Bill’s Blog

This is my first time in front of the camera.  See me talk about my team, Web 2.0, and what it’s like to work at Intel.

Originally posted here

Last week I had the honor of hearing Linus Torvalds speak. He said he didn’t like to speak in public, but did a great job anyway. He spoke bluntly and passionately. I was at a work-related meeting, so the only camera I had was my little point and shoot. You can see the crappy picture it took. Dirk, Dave, and others had their nice DSLRs out. Guess that will teach me not to bring the camera. Turns out I brought it the next day, but that’s another blog post.

The meeting was an open source meeting.  It’s interesting hanging out with some of the more passionate open source folks.  Some of them live in their own little world, protected by the open source force field.  I’m just glad the force field appears to have a door or two

O’Reilly has been running a series on women in technology.  I just read one from Dawn Foster called “Advice on Careers in Technology for Geeky (and not so Geeky) Women“.   I worked with Dawn  when she was at Intel and I follow her blog, so naturally I was interested in what she had to say.  It’s a great article for anyone to read.

In my first job out of college, I worked for a defense contractor.   There were a few women there, but the majority of them were in administrative (secretarial) positions.  I was surprised when I came to Intel and discovered that my first boss was a women.  In fact, there are a lot of women in technical and managerial positions at Intel.  In my dealings with other technology companies, including O’Reilly, I’ve been pleased to discoved that there seem to be a fair amount of women in high positions.  For example, the VP that I dealt with at O’Reilly was a women.  I hope the opportunities for women in technology continue to grow.

We’ve reached the end.  For the past ten days, I’ve been working with six very smart people on an uber-problem.  It’s been great learning about the topic, figuring out what we should do to address the issue, and preparing to recommend a solution.  Today was the day.  We presented to the GM of our division.  For good measure he brought along his entire staff and a few of his peers (think VPs).

Earlier in the week we needed to decide who was going to present our team’s recommendation.  Six of the seven people on the team wanted to present.  That’s actually a low number considering we’re all managers and this is a perfect opportunity to get visibility.  A colleague of mine on another team told me that all seven people on their team wanted to present.  We decided to take a vote.  Much to my surprise, I was selected to present.  Normally this wouldn’t be an issue.  I enjoy talking.  Some might say too much.  I know the material well though, so no big deal.  This time I was nervous.  We went through a dry run yesterday.  My team told me I did well, but I better.  I went home and practices.  I practiced again on the way into work.  We had another rehersal this morning.  The good news is that it turned out ok.  I didn’t forget the summary slide like I did in the rehersal.  I didn’t trip up over too many words.  Since we got to go first, it was eleven and I was feeling relieved to be done.

In the end we didn’t get thrown out on our ears.  Our recommendations were discussed and follow up assignments were given to a couple of staff members.  I’m glad to be done, but it was an exercise worth doing.

I just finished the first day of a leadership program at work. It’s been interesting so far. They’ve tried to make it special and a bit exclusive. That adds to the allure a bit.

We received our team assignments today and found out which teams we are on. Each team is assigned a meaty problem to go solve. We have the next 10 days or so to come up with a solution to a challenging issue facing the organization. They’ve arranged for us to talk with experts and to have coaching sessions with Sr Execs who are sponsoring the issue. We also had a chance to speak with our GM today to get his perspective on the issue. I hope our team comes up with something wonderful. Day 1 was a bit rough. Some of the team really wanted to solve the problem TODAY. That was an interesting conversation.

One thing I thought was interesting was that the host and the GM stated several times that one of the most important outcomes of the session was expanding our network. This session is a huge investment by the company. To see that high of a value placed on networking is unusual. It’s a good thing, just not typical. Of course, he also told us that several of the recommendations from these things in the past have actually been implemented. Some of the examples were huge (lots of zeros) decisions. It would be exciting to be a part of something like that.

The only downside to the program is the schedule. We’re going from 8 AM to late at night (today was 8 PM) every night, and meeting on the weekends. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I don’t mind the work. I’m sure they pack the schedule so intensely so we can all get the most out of the limited time we have together. It’s just that I’ve heard to much about work life balance lately. This is an interesting twist.

Yeah, ok I’ve been quiet for a while. I’ve been keeping busy setting up a new hosting provider and a new Mac.

The Mac experience is the most interesting, so I’ll start there. Using a Mac inside of a primarily Windows company and you’re pretty much guaranteed some trouble. So two weeks ago I drove over to the IT place to pick up my Mac. When I got back to my desk, opening the box was like a breath of fresh air. I stared at the MacBookPro in anticipation. How long until I was blissfully typing emails and chating with my co-workers? Take a guess…

Friday I started the build process. It completely wipes the drive, partitions it, and dumps the special IT version of OSX on the system. Then it automatically does some configuration like adding the machine to the active directory. Finally, it adds a Windows VM using Parallels. Sounds good, right? On Friday mine got as far as copying about half of the 10 or so GB file before I had to leave work. Two hours wasted.

Monday I started again. This time the file copied and OSX was installed. But, it wouldn’t recognize the network. I spoke with the coordinator for the project and was told to “try it again”. Ok, six more tries and it still didn’t work. Somewhere in there I heard that the connection between a couple of sites was down so the Mac couldn’t be added to the active directory. So I headed out for the long weekend without my mac

Tuesday morning I plugged it in and started the install process one more time (if you’re counting, that makes 8). This time it worked! In a completely automated fashion, my machine had installed

• OSX
• Office for Mac
• Parallels VM
• Windows Build
• All Windows SW
• Added to the active directory
• copied all my data from my old system

I’ve been using the Mac as my primary business machine for four days! It’s pretty cool. The only thing I don’t like is having to use Windows to run outlook. If there was a similar email client for Mac that integrated well with Exchange it would be Nirvana. They way Outlook is configured also has some quirks. My OST files are on a parallels shared file system. When I go into standby and come back, outlook loses itself. I have to shut it down and restart it beforeit can see the mail folders again.

Any suggestions for me? What apps should I try now that I’m using a Mac?

The ISN team went out on the town today.  We took a break from the site and spent the afternoon at the OMSI.  Our first stop was lunch at PF Chang’s.  Next we headed downtown to tour SS581, a Blueback Sub.  We wrapped up the afternoon with a viewing of “The Alps“  The Omnimax theatre was incredible!  I highly recommend it.

What’s great about these type of events is that we get to spend some time getting to know more about the people we work with.  We can let our hair down a bit and have some fun.  I like the people I work with and enjoy getting to know them better.

And yes, I took pictures of the event.  The low light inside the sub made me choose ISO 1600 for many shots.  It’s a great effect with the red lighting.

We did it. We launched the new Intel Software Network blogs. Normally launching a new blog isn’t a big deal, right? People do it all the time. Why I’m so proud of this one is because it was my team that did it. It was great watching them work on this. They are professionals, and they always do good work. This time, it was different. This time there was passion. They weren’t working to a spec. They weren’t working on just another project. In this case, they were working with passion. They believed in what they were doing. They wanted to make it great.

Did they succeed? You tell me. I think they did a wonderful job.

Evans Data is hosting their 3rd annual Developer Relations Conference March 12-13 in Redwood City.  I am giving a talk there about how Web 2.0 has changed developer programs and what we’re doing to keep up.  If you’re going to be there, drop me a line here and be sure to say hello in Redwood City.

Here’s the last installment of what I learned from Stephanie Booth when she came and talk with us about blogging.  These notes are from a two hour session she held with many of the ISN bloggers.

• Blogging takes time.  Set aside enough time to do it well.  An hour a day or so is great.  Her advice was to spend every other day writing and every other day reading other bloggers
• Write for the web.
• Use short sentences and paragraphs. 
• Remember that people don’t read, they scan.  Take this into account when you’re writing. 
• Avoid words that your audience won’t understand, such as abbreviations or industry jargon.  
• Make your blog more scanable by using bold, lists, and links to emphasize text.
• Use links with your text.  Don’t post raw URLs.
• Use informative, rather than catchy headlines.  You want to use titles that are going to get people interested in your topic.
• Other style tips
• Spelling remains important.  The odd typo is ok and even expected, but good spelling never hurts.
• Short posts are good too.  More short posts are better than a few long ones.
• Write for people who know a little less than your target audience.  I thought this one was particularly insightful.  If you assume everyone knows what you’re talking about, you are likely to be wrong.  Start from the beginning.  Introduce the topic and grow from there.
• Don’t sign your blogs (we had some people signing their blogs like you would sign a letter
• Imaging you’re talking with someone.  Use a conversational style.
• Content
• Tell a story
• Show your passion
• Take risks
• Ask hard questions
• Be critical
• Maintain focus.  This helps your readers stay with you.
• Listen
• Use technorati to see what others are saying.  Think up good keywords.  Engage with others.  Subscribe by RSS to those you find interesting.
• Write about what you hear
• Link to what people are saying
• Read other blogs.  By colleagues.  By friends. By strangers.  Use an RSS reader to make it easier and quicker.
• It’s all about conversations
• Respond to comments.  Get involved with what’s happening on your blog.
• Don’t wait for people to talk amongst themselves.  Engage them.
• Don’t expect comments.  They’re a bonus 
• Ban anything resembling corp speak – TM, marketing speak, motherhood and apple pie, insider jargon
• Don’t be too upbeat.  It feels fake

She also gave some examples of posts that she thought worked and why.  

So here it is.  Anything you’d like to add?