go bold

Impetus

Posted by christine - 07/29/09 at 01:07:50 am

I’ve been trying to be on my own case this summer. Last summer I was in San Francisco, I was very comfortable – I took the last shuttle home (at 7pm!) every day, couldn’t do work at home (no VPN access for interns!), so did a lot of relaxing, watching Alias, and cooking.

I’d had the goal of going out and “doing the SF tech thing,” which to me at the time meant going to tech meetups and talks and meeting all sorts of cool people, and learning all sorts of cool things. Clearly, it didn’t happen.

So this year I’m trying something different. I’ve been much more proactive about getting out and talking to people – an interesting union of MIT friends in and out of the startup world, acquaintances with interesting backgrounds and experiences, and now and then the occasional stranger whose blog I find fascinating. (I hate the term networking. I prefer “being-enriched-by-the-wisdom-of”.)

While the first category of dinner partners definitely keeps me from feeling like I’m becoming a hermit, it’s the second two categories that are really pushing this summer and myself forward. I walk out of each of these dinners excited about everything I can and want to do, and even more convinced of the importance of constant self-improvement.

So. In the interest of committing myself to a number of things to achieve this goal, here goes the list:

• Blog at least once a week. I’m going to set an alarm on my iCal and commit to posting something interesting I learned, or thought, or accomplished.
• Read 1 ‘improvement’ book for every fun book. I’m in the middle of reading the LOTR series (for the first time!), and once I finish The Two Towers, until I finish a programming- or startup- or productivity-related book, I won’t let myself read Return of the King. Sniff.
• Keep working a few nights a week on my side project (more later) – I feel like I need at least one or two non-school- or work-related projects under my belt before I can respect myself as a hacker. Or, as a lower standard, any sort of programmer.
• Along that line of thought – be more disciplined about said project! Don’t just sit down and start coding. Plan out the project a little more (what do I want it to do? How should it behave?) and use version control / repo management tools as well.

(Side note: am still probably far too awkward to be going around meeting people and making these first impressions. Need to work on that, too – for now, just sadface)

(Last note: tonight’s conversation was described as “covering a lot of ground, both philosophically and academically.” Last week’s was described as “spontaneously deep conversation with strangers.” Good nights, both. :))

Readymades

Posted by christine - 07/15/09 at 03:07:32 am

I was at the SF MoMA this past weekend – and if you’ve ever been, you’ll (hopefully) know that in their standing collection is a set of art from a number of particularly interesting artists, one of whom (Duchamp) is known best for a work photographed here. This is Fountain:

It’s a urinal. It’s a run-of-the-mill, yes-he-really-did, urinal. Made into art (and thus deserving of a spot inside the MoMA) simply by declaring it as such.

Of course, some amount of reputation was required to pull that off, and some other, more traditionally respectable work had to be done to acquire said reputation, but in the end – he’s able to pull something someone else technically “made,” and enhance it for his own purposes.

In the software world, there are those who seem to find it unthinkable to use off-the-shelf products to help with the engineering process in-house. While this attitude has certainly led to plenty of innovation (thank you for Cassandra, BigTable, etc), these special cases seem to really only be the extreme of the “there’s nothing out there just for us” attitude. And, I suppose, to play devil’s advocate, in their situation, off-the-shelf tools probably aren’t quite right for their incredibly unique case. (Or maybe they just had too many engineers and not enough game-changing projects?)

In any case. One of the things I’m getting used to at Aardvark – and starting to really appreciate the wisdom of – is utilizing existing and established solutions when necessary. We need bug/ticket tracking? There’re tons of solutions out there – done! Better log analysis? Found, installed, done. System and cluster monitoring? Perhaps not entirely ideal, but good enough – done. It lets the team know what we need to know, and gets us free to focus on what we really need to get done – the core product and infrastructure.

I joined a conversation this past weekend with a couple of people just starting to get their startup off the ground, and they were embroiled in a CouchDB vs MySQL debate – are relational databases really outdated, or are document-based databases just overhyped? Which is the better to start with for their startup? My answer – whichever makes your actual job easier. There are lots of cool toys out there, but there’s a careful risk vs. reward tradeoff you have to make – and when you’re focused on startups, can you really afford an awkward risk down the line with your data or architecture?

I suppose this is a long, elaborate rephrasing of “Worse is Better.” Take shortcuts and the quick, easy, established route to change the world, first – then figure out how to make it happen better.

Too many ideas!

Posted by christine - 07/09/09 at 10:07:24 pm

I need a brain recorder. Not a notepad, or a voice-recognizing to-do list, or an iPhone app I can access anywhere, but a straight-up biodevice that hooks up to my brain and, when I realize I’m thinking a semi-coherent and somewhat interesting thought that needs a little more munching on, jots it down somewhere for me.

This summer, I’ve been exposed to more down time than I’ve ever been used to – part of it has been due to the necessary delays that come along with the joys of public transportation, some of it is from the copious amounts of walking I’ve been doing (to the grocery store, to and from work, to BART), and some of it is late at night after I get home. (Digression: that down time I’m not OK with – email me to hang out if you’re free!) And in this down time (actually, often when I should be focusing on other things), little thought bubbles pop up around my head:

I wonder what the weather is like in Boston, and (when it’s cold and windy here in SF) how much I actually appreciate seasons on the East Coast,

I wonder why there are so many people scattering so many elementary grammar and spelling mistakes in their emails (“Lot’s”? Come on.),

I wonder about companies and focus and HR people and women (more blog posts along the way),

I wonder about relationships and priorities and what other people are doing this summer.

So somehow, in my mind and for this blog, I’ve been queuing up quite the list of things to think about and blog about. I haven’t, however, found the impetus or time (because I’m thinking up too many other thoughts? :)) to actually do so. So here’s a promise – there are interesting things to come.

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