This year, VendAsta’s very own CTO, Jason Collins has the honor of joining this elite group of presenters. Those of you that have been fortunate enough to have seen Jason speak before will know not to miss this presentation titled:

Code Free or Die Hard

Free content. Free application hosting. Unprecedented access to customers eager to use your application – and promote it to their social networks, for free. Multiple frameworks, APIs, and development tools jostling for your attention. Users are on the move, their phones know where they are and where they’ve been, they’re connected all the time – but their interactions with technology are faster, more fleeting, lighter on content but heavy with context. What does this all mean for developers? It means being able to operate in multiple environments simultaneously. It means writing smaller amounts of highly functional code. It means keeping pace with a consumer-facing software sector that is frantic, kinetic, and creatively destructive – now more than ever.

The event is open to all and is posted on the University of Saskatchewan’s website .

2008 P.G. Sorenson Distinguished Graduate Lecture
“Code Free or Die Hard”
Speaker: Jason Collins
Date: Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
Time: 7:30 pm
Room: Arts 146
Everyone is welcome.

Congratulations to our very own Jason Collins – He’s kind of a big deal!

What does that mean, you might be asking yourself. Let me explain.

When we first discussed the idea of working on side projects I had a lot of fears.  Fears that we would lose focus, fears that it would be expensive, fears that the time would be “wasted”.  To alleviate those fears I wanted to impose restrictions.  Things like:  Projects need to be well thought out and documented, projects need to have some benefit to the company, or projects need to be in area of development we are already in.

Then, I thought about what it is that we  originally envisioned VendAsta to be.  To paraphrase, we wanted to work with super smart people we like on interesting stuff.  To achieve this, our attitudes, philosophies, environment and culture must reflect this.  Imposing rules overtop of JAM to alleviate fears is wrong, it is simply not what we are about.

On the face of it JAM is about allowing everyone to have an opportunity to work on ideas that are their own or ideas they personally and individually buy into.   But it is more than that. It is about providing people with the luxury of dreaming.  It is about giving our people a chance to turn some of their dreams into reality.

People at VendAsta work very hard.   When you hire the best and brightest you tend to get people that are ambitious and driven.  VendAstians are thinkers, innovators, and leaders full of their own ideas and driven by a strong competitive work ethic, healthy peer pressure, and pride.

JAM is about providing time, money and opportunity for anyone to sell their idea to the VendAsta team.  JAM is the mechanism to take something from a dream to an idea, from an idea to a plan, from a plan to a prototype, from a prototype to a product and from a product to a money maker.

JAM products will gain momentum through peer review, open discussion and debate and personal choice. JAM Product decisions will not be made by management and executives.  Products that gain JAM momentum will benefit from all the skill sets available; marketing, promotion, critical analysis, development and production environments, business development, testing, monetization, HCI and development.

JAM is also an opportunity to share in the profits and hedge your chances for success. The profits of products built and released via JAM will be shared in a very democratic way with all.

Most of all JAM is about making VendAsta a great place to work with super smart cool people building interesting stuff.

I suspect that in most work environments people have gone through the experience of having new team members simply show up. A new team member suddenly thrust upon them as the result of some decision made from on high. Personally it is something that I have always hated. I guess it is okay if your definition of a team is “Two or more draft animals used to pull a vehicle or farm implement”. But when your definition is as ours; ” a group of individuals who interact dynamically, interdependently and adaptively to achieve specified, shared, and valued objectives in an environment of respect and trust”, then it is ludicrous that the team shouldn’t have a say in it’s own composition.

At VendAsta we are changing our hiring process to truly value the team. Applicants will start with an initial screening and generally there will be a second Interview with an HR team unless the employee is an obvious hire and is known to the team. So once the HR team approves the applicant they will then face the real test. Lunch with the team of people they will ultimately work with.

The team will arrange a lunch or dinner with their potential new team mate. The reviews, opinions and general sentiment of the team will ultimately decide whether or not a formal offer is extended. This is good for the team and good for the applicant. Nobody wants to work with people they are not compatible with.

For the record, it’s not all just a free lunch. The team has to complete a confidential review. What they like about the applicant, what they don’t, how they see them fitting, potential conflicts or anything else they want to point out. When 90 days are up the team will revisit the hire and make recommendations.

We can all think of companies where the idea of “culture” is a set of values and practices formulated and dictated down by some group of executives to everyone else. It simply doesn’t work. It’s like trying to smile while doing something you really dislike. Sooner or later your face is going to show your true feelings.

The interesting thing is that company culture CANNOT be dictated down from on high. In fact, by definition it can’t be dictated at all. It has to be shared and created by the members of the group – by the employees. Every individual in a company has something to do with it’s culture simply by virtue of having values and practices. So in my view, culture isn’t so much something that you can create, it just simply is.

This doesn’t make it impossible to create a company with a great culture. In fact all one really needs to do is to work with  people who love the same values and practices that you love.

So here is what I love about VendAsta. I get to work with super smart, cool people building really cool stuff that people care about.But it’s more than that. Here are a few things I personally have observed first hand. Things that are not written down or mandated, things that just ARE.

• Mutual Respect: There is no room here for disrespect.
• No Party Line: Not having a party line makes it much easier to tow.
• Be Yourself: We dress, talk, celebrate and act the way we want to. No fear.
• No Dictator: Sure sometimes tough decisions have to be made but never in a dictatorial fashion.
• Mistakes allowed. Personally all I can say about this is “Thank God”.
• No Sacred Cows: ‘nough said
• Open Minds: Minds changed based on information and fact
• Transparency: When you all sit in the same space you have this whether you want it or not.
• Self Assigned responsibility: I don’t think I have ever heard anybody dictate what to do to someone else. Not once.

These are simply some of values and practices that I have observed in the work environment. However, the work environment wasn’t really what I wanted to blog about.

Vendasta is just a baby at just over half a year old so you might think that we don’t really have a lot of “I remember when …” in us. But most of our team has known each other for years and many (in fact most) have worked together for over 7 years. So when we had a summer barbeque and pool party it was especially thrilling to see the entire team, new comers included,  interact like it had been together for years.

I think that great companies are a lot like great people. They both have an exciting story to tell and the best stories are built around actual real life experience. The VendAsta summer party of ’08 was one such occasion about which one day we will surely say “I remember when …”.

Let me point out that no matter how good a product is, change is difficult and usually people have trouble committing.  We had no choice.  We had nothing else.  I will be the first to say that Google documents lack much of the advance functionality of word.  Google Spreadsheets, while quite versatile, lack sophisticated graphs and presentations and Google presentations while good is certainly memory and CPU hog.  However, Gmail with its lightening quick  awesome search and  essentially infinite size and the Google Calendar certainly put outlook to shame.

In any case, we had nothing else so we used Google Docs.  Certainly not as sophisticated as Microsoft Office. Certainly lacking all the bells and whistles.  But as we sat around my living room each working on our own notebook building our business  together, something happened.  We discovered the true power of collaboration. You might think that eight people editing a  spreadsheet or a document at the same time sounds like a nightmare but that is likely because you are thinking about the ”track changes” nightmare that makes you want to throw out a MS Word document and start over. Google Docs just doesn’t work that way.

In the end it’s nothing you can put your finger on at first but rather a number of things that make Google Doc’s brilliant.  Things like:

• Easy intuitive instantaneous collaboration.
• No worries about multiple versions of spreadsheets, documents and presentations everywhere.
• Global version control for documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
• Easy presentation and sharing of documents, spreadsheets and presentations with people outside your domain (like VC’s).
• No worries about backing up.
• No worries about space.
• Great Calendar.
• Awesome Email.
• Integration.
• Transparent and easy configuration.
• Easy access from any PC from any location at any time.
• No software to install, no licence keys, no costs.
• Constant innovation and upgrades but  without the upgrades.

So when we purchased our first set of notebooks (yup notebooks for everyone) we purchased them with copies of Microsoft Office, but a funny thing happened.  Hardly any copies of Office got installed. It turns out that we are hooked on Google Docs and hooked on collaboration.  If you  own Microsoft stock I have a word of advice for you – sell now!

This new paradigm also seems to dovetail extremely well with our new working method – Scrum.  Notice I didn’t say “development” method.  Scrum isn’t just for developers.  It works for business development, requirement building, project planing and marketing too!

Here is how I sum up my feelings why Google Doc’s will overtake Microsoft Office within the next 18 months: Easy, Real, Convenient, Collaboration ALWAYS trumps Configuration, Complexity and Non-Intuitiveness even (maybe even especially) if it is in the name of Security and Control.

Oh and today Google added “Google Sites” their reincarnation of the Jotspot Wiki.  I added it to our Google Docs this morning with a simple click.  Thank God we will never have suffer another installation of Sharepoint!

See how they scrum:

We also have a third arrival – Allan’s new Macbook Air. In Saskatoon, at Vendasta, software developers are encourage to participate in choosing their environment. There are lots of different opinions and views on the Macbook.

Here is a little video of the arrival of Kevin, Ryan and the Macbook.  Oh, and the video has a twist.  If you watch it you will notice the first part is music and video and the second part is the audio track as recorded with the video.  As a viewer you might find it interesting how different the actual words and thoughts behind the music are compared to what you might have thought they would be.

What is amazing however is our Google search results for “Saskatoon software careers” and “Saskatoon software development careers”  We are number one for both these entries.  And we are on the first page for “Saskatoon Developers”.  This simply goes to show that the power of blogging and proper search engine optimization should not be underestimated!