Postcards From My Life

Dear Reader,

I spent around 4 hours with Dave Delaney yesterday. Specifically from somewhere south of Chattanooga to somewhere past Lake City, FL. Dave is the host of JumpStart Foundry Podcast and since I had a very long drive, I listened to a lot of the back catalog. Dave has interviewed everyone from Marcus Whitney to Seth Godin, and everyone in between.

A couple of seasons ago, Dave’s format included ending the show with the question “What 3 tips do you have for new entrepreneurs.” Somewhere around the 6th or 7th episode of hearing guests answer this question, I began formulating my own answer; I’m telling you, it was a LONG trip. :)

Now, I’ve never been a guest on JumpStart Foundry Podcast, which is fine, I don’t have that much to say to entrepreneurs anyhow. That having been said, I do see more and more developers getting bit by the entrepreneurial bug. So I decided to share my 3 tips for entrepreneurs, even thought it’s a question I’ve never been asked.

1: Thanks for asking, yes, your idea is shit.
Ideas area dime a dozen; good ideas are a dollar a dozen. Your idea may be good, it may be bad but it’s just a idea. Take for example the iPhone. Apple didn’t invent the idea of the smart phone. When they had the idea to create a new phone, they weren’t breaking new ground. It was their execution of the idea that changed everything.

Don’t get so hung up on your idea that you lose track of what’s important, the execution.

2: Friends and family suck as an idea filter
Stop asking your friends and family if you’ve got a winner of an idea. Half of them don’t understand you, what you do, or your idea and will tell you it’s an awesome idea just to feel like they are supporting you. the other half are jealous and don’t want you to succeed because if you do, they look bad because they won’t try. So they beat you don’t and tell you all the reasons your idea won’t work. Ignore both groups!

Find you a group of peers who will give you the truth. I am lucky enough to have friends like Luke Stokes, Keith Casey, and Jacques Woodcock who I trust to give me an honest assessment of an idea. Yes, they are all my friends but I know from experience that they want me to succeed. They help me assess an idea, but more importantly, they help me plan my execution. They rarely just say “Good idea” or “Bad idea”; they recognize the importance of point #1.

3: Failure is ok, but no reason to celebrate
Of late the entrepreneurial cast has adopted the motto, “Fail Fast”. They have adopted it so thoroughly that it is almost a moment of celebration when a startup fails; this is bullshit. Yes, failures happen. Adam Savage has a great talk about failure“. A failure is however, still a failure. Don’t hold your head up high, you failed! More important than celebrating failure is learning from failure. I’ve had my share of failures. I don’t linger on them, I certainly don’t celebrate them, I learn from them and I try not to make the same mistake executing my next idea.

There you have it; my advice to developer entrepreneurs. What’s yours?

Until next time,
I <3 |<
=C=

Dear Reader,

In cased you missed them, I’ve been published a couple of times recently.

Fuel the Rocket : Civic Responsibilities for Attracting Developers
This is a look at what I think it will take for Nashville to launch itself as a Technology hotspot.

Why cube farms ‘suck’ and working remotely doesn’t
I sat down with a reporter from the Nashville Business Journal and discussed a lot of things. One of the things we discussed was remote working.

Looking for tech talent? Think beer, pizza and focused jobs
Part of that same interview was some common sense advice on how to find developer to hire.

There is nothing Earth shattering here if you follow my blog regularly. Most of it is stuff I have said before, and I will continue to say.

Until next time,
I <3 |<
=C=

Dear Reader,

We are taking the CoderFaire show and hitting the road!

This time we are headed to Atlanta, GA. This past week, Jacques, Kathy, and I, along with our friends Kevin Roberts and Chris Spruck announced CoderFaire Atlanta. A two day conference and hack-a-thon, April 20-21, 2013.

Today we are announcing that the Call for Papers is now open. We will accept submissions from now until Midnight EST, March 17th. Thats’ 2 whole weeks to get your ideas together and get them submitted.

CoderFaire Nashville was an awesome time and fanned the tech flame already burning in Nashville. We want to do the same thing in Atlanta, but we need your help. CoderFaire is a hyper-local conference. All the speakers will come for the Atlanta area. All talks will be selected by a group of Atlanta User Group leaders. This is a conference all about showcasing Atlanta’s tech community.

Regardless of your programming language, favorite operating system, or favorite editor, if you are in the Atlanta area, you don’t want to miss that 2 day event. So get involved.

Either
Submit your talks
or
Register Today

Don’t wait though, get involved today!

Until next time,
I <3 |<
=C=

Dear Reader,

Recently at SunshinePHP, my friend Ligaya Turmell and I had a discussion about sexism in the PHP community. My question to her was something like “I’ve been running PHP conferences for 7 years now and have never heard of an incident at any conference of which I was a part.” She had a great response. I am paraphrasing here, Lig, feel free to correct me.

“The PHP community has not had the problem with sexism that other communities seem to have but that is because from the early days, we have had strong women role models. Women like Lara Thomson, Sara Golemon, Liz Smith, and the like have played such a prominent role in the community that no, we’ve not had that big of a problem.”

I do not mean to imply that we can’t do better but if you look at all the recent blog posts about sexism at conferences, you will notice that none of them are PHP conferences…until now.

Today @webandphp rolled out a new T-Shirt at PHPUK. I’ll leave it to you to go find the picture, I’m not going to give them the Google juice of a link. I’ll just say THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS!

No it’s not horrifically offensive. I’ve seen worse at conferences like OSCON…but that was from members of other communities that think it’s cute.

Here’s the bottom line. @webandphp thinks this is ok; that’s fine, it’s their opinion. My opinion is that it’s not.

• As a man, I’m embarrassed
• As a board member of PHPWomen.org, I’m offended
• As a member of the PHP Community, I’m sad

So I’m going to take a stand in my little corner of the world and I don’t care if anybody else does.

To all PHP Conference organizers, I will not participate in any conference that @webphp or their parent company S&S is involved in. I will not attend, I will not speak. If I agree to speak or purchase a ticket and then they get involved in any way, I will refuse to participate.

It’s a small step, I know. Largely symbolic because to date, I’ve attended 2 conferences that S&S has been involved in and none that @webandPHP has been a part of. (To the best of my knowledge) But it’s my small step.

And to whomever is operating the @webandphp twitter account”

“@CalEvans Cal you act like I’m not a part of the community, I would gladly speak to you on the phone, if you would talk to me :) ?”

I don’t get to define what the PHP Community is, but I’m not part of ANY community that identifies itself with stuff like this.

UPDATE: Thanks to my friend @JCarouth, I am informed that @webandPHP was a media sponsor of @SunshinPHP, a conference that I attended and at which I spoke. As much as I LOVE @sunshinePHP and it’s founder @AdamCulp, I will stand behind my pledge. Again, it’s a small step, but it’s my small step.

UPDATE: It should be noted for those that do not know, all of this happend just recently. Sunshine PHP took place a few weeks ago and before this incident. I do not mean to disparage SunshinePHP or my friend Adam Culp in any way. :)

Until next time,
I <3 |<
=C=

For more on this topic, check out the Sexism in Tech I recorded on the topic with 4 respected women in the community.

Dear Reader,

Conferences are a big part of being a developer. Whether you organize them, speak at them, or attend them; they play an important role in the lives of developers. As a conference organizer myself, I know the problems that face organizers and the biggest problem I see is that each year, we get a lot of great talks proposed from the same people. There’s nothing wrong with these speakers, in fact some of them are pretty damn good. It is nice though, to see new faces – and new perspectives – being represented.

The most common reason I hear for not submitting is that developer’s don’t feel that they can speak in public. That or they’ve tried once, didn’t get accepted, so they assumed that no one is interested. I want to help developers, and conference organizers by trying to solve this problem. To that end, I’ve announced Day Camp 4 Developers #5: Public Speaking for Developers.

Check out our lineup for DC4D#5:

• Secrets to Success: How to propose a talk and get it accepted. – Laura Thomson
• Preparing to Speak – Lorna Jane Mitchell
• Baby Steps to Ballroom Dancing: Getting on the Path to Speaking Success – Elizabeth Naramore
• Worst Case Scenario – Keith Casey

Day Camp for Developers is a one-day, on-line, technology agnostic conference. You participate in this live conference from the comfort of your own home or office. Included in your price is access to the recordings of all the sessions for download after the conference.

Come join us, March 22, 2013, for a great day of learning. Invest a day in your career, get your ticket today for Day Camp 4 Developers #5: Public Speaking for Developers.

Until next time,
I <3 |<
=C=