Who You Calling A Jesse?

This past week I have had my calendar and task list hijacked by a cold virus that hasn’t even found its way to make me ill but it has decided to drive up the internal temperatures of the two little things in the house. The upside to this is that I have an excuse to hang out with them during the week, the downside is that this unplanned vacation is anything but and I am sinking into declaring inbox and task list bankruptcy.

How do you balance kids with work?

Honestly, how do you? You don’t, kids win every time. However, how do you deal with coworkers that find your unplanned absence annoying? The situation for my wife and I is extra fun as she just recently returned to work from maternity leave and they are already down one staff member in their group, I am working on a startup when I am not working my more than full time job at VeloCity, and I still have responsibilities as Past President of the UW Staff Association. Thankfully we both have understanding coworkers but not everyone does.

I don’t have an answer for those that don’t have a supportive work environment but here is my two point strategy for not letting the big things slip (and it may help contribute to having understanding coworkers):

• Work with your partner—even though you both won’t be sleeping and probably have short fuses
• Prioritize the big things and find an hour in the day to triage (see it as being forced to focus on value, not volume – that might help)

Then repeat the following every time you think you are about to drive yourself crazy with thinking about the things you should be doing:

Nobody on his deathbed ever said, “I wish I had spent more time at the office.” – Paul Tsongas

When you are busy second guessing your decisions about going to the doctor or not going given temperature, time, colour of the boogers/poo, should they go to daycare, or damn daycare for the bug sharing, etc you find work is a pleasant distraction but don’t let it guide your decisions. Once in a while I find myself heading that way and I have to keep coming back to what is most important and it isn’t work.

…but it will burn many hours of your work day talking about this enlarged iPod/iPhone. Everywhere I turn people are either making fun of it, dismissing it (passionately), or ready to pull out the credit card and buy one. What really gets me are this new group (to me) of people that think you need a half inch, desktop powerful, physical keyboard using device or it just isn’t good enough.

Here’s my position on the iPad the day after:

• It is a consumption device.
• It won’t burn your bits when you try and watch a movie on it.
• I sat in the coffee shop with morning with email, a web browser, and tweet deck open for 3 hrs—didn’t need my laptop for that.
• It isn’t expensive for the early adopters that will buy version 1
• It is a product release that had features dropped that didn’t meet the quality control requirements (think iPhone before the 3G)
• Developing apps for it will likely be awesome
• If I were a student, I would be beyond excited to have all my text books on that (hey higher ed, how many will be offering this to first years loaded with all their text books, notes, slides, podcasts, etc?)

I will admit my bias and say that a big iPod touch that can tether with my iPhone is all I really wanted. A full OS would have been nice but I am really excited to see how developers take advantage of the HTML 5 stuff that Safari supports.

Will it be for everyone? No. But I would bet their $50 billion company is safe for now.

When TEDxWaterloo was first mentioned I was beyond excited (it was around the same time IgniteWaterloo was being planned which is also awesome). The focus and quality of the independently organized TED event is something I think the local community could really benefit from. As much as I love the whole unconference thing I know it doesn’t work for everyone and it can be really strange to people that haven’t attended. However, I am disappointed in the rationale behind applying to attend that TED itself promotes. I do appreciate the views on it by organizing folks but…

I am concerned about it being exclusive

I had a big long rant written about this but instead I will keep it simple: applying to attend something in a community this small that is dominated by Higher Education, think tanks, and RIM-jobs driving BMW’s implies exclusivity. Maybe being exclusive to a certain type of person is exactly what TED is trying to do to ensure there is quality conversation. However, the community is full of interesting and colourful personalities… you can’t just exclude them because, well because is hard to say as they haven’t really listed any measurable criteria.

As one of the commenters on Renjie’s blog post there is a fine line between elitist and open that TEDx seems to just barely stay on the positive side of but I think the problem the registration is intended to fix doesn’t actually exist. Not in Waterloo anyway.

What am I going to do about it? Nothing. I am not going to apply to attend, not going to talk about it anymore (I will try), and look forward to the next Ignite Waterloo or BarCampWaterloo or StartupCampWaterloo or Web Design meetup or startup drinks or any other event that is open to everyone.

Over the past week we tried something different at VeloCity – we opened up the term not with speakers but instead engaged the students in a serious of brainstorming evenings followed by a weekend focused on starting their startup. Amongst the group discussions, team formation, development, and business planning have been a number of local entrepreneurs that have wandered around the residence talking to students and offering some insights—at least one mentor really enjoyed the experience.

The goal for the week evolved a bit but what I wanted to do is give all 65 students at the residence an opportunity to participate early on by challenging them to have a pitch and a demo by Sunday night. Keeping in mind that most (if not all) of the students here have never had an opportunity to work towards building a business with their peers.

The result? About 50 of the 65 students at VeloCity participated this weekend in fleshing out some ideas and most of the teams actually built a usable application. One of them, the room booking application, will be used at VeloCity starting this week!

At the moment I am a bit tired from the 80+ hour work week to write a big post but I can confidently say that we have exceeded out goals for this week and moved VeloCity clearly away from simply a space for innovation to a community that is actually doing something.

At the end of 2009 it is worth a look back at a decade that just happens to be the first 10 years since I was a full-time student. I entered the naughties in a job based out of Thesselon Ontario working for the Community Development Corporation trying to get small business on the web and into our crazy new web site (which was updated only recently to a much better site). Now I am part of a small team of folks trying to get students at the University of Waterloo connected to people that will help build something awesome at VeloCity.

I would have never guessed the decade would close the way it has and I have to say I feel extremely lucky. While all the madness of the world was going on I met my wife, bought a house, experienced a part-time grad program, I have kids, and lots of other fun stuff.

What have I learned?

• I knew nothing in my 20s
  
  • …and spent way too much time worrying about things
  • …and I let that worry guide too many decisions
• experience is important, embrace every experience good or bad but don’t let experience limit you
• always take calculated risks and be ready for Plan B (because you are wrong about plan A most of the time)
• how not to take things personally instead of just saying that I don’t

I hope that the next 10 years are just as fun as the last 10. Just like in 1999 when I thought I would be old in 2009, I think I will really be old in 2019… hopefully wiser ;)