Change Is The Rule

I read this insightful, funny blog post by Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror - How to Motivate Programmers. Jeff says, and it's so true, "Don't race sheep, don't herd race horses." Best way to motivate best programmers is to ignite a little friend competition. It immediately got me thinking.

It would be so cool to have a programming competition in my dream organization for my race horse programmers. I would like to call it Code Fight competition. Let me dream up a invitation to enter this competition for the employees of my dream company.

-- Code Fight competition 2011 --

Are you bored by day to day job and want to develop a cool, exciting project all on your own? Well, here is your chance to unleash the beast and win 1000$. We are hosting a company wide Code Fight competition. We invite all developers to enter this competition.

You can choose any idea of your choice and implement it. Generally you want to be useful (to someone), because that is one of the factors you will be evaluated against. If it is useful for use inside our company, all the more better.

To enter the competition, you are required to submit your entry within 8 days by xyz date. Please mention your project title, brief description and technologies you plan to use. All entries after XYZ date will be rejected. You can enter individually or as a team. In case of team, you will be

Competition deadline is ABC date. You have 2 months (till ABC date) to conceptualize, design and develop your application. On abc date, all the entries will be made available for company wide evaluation. Winner will be decided by public voting/scoring. Entry with maximum score will be the Winner. Anyone can download, evaluate and give scores for all the projects for following evaluation criteria.

1. Concept - how simple, useful, innovative the application concept is?
2. Usability - Is the user interface simple to use, intuitive, uncluttered?
3. Code design - how good do you think the architecture is? Is code modular enough? OOP concepts followed? Coding best practices used?
4. Code clarity - One year down the line, if you are asked to maintain this project, how comfortable do you think would you be? Does the code look clean, properly commented? how easy is the code to understand?

Each criteria can be given score against 10, so each evaluator is giving score out of 40.

We will host a Code Fight competition event on deadline ABC date. Each competitor will get a chance to do 5 minute presentation about their project. Goal of the presentation is to excite the crowd about your application and entice them to download and evaluate your project.

Competition rules -

1. You can devote 20% of your weekly time to the project, for the duration of this competition. Of course, you are all the welcome to use your personal time.
2. Required base database should be included with the downloadable code base. Try to organize project files, resources in a way that makes it easy for anyone to quickly setup application on their machine. Provide installation instructions text file. Remember, the easier you make it to install your app code base, the more you increase your chances to get good marks.
3. etc. etc.

-- End --

Occasionally, late/last minute entries can also be permitted on case by case basis, but this point will not be publicly declared. I'm still not sure if cash prize is a good idea, or some cool geeky device such as i-phone or few days of PTO, etc.

I know there are a lot of rough edges around this idea. It needs lot of improvements on competition rules, evaluation criteria, possible prizes, etc.

What do you think about this idea? Do you have any comments, suggestions? You are free to use this idea (I know it's not all original any way) in your organization/company. But please let me know how did the event go, will you?

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Cheers,
Tejas Joshi

I learned a thing today about making a good conversation. I going to share it with you.

I have a very good friend, with whom I talk in english, like most of we do. Let's call him 'guy A'. The problem with this guy is, he is not very good at speaking english. He finds himself struggling for words quite often. He is from one of the third world countries and his accent is different than most popular accents in america.

I have another good friend, whom I highly regard as a good conversationalist. Let's call him 'guy B'. He is so good at making a conversation, he can talk for couple of hours without you getting bored and without you uttering a word. He has varied interests from busines to politics, from sports to technology. He has lot of ideas and opinion about everything he comes across. Talk to him on any subject, he may tell you a thing or two worth pondering.

The funny part is, guy A and guy B are the same person. How can a person be not good at speaking a language and still be very good conversationalist, you ask? I say why not? You don't have to be good at language to make a good conversation. What you need is lot of good ideas and boldness to put them forth. You need to have confidence in yourself and what you are saying. If you have ideas don't worry about the language, go ahead and try to express your ideas.

Related to this topic, I stumbled upon a very good blog post today - Seven Tips for Making Good Conversation with a Stranger by Gretchen Rubin of Happyness Project. Check it out, you may like one of the tips.

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Cheers,
Tejas Joshi

Nandan Nilekani, visionary CEO of outsourcing pioneer Infosys, explains four brands of ideas that will determine whether India can continue its recent breakneck progress.

Ideas which have arrived

• population as human capital
• enterpreneurs as role models
• English language as an asset
• technology as a boon
• acceptance of globalisation
• Democracy at its peak

• Education
• Infrastructure
• Growth of cities
• India as a single market

• conflicting ideologies
• Labor reforms
• Higher education

• E-governence
• Health issues
• Pensions and entitlements
• Environment

Peter Zarris - CEO of OPIC “If you get to thirty and you still think persuasion is about making a logical argument, you have already lost”

I first came across Peter when one of my businesses built a website for Peter that would allow them to select the best psychometric tool for any situation.  Downstream we became friendly and he also did some testing for my staff.  On one discussion with Peter over coffee about why a business partner couldn’t see sense in a particular course of action, Peter stated “If you get to thirty and you still think persuasion is about making a logical argument, you have already lost”.  I came to realise that what was logical to me, was based on my values and experiences and others would intepret the same  set of facts according to their own values and experiences.  It was a real slap in the face to me because up to that moment, logic had been king.  Peter also told me that if you really want to change, understand its going to hurt.  And if it doesn’t hurt, your not doing right.  Peter’s insights fundamentally changed the way I deal with people.

Here are 2 informative links, which answer the question - what are the reason behind sharp house prices fall in U.S.?

http://www.moneyweek.com/investments/property/three-reasons-why-us-house-prices-have-further-to-fall.aspx

http://hubpages.com/hub/Foreclosures--Sub-Prime-Loans--And-The-Real-Reason-The-US-Housing-Market-Is-In-Free-Fall

Thanks,
_Tejas.