First Rule of Demos: It will Crash

The first rule of doing any live demo is that it will crash regardless of how stable the product is. That is why you will often see videos of computer demos instead of an actual live demo. Today the first rule of demos reared its ugly head at the most inopportune time.

I had a meeting with my boss and he brought up the topic of needing to delete some data from our data warehouse. Not deleting the data puts us in jeopardy of being sued and so I wanted to show him all the different areas that contained the data. I made sure I had logged into our company's virtual private network (VPN) so I could get into the data warehouse. Then I tried to bring up a virtual desktop which is required to log into the database system. It immediately crashed. I tried several more times only to have the same thing happen. Ultimately I had to describe the many different places engineers had squirreled away the information.

Fortunately I didn't need to actually do a demo as I accurately described the many copies of the data. My boss explained that because the copies of data are anonymized, meaning there is no way to associate with with specific people, they do not need to be deleted, just the non-anonymized data. That came as a relief. Ultimately nobody is using the data and so there is no need to keep it around but deleting it is not an emergency.

I finished my video call with my boss and decided to troubleshoot what went wrong. As you would expect, everything worked fine. That only shows the validity of the first rule of demos. 

A Little Guidance Saves Time

On Monday I had to submit a purchase order request for some data quality assessment software. I have been at Sony for quite a few years but have never submitted a purchase order. This should have not been a time-sensitive matter but it took 2 weeks to get access to the system that allows me to submit purchase orders and the vendor started getting a little restless. Monday morning I received word that I had been granted access to our internal accounting system and felt excited to get this taken care of.

Having worked in software for decades, I didn't feel like I needed any extra training to use the accounting software. Then I logged into the system and discovered it to be a bit more complex than anticipated. I reached out to my contact in accounting who directed me to someone that could help me get the request completed. He couldn't meet immediately but I only needed to wait 30 minutes. When he became available, we jumped on a quick video call and I shared my screen with him. He then talked me through the process. We took about 10 minutes and everything got submitted correctly. The next day, the vendor successfully submitted the invoice.

As we walked through the steps necessary to submit the purchase order request, I realized I successfully filled in the correct information for 95% of what it needed. Having someone walk me through the process really streamlined things and helped me do it right the first time. You may be very skilled with technology but don't hesitate to ask for a little guidance for something you are doing for the first time. It may save you having to redo something because of a minor mistake. 

Software Product Features

Earlier this week I attended 2 different seminars on how to get the most out of the software products I use daily in my job. I will confess that I didn't learn a lot but I discovered several new features that I didn't know about. It got me thinking about how to figure out what features are available in the many different software products we all use.

The first method of discovering new product features is when we do something new. This week I put together a Google Doc's document and needed one section to have 2 columns while the rest of the document just needed that standard single column. In Microsoft Word and other word processing software, there is a "Columns" icon. All you need to do is select the text you want to put into multiple columns, click the columns button, and select how many columns you want. In an effort to reduce screen clutter, Google decided it didn't need a column icon. Instead I just needed to select the text, click on the "Format" menu, and a drop-down menu showed a number of additional options, including columns. I correctly assumed the feature existed but didn't know how to use it until I had a document that required it.

The second method of discovering new product features is attending seminars outlining product features. This is what I did this week at work. We spend a lot of money with certain companies and they always want to make sure we are happy with our purchases and that generally includes taking advantage of all features. Unfortunately not everyone spends large amounts of money on software and don't have access to these seminars.

The third method of discovering new product features is through Internet searches and product videos. Perhaps you are trying to calculate something in a spreadsheet and the video you are watching shows you how to do the calculation but also shows some new features that you didn't know about. I find that very helpful.

Finally, there is the method of watching somebody doing something new that you have not seen before. Perhaps you are watching them edit a document and with a few keystrokes something amazing happens. Don't be afraid to ask them what they did. Then be sure to immediately give it a shot the next time you are working on a document. The best way to learn something new is to practice and so immediately trying something you have recently seen will reinforce the knowledge.

We all use quite a few different software products whether it is on our computers or on our phones. My personal estimate is that we really only use about a third of what the software can do. While we may not need all of those features on a daily basis, there are many more things we can do if we only know certain features exist.

Simple Comforts

Every Thursday the cafeteria in my office has cookies and milk available at 2:30pm. It is a simple snack but oh so comforting. Comfort can be a great thing especially during trying times like right now with people worrying about COVID-19. Unfortunately it also hinders progress and learning. If we always stay in our comfort zone, we never progress. This week that point got driven home more than once on my current work project.

My project requires that I use a tool that I have been using for the past decade. I thought I knew it inside and out but discovered there is still plenty to learn. I put together a demo last week and showed it off at the beginning of this one. My boss thought I did a great job but had some minor tweaks with some very simple things like colors. The tool does a pretty good job of hiding color choices from you and selects them automatically. I had no idea how to change them as they didn't look too bad but could be better. When my boss asked me to do so, I said, "I'm not sure how but it is probably possible." Playing around a bit, I figured it out. In fact I managed to implement all of the minor changes rather quickly.

When the software you use automatically takes care of mundane tasks, it is easy to accept the defaults and say the project is done. My reality is that I settled. I could tell that things didn't look perfect but would rather work on other parts of the project than fix important little details for my demo. I'll have to remember that before my next demo so I take the time to show my vision of the project.

Java Blows

I have been working on a project at the office involving Java and it is much more complicated than it needs to be. Part of the problem is that we are using a piece of software that isn't that well documented. However the bulk of the problems stem from the overcomplexity that is now associated with Java. I needed a small program that needed to do three things. If my Java program requires a directory filled with various files just to do one of those tasks, there is a problem.

When I started my career at Oracle corporation, I had the luxury of learning one of the most complex relational database management systems on the planet. I watched as database administrators built their careers on this complexity, never having to learn another company's product. I then watched a number of Java developers do the same thing with this new language created by Sun Microsystems. I don't think it is a coincidence that Oracle now owns the rights to Java because of the Sun acquisition.

Lately I have been watching as Java has waned in popularity and other software development languages have risen to take its place. I just wish the death of Java wasn't taking so long. Do yourself a favor and if someone suggest using Java to create an application, just say, "No."

Free Content - Part 2

My last posting provided a little history about how we went from software pirates to music pirates and now to movie pirates. Congress has proposed legislation to help curb this piracy, but is has been put on hold for the time being. This brings up the question: Is legislation the answer? In a nutshell, no.

If you look at the software and music industries, enacting new laws didn't really help. A combination of enforcing existing laws coupled with simple technological advances like software licensing keys had the largest success for the software industry. As for music, piracy just went underground. The same will happen with movies.

Talking with one of my co-workers exposed a mindset of the younger generation that was new to me. He expressed that teenagers and young adults expect certain things to be free. If you look at the software industry, open source is a large movement that gains more and more projects every day. The same thing is happening with music. If you look at iTunes, they constantly have the free song of the week. There are also bands that make their music freely available from their websites. One would think this would kill innovation. I personally believe it has the opposite effect. If you are a commercial software company and put out a sub-standard product, there is an open source project that your customers can replace you with. That means your product had better be good enough that people will pay money for it. I see the same thing happening with music.

So what is the solution for Hollywood? My suggestion would be to embrace the Internet and don't try to litigate or legislate it. Use it as a new medium for distributing your products. While fewer people are interested in actually buying DVDs, more people are interested in streaming movies from places like Netflix. Think about it. If you don't have to create a DVD and ship it somewhere, you shouldn't have to charge nearly as much, but still be able to make the same amount of profit.

Unfortunately movies are not the end of free content. Today I saw a prototype of a new electronics device created on a 3D printer. It is only a matter of time before you will be able to download plans from the Internet and create your own Ferrari. Let's see Congress try to figure out how to legislate that one.

Free Content - Part 1

I recently had a conversation with several coworkers and we talked about the new anti-piracy legislation that seems to have been put on hold by Congress. On one hand, Hollywood wants to protect their movies, and on the other, Silicon Valley doesn't want censorship, which is what they felt was happening. This brought up a very interesting discussion.

When computers first came out, there was little to keep friends and family from sharing software with each other. If you had a program your friend wanted, simply make a copy of it and he had it too. Then software companies came up with anti-piracy methods to keep this from happening. After all, why should software developers miss out on lost revenue from software pirates.

Then the Compact Disk or CD was developed. The deterrent that kept people from copying and sharing music was the massive size of one single song. Twenty years ago, 75 megabytes was huge and that only got you a single song. Back then, a 100 megabyte hard drive was considered massive. Eventually better compression techniques were created and the size of disk drives increased. Gigabyte hard drives emerged and MP3s shrunk the size of a song to around 5 megabytes. Then the same problem the software industry faced years earlier, plagued music companies. Their solution was to litigate. Sites like Napster were shut down and several high-profile offenders were slapped with huge fines and threats of jail. Unfortunately the music companies were not nearly as effective as software companies and stolen music continues to be a problem.

Now we face the same issue with movies and Hollywood isn't too happy with the music industry's success. Hard drives have continued to increase capacity to the point where countless movies can be stored on even the most basic laptop. The movie industry has enough trouble making profitable films and they don't want to loose any potential revenue. So what is their solution? Lobby Congress to enact tougher laws regarding copyrighted material. This includes creating a new police force, which is made up of Internet service providers (ISPs). Furthermore, anyone can claim a copyright which could force ISPs to suspend service to anyone with a false claim against them. If you don't like the content found on a website, claim it is yours and force the ISP to remove it. Then wait for the court system to churn through all of the false claims, which takes a lot of time.

So that is how we got to this point. What do we do now?

Free Software for Everyone

Herman Melville is most remembered as the author of "Moby Dick." When it was first published, the general public thought of it the same way as most high-school students do today: what a bore. What most people don't realize is that it is based on a true story. Only in the true story Captain Ahab doesn't die. The ship does get smashed by an angry whale and the crew is left to survive an incredible ordeal in their life boats.

While I have read "Moby Dick," I actually prefer one of Melville's earlier books entitled "Typee." As with his more famous work, Typee is based on a true story. Melville was good at writing what he knew about. Early in Melville's life, he signed on as crew on a whaling ship. About the time he got to the South Pacific, he realized what a horrible decision he had made and decided to abandon ship in the Marquesas. Typee is a fictional story based on this experience. After the story was published it was discovered that there was more truth to the story than fiction.

Melville describes life in a near perfect world on Marquesas. Food is abundant. If you get hungry, simply pick tropical fruit off the closest tree. If you are looking for a ham sandwich, pigs roamed the area in plentiful quantities and so there was never any concern for food. As for shelter, the entire village pitched in and built you a hut as soon as you were ready to move out of Mom and Dad's. As the weather is relatively perfect, clothing need not be elaborate. So what did everyone do with their time? They lived in what we call a "gift economy." If you liked carving Tiki idols, you would make them and then give them away.

That same "gift economy" exists in the software world. Software that is given away and can be freely used is called "Open Source Software." If you don't want to pay the $125 to Microsoft for a Student/Teacher version of Office, there is OpenOffice.org that reads and writes Office files. Don't want to pay the $699 for Adobe Photoshop, there is GIMP. Doing work with databases and don't want to fork over your first born for Oracle, there is PostgreSQL.

These are not crippled versions of software that you can try for 90 days and then are asked to pay money. These are full working versions of software that mimic the functionality of their more expensive cousins. Should you be interested in making any modifications to the programs, you can also get the source for free. Of course, if you are good enough at software development to make any changes, the open source community hopes that you will make those changes available to everyone.

Open source software is freely available software that you can use without any licensing costs. It is created by people that have a little extra time on their hands and don't mind sharing with you. The next time you think you need to spend money on a new piece of software, do an Internet search and see if there isn't something already out there for free. There generally is.