Base running and base stealing would appear to be arts driven solely by a runner's speed, but there's more than mere gristle, bone and lung power to this facet of baseball — lots of mathematics and physics are at play...

"There's momentum — mass of the body times how fast the player is moving," he says. "There's angular momentum (mass movement of inertia times the rotational rate). If it's feet-first and you're starting to slide, your feet are going out from you and you're rotating clockwise; if it's head-first, as your hands go down, you're rotating counterclockwise."

"On top of this is Newton's Law," Peters explains. "Force is mass times acceleration. Then moments of inertia times your angular acceleration."

So, who gets there faster?

"It turns out your center of gravity is where the momentum is," Peters says. "This is found half way from the tips of your fingers to the tips of your toes. In the headfirst slide, the center of gravity is lower than halfway between your feet and hands, so your feet don't get there as fast. It's faster head-first."

What does Molly Wood have to say about all this?

Not as impressed as Vince with the new browser. Buggy (error at startup time after migrating the favorites) unable to access gmail, suspicious googleUpdate.exe process still active after I've closed the app etc ...

However, the comic is quite a fascinating experience.

Documenting software to transmit knowledge has always been something I've loved to do. The reason is : along with tests, documentation is another abandonned child of the developpers and as such I feel a lot of tenderness towards this activity.

Head First series has been an amazing step toward transmitting knowledge. Kathy Sierra has been studying cognitive science so she knows a tad bout the subject.

But here we're just moving a step further : a real artist is documenting this rather geeky product ...

Scott Mc Cloud is a graphic artist and he has been approached by google to write the specs of the Google Browser. The old times of truck loads of documentation delivered together with your software by the big cat  seems like ages ago.

Kathy Sierra taught us why a) conversational writing kicks formal writing whenever it comes to teach and have your audience remembering and b) Graphics have people responding. Google learned their lesson very well thank you and decided to do both.

At GLV puts it in twitter : Google Chrome's coolness is mostly under the hood. Hard to convince nonprogrammers why that's important. The comic is a brilliant solution.

Best thing : the main characters are software engineers. Respect to the alpha geeks indeed.

Check out Scott interview at techRadar.

Think piece for Melbourne Palm Bay Area Chamber of Commerce, August 5, 2008

Have you noticed, the days are getting shorter? It will be sometime in May 2009 before you see as much daylight as you saw yesterday. Nothing but shorter, darker days till then.

Have you noticed, the national economy is getting worse? If you trust the research departments at Merrill Lynch and UBS — I do — it will be sometime in May 2009 before the economy is once again as good as it was yesterday. And it’s going to be nothing but worse from now until then.

Wouldn’t this be a good time to pump up the Space Coast economy? Will there ever be a better time to increase sales, increase employment, increase wages, increase profits and expand our businesses? If we could do it at no cost, wouldn’t that be a good investment?

For your consideration, The 2008 Space Coast Economic Recovery and Expansion Plan: buy from each other. As simple as that. Four words. No cost.

No outside influence pressing on us today — not gas prices, the subprime crisis, or national employment declines — can drive us down as forcefully as keeping our money circulating in our economy can drive us up.

If ours were a large robust economy, with countless billions pouring in from the outside and fewer billions pouring out, the buy-from-each-other strategy might not have much effect. Lucky for us, I guess, we don’t have a big strong economy. Ours is subject to major improvement by simple measures.

Every time a dollar is re-spent in our economy, our prosperity ratchets up by another dollar. If United Space Alliance spends $1000 at Pelican Sales, and Pelican Sales spends $1000 on my services, and I spend $1000 at Indian River Networks, and Eric Smith spends that $1000 at Indian River Printing, and Russ Kittel spends that $1000 at Meg O’Malley’s, that original $1000 has pumped up our economy by $5000, and it’s still in circulation here. Had USA spent the original $1000 at MSC Industrial Supply in Melville, NY, there would have been no contribution to our economy. If Eric Smith had used a lowest-bidder printer in Citrus County, we’d be only $3000 richer.

By buying from each other, by keeping Brevard money circulating in Brevard, we can increase the revenues, profits, wages and benefits at every business in this county. By buying outside the county, we can drive down revenues, profits, wages and benefits at every business in this county.

Let’s adopt a new habit: buy from each other. Let’s hold each other’s feet to the fire. Let’s celebrate every time one of us does a big deal with another one of us. Let’s keep our money moving inside our economy. Let’s get rich together.

First published in Spacecoast Business Magazine August 2008

Retail on the Space Coast is absolutely dominated by national chains. We ignore our local merchants in order to wear what they’re wearing in Kansas City, eat from the same menus they use in Indianapolis, and drink the same coffee they drink in Nyack. And every time we make those choices, our money moves to towns like Bentonville, Minneapolis, Lakeland, New York and Mooresville, never to circulate in our local economy, never to lift our community’s prosperity. Ours would be a prosperous community if we had lots of local merchants, and if we loyally patronized them, but we don’t. Is the battle lost, or is there still room in our economy, and in our spending habits, for locally owned retailers to compete against the alien giants?

Laurie Behr is one entrepreneur who isn’t intimidated by Big Retail. In October 2007 she opened her new coffee house, Java Surf, along Indialantic’s boardwalk about 80 feet from Starbuck’s. Not the best way to sneak into the market, right? Now it’s the summer of ’08, and Java Surf is probably the best little coffee house in South County, with the kind of loyal clientele most retailers would kill for.

What is Behr’s secret formula for retail success? Could a hardware store next to Lowes, or a clothing store next to Target, succeed by the same formula? What can she teach the rest of us owners who have to wrestle our top lines from the jaws of monster competitors?

No surprise, Behr’s lessons are all about product value and customer experience. Behr juggles a hundred other balls, as every owner must, but she knows that a prospective customer standing at the entrance to Nance Park can see both Starbuck’s and Java Surf with one eye closed. Whether the prospect walks a few steps south, or a few steps southwest, depends upon the difference in value and experience the two stores offer. Everything else is details.

Compete on Product Value. Starbuck’s coffee is expensive, with a markup of 400-900% depending upon whom you believe. The textbook strategy would be to serve equivalent coffee and undercut Starbuck’s prices, especially since Starbuck’s stores don’t have the authority to wage price wars. Behr went the other direction. She buys coffee much finer than Starbuck’s and delivers it at prices only slightly higher. Higher product value without price competition.

Win Away the Competition’s Best Customers. Starbuck’s has invested billions to raise the consciousness and spending habits of a nation of coffee drinkers. Their clientele are people with plenty of money in their pockets who like to drink, and be seen drinking, high-priced coffee. Java Surf’s strategy is to attract away the top layer of that ready-made market: people with plenty of money who appreciate even better coffee and don’t care that Java Surf cups don’t sport a logo.

Stay Fresh and Agile. A Starbuck’s weakness, and Java Surf advantage, lie in their product-development cycles. When a brilliant new product idea arises in Seattle, it takes months to roll it out to the stores. Behr’s new-product-development cycle ranges from ten minutes to ten hours. Ditto, her timeline for withdrawing a product that isn’t as good as she thought it would be. The result is that Java Surf always has new things to try, but no old stuff to push.

Turn Their Afterthought Into Your Goldmine. Starbuck’s sells tea and kiddie treats, but primarily as a convenience to the tea drinkers and children who accompany their core clientele, the coffee drinkers. Behr elevated the status of the tag-alongs by offering fine leaf-tea drinks that upstage Starbuck’s teabags, and shaved ice in as many varieties as the coffee. As a result, kids and tea lovers head for Java Surf with coffee-drinkers in tow.

Deliver a Clearly Different Customer Experience. No one can outdo Starbuck’s in delivering the Starbuck’s experience—the jargon, the process, the uniformity, the lighting, the seating and the decor. Behr doesn’t try. Again, she went the other way. Most of her staff are simply nice local kids who have not had that quality trained out of them. They know their business and turn out excellent products, but they are otherwise unrehearsed. Starbuck’s delivers uniformity, Java Surf counters with spontaneity. And, the most spontaneous member of the team is Behr herself—every day a different outrageous look and a wardrobe that never disappoints.

What’s In It For The Rest Of Us? With Behr’s inspiration, can Margaret to take on Target by selling far better clothes at slightly higher prices? Can Joe’s wrest market share from Lowe’s with salt-resistant products that beachsiders can’t find at Lowes? Does anyone have an excuse for not trying, after watching Laurie Behr take on Starbuck’s?

Jack Harris is the Managing Principal of Head First Consulting in Melbourne Beach, Florida. He specializes in leading small and medium businesses through the changes that will make them great. During his 33-year consulting career, he has completed 600 projects for 100 government organizations and 200 companies, ranging from Fortune 50s to startups. Contact him at Jack@HeadFirstConsulting.com or (321) 729-9955.

© 2008 Jack H. Harris

First published by the Melbourne-Palm Bay Area Chamber of Commerce July 5, 2008
Buy local and buy from each other. For hundreds of thousands on the Space Coast, our prosperity is a function of our neighbors’ prosperity. The more money that people spend in our economy, the more prosperous our local businesses become, and the more jobs they create, and the better they pay their employees and owners—our neighbors—and the more those neighbors spend in our local economy—and on and on it goes.

There’s a catch, of course. The only spending that really matters is the money we spend at local businesses, especially locally owned businesses and national businesses that re-spend heavily in our local economy. Eat at a local restaurant, and your money gets re-spent on local suppliers, local accounts, local printers, local designers, and scores of other locals, all of whom re-spend what they get on local lawyers, local drivers, local uniform makers and scores more locals. Spend $1000 at a local restaurant, and you easily generate $4000-5000 in local economic activity through re-spending. Spend $1000 in Orlando, and you simply deplete our local economy by $1000.

Buying local should be a no-brainer for Chamber members and other business people, but some need constant reminders. Do yourself, your fellow business people, and everyone in the community a favor: spread the word that buying local lifts everyone in the Space Coast economy to a higher level of prosperity.

Sell everywhere you can. The other key is to bring money from other communities into ours. One reason we put Harris, DRS, Symetrics, Authentec, local hotels and Shuttle contractors on pedestals is because they do exactly that, and on a big scale. But they can’t make up for the dollar volume that streams out of here through misdirected consumer and B2B spending. Even at the micro end of the scale, we’re all better off when a local seamstress sells her beach cover-ups to tourists, or sells them online to people we’ll never see, than when she sells them to locals. New money in our economy is even better than re-spent money. Of course, the best thing we can do is to attract national businesses to headquarter here and haul in billions from all over the world. When other communities are sending more money to us than we are sending to other communities, we will be on our way to prosperity.

What do your customers say about your customer care? Are they “tickled” to converse with the machine that answers your phone? Do they “treasure” the discount coupons you give them to make up for serving their dinners cold? How far would you have to raise your customer care standard before customers tossed the word love into their descriptions of doing business with you?

A few of us can skate on product superiority alone, but the rest of us have competitors with products as good as ours. At some point, customers no longer understand or care about the technical differences between our offering and our competitor’s. How shall we compete when prospects turn to other criteria to make their choices?

We can take a lesson from Don McKenna, who became Administrator of Wuesthoff’s Melbourne hospital in March 2003, shortly after the new facility opened its doors. Consider the business environment he faced. The south-county market was already monopolized by a giant five times larger than Wuesthoff-Melbourne. Every medical procedure that Wuesthoff offered, from spinal fusions to appendectomies, was also available at Holmes just four miles away. The market for most procedures was fixed. In other words, neither the availability of a new facility, nor any amount of advertising, could change the number of patients in need of spinal fusions or appendectomies. The only way to grow the new hospital was to take market share away from the established monopoly.

How does a new hospital seize market share? Ideally, by delivering superior patient outcomes, and watching the market flow in through the front door. Nice goal, but even if you deliver better outcomes, it takes years to collect convincing data, and years more to educate the market on what the subtle differences mean. That’s not a strategy for quickly seizing market share from a monopoly.

What if you pour your soul into customer care, the thing that matters most to customers after the technical quality of medical treatment? What if you give every customer an experience unique among her lifetime of experiences with hospitals and clinics? Can a hospital create raving fans?

Wuesthoff’s strategy for growing their market share, and for building their brand, called for exactly that: pour the hospital’s soul into the whole lifecycle of customer care. Make sure every touch, from the first telephone conversation to the very last interaction, is a satisfying experience for the customer. Wuesthoff called their strategy Loving Care, a term borrowed from Erie Chapman, author of the healthcare book Radical Loving Care.

Wuesthoff’s implementation of Loving Care begins with seizing control of the relationship at the first moment of contact and repeatedly proving to the patient that the entire relationship is going to be marked by courtesy, compassion, honesty and scores of little touches that prove they care. They follow through on their brand promise—everyone from top to bottom on the org chart, at every touch point.

Wuesthoff enjoys one natural advantage: a 21^st Century building that has modern technology built in, instead of crammed in. The difference in patient comfort and medical care in new vs. old buildings is substantial. For example, Wuesthoff’s quiet private rooms automatically eliminate many of the irritants that make hospital stays elsewhere so unpleasant.

Buildings matter, but the greatest difference between Loving Care and typical hospital care comes from people. The key to raving fans is to staff the hospital with people whose work is not only technically excellent, but also delivered with courtesy, compassion and integrity. How do you turn a typical hospital employee into that kind of employee? You don’t, you can’t. You have to start with people who are already that kind of people, which makes hiring for extreme customer care very difficult.

McKenna requires that candidates pass two screens. The first screen is for complete technical knowledge, skills and credentials. Nothing else can make up for shortcomings in technical qualifications, and Wuesthoff is not in the business of remedial training. If a candidate passes that screen, his attitudes and values are explored to see if they measure up to the hospital’s Loving Care standard and the culture in which he would work. McKenna refuses to put anyone who doesn’t pass this screen under the same roof as patients.

Is McKenna’s approach just overkill? What can a business reap from all this heart and soul? Hold McKenna’s numbers up to yours, and see how your business compares.

After a solid first year, his customer totals grew 123% by the fifth year. During those five years, in a market that many argued was already fully served by existing hospitals, the newcomer served 271,000 non-unique customers.

Wuesthoff sets a high standard. Few of us invest enough in customer care to earn words like love, bless and wow in our customer’s referrals, but Wuesthoff’s performance shows that putting money, time, heart and soul into customer care is a sound business strategy.

Jack Harris is the Managing Principal of Head First Consulting in Melbourne Beach, Florida. He specializes in leading small and medium businesses through the changes that will make them great. During his 33-year consulting career, he has completed 600 projects for 100 government organizations and 200 companies, ranging from Fortune 50s to startups. Contact him at Jack@HeadFirstConsulting.com or (321) 729-9955.

I've also started cycling properly again over the last month. Living in the city centre, I feel a definate need to go blow off some steam and get away from concrete occasionally. I've been riding over the moors east of Manc and down south of the city quite a lot. It's nice exploring a new area and keeps the rides interesting. The hills out east are great, over out by Holmfirth there's some cracking long climbs and fun descents. For a while, being in the city put me off cycling, but Manchester's a pretty sweet base for cycling. I kinda enjoy riding in traffic now, it's good for bike handling skills, and its not that bad really. I wanted to join a club so i've been on a couple of rides with the Manchester Wheelers, which have been great. I'd forgotten what a difference riding in a group makes, its so easy to rack up the miles! Plus the guys and gals riding when i've been along have been absolutely top..real nice folk.

I've been enjoying my cycling so much lately that i've even invested in a new frame and forks...which obviously led to numerous other components being purchased. I don't much care for the way in which bikes soak up pennies! Still, i'm staying bog standard and cheap..but well though out. Anway it's being built up tomorrow! I'm rather excited! Still, my old steed held up well, four years and throusands of miles, all for £250! It's not about the bike i guess...but still, i'll be bloody glad when i get this new one made up!. My cranks won't wobble from side to side!

First published as op-ed by Florida Today Newspaper June 2, 2008

A panel of local business experts recently reviewed Brevard County's planning, budgeting, buying and spending, and delivered a 92-page report summarizing its findings and advice for improving effectiveness and efficiency in the County's financial operations. The panel did an excellent job in a very short time and earned the applause of every Space Coast taxpayer.

A Florida Today editorial said the report’s limited list of suggestions confirms the county is performing rather well, a statement backed up by some of the business leaders who did the review. That interpretation fails to recognize that the County's question, the one addressed by the panel, was essentially "How can we do everything we're doing, and spend every dollar available to us, more efficiently, so as to avoid reductions in government programs and employment?"

In fact, the County is already doing almost everything it can to spend every available dollar and avoid job reductions. If our government has one highly developed skill, that is it.

The question that should have been asked is the first question any good business asks of itself, "What things are we doing that we shouldn't be doing at all?" I don't pretend to speak for everyone who voted with me on Amendment 1, but my reason for supporting that amendment and the next 50 tax-reduction proposals is to force government to confine itself to governmental functions and shed the non-governmental lines of business it has taken upon itself.

Our interests are not served by making the county board more efficient at competing with the private sector, for example by using tax dollars to provide stalls and equestrian facilities for horse people, undercutting local stable owners. Our interests are not served by efficiently converting our tax dollars to charitable donations, for example by purchasing sand for beachfront property owners, and by taking care of Yuppies’ parents so the Yuppies can drive newer BMWs. Our interests are not served by policing our sexual behavior in our own homes, or by policing the wardrobes of sunbathers at Playa Linda. These egregious examples represent hundreds of programs, projects and activities that our government should simply not be doing, efficiently or inefficiently.

By following the panel's advice, the county government may be able to survive a 5% budget cut and continue doing all the things it has taken upon itself. By eliminating the things it shouldn't be doing in the first place, it could easily reduce its own budget, and our tax burden, 25-30%. It's time for a Blue Ribbon Panel to answer the big question, instead of the little one -- "What should our government NOT be doing?" instead of "How can government continue doing the wrong things more efficiently?"

First published in Spacecoast Business Magazine June 2008

For a good small business on its way to bigness and greatness, one of the toughest hurdles to clear stands at the 150-employee mark. Passing through 150 means shedding the amateur status of a small business and acquiring the professional standing of a big business. It also means losing the advantages of a small business, replacing them with the necessary evils of a big business. That one big happy family turns into a hierarchical, bureaucratic organization that often leaves owners, executives and employees alike wondering what happened to their company.

Symetrics Industries, an aerospace manufacturer and arguably the best small business on the Space Coast, is rapidly approaching the 150 mark. Every owner whose day is coming would be wise to watch Symetrics for the next couple of years for hints on how to pass the 150 test.

The Rule

The Rule of 150 has been a fact of life for two thousand years or longer; although only recently did Robin Dunbar and Malcolm Gladwell raise our awareness of the phenomenon. Simply stated, 150 is the upper limit of a person’s ability to maintain stable, productive relationships with other members of a group. At levels below 150, we can know everyone else, know what they know and don’t know, know how they think and work, know what makes them tick, and understand their relationships with the other individuals in the group. At levels above 150, we can’t, so the group inevitably splits into two or more smaller groups, and the members settle into smaller networks of relationships.

The Rule of 150 applies to combat units, church congregations, and every other organization whose performance depends upon social cohesion among all its members. The Rule is encountered by every business that grows beyond the 150 mark. There is no immunity. The question is, do you sit back and let your company change in whatever way it will, or do you take direct action to change your company the way you want it to change.

Take the Road Less Traveled

Suppose you let Nature take its course. Your happy family subdivides into factions based on seniority, function, status, or worse—age, race, or gender. Sometimes the family just disintegrates into a spiritless labor pool that no longer cares enough to manage itself. Nature has a knack for taking you where you don’t want to go.

But you’re the proactive type, right? What can you do to ensure your company is even better after it clears the 150 hurdle? Companies that fare well seem to favor four solutions.

Implement your future structure. Well before the big milestone, install management structures, systems and an organization optimized for the future company, the company you envision two or three years after passing the 150 mark. Give it a light touch at first, and let employee demand on the system grow it to maturity.

This is the Symetrics solution. For two years, the company has been designing and implementing the systems and structures it will need to run a big business. The management structure is in place, and its supporting systems are being installed—for example, stricter Configuration Management, a new Enterprise Resource Planning system, and a significantly better business metrics analysis process.

Use IPTs ( Integrated Project Teams) instead of departments as your primary organizational element. IPTs bring together people with several different specialties to focus on a specific mission. This creates new families aligned with the company’s most important work. As each mission is completed, people move on to new IPTs with different colleagues. The closest working relationships that co-workers develop are always based on cooperating to accomplish the company’s mission, not on waging war against other departments.

Use the Gor-Tex solution. At Gore, no building can accommodate more than 150 people. As the company grows, Gore simply adds more 150-person buildings.

Make your employees owners. Nothing fuels self-management, cooperation and the spirit of company-first like universal ownership.

Who Suffers Most During the Transition?

In even the best cases, the transition from small to big disheartens people. A few may benefit from increased upward mobility, but most will continue doing what they do, and earning what they earn, but in a more regulated atmosphere.

Yet, the person hit hardest by the transition is the CEO. Look into the future of Mitch Garner, CEO of Symetrics. Today he knows everyone in the company—all 140 of them—and he knows what makes each person tick. One factor that makes Symetrics a benchmark company is widespread loyalty to the top, based on 139 personal relationships with the CEO. The same relationships help to make Garner a first-class CEO, because he gets near-real-time, unedited information about everything going on under his roof. He enjoys an incomparable advantage over the CEO with a dozen direct-reports, each with a dozen direct-reports, all of them in the business of filtering information before it reaches the boss.

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

What will Garner’s life be like going forward from 150? Will he still be showered with information, bright ideas and personal insights from everyone in the company when Symetrics has 250 employees? Not likely. When they have 500 employees? No way. Nobody can sustain productive relationships with 500 people. His new challenge will be to lead an enterprise substantially different from what it used to be, using methods, systems, and channels that he never had to rely upon before. We’ll all be watching to see how a great CEO and a great company make the transition.

Jack Harris is the Managing Principal of Head First Consulting in Melbourne Beach, Florida. He specializes in leading small and medium businesses through the changes that will make them great. During his 33-year consulting career, he has completed 600 projects for 100 government organizations and 200 companies, ranging from Fortune 50s to startups. Contact him at Jack@HeadFirstConsulting.com or (321) 729-9955.

© 2008 Jack Harris

By moving away from the mostly dreary dull literature we find in most books about software development and instead keeping the tone light and amusing, using various visual elements on the page & including user input activities I have found them incredibly helpful in getting the message through and making it stick (not easy when the topics covered are tricky and complicated).

I would highly recommend anyone to give this series a shot, you won't be disappointed!

Mein zweites Buch der Head First Labs. Durchaus ein lesenswertes Buch für jeden der den Big Bang-Entwicklungsprozess (aka. Wasserfallmodell) mit etwas iterativerem ablösen möchte und vorallem darauf Einfluss hat...somit war dies eher ein theoretisches Buch für mich :)

Besonders das vorgeschlagene Planning Poker für eine Aufwandsabschätzung mit etwas Fundament finde ich gut. Die Beschreibung des Konfigurationsmanagement und der Kontinuierlichen Integration empfand ich jedoch stellenweise zu spezifisch und hätte eine Diskussion auf etwas abstrakterem Niveau bevorzugt.

One of the blessings of life on the Space Coast is the near absence of government corruption. So far, we’ve had barely enough to keep us amused, but all that is about to change.

If you haven’t lived under a government like Detroit’s, Baltimore’s, DC’s or Newark’s, prepare to be shocked. We’re getting red-light cameras, the richest font of local government corruption since Prohibition. Life on the Space Coast will never be the same.

Installing red-light cameras produces the same five results in every community. First, we’ll see a small reduction in T‑bone crashes—small, because very few red-light infractions result in crashes, and because most T‑bone crashes occur at intersections without traffic lights.

Second, we’ll see a big increase in rear-end collisions. Other communities experience a 140‑180% increase. Expect worse results here due to our large concentration of drivers who are no longer able to adjust to new circumstances.

Third, local governments will have a new stream—more like a raging river—of revenue they can spend on the very things we fought so hard to kill with the recent tax-reduction. In my first-hand experience with two jurisdictions, nearly all the new revenue was squandered on things the taxpayers would never approve, like bonuses for pet employees, fancy trappings for government offices and pet projects to benefit political contributors.

Fourth, the cameras will generate an underground stream of unreported cash—a trickle at first, but eventually a torrent as more cameras are installed, yellow lights are shortened, and drivers learn about the cash option. In one of my previous hometowns, red-light runners could pay a $75 fine by credit card or simply mail in two twenty-dollar bills. The cash option meant that all records of the violation disappeared, a win-win for violators and those tapped into the underground stream.

Fifth, as governments lose their innocence, the business community is hit the hardest. Demanding grease from citizens yields only peanuts, and you can never be sure with whom you’re dealing. For a chance at a hundred dollars, you could be written about in Florida Today or busted by an undercover Fed. But homebuilders, public-works contractors, national retailers and the like—they’re expected to play and not whine.

But, what about public safety? Isn’t that why governments install red-light cameras? No. The public safety thing is just an inside joke among the manufacturers of red-light cameras and the governments who buy them. It’s all about the money, for everyone involved. Despite years of studying data and anecdotes, and talking with politicians and camera companies, I have found no community in this country where these cameras contributed enough to public safety to outweigh their collateral damage, no politician who voted for the cameras without the expectation of personal gain, and no source of red-light-camera data that is not tainted by money.

Welcome, Brevard, to the world that many of us moved here to escape.

PC Specs:
P4 1.5 GHz
1 Gig Memory --> Recently added 512MB
200 GB HD
256MB VC

Advisable Upgrade:
Intel Core 2 Duo
Any motherboard
2 Gig Memory

I was also thinking about buying a laptop. Which is better? Desktop or Laptop? Whewww! I wish I have enough budget for a new decent machine for my Java ventures.

First published in Spacecoast Business Magazine May 2008

The loss of thousands of jobs and hundreds of contracts when the Shuttle Program ends may prove to be either the best or the worst thing that happens to the Space Coast economy in the 21^st Century. The outcome depends upon how many small businesses are energized by this dislocation to become our new generation of great Space Coast businesses.

Due to its long run and massive budget, the Shuttle has spawned its own economy—not just the big contractors and a few hundred small ones, but all the secondary and tertiary businesses that feed on the high-tech payrolls: from barber shops to day care centers, from school teachers to accountants, from charter boats to restaurants. Considering how much we all stand to lose, let’s adopt a new definition of “great business” for the here and now.

Be it resolved: We shall designate as great any Space Coast business that is currently dependent on NASA for its livelihood and emerges after the Shuttle’s termination as a bigger, better and stronger business. We shall honor every Shuttle contractor who successfully transitions to a new line of business and builds a strong new company around it.

Is this too much to expect? Not at all, because this phenomenon followed almost every similar dislocation in the 20^th Century. The key to success is for this business community to make it happen here—which, by the way, we did rather poorly at the end of the Apollo Program, so the termination of Apollo will always be remembered here as a disaster.

Who can we count on to become our new generation of business heroes? Bet your money on the few small technology businesses that are already positioning themselves, first, to survive the great dislocation and, then, to emerge as bigger, stronger, more profitable companies.

Craig Technologies, a 150-person information-technology company in Cape Canaveral, is setting an example for other small contractors. Under CEO Carol Craig, the company has ensured its continuity and growth by diversifying its contract base. Craig’s employees are now covered by 27 different contracts with an array of different clients, rather than by one or two bread-and-butter contracts. Many of these contracts have the potential to grow and diversify into major lines of new business, enabling substantial growth, not merely survival. The lesson: never bet the company on one client, especially a client whose budget depends on elections, White House decisions and annual Congressional appropriations. You won’t be around when they name the heroes of the 21^st Century economy.

Craig has also solved an array of people problems that every company must solve, either Craig’s way or some way, before it can blossom into a great company. The Craig Way is to run an extremely employee-centric business. Few business owners offer such generous benefits, invest as much in training, or put as much personal effort into developing each employee’s potential. As a result, Craig wields the strength of a fiercely loyal high-performing team. While employees at other companies are scanning CareerBuilder.com, Craig Technologies has a waiting list of excellent people eager to leave their employers and join Craig. The lesson: take care of the people who take care of the clients. Sustained growth and profit during tough times are pipedreams without a strong, stable, ever-improving core of leaders and technical performers.

Finally, CEO Carol Craig is a strategic planner. Today she’s solving problems her company will face four years from now, and executing plans, made long ago, to grow through today’s challenges. The company was already ISO-9001 certified long before most CEO’s would make that investment, and Craig is already planning the business-development infrastructure that will enable the company to compete against IT giants like Lockheed-Martin and IBM a few years from now. What got Craig this far ahead of the field is good planning. The lesson: planning is more than predicting; the essence of good planning is to solve today the problems you will face in the future.

The big question for the rest of the Space Coast business community is: What are we going to do to ensure that Craig and a hundred entrepreneurs like her become the economic engines of our future? Wishing them well isn’t enough. The Technological Research and Development Authority and Small Business Innovative Research Program are right on target, but too resource-limited to meet the big challenge we face. Perhaps the best solution is a Rich Uncle program that pairs solid Space Coast companies with these future heroes of the economy to mentor them, help guide them through the extraordinary problems they’re facing, and even make small investments. We’re all in this economy together, and anything we do to overcome this looming dislocation serves our own business interests. Do we have any volunteers?

Jack Harris is the Managing Principal of Head First Consulting in Melbourne Beach, Florida. He specializes in leading small and medium businesses through the changes that will make them great. During his 33-year consulting career, he has completed 600 projects for 100 government organizations and 200 companies, ranging from Fortune 50s to startups. Contact him at Jack@HeadFirstConsulting.com or (321) 729-9955.

© 2008 Jack H. Harris

Lyd - Rock
Lyd - S for Song
[audio=http://www11.nrk.no/urort/1.0/track/download/505990.mp3]

Jeg falt for denne sangen, fordi jeg liker denne typen musikk. Et rent jenteband fra Bergen!

Kite - Rock
Kite - head first (into oblivion)
[audio=http://www11.nrk.no/urort/1.0/track/download/51417.mp3]
Kjempebra rock!

Big Muff 68- Hard Rock
Big Muff 68 - This drug will set you free
[audio=http://www11.nrk.no/urort/1.0/track/download/137026.mp3]
Glimrende gitarsoloer som smelter sammen i en treenighet. Love it!

Just kidding about the sponsorship, but oh-so-serious about the brevity. I'm currently learning C# to complement my VB.NET skills, so I'm dedicating my non-wife, non-twitter, non-work time an hour per day to the task. While I already have a couple of books on the subject, they are a bit on the dry side. So, in the spirit of livening up my educational endeavor, I discovered and purchased Head First C# by Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene. The Head First book series, published by O'Reilly, is similar in premise to the Dummies and Idiots and Absolute Beginners books (oh my!), but is far superior to them in execution. Here's my perspective on why:

1) Pretty pictures. Yes, all of the other series have illustrations and screen shots, but the Head First C# book kicks things up to an entirely different level. It's the first technical book I'm willing to place on my coffee table for all my non-developer friends to flip through when they're over for dinner. Judging from what I've seen of the other books, this feeling is common for all books in the series.

2) Keeps my attention. The book is funny, entertaining, and educational all at the same time. The content isn't watered down as it is in the other series. I greatly respect the infortainment as a seasoned developer who's branching out into other languages at the behest of friends and recruiters. I don't feel like an idiot or a dummy when I'm reading HF C# because the authors treat me, their audience, with respect. Double kudos for making me feel like a genius upon placing a picture box control on the form and tying it to a messsage box.

3) Finally, the educational content is open-ended. Like any good learning resource, the book raises topics of interest for future study and creates many deeper questions for each simple one it answers. No fluff here, folks. Reminds me of my college experience: I walked in knowing everything, and walked out realizing I knew practically nothing.

So that's it for my brief interruption of the irregularly-scheduled programming going on here at Idea Maven. You'll be glad to know that blogging is now a priority for me as I plan commitments each week. I've even created a shiny new notebook in OneNote just for the blog.

P.S. I'm testing Zemanta's Firefox plug-in for the next few posts to see it work in action. Zemanta is a tool that suggests content, links, and tags for your posts as you type them. It's fun, free, and oh-so Web 2.0! I highly recommend you give it a whirl.

First published as op-ed in Florida Today newspaper March 31, 2008

Is there any merit to Boeing's complaints about losing the $35 million tanker deal to Northrop Grumman? Was Boeing blindsided by a change in requirements midway through the long competition? Not bloody likely, to borrow a phrase familiar to international partners on both teams.

Having led lobbying, marketing and proposal campaigns for both these companies and most of their competitors, I have no doubt that Boeing knew everything Northrop Grumman knew, and vice versa, about what the government wanted, expected, and dreamed of getting. Boeing's claim that the government secretly changed its selection criteria in mid-procurement may arouse the passions of naïve outsiders and politicians, but no insider would ever accept that Boeing didn’t know everything about everything at every moment in this long-running competition. Companies like these cannot be blindsided; they have no blind spots.

What seems to have happened is that Defense Department evaluators, studying the two designs side-by-side, preferred the Northrop Grumman tanker. Limited public remarks by the government indicate that the winning design meets the mission requirements for a refueling tanker and offers superior capabilities to support other missions such as transporting troops, patients and freight. As taxpayers, we’ve been well served. The overarching criterion for every procurement ought to be which offering provides the best value, not which offering is most faithful to the contractor’s original interpretation of the requirements. Boeing may feel stung, but they were stung by their own failure to offer a more capable tanker and their failure to coax the Air Force to a more favorable view of their smaller aircraft.

Let us assume, as we safely may, that Boeing knows that. Why the formal protest, public relations campaign and huge lobbying effort? One thing it will do is provide a pretext for unethical politicians like John Murtha, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, to bully procurement officials into changing their decision or giving Boeing another chance to beat Northrop Grumman. It may also delay work on the new tanker until a new Administration is in place, perhaps bringing new officials who prefer Boeing to Northrop Grumman, or officials bent on cancelling the program outright.

No one can confidently predict the impact of Boeing’s protest. It’s a roll of the dice that might give Boeing a do-over, but probably won’t. Meanwhile it will be something between a nuisance and a calamity for the Air Force and the taxpayers. Everyone but Boeing will be better off if the protest is rejected and the Air Force gets the tanker it needs.

First published in Spacecoast Business Magazine March 2008

Are there any merely good CEOs running great companies? Yes. Are there any great CEOs running merely good companies? Yes. If that’s the case, how much does the CEO matter in a good company’s quest to become a great company?

I’ve confirmed in my 33 years as a business management consultant, as Jim Collins did in his landmark studies (Good to Great, Built to Last), that good companies can chug along profitably for decades without the benefit of great leadership and that great companies, once they’ve been transformed from good to great, can remain great through occasional periods of less-than-great leadership. However, no company can make the critical transition from good to great without a great leader at the helm during the transformation.

The transition to great is a profound change in the life of a company. It doesn’t come from waiting your turn, paying your dues, or doing more earnestly what you’ve been doing for the past several years. Companies that make the leap from good to great are invariably led, by great CEOs, through major changes in every aspect of their businesses. Not surprising, the CEOs who successfully lead these transformations have a lot in common, and these common characteristics clearly distinguish them from merely good CEOs. How do you (or your boss) measure up?

You may be a great CEO if:

You don’t think you’re a great CEO. The best of breed never think of themselves as great. Confronted with the facts of the company’s spectacular success, the great CEO is more likely to attribute the results to a team of great managers and employees and to favorable circumstances that gave them the opportunity to succeed—in other words, good luck.

You think your company has a long way to go. Great companies are recognized as such by objective outsiders, usually long before a great CEO would concede the point. Great CEOs are always looking ahead at how much remains to be achieved, not comparing the present to the past and awarding themselves trophies.

You took your last ego trip in the 20^th Century. It’s ironic that big egos are so common in mediocre companies and so rare in great companies, especially among CEOs and the people they are grooming for C-level leadership. Great leaders are quick to admit their mistakes and accept responsibility for them, while distributing credit for good decisions among the people who made them.

You think you have a lot to learn before you’re fully qualified for the CEO job. Closing the gaps between what the company is and what it could be, between how good their people are and how great they could be, and especially between how they themselves perform as CEOs and how well they could perform—that’s what drives great CEOs. Whether surveying the shop floor, studying the financials, or looking in the mirror, the great ones are never satisfied.

You get your information before it’s given to you. Great CEOs go to the source for unfiltered information. They learn about production problems by talking to people in production. They know their best customers better than they know their own subordinates. No one in the information chain would dare to withhold or Simonize the facts; the boss already knows.

You know what you don’t know. On their way up the ladder, few CEOs get the opportunity to master every aspect of the business. The great ones recognize their own weaknesses and knowledge gaps, and they fortify themselves with strategic hires and consultants. No ego means no reluctance to seek out the help you need.

You support community projects based on the value you can add, not the praise you’ll receive. Remember, you left your ego at the door when you entered the CEO’s office. Pick it up, if you must, on the way to the tennis court, but not on your way to the Boy Scouts, United Way, or a fund drive for the soup kitchen.

You’ve groomed your successor, even though you don’t plan to leave. Making sure that no one can take your place may make you indispensable, but it also guarantees the collapse of the company when you are killed or disabled, and ensures that you will be remembered as the self-centered jerk who cost the company’s investors their money and cost the employees their jobs and retirement. Great CEOs think of the company—first, last and always.

“What got you here won’t get you there,” the phrase made popular by Marshall Goldsmith, is especially true for a good company that yearns to be a great company. Everything has to change, and the change has to be led by a great CEO. Look in the mirror, confront the brutal truth, adjust your attitudes, learn what you don’t yet know, and hire the help you’ll need to lead the company through the most difficult, most rewarding changes it will ever experience.

Jack Harris is the Managing Principal of Head First Consulting in Melbourne Beach, Florida. He specializes in leading small and medium businesses through the changes that will make them great. During his 33-year consulting career, he has completed 600 projects for 100 government organizations and 200 companies, ranging from Fortune 50s to startups. Contact him at Jack@HeadFirstConsulting.com or (321) 729-9955.

© 2008 Jack H. Harris

Head First Java, 2nd Edition
Head First Design Patterns
Head First Servlets and JSP: Passing the Sun Certified Web Component Developer Exam (SCWCD)

and...

more here.

Got to print them out soon... Hehe!

First published in Spacecoast Business Magazine February 2008

Many factors make the Space Coast a special place to do business. One factor in particular makes it different from any other community I’ve studied: our great abundance of free labor. Unlike their counterparts in Washington, Chicago, Denver or Dallas, Brevard County’s small business owners get free bookkeeping, free accounting, free human resources management and free benefits administration, as well as free computer, software and network maintenance. What’s their secret? Instead of paying someone else to do this thankless work, they do it themselves. Great way to save money, right?

Hardly. There is no better demonstration of “penny-wise and pound-foolish.” To milk another old saying, the engineer who does his own bookkeeping has a fool for a client. So does the wholesale distributor who repairs his own computers and networks, as does the restaurant owner who does her own payroll. Time is money, and nothing that a small business owner spends her time on is free.

What is an hour of your time worth? No, the answer is not your annual take divided by 2000 hours. That’s an employee’s view of the world, not an owner’s. Assuming the performance of your business is directly proportional to the amount of effort you put into building and conducting the business — as it should be in a small business — each of your hours is worth some fraction of the company’s annual revenue. If your annual revenue is $1 million, and you devote 2500 hours to building and conducting the business, then each of your hours is worth $400 to the business.

Of course, if you’re like most local business owners, you spend about 1000 of those hours on trivia that contributes nothing to building or conducting the business: bookkeeping, payroll, taxes, IT problems, government reports and the like. In truth, you’re devoting only 1500 hours to generate $1 million, which means that each of your focused hours is worth $667 to the business. In this hypothetical scenario, you could raise your revenue from $1.000 million to $1.667 million by simply refocusing those 1000 lost hours on work that matters. There are other ways to grow your business 66.7%, but none so easy as this.

The ambitious owner of a small business should be fully engaged in the tasks that produce revenue and profit, for the present and future. This means setting goals, planning, strategizing, managing production or service delivery, marketing and selling, and filling the pipeline by networking and writing proposals. These are the tasks that build the business.

Bookkeeping, payroll administration, calculating and depositing taxes, arguing with health insurance companies, and cursing networks and computers contribute nothing to the development of your business. They are the scut work that wastes your time and saps your company’s vitality. They are tasks that can be performed better by other local businesses, at a small fraction of what it costs to do it yourself.

Outsourcing non-core tasks is not a new idea. It’s a way of life for America’s greatest corporations. Take General Dynamics, one of the nation’s foremost technology-integration companies. The computing and network solutions they deliver to clients are among the best in the world. Do they buy, install and maintain their in-house computers and networks? Of course not. They pay Computer Sciences Corporation to provide GD’s IT infrastructure, while GD talent is focused on making money for GD.

Outsourcing is also a way of life for small and mid-size companies in booming business communities across the country. Here in Brevard, our reluctance to outsource our junk, and refocus our top talent on core tasks, is one thing that keeps the Space Coast from reaching its potential as a business community and keeps our good businesses from becoming great. We are, in practice, a community of part-time leaders and executives. We may spend long hours on business-related stuff, but we spend too few of those hours on the stuff of business.

What does it cost in our market to get the junk off your daily schedule? For bookkeeping services, expect to pay from $40 to $75 per hour, depending upon the complexity of your business, the condition of your records, and how long it has been since the books were done right. A typical small business, with its records in a typical mess, might pay for 8-10 hours the first month and 4-5 hours per month thereafter. Almost every business owner who is a do-it-yourself bookkeeper spends many more hours, and many more resources, getting that thankless job done.

Outsourcing your personnel headaches is probably the best thing you can do for your small business and your own sanity. Payroll, time accounting and benefits management are dirt cheap. An even bigger payoff comes from using a Professional Employment Organization to administratively employ your people. In this arrangement, your employees are yours to control in their daily work, but they belong to the PEO for all administrative purposes: payroll, benefits, taxes, workman’s comp and all the rest. You write one check a month and the PEO takes care of the rest. Depending upon the benefits, bells and whistles you choose, the cost will be about 5-10% of your payroll. That is a small price to redeem hundreds of hours of your valuable time. And, if you do it, you won’t be a pioneer. The top five PEOs headquartered in Florida already employ about 500,000 people for their clients.

What about using a local IT firm to take care of your computers, printers and networks? The cost will vary with the complexity and condition of your computing assets, but of course your time spent dealing with computer problems also varies with the complexity and condition of your assets. In any case, the cost of having experts on call will always be cheaper than the true cost of doing it yourself. Many of us have had the experience of pulling our hair out for two days trying to fix the system, and then calling in a high-priced $100-per-hour technician who fixed it in 30 minutes. That’s the trade-off; who wouldn’t take that deal?

Becoming a great company and dominating your competitors requires that you spend your time on the things that pay off most for the company. When someone offers to do your trivial pursuits cheaper, faster, more accurately and more legally compliant than you can do them, give them the order. You just shook hands with your company’s new best friend.

Jack Harris is the Managing Principal of Head First Consulting in Melbourne Beach, Florida. He specializes in leading small and medium businesses through the changes that will make them great. During his 33-year consulting career, he has completed 600 projects for 100 government organizations and 200 companies, ranging from Fortune 50s to startups. Contact him at Jack@HeadFirstConsulting.com or (321) 729-9955.

© 2008 Jack H. Harris

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514822/errata/

This is the official errata for the book. So if something isn't working the way it should, you should be able to go there to see if a correction is available. By the way, in case you didn't know Andrew Stellman is co-author of Head First C# with Jennifer Greene. They and their team deserve some serious props for putting together a great book.

Page 133
Ok, so this is nit picky. For the reimbursement calculator, the NumericUpDown boxes require a range of 1 to 999,999. However, when one tries to put 999,999 (with the comma) it generates a “Property value not valid.” error. Just take the comma out and all will work great.

Page 143
Again I think this is being nit picky. In part one of the Sharpen your pencil, the last statement says:

Dog quentin = Fido;

Because C#, as I understand it, is a strongly typed language (capitalization counts) it will throw an error in the real world if you try to set Fido. Fido was set with this line:

Dog fido = new Dog();

Notice the lowercase f when fido got set.

The last line should read:

Dog quentin = fido;

This will help maintain consistency.

Page 147
Here is another case where a variable is capitalized when it should not be. In part 2 of the exercise you are asked to type the following line:

lloyd = Lucinda;

However, Lucinda with a capital L is not a valid variable name. To make the example work correctly you will need to make the line look like so ...

lloyd = lucinda;

After the change is made there should be no more issues with this part of the example, save maybe a little identity crisis.

Page 153
The last answer in the middle of the paragraph

A virtual machine is a way for to isolate ...

should read, I think

A virtual machine is a way for it to isolate ...

Page 154
The second question on the left hand side says

Wait, then doesn't that mean that every time a change a value ...

I believe it should read like this

Wait, then doesn't that mean that every time I change a value ...

This was all that I found with chapter 4. Next is the first C# Lab. Wish me luck!!

Chapter 3 was clean. Everything worked as expected and Joe and Bob were able to transfer funds to each other. If you are wondering who Joe and Bob are get the book. They need your help getting money to each other.