Ace Gentile is blogging

Rules of management

2009-01-13T08:18:00.001-08:00

The first rule of management (and not only):
Don't make assumptions !

Please repeat until you get it.

Impresii de calatorie

2008-06-04T02:39:00.000-07:00

Citesc pe WallStreet "Romania va ajunge in 2020 la puterea economica a Irlandei din 2007".

Oameni la costum, importanti. Etajul 3 dintr-o cladire desprinsa din Startrek ce se vroia a fi destinata circuitului universitar.
IBM, HP, Siemens, Oracle, Tsystems stau in raftul deasupra aparatului de cafea. Regret ca nu am luat Fortech cu mine sa il pun in rand cu celelalte.
O sa sorb din paharul de sticla, anonim.
Ma uit in jur si nu pot sa nu observ lucrul bine facut. De la curatenia generala, la reteaua de cabluri ascunsa in podeaua falsa si inapoi la tractorul cu emisie minima
de noxe si zgomot ce se asigura in fiecare saptamana ca iarba sa creasca la acelasi nivel. Cum fac?

Intru in cladire, pe singura usa fara sistem de securitate, in fata Office Desk.
- "Hello" -"Halo" - "Sprechen sie English?" -"..." (o da! popor mandru, era sa uit). - "Aaaa...ich been in project Y, mit Herr X..."
- "Ah so, Bitte melden Sie sich" si imi arata un registru. Semnez si sunt indrumat catre etajul 3 dintr-o cladire desprinsa din Startrek...

Autostrada, 20 de kilometrii si intru in oras. In jur campii verzi, agricole, samanta a prins de cateva luni si acum vesteste ca va fi o recolta buna.
Tresar la vocea robot a gps-ului "...in 300 de metrii iesiti de pe autostrada." 5 minute mai tarziu opresc la un stop si admir peisajul:
mult verde, ici colo cate o cladire si deasupra tuturor fabrica dominand orasul. Masinile ma ocolesc ca si cum nu as fi acolo. E verde, prind urmatorul rosu.
Fiecare isi vede de treaba lui. Sunt in tara celor ce au cucerit Europa.

Catva kilometerii pana la Debrecen, prima oprire intr-o parcare inainte de granita sa imi intind oasele. Zambesc la soare ca si Ion dar pentru o clipa
imi revin imaginile de cosmar a nefericitilor din loganul alb. Realizez cat sunt de norocos.

Ultima intersectie si voi iesi din Grigorescu, clacsoane, scrasnete de roti. "Te bag in p.. ". Suntem un popor second-hand.

Ora 9! Ah trebuia sa ma trezesc la 7.

Like sheep we are

2008-02-13T05:51:00.000-08:00

Since when we started giving up at what we are? I confess myself that I'm impressed of management. And I mean management in general cause I've seen a lot. Somehow we all accepted that we are resources. What a term that is! So innocent at first look but so brainwashing. And they know how to tell you what a valuable resource you are, oh yes.

Scenario:

a list of tasks
an impossible deadline

What you do?

You cut of from quality? - You good individual - bugs + evaluation + luck ( you are a good listener + you do overtime form time to time ) = You are a good resource

This would not be so bad but here comes the devil. You get used to it you think it is normal and that you are a professional programmer. You just lie to yourself and because all the others are the same you even don't have a chance to see it.

You raise the problem? - You bad individual - you are a problem maker - bad evaluation with no luck = You are a bad resource.

It might look like a dead-end for one who looks after professional (in real sense) growth. For those that care I say You don't have to choose from being a good resource or a bad one. Stop thinking in those terms instead look in the mirror and answer to this question:

Am I prepared to sacrifice what I like for what I want to become?

When you are prepared for that, start building your value. And always remember - your code is your value.

Hate your code!

2008-02-13T05:45:00.000-08:00

Of course you already hate the code of the others so I won't speak about this here. What really makes you better is to be unfold now. It's something so simple yet so difficult to realize. I came upon this truth by chance when refactoring an already refactored code.

In order to improve you have to hate your own code.

Yes folks that's it. If you concentrate on hating your code /*that is really not liking what you wrote to the level that makes you so sick that you can't resist the need to change it*/ that is what will make you improve. Without this sadomasochistic mental behavior you will get to be a self loving average individual part of the large self loving average world.

So, start hating!

eLiberatica conference 2007

2007-05-22T02:02:00.001-07:00

eLiberatica conference 18-19May 2007

Conference [link]

Participant friends: Toffee, Zeze and me

Trip notes

17May2007 - After having a good argue around the Who Should be the Driver issue we chose the safe side so Toffee started preparing his car for the road. Right there I knew that I'm in for a long ride, why is a different story. Targeted TOD (time of departure) was 20:00. The estimated TOA (time of arrival) - 23:00 - was graciously provided by Ioana our iGO sensual voice. She was sweet but so wrong, the actual TOA was 01:00. Here I wanna thank to Alina, Toffee's wife, because her sandwiches were life saving. We had around 5 stops, one was worth noting: the stop on Sighisoara. For me it was the first time to see Sighisoara not because I didn't like it but mainly because when I wanna get really drunk I prefer going downtown, it's faster and cheaper considering also the travel cost. It was a short walk with Zeze being our guide. We saw the famous stairs where all that drunk hippies gather on Fest. Deeply impressed and "in the Fest spirit" how Zeze called it, we stopped and pee on that stairs.

18May2007 - one hour after midnight, our drunk Co-pilot, Zeze felt asleep on the back seat. Somehow we managed to find the Pension without his precious help. The place had good living conditions, I was amazed to find that we have HBO and some adult channel for free. Woke up at 07:20 and had a nice small omelet with 15RON. At 09:00 we were at the conference in ARO Palace hotel , where a room for single was around 120EU no VAT included. The conference took place on two tracks (having 2 rooms with different topics at a time). At 18:20 the first conference day was over. After a couple of beers, exchange of ideas, setup of strategies for the firm-open source tandem and a nice food at a traditional german?! restaurant we closed the day.

19May2007 - this time we skipped the attractive omelet offer and hurried downtown to vote (you know the "suspended citizen" issue). The conference started around 09:20 just in time for me to grab some Ubuntu CDs and some latex condoms from BitDefender (don't ask me why this company changed its business profile, I imagine it has something to do with viruses). I always appreciate free drinks and free condoms so I got my hands full. Around 18:30 the second and last day of conference was over. At 19:00 we hit the road. Ioana which for the full length of our staying in Brasov refused to collaborate with us complaining about some satellites (what business has a woman with satellites is beyond my comprehension) decided to help us again with our way back to Cluj. Again she was very optimistic about our TOA but I knew better so we managed to arrive around 00:30 safe and sane. Ze end.

The experience

Now the deal with the conference. From the beginning I must state that the quality of the speakers, especially the external speakers worth all the money and the trouble. I will enumerate some names here:

Aleksander Farstad - co-founder and CEO of eZ systems
Brian Behlendorf - co-founder of the first web development company, co-founder of Apache Software Fundation, CTO and co-founder of Collabnet (sponsor of SVN)
Kurt von Finck - lead of technical support for BeOS, member and sysadmin on GNOME Fundation, Senior Ubuntu Systems Support Analyst
Zak Greant - Mozilla Foundation member, Executive Director for eZ systems, author of many popular books on PHP/MYSQL
Georg Greve - initiator and president of the Free Software Foundation Europe
Jim Willis - Director of eGovernment and Information Technology for Rhode Island Office, instrumental contribution in US Federal and State government adoption of open source software
Monty Widenius - father of MYSQL, currently CTO of MySQL AB

DAY 1

Lucian Slavuc, ROSI initiator and coordinator of the eLiberatica conference presents strategies for making Romania known worldwide by joining the FLOSS movement (Free Libre Open Source Software).
Zak offers an intro to free software philosophy
Brian presents the recipe for a successful open source community
- treat people like peers; assume they are intelligent
- motivate
- be transparent; take decisions in front of the community
- be open to changes
- be neutral; think for the community
- contribute; give back to the community
Georg presents open standards
- the role that the standards have in protecting the freedom of the competition
- open standards need to be maintained and protected against company locks to prevent monopole
- open standards are not free software but only by free software they will win
Kurt. In fact this animate person is difficult to capture on an article, I recommend to anyone to go and speak with him or see him at conferences. All I will say about him is: Ubuntu!
Notable from the rest of the conference day was "The Semantic Web" presented by Sabin Corneliu Buraga, an excentric Phd from Iasi which impressed me. I realized we still have intelligent people that did not leave the country (yet!).

DAY 2

Jim advocates open source on government services with the formula os + oContent + oServices = oGouvernment. He advised that Romania must play its role on local level and then on international level regarding eGouvernment.
Aleksander presents the business model based on open source behind eZ systems. How a firm based on 100 employees can level the business to 8mil euro income. His solution: a good software developed by the community and income on services and partnership built around it.
Monty presents his recipe to success.
- he built MYSQL first as a close source project and after he opened the project and use it to work close with others contributors.
- create a community around his project
- make project easy to use, install, understand
IBM presentation hold by sales representative. He presents the SOA paradigm applied not as everyone may think at the code level but at the organizational level stating that currently IBM makes efforts on moving towards this model.
SUN presentation was mainly focussed on licensing models and on SUN motivation to embrace open source.
Kurt. Again Ubuntu :)

The value

You all might be wondering what benefit can someone gain for himself and for his company out of this kind of conference. I mean come on we have strategic clients. What place can one see for open source in an outsourcing firm? To the first concern (the benefit to himself) it is quite trivial to figure out the answer. For a programmer it is crucial to stay informed, to keep up with the world directions, to get inspired by other minds. And this is what I got in the first place:

Information
Ideas
Inspiration

Now for the not so obvious gains for the firm. This conference brought us close to the people that built business with interesting models and approaches to open source. Their ideas are like fertile soil we only have to try it on our weeds. I'm sure there will be follow-ups and lots of discussions on this topic inside the firm. Open source is a state of mind with big impact on employees and employment and used accordingly can create value for recruitment process. Open source is also about fame. Being famous will attract interest not only from potential employees but also from potential customers. In consequence can be a great marketing opportunity. And if all above seams to be long-time strategy at least having people with open mind is a direct benefit to all. Until we will all open up and understand that is ok to give up control cu at next eLiberatica conference.