In 1988 the Department of computer Science instituted a yearly lecture series now know as the Paul G Sorensen Distinguished Graduate Lecture.Since its inception an impressive list of speakers have graced the presentation stage and imparted their wisdom and experience to the undergraduates and faculty of the University of Saskatchewan and other interested parties.
This year, VendAsta’s very own CTO, Jason Collins has the honor of joining this elite group of presenters.Those of you that have been fortunate enough to have seen Jason speak before will know not to miss this presentation titled:
Code Free or Die Hard
Free content. Free application hosting. Unprecedented access to customers eager to use your application – and promote it to their social networks, for free. Multiple frameworks, APIs, and development tools jostling for your attention. Users are on the move, their phones know where they are and where they’ve been, they’re connected all the time – but their interactions with technology are faster, more fleeting, lighter on content but heavy with context. What does this all mean for developers? It means being able to operate in multiple environments simultaneously. It means writing smaller amounts of highly functional code. It means keeping pace with a consumer-facing software sector that is frantic, kinetic, and creatively destructive – now more than ever.
We’ve been busy moving to our sweet new “Caves and Commons” office and haven’t really had time to blog. We have taken pictures and Picassa does an okay job of throwing together a video automatically.
At VendAsta we just announced our Friday afternoon Jam Sessions. Basically we have decided that we are going to allocate time to allow people to work on anything of, interest to them – as long as it is software. Personally, I love what we are doing here. I wanted to write a blog about it so I have been doing a lot of research and introspection. I really want us all to think about what we are trying to achieve. This isn’t an idea or gimmick to gain more productivity from our staff. This idea is truly more about our attitude, philosophies, environment and culture than some “thing we do”.
What does that mean, you might be asking yourself. Let me explain.
When we first discussed the idea of working on side projects I had a lot of fears. Fears that we would lose focus, fears that it would be expensive, fears that the time would be “wasted”. To alleviate those fears I wanted to impose restrictions. Things like: Projects need to be well thought out and documented, projects need to have some benefit to the company, or projects need to be in area of development we are already in.
Then, I thought about what it is that we originally envisioned VendAsta to be. To paraphrase, we wanted to work with super smart people we like on interesting stuff. To achieve this, our attitudes, philosophies, environment and culture must reflect this. Imposing rules overtop of JAM to alleviate fears is wrong, it is simply not what we are about.
On the face of it JAM is about allowing everyone to have an opportunity to work on ideas that are their own or ideas they personally and individually buy into. But it is more than that. It is about providing people with the luxury of dreaming. It is about giving our people a chance to turn some of their dreams into reality.
People at VendAsta work very hard. When you hire the best and brightest you tend to get people that are ambitious and driven. VendAstians are thinkers, innovators, and leaders full of their own ideas and driven by a strong competitive work ethic, healthy peer pressure, and pride.
JAM is about providing time, money and opportunity for anyone to sell their idea to the VendAsta team. JAM is the mechanism to take something from a dream to an idea, from an idea to a plan, from a plan to a prototype, from a prototype to a product and from a product to a money maker.
JAM products will gain momentum through peer review, open discussion and debate and personal choice. JAM Product decisions will not be made by management and executives. Products that gain JAM momentum will benefit from all the skill sets available; marketing, promotion, critical analysis, development and production environments, business development, testing, monetization, HCI and development.
JAM is also an opportunity to share in the profits and hedge your chances for success. The profits of products built and released via JAM will be shared in a very democratic way with all.
Most of all JAM is about making VendAsta a great place to work with super smart cool people building interesting stuff.
We have been doing a lot of hiring, mostly through word of mouth and the recommendations of our current team. In fact we have 5 new people starting within a month but we still have a long way to go. Hiring is one of the toughest and most crucial aspects of building a great company, culture, and team.
I suspect that in most work environments people have gone through the experience of having new team members simply show up. A new team member suddenly thrust upon them as the result of some decision made from on high. Personally it is something that I have always hated. I guess it is okay if your definition of a team is “Two or more draft animals used to pull a vehicle or farm implement”. But when your definition is as ours; ” a group of individuals who interact dynamically, interdependently and adaptively to achieve specified, shared, and valued objectives in an environment of respect and trust”, then it is ludicrous that the team shouldn’t have a say in it’s own composition.
At VendAsta we are changing our hiring process to truly value the team. Applicants will start with an initial screening and generally there will be a second Interview with an HR team unless the employee is an obvious hire and is known to the team. So once the HR team approves the applicant they will then face the real test. Lunch with the team of people they will ultimately work with.
The team will arrange a lunch or dinner with their potential new team mate. The reviews, opinions and general sentiment of the team will ultimately decide whether or not a formal offer is extended. This is good for the team and good for the applicant. Nobody wants to work with people they are not compatible with.
For the record, it’s not all just a free lunch. The team has to complete a confidential review. What they like about the applicant, what they don’t, how they see them fitting, potential conflicts or anything else they want to point out. When 90 days are up the team will revisit the hire and make recommendations.
How many times have you heard someone ask “what’s it like there” when referencing a work place? Usually the answer reveals a lot about the company’s culture. But what the heck, really, is culture? About.com has this to say about culture: “A culture is the values and practices shared by the members of the group. Company Culture, therefore, is the shared values and practices of the company’s employees.”
We can all think of companies where the idea of “culture” is a set of values and practices formulated and dictated down by some group of executives to everyone else. It simply doesn’t work. It’s like trying to smile while doing something you really dislike. Sooner or later your face is going to show your true feelings.
The interesting thing is that company culture CANNOT be dictated down from on high. In fact, by definition it can’t be dictated at all. It has to be shared and created by the members of the group – by the employees. Every individual in a company has something to do with it’s culture simply by virtue of having values and practices. So in my view, culture isn’t so much something that you can create, it just simply is.
This doesn’t make it impossible to create a company with a great culture. In fact all one really needs to do is to work with people who love the same values and practices that you love.
So here is what I love about VendAsta. I get to work with super smart, cool people building really cool stuff that people care about.But it’s more than that. Here are a few things I personally have observed first hand. Things that are not written down or mandated, things that just ARE.
Mutual Respect: There is no room here for disrespect.
No Party Line: Not having a party line makes it much easier to tow. J
Be Yourself: We dress, talk, celebrate and act the way we want to. No fear.
No Dictator: Sure sometimes tough decisions have to be made but never in a dictatorial fashion.
Mistakes allowed. Personally all I can say about this is “Thank God”.
No Sacred Cows: ‘enough said
Open Minds: Minds changed based on information and fact
Transparency: When you all sit in the same space you have this whether you want it or not. J
Self Assigned responsibility: I don’t think I have ever heard anybody dictate what to do to someone else. Not once.
These are simply some of values and practices that I have observed in the work environment. However, the work environment wasn’t really what I wanted to blog about.
Vendasta is just a baby at just over half a year old so you might think that we don’t really have a lot of “I remember when …” in us. But most of our team has known each other for years and many (in fact most) have worked together for over 7 years. So when we had a summer barbeque and pool party it was especially thrilling to see the entire team, new comers included, interact like it had been together for years.
I think that great companies are a lot like great people. They both have an exciting story to tell and the best stories are built around actual real life experience. The VendAsta summer party of `08 was one such occasion about which one day we will surely say “I remember when …”.
When we first started up we were all working on our personal computer. We didn’t yet have any hardware or software. We needed to work. I don’t know if it was Allan or Jason but someone fired up Google Docs so we could at least get to work. That seemingly inconsequential act may well turn out to be one of the best things that have ever happened to us.
Let me point out that no matter how good a product is, change is difficult and usually people have trouble committing. We had no choice. We had nothing else. I will be the first to say that Google documents lack much of the advance functionality of word. Google Spreadsheets, while quite versatile, lack sophisticated graphs and presentations and Google presentations while good is certainly memory and CPU hog. However, Gmail with its lightening quick awesome search and essentially infinite size and the Google Calendar certainly put outlook to shame.
In any case, we had nothing else so we used Google Docs. Certainly not as sophisticated as Microsoft Office. Certainly lacking all the bells and whistles. But as we sat around my living room each working on our own notebook building our business together, something happened. We discovered the true power of collaboration. You might think that eight people editing a spreadsheet or a document at the same time sounds like a nightmare but that is likely because you are thinking about the ”track changes” nightmare that makes you want to throw out a MS Word document and start over. Google Docs just doesn’t work that way.
In the end it’s nothing you can put your finger on at first but rather a number of things that make Google Doc’s brilliant. Things like:
Easy intuitive instantaneous collaboration.
No worries about multiple versions of spreadsheets, documents and presentations everywhere.
Global version control for documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
Easy presentation and sharing of documents, spreadsheets and presentations with people outside your domain (like VC’s).
No worries about backing up.
No worries about space.
Great Calendar.
Awesome Email.
Integration.
Transparent and easy configuration.
Easy access from any PC from any location at any time.
No software to install, no licence keys, no costs.
Constant innovation and upgrades but without the upgrades.
So when we purchased our first set of notebooks (yup notebooks for everyone) we purchased them with copies of Microsoft Office, but a funny thing happened. Hardly any copies of Office got installed. It turns out that we are hooked on Google Docs and hooked on collaboration. If you own Microsoft stock I have a word of advice for you – sell now!
This new paradigm also seems to dovetail extremely well with our new working method – Scrum. Notice I didn’t say “development” method. Scrum isn’t just for developers. It works for business development, requirement building, project planing and marketing too!
Here is how I sum up my feelings why Google Doc’s will overtake Microsoft Office within the next 18 months: Easy, Real, Convenient, Collaboration ALWAYS trumps Configuration, Complexity and Non-Intuitiveness even (maybe even especially) if it is in the name of Security and Control.
Oh and today Google added “Google Sites” their reincarnation of the Jotspot Wiki. I added it to our Google Docs this morning with a simple click. Thank God we will never have suffer another installation of Sharepoint!
We had a great week at VendAsta. Jason C and Kevin P spent the week working with Sybase in Waterloo and. Ryan B was up from Regina working with Allan, Guy, Ches and Dale (remotely from London). Jon took off to Jamaica, and I had a lot of fun with a new baby. Also Jeff, John and I made some great strides onNMDK. John also gave the VendAsta site a little upgrade. The next two weeks are going to be super packed with new employee starts and exciting new work.
We had some great new arrivals this week at VendAsta! We are proud to announce that Kevin Pierce and Ryan Baldwin have joined the VendAsta Team! We have all worked with both Ryan and Kevin in the past and know they are going to make fantastic additions to the VendAsta Team. Ryan can’t wipe the smile from his face, he tells us that this is because he is so happy to be working with us again, but we suspect it might actually have more to do with his escape from Regina ( Ryan is actually returning to our fair city after a stint in Queen City).
We also have a third arrival – Allan’s new Macbook Air. In Saskatoon, at Vendasta, software developers are encourage to participate in choosing their environment. There are lots of different opinions and views on the Macbook.
Here is a little video of the arrival of Kevin, Ryan and the Macbook. Oh, and the video has a twist. If you watch it you will notice the first part is music and video and the second part is the audio track as recorded with the video. As a viewer you might find it interesting how different the actual words and thoughts behind the music are compared to what you might have thought they would be.
When we were choosing a name for our new enterprise we were very cognizant of it’s google search footprint and it’s “Google-ability”. We wanted a name that didn’t already have “thousands” of entries. We wanted a name we could make our own. So when we settled on VendAsta I was pleased that it had under 350 search results. In a short month there are now over 2140+ entries and they are 99% about our Company. Now you might be saying to yourself, so what, it is easy to own the Google search results for a made up name. You would be right to think this, but still it is nice to own all the results.
What is amazing however is our Google search results for “Saskatoon software careers” and “Saskatoon software development careers” We are number One for both these entries. And we are on the first page for “Saskatoon Developers”. This simply goes to show that the power of blogging and proper search engine optimization should not be underestimated!
We love our new facilities here at Innovation place, but those that know our “Chief Negotiator” Jonathon Levesque, will also know that he always asks for more. So true to his nature when Jon was negotiating our space here he closed with ” buy two new tables for your games room and you have a deal”. Innovation place is now the proud owner of two brand new stainless steel Tornado Foosball tables.
At VendAsta we have some pretty strong feelings on core values and business philosophies. In the near future we will be sharing these. However, I thought that I would share one right now.
