no, really

I really have enough trouble trying to sanely balance my many tasks at work, the social aspects of work, buying a house, and attempting to have a life – I really can’t afford to be wasting effort on other peoples’ crap. It’s one thing if I have overextended myself, clearly that can only be my own fault. But I can’t stand when other people have issues and the results of those issues piss all over my life.

If you bit off more than you can chew and you have to manage people, be adult enough to admit it. Don’t make their lives harder because of your lack of management ability and your pride. Fess up, admit you need help – don’t throw up roadblocks or distractions to compensate… I just stresses everyone out and wastes precious cycles trying to compensate for or deal with your issues.

Unfortunately, not all stress points can be told to go away. Sometimes they are like persistent cancers that can’t be politely extracted, and sadly amputation is the only option. One such situation is so stressful it actually makes me physically ill. It has been so long and drawn out that about half my day is spent processing and trying to ignore the whole situation.

Add to those two stresses any little crap in between, and you’re looking at any number of potential straws-that-broke-the-camel’s-back. That means the super extra additional stress of trying not to have everything all cave in around me. I’m seriously considering prescription drugs to deal with it, but that just means more work to do.

Something’s really gotta give – in a good direction.

I wonder if it’s a part of Murphy’s Law… the more interesting things that happen in my life, the less time I will haveto write about them. It seems to vary inversely…

NextNY

What I am most proud of from the past few weeks is the development of the NextNY Community Conversations. It started out as a glimmer of hope that some really useful, instructional meetings could come out of the group, and now we’ve blossomed into a list of exciting topics, a healthy pool of speakers, and some fantastic spaces to meet in. Now the hard part is going to be the logistics of the invitation, the RSVP, coordinating with the venue, picking a specific topic for discussion, working with the speakers…. not an easy list, especially if it all happens on June 13th!

Perfecting Transition

For some time, I’ve joked that our mantra in the office is “Perfecting Transition” because we always seem to be shifting from one thing to another… personnel, platforms, enterprise systems, leadership. Change is stressful… not bad, necessarily, but stressful. For the past few weeks we’ve been transitioning in new leadership on our team, and it’s been very stressful – bad stressful. A clear list of concerns has emerged, and the overall sense is “party’s over.” Today is scheduled a meeting to attempt to improve communication, but expectations are slim that it will improve the situation. The conflicts run so much deeper – they’re cultural and fundamental. How do you teach someone to be your leader?

Late to the Party

I love my job, and I’ve been very happy in my career, but I can’t help feeling that I’m always about three years too late for everything. During the swelling of the last bubble, I was there, but not on the front lines. The people I’m competing with in the industry are just that much more experienced or trained than I am, and now I feel so rushed to launch the side projects I’m working on so I don’t miss the opportunity and be second-to-market or miss out on timing. I look around at coworkers my age and wonder what makes me different from them that I’m ahead of the curve. Then all sorts of other insecurities creep in… and then clarity snaps in. I can do this. I’m here because I can do this. As long as I have the confidence, I can larn the rest.

I thoroughly enjoyed attending both the Zend and SDWest conferences this year. So much of what we do as developers is standing on the shoulders of giants – learning from their examples and mistakes. It shows how much of a community we are in the world. Arguably the most global and technologically connected of any community.

I’m glad I attended both conferences, because the combination of the two showed me clearly what is missing from both. SDWEST gave me the concepts and trends that are so important in software development, and Zend gave me specific examples of the best ideas about php, but neither covered the seemingly obvious overlap of “web software development.”

I’m talking best practices, trends in user interface technology, advantages of xhtml compliance, how to handle legal concerns, and so on. I could continue at length generating a list of topics I’d love to see on a conference schedule.

So the obvious next step would be… create a conference! Or even propose the idea to O’Reilly or CMP for inclusion in one of their conferences. But I’d say that’s jumping the gun a little.

This conference needs to stay small and cheap. One of the likely reasons this doesn’t exist is because the target audience doesn’t have the time or deep pockets to invest in a big conference. I’m talking small web dev shops, or small teams in larger organizations where the web is their passion and their bread and butter. It needs to be financially accessible (i.e. free), and convenient (read: local).

I’ve attended the New York Tech Meetup, and the NextNY events, and while they are making great strides in bringing the tech/new media community together, I don’t see how much the group is benefiting from the meetings.

Okay, that may not be fair. I’m sure that some valuable connections were made, and some great ideas were formed, but I’m really looking for something that can really give back to the whole community. I want peoples’ experiences to drive education of the community, so we can really move forward in technology and make the web a safer place for our kids. (I jest)

In what non-believers call a coincidence, Charlie O’Donnell of USV/NextNY announced that Google is happy to play host to NextNY’s next meeting. This would also be the inaugural non-recreational meeting of the group. A perfect opportunity to present the idea. I proposed to Charlie that we use this event to start a series of talks or roundtables aimed at the web community in New York. While he doesn’t think it would fit in with the next meeting, he suggested I start a wiki page on the site to gain some traction with the group. Now I need to get some ideas down for people to respond to!