For me, what was interesting is that sometimes I, as a manager, may send signals out to staff by mistake that could be read as one of the 23 listed. It’s good to keep this in mind in case you do NOT want to send the wrong message.
And I guess on the cynical side if you do want to send this message, here are 23 ways to do it!
Have you ever experienced this?: some new plan, structure, vision, direction, the idea is announced and you know in the very core of your bones it will fail. Maybe it’s terrible in that it could result in a severe impact on you, your team, your job, your customers. Maybe it’s coming from someone new in your organization who may not be aware of things you’ve learned the hard way.
Unless you’re the CEO, you will have someone managing you. And honestly, even the CEO has someone they must satisfy (stockholders, partners, etc.).
So what if this decision or plan is coming from northward of your position?
At this point, let’s assume that you want to remain employed at this organization (you’re not going to jump ship or move to an unimpacted department).
What are the options for a seasoned manager like you?
Fight Like Hell Against It Possible outcomes:
1. The plan fails. However, your senior management decides that it failed because you didn’t support it as you were asked to do. [-1]
2. The plan succeeds anyway, without your support. You have alienated your senior management, perhaps irreparably. [-1]
You Express Reservations, But Ultimately Must Fall In And Support the Plan
Possible Outcomes:
1. The plan fails miserably, but you supported your management and thus aren’t directly attributed to this failure. That manager is removed and you go back to your regular work. [+1]
2. The plan succeeds, and it turns out you were wrong or misunderstood the plan. In the end, you like your wounds but are in good with senior management and the plan [+1]
Clearly, as a good steward for your organization and your customers, you should be able to professionally and sometimes strongly express your opinions. There may be times when you fall on your sword.
But using a simple options matrix, it appears the most appropriate thing to do is express your concerns professionally and through proper channels, but, in the end, support your management.
If you truly cannot support the plan, then you should consider working in another capacity or location.
Bonus advice: you can argue and debate with your manager behind closed doors, but once you and your manager leave that closed environment, whatever the decision is you must be in lockstep.
Ooof, it’s hard to take feedback, isn’t it? As a layperson, you might be subject to negative constructive feedback from your boss. You should, in my opinion, seek that sort of feedback. All ☀️ sunshine☀️ and 🍭 lollipops 🍭 comments feel good but aren’t that useful. Constructive feedback from your boss,, assuming it’s legitimate, provides specific information that you can act upon to improve your productivity.
But often that attitude changes when you become a manager. For some, being given a management position appears to endorse an inner feeling of superiority. “Hey, I’m something special and I must be doing all things perfectly for me to be given this position!” For others, they may have not developed the skill of properly managing upward feedback. In either case, not seeking and not being receptive to subordinate feedback can be career limiting.
(Note: I say “can” because there are plenty who have made a very successful career by only “managing up” and not caring much what their subordinates think. But for this article, let’s assume you want to be a servant leader)
Let me make this clear, you desperately need feedback from your staff. Without it, you’re plodding along, unaware that trouble is brewing and that often means it will rear up at the worst possible time, such as during a full staff meeting, when one of your staff members asks publicly about something you were unaware or unreceptive about. (another note: in such a situation, your boss should know better than to endorse such feedback publicly and instead just receive it and promise to look into it).
Here are some basic thoughts about the feedback you receive:
A) Is it Legitimate?
The most challenging part of hearing feedback is whether it is legitimate. You have to consider whether it represents something that could be possibly true. In nearly all cases, I think you’ll find that such feedback will have at least a shred of truth linked to it. A small percentage will be feedback that is based on improper perception or a misunderstanding, but one could argue that this still makes it legitimate. The perception of issues is as strong as the existence. So you treat all feedback initially as being true.
B) How You Should Comport Yourself When Receiving It
Here’s a good guideline: pretend your staff person is you, and you are presenting this feedback to your boss. How would you want your boss to treat you? This is a good yardstick for many things you will say and do as a manager of people. Treat yourself as the third person and consider what you would prefer.
In general, listen. Receive the feedback. Take notes. Be receptive. Repeat what you are hearing to make sure you understand. These are basic listening techniques.
A couple of general rules:
Find a private place to receive feedback. You want the provider to feel comfortable speaking freely and you may not want others to eavesdrop.
If the feedback is about something dangerous (“Janie’s got a gun!”) or something unethical (“Bill stole a computer”) or a violation of HR policies (“Jordan had porn up on his laptop”) you need to act upon this information right away – which often means contacting security or human resources.
You don’t have to offer immediate feedback, whether acceptance or repudiation. You should use good judgment in this case, but I’ve found that taking the feedback, giving yourself time to think and explore the information you received, and then scheduling a follow-up is usually the better tact. Blurting out “that’s not true!” or “the hell you say!” is not appropriate usually.
You may be receiving confidential or private information. Don’t blab to others about what you’ve heard.
If the feedback is about you, before you reject it, ask yourself if there’s any chance it is true (whether in reality or by perception). Nearly in all cases, you should be able to find the possibility that the feedback is reasonably valid. And in general, you should again just listen and take notes rather than argue.
Bottom line is that if you wish to keep receiving feedback from your staff, you have to create an environment that is professional and receptive, even if you find out some of the feedback is not legitimate. Blasting back at a staff member providing input will inevitably be shared with others in your group and presto, you now have a reputation.
C) Closure
In some cases, you may not be able to provide closure. It may be that it’s information that requires follow-up or a timeline to receive additional feedback before you can determine legitimacy. Let the person know whether you expect to be able to address their feedback in a short time or that it will take longer.
In many cases, beyond a verbal closure, you’ll want to provide an email/written closure – especially for serious circumstances. This both provides the individual with well written (hopefully!) feedback and provides you a paper trail should this discussion take an awkward turn.
D) Formal versus Informal
You’ll want to have both formal and informal communication paths for feedback from your staff.
Formal
Set up periodic staff meetings that have a good chunk of the meeting related to receiving feedback or Q&A. You don’t want it to become mob rule, but having a place where people can comfortably provide feedback is useful.
Set up meetings with groups of your staff in a casual place to get specific feedback. Mix and match the group so that you have people from various disciplines and with various personalities. Don’t pull together a group of all introverts, or all extroverts. I called mine “Fireside Chats with Bill” – though we didn’t actually have a fireplace in our cafe.
Set up a Comments Box where staff can write anonymous feedback and place it in this box – and remember to check it (!)
Perform a periodic “climate survey” where you ask questions that can be used to determine staff sentiment.
Informal
Sometimes you can rely on your Administrative Assistant to be your “ears on the ground” and alert you to brewing trouble. It takes an Assistant who is close to staff and isn’t perceived as a shill.
Use peers you have in other departments to listen for scuttlebutt. Return the favor, of course.
E) Destructive Feedback
There are going to be times, hopefully very infrequently, where you’ll hear feedback from someone simply trying to be destructive to the department, a project, a team member, or you. This is the most difficult feedback to manage appropriately for two reasons: 1) it’s very hard to listen patiently to severely stilted, personal, and negative feedback, 2) you may not be able to address this person’s concerns or make them stop providing inappropriate feedback.
Part of this can be managed by making sure the hiring process weeds out such staff people. In a future article, I will discuss my “no jackasses” policy related to hiring the right kinds of staff people.
Assuming this person made it through your “no jackasses” policy (or was inherited), you may not be able to assuage this person’s concerns. If this person is unable to accept that their feedback is either not actionable or illegitimate, and/or this person attempts subversive behavior, you may need to work through your Human Resources department to correct this behavior or ultimately release this resource.
If the person shouts or loses their temper, you have to quickly decide whether you cut that session short or whether you make an attempt at calming the person down. These days, you also have to be aware of whether violence upon you is impending. In such cases, it’s best to capitulate in order to defuse the situation, and then head on down to HR (or Security) for assistance. Obviously, do not get into an altercation with your staff member, whether physical or verbal.
F) Feedback That Cannot Be Acted Upon
You may receive feedback that you cannot act upon or resolve. It may be general feedback that would require much more senior authority than you to address. It may be feedback that is legitimate but cannot be resolved due to workplace policies. It may be feedback about you that, to address, would force you to deviate from what you believe is the right behavior or policy.
In any of these cases, and others, you should be able to document the feedback and let the person know that you cannot (or are prohibited from) addressing the request. You have to count on this person to be reasonable and empathetic (reminder, “no jackasses”).
If you’re a person that never accepts feedback, then it will be very difficult to appear that you want it.
If you receive suggestions that need to be mitigated at a higher level than you, do a follow-up with your senior management if the suggestions are appropriate. Let the requester know the progress.
G)Public Dissemination of Feedback
There may be some suggestions or feedback that you receive that you should or could share publicly with your staff. This could be during a staff meeting or via email. Make sure you get approval from the provider to share this information (perhaps anonymously) with others before you do. Sharing suggestions reinforce that you’re receptive to such things. You may even receive personal feedback that you can share with the group, for example:
“Recently someone suggested that the strict working hours I’ve been enforcing have been causing stress to those folks that have long distances to commute. I can see where inadvertently this is the case and thus have agreed to allow people an extra 30 minutes to arrive in the morning.”
Sometimes you can read suggestions out loud, but be prepared to hear some stiff feedback or unexpected notes. In either case, keep a sense of humor.
Summary
Everyone wants their feedback heard, and so do you. When you approach your boss with suggestions, you’d prefer she/he is receptive and supportive. You should be the same way with your staff. Lead by example, be humble, and make them know that your job as a manager is to give them the tools and support that are necessary to do the job, and then get out-of-the-way.
I find that the amount of time that I spend answering emails continues to grow, and has continued to grow since the introduction of that platform in 1972. Thanks, Ray Tomlinson. I’ll email you my personal thanks. And if I find where you live… Heck, before starting to writing this article I spent the previous hour reading, answering, and forwarding work emails.
Who hasn’t felt the satisfaction of emptying their inbox by rifling through and responding (REPLY ALL!) or forwarding emails and then deleting them from your inbox. Or felt the stress of opening emails and seeing 200 new ones.
Emailing is not productivity.
I sometimes wish that sending and replying to emails was accompanied by physically poking the recipient (or sender) in the eye. In this way, you (or they) would be keenly aware of the pain you (or they) were inflicting by simply flinging emails out to others. And answering emails rarely is an end to a workflow. Emails beget emails beget emails beget… (Proverbs: 110: 1-16)
Emails are used as replacements for meetings, and too many meetings is something I ranted about in the previous article. And emails have come to replace the phone or face-to-face conversations. I’ve experienced my next-door cubicle neighbor sending me an email that could have been solved with a five-minute visit. Things are in a sad state of affairs.
So I mulled and mulled and tried to come up with some ways to avert email overload.
I recalled once where I inadvertently deleted all my emails from my inbox and you know what? Nothing bad happened. The people who needed something from me simply re-emailed or (or, [gasp!] called me).
Things I Have Tried
To help, here are some actions we took related to email overload that I and my team have tried over the years to varied success:
We tried “no email” mornings where the management team agreed that between 8:30 am and 11:30 am, we were not going to send each other emails.
We introduced a mechanism with subject line pre-fixes that provided information on the content of that email without you having to open it. For example:
“AR” means “Action is required of you”
“PF” means “Print and File”
“NRN” means “No response necessary”
“FYI” means, well, “NRN”, but “NRN” was a strong suggestion NOT to respond
We had an email etiquette class to remind people how and when to write emails.
All of these provided a modicum of relief, but because we could not control what others did relate to the email we were still inundated.
Suggestions
So to wrap up this short article, here are some suggestions and guidelines that I think you ought to strongly consider:
Peel off people from emails that are not key or are not expected to provide input. There have been countless times in endless email “chains” where I’m CC’d and dragged along in the wake of the conversation. Some parts of the conversation are just “yep” or one sentence that continues to pull me along like a minnow in a paper eddy. Just drop people off, especially executives from the To: and CC:.
If you’re CC’d – avoid the temptation to respond. Technically, as a cc:’d recipient, the intent should be to advise you rather than gather your feedback.
Keep your emails very short. No more than one paragraph. Writing long emails simply forces people to speed read and skip potentially vital content. Tighten and re-tighten the language. Less is more, more or less.
Do not send inflammatory emails. Emails, like regrets, are forever. And you don’t want to leave evidence of your unstable personality for all to read at some future performance review session.
As a corollary to the previous item, if you do find the need to send a strong email, don’t send it and instead save it for an hour (or a day if possible). Read it again at that time and you may find that a) things have changed and thus there is no need for your email, b) things have changed for the better and your email now seems silly, c) you really should not have sent that email at all, d) you don’t really care about the topic as much as you really thought at the time. Ambivalence is a strong and often rewarding emotion.
Immediately unsubscribe from junk emails. Hit the “Junk” and then the “Block” buttons on your toolbar on spam emails.
Setup rules by the recipient to move emails from less important people (or informational emails) to a separate folder — that you probably then will never visit. Then set up rules that periodically empty out these folders.
Before sending any email, pick up the phone and call the person. You may get your answer right away. [Note: the worst is when someone emails you and then picks up the phone to discuss the email they just sent you. “Justifiable homicide” comes to mind.]
Proofread your emails. So many times I have received emails that appeared to be written by someone who didn’t understand verb tense, punctuation, correct forms of possessiveness, oh, the English language, etc.
What have you done to help assuage the tidal wave of emails? Email me and let me know: willrwills@gmail.com.
Update 7/20 –
The inclusion of the email address at the end was an attempt at irony. My thanks to the readers who said “hey, you know that you included your email address, right?” Yes, I do.
Another annoying thing was suggested by a reader. Let’s call him Peter. That would be:
Having a long email chain forwarded to you simply with “FYI”, forcing you to read the entire chain – and then finding out you were already on the TO: or CC: anyway! Ugh!!
The title should be enough guidance on this topic. This is as bad as sending too many emails. Just stop. STOP!
Literally, using the correct definition of the word literally, I can say that too many of my workdays are non-stop meetings from the moment I walk into the moment I leave for the day. If I hadn’t blocked off some time for lunch, I would be meeting through lunch. And in fact, sometimes people put meetings through my lunch. And when I’m out of the office (on business or PTO), meetings are scheduled that I am asked to dial into. There’s no escaping meetings!
The result of so many meetings?
I’m unprepared for meetings.
Meetings run over so I’m late to meeting+1 all the way to meeting+n. People in these meetings are irritated at me for being late.
I end the day exhausted and feeling like I haven’t accomplished anything.
I end up taking real work home so that I can complete my deliverables, in preparation for the next day of meetings.
My PTO is ruined because I have to tell my family to head out on their own while I take this 30 min call, which ends up being an hour or more.
My business trip or training is ruined because I have to duck out at some very crucial session time to take a 30-minute meeting.
And if you think having an agenda ready for each meeting will decrease the number of meetings that are scheduled, you’re wrong. Agenda’s don’t take much to pull together.
And maybe you think that challenging people on meetings will cause them to reschedule or cancel them? No. Often the challenge is responded to with a name drop: “Well, VP Mr/s. Smith needs this meeting and this is the only week they are available and you’re not available this other time so…”. And then, often, VP Mr/s. Smith doesn’t even show up for the meeting, or shows up and is unprepared.
When I See My Calendar
This is a problem all the way up the chain, and frankly, I’ve found that while everyone complains about this, rarely does anyone do anything about it. Oh sure, they might schedule meetings to deal with the plethora (would you say we have a plethora of meetings?) of meetings.
And worse yet, the trend now is to not even check if your calendar is free for a meeting. Often I receive meetings on top of (or overlapping) existing meetings on top of… I had one day where I had four meetings at the exact same time. Professional courtesy is gone, I suppose, but this is just regular human courtesy, or perhaps laziness.
Has no one any workable advice on how to avoid meetings?
I care about you, and so I’m going to help you reduce the number of meetings you are invited to. And I don’t want anything in return! I’m the Buddha of “better work habits”! I’m the Jesus of “just giving you more time”. I’m the Mohammed of “making your work life easier”. I’m the…eh, Jim and Tammy Bakker of … not sure where I was going with that.
Below are some of the things that have worked for me. Some are obvious, and maybe some are not. Try out different ones at different times.
Top 10 Ways to Reduce the Number of Meetings
Decline meetings.Yes, just decline them. You have work to do that’s more important than that meeting. Just hit the “Decline” option and provide a comment that says you have some deliverables to work on. Your declining (or declination? dejection? ) will often lead to other meeting invitees seeing this and declining the meetings themselves and being able to use you as an excuse why: “well, Bill can’t make it so we need him there and I’ll wait until he’s available”. Remember, you can use this technique, too. But, this is especially easy if you have some reasonable rank in the organization. If you’re a layperson and decline the CEO’s meeting request, you could have a lot of time in your future with no meetings.
Decline but propose a new time. This is the kinder version of #1 above. If the meeting has some merit, but you are otherwise indisposed, propose a time that works better for you.
Set a cap on meetings, and then follow #1 or #2 above. 45-hour workweek. Two hours of meetings a day is 10 hours. 10 hours of meetings per week is almost a quarter (that’s 25%!) of your week. That’s a lot of time in meetings. So put a cap at 2 meetings per day, or 10 meetings per week, and stick to it. If someone places a meeting on your calendar and you’re over your limit, decide which other meetings should be declined.
Have a no-meeting day. Just take a day off every week and block off that time as “Busy”. Decline meetings that are placed on that day. This doesn’t eliminate people who just drop meetings haphazardly on your calendar, but it does help.
Add random fake meetings to your calendar. Yes. Take the time, or have your admin take the time to create a spate of fake meetings with realistic-sounding names. One time my admin created such a realistic name that I thought it was a real meeting and started stressing. Imagine my relief when it turned out to be a fake meeting. We high-fives! Just plop a couple of hour meetings each day across the week.
Fake PTO. Alright, maybe not fake, but go ahead and block off time in the future to take a vacation from work. If you’re like me, you have to do this so far in advance anyway because you’re already booked up for the next two months. Put “Hold for PTO” out on your calendar, mark the day off and wait. If you end up taking the day off, then that’s a good thing because you get some time to relax and regenerate. If you end up not taking the day off (but you really should, people!), then you have a reasonably unfettered day to complete your work. Note that if you overuse this, people will ignore these blockages and put meetings on your calendar anyway.
Setup no-meeting mornings. As an alternative to marking a whole day off, mark off your mornings only (9 am to noon). Studies show that you’re most alert in the morning so use that time to do difficult or important work. You want to be a hero, and you are a manager (or above)? Create a policy for your department that is “no meeting mornings”. That positive energy will carry long after you have to stop doing this because some other department complains because their manager won’t do the same, wah.
Convert your meetings to stand-ups. Take a page our of agile development and host stand up meetings in place of using a room or going off-site. This does a couple of things: 1) these meetings are usually shorter because no one wants to stand up for long, 2) thus these meetings are more curt and specific, 3) you and your team look trendy and high-tech. Look at you with your team doing that stand up thing!
Let your admin control your calendar and tell her #1 – 8 above. The only thing attending to many meetings is stressing over how to manage all these meetings and decide which ones to decline. If you’re the lucky person who has an assistant, as that person to follow my rules above. First, you’ll relieve your stress because you’re not having to do this. Second, usually, your admin will care just a little less about hurting other people’s feelings and will end up declining a heck of a lot of meetings. A good assistant is one that will stand up to others on your behalf. But you have to stand up for them as well.
Work from home. If you’re lucky enough to be afforded this option, do it. It’s difficult to set up meetings with people who telecommute. Yes, you can Skype or Hangout it, but that’s not usually used for real meetings. And yes, often you have to come in for real meetings, but out of sight is out of mind, and just by being out of the office you’ll not be invited to so many meetings.
I understand some of the above is a bit extreme. You need to decide what will work best for your organization. Maybe you soften some of them up. For example, you don’t want a reputation for adding fake meetings to your calendars: “Oh look, here comes Mr. I’m so busy I have to lie about my meetings guy!” But if you call them “work times” rather than “fake”, then you’re just being more productive with the valuable time your organization provides! That is so nice of you and should earn you an award.
Alright, give it a shot. Help address this blight on productivity right away! Have any other ideas that worked for you? Let me know in the comments!
Well, sadly the day came when this whole WWDC thing wrapped up for me. While WWDC continues on Friday (Day 5) until the early afternoon, I had to catch a flight back to the east coast (6 am flight!).
Day 4
After the first few days, things sort of fell into a routine, as oft things do – or as they are oft to do? Breakfast in the hotel, more snacks after arriving (oh how tight those jeans feel!) and then sessions in the morning, followed by lunch with 2,000 people staring at their Macs, and then afternoon sessions followed by an evening event. Interspersed were labs with face-to-face meetings with smart and friendly Apple engineers.
On the final night, the Apple Big Bash event was a walk to a nearby park that was filled with Cornhole games, food, drinks, and…. a private concert by Fallout Boy.
Before Fallout boy came on stage, a DJ pumped out an odd mix of dance music, including Head on the Door by the Cure, which was released before nearly all of these kids were born. One thing that shocked me was the loudness of the music. 120 decibels right in front of the stage. I’ve been to some loud concerts (Van Halen! Billy Squier! ) but this was jarringly loud. A quick search showed that 120 decibels is the sound level of a jackhammer and can cause hearing damage after about 30 seconds. But these kids stood in front of the speakers, dancing away.
I asked an audio guy for some spare earplugs from a “jug” of them he had. He obliged, adding “yep, it’s louder’n shit”.
The food was good. Scanning the crowd, there were a large number of loners, sitting quietly and balancing their drinks on their lap. That is one odd take for this conference – there didn’t seem to be any “team-building” or “get to know someone” event. Some companies were lucky to have two or three people attending, who knew each other. But there was a large number of people who clearly didn’t know anyone (that group included me). I did notice on the way out that bioluminescent Cornhole (glow in the dark, likely not “bio”) did attract people playing together.
Fallout Boy ran out on stage around 8:15 pm and played “louder’n shit” as well. I recognized a few songs, including their most recent Uma Thurman song, that lifts the catchy riff from the Munster’s TV show. They also reminded the audience that they provided the main theme for Big Hero 6. Another pretty good tune was American Beauty (American Psycho). Patrick Stump on lead vocals certainly can belt out a tune. It’s a four man group that’s more punk/dance than rock.
Walking back to my car, I could still hear Fallout Boy five blocks away. I’m flying back home in time to see Hall and Oates (with Tears for Fears). I’m hoping they don’t play at 120 dB.
Conference Wrap Up
I’ll keep this in the quick-take genre, and avoiding the information I’ve already provided in previous end-of-day wrap-ups.
The conference was best when engineers were available face-to-face. As noted, all of the sessions are/will be online so you won’t miss much by not going to them personally. For the first few days, I took an insane amount of notes and then realized that all I needed were some reminders to re-check out the video online. If I’m lucky enough to go next year, I’ll spend more time in the labs.
There were some interesting lunchtime sessions, including the woman (and the dancers) that came up with the iLuminate product that’s been seen on America’s Got Talent and off-broadway shows. She discussed how she used Apple’s platform and some pretty cool wearable hardware configurations for her dancers. And another session by Todd Stabelfeldt, founder of C4 Consulting, who has lived with quadriplegia since the age of 8. He explained how he uses technology to make his life easier. There was a lunch session by Dr. Christine Darden, who started her career in 1967 at NASA’s Langley Research Center as one of a pool of African-American female mathematicians whose talent earned them the nickname of ‘human computers’. The movie ‘Hidden Figures is based on her and her female co-workers’ NASA research.
The Tim Cook experience was good, but having seen videos of Steve Jobs doing the same, ol’ Jobs had a better knack for generating excitement. The iPad, Mac laptop, and iMac updates were all reasonably impressive. The HomePod announcement was a bit of a head-scratcher when you look at the features, but under Tim Cook, Apple is good at planting products out there that initially underwhelm but that ultimately form a key part of their ecosystem. When I was gifted an Apple Watch two years ago, at first it was just a watch. Now I find it almost indispensable and feel like I’m in manual mode when I don’t have it.
I’ve not been to a comparable Microsoft event in over a decade, and I’ve never been to a Google one so I can’t tell if they are similar. I suppose I can check out their online videos. For Apple, it was oddly reassuring to hear them having spent time reworking some of their core platforms and being “all in” with Swift. It’s making me consider rewriting my pet-project (BandStar) server from C++ to Swift (like my iOS app). And Xcode seems to rival the heydays of my Visual Studio 6 experience. It certainly runs circles around NetBeans and Eclipse in terms of features, but mostly speed.
It also never occurred to me (until a UX engineer pointed out) that an iPhone 7 in landscape mode is the same width as the larger iPad Pro in portrait. When you line up all the platforms and sizes, they make sense. There’s thought put into the overall Apple product line and technical specs. For Android, it appears that it’s just every platform provider creating the size and density devices they feel are useful to them, or that outdo the competition, without considering the bevy of other devices that a developer has to support.
Some final notes about WWDC –
Make sure you attend the labs and talk to engineers.
Make sure you sit through the lunch presentations rather than sit in Hall 1 by yourself, staring at your computer while you eat a cold sandwich.
Find time to go outside on sunny days and enjoy the fantastic weather.
I hope this series has provided some useful information should you find yourself selected to attend WWDC ’18.
I’m actually in the middle of Day 4 but didn’t get a chance to update this last night. I’m sitting at lunch with 1,200 of my closest friends, enjoying a chipotle chicken wrap and a Coke.
Some useful information about WWDC:
Food is supplied. There’s breakfast, which includes donuts, coffee, fruit juices, and fruit. There’s coffee intermittently throughout the day. There’s lunch that usually is a few sandwiches, chips, a cookie, and a drink. Each night there’s an optional evening event that provides entertainment and at least finger foods.
San Jose at this time of year is either bright, cool, and sunny or overcast, cool, and rainy.
If you can’t stay in the city itself (which is very walkable), stay North of the city so that in the morning when you drive in, you’re not heading toward SFO (where all the other traffic is heading) and in the evening the exact opposite is true, which is good, too. Also note that there’s parking right at the San Jose Convention Center, which maxes out at $20/day – but is very convenient.
Bring a backpack to carry your materials around.
Note that ALL of the sessions are available online afterward to all Apple developers. While there’s excitement about seeing the presentations, you should pick and choose the ones that you really want to interact with.
The Labs (by appointment or walk-in) are the most useful as you get to discuss ideas and issues with Apple engineers.
You are free to go and come as you please, just wear your badge.
The wristband that you are required to keep on, and that apparently cannot be taken off without destroying it (I haven’t tried), gets pretty dirty after sleeping and showering with it for a few days.
There is a lot of exciting stuff coming in iOS 11, a major upgrade to the O/S. The machine learning capabilities built into the platform is simple to leverage programmatically. The ARKit for Augment Reality is shockingly powerful and usable across all platforms. Some of the AR demos they did were jawdropping, and in fact, they wrote code on stage and executed it to show how easy it is to include AR support (and Machine Learning and…). In fact, the “watch as I write the code right now” parts is the most engaging for me.
Apple is doing a nice job of laying the groundwork for future applications and making sure all of their platforms work seamlessly together.
It’s not lost on me that the major challenge of Android is the huge diversity of screen sizes and device capabilities. It must make it difficult to write a common app for that platform. Steve Cook reminded us that 83% of iOS users are already on the latest release of iOS.
This is a quick take, so that’s it for Day 3. As noted, I’m in Day 4 so I’ll write that up tonight (or tomorrow morning) with overall notes about the conference.
As expected, Day 1 was followed by Day 2. However, Day 2 was markedly different and very informative, not to mention exciting.
Michelle Obama
Day 2 started with “A Conversation with Michelle Obama”, where the former first lady was interviewed by Apple’s Lisa Jackson. Without going into a lot of details, it was a very good interview. You may not like her husband’s politics, but her message is spot on. Very encouraging about technology, especially female technologists. Some funny comments on pictures of her and the former POTUS. I live-tweeted the whole thing if you’re interested in hearing her (@willrwills).
Sessions and Labs
The rest of the day was comprised of sessions throughout the day at scheduled times, along with labs on various topics.
Speaking of labs, you have to request a reservation to attend a lab. And you can’t acquire the reservation until the day of, starting at 7 am. Well-hell, I logged in at 7 am and went searching for labs and they were all full within minutes! I was able to schedule one at noon with an Application Engineer.
From a session perspective, you have to pick and choose because they overlap. For me, I attended:
What’s New in Cocoa Touch – which covered new UI elements in iOS 11, including drag and drop, changes to certain screen layouts, etc.
Introducing Drag and Drop – this will be an amazing feature for folks with iPads. You can drag all sorts of things from app to app very easily. Makes assembling documents and mix-media emails very easy.
What’s new in Swift 4.0 – a good overview of Swift 4. Some cool things in there, including auto-refactoring and simplification of Strings.
Introducing MusicKit – Apple makes it easy for app developers to access people’s music libraries and Apple Music.
Updating your App for iOS 11 – a good rundown of layout changes and help functions that make programming that much easier.
Introducing ARKit – a run down and some amazing demos of built-in Augment Reality functionality
At 6:30 pm they screened a new movie called Planet of the Apps. I did not stay for that as it was in a nearby theater and the line stretched around the block. Finally, there was a “Music in the Plaza” starting at 8 pm. I skipped that as well as it focused on live music (good!) and micro-brewery beers (ick, I don’t drink beer much) – PLUS, it started at 8 pm (11 pm circadian time), and didn’t want to stay that late. Of course, it’s 1:20 am now, east-coast time, and I’m writing this entry! Fool!
Summary
The technical sessions were very very good. They placed engineers on stage to describe the various new technologies. These guys and gals were very smart, and amazingly effective presenters. They also brought up Xcode and showed live how to code some of the new features. They ran the new code live and it worked very well.
I was able to take pics of the screens and take notes. The presentations were often interrupted by cheers and claps as they either introduced new functionality via API’s (Augmented Reality support, for example) or made certain programming aspects much much simpler (handling Unicode in Swift strings).
The engineer that I scheduled time with went way over our time as I asked him about various aspects of app development. He was knowledgeable and patient.
Beta versions of applications and tools are now available.
It’s clear that Apple knows how to do these conferences. Tomorrow, it’s more sessions and… I’m looking forward to them! I’ve collected tons of notes and pics and will be writing this up for staff at work that could not be here.
Personal
I hadn’t been to a true technology conference like this in many years. About 6 months ago I decided to learn how to write iOS apps. I watched plenty of videos from MIT and Apple University until I was comfortable with the language. And then most recently I created a free-standing app (in the App Store) with a unique angle for audience participation at live music shows. This included writing both the client-side (Swift 3.1 and Xcode) and the server-side (Amazon EC2 Linux C++).
At this conference, I knew pretty much all the terminology and was able to spend time talking to some much younger developers than I about various coding and tool challenges. It was invigorating. My real-work had taken me so far in the direction of administration and management that I had forgotten how FUN it is to create something yourself from scratch.
I found myself smiling as Apple unveiled a bunch of incredible new features and API’s – and am looking forward to downloading the BETA tools and trying out the various new items – especially AR!
In my career, staying technical and being able to talk tech with my developers was the key to my success. Recent developments may provide me this opportunity again.
I’m a day behind writing my quick takes. I’ve tried to stay on east-coast time, without a lot of luck. It’s going to be quite the adjustment to my circadian clock when I return home, not to mention my midichlorians. The drowsiness will be strong with this one.
Conference Logistics
The conference was moved to San Jose this year. Usually, it’s over in SFO. All presentations and sessions are in the San Jose Conference Center. San Jose is just south of San Francisco.
In general, the conference is made up of presentations and labs. Some of the presentations are keynotes and others are product updates. The labs last the entire day. You must enroll for each lab on the day of the lab, starting at 7 am. However, as I found, they fill up insanely fast.
Each day you are provided pastries, fruit, and coffee for “breakfast”, and a lunch consisting of a wrap (or salad or sandwich), some chips, drinks, fruit, and a cookie or brownie.
Each night there are evening events, including food, music, and even a movie. There’s a large bash on the “last” day, which happens to be Thursday despite the conference running to Friday.
Attendance I believe was estimated at around 6,000 people.
Sunday
I flew in Sunday night because the opening session was 10:00 am and it’s near impossible to fly East Coast to San Jose and get there in time for such an early session. On the other hand, I left as late as possible Sunday so I effectively was in my hotel around 2 am (my local body time) when I hit the sack.
I found out very late that I was attending this conference so hotels were pretty much booked. I’m staying out near the San Jose airport – which is fine because my flight out on Friday is like 5 am or something. What did work out well is that I’m north of San Jose so driving to the conference I’m driving against traffic (i.e. no traffic) as most people in the morning are heading into SFO. The same goes for the evening drive back to the hotel.
Thus far I’ve found a lot of great Asian food near the hotel (thanks Yelp!).
Registration is Sunday all day, which is important as you will read later. Having arrived so late, I was unable to register until Monday.
Monday – Day 1
Monday was about calculating how early I needed to leave the room to get to the conference two hours before the 10 am the main session with Tim Cook. It was a 22-minute drive from the hotel so I left around 7:30 am for the Convention Center.
Once I got there around 8 am I did find parking at the Convention Center ($20/day!). I walked down and found a very long line into the WWDC already in place. I then was told that I had to get into yet another comparably long line first to register.
The line to get into WWDCSimilarly Long Line to Registration
The good news is that the weather was nice and so waiting in line was not so bad. Also, make sure you use the restroom before getting in line. I did not and thus I had a grimace on my face the whole time.
My main worry is that I would not get in. I later would find out that everyone basically gets in. If you want to sit near the front and look Tim Cook in the face, you’re going to have to a) register on Sunday and b) arrive very very early Monday and wait. But if you’re okay being farther back (and there are plenty of large displays with closeups of the stage), then you can arrive around 9:15 am. Still, registering Sunday is probably a good idea – you will cut your line waiting in half.
More waiting for registration…The goal! Registration!
Registering provided me with a wrist band that the attendant said “do not remove it”, a nice black denim jacket, and some WWDC pins.
My Official WWDC17 Denim jacket!My “Permanent” Wrist BandWWDC 2017 Pins
Once registered, I went back into the original line, but by this time the front door had opened and a lot of people had been allowed in. The entrance to the center had drug (bomb?) sniffing dogs and a modicum of security. They scanned my bag quickly and I didn’t have to go through a metal detector.
Old Scratch and Sniff sadly addicted to opiates…
By the way, the makeup of the crowd was interesting –
The Crowd
Which I described as:
Anyway, I made it past security and was put into a very long line, just inside. It literally took another 40 minutes to be allowed to enter the main room.
Here’s a nice thing. Since it was just me, I was able to wander up near the front where staffers with blue signs were pointing out single seats. So despite arriving very late, I was able to get a decent seat.
My View – not Bad!
The Staffer with the Green “Seat Available” Sign
Opening Keynote
Cook’s keynote was as expected – lots of excitement and shouting as he entered the room. He speaks very well and really commands the crowd. In his keynote, he said that there were 6 major announcements today. I know that most in the crowd expected number 6 to be a new iPhone.
So we patiently waited as he described some top-to-bottom rewrites of major tools (Xcode), iOS 11 with a bunch of neat features, the new Max OS called High Sierra (followed by a giggle in the room), new iMacs (including a crazy-powerful, dark grey machine with like 1.21 gigawatts of something or rather), a new iPad Pro that sits between the large and small one, some amazing drag-and-drop that’s part of iOS 11 for iPad Pros and finally number 6, which was a new…
Home Pod?
There was a thud when he announced this, followed by murmurs that sounded like “how about the iPhone 8?” repeatedly whispered.
Home Pod is basically an Alexa, but for Apple. On the plus side, it seems to have some kickass speaker technology that blows the doors off Alexa and Google Home. It includes a Siri interface and can act in place of Apple TV for Apple Home Kit integration. But it’s not a new iPhone and so a bit of excitement left the room at that point.
Platforms State of the Union
Once the opening session completed, there was a bit of a break, and then the second session which was the Platforms State of the Union. This took us through all the various platforms, including ARKit, MusicKit, UIKit, Swift, Xcode, and all the core technologies. This session lasted until about 4 pm, followed by “hands-on” time in various labs on the new devices and software and then an evening event (food and drinks in San Pedro square).
Bottom Line
An interestingly slow start to the conference. Yes, some neat things were announced, but it looks like for the June Apple announcements, it’s all about shoring up their technologies. They took major tools like Xcode and rewrote them from the bottom up. They introduced the latest in Apple’s open-source programming language Swift 4.0.
You can look up all the products and updates announced, I won’t include those here.
If this wasn’t Apple, I think I would have totally amazed. As it was, I was impressed, but like others wasn’t sure why I felt let down. I think after years of shocking us with new technology, this one was about streamlining and improving performance. Frankly, it may actually be a good thing. Running at 100mph can produce shocking innovations, but if you never take the time to go back and fill in the missing pieces, you’ll end up with flashy-unstable-garbage.
