May 6 2018
Your New Career – Part 3: Social Media Presence

Hopefully, by now, you’ve prepared your toolset for the job researching and interviewing process?  If not, go back and read a previous article.  I’ll wait.
Until now we have focused on relatively simple areas to address, including your emotional health.  Look for a guest post shortly about what happens to your network of friends after you are unemployed.
Now we have to turn our attention to one of the more difficult tasks.  This one is particular will take some time and creativity.

It’s time you “professionalized” your social media presence.

By that I mean, review:

  1. Your Facebook Page
  2. Your LinkedIn Page
  3. Your Twitter Account
  4. Your Instagram Pages
  5. Your Snapchat Account
  6. Any other public social media (blog posts, Pinterest, MySpace, Tinder, etc.)

A Little Primer on Social Media and the Interwebs

Facebook has been in the news recently (April 2018 – https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/06/cambridge-analytica-kept-facebook-data-models-through-us-election) due to a scandal with Cambridge Analytics where they scraped Facebook data and used it to build a persona for millions of unwitting Facebook users.  This persona was then leveraged to generate specific political ads based on that user’s likes and dislikes to guide them to vote for a particular candidate.  It was generally considered illegal not because of what was attempted, but because it was allegedly done without Facebook’s knowledge/consent.  It’s okay though, Zuckerberg apologized (https://9to5mac.com/2018/04/10/zuckerberg-apology-to-congress/).

Mind you, big data engines and machine learning algorithms can now categorize you based on studying all of your online presence, including emails and text messages.  You must know by now that your Alexa queries are used by Amazon to suggest products and services – and that this information is sold to others.  So it’s important to know what sort of footprint you’re leaving out there.

Try this – search for your name online using Google.  Too many hits?  Enclose your name in quotes.  Note how Google search often finds you very quickly and has links to a host of information including company career names, media posts, Facebook pages, ReverbNation (if you’re in a band), and others.  You are very easy to find, it’s hard to erase the Internet trail you’ve left out there, and it tells potential employers a lot about you.  See if you can find out where you live, who lives there with you?  Your property taxes?  Easy.  The cost of your home?  Yep.  Mugshots?  Check.

See a photo of the front of your house?  Yep, thanks Google!  note that in itself says a lot you.  Live in a dangerous neighborhood?  Is your yard full of weeds and is there graffiti on your garage door?  Search for your home on Google maps and use Street View to navigate to the front of your house.

And this information will be out there forever, or until aliens take it down with an EMF pulse (http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/01/14/emps-how-to-detect-blast-that-could-darken-world.html).  EMF is unbelievable.

The Folly of Using Your Actual Name

While it might be tempting to come up with user names that reflect your real name — especially since it’s often easier to make up a unique user name by using parts of your actual name – that’s a very bad practice.  This makes it easier for online searches and machine learning algorithms to compile a list of all your recent activity and associate it to you personally.

If possible, then, make up a user name that means something to you and your friends, but doesn’t generally link to your actual name.

Gmail is Your Friend (This Time)

Another way to find links between your accounts is to look at the contact email address (or phone number) on your profile.  First, you should resist the urge to provide a phone number except for some very specific security-related functionality (to text you to unlock a bank account).
But more importantly, if your email address is sammysosa@aol.com (see my previous post on not using AOL as a domain), and your name is actually Sammy Sosa, then you should not use this email in your profile information on social media.  Instead, use Gmail to create a new account called something like “baseballhero78@gmail.com” and use that in your profiles.  Set up your email client (Outlook, Mac Mail, Gmail) to receive emails from that account.  You can still use sammysosa@aol .com (or better yet, @gmail.com), but use it for professional correspondence and things that you aren’t ashamed of sharing with potential employers.

Google is Not Your Friend (Usually)

Keep in mind that by using Google Gmail, you’ve already agreed to allow Google to scan all of your emails, advertise to you based on your email content, and potentially share this information with others.  The same goes for searching.  Everything you search for is remembered by Google and your ISP’s to be used to market and study you.  The same goes for any events you put on Google Calendar.  And for YouTube videos, your search for, channels you subscribe to, and any videos you watch – all of that is owned by Google, but licensed for your use.  Thanks and Neat!

True Story => Recently I was in the market for a new car.  I searched for Mazda CX-9 to read up on dependability and see reviews.  After only a few of those searches I started getting ads for that Mazda, and emails from Mazda.  Creepy.  After only about 15 minutes of searches.

Twitter-mania

Twitter has made it easy to communicate with vast arrays of people, publicize your personal opinions, and follow organizations that may interest you.  Twitter rage is a thing, where a Twitterer will tweet angry things at various politicians, actors, social media outlets, organizations, etc.  Rarely do you get a response, but your Twitter friends who share the exact same feelings as you will Like the tweet.

Under the same guideline as “don’t use your real name”, you should not have a Twitter handle (or associated profile email address) that you use to tweet anything that a prospective employer should not see.

If you would like to stay on Twitter and rant, leverage a Twitter handle that cannot be linked back to you by name.  Or, if you have a lot of followers due to your clever tweets and amazing Twitter polls, change the name of that account to something that is not readily linked to you.  Then start a new Twitter handle that you can use for personal and professional tweets.  Then link the professional account to your personal email and take the time to follow a number of industry icons.  Do NOT Tweet anything using this personal account that would tip people on your personal political opinions, and don’t tag your “rant” account from your personal account.

“But I’ve Gotta Be Me!”

Sure, thanks for that.  That’s what the Russian bots said.
Listen, you don’t know what the political leanings are of the people who will be reviewing your resume.  TECHNICALLY, Human Resources and prospective interviewers are not allowed to look for any social media presence, but the reality is that it often happens.

Most mature employers and recruiters can set aside their personal opinions and interview you objectively.  But some cannot.  And when you are in search of a job, you need to be a clean slate.  Or at least a professional slate.  Heck, you can use your professional social media account to research a prospective employer and even Like or retweet stories the organization puts out there.  Great way to show that you support what they are doing.

Facebook

Another “same deal here”, but a little more difficult.  Facebook does allow you to mark your account private and not allow search engines to find you.  And you should immediately do that.  However, the world is a small one (thanks Disney!) and while it’s full of joy, it’s also full of fears, but there’s so much that we share, that it’s time we’re aware.  It’s amazing how many people operate in similar social networks.  A recruiter may be a friend of a friend who is a cousin of a family member of yours and stumble upon your information.  And that could be good or bad, but you’d prefer it was neutral.
Here are some things you can do on Facebook –

  1. Create a private and a public persona. That is, create two FB accounts and use the private one for sharing opinions about politics or Selena Gomez.  Come on, Selena.  Charlie Puth is adorable!
  2. Lock down your account.  FB allows you to control how posts are viewed, so do NOT allow your posts to show up publicly.  Create groups of FB friends that you want to include in your most personal views, and another group for views that are relatively benign.  Use the appropriate visibility when posting.
  3. Delete your Facebook account. A bit extreme, but Facebook popularity has been waning recently.   Deactivate or delete your account.  You can download all of your content in case you want to re-activate it at some point.
  4. Clean up your Facebook presence. Yep, look at the “likes” you have set up for movies, books, other companies, political affiliations —  and drop the ones that could be polarizing.  Looks through your recent posts and delete those that are highly political or extreme.  DELETE any photos that are suggestive, including a certain lack of clothing or where you were drunk and riding that Skeedoo up onto the dock, while holding a beer.
  5. Do NOT list your Facebook account on your resume.  See previous sentence.  Read it again.
  6. Create a business/organization Facebook account. If you use your personal Facebook account for another venture such as a restaurant, professional service, a personally run company, a social group, etc. it’s just as easy to create a second account and move all of that content from your personal account to your organizational account.  Then do not link the accounts, and be careful when you tag one account to the other.    Facebook provides some nifty tools for organizational pages.
  7. Remove information that would lead people to know your age, your marital status, your employment, your sexual preferences, your religious affiliations, etc.
    Mark the following bio items private or hidden:

    1.  Birthdate
    2. Relationship Status
    3. “Looking for a (man/woman/elf)”
    4. Job details, if not pertinent to your job search.  If LinkedIn says you were employed until last month, and Facebook says you’re now waiting tables at a Wawa, then remove the Wawa.  There’s nothing wrong with waiting tables at Wawa.  But it may not be pertinent to your desire to be a Vice President of Technology.
    5. Education years – people can figure out how old you are if you graduated from high school in 1983 or if all your likes are from 1966-1969 (Star Trek TOS!).
    6. Bio quotes that may not be funny to everyone: “I killed Amelia Earhardt”.  I mean, okay but why?

Remember that everything you do on Facebook, including Likes, Tagging, Comments, Locations are used by Facebook (and sold to others) to paint a picture of you.  What do you want that picture to say about you and your employability?

Profile Photos

Review all of your social media accounts and make sure your profile photos are professional. They don’t need to be a headshot in formal attire in front of a clearly fake backdrop, with mood lighting.  But they should avoid anything that suggests you’re not professional.  Also a blurry shot (or pixellated one) tells me that you don’t have many photos of yourself or that you’re not very technologically adept.  If you don’t know how to crop your head out of a photo and/or reduce or enlarge a photo without creating blurriness, ask a more techno-savvy family member to assist.

Update your photos every few years.  Using one from 15 years ago will surprise an employer when you show up as someone much older looking.  That’s not to say employers should be avoiding hiring older applicants, only that it’s misleading and may suggest to your employer that you’re vain, disingenuous, or haven’t paid much attention to your Internet accounts (or hair color) recently.  Do the same if your look has changed recently.
Select a photo where you’re smiling naturally, not making a “duck face”, not trying to be seductive, not brandishing a weapon,  not wearing a bikini,  not with any part of your body duly exposed, etc. – I think you get the… picture.
And as you take informal photos in your personal life, keep an eye out for ones that have a nice image of your face, smiling and natural.  Put a copy of those in a folder because a) we both know that we rarely take good photos anymore and b) it could be useful for a future profile pic.   At some point, crop the rest of the photo out and use that for your headshot.

Note: if you’re an actor/actress, there’s a whole other aspect to headshots that are beyond the scope of these articles.  That’s when you need professional services.

In general, look at your profile photo and objectively ask what it says about you.  Or better yet, ask your mother what it says about you.

LinkedIn

This is such an important one that I’m going to devote the next post to it (3.5).  THIS is the main online tool in your job search and it likely needs cleaning up and refined.  More on that later.

Sealing The Email Address Part 2

This is so important that I’m going to keep harping on it, like a seal.  Like a Harp Seal.
harp-seal-pup-1a-1996-xl.jpg
For your resume or for any correspondence to potential employers, you must have a professional email address. Drop the funny names (buymymonkey, anyone?) or antiquated domains.  Create a brand new and professional email address that reflects a polished and objective person.  Use that for professional correspondence, your resume, and social media profiles for professional use.

Summary

That’s just a quick take on what you need to do to your social media presence before you start applying for jobs.  It’s so critical that you appear professional, polished, and objective.  For me, it was surprising how much I was projecting about myself with my social media accounts all mixed and cross-referential.

It took me a few weeks to clean everything up but in the end, it allowed me to take two personas:  the guy you absolutely need to be employed at your organization and my informal social media presence.   Let no one cross the other!

And work to keep it that way, even after you’re employed.

willrwills 0 Comments
Apr 28 2018
Your New Career – Part 2: Your Toolset

Now finally we are finally getting into the meat of things with finding your new career. And it calls for organization and effort.

Note that my advice is based on my experience of seeking a professional, managerial position.  My previous position was just shy of C-level, so what I was looking for was a bit north of a lay position.  A lot of what you’ll read is about aiming at the middle to upper management.  However, most of the suggestions can be leveraged for any position you’re interviewing for.  And, as I’ve said, if you have specific questions you can always email me or post a question in the comments.

Let’s start by getting set up with the tools you’ll need to be successful:

  1. Make sure you have an electronic calendar where you can keep all of your appointments.  In my case, I used Mac’s Calendar app.  All my devices (all Apple products) use it and they sync using iCloud.  It’s vitally important that you know who you’re meeting with and when.  Missing appointments is a great way to lose a golden opportunity or send a negative message to your potential employer.  A paper calendar can make do, but why not instead make an effort to move into the 21st century and leverage a digital calendar?  Further, by using an integrated calendar app, the appointment contains the address where you’re heading to (and/or the phone number) and you can immediately link to Maps and get guidance and drive time, or you can click on the phone number and easily make a call if you’re running late.  Try that with paper! (…during the interview, slowly unfolds paper map to find the location of next interview…gets paper cut…).

    When choosing a calendar app, you can certainly also use the calendar that is part of Outlook.  That works best when Outlook is also your mail client.  Outlook, however, does not play well with Mac Calendar or Mac Contacts, not even Google contacts (at least for now).
    You can also use Google Calendar, which works well if you have a Google email address.  You can access it by logging into Google and going to calendar.google.com. The good news is that Mac Calendar can connect to the Google Calendar, but Outlook appears not to.  The bad news is that, as with anything you share with Google, it will be scanned and stored for use by their AI marketing monster.
    You can use a paper calendar organizer but imagine how “high-tech” you’ll look when you’re interviewing and have to crack open that journal and write your follow-up appointment down.

  2. Make sure you have an electronic Contacts list.  If you’re like me, a few years ago my contacts were scattered everywhere.  I had Outlook contacts, and Google contacts, separate contacts on my phone, iPad, Mac laptop contacts, and a mishmash of every person I’d interacted with for 25 years.

    I switched to using Google contacts.  Again, this is best when you already have a Google email address, and you can access it using http://contacts.google.com. See the pattern?  http://[content type].google.com and you can get directly to the page with the info you want.  I linked it to my Mac, and it works flawlessly with Mac mail.  However, it doesn’t work well with Outlook.  That’s another pattern you’ll find.

    This is the perfect time to go through ALL of your contacts, merge duplicates, and delete those that are no longer relevant.  Export all of your contacts into a flat-file and import them into Google, which has a nice “find duplicates” feature that lets you merge similar contacts.
    Make sure you have a “me” contacts entry that allows you to quickly send yourself an email.  This is great when you want to take down notes via your electronic device and send them to yourself for later.

  3. Make sure you have access to solid Word Processing software.  You would be surprised how many resumes I’ve seen that were clearly written in Notepad (or vim).  Nearly every platform comes with a decent word processor.  Certainly, Microsoft Word is the king, but Mac Pages is fine, along with a bevy of free writing tools you can download.  Or just invest in the Microsoft Office 360 license, at least for now.  All you really need is a way to do bullet points, bold text, paragraphing, and, for the love of God, spelling, and grammar checks!
  4. Setup a Cloud or backup storage location.  This is not directly related to your job search, but having a cloud drive that you can access from any device allows you to quickly get to your resume or other pertinent information.  Imagine you arrive at a job interview and realize you didn’t bring any extra copies of your resume.  With your resume being on a cloud drive, you can quickly print a few copies at Kinko’s, for example.

    And I should not have to convince you to have a solid backup of all your systems.  I use Apple TimeMachine.  You can use an external drive or the aforementioned cloud drive.  This has saved me even when all I needed was the last version of my resume.

  5. Create a Job Search Log.  On a shared/cloud drive, create a document that you will use to track every company that you contacted or sent a resume to, and every networking activity you participate in — and the result.  Below is a snippet of my log:
    Sample Job Log

    It’s basically a three-column table that includes the date, the activity, and the current status.  I used “orange” to indicate job applications, and white (or clear background) to indicate other activities, and gray for those that had reached a conclusion (good or bad).  These are all gray because they were from earlier this year.

    Also, you may forget where you have applied and apply there again.  Or perhaps you applied and never heard back – this is a great reminder tool to check the status of that application.

    Keep this log close to you and update it nightly (or more frequently).  As you’re looking for a job, networking, getting feedback and referrals, it’s easy to lose track of the last thing that happened.   It also helps you remember names and assemble your notes.

    Take any names of people or organizations and add them to your contact list.  Make sure you include phone numbers and addresses.  If you don’t know the address for a business, for goodness sake use Google to search for it.

  6. Get a decent email address.  Oh my oh my, how many resumes have I seen where the person’s email address is something like “deerhunter37@aol.com” or “babybabyloveme@hotmail.com”.  C’mon people!

    First, do you really want an interviewer to judge you based on your email address before getting to know you?  What if your email is “crookedhillary@yahoo.com” or “impeachtrump@gmail.com”?  Is that the right message you want to send professionally?  Hint: NO.   Invest in getting a decent and professional email address (they’re free!) that uses your name or some derivative of it.  Make sure it doesn’t send a message about your political, romantic, dietary, or pop-culture references (“hanshotfirst@greedo.com”).  You want to be a blank slate heading into that interview.

    Also, having domains that seem old or outdated (@aol.com, @myspace.com, @netzero.com, @me.com) again just paints a picture of your technology hipness before you get a chance to say a word.  AOL implies you use a dial-up connection (14.4K baby!) and the others are just old providers of email addresses.  Go grab a free email address from Google, iCloud – or create your own domain (https://www.melyssagriffin.com/use-gmail-custom-domain/).
    Here’s an article on the “mockability” of your email domain. (http://11points.com/11-email-providers-ranked-mock-ability/)

    As you progress through interviews and the ranks of interviewers at an organization, your email address will be seen by more and more people.  Make sure it reflects your professionalism.

  7. Find a tool to provide background information on an organization.  This is not absolutely required, but you really should know the details about the company you will be interviewing with.  If you were laid off, you may have been provided access to an outplacement service.  If so, they often provide access to Hoovers or Bloomberg, or others to be able to research the financial viability of organizations.  If you don’t have that, Google can suffice.

    Really this is more advice than a tool: make sure you research an organization before you apply for a job there.  What’s happened recently?  Did they just get acquired?  What’s their financial position?  What earnings (losses) did they report in the last quarter?  If nothing else, it gives you discussion material during an interview to show you’ve done your homework (more on that in a subsequent article).

  8. Pay for LinkedIn Premium.  If you’re already on LinkedIn, you probably have received countless offers to upgrade to Premium.  I eventually did and found it helpful.  You will get one month free, and then I paid for a subsequent month.   Premium Career (currently $29.99 a month) is sufficient.   In my opinion, it’s perhaps barely worth the cost, but worth it.

    Using premium you can see who looked at your profile and often see a specific name or organization that showed interest.  You get statistics on how often your name came up on searches.   To me, that was an important and interesting part.  It allowed me to follow-up with people who seemed to revisit my profile.  You have to be careful and not do this in a creepy way.  I’d recommend referencing the organization they work with and not “hey, I saw you skulking around my profile…”

    Also, you can turn on the “I’m looking for a job” switch on LinkedIn, which makes your profile show up on candidate searches.
    A future article will provide direction on cleaning up your online presence, including on LinkedIn.

  9. Pay for a Resume Writing Service. Oh yes, this is important.  We’ll get into your resume in more detail in a subsequent article, but this is so important.

    Resume structures and accepted formats change often.  What looked cool and hip a few years ago (your headshot on a resume!) is embarrassing now.  Multi-columns versus single column, using color, a “career goals” section, how you list employment, how far you go back and other key elements of a resume keep changing.  Having a professional service create a resume for you is useful and vital.  You’ll stand out from the others who still use outdated techniques, and you’ll be seen as investing in your job search.

    Also, the way companies scan resumes and look for keywords can be severely impaired if you create a cutesy resume with all sorts of “cool” fonts (papyrus, anyone?).

  10. Wardrobe Makeover.  This is absolutely a tool. The way you look is also seriously important to how you fare in an interview.  It’s unfortunate but true that employers will judge you on how well your clothes fit, how contemporarily professional you appear and the color combination you choose.  There are suit colors that are more appropriate for interviews than others not just the obvious (stay away from all-white unless you’re applying for the job of host of Fantasy Island).

    If you were previously employed at a casual or business casual organization, you may find that you don’t even own a well-fitting suit, or that your polo shirts are ratty, bally, and worn.
    If you’re serious about getting a decent job, you’ll have to spend some money on a few good interviewing outfits, new shoes, and even a new carrying case.  We’ll cover a section on the interview process, but please do NOT show up at an interview with a backpack, or any hat, or way colorful socks.

    Also, get a haircut, get your teeth whitened, treat that acne, invest in cologne (don’t slather it on!), practice smiling naturally, practice your handshake.   When you step into the interviewer’s office, you need to strike them as a great “first impression” person.  This is often a key, but unwritten part of the interview process.

    Finally, have your interview clothes dry cleaned.  Don’t just iron them or worse yet show up with wrinkled clothes.  After every two or three interviews, have them dry cleaned again.

Being prepared for your job search means having all the tools in place to react to opportunities, do research on organizations, and have that snappy outfit ready when you’re called in for an unexpected interview.

willrwills 5 Comments
Jan 20 2018
Coming Soon – Diary of a Job Search

In 2017, on 12/12 at around 12 noon, I found myself suddenly unemployed after 23 years of dedicated service to a single organization.  Since then, I have been gearing up for a job search.  The enjoyment of not having to work is now juxtaposed with the worry that I will need to eventually find employment.

I’m keeping copious notes and once I have found a place to land (or perhaps a vocation, since I may not land in one place), I will publish my experiences here in hopes of helping others find success as I will (did).
The process is far different than it was 23 years ago, trust me.  And it’s not intuitive.  And if you’re over 40 (guilty, your honor), it’s even more challenging.

My background is in IT leadership, innovation, product development.  I designed and built software by assembling a team of highly effective technicians and supporting roles.  I also did the marketing and sales for the products developed, demonstrations, and financial analysis.

Keep checking back…  in the meantime, I’m publishing some articles I wrote for another publication and this is me, below, earlier in December 2017.
IMG_6721.jpg
 
 

Will R Wills 0 Comments
Jan 20 2018
What’s all the Hubbub about Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency?

As technology and financial bubbles go, there’s nothing that feels more like a bubble right now than the mayhem associated with the various cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.  Holders are gaining and losing thousands of dollars (or more!), sometimes on an hourly basis.  And if that feels like hyperbole, it really isn’t. One of the draws of the various cryptocurrencies is the chance to get into ground floor of a nascent idea that either could be significant fortune or end up a bust – and that introduces volatility.  Here’s a high-level look at blockchains, cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin.  Be forewarned that while this is not a technical discussion, there are some technology concepts that will be thrown around.

Holders are gaining and losing thousands of dollars (or more!), sometimes on an hourly basis.

So, what’s so different about cryptocurrencies than say your average Alexander Hamilton ten-note?  To answer that, let’s start with a look at the history of money.

The History of Currency

Originally, money was literally anything you will trade for other goods and services, or for repayment of debt.  A live chicken might be considered “money” just like the modern-day Euro. Let’s review the differences and similarities between these two transactions.  Both are based on the value of what is being offered.  A chicken may have unique value based on its ability to be converted into a meal, or to be used to create additional chickens, or maybe even as a pet.   It has intrinsic value based on what it can be converted to.  A Euro is similar in that when you pay someone with it, the person is thinking about what in turn it can be converted to.  Why, it could be used to buy a chicken (but not for long in England)!

Clearly, it’s easier to exchange coins or notes on paper than it is to barter in livestock, so thousands of years ago the switch began to instead use placeholders of value (fiat).  Initially, the value of these placeholders was in direct relation to the precious metals they were made of. In fact, the term “salary” originated in ancient Rome (“salarium”) where Roman Centurions were often paid in salt, a rare and precious spice that was used to cure and preserve meats.  But trading salt, gold, or other precious materials became unwieldy and portion control became a problem.  Did I owe you a handful of salt?  Or a cup?

Coins made of more structured materials such as gold or silver began to be leveraged.  They not only were easy to handle and ration, they often carried similar values across cultures and nations. This ultimately leads to the notion of a gold standard, where paper money is freely and easily converted to an equitable amount of gold held by the issuer of the currency, often a government.  In the 1700s and over the following two centuries, countries began keeping quantities of gold to represent the outstanding amount of paper money they had in circulation. And this was ultimately adopted by all Western countries.  But as gold reserves dropped worldwide, there was a movement away from this standard, leading ultimately to the US dropping the gold-standard in 1971.   This conversion is technically called a move to “fiat”, where the value of the currency is not related to the gold it can be exchanged for, but to fiscal policies and economic stability of the individual.

When based on economic conditions however the value of a particular currency can vary and be manipulated artificially.   This is the problem that cryptocurrencies looked to solve.

But how can a currency be created that is not controlled by any nation or world bank?  How can it have any value?  How can it be legitimized and certified so that it cannot be forged or counterfeited?

Enter Block-Chain

Blockchain is the technology that makes Bitcoin (and other crypto-currencies) possible.  It was created in 2008 by a person or group (no one is sure) named “Satoshi Nakamoto”, who since has disappeared. In short, blockchain is global digital ledger that openly and accurately tracks a transaction between two parties, and allows those parties to remain anonymous. A transaction entry in this digital worldwide ledger cannot be modified or forged.   Blockchain technology is useful for tracking any interaction where security and integrity must be enforced but is not under the control of any particular person.  Financial transactions, rights ownership, medical records, land ownership transactions, identity management all could leverage this technology someday. But what does that have to do with cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency is just a digital asset that can be exchanged as money.  Blockchain provides solutions for two fundamental cryptocurrency concerns: double-spending, and risks associated with control by a central authority.  Double-spending would allow you to use the same “dollar” to buy multiple items without handing over that dollar.  In essence, you could duplicate that dollar and use it repeatedly to purchase items.  Control by a central authority would allow cryptocurrency to be influenced by nations or world banks, or if stored centrally would allow it to be hacked and polluted.  Since a Blockchain is stored across the Internet on multiple computers, with redundant cross-checking to insure integrity, both of these issues can be addressed.  The Internet has made it possible for computers all over the world to communicate and maintain integrity in real-time, and ensure no central point of hacking or failure.

How is Blockchain used to create a secure and reliable cryptocurrency?  It’s all about “mining”.  Mining is a term that describes the process of making sure that blockchain transactions are legitimate and intact.  It’s a very complicated process that involves words like “nonces” and technical terms like “proof-of-work” algorithms.   But the process to do this takes significant horsepower; more than one computer can provide. Thus, the process is distributed to many computers across the Internet leveraging their combined horsepower.   Computers work together to verify that all transactions that are added to the Bitcoin blockchain are valid.  The complexity and scale of verifying transactions increases as more transactions involving unique Bitcoins occur, so there’s a practical limit to how many unique Bitcoins can be leveraged. The Computers who work together to mine and create additional transaction slots (coins) are rewarded with 12.5 new Bitcoins each time a new “slot” is created.  The limit on the number of total Bitcoins that can be created is 21 million and will be reached in 2040, over half of which having been created thus far.  At that time, these mining computers will switch to simply verifying the integrity of the Bitcoin blockchain transactions and will be paid in transaction fees.  No more new Bitcoins will be created and the ones in circulation will all be linked and validated to each other.

Bitcoins are acquired and stored in “wallets”, which are digital credentials for your owned currency that relate back to the blockchains where they were created and transacted.   The wallet owner is responsible for keeping their credentials secret.   Keeping wallets is significant technological tasks so often people use “wallet providers” who manage your wallet for you.  If you want to touch and feel a Bitcoin, there’s a standard hard-coin with a logo that can be created.  On the coin is the transaction id that refers back to your wallet, that refers back to the history of the Bitcoin and how you came to own it.  In fact, it’s easy to see all the previous places your Bitcoin was used to purchase something, with the identity of the transaction-placer kept private.  In this way, you can avoid purchasing Bitcoins that may have been used in dubious transactions.

“In 2015, there were over 100,000 merchants that accepted Bitcoin, including Dell, Microsoft, and PayPal.”   

I Wanna Play!

To purchase a cryptocurrency, you have to visit a “cryptocurrency exchange”, which allows you to trade assets (e.g. US dollars) for various cryptocurrencies.  In the US, you can use Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini, and the list is growing.  You simply log in and purchase the cryptocurrency you want at the going rate and place it in your wallet.

Since the value of cryptocurrencies is not tied to a standard but instead to a combination of supply and what they can be traded for, we’re talking about a very volatile market.   The majority of the supply appears to be controlled by very early adopters and miners. If someone who owns a large quantity of Bitcoins suddenly sells them off for US dollars, the value of the cryptocurrency dives.  And there’s some concern that artificial buying and selling by some large holders is creating millionaires under dubious circumstances.

As the chart below shows, over the last 3 years while steadily rising in value against the US dollar, there have been times of instantaneous dives that delivered masses losses to Bitcoin owners.
Bitcoing Chart

By Bitcoin Charts – https://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg1460zigWeeklyztgTzm1g10zm2g10zl, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27802663

Is there nothing that can be done to stabilize Bitcoin prices?

Yes, actually.  In December 2017, Bitcoin were added as a “futures” commodity on the Chicago Board Options Exchange.  This is the first time Bitcoin has been on any regulated exchange.  A futures exchanges has to do with investors paying now what they think something will be worth in the future.  It can be based on company performance, whether a particular crop should have a good harvest, plans by OPEC to increase production. It enables investors to speculate on the price of Bitcoin without buying it.  And by adding some regulation, the side effect should be some price stabilization.

Finally, Bitcoin is but one of many cryptocurrencies in existence.  In fact, anyone can create their own cryptocurrency.  The programming code to create blockchain transactions and mine coins is open-source (freely available) so you can create your own variation, name it whatever you like, acquire a bunch of miners and have at it.  What your new currency is worth is based on what it can be used to purchase, supply, etc.  Examples of other cryptocurrencies in existence includes Namecoin, Litecoin, Swiftcoin and even one based on an Internet meme called Dogecoin.  (Here you can find a current list of the various cryptocurrencies in existence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptocurrencies )

Will cryptocurrencies become the standard for transactions across the world?  Probably not in the short or middle term, but long-term there is something alluring about currency not controlled (i.e. manipulated) by a central authority – especially if the introduction of some regulation starts to stabilize its value.

Blockchain technology will definitely stick around as it’s a unique and certified way of creating verifiable and secure transactions in a digital ledger.  The use of blockchain technology unrelated to financial transactions continues to grow as well. Chronicled is an organization that is using blockchain to store contracts and legal documents.  A startup called Follow My Vote is using blockchain technology to address voter fraud concerns.  And MedRec is an effort to use blockchain to store private medical data.

While the technology behind blockchains, cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin is highly complicated and often confusing, the idea behind having a solid and verifiable way to exchange currency that is not in the hands of any government offers some interesting possibilities – and is not unlike the idea of “credits” in the Star Trek universe.

willrwills 0 Comments
Jul 19 2017
The Unrivaled Leader : Part 7 – Answering Email is Not Productivity!

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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:
    1. “AR” means “Action is required of you”
    2. “PF” means “Print and File”
    3. “NRN” means “No response necessary”
    4. “FYI” means, well, “NRN”, but “NRN” was a strong suggestion NOT to respond
  3. 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:

  1. 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:.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. Immediately unsubscribe from junk emails.  Hit the “Junk” and then the “Block” buttons on your toolbar on spam emails.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.]
  9. 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 –

  1. 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.
  2. 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!!

Will R Wills 2 Comments
Jun 9 2017
Apple WWDC 2017 Quick Take – Day 4 and Wrap Up

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 –

  1. Make sure you attend the labs and talk to engineers.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

willrwills 0 Comments
Jun 8 2017
Apple WWDC 2017 – Quick Take Day 3

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:

  1. 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.
  2. San Jose at this time of year is either bright, cool, and sunny or overcast, cool, and rainy.
  3. 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.
  4. Bring a backpack to carry your materials around.
  5. 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.
  6. The Labs (by appointment or walk-in) are the most useful as you get to discuss ideas and issues with Apple engineers.
  7. You are free to go and come as you please, just wear your badge.
  8. 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.

willrwills 0 Comments
Jun 7 2017
Apple WWDC 2017 Quick Take – Day 2

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.

willrwills 0 Comments
Jun 7 2017
Apple WWDC 2017 Quick Take – Day 1

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.

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The line to get into WWDC

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Similarly 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.

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More waiting for registration…

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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.

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My Official WWDC17 Denim jacket!

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My “Permanent” Wrist Band

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WWDC 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.

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Old Scratch and Sniff sadly addicted to opiates…

By the way, the makeup of the crowd was interesting –

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The Crowd

Which I described as:
Makeup Tweet
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.

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My View – not Bad!

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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.

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Jun 4 2017
Apple’s 2017 World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) June 5th – 9th: Quick Takes

I am the lucky recipient of the opportunity to participate in 2017’s WWDC.  I have never been to this conference and am thrilled to be part of the show.  It was recently moved to San Jose from San Francisco and officially starts at 1 pm Monday, 6/5 with the famous Apple CEO’s Tim Cook keynote speech (made originally famous of course by Steve Jobs).

My plan is to post nightly updates on my experiences at the conference.  If you have any specific questions, please don’t hesitate to post them below.

About Me:
I have been writing applications since my first Atari-800 and the Deep Blue C software. At age 15, my mother purchased a Burroughs Mini Computer with a paper-tape interface!

Currently I work for AAA and lead a software development team that created the first custom (optional) software that was selected for use by the entire AAA Association.  It is the software that delivers Road Service to the 56M AAA members and is used in the US and Canada (CAA). This included designing, coding and implementing the original version of the software (along with a contractor who wrote the back-end) myself.  Over the source of my 23 years at AAA, I’ve assembled a team of amazing developers, UX/UI, deployment, business analysts, product managers and technology experts.

I am also an iOS developer, with both professional development experience and personal experience (I’m wrapping up development of an iOS app for performers).  I taught myself Swift in 6 months and wrote both the front end and back-end, hosted on Amazon AWS EC2.  I have a business partner who worked on the User Experience and Marketing.
I have installed Apple HomeKit and have been documenting the ups and down of that process so that I may post an article about it here.

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