I predict Microsoft will have another layoff this year.

This is either a bold or stupid thing to say, much less write in a blog. Probably both. I’m no economist, financial guru (to which my last set of brokerage statements will attest), or business seer. Nonetheless, I have two eyes, and a brain that occasionally produces a worthwhile thought.

Microsoft faces serious challenges ahead, which I think will result in another round of layoffs.

The most significant will be that the economy simply won’t recover as quickly as the company expects it to. (For that matter, this is also true of many other companies, and our Federal Government.) I say we’ll surpass 10% unemployment. And the “recovery” will be shaped like an “L,” and not a “U” or “V”. The result will be a very challenging environment for revenue and profit targets, even if all their products were otherwise on firm footing.

Another challenge will be specific to the Windows product line. I believe Windows 7 won’t bring in the hoped-for revenue, even without this economic clime, for three separate but interconnected reasons.

1. Google’s Chome OS FUD, and Apple’s $29 Snow Leopard upgrade price, will exert downward price pressure on operating systems. (Note that Snow Leopard will be available for sale one month before Windows 7.) Potential customers will question the pricing, and delay purchases while they push back (actively or passively) on Microsoft. ($120 or $200 vs. $29? Eh…hello? Yes, I’ve read the rationale that Snow Leopard is more like a Service Pack. Only problem with that argument is that it’s false.)
2. Even without the noise about Chrome OS or Snow Leopard pricing, Windows users would upgrade more slowly than the company hopes. The thinking of Windows Vista users will be, “I won’t get fooled again. I’ll wait a while and see how Windows 7 shakes out before deciding whether to upgrade.” Windows XP users will think, “I’m glad I didn’t upgrade to Vista. That decision worked out just fine. Why should I upgrade to Windows 7, at any price?”
3. At least one driver snafu will trip-up the marketing juggernaut. The breadth of Windows’ ecosystem is simultaneously an assert and burden. Some video or storage device will have a problem, and fairly or not, the online commentary will pounce on it.

So, if I were a betting man, I’d bet that Microsoft will miss its internal revenue and profit targets. And then cut costs for both real prudence, and to court investors’ perceptions.

If I’m wrong, it wouldn’t be the first time. (It also wouldn’t be the first time if I’m right.)

On Monday, EMC released Retrospect 8.1. Here’s the lowdown:

• There is still no user manual. This is shameful for a product that was released for sale three months ago.
• The engine — console communications are better.
• The console UI is getting better, but it’s still goofy in some respects.
• In the support forums, there still are reports of spurious problems with intra-application communication, and backup management.

Bottom line: I still give this product a thumbs-down. Until, at a minimum, they release a solid user manual, and fix enough bugs so that it feels like a solid, you-bet-your-data product. As things stand now, I’m sorry I bought it.

I should have a preamble here, but my mind’s blank. I’ll jump right in.

Comparing Portland and Seattle

I’ve been ruminating over this since returning from Open Source Bridge. I felt odd the day after returning, and I quickly realized that my mood was… depressed! For the first time ever, I was in a funk about Seattle.

OSB was a rush of camaraderie, intelligence, and cutting-edge developers. Portland (in the tech realm) struck me as approachable, celebratory of cooperation, and tuned for geek individualism. My vexation, and the cause of my blues, was that Seattle isn’t as solid in those characteristics. I’m not claiming they don’t exist here, but that they are stronger and more evident in Portland. I’ve been thinking about why this is, and what if anything to do about it.

Admittedly, I have asymmetrical data points. I’m drawing on knowledge gained about the Portland locale over time, but at a distance. I’ve tried to compensate for my familiarity with Seattle, so that I can infer (or perhaps rediscover, or finally acknowledge) some fair conclusions.

The Seattle tech ecosystem is more business-focused and “corporate” than Portland’s. There are culturally-active technical individual contributors, to be sure, but the information streams bias along paths between a handful of “Seattle tech news” sources and a handful of companies. This is a generalization and not a rule — I’m describing the 80% point on the curve. Visualize two axes: Online organization and dissemination, and employment. On the first axis, we have nPost, Seattle 2.0, TechFlash, and a couple other sites, depending on how mainstream you like your information. On the second axis, we have four firms: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Boeing. When one of them sneezes, it dominates the local chatter; when one of them inhales, it sucks all the oxygen out of the room. (Over the metaphor cliff I go.) There are other large Seattle employers, but these are the Four Horsemen of the tech (predominantly computer tech) domain.

Compare this with Portland’s ecosystem. Portland’s tech aether appears more egalitarian, with a less constricted online information flow, and without three or four monster companies absorbing all the online interest. They do have Nike and Intel, but Nike and Intel don’t dominate the local press the way M/G/A/B do here. And the online information sources appear to be spread across a much wider range of commercial and non-commercial sites, such as Silicon Florist, Beer & Blog, Our PDX, and Strange Love Live.

As for open-source, the Seattle FOSS cultural scene is dead. If you think “dead” is too strong, let’s at least agree that it’s a far distant N^th place to M/G/A/B goings-ons. The weird thing is that FOSS is used at Google, Amazon, and Boeing, not to mention at tens (hundreds?) of local start-ups. Linux, Apache, Python, PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, open-source frameworks … all are used locally in abundance! And some (most?) have local user groups. But it’s as though techies working on or in open-source, and the local news flow, are abstracted out by the local corporate facade. An egregious example is how TechFlash completely ignored Open Source Bridge, but devoted – and still devotes – substantial (as in gobs, considerable, voluminous) energy to cover Microsoft marketing campaigns.

You could argue that Google and Amazon have relatively open technical access as large companies go, and so they emanate lots of useful info. I’d agree. But the issue is the local information ecosystem, not the companies themselves. Negative and positive feedback loops are at work here. For instance, Seattle 2.0 publishes something, TechFlash writes about it, then it’s mentioned on the nPost blog, and then it becomes the zeitgeist de jour. There’s nothing inherently wrong; these parties worked hard to develop a following, and more power to them. But it’s a local filtering attribute that needs avowal. On the flip side, someone irritated by a post in one of these sites won’t publicly comment. Or, they’ll do so only anonymously, which is better than nothing but lets it be easily dismissed as a snark. Nobody wants one of these sites to set their Bozo bit, because the local tech ecosystem has a small number of fault lines. In Portland, it would matter less, if at all.

Maybe it just comes down to environments with more freelancing vs. more full-time employment, which induces the establishment of communities independent of the employers. And having a more diversified work habitat vs. a small group of powerful economic news sinks. Maybe Seattle has been this way for years, but it’s me who’s mutated over time, and only now I’m noticing it because my interests have sufficiently changed.

Here’s a reflection from Selena Deckelmann, a crown jewel of the Portland FOSS ecosystem:

I think this is mostly true. Another thing is that our city is a city of freelancers, and people who work from home.  We seek out socializing to a very large extent with other freelancers and people who work at home. When everyone works in a big building together, it changes their social interactions with people on the “outside”.

In Portland, a lot of us are “on the outside, together”. People have actively worked to make the social atmosphere better.

My friends in Seattle say that the FOSS culture there is non-existent. There are the Burning Man community, Microsofties, Amazon folks and Googlers like you mentioned. And… Not much else. So, tons of Seattle people come out for LinuxFest NW.  I don’t know why they don’t like to gather in Seattle. It’s a lot of work to make fun tech cultural events, but I think it would be possible with the right mix of people.

Rick Turoczy, another Portland jewel, who runs Silicon Florist, says:

Portland is incredibly collegial, but not very business oriented. I tend to think of it as an R&D lab where people are sharing, experimenting, and cooking up cool ideas whether they have business applications or not. It’s an extremely creative and artistic pursuit. And as such, revenue tends to be the last thing on most people’s minds.

Long story short, Portland folks tend to focus on realizing the idea with technology. and then maybe making a business out of it.

By contrast, Seattle has always struck me as a flavor of Silicon Valley: Come up with a good business idea and find a way to apply technology to bring it to reality. While this is a great way of building startup companies that are designed to drive revenue, it can hinder the development of the community itself, because there aren’t really any communal pursuits. There are business pursuits and competitive concerns.

I don’t think either way is right or wrong. Just different. And to be sure, those are pervading themes. There are incredibly business minded technology pursuits down here, just as I’m sure there are communal pursuits up there. It’s just that they’re not the pervading efforts.

“John, You Ignorant Slut“, or, YMMV

Hey. I’m not perfect, and I’m only one person. I’m evaluating Seattle and Portland within the context of my own background and values. I’ve tried to calibrate the data for my own biases, and think about the cities in a way that recognizes the bulk experience. But someone else might arrive at different conclusions. (But they’d be wrong, because I am all-knowing.) I’d love to hear other viewpoints on all of this.

Without my last Portland trip tipping the scales, I wouldn’t have thought more about Seattle and Portland, or written this. Evaluations within a system are impossible until you can reference an exterior system. If you’ve never investigated Portland, at least follow some of the Portland news sites and become familiar with their technical communities.

Get to the point dammit

I’m still thinking about what this means. I love living and working in Seattle. But what if, all things being equal, I’d more enjoy, and be more successful in, Portland? Of course all things aren’t equal — I’m here now. But if Portland would be more congruous to a lifestyle, that deserves consideration. Even if it leads to concluding that staying in Seattle is the best choice, the processing will still be worthwhile.

Could I affect the local environment for the better? I’m a sometimes attendee of SeaPIG and Seattle Plone Gathering, and a charter member of the Seattle Django Users’ group. (They don’t have official charter membership; I just made that up.) Should I contribute more energy to them? Or, try creating/formulating/supplying absent aspects in the Seattle tech culture? I’m not the conference/user group/event-organizing type, and changing an urban information ecosystem’s nature is a bit beyond me.

Employment

I’m talking to three start-ups at the moment. None of them are yet taxiing down the runway. In the meantime, I’m doing a lot of reading and networking.

Twitter

I’ve become fairly active on Twitter. I enjoy it more than I thought I would. It is addicting.

Over time, my tweets have become more personal and relaxed, and more about everyday things, and politics. You can reasonably argue the definition of “friend,” but, I’ve made new friends through Twitter. Sure, these aren’t donate-a-kidney friends, but they’re good people who are fun to converse with. Maybe after meeting up for a dinner or drinks a couple times, I could get a kidney or two if I needed them. And I’m hearing about the day-to-day activities of some of my conventional buddies, which is delightful. As well as discovering new things about friends I’ve known for years.

Twitter is where I first learned about the passing of Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson. And first heard of the Iranian election protests.

I use Nambu and Hootsuite, but I’m thinking about replacing Nambu with Tweetie. Nambu (the company) is favoring its iPhone app, and giving its Mac application short shrift. It took them forever and a day to fix Nambu’s flagrant crash and performance problems. I’m losing faith in their ability to quickly develop and improve the application, based on their performance to date.

All the talks I attended were very good to excellent, with one exception. I didn’t like one that was at a more elementary level than its synopsis had led me to expect.

The sessions were more casual than those at OSCON or PyCon. It’s hard to explain why, but that’s the impression I came away with. Well, here’s one example: More than one presenter commented about how they had generated their slides the night before. I never heard that at the other conferences. It’s neither better or worse; just different. Although, maybe these presentations were slightly more survey-ish in nature. Hard to say. Spelling or layout errors were evident in two talks, including my hot button of “its” vs. “it’s.” Gaaaaaa! I also caught a “your” vs. “you’re.”

One in three presenters were female. I didn’t hear attendee statistics, but it also seemed that women were a high percentage (i.e., higher than in a typical software conference) of the entire assembly. I found the social atmosphere was a little more sophisticated (mature?) than in some other conferences I’ve attended. Probably not a coincidence.

No power strips in the session rooms. Hoo boy. I coaxed more battery life by turning down my display brightness, and turning off my wireless network, while in sessions. I rushed out to the public tables (which had power strips) to juice up between talks.

Speaking of power strips, some were daisy-chained between the public tables. And many MacBook power adapters were in use. We open source folks live life on the edge.

Hearing Ward Cunningham talk was a treat.

No tchotchkes were distributed at registration, which suited me fine. I wind up throwing away 80% of conference baubles. They’re a traditional revenue source (explicitly or implicitly), but vendors need to wise up and reevaluate their effectiveness. (For example, CDROMs aren’t appreciated anymore, now that most software can be easily downloaded.) They’re an outmoded conference tradition that can’t disappear too soon.

The Exhibit Hall had just four exhibitors. I didn’t see a whole lot of interest there, but, maybe there was and I just missed it.

This conference is great, great, great!

The Open Source Bridge organizing team deserves kudos and huzzahs. They hit the ball out of the park and tore off the cover, like that scene from “The Natural”. If I could, I would buy all of you new cars. (They would be BMW 7-series.)

I heard two numbers: Over 400 attendees, and about 500 attendees. This is an extremely strong showing, from a new nonprofit 100% volunteer conference, in this economy, without prior brand establishment. Open source world, take notice.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams gave a keynote address today. He spoke about government’s use of open source, digital media, and governmental openness. The crowd went wild. Nobody asked any embarrassing questions.

The 24-hour Hacker Lounge (that link has a video walk-through) was great. It’s more than merely having 24-hour wireless access. The gist is having a space set aside for hacking, where developers work on different projects in close proximity, and you have the license to spread out and linger for as long as you like. It’s an excellent addition to providing public area Wi-Fi during the conference.

For backchannel communications, IRC was pretty much dead. Twitter was the tool to use. The tipping point has been reached. I could rant pontificate on why IRC is better than Twitter for conference backchannels, as I’ve done before, but the people have spoken.

Portland is so much more advanced than Seattle in mass transit. Seattle, why can’t we get out of our way?

No Seattle “technology news sites” were here. ReadWriteWeb was here, as was Strange Love Live. Yes, as they are both based in Portland, they could easily attend. But c’mon. This is a conference devoted to open-source technology, business practices, and communities, in Seattle’s back yard. No Brier Dudley, no John Cook or Eric Engleman? I twice pinged TechFlash about one of their staff covering this conference, and one of TechFlash’s kingpins met with Open Source Bridge organizers at a Seattle Lunch 2.0 mixer. But this conference was apparently not as newsworthy as:

• Covering Microsoft, Microsoft, and Microsoft. Here’s a word cloud of story summaries from TechFlash’s first two pages, taken today:
  
  The biggest three words are “company,” “new,” and “Seattle.” Fair enough. Next up is “Microsoft.” And, even worse, “Microsoft” and “Microsoft’s” are separately represented, so you should mentally add their sizes together. The site’s lately been all-Microsoft, all the time. Microsoft’s selling a new mouse, claiming something about IE8, claiming something else about Windows… Zzzzzz…
• Someone moves from California to Seattle.
• Someone’s working on a start-up they aren’t talking about.
• Marketing stunts on late-night talk shows. (From, Microsoft. Natch.)
• At least monthly mentions of Seattle 2.0 or Sampa.

“Seattle’s technology news source” should include coverage of cutting-edge technology conferences, and new movements within a class of commerce and technology development that represents the software industry’s future. I hope they’ll start doing that.

I’ve checked into a swell room at the Portland Hilton. I hope to link up with other Open Source Bridge attendees later, for dinner or drinks. PDXPHP is hosting a kickoff meeting tonight; I’m not a big PHP user, so I’ll probably not attend.

Apparently, the 24-hour hacker lounge is located on the floor directly above mine! That means two things. One, I can overdose on the 24-hacker lounge. Two, I’m hoping the lounge’s wifi reaches down here, because the in-room network is $10/day. (It’s fast, but it’s still an unacceptable extra expense coming from a business hotel chain.) So I’ll be able to continue being connected overnight, without the additional fee.

Lately, I’ve seen an increase in “Twitter porn.”

That’s my term. I just invented it.

I’m not referring to web-cam girls, accounts with handles like lusty[insert name]2755, or other sexual porn activities. I’m referring instead to twittering about Twitter. Twitter porn is meta-twittering. It’s being social about being social. Like sexual porn, it can be good, but usually it’s teh suck.

Hey baby. You got girlfriend?

I was a CB radio user in the 80’s, when I lived in Massachusetts. I got into Single Side Band transmission, joined a local CB radio club, and briefly planned to buy a high-power (cough illegal cough) transmitter. I eventually lost interest, because I discovered that most CB conversations were about … CB radio. People bought CB radios to talk to other CB radio owners about CB, and this was a lot of navel-lint gazing.

Most CB chatter was “CB porn.” What’s your location, how do I sound, you sound good, thanks well you do too, I have a new microphone, that’s nice, how does it sound, good, do I still sound good, yes you do, where are you, oh you’re far away but you signal is strong, good thanks do I still sound good? Epic Yawn. Each individual question was fine, but nobody within the subculture stopped to ask, “We’re talking about ourselves. Is this the best we can do?” I had expected to use CB radio as a tool to communicate with people who shared my other hobbies.

It was intensely boring. (Oxymoron?) (I’ll admit that CB was still occasionally useful for road conditions and emergency assistance. It was an analog chat room, and although I haven’t checked in on that subculture in years, I’ll bet that 3G, 4G, cell phones, and GPS have blown it out of the water.)

Anyway, back to my point about Twitter. Twitter porn is twittering about Twitter, and measuring your Twitter usage. Well, it’s more than just measuring — it’s obsessing about measuring. It’s a preoccupation with reach, influence, affections, “friend” counts, rankings, characterizations, etc.

I thought the point of social networks was discovering new information, making new (if casual and distant) friends, and ambient awareness. You read what was interesting, followed those who were interesting, and said interesting things. (About your career, job, life, family, whatever. Some tweet personal things, others tweet job things. That’s fine.) You choose to whom you listen, and the whole thing is self-adjusting. But for some, the point of Twitter seems to be … increasing their Twitter popularity. Gaaaaa!

I don’t understand this. It’s meta. It’s Twitter’s first derivative. It’s Twitter porn. It’s a waste of time.

As with any deviancy, there’s a demand and supply side. The demand comes from curiosity, insecurity, geek appeal, marketeers despairing for a following, or whatever. In most cases, it’s a natural inclination that wouldn’t ripen into anything weird if left alone. The supply comes from sites eager to supply ranking, categorizing, or cool looking numbers. If, like drug addiction, the need for measuring one’s Twitter reach can be said to be a combination of nature and nurture, then these sites are handing out free crack at the corner.

Three examples

Marcello Calbucci announced a “Seattle 2.0 Twitter Directory.” It’s “for the executives, entrepreneurs, investors and all the people around the high-tech startups in Seattle.” If it was just a list, that would be OK by me. But being just a list of people who use Twitter isn’t sufficient; each entry also has a score. In fact, each entry has a ranking, score, and four more numbers related to the user’s popularity.

How are the scores calculated? That’s a secret. “Scores are computed based on the number of people from the startup community following that person, between other metrics.” Mmmm, informative. Some of highly-ranked entries I wouldn’t listen to in a million years, and two of the top 20 entries are certified goofballs. Companies are mixed in with individuals, which is awfully odd. And wouldn’t you know it, Seattle 2.0 tops its own list. Breathtaking.

I know someone who fretted about his ranking, and asked for help in increasing his score on this list. I’m sure he’s not the only one. Rather than just saying what he wants to say on Twitter, he’s concerned about his ranking in this new (arbitrary) list (with secret algorithms).

We’re all friendly mature consenting adults here. (Except for me, I’m an immature curmudgeon.) If John Doe assigns importance to this directory, or anything else on the Seattle 2.0 site, that’s his decision. But I think this list is odd, and I question the sanity of anyone giving it more than two seconds of time.

Here are some heretical notions: If you’re a self-identified entrepreneur and you’re on Twitter, then you think you have interesting things to tweet about, or you want to read someone else’s tweets. Don’t let a list dictate your actions. If you want to know what entrepreneurs are saying, you should follow entrepreneurs who sound competent. Better, follow those whom you know are competent. (Maybe you actually, you know, talked to them once or twice.) A ranking doesn’t indicate competency. If you don’t know who someone is, maybe you shouldn’t follow them.

Klout “tracks influence across the social web.” You sign up, give it access to your Twitter account, and it produces a profile of your influence. Here’s mine.

You get a graph. You get a bunch of cool-looking numbers. You get a map of the world with your “influence.” Let me say right now that if someone out there lets me influence them in any substantial way, they should see a shrink. I can’t influence my wife, and I can only sometimes influence my dog, even when they’re in the same room as me.

Best of all, you get a “K-Score!” A K-Score is based on “25+ variables,” which are intensely masturbated to produce a cool-looking number.

And the point of this number is…what? Is someone with a K-Score of 50 twice as correct or credible as someone with a score of 25? If I’m looking for someone to recommend my product, is that person worth twice the kickback bribe incentive to make it happen? Gaaaaa!

Klout puts me in the “Casual” corner of their 2×2 quadrant graph, which is where all the losers hang out and smoke dope. Casual users are stupid, worthless, and weak. Maybe we should hope to become a Connector, Climber, or, the best of all Klout categories, a Persona? Eh, fuck no, let’s go rob a grocery store instead.

Here’s an old engineering joke: A calculator is a device that takes a seat-of-the-pants estimate and a wild-ass guess, multiplies them, and produces an answer accurate to 12 decimal places.

Twanalyst is less serious and therefore more fun than the first two. You give it your Twitter handle, and it spits back a characterization of your Twitter usage. You again get lots of cool looking unexplained numbers, a couple words about your personality, and hints for how to be “better,” in Twanalyst’s opinion. (E.g., use fewer hashtags.)

One big reason why it’s better than the first two is the lack of a ranking of your account against other accounts.

Social networking works only if good things go into it.

It’s GIGO on a massive scale. Be yourself, and you’ll get the following you deserve and make the connections you need to make. Don’t act differently to make a silly number increase from 17.5 to 23.1. Ignore the numbers, and use the tool to be more productive and effective in your life.

Open Source Bridge is in two weeks, and I used their OpenConferenceWare system to select my favorite sessions.

Argh! I want to attend three talks in the Wednesday, 5:00pm timeslot. I’ll have to attend one, and view the other talks’ video afterward. But video’s not as good as being there.

I can't be in three places at once

In my ceaseless quest to boost my readers’ happiness and productivity, I’ve made this blog available for Kindle users.

An update to my earlier reviews of Retrospect 8.0 for Macintosh.

1. There have now been two updates to the product since its release on March 22.
2. It still has a ton of problems.
3. It still is not at a minimally acceptable level of quality or performance.
4. It still sucks.
5. It is still a Failboat.
6. It is still not acceptable.
7. You should still not buy it.

I could give a rash of examples where this product is still problematic, and quote a batch of user complaints from their support forum. But why bother?

Disclaimer: Retrospect 8.0’s developers and product managers seem to be working very hard on the bug reports, and their product management’s forum responses are very helpful. Disclaimer #2: That does not let EMC off the hook for a disastrous product release.

Looking for a new job is an intriguing experience ITE. Here’s what I’ve been doing.

Where to?

In every search, you’ve first got to understanding what you’re searching for. This can happen automatically, so that you don’t even realize you’ve done it, because you examined your search objectives subconsciously and/or over a few milliseconds. For this job search, I wanted this to be a very deliberate and methodical step, and even stretch it out a bit, so that I left no internal stone unturned.

So, I selected a decent mind-mapping package, and did mind-mapping exercises about what I wanted in my next job slash career. I plotted the mundane (e.g., commute time vs. salary), middling (e.g., responsibility vs. authority), and weighty (e.g., company values). This helped me better understand what I wanted to find, recognize what issues were really important vs. really trivial, and frame my trade-offs. No stellar epiphanies, but a lot of fine-tuning.

Hit the bricks

I then reached out to friends. I’m blessed with a small but hardcore circle of friends, and their support and encouragement has been crucial. I also ramped up my networking. (Which is a constant background activity in my career, but I admit that I do it more intensely when job searching.)

I like to think about connection/networking activities as operating in two modes:

• Active (searching): trolling job boards, connecting with friends, networking
• Passive (exposure): blogging, LinkedIn profile updates, Twitter, conferences

For the active mode, my primary tools are e-mail, lunch meetings, and coffee meetings. I doubt the job boards will amount to much for my search level, but they can’t hurt. (By and large, I’m looking for a senior technical management position, a la VP, Director, or group manager.)

A word on passive mode. It’s important! Think of it as establishing your “career brand.” It broadcasts your interests and capabilities in a way that’s easily accessible at others’ convenience. Your LinkedIn profile and personal blog are real-time resumes — they establish you in a way that streams into new directions over time, with links to (and from!) web material that highlight your interests.

You could argue that such brand establishment can wound your chances with some employers. But I’ve concluded that it helps far more than it may hurt. “What if the hiring manager is conservative, and she sees on my blog that I read Daily Kos?” Do you really think a mature hiring manager would be so shortsighted? And if he/she is, you’d want to run away from them anyway. (And as for the extreme corner cases — well, if your blog is truly offensive, then you’ve got deeper problems.) You want to find a new position that matches your interests, so if a hiring manager reads your blog and concludes you’re not their guy/gal, you didn’t want to work there anyway.

Be yourself! You’re the only one who can.

Coffee. Coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee.

My home features a fast Internet connection, a loving wife, a loving dog, and cats that allow me to feed them. Although home has many conveniences, I often prefer to spend my day in coffee shops. Free wi-fi is my friend. I gravitate to El Diablo (”I’llhaveadecafcubanoforhere”) and Tully’s. I have more energy when I’m around others, and getting out & about is healthy for the mind and body, even if it’s only walking around town between meetings. Seeing and hearing other people in motion helps put my own mind in motion. Something’s happening over there, and my mind responds with making something happen over here…

Besides which, you never know who you’ll bump into during the day. You sure won’t meet anyone in your study.

Drum roll

The good news is, I’m finding positions that at least partially meet my objectives, at the rate of about one a week.

The bad news is, with two exceptions, they’ve been lacking in at least one significant respect. Only two nearly dead-on job matches in three months of looking isn’t a terribly high hit rate.

I’ve considered suspending my job search for two weeks, and going on a road trip with my wife. And dog. On the plus side: During this period, Pr(my ideal job becomes available && is filled) == ε; it would be fun; it might be mentally therapeutic. The minus side: We’d spend money that we don’t have.

And after some discussion, my wife and I decided to not do the road trip, but to instead do some day trips. I guess we’re both fundamentally frugal.

Mental state

I’ve had a handful of down days. Feeling out-of-sorts, got up on the wrong side of the bed, etc. I’ve found it’s best to just role with it and take the day off. See a movie, take the dog for a ride, stay home and read, have a cigar, whatever. I’ll intermittently think about what’s bugging me, process it a little, then put it away for a couple of hours. Later, I ponder it again. I pick at it like that periodically during the day.

Come the next morning, I’m again good to go.

My predominant optimisim is kind of fascinating, because I can’t report that I have an offer, or the phone’s ringing off the hook! I just innately feel that everything will work out fine in the end. This isn’t “hope,” exactly; hope is a desire for something to happen. I know something better is ahead. A superb start-up opportunity, leadership engineering position, etc. is just around the corner.

Is this a survival skill, delusion, or savvily plugging into the universe? I know it’s the latter.

Other stuff

I’ve been doing some long-overdue reading. Lately it’s been about neural networks and SETI. A spate of second-edition Django books are soon being published, and they will be fun to rip through.

I’ve joined two part-time ventures. The motivation was rational curiosity more than anything else — neither may pay much, but they would be terrific experiences that could stretch my capabilities in as-yet untried directions. They may become real this summer.

What useful strategies, observations, or tips did you learn when you were last unemployed?

Over the years, I’ve used many website forums and bulletin boards. They’ve been based on a variety of packages, such as phpBB, LiveCloud, or vBulletin. PhpBB is, I think, the reigning king of forum software.

To add a forum to a site, you can use an off-the-shelf system, or roll your own. Casual sleuthing will reveal an assortment of at least 50 some-odd off-the-shelf bulletin board systems, from which you can choose one to run your forum. If you want a bespoke forum, most frameworks provide bits of the necessary functionality, if not entire customizable forum modules. For example, see the Django forum applications or Drupal’s Forum module.

Web forums are OK, but I’ve yet to encounter one that wasn’t clumsy in some way — sometimes, in multiple ways. And you know what? I’ve yet to find one that beats august Usenet, when accessed with a decent reader such as Agent or Unison.

A Seattle Django Users’ group is forming. Here’s the official announcement:

—— Forwarded Message
From: Brian Gershon
Reply-To: A group of Python users in Seattle
Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 13:57:35 -0700
To: seattle-python, plone_seattle
Subject: New Seattle Django User Group meeting June 2 (Save the Date)

This is an invite for the newly forming Seattle Django User Group.

Please save the date for our first meeting: Tuesday, June 2. More details coming soon.

If you’re interested in getting regular updates, please sign up on our mailing list:

http://lists.webcollective.coop/listinfo.cgi/djangoseattle-webcollective.coop

What topics are of most interest?

Please let us know if you have a topic you’d like to present on, or a topic you’d like to hear someone else talk about.

We look forward to seeing you!

Brian and Leo

Leo Shklovskii
Brian Gershon

—— End of Forwarded Message

If you’re a Seattleite Djangonaut, sign up now!

I attended Seattle Lunch 2.0 at Pelago today.

• Food: -1. Cold cut sandwiches, cookies, and soda. Meh.
• People: +1. About 60 in attendance, by my count. A good cross-section of Seattle geekdom.
• Talk: -1. A circle jerk about whether you can make money from Facebook apps. Let me assuage your anticipation: “Maybe.”