always the same.

When my family picked up to move here to Costa Rica, we severed ties with Canada. We didn’t just moved, we left. I mean, come on, we were moving to a tropical country where it’s summer all year, and everything is wonderful. Why the heck would we even dream of moving back? Right?

Right??

Yeah. Well.

Here’s the reality: for as much as the weather here is great, and as much as I love being really near warm oceans and beaches, and as much as I love the freaking coffee here (no joke), almost every other day we realise just how much we miss our family and friends, seasons that actually look different from one another, the ease in which we can do some things because we don’t have to struggle with bureaucracy, and yes, even the snow.

We’re moving home. Our home. To Canada.

Now before you all jump on me that I’ve got totally distorted expectations of Costa Rica, just hear me out. All of these things have been taken into consideration. Yes, there are things that have bothered me here. But, guess what, there are things that bother me about going home, too. Calgary’s far from perfect. Canada has lots of issues. Maybe it’s just that we’re Canadian, but they’re issues we grew up with, and issues that, in some small way, seem more manageable.

(And yes, I completely and utterly appreciate the humour/irony that we only just got our official residency status.)

When we looked long-term, staying in Costa Rica just wasn’t an option. Monkey will start school in a couple of years, and Alex’s employment prospects here in Costa Rica hinge on her becoming significantly more fluent in Spanish. As for me, my contract here ends in a couple of months, and it’s time for me to hand the reigns to someone else.

Officially, my contract ends in December, which is when we’ll be winging our way back to Calgary. I’m not looking particularly forward to returning in the winter (seriously, this could be close to the dumbest thing we’ve ever done), but it’s the right timing for us.

It’s still three months away, but already I know I will miss Costa Rica. I will miss the weather. I will miss the people we’ve met and the places we’ve been. I miss the food, especially the freshest fruit I’ve ever eaten. I will even miss the rain and the thunderstorms (mostly ‘cuz Calgary hardly ever has them).

I know we’re going to have a heck of a hard time adjusting back. Reverse culture shock, of a sort. Everything in English. Not having to argue with a sales clerk, or having to use hand gestures (note that this is a problem with us, not the clerk, just something that we’ve had to do). Having to follow enforced rules of the road (in other words, not driving like lawless maniacs). Having to actually use a furnace and blankets to stay warm at night. Wearing pants (as opposed to shorts — get your minds out of the gutters, you freaks!).

Three months. It’s equally a very long time, and will disappear in a blink. One day, not long from now, we’ll have to reminice about living in Costa Rica, just like we reminice about Calgary right now.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick…

With great power comes great responsibility.
- Various sources

I’m sure you’ve heard this quote before. It’s a good one, often used to reinforce the need for people to not slough off their priorities. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all fine and dandy, but I don’t really like it. It works for superhero movies and parental figures. It fails in my mind because it puts more of a burden on responsibility, rather than the sense of freedom one gets from being responsible.

Instead, I prefer this variation:

With responsibility comes a sense of great empowerment.
- Me. ‘Cuz I just said it.

I know what you’re going to say…

“Responsibility is a pain,” you say, cursing the mere thought that it could be anything else. “Whenever anyone says: ‘You have to take responsibility for the things you do!’, all I get is trouble! I don’t want responsibility!”

Everyone remembers hearing seemingly endless tirades a kid, and having their parents, teachers, older siblings (if they had ‘em), and elders tell them about how being responsible was important, how it was crucial to the survival of mankind that they feed the dog, clean the goldfish bowl, and mow the lawn. Everyone remembers the stern finger-wagging and sterner gaze about how their lives were going nowhere if they didn’t shape up and do what was expected. The punishment for failure sometimes meant not being able to sit properly for a few hours.

Hence the problem with people wanting to take on responsibility in their jobs. As a manager, I’ve seen this dozens of times — and struggled with it myself. There are those who avoid responsibility at all costs, and there are those who take on far too much responsibility. This applies not just to staff but also to their managers. (Yep, this also lends back to my point on delegation. But I digress.)

Responsibility is a fundamental part of any career — any successful, growing career. If you read that statement properly, then you picked up on my point: You can avoid responsibility, but don’t expect to go places. In fact, if you go so far as to be irresponsible, you can pretty much wipe clean any credit you’d earned.

Being responsible requires two leaps of faith.

First, from yourself. You have to first show that you’re willing to accept responsibility. Accepting it doesn’t mean receiving work: it means knowing that you are the one in charge of the solution, the one who’s going to be asked to address problems and create the solutions. You do that through doing your daily job, demonstrating that you can not only deliver with consistency, but ask for more.

The second leap of faith is from your manager. The leap can be minor — such as assigning a larger project. When it’s a major leap (and it can be), it’s often a test. There’s not always a clear indication that someone is ready for a lot of responsibility, just a possibility. That initial assignment can be just as daunting for a manager as it is for the one receiving the work.

Responsibility is not solely an individual event — one person’s abilities affect those around them. Consider the following examples:

• Responsible
  Someone who steps up to the challenge is someone who not only gains the respect of management, but also demonstrates the capability to others around them. A single responsible person on a team contributes to a team’s overall success and outlook.
• Not Responsible
  Someone who avoids the responsibility is neutral, to some extent. They make still contribute to a project and a team, they cannot be tasked with anything significant, which imposes a larger burden on those in lead positions. These people are often left behind while others are promoted.
• Irresponsible
  These are people who ignore the responsibility given to them, or fail to understand how their actions will affect those around them. A single irresponsible person at the very least often increases work for those around them, and can lead to poor quality or incomplete (failed) work. On teams, this leads to lowered morale, and can ruin the dynamics of a team.

A key point that everyone needs to know, manager and staff member alike, is that responsibility is never given — responsibility is taken.

I cannot go to anyone on my team and give them the mantle of ownership for a given task. Or rather, I can, but that act is meaningless. It’s like offering food to someone who isn’t hungry. Someone must take responsibility when it is offered. Only when it is taken and acted upon does responsibility truly exist.

Responsibility exists at all levels, too. The higher you are in an organisation, the more responsibility you (generally) have. You can’t pass off responsibility to others — you merely allow someone else to take direct responsibility from you. You are still accountable for that decision, and it’s a poor manager who fingers someone else for a responsible act, rather than stand up and accept the blame for things gone wrong.

Okay, so where does the “empowerment” come into all of this? I’ve rambled on for 869 words, and I still haven’t addressed that point.

Ever done something challenging? I don’t mean that 2,000 word essay or the 3 hour exam in university. I mean having been handed something hard, something when you first saw it were actually (even slightly) scared of it, to turn it around and successfully deliver? Remember that feeling?

You think it was elation from success, and to some degree, you’re right. It’s a validation of your abilities, that you handled and controlled. That’s empowerment. That’s the sense of knowing you’re capable, able, and trusted to run with important work. Even with critical, life-supporting duties (witness the staff of an ER some time — hopefully on good terms), and you’ll see empowerment in its truest form.

As a manager, I not only look for those willing to take on responsibility, I rely on them. I cannot do my job without them being able to do theirs. And as a staff member (remember, I report to those above me), I want to expand my own horizons by doing the difficult, and know that delivering the right solution helps not only me but those I work with.