So ‘why the lucky stiff’ has revealed the latest project, which is the culmination of several projects. Clearly impressed with everything from why, Hackety Hack deeply resonates with me. Having my first programming epiphony implementing the de facto ‘tic tac toe’ in BASIC for my brothers to play with, why is providing the same for a new generation.

From Hackety Hack…

In the 1980s, a language called BASIC swept the countryside. It was a language beginners could use to make their computer speak, play music. You could easily draw a big smiley face or a panda or whatever you like! But not just BASIC. Other languages like: LOGO and Pascal were right there on many computers.

In this century, you may have dozens of programming languages lurking on your machine. But how to use them?? A fundamental secret! Well, no more. We cannot stand for that. Hackety Hack will not stand to have you in the dark!!

Genius…

James Govenor of RedMonk observes that the tide is changing in the software industry. Where many have viewed Web 2.0 as simply eye candy or a different class of applications for consumers, James cuts right to the heart and soberly declares that IBM is on the path to loosing a software battle much like they lost the PC hardware battle. I concur.

At IBM, we systemically divide “consumer” and “enterprise”. Our entire culture, everything from sales (pricing of services, hardware, and software and incentive structure) to services to product group to research, focuses on what IBM claims they know best…the enterprise. And we’ve been very successful. But there is no way we are  ready for an ecomony where micropayments are king. 2 cents a transaction? Sales won’t touch an engagment unless it is in the millions.

But what about emerging economies? I don’t mean emerging countries. I’m talking about Web 2.0. Om Malik is quoted saying “On this Web 2.0 highway, there are three exits: Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google.” Where is IBM? Well, have we completely positioned ourselves out of the consumer business? Are there enough experts or thought leaders in this space at IBM to make a splash?

If Web 2.0 means anything to me it is that consumers are demanding convergence. IBM may get paid by enterprise customers, but who pays IBM’s customers? In a time where IBM’s customers’ customers are demanding a digital lifestyle to follow them wherever they go, IBM seems to be raising barriers of entry to new customers and potential community members. Increasing complexity for the sake of complexity to win over service agreements.

Further, with the lure of next-gen frameworks such as Django and Rails, smaller shops are more effective. This may be a blip on IBM’s radar right now, but what really matters is what what is the favored tools of college kids. I’ve heard many call this class of developers and their tools “toys”.

True, nobody got fired for buying IBM, but in this emerging economy, will we be in position to be bought?

Several months ago, Seth Godin wrote an insightful piece on the difference between “electable” and “marketable,” claiming that it is easy to get the two confused.

To be marketable, you must be remarkable. Marketing isn’t about getting more than 50% market share, it’s about spreading your idea to enough people to be glad you did it…

Godin uses Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama as examples of remarkable politicians that will be lucky to find themselves in the White House. They are, therefore, marketable but not electable.

Is this always true in software? Look at Java. It isn’t just a language. Rather it is a “platform”, a series of specifications that is only thriving because of timing in the mid-90’s. It was “elected” (arguable) as a platform for the web by most industries and quite successfully marketed (again, arguable). I can still hear the ringing voice of my manager circa 2001… “You see, EJB’s will solve that problem.”

However, I believe Java’s marketability is wanning in the face of much more marketable platforms…Rails, Django, Plone, et al. A language like Java comes around every decade or so. Fortran, Cobol, C, etc. Through strange market pressures Java became a ubiquitous language, in spite of its technical merits. I often ponder what 2007 would be like had IBM backed the Smalltalk horse.

I have been on projects where the motif was to “solve a constrained problem” yet the project failed because the scope increased behind our backs. On one level or another it is human nature to want to be “elected.” In this case, to develop electable software.

Recently it has become my motto that…

Providing value to everyone, provides value to none

I remember, in developing a framework for ColdFusion several years ago, telling my friend and co-developer “everyone wants to build a framework.” Why is that? Why do developers gravitate to building frameworks?

During my Master’s degree I interned with Microsoft. Specifically, I interned as a Program Manager with the Office Outlook team. My job for the summer was to become an expert in time zones, drive features for the 2007 release.

Those close to me know how immersed I can become in something. That summer, I threw myself at the problem and emerged with a two-staged strategy for the Outlook team. First, a set of ”easy” stuff for the 2007 release. Second, radically rethink time management so that it completely embraces time zones.

Two of my features found their way into the last two public betas and then final relese of Outlook 2007. The first feature enables a calendar event’s start and end times to be specified in the context of a time zone. The second feature can detect time zone information change and migrate an entire calendar’s entries to a new time zone and then notify meeting participants of the change. The user is prompted with the option to migrate if the system time zone has changed or patched with new time zone information (i.e. Daylight Saving Time rules).

My vanity got the best of me recently and I went searching on what people were saying about the features now that Outlook 2007 has been “out in the wild” for a few months. Feedback, in general, is VERY positive. Here are some links to what I found…

• http://www.technotesblog.com/?p=140
• http://marypcb.livejournal.com/190183.html
• http://blogs.msdn.com/melissamacbeth/archive/2006/06/09/624236.aspx (disclaimer: Hank Leukart, my “mentor” for the duration of my internship, guest posting on Melissa Macbeth’s blog)
• http://blogs.msdn.com/ddysart/archive/2006/08/14/699546.aspx
• http://www.office-outlook.com/outlook-news/microsoft-outlook-2007-review.html
• http://www.calendarreview.com/2007/02/15/outlook-causes-mini-y2k/ (In the summer of 2005, I was quite grave about the Daylight Saving Time change. I identified that the largest pain point would be that meetings scheduled during the overlap between new DST start [early March] and old [early April] on a system prior to having the operating system patched with new DST information. My claim was that users would see this as Outlook being fragile and that we should prepare. See next link…)
• http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102086071033.aspx (Congress was close to passing the law for the Daylight Saving Time change that started this year at the end of my internship. I proposed a tool to fix calendar and task events for older Outlook clients.)
• http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb176877.aspx (getting better Outlook extensibility support for time zones)
• http://blogs.msdn.com/cjohnson/archive/2006/05/08/592014.aspx
• http://blog.madd0.com/?p=133
• http://news.office-watch.com/t/n.aspx?articleid=19&zoneid=9 (I totally agree with the author. Time zone support in Outlook 2007 is fairly marginal. See below.)

Several feature specifications didn’t make it into the release, however, that would have made a lot of difference. Contractually, I unfortunately cannot discuss them. I do hope that they make it into future releases. However, Outlook 2007 plucked some low hanging fruit and that’s great from Microsoft’s customers.

Further, the strategy document contained a treatise on how pervasive technology (i.e. Outlook plus some other things Microsoft was working on that summer) could “change the world” by making time zones dead simple. I’m only joking about changing the world. Well, maybe half joking since I was aiming to do for time (read calendar) management what David Allen’s Getting Things Done has done for task management.