Sometimes, its just about writing– And, if ever asked to supply that single, horrifying but simple line which defends mankind’s finale, I would say, both tactlessly and truthfully, about our people, as if a father excusing a misbehaving child…

Arrogant and unpatient, mankind learned only to race against time. And, died ignoring all other life here, whose careful stewardship all surrounding lent time to learn and live at all.

Every IT organization can benefit from knowledge-sharing. An example of this, and a particularly resource efficient way to grow the skills of almost any organizational unit, is to allow for cross-training.  An exceptional vehicle with which to present cross-training is as a component of an “20% Plan.”

A 20% Plan might include time for members of an organization to expressly work on their own ideas (Google has such an installment within its workflow). There are other ways to make use of such an allotment of time for an organization — though, with this design Google leans toward fostering creativity.

A sound structure to develop and implement cross-training, starting with the most credible and knowledgeable members in each sub-unit, is a well-rounded, mature accent to any IT organization — and might make a smart form for early adopters of 20% Plans — especially at Universities, where the resources to teach in mass are at the ready.

Installing such a facility to members of organizations helps to build important relationships, promote trust,  and can increase the overall value of each and every member. In this way, peer review allows even the cross-training methods to become better over time, and over-time impose internal efficiency standards on each developed organization unit.

I suggest something along the lines of: members develop training topics as a function of their skill-set, while audience size and reaction determine acceptance and effectiveness. In this way, the raw data help to demonstrate direction and help organizational development respond in something closer to real-time.

Who do you want to spend your money? A woman who needs $150,000 in make overs and travel expenses or a guy who makes a pair of shoes go the distance (and into the White House)?

In case you McCain people wondered, this is what it means to walk the walk.

In February of 2000 Hank Paulson, then CEO of Goldman Sachs, testified to the Senate Banking committee requesting that they reduce restrictions on the financial services industry, allowing investment banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merill Lynch, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers, to leverage themselves upward of 20 to 1 — to risk more than 20 times what they could bare to lose.

The request went denied then in 2000 by a regulating body still containing many members appointed by Clinton but was approved only four years later by the regulating body installed with the Bush administration.

Now, Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson, a Bush appointee himself, asks the American people to pay for the results of those misguided and destructive business decisions and the ineptitude of officials, who realized too late the danger approval posed.

America confused, bewildered and driven by fear, agrees begrudingly to a 700 billion dollar bailout plan for financial institutions — the death of Socrates all over again.

–

If I told you these circumstances were all that were neccessary to undo the great promise of America, you would likely have doubts. You, stubborn and loving of America, would with all that you were say “No. America is greater than that.” But my friends, there can be no doubt now, that we have traded all we once were away — we have become all we had ever hoped to avoid: Rooted in corruption; heartless and descrimitive; deluded beyond perhaps all sense of hope for a future.

We have given the Doctor Frankenstein’s of this particular American monster absolution.  Whats more we have placed them back in control of the laboratory to further ruin the great experiment that is the American dream.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety; Benjamin Franklin saw the soul of America and understood its fragility — our most recent actions will serve to prove him right. It is not what we have bought with these banks full of debt, but instead what we have had to sell of ourselves first in order to ever take ownership.

“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature - that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance - and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth?”
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Brothers Karamazov

This is for John–

1.  Thinking on Your Feet

Few people might call analysis an art, but it is — ask any developer. When you have to come up with a way to fix a train when its moving along the tracks (patch a broken, already released product) , you learn fast how to think on your feet.

Another way to put it: when you develop software, over time, you begin to restructure your thoughts so that almost any inquiry can fit inside a formalized optimization problem.  It goes something like “What is the ideal way to handle this?” After answering that question in the multitude of ways its presented developing software, the programmer literally has learned optimized internal methodologies. This in turn further improves how they handle future analysis.  And before long like rolling lava, this optimized way of thinking covers all things and creates a new mental landscape. Smarter… Faster… Stronger…

Except maybe as an acrobat on the high-wire, few other jobs will provide such powerful training with thinking on your feet.

2.  Mastering Discovery

Developers need a lot of other software tools for making software.  And they are without a doubt the very definition of power user when it comes to how most of those tools were designed to be used.  So its often that a developer will discover a bug in the very tools used.  What so great about that?

These instances teach you discovery! They teach you how to remain skeptical and studious, so that one day from learned proper analysis, you are astute enough to see such problems coming down the pike and perhaps inspired to deal with things differently in your own creations– all gratifying..

Sometimes though, there is just no more instant a form of gratification than being first.  First in line.. first to make it home– first to find a problem.  Mastering discovery means just that, being first when it comes to finding (and if possible solving) problems.  But, it also means being a developer sometimes comes with all the gratification and arrogance of approaching your SAT proctor and saying suggestively, “Excuse me, sir.  I think you’ve gotten this question wrong.”

3. Being In-Demand

Lets face it, we’re surrounded by technology.  And one of the best things about being a developer — being a technologist — is simply the fact that right now, every one needs you!  Mostly due to the truths surrounding #4 on this list.

4. Making it Look Easy When its Not

One of the best things about being a software developer, is that we’re usually able to make it look incredibly easy given what the heck we’re actually doing.  We type some jumble into some window on our screen and suddenly, we can all socially network on the web;  communicate and search based on geographic location; blog about our day; become closer to one another and the information that binds us to one another.

To draw a metaphor other developers might need concrete, nails, hammers, sheet rock, a giant truck to carry it all and the laborers. Not us; a desk if you got one otherwise our lap will do and these days the obvious Internet connection, is pretty much all we need.

The reality is though, our job — software development — is intensely challenging, making the success all the more sweet albeit not so easy to share.

5. Making Friends/Solving Problems

Then there are times you can share it.

One of the most true statements about sociality with people is that shared trials and tribulations can bring people together more smoothly and easily than most other sets of circumstances.  The effort to share survival is an ultimate and immediate trust-builder.

When you and your co-worker manage to save the company $100,000 outage, keep some cracker from making it all the way into some critical system, find a faster way to complete some business process, or even just provide a friend a URL that makes their personal lives easier somehow, you’re making friends,  solving problems.  You’re contributing to something that is truly the masterwork of every developer: a unified framework for solving problems, creating a better perhaps less hectic life for everyone.

For years people have learned from hacking — its the most ancient human art. But, it seems the US has slid so far from its foundation, that now the sheer construction and presentation of information can within itself be considered in some way criminal.

A judge acting as thought-cop told 3 MIT students they were not to discuss their latest hack. Since the halt order, the availability of the information in the presentation has fluctuated. Decius makes mention of the evolving legal manifestation on Memestreams.

I believe information like this ought to be free, and so: a complete form of the content of the halted Defcon presentation is right here (in PDF format). Enjoy.

For million of years, mankind lived just like the animals.  Then something happened, that unleashed the power of our imagination — we learned to talk…

–

It doesn’t have to be like this, all we need to do, is make sure, we keep talking.