Over the last few days I have been asking people the question: “What are the top 5 skills you look for in a software developer?” in preparation for my talk at unConference 2009 in Singapore in two weeks time. I have been gathering the results together in some sort of draft diagram and they are available here. I would really welcome any comments and suggestions for improvement.
The other day I bought a copy of the book Presentaion Zen by Garr Reynolds. I have been looking for a book like this for years. It teaches you have to do decent presention not just the standard “don’t put too much on a slide” power point tips but how to plan them though to giving them and most importantly how to make them look good. He is coming from a designery mac user’s world of less is more and I really like it. I will be trying to apply what I have learnt when i give my talk at unConference in Singapore next month.
I just wanted to recommend an episode of In Business on radio 4 as mentioned by Klaus on his blog. The programme talks to entrepreneurs to establish why they believe that the current economic situation is a great time to create innovative new startup. I agree with what is said in the programme but I also agree with Klaus that the current situtation is going cause a big shift from big traditional companies to a new models of business. It is an interesting time.
I was pleased to read today that a new version of GWT (Google Web Toolkit) has been released. I have been working with GWT for the past 18 months or so and really like it as a platform particually when coupled to a Spring backend. It looks like 1.6 represents another step to GWT becoming a serious mainstream platform and now includes a proper plugin for Eclipse and the ability to publish to the Google App Engine. I am sure I will be taking a proper look over the next few weeks. A good start to understand what is going on with App Engine however are these videos:
Yesterday I went along to Mix-It-Up: Visual Studio 2010, ASP .NET 4.0 at Microsoft to learn about Microsoft’s upcoming development tools. Having not worked with Microsoft tools for several years and being way down the Java and Google Web Toolkit road in terms of AJAX development I was interested to see what Microsoft’s take on AJAX is.
I believe that I have made the right decision, Microsoft’s tools and approach to AJAX development seems complex and even a little clumsey. I may be bias but Google’s approach with GWT; which is that you write code in Java and it is compilied into optimised JavaScript seems so much more elegant, from my point of view much easier to develop and more importantly manage and support. I will not be switching any time soon.
On Friday I attended Infocomm Live an event where Matthias Kunze, a serial entrepreneur and now head of Yahoo! Mobile APAC talked about the secrets of his success.
It was an interesting talk and he had a lot in common with similar people I have heard speak or talked to before. It was all good stuff.
What did stand out particularly was his background as a keen athlete and his strong believe that balancing hard work with other interest and a healthy lifestyle was a key factor to maintaining motivation and most importantly avoiding burnout. This seems to be a common view amongst successful people such as him.
I was fortunate to be able to ask him a question after the talk and he reinforced my belief that while exercising is when some of the best ideas or solutions to problems just pop into your head. He said that when he has a problem he finds that if he goes for a long bike ride by the end of it a solution is likely to have appeared in his mind.
He also told an interesting story about how the idea for his second start-up came to him and his colleague while they were sitting in a BA lounge at an airport. This again reinforces another thing I have found; more ideas appear when you are out of you normal context and in terms of what I have read about brain function and creativity in the past I can see why that would be true. I plan to investigate both of these things further.
All in all it was a very good event. I also want to thank Susan for telling some much interesting information about the IDA and Singapore and Ruohan for sharing his interesting product ideas with me, long may his enthusiasm and innovation continue.
During my short time in Singapore I have now accidentally dropped a note from my wallet on the street three times. Each time immediately someone has very politely said excuse me and handed it back to me. I am impressed with the honestly although I could of course have dropped money more than three times and not noticed
Being in Singapore at the moment and not being fed UK news for the last six months gives me a slightly different view of the Global Economic Crisis.
What is becoming clear from my simplistic understanding of economics is that there are two types of countries in this crisis; ones with borrowings and ones with savings.
Singapore had a surplus before the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997. Although Singapore went into a recession it was in a stronger position to recover well. Since then it has continued to built a surplus until the current financial crisis. To me this is like someone loosing their job but finding a new one quite quickly and thinking; “that is a relief from now on I’m am going to be careful with my money and build up some savings in case this happens again”.
The UK however has not experienced a recession since the early 1990s and had lulled itself into a false sense of security. It is like someone who has been in a secure job for years. As a result it has spent and borrowed in the same way as many of its population and saving for a rainy day was not something it worried about.
So now both countries are in recession. To me they are like two people being made redundant. Singapore has a load of savings in the bank however the UK has a mortgage to pay and a load of credit card debt. Their room for manoeuvre could not be more different.
All the UK can do is cut back as much as possible and borrow to cover its living costs. However Singapore is in the enviable position of being able to reluctantly dip into its savings.
The example I have noticed this most is in education. Singapore has a very well funded education system in fact when visiting a Polytechnic the other week and a library another I was hugely impressed with the facilities available. Faced with the current recession Singapore’s reaction has not been to cut budgets but to increase the money it puts into education by 20%. It also has all sorts of schemes into place to pay companies to put people into training instead of making them redundant. This is smart as when the economy recovered Singapore’s population will have and even higher level of education and be even more competitive in the world.
The UK on the other hand only really has the option of cutting back on education and is proposing increasing university fees for students. I was interested to see a couple days ago there was an article in the Guardian by Brian Cantor where he suggested the UK taking similar steps to Singapore. I totally agree with him that it is the right thing to do but I cannot see it happening. The UK does not seem to think in that long term way and even if it did it probably could not afford it. I fear when the UK comes out of recession the population is going to have a lower educational level and be a lot less competitive in the world than at the moment.
I don’t know exactly how typical the UK’s position is of Europe and how typical Singapore’s position is of Asia but from what I understand this is reflected in other countries to an extent. It seems to me that there is potential for a large skills gap to open between Asia and Europe and it will be interesting to see if economic power shifts as a result over the coming decades.
This weekend I went on a trip to Vietnam. I really enjoyed the trip but one thing I did find hard to get information on was the visa application process. Therefore I thought I would do a write up here of my experience.
As I was not keen to visit the embassy or more precisely leave my passport there for a few days while my visa was processed I decided to try one of the online “visa on arrival” services. Visa on arrival is misleading as there is no such thing in Vietnam. You can not arrive in Vietnam and then get a Visa in the airport like in Bali for example. What you have to do is apply before hand and receive a visa confirmation letter saying you have a visa waiting for you at the airport in Vietnam. You then pick the visa up at the airport. You will not be let on the plane without a visa or a visa confirmation letter.
There are many companies online that provide this service. I used one called My Vietnam Visa. Their process although a bit convoluted is quite painless. I paid $25 for my application and $3 for credit card charges. I applied on a Thursday morning and got my visa confirmation letter e-mailed back by the Monday evening.
When I arrived in Vietnam it is a bit confusing as the process is not explained but it is quite straight forward.
I went to the landing visa desk with three officials behind three windows. There were a lot of people hanging around waiting but no real queue. I approached a window and gave my passport and the printout of my visa confirmation letter both of which the official retained (I also had a landing card with me but this was not required for the visa). I was then given a form to fill out and went away to complete it. The official did not speak at all or explain anything.
When I had filled out the form I approached the window again and gave the official my completed form and one passport photo (no special size). I then took a seat and waited 5-10 minutes before my name was called.
I then approached the window a third time, paid my visa fee of US$ 25 in cash (no change available) and my passport was returned with the visa stuck inside.
I was then able to go to passport control and proceed as normal getting my passport and landing card stamped although the offical did not take the landing card.
So the total cost of the visa (up to 1 month single entry) worked out at US$53. Hope that helps
Yesterday I went along to Blogout 2009 in Singapore. Up until very recently blogging, although being something I had been aware of for years was not something I fully got. I am pleased to say I now get it. This is both thanks to a talk by Preetam Rai at Blogout today and Mr. SquareCirclez whom I talked to at BarCamp last week.
From my point of view a blog provides individuals working in a narrow field a boost in credibility that they could only previously get from being associated with an organisation.
For example, say I was really interested in fossils. I may enrol in a university on a PhD. programme, read a lot, research a lot, write a thesis, graduate and stay in academia researching. As I publish papers in academic journals, speak at conferences etc. I will build a reputation as someone who knows his stuff within that academic community and be accepted into it.
Now suppose I am not interested in fossils but the history of paper clips. The likely hood of being able to take that up as an academic subject in a university is small. However I could read a lot, research a lot and write a blog with interesting and original articles on the history of paper clips. Marketed correctly the paper clip history community (if it exists) will find my blog and comment on my articles.
This in turn with statistics on how popular each article is would give me an idea of what people are interested in and give me a direction to go in when writing further articles. As more people get to know about my blog so my reputation in the community will build and soon people all over the world will be asking me for your views on the history of paper clips. I would then be part of the community or so the theory goes
I believe that in a wider context this is another way that the internet is providing individuals with an alternative to reliance on large organisations but that is another story.
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