Who You Calling A Jesse?

Today I find myself at a car dealership in town that is willing to sacrifice a long standing relationship for $50. No more $150 oil changes, no more other service, certainly won’t buy new tires from them, etc all because they insist to charge me to figure out what is wrong with my less than three year old Saab. Talk about a short-sited customer service decision.

After leaving my car to sit for a few weeks while I was on vacation I returned to a car that was just a mess. The lights kept going out, there was a violent vibration from the back wheels (feel it in the seat not the steering wheel), and it just ran rough. Given it is generally a sleep in the garage car I assumed it just didn’t like being outside and/or it is showing its 65K of KM. Although for a Saab 9-5 that shouldn’t be a lot.

I finally managed to get into the dealership a month and a half later. The lights have been an ongoing concern (they have been replaced every time I bring it in) so no worries there, they will take care of it. The vibration might be warranty work or it might not. Just to find out I get the privilege of paying for the time to figure it out.

I realize it is common practice for mechanics to do this. After all, it takes them some time to figure it out (or simply plug in the computer and it tells you) and sure mechanics could spend all day diagnosing things and not get paid. But:

• is diagnosis not built into their $80/hr+ billing rate?
• I bought the car from that dealership and I might buy another (not now)
• The mechanic won’t feel the vibration anyway as he isn’t allowed to go fast enough to feel it (yes it is above the speed limit but not by much)

What I don’t understand is why do people accept this? If more people complained then there is no way it would continue. I am certain the irritation on customers over oil changes is why GM now covers that for the first few years… obviously the service cost is worth absorbing to make customers happy. BMW, Mercedes, and others offer free ‘scheduled’ maintenance as does Cadillac. They probably don’t charge to tell you if something is warranty work or not. Why? Over the ownership time they may have to absorb $200 per customer on average which is pretty cheap for happy people that spend 40k+ on a vehicle.

Our lease is up in a year and I am pretty sure I will not be going back to that dealership for much beyond handing them the keys.

The Canada 3.0 conference wrapped up the second day with speeches from the CEO of RIM, the Chair of the CRTC, and others all with a strong patriotic message as well as a surprising amount of useful vision and position stuff specifically from the the Chair of the CRTC. Day 2 did, sadly enough, start off with some rather dry and boring stuff that made for a fun game of buzz word bingo.

Between the speeches I attended the talk that included Waterloo’s own Jacqui Murphy from TechCapital. She took full advantage of having a mic and an audience to make it clear that startups shouldn’t be about seeking funding or exits with big companies buying you. You should dream big and focus on revenue generation. Some great messages to bring back to VeloCity I think.

The round table discussions in the afternoon felt like they lacked energy and urgency. The big rooms and groups just didn’t work well for that but I did meet some really interesting folks around my table. If nothing else, that was a huge bonus.

Overall, the strength of the Canada 3.0 conference was in the diversity of the folks that attended. There were some very obvious complaints about the lack of students attending but we really need to stop idealizing students, if they are interested they will come—if they aren’t there they really don’t care…. yet. There were enough student volunteers to suggest to me that the ones that are interested knew about it and made the effort to attend.

What I think was really missing was the younger entrepreneurs and leaders on the panels. Not the under-25s that the over 50’s marvel at, but the 25-40 yr old professional crowd that have the skills, experience, and know how to really push Canada’s ‘digital economy.’ I would have also liked to see more of an unconference stream. Being a Barcamp/Startup organizer I am already a fan of the format but we needed more conversation over round table sticky notes. I will even volunteer to organize that for next time ;)

I should also point out the technology situation. Stratford doesn’t have 3G, the wireless was overwhelmed by all the mobile devices and laptops begging for data (but we got the tweets out!), innovative things weren’t set up like streaming panels to the media room at the very least. Sure Igloo put together a good site but that was impressive a couple years ago, if this is ‘3.0’ then it should push the boundaries.

Honestly, it was an amazing conference. This should be the start of something… keep the buzz going, follow up with the business cards you collected, and start thinking big!

The Canada 3.0 started today in Stratford Ontario (45km west into farm fields from Waterloo) and surpassed a lot of people’s expectations I think. The morning had the typical political talk you would expect when government folks are given a microphone along with the University of Waterloo making it clear it is committed to the Stratford campus and all the potential developing such a campus may hold. What followed was a day of great conversation about communities, what to do to foster entrepreneurial talent, mobile technology, and more.

It was high level discussion mostly but it was honest discussion focused not on how great Canada is but where Canada needs work. Have a look at the twitter stream under the #can30 hash tag for some great bits of information. Day 2 promises to be more interactive with work groups tackling some of the issues presented today.

I spent a lot of they at the VeloCity booth talking to people that are interested in the idea and colleagues at other schools that are a bit envious that Waterloo has such a residence. I will be around for day 2, stop by the booth and say hi!

Over the past couple of days I have been driving the Chevrolet Traverse as part of a Twitter Test Drive arranged by Waterloo Auto Mall. Overall I think it is a great XUV (SUV is so 1990s) that does pretty much all of what a mini-van offers but with a much more solid vehicle that you can use on light off-road fun and snowy days.

• Back row of seats—although not entirely usable for adults (what back row is?) there are plenty of seat belts for when you need to move kids around town
• Even with the back row up you have space for stuff—something I didn’t expect given it isn’t a Yukon or Tahoe.
• The 3.6L engine can actually move the thing—it has enough acceleration to be fun
• Overall design of the interior—although not up to European quality of materials, it certainly is well designed and comfortable

• The stock GM technical parts that you see in 20-30K vehicles in this one that has a 50K+ price tag—The quality isn’t there in the 20 year old digital displays compared to similarly priced BMW’s and Mercedes.
• The exterior lighting—again, for the price I would expect xenon lights and less ‘cheap’ looking plastic
• Mileage—this vehicle isn’t broken in but but the avg economy on a highway drive between Waterloo and Hamilton was 12L/100km (~20 mpg). Why wouldn’t I just drive the V8 Tahoe?
• The one I had was front wheel drive only—for the price I would expect all wheel drive.

The two top things I don’t like is (I think) because this model has a 50K price tag but there is a 35K version. That is something that I think plagues GM vehicles as a whole. You can’t upgrade bits here and there and add that much to the price because you start getting into BMW and Mercedes land that have all those features and more in a much nicer designed package with quality finish. BMW and Mercedes just don’t have a lower priced option… GM needs to either upgrade more in a vehicle or stop trying to have premium domestic vehicles.

My verdict

If you can get an all wheel drive version at the 40K level you are getting a great vehicle. The quality, the performance, and the utility is certainly there. However, I am not convinced I wouldn’t look seriously at a Jeep Commander instead if I want a 4×4 that can do family stuff for ~35K.

Also: See the Edmunds report on the Traverse

About TwitterTestDrive

As far as I know the Waterloo Auto Mall is the only dealership trying to actually use social media and reach out to its customer base. I think it is a brilliant idea to try out and let the users of social media reach out to their online friends about a real experience that is essentially word of mouth marketing. I expect the #twittertestdrive hashtag will be filled of some honest and interesting experiences over this summer that will influence at least a couple car buying decisions out there.

Almost ready to have the sixth StartupCampWaterloo in just under two years. For this one it was decided to not get an opening speaker and just leave it to the community to drive the event. Our sponsors are still doing the same thing and making sure everyone has snacks and liquids. I am really looking forward to the event and meet some new folks as well as catch up with others. If you haven’t signed up and are coming, please head over to eventbrite!

After number six there will be some changes coming to StartupCampWaterloo. We didn’t get a chance to put them in place this time due to vacations (I didn’t post a thing in May) and overall being busy. If anyone has suggestions please post them here to drop me an email (jrrodgers on gmail).

After a few weeks of going back and forth with all the internal workings it is now official, I am one of two new Associate Directors at U of Waterloo’s incubator 2.0 residence, VeloCity. I join Virginia McLellan (the other Associate Director) and Sean (Director) as the new team to really push things into something really great (and fun).

The residence has come a long way in last 8 months since it started taking on students. With more investment in people to help push the direction we plan on building more of a community around VeloCity, trying out new things, and seeing where we can go. It is very exciting to be involved in such an innovative and fast moving project.

Can’t wait to get started.

Following what was an interesting 2007, 2008 proved to be one of personal and professional growth. Here is my reflection/projection post for the year.

Personally:

Probably the oddest thing about the last year was that it felt like I got very little done. I just didn’t feel productive in my work life nor did I feel like I was using my own time very well. Sure I got to spend a lot of time with my son and accomplished a lot at work but I think a lack of sleep just left me feeling a bit drowned in tasks for 2008. An overall goal for 2009 is manage my time better and enjoy myself more.

I also need to use more time for a hobby or two that isn’t web tech related. It may be time to re-invest into hockey equipment and/or my bike. At the very least I am going to bring my son fishing and try to get up north more often.

That said, things I feel good about personally:

• I finished my Msc (and my wife finished hers)
• Led the UW Staff Association as it doubled its operating budget, hired an Executive Manager, changed some key policies, and after 40 years the organization signed a formal Memorandum of Agreement with the University of Waterloo.
• Drove to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
• Besides Myrtle Beach I visited Las Vegas, Orlando, Wilmington, Clarksberg, Georgetown. All except Orlando were family trips!
  
• Spent a lot of time with Addison
• Welcomed an amazing baby girl into our family

Professionally

Working at the University of Waterloo has advantages and drawbacks. The drawbacks are largely the politics of the environment – a culture that suppresses creative problem solving has been set in for some time. I can honestly say that in 2008 I finally figured out how to get things done properly in such a place without becoming part of the existing culture. The organizational culture must (and will) change over time. Not sure if I will be around UW long enough to see it but who knows.

The past year was about being front and centre in campus wide politics. This coming year is going to be about building some pretty cool front ends, learning to really love (and hate) AJAX, AIR, MS servers, and design. I will be more behind the scenes on campus politics hopefully and I just focus on some good geekery for 2009.

I would also like to make a few more conferences this year. The creative spark that I get from conferences went missing last year. I need that back.

Community

This past year saw what I think was a huge success in the growth of a local tech/entreprenuer community outside of traditional channels. StartupCampWaterloo and BarCampWaterloo really started to take off. DemoCampGuelph contributed as well to what is a pretty interesting unconference community. It isn’t a huge community by any stretch but it is a very intelligent group of creative entrepreneurs. I am excited to see what 2009 will bring.

There is of course the other groups locally that add depth to the community. DevHouseWaterloo (hosted at AideRSS), local Twitter groups, Flickr groups, etc are all enriching and broadening community.

This year I want to get a local Adobe User Group off the ground. The region has a lot of Adobe users and I think they could all benefit from having a group that shares their experiences using software from Adobe. Being an Adobe Community Expert I should really get on that ;)

Bring on 2009!

Seems RIM’s new Blackberry Storm has a raised a few eyebrows over web related things. In the first review I read there is a mention on the browser:

…had zero issues with the Storm’s browser. Zooming in and out is simple and it seems to load most pages fine, except the NYTs as it reverts to the mobile edition and doesn’t want to load the regular site. Anything with a lot of Javascript chorks, though. Everywhere else on the device there are scroll up/scroll down keys but they’re missing on the browser. Seems like an odd move, but the navigation bar would be a bit crowded. – CrunchGear

As a person that believes the browser is the platform I think the browser is where the mobile device will be won (or lost). As much as I love the app store I hate having all those silly icons scattered on my device just to access web based content. Let me use my browser (like google does). Likely a balance needs to be found but at the moment I have app icon overload…

Living in the town of RIM (Waterloo, Ontario) I often hear things at pubs, at events, or through some second hand gossip. What I hear is usually some pretty positive stuff but at the risk of calling out a specific person, when I hear something along the lines of “webkit doesn’t support Acid2 but the Storm browser does” as a point of discussion I get a little concerned.

First, the Acid tests for web browsers are not a target that makes your web browser bad ass. You can pass it one day but not the other for good reason. But what I don’t get is that Safari passed Acid2 in April of 2005. What that person said in that statement (to me) is that they made sure they passed a test they didn’t even understand! Sure if you run Acid2 on the browser on the iPhone it has a little issue but there could be a good reason for it. AND IT DOESN’T MATTER. Web standards are guidelines… just don’t break things and force me to customize my CSS or JS for your browser.

I don’t want to put down the folks at RIM (the value of my house is directly related to their success!), they made some huge improvements. Problem is that they are against a number of new competitors that have years on them with regards to utilizing the web… they need to come across as knowing what they are talking about, even in the local gossip pools.

The team I am on here at U of Waterloo is looking for jQuery or just JavaScript person that is more than just familiar with .NET to give us a hand for a few months (up to 8 months) as we make a big push to get this system ready to go… on time. If you are in the Waterloo area and interested, drop me an email (jrodgers at uwaterloo dot ca). Freelancers are welcome ;)

A twitter conversation got me rethinking about the concept of content vs design yet again. I am constantly in a battle with having to design an interface for content, actions, and requirements that are either contradicting or simply not known yet. That is hugely frustrating however there are ways to design some general things without knowing the specific content and through a few iterations you get there. That is usually what you are forced to do if you are trying to be truly agile.

In Higher ed, what rules is content or design? My feeling is that it is still content. Aside from Alumni and High School students, the gross majority of consumers of information in the higher ed web space are a captive audience. They are staff, students, and faculty that are simply doing their daily activities in a web space they have to use. Sweating over design and what that design should be may not be a fair trade off over just simple content organization. If content is so important I think the use of Microformats is as well because it allows the higher ed space to open up that useful content to a larger audience and potentially enables their internal audiences to use that content better.

Design (impressive, high end, etc) should be more important for micro-sites that are targeting external audiences. An impressive design can be that ‘wow’ factor that will attract those high school students or make your internal audience more comfortable to find information within your web space. However, content may still be more important in the form of a social media foot print in youtube, twitter, facebook, and other places where you don’t have control over design… only the content.

That is not to say good design isn’t needed but I think if you have only 1 day to spend fixing something in your higher ed web space, fix up the content.

As of today I will no longer be President of the University of Waterloo Staff Association. My last act as President was to chair the first half of the Annual General Meeting and then hand over new business to the new President. I take on the role of Past-President that involves co-chairing the Staff Relations Committee and moving to a more advisory role within the Staff Association organization. As President I have two staff that report to me and was in a leadership position. Now I have to step out of the leadership role but stay involved.

In some sense I am happy that my time is up—another kid is on the way and my sanity is getting harder to find!!! A lot was accomplished thanks to the efforts of the UWSA Executive. I can’t thank them enough for the support, the input, the feedback, and the initiatives they brought to the table. Ideas moved quickly and results are starting to show already. One last accomplishment was signing a Memorandum of Agreement between the Staff Association and the University of Waterloo. It was a necessary step that the organization had to do and the Executive made the decision to get it done without a drawn out feedback process from the membership on the basis that that it does not change the working relationship between the University and the employee only the relationship between the two organizations (UWSA and UW). That lack of process didn’t go over well with some in the membership but it was the right thing to do and I am glad we did it.

I have learned a lot about how a higher education institution functions over the past year. Far more than I learned in six years in the Communications and Public Affairs Office and certainly more than I would have an opportunity to in my current role in the IT department. It is a wonder that the organization functions at times but there is a certain value to the organizational structure that is hard not to admire. Now I am part of that structure co-chairing a committee that has oversight over many University Policies that are related to staff.

At the end of my tenure as President the UWSA seems to be getting back to business as usual. A failed union drive offered opportunity and purpose to strengthen the organization and time will tell if that was actually achieved. One remarkable thing that I have learned about the large group of staff in higher ed is that Peter Drucker needs to be required reading for all higher education workers. His management philosophies are applicable to higher education but sadly the execution of any institution wide management strategy is just isn’t there (yet). Another important thing is that some of the best people anywhere dedicate a lot of time and talent to higher education and academics, I would argue, play a lot lesser role in the ensuring higher education works then some would have you believe.

Tonight had to be the most unexpected StartupCampWaterloo yet and it was a load of fun! We had a fairly full room of new faces (60-70) that hadn’t been to a camp event before and really didn’t know what to expect. This left us in a bit of an odd situation as we had no one signed up on the board. So what happened? David Crow made his community pitch to the folks and then everyone introduced themselves as Mic got the names of startups in the room up on the white board.

The number of startups on the white board? 19. There was 19 new startups in the room that were all in fairly early stages. Once all the intros were done and we had a break, a mix of new and some evolved ideas were presented. It was totally not what he had expected for the fourth event but it is exactly what these events should be about. Everything from the project that is being worked on in the basement to a student from Velocity just throwing ideas out there.

The startup community in this town is inspiring.

Do you want to make the system better? Do you want people to use your code? Do you want to work with me? It is close to the end of the first round in co-op here at Waterloo and we have a couple jobs posted. Here is the jobmine info so you can find it easier:

Winter 2009 Co-op 00092349 Software Developer
Winter 2009 Co-op 00092354 Software Developer – Q/A
Winter 2009 Co-op 00092662 User Advocate

We need some passionate students that are keen on web technology to get us to the pilot stage in the spring. Do you think you are up for it?

The technology you get to play with is mostly Microsoft – SQL, .NET, etc – but the GUI likes to use jQuery (before Microsoft decided it was cool).

Just about a year ago I switched jobs on campus from one that focused on applying a broad range of web technology with a marketing and communications focus to a job where I was to focus on user experience of one particular project. I posted some thoughts on what I would have liked to have done in my previous job if I was still there. Have to say, after 12 months I have no idea if any of my list was achieved or even is a big deal to folks that are dealing with U of Waterloo’s web space but it is strangely still important me and I still feel a bit like I need to figure out how to achieve it.

What is truly strange about changing jobs and staying on the main campus is that I don’t really feel like I changed jobs, I just changed projects. Maybe it’s because in my previous job I had a pretty high profile across campus with regards to the web (being the first and only – for a number of years – person hired to work only on the web on campus) and with my current job we are working on a pretty high profile project.

When there was an opportunity for growth presented to me I felt like I had to take it but really wasn’t sure in my decision. However, I have learned a lot that I would not have learned in my previous job which makes the decision to switch jobs a good one a year later. Is my current position better or worse than my previous one? Neither, it’s just different. For me, the motivation to change jobs came from the desire to learn new things and gain from new experiences but there is always a risk in leaving the job you know (or established). I think for a lot of people that work in a large organization and are happy where they are, they can get trapped by the conflict between doing what they know vs the joy of learning something new vs the risk of finding yourself in a bad situation.

In my role as President of Staff Association I have tried to promote changing roles or jobs on campus is a good thing to do both personally and professionally. More needs to be done at Waterloo to encourage folks to move around and I have a feeling in higher education in general a culture of ‘moving around’ doesn’t exist. Given how phd’s don’t change departments… ever… it isn’t a surprise that would influence the culture of higher ed.

For the past few weeks I have slowed into a summer routine of not looking at my watch and just doing whatever comes to mind. It has been a nice pace over last summer where we were flying or driving all over the place and not being home for around 14 weekends in a row.

Besides my obsession with what has been going on in the NFL pre-season or finally being rewarded for attending a CFL game I really haven’t been getting into too much.

I do plan to catch up on stuff this week and get a few posts out… or maybe not. A week into August already and I am just going to enjoy this month ;)

This past week the front-end team that I lead (it includes GUI makers, User Advocates, and UI folks) along with the rest of the team (SOA enablers) are religiously entering a scrum cycle for the remainder of the summer. We have broken into two groups along the lines already mentioned.

The problem I am having is that my group is a mix of the pigs and chickens and I am not entirely sure how to have them all involved. My approach for the moment is to have the UA/UI folks participate as observers in the first 15 min daily with the UI folks really taking the time to go over their tasks from yesterday, for today, and tomorrow. They leave, then the UA/UI folks do their thing for 15 min.

The other challenge as I see it is that we can’t ‘lock in’ tasks for a two week period as the expectation is that clients are giving feedback and expect to see some adjustments on a very short cycle. To address that I have set up two days of ‘respond to feedback’ where we tackle any tasks that can be done in those two days. Anything that can’t fit goes on the list for the next cycle.

This is going to be a bit awkward at first I think… not entirely sure I have it organized properly yet. Hopefully by the next two week cycle I will get it ;) Wondering though, anyone have a similar problem? How do they handle front end development of web applications in a scrum cycle?

Illya posted some thoughts on Agile Release & Testing Procedures and instead of writing a big long comment I figured it was worth a blog post. At the University of Waterloo I have had experience deploying a number of different applications for a variety of audiences… it is next to impossible to get all the details in a post but here is the general truth: there are no enforced institutional wide procedures for web applications. You might think the lack of procedures is bad but it is a result of the relatively low risk environment (even though the campus community has a low tolerance for bugs and changes). There are rarely formal teams of developers, it is mostly the loan coder building a specialty application – enforced procedures would frustrate them.

When you are dealing with a simple web page, say the uni home page, I have essentially covered the typical user acceptance, performance, and stress tests when the page goes live. I go through the gamut of web browser testing, try some OS variations out, and then get it out there. There is a relatively low risk here as the users don’t interact with a database or a whole heck of a lot client side. Once rendering issues are dealt with, it is pretty much unlikely to have other issues. This is with 30 000 or more people seeing it within a short period of time too. I had relative success but I think it was more luck and the fact we kept web pages simple.

Stepping up the development a bit, throw in a Ruby on Rails or PHP application. My testing procedures involved pretty much the same as the web page testing: poke away at it, fix bugs as they appear, and get it ready to go off of the development server to production. We (co-op student and I) never really sat on changes very long. The thinking was that if it went bad on the production end we just roll back the version, fast. When I made the jump to Ruby on Rails development with Capistrano and SVN that became so easy it was scary. On many occasions we had new versions going up two or three times a day. Minor changes, but they add up. This meant a lot of bugs made it out to the community version but as a whole the community appreciated seeing the progress. Our harshest critics were few and usually the type of people that would sit on things until they are perfect, the web is never perfect.

Now I find myself in the .NET/C# development world. I am happily hacking away at the JavaScript on the front end but I still live in the development environment. Here we have a solid team, a lot of developers, some serious tools, and totally different requirements from the client relationship/expectations end. At the moment we are doing limited testing that makes sure it works and then pushing it to an environment that a group has a ‘sanity check’ and gives us feedback. Releases are going out on a weekly build routine with a daily routine for an internal release. The whole process is evolving as we go but in a very general sense we are aiming to maintain a weekly build schedule for one set of users, daily internally. Our goal is to not leave the application in a non-working state and at any time the build could go live. This habit takes time to develop though… I don’t expect us to be in the groove until over the summer.

That is the nutshell version of what I have had experience with, I suppose it is Agile without the buzz terms. Personally I don’t see a reason why any web application couldn’t work on a daily build process. If you break the big change down to a lot of little changes you reduce the risk of breaking it and you ensure stability (so the theory goes). The problem is that in order to break a big thing down to a bunch of little things you need to take the time to talk it out, plan it out, and scope out what goes into a big thing. It is a way of thinking and it doesn’t happen overnight, most people need experience thinking that way.

I am interested to know what other higher education folks are doing with release and testing procedures.

With our second StartupCampWaterloo behind us here in Waterloo we hit a milestone. Over 100 people were in the main area of the Waterloo Accelerator Centre to talk with Startups and help each other with ideas (quick estimate based on 88 chairs in the room plus Ali’s colourful chairs). I am pretty sure all those that demo’d got some useful information and experience out of the evening.

A big thanks to Stefanus De Toit for opening up the evening and breaking-in the crowed by sharing insights like: Turning academic research into a product is hard if you don’t keep your paperwork in order; hire your friends; wow people with lots of 3D chickens to get investment (actually prove your concept with a solid demo). Another big thanks to Austin Hill for closing off the evening with a great presentation which included: don’t be afraid of sharing your ideas because someone already tried it – it is your execution that is important; Canada needs more of its successful entrepreneurs re-investing in the startup scene; beware the vulture investors; do a startup while you are a student; it helps to work for a startup if you are thinking about a startup as startup culture is infectious.

What was learned from this one is that 60 second intros with voting works out really well. Keeping things short and keeping the slides out of it kept the conversation interesting and focused. The big buzzer also helped. Only took one person being caught by it—no one else dared challenge their time limits. Plus it kept us on time, mostly.

I had a lot of good feedback and now can relax—until the next one. What are we going to do next? BarCampWaterloo is on March 29th, a DemoCampGuelph will be in April, and StartupCampWaterloo3 will be sometime in May. If you can’t figure out if you want to go, I have a post coming up tomorrow that will cover that ;)

Other folks to thank for making the trip from places afar and/or helping out last night… The Toronto folks venturing outside of the GTA in their large 4×4: David Crow – thanks for the books and disruption, Jevon McDonald,  Jonas Brandon.   Ali Asaria brought some chairs and name tags and Simon Law for came down from Montreal. The other organizers Simon Woodside and Mic Berman ensured that we appeared as unconference as possible ;)

Most importantly, the night was good because of the folks that were there. Waterloo has a great community.

It is interview time here at Waterloo. It happens once every four months, thousands of students and employers enter a dating game for talent and experience. Waterloo is a bit unique having a building dedicated to the process (just happens to be where my office is) and a frequency of three times a year for the process to run. Large companies like Google, RIM and Microsoft are hear hiring large numbers of students but so are local startups like AideRSS and Semacode along with all sorts of companies from different fields and different sizes. Posters on the walls with all the different information sessions show all the opportunities for students.

Why do the companies come here? Waterloo has the talent and I would argue there is far more and better talent than Stanford (update: Larry disagrees or does he?). Our students go to the Valley or Seattle or Boston or Ottawa and all points in-between to work for big names and get started on their carriers while they are working on their undergrad (or grad) degrees. A lot them stay local (Google and RIM are in Waterloo, along with a lot of other interesting employers) and even more would like to stay local for a term or two if a great job can be found.

For local web/tech startups this is a great opportunity. If you developing an idea and you need someone that can code and wants to contribute, for around 10K you can get a junior student for four months to do that. Senior students are more but you get higher quality and more experience. Just to prove a startup concept though, a junior co-op student is inexpensive and hugely beneficial.

The project I am working on depends on the quality of Waterloo Co-ops. We are building a new system to run the job/dating game and have a great bunch of students to do that. They code, they ask questions, they learn, they are excited, and they build really cool things from your ideas. Over the years I have worked with a number of different students and all of them made me look good—which is what you want when you hire someone, right? ;)

There is a side benefit to local startups hiring students I think as well. If you keep the students here, keep them engaged, and get them excited about trying out their ideas you help the local community build resources. I think it’s one part of the puzzle that may help Waterloo’s stealthy startup scene become even more open and exciting.

If you are wondering how to hire a co-op, contact CECS and they will have you set up in no time.

In my relative short career I have not had the pleasure of surviving a unionised environment except as a summer student doing landscaping work for the City of Sault Ste Marie. IT related work environments just don’t seem all that interested in a union, I would argue most knowledge workers have little interest in such a club. However here we are in 2008 at the University of Waterloo facing a vote in an attempt to certify OSSTF as a bargaining unit on campus. The vote is today however the outcome won’t be decide for approximately a month due to some dissagreement in who is in the bargaining unit.

The one thing that does get me about this entire process is how the law in this province favours unions over the individual. Maybe in industrial work environments the method used to unionize makes sense as workers generally may be easily replaced and can be easily bullied. However in a professional work environment, where it can take a few months to a few years before a worker performs at top form with higher education credentials, it feels like the whole process tramples on your rights no matter which side of the fence you sit. The behaviour out of the union itself just feels like they are after members, they don’t actually care about the workers otherwise they wouldn’t pursue unionization where the support is 50-50 at best (here it is 60% against, but they need to vote).

This whole experience has taught me a lot and I’d like to think I managed to get through it, up to this point, as President of the Staff Association (the opposing force) with only being called a few names: Meat puppet, lap dog, etc. Oh and apparently I have been paying people to vote… that would mean I had personal wealth large enough to do that. Cool, someone tell my bank manager ;)

Over the past year or so the MMNP effort has been working on ways to utilize mobile and media based technology on campus. A year ago a pilot project looked at the possibility of students replacing their land lines in residence is relatively smart phones. Lots was learned (primarily that students are shell shocked by the telco cost and don’t really use them even when a large chunk of costs are covered) and the project moved on to different ideas. One of those ideas was a living environment that doubles as an incubator for entrepreneurial students.

Enter 2008 and the announcement of VeloCity. The Daily Bulletin article covers all the details. From the VeloCity site:

“It’s a place where some of UW’s most talented, entrepreneurial, creative and technologically savvy students will be united under one roof to work on the future of mobile communications, web and new media.”

I was involved with the project early on and it is great to see that Sean has taken his idea and made it a reality. I expect to see some exciting things come from this housing experiment. What a great opportunity for some students!