Brian H. Prince

All through my life, especially my career, I have run into rules that make no sense. Once I was given a 'beat down' by the IT department of a former employer for not following a specific rule. When I asked how I was to have known about the rule, they said it wasn't documented or published. I then asked if there is a list of other undocumented/secret rules I should know about. They didn't laugh. Too many times a rule or guideline is drawn up and rolled out to the masses. Then time goes on, and if things are going well, the business changes. [Side note: If your company doesn't change, then get a new job, because that company won't be around for long.] After the change, the rule is still blindly followed, doesn't make any sense, and people are still following it. Also, after this business change, the rule might need to be updated or removed entirely. If you don't remember the reason for the rule, then you won't know when it needs to be updated. This fo...

I love being a consultant. I love managing a consulting team. I can't think of something more fun to do. Over the years, I have learned a lot! I try to codify these lessons, so that our team can move farther and faster from all of our experiences. I will start posting some of my 'rules of thumb' here. These are not scientific. NONE of them are 100% strict or prefect, which is why they aren't just called 'Rules'. There is always a lot of gray area in consulting, and communication and truth will guide you in the gray areas. But until you get the experience, and comfort with clients, these should help you through some situations. Truth be told, most of these have come from me, or people I know, putting my foot in my mouth. I am sure these have all been covered on other web sites and blogs. But, since blogs are about conversion, I thought I would put some down here, and see what people have to say. What is a consultant? Well, that is a very ambiguous term, as mu...

The past 48 hours has seen a huge spike in registrations! The Early Bird discount of $50 (from $149 to $99) just expired about half an hour ago. I guess there are a lot of procrastinators out there. We have received word that the hotel still has some rooms left at the $88/night rate. So while the CodeMash registration fee is now $149, the hotel room is still a great value. We can't guarantee this hotel rate for long, because when they run out of rooms in our block, then you will have to get a normal room at the normal rate of around $150 or so (I don't know the real rate off the top of my head, but it is up there!).   So, act now! http://www.codemash.org/

Part of my job is to build an awesome application development team. A team involves a lot of different skill sets of course. This includes the developer, but also the architect, PM, BA, QA, DBA, etc. There are certain qualities that we look for when we are trying to find a new person to add to the team. These qualities are in addition to the certain skills and attitudes a specific position might require. I think all of these are things that you learn as you are young, and may be complimented by a certain amount of inborn talent. The following three qualities are the baseline to get started. These are qualities that can be hard to see in a person in interviews. We usually go through 3-5 rounds of interviews, which culminate in an 'audition' in front of the team. More on this later. So, what are these wonderful, Zen like qualities? 0. Learn Quickly, and Unlearn Quicker I used to say 'Everything you know today will be worthless in two years.' I was corrected by a tea...

There was a time when I had a lot more free time. I had time to go check the mail. The real mail I mean. To go get a drink. Perhaps to quickly read a blog post or two. Skim a tv show. Hug the kids. Lots of small activities I could fit into my day. Vista has ruined that. Damn you Microsoft! Now, the laptop boots quicker, hibernates/sleeps quicker (with one button or icon Mr. too many icons guy), runs quicker, loads quicker, searches quicker. I even upgraded my display driver from a standard Vista one to an ATI driver (I have a long hatred for ATI drivers, they always seemed to have problems, not like the nVidia drivers) without rebooting. What happened? It used to be : 1. download new driver 2. uninstall old diver. 3. reboot. 4. install new driver. 5. reboot. 6. waste 20 minutes reconfiguring the new driver to the settings I like. New Way: 1. Click 'update'. It was an optional update for the new ATI driver. 2. Wait a few minutes while it is download, and checkpoint created and i...

I have been running Vista for a while now. Not once have I had a real crash. A few applications have crashed here and there, and that is going to happen on any OS/platform. Applications have problems at times. It's no big deal. Each release of Vista during the RC/beta process was better and better. It was faster, and more cohesive. I really love the search in the control panel. Ever since Windows 3.1, I could never find the right icon for what I needed to do. The control panel was always the worst designed aspect of the system. Just a giant switchboard interface, with no real guidance, or rhyme or reason. It lacked any sense of Information Architecture. It was a firehose of options. Windows XP tried to fix that, with the groupings, and what not, but I always clicked it back to 'classic view' when I setup my profile because I had become comfortable with the dysfunctional menu, and didn't like the menu aimed for 'everyday' people. Vista has even more items in the ...

So, want to win a Zune ? Register for CodeMash here : www.codemash.org Put the blog badge on your blog, and blog about CodeMash. Then send an email with your blog link to contest@codemash.org . Don't have a blog? Just start one. There are plenty of places to start one. What? You're still reading? Go do it. Now, while you are thinking of it.