Then, out of lazy Sunday curiosity, I started checking into Cholula’s brand online. It was nice to see they have a decent looking website and some cool “wearables” in their online store. However, their marketing site is entirely in Flash (navigation, forms, content, etc.), the baseball caps have sizes (WTF?) and they have no social networking presence, at least not anything actively operated by them. Apparently I’m feeling semi-activist today, so I chose to write them a letter with a laundry list of my thoughts. Here it is…

Hi, there. First off, I absolutely LOVE Cholula Hot Sauce! I was first introduced to it a few years ago and it was tasty from the first time on. Lately, I’ve been using it on just about everything possible and we need at least one bottle in our house at all times. So thanks for making such an awesome product!

Second, I’ve been a bit bummed that Miejer, the largest grocery chain in Michigan (in size of the stores and number of stores), hasn’t been carrying Cholula – at least the one closest to me. I’ve had to go to other stores (usually Kroger) just to get my Cholula fix. And then today, while crusing the aisles at Meijer, they had it on the shelf! Even though we have an unopened bottle at home, I bought another one just to reward them for stocking it (plus it was on sale). So, I definitely think you need to give Meijer credit on your Store Locator for carrying it now. Plus, you’re missing some Kroger stores in my zip code on your interactive map, so it’s due for an update anyway.

Third, seeing your web site for the first time today, it looks great. Simplistic but very tasteful… just like your hot sauce! However, the entirely Flash-based site is really annoying to be honest. Having  the little loader pop up every time I want to go to a different page gets old real quick. Not to mention, if I’m trying to tell others about Cholula while at a party, out at a restaurant, etc., people can’t look up the site on their iPhone, iPods, iPads, etc. With the mobile Internet device audience rapidly expanding, you may want to do something to address that. Just in case you didn’t realize, this is what your site looks like on my iPod Touch (it’s identical in functionality to an iPhone except the phone part):

http://bit.ly/bhWLmV

Again, the site looks great, but having it in all Flash is becoming more of a liability these days than it is an asset.

Along the same lines, you should really get your brand on Twitter and/or Facebook. You’re really missing an opportunity to connect with current and potential fans by not creating a presence there. Social commerce is the new way to create a loyal base of  customers. If you’re not in there creating your brand, you’ll either be left behind or someone will fill in the gap. See what the parody of BP’s PR department is doing at http://twitter.com/bpglobalpr as an example of what happens when an company doesn’t work to create their own name in the social networking realm. Actually, it looks like some variations on your name have already been swept up on Twitter. Not sure if you have someone on this yet, but you really should. Heck, I’d even be willing to help get things started if you don’t have anyone who is expert level at that kind of stuff.

Finally, I’m also interested in ordering a Cholula baseball cap (more promoting to others!). I can’t quite decide on red or black yet (red seems best tho), however my biggest hang-up was on the sizing. Why no One-Size-Fits-All option like every other hat I have? Are they fitted hats or something? I like them a lot but I have no idea what size I need to get. Is there actually a difference? I’ve just never really seen hats come in S, M, L, XL sizes to know what size I need.

So, again, Cholula is AWESOME, AWESOME stuff. Keep up the great work making a fantastic product that I love recommending to others. Especially up here in the northern Midwest, where the notion of hot sauce is usually some extra black pepper in our ketchup. But you’ve made a believer out of this guy from Scandinavian heritage. Thanks!

Sincerely,

Blake Nyquist

I suppose I should have devoted any activist tenancies to something much more meaningful to the world. I hear there’s a an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and there are children in need of clean water all over the globe. However, other than giving money to some charity (which we do a bit of already), I usually can’t contribute anything based on my knowledge and experiences. Providing substantive feedback to Cholula about their online brand is something that I could use my background to create, so I did.

Being I sent this out on a Sunday, I certainly don’t expect an immediate response. However, I’m very curious to see if there is any kind of reply at all. If I do get anything back, I’ll add it in the comments.

Have you ever taken time to provide a boatload of feedback to a large company that may or may not care? If so, how, why and what was the result? Also, have you ever tried Cholula® Hot Sauce? Isn’t it amazing??!!? Submit a comment with any of your thoughts on this stuff.

This really was one of the cooler assignments I’ve had to do so far for my Master’s program. I was required to go wardriving in my neighborhood and write-up my findings on “conducting the wireless survey,” which is just PC-speak for wardriving. So without further adieu, here is what I submitted for the assignment, with some minor edits, plus a bonus mention of a possible business venture/idea.

A couple other things to mention before starting in on the meat of things…

• This certainly isn’t ground-breaking research into the world of wireless network security. Other than the statistics from my survey, all of the information here has been widely known for some time. In fact, I could very well even have made some errors in my statements. Please let me know if I did by leaving a comment.
• I’ve added some more info via links at the bottom of the article. Feel free to check those out if you want to know learn more about wireless networks and/or wardriving.
• Until the end of post, the headings below are just the questions that needed to be addressed as part of my assignment. I could probably make them sound better for a blog post, SEO, etc., but I didn’t. Deal with it.
• In case you happen to be interested in copying my content for your own use, please don’t. I’m posting this here after the assignment deadline so at least no one from my class can plagiarize, but I really hope that won’t happen for any subsequent sections of the class or any other reason. Feel free to use it as information, but don’t do a copy+paste on it for your own purposes.

Describe your survey area in a short paragraph.

The area survey covered an approximately 2.7 mile stretch of the northern portion of the Groesbeck Neighborhood of Lansing, MI. The survey was conducted by driving the route shown below.

The path can be followed by a combination of the arrows and letter-based “destinations.” (The starting ‘A’ is behind the ‘G’ towards the lower right.) The survey included driving through the two noted apartment complexes indicated on the map, as well as on Lake Lansing Road, which has several businesses along either side.

Open VIStumbler on your mobile computer and determine how many wireless access points are found in your survey area and how many are active. Include a screen shot of the VIstumbler screen showing most of the found access points.

The screenshot does not indicate any of the active access points from the survey due to safety concerns of creating a screenshot while driving. However, several of the APs were noted as active while conducting the survey. A full screenshot of all the APs detected during the survey can be viewed at:

http://www.screencast.com/t/YTA1YWMx

How many access points did you find?

A total of 156 access points were detected while conducting the survey.

What percentage, or number, of the wireless access points was unsecured?

Of the access points surveyed, 39 (25%) had no security setup at all.

What percentage, or number, of the wireless access points was secured by encryption? (WEP is displayed even if it is secured by another method.)

The remaining 117 (75%) of detected access points had at least some form of encryption. The breakdown of encryption types is as follows:

Please recommend what the users should do to their wireless access points.  Include recommendations for securing the access.

In order to ensure proper security for a wireless access point, some form of adequate encryption should be turned on in order to gain access to the network. Adequate encryption no longer includes using wired equivalent privacy (WEP). Using WEP for wireless security can be cracked in minutes, allowing malicious attackers to easily gain access to the network. At a minimum, WPA encryption should be used, with WPA2 providing the highest grade of wireless encryption for general residential use. In either case, Personal WPA/WPA2 encryption using a pre-shared key (PSK)/personal mode requires a pass phrase of at least 20 characters to ensure adequate protection from cracking.

A final note is that if the user is not making use of wireless connectivity for their home network, either the wireless transmission from the router should be turned off or the AP should be entirely shutdown. This can be done either on a temporary or permanent basis.

What can the owner do to maintain open access and protect their home networks from this open access?

There are some methods of obfuscation that can be put to use on home networks in order to prevent light attempts to gain network access while maintaining an open access point. The first is to hide or not broadcast the service set identifier (SSID) for the AP. Any client trying to gain access to a wireless network needs to know the SSID in order to connect. However, the SSID, even if it is not broadcast, can still easily be discovered. Secondly, wireless APs can often restrict access to devices with approved/known MAC addresses. Any device without an approved MAC address will be rejected from authenticating on to the network. Again, any sophisticated attacker would be able to readily discover an approved MAC address and spoof it in order to penetrate the network. Just about any contemporary access point should have software that allows both of these features.

There are slightly more rigorous methods of protecting the network with an open access point. Using a virtual private network (VPN) is one of those methods. With a VPN connection, security is independent of the transmission path. Even if an attacker has gained access to the network, it would not be able to decrypt any of the traffic across the network. Another method would be to use a separate virtual LAN (VLAN) for the wireless devices. This would prevent any wireless connections from being able to communicate with any other devices outside the VLAN. This would allow any switched/hardwired connected devices to remain free of traffic interception from the open wireless network. Both of these methods usually require more sophisticated AP management software than what is typically provided by home use AP manufacturers. One recommendation would be to replace the AP’s firmware with DD-WRT software to enable this functionality. See http://dd-wrt.com for more information.

Amazing Business Idea!!!11oneone111

After seeing so many open/unprotected wireless networks lying around my ‘hood, I think there is a business opportunity for someone to improve the security situation. Chances are there would be a bit of education involved in getting people to understand the importance of proper security on their network and the risks of not using decent encryption. However, in the interest in making sure my neighbors are adequately protected from anyone wishing to get access to their networks, I think it would be worth the effort… for a small fee, of course.

Additional Information

As mentioned above, I used VIStumbler as the software tool of choice for conducting the survey. It works on Vista and Windows 7. It’s older cousin, NetStumbler is what I used a while back on Windows XP. If you need something for Mac or Linux, try KisMAC or Kismet respectively. There also plenty of other free wireless survey tools.

There are certainly ethical implications of wardriving that you should be aware of before attempting to detect wireless networks. If you really get into it, you should learn warchalking to share your findings with others.

As noted above, hiding the SSID for your wireless access point is NOT an adequate form of protection from attackers. Be careful and make sure to protect your data, privacy and sanity.

Has anyone else gone wardriving recently? Share what you found in your neighborhood by making a comment below. Thanks for reading!

Okay, I’ve got everything recorded in the appropriate posts as notes from the most excellent TEDx Lansing event today. It was a really great day with fantastic presentations. Tons of good thoughts and ideas for Lansing and all of Michigan. I certainly wasn’t perfect in recording things, whether omissions or inaccuracies, but I did what I could.

At some point, I’ll finish processing my overloaded brain and create some sort of reflections on the whole event. For now, this is just a one post to rule them all for the separate sessions. You can jump to anyone you’d like. Just click on “Session #” to see my notes. (I was going to use my original post for this, but that’s so two days ago now.)

Session 1

• John Hill – Affiliation Nation: Powering Up TEDx Lansing’s Interconnectivity
• Justin “Bugsy” Sailor – Road tripping: A journey of people
• Sam Singh – Seven Continents, Seventeen Months
• Allie Merrick – ARTiculation, the Art of Speaking

Session 2

• Bob Fish – Random Entrepreneurial Thoughts
• Erik Qualman – The Future of Social Commerce
• Patrick Retzer – Lifelong Learning from 10,000 Feet
• Ross Emmett – Innovation is an Act of Love

Session 3

• Bryan Ritchie – Dismantling the Shark Cage
• Karl Gude – Visualizing Information
• Mark Wilson – Fair Sins and Virtues
• Dirk Schweitzer – Genetic Genealogy
• Chip Brock – Mass Confusion: The LHC Challenge

Session 4

• Betsy Miner-Swartz – Be a Hero, Will You Save a Life Someday?
• David Murray – Michigan, Leading the FutureMidwest Movement
• Rory Neuner – Creating a Livable Lansing
• Matt Dugener – The Thing About Cheese and Underoos

Which presentation did you like or hate? For those not there, any you wished could have seen? Just post a comment here or on the specific session post. Let me know!

Links to the other sessions: Session 1, Session 2, Session 3

In this session:

• Betsy Miner-Swartz – Be a Hero, Will You Save a Life Someday?
• David Murray – Michigan, Leading the FutureMidwest Movement
• Rory Neuner – Creating a Livable Lansing
• Matt Dugener – The Thing About Cheese and Underoos

Be a Hero, Will You Save a Life Someday?

Presenter: Betsy Miner-Swartz

http://www.giftoflifemichigan.org

Betsy Miner-Swartz is a communications specialist with Gift of Life Michigan, Michigan’s only designated organ and tissue recovery organization. She is working to grow the Michigan Organ Donor Registry through statewide promotion of organ, eye and tissue donation.

Before her role with Gift of Life, Miner-Swartz was a newspaper reporter and editor, earning state and national awards for her work at the Times Herald in Port Huron and the Lansing State Journal.

Having lost her father to pancreatic cancer and mother to ovarian cancer, Miner-Swartz is intensely aware that each day is a gift. She’s extremely proud, motivated and grateful to work in a field that literally helps save lives every single day.

In Wyoming 79% of drivers are  registered organ donors. National average is 42%. Michigan is 25%. Michiganders now need to be in the Michigan Donor Registry. Michigan has 3000 people on organ donation waiting list.

No one is too old to donate. Had 90 year old kidney donor and 103 year old tissue donor. One donor can save up to 8 lives. 9 Michigan heroes saved 39 lives.

Real quiet in here. Ultimately positive but extremely sad stories to share. Got to be rough to deal with seeing this type of thing all time… But the flip side is those who received donations. They got a second chance on life  because of those heroes.

A lot of us do a lot of great things, but we often only get one chance to save a life. Organ donation is how we can do that.

Michigan, Leading the FutureMidwest Movement

Presenter: David Murray

http://www.themurr.com/
Twitter: @davemurr

David Murray is the director of Social Web Communications for re:group and enjoys helping businesses value the digital landscape and showing job seekers how to use social media to find new careers.

Murray came back to Michigan in 2008 after 10 years away and immediately went to work organizing Detroit’s Social Media Club chapter. As member of iDetroit, he has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal online and has been featured in David Meerman Scott’s blog Web Ink Now and his book, “The New rules of Marketing and PR.” He is also co-chair of FutureMidwest, a conference inaugurated earlier this year.

FutureMidwest was to re-educate our region.

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” – Yogi Berra

Moved back to Michigan from Arizona. Re-connected with a lot of people. People drive Michigan’s pride and passion. Out of state people saw and recognized this at FutureMidwest. Need to connect the hubs (Detroit, Ann Arbor, Lansing, Grand Rapids, Traverse City, etc.). Michigan needs to reclaim its brand.

Michigan = Opportunities

Dave lost his job 3 times since coming back to Michigan, but again, it’s not about the jobs. He was waiting for someone to have SXSW type conference Michigan. It didn’t happen. So, they did it. Huge attendance, blew out expectations.

Strangers are the true metric. Didn’t recognize half the people there. People need to move their small businesses into the digital domain.

Michigan is old. It is a bunch of separate communities. Need to extend digital handshakes to reach out to others. That will create the connections we need.

Passion attracts passion. Use this to rebuild Michigan. If you want limitations, all you have to do is ask for them. Just use your passion. Allow other people to participate.

Tear down your garden walls.

Creating a Livable Lansing

Presenter: Rory Neuner

Twitter: @rory_neuner

By changing to more walkable communities, we can reshape this region and encourage healthier, happier, safer, more sustainable and more affordable lifestyles. Rory Neuner has become integral in this pursuit and sees the potential in everything — even a simple sidewalk — a plain, yet key component to improving so many of the region’s problems, ranging from obesity to poor social connectivity.

Through Neuner’s attempt to change a culture of inactivity and childhood obesity she is creating networks with leaders in more than 20 states to find solutions to these issues. For more information, visit the Safe Routes to School National Partnership.

In Lansing, Rory is an active member of the Walk and Bike Lansing initiative. She’s also responsible for getting Lansing on the League of American Bicyclists‘  list of Bronze-level Bicycle Friendly Community Winners. She is co-founder of the Michigan Complete Streets Coalition, a group several Michigan organizations working to pass a statewide complete streets law that would improve the design and engineering of Michigan streets and roadways.

Other presenter’s make her point easier. Michigan is in the midst of a change. TEDx Lansing is about moving us through that change. Need to broaden our horizons.

Livability is a key component of that transition. It’s made up of:

• Design
• Transport
• Community
• Economy
• Sustainability
• Health
• Education
• Safety

Livable communities are walkable communities. Transport/mobility allows us to get to places, connect with others and partake in commerce.

Automobiles take up a lot of space. It’s hard to create density without talking about how we re-shape our environment

Success in the knowledge economy requires we rethink our environment.

Mobility = Options. When you wake up in the morning, you should have 3-4 options on how you get to work. This isn’t a zero-sum game and it’ss about the freedom.

40% of a trips we take in this country are 2 miles or less. Can we change?

[DOH! Netbook finally died after a full day of typing. Cutting over to the Notes app on my iPod... whew!]

Emerging Leadership

• Complete Streets
• Public Transit
• Many others…

The narrative for Michigan continues to be in the economic side, but we also need to think about the built-in environment.

In this session:

• Bryan Ritchie – Dismantling the Shark Cage
• Karl Gude – Visualizing Information
• Mark Wilson – Fair Sins and Virtues
• Dirk Schweitzer – Genetic Genealogy
• Chip Brock – Mass Confusion: The LHC Challenge

Dismantling the Shark Cage

Presenter: Bryan Ritchie

https://www.msu.edu/~ritchieb/

Bryan K. Ritchie is a professor of international relations and political economy at Michigan State University’s (MSU) James Madison College. His research and teaching focus on the political economy of innovation, entrepreneurship, technological development, skills education and training and social capital. He has received numerous teaching and research awards and has been published in several academic journals, newspapers, blogs and websites. He is the author of “Systemic Vulnerability and Sustainable Economic Growth: Skills and Upgrading in Southeast Asia,” and “Relationship Economics: The Social Capital Paradigm and its Applications” .

Ritchie is an entrepreneur. Prior to his academic career he started and managed multiple companies in the computer industry. He has also held management and consulting positions at numerous firms. Ritchie is an associate director for MSU’s BioEconomy Network and co-directs the Michigan Center for Innovation and Economic Prosperity. Ritchie received his Ph.D. from Emory University and his MBA from Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management.

There are still sharks in the water, but things are changing. Institutions need to change. Michigan has created more wealth for more people in our history as an empire.

People are benefiting from the status quo. Not the most important reason these institutions persist. They persist because we think the way they tell us to think. Need to change our thinking in order to change our institutions.

Six ideas

Old Thinking: More jobs equals stronger economy

Jobs are not the positive. It’s the types of jobs that matter. Jobs that could go away are useless compared to jobs that are going to last.

Current Reality: Jobs are an outcome, not a cause

New Thinking: Create entrepreneurial and innovative enterprises

Economic hunting – trying to attract companies to your area. Usually through lowest cost of labor.

Economic gardening – ways to create incentives to establish and grow.

Taxes don’t matter. Simply a cost towards the bottom line. What we tax and regulate needs to coincide with what we provide in the community as value.

Old Thinking – Maximizing security and monimizing risk with long-time employment with big firms

Current Reality – The global econonmy and the rapid change in tech has made stability and security an illusion

New Thinking – Create institutions that absorb the negatives (risks) from change and do not punish failure (In Florida, if declared bankruptcy on a business, your primary residence is not at risk.)

Cool cities are also outcomes, not causes. Make it easy for people to try (in a calculated way) things.

Old Thinking – Education beyond high school is a luxury good that most do not need to make a living

Current Reality – The new break-even economic point for education is now a bachelor’s degree

New Thinking – Education = risk taking. Be creative in the environment

Old Thinking – Organized albor is needed to balance workers needs and rights with demands of management

Current Reality – technology is driving needs for higher skills

New Thinking – Labor must champion productivity and skills upgrading

Work needs to be an institutions of learning as much as if not more than an institution of earning

Need to foster ent. in a broad sense. New things anywhere and everyway. This is a culture change. Get involved in the policy process… how we create a new economy, not where the next 1000 jobs come from. Own the debate, lots of sloppy ideas. Make politicians know they have to do what’s right.

Search for pearls of economic development and growth.

Visualizing Information

Presenter: Karl Gude

http://visualeditors.com/gude/
Twitter: @karlgude

Karl Gude has been visualizing information for news organizations since the late 70s and is one of the few visual journalists who has worked for newspapers, news magazines and wire services. Until recently he was the director of information graphics for Newsweek, a position he held for more than 10 years. He has also worked for the Associated Press, United Press International, the New York Daily News and the short-lived National Sports Daily.

Gude has visually covered seven presidential elections, a slew of wars, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, sports, business and countless medical and scientific discoveries. He led a Newsweek team of graphics reporters during the attack on the World Trade Center and later mapped the progress of U.S. soldiers as they headed toward Baghdad. He has charted the ups and downs of the U.S. economy and used statistics to illustrate how Enron executives lied to stockholders.

Gude teaches information visualization for Michigan State University’s (MSU) School of Journalism and provides consulting for news and government organizations.  A collection of Karl’s infographics, personal drawings, paintings and even children’s books can be found on Flickr.

Tea cup and a fire hose, that’s all I have to say. Awesome start!

“Information gushing at your brain like a fire house pointed at a tea cup.” – Scott Adams

Video of it happening courtesy of the East Lansing Fire Department.

Lot of bad news on the Internet. Way more information about the world than you ever knew before. Get grief fatigue. Can’t care anymore. Brains not wired to absorb constant pain. Need to move on. It’s only going to get worse.

Originally was just Enc. Brit. as the entire collection Western world. Internet has exploded what that is. But our brains aren’t going to grow. News editor told you what you were going to get. Lots left on the cutting room floor. Now, we’re the editors and control.

Unfortunately, it’s all crap out there. We’re not just consumers, we’re also the producers. We write words, words, words, words.

SHOW IT!

Notice it, get it, scan it… fast! You’ve got five seconds. Need to stop them in their tracks. Words are dense. Ouch!

Words are important, but even a document can be scannable. Breaks, headlines, bullet points. Pour it into wordle.

But I’m not an artist! Or a computer scientist! No problem, there are rules and tools. And there’s technology! It’s hard. But it’s really easy, kinda cheap.

Free, easy – documents, charts, drawings

We’re all right-brained in some ways. What can you visualize? Look for opportunities in your message, think about design, then use visual tools. Use things to compare and associate and flow or relate and explain the real world and locate.

So instead of contributing to this… crap, look for opportunities to target visually.

Fair Sins and Virtues

Presenter: Mark Wilson

http://mark-wilson.org/

Mark Wilson revels in all dimensions of the world’s fairs and is especially intrigued by the combination of optimism and promise they offer and the unflattering mirror of society they reflect. Wilson’s presentation explores 150 years of the sins and virtues of the world’s great expositions.

When not immersed in the world’s fairs, Wilson is the associate director of the School of Planning, Design and Construction at Michigan State University (MSU) and has an academic background in economics and geography. His three primary interests include the planning and politics of mega events such as the world’s fairs and the Olympics; information technology, cyber geography and the relationship between technology, people and places; and the role of non profit organizations in community development.

Wilson is committed to international education and has developed or participated in study abroad programs in numerous countries. He has also participated in US Pavilion programs at the world’s fairs in 1993, 1998 and 2005. Wilson serves as chair of the International Geographical Union’s Commission on Global Information Society. Please visit his homepage at www.mark-wilson.org.

We forget that world fairs still existing. We think they are meant to show us the past. Really, they show us what already exists. Sometimes they show us things we don’t want to see.

Little bit of a history lesson on the first world fair. Look it up on the Internets.

World Fairs show us optimism. The Eiffel Tour was an example of this. The Washington Monument was example of this. General Motors was an example of this with Futurama in 1939.

World Fairs show us hubris. Show how other populations are worse off.

Aesthetics is another virtue. Whistler’s Mother an example of impressionists. Barcelona chairs. The Space Needle in 1962.

Wrath is another aspect of World Fairs. 1901 President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist at the fair.

Lust also is a sin of the fairs. Midway in Chicago was created to attract more people to the fair.

World Fairs are more about the past than the future, and more about sin than virtue.

Genetic Genealogy

Presenter: Dirk Schweitzer

http://www.dirkschweitzer.net

Dirk Schweitzer is a  German native and a chemist by training. He is working on establishing a green economy by replacing oil-based products with sugar-based products.

Could get crazy with this genetic geneology stuff. Yup, he’s explaining chromosomes. I could be lost shortly.

Yea, that was a lot. Tons of stuff about genetics. I listened, but sure didn’t recording much. Whew!

Mass Confusion: The LHC Challenge

Presenter: Chip Brock

http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/
Twitter: @chipbrock

Raymond “Chip” Brock is an elementary particle physicist. He trained as an electrical engineer and briefly worked in the engineering industry. Brock obtained graduate degrees in experimental and theoretical physics from Carnegie-Mellon University. Since, he has spent the last 30 years exploring the “inside of the universe” as a professor of physics at Michigan State University. His research takes place at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illinois and the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. He frequently gives guest lectures about scientific results and the future of particle physics.

Brock chaired the Department of Physics and Astronomy from 1994 to 2001. He is an American Physical Society fellow and author of more than 200 scientific publications. He is the recipient of numerous MSU research and teaching awards and has served in numerous national advisory roles. He currently serves as the elected chair of the American Physical Society’s Division of Particles and Fields.

Brock researches electroweak particle physics, which entails performing experiments studying light and heavy particles. After years of preparation Brock and his MSU colleagues have launched the most ambitious physics project of all: The gargantuan ATLAS experiment at CERN.

LHC is 27km/17mi in circumference. 10,000 magnets. Interest is in the beiginning of the universe. Recreates that moment 40,000,000 per second.

From this we’ve realized we’re confused about mass. 2 big ideas:

1. Mass is energy.
   1. E  = mc^2 is one equation. But today we get 2:1 offer.
   2. m = E/c^2 is the other equation.
2. Nature is clumpy – stars, earth, buildings, people. Energy has ways it likes to clump. Way to study those clumps is to “bang” stuff together.

Elementary in nature – things with no smaller parts: electrons and quarks… we think

Mass of a proton is greater than sum of its parts. It’s the things that hold those parts together: gluon is that field of energy that holds them. Energy that provides mass.

Quarks share same properties except one: mass. The action is in the vacuum in understanding mass. Start of universe was a tiny ball of energy 13 billion years ago. No mass in those particles moving at the speed of light. Then the magic temperature occurred and the vacuum got full… with the Higgs Field. The Field has Higgs particles (boson) in it. The Higgs Boson’s job is to grab onto other particles. It gave those particles inertia, which is mass.

Andromeda galaxy has dark matter that holds stars at the outer edges together. There must be a dark matter particle.

ATLAS is a very large detector. Much of it built at MSU. Tracks everything that happens inside the LHC.

In 20 years, we’ll study more about the origins of the universe than we do down.

Day broken out in “movements.” First session was culture. Now business.

In this session:

• Bob Fish – Random Entrepreneurial Thoughts
• Erik Qualman – The Future of Social Commerce
• Patrick Retzer – Lifelong Learning from 10,000 Feet
• Ross Emmett – Innovation is an Act of Love

Random Entrepreneurial Thoughts

Presenter: Bob Fish

http://biggbybob.com
Twitter: @biggbybob

Robert (Bob) Fish, better known to many local coffee aficionados as “Biggby Bob,” is the CEO and co-founder of Biggby Coffee. The Lansing, Mich.-based chain now has more than 115 cafes located across a five state area.

He worked several restaurant jobs  to pay his own way through college. In 1989, Bob earned his degree from MSU’s School of Hospitality Business. Two years later, Fish and his partner, Mary Roszel, opened their own restaurant —  a Flap Jack Shack. After two successful years in the breakfast business, it was time for a change. In March 1995 Biggby Coffee served its first Caramel Marvel and Bob has never looked back. The first franchised Biggby Coffee was sold in 1999 and the company has basically doubled in size every two years since.

This year Fish was honored to serve as the past chairman of board of the Michigan Restaurant Association. He is also a member of the board for the Small Business Association of Michigan and JA of Mid-Michigan.

Started first store next to Crunchy’s 15 years ago. 8 years to get bachelors at MSU. Advised to not use a PowerPoint presentation, frightened to death, but did it anyway. Several topics to discuss.

Core Value for an entreprenuer – faith, confidence and courage.

Faith - internal (inner spirit) or external (religion). You need it. Need it for when you have moments of doubt… which will happen.

Confidence - a virtual fabrication. Just an idea. Doesn’t exist unless you say it does. Nothing more than having done something before or self-reliance. Comfortable in who you are and what you’re doing. You believe in you.

Courage - Do something you’re afraid of anyway. Essential component to personal freedom. Has personal fear of public speaking. Only way to overcome was to look in mirror and say “I am afraid.”

3 Ds

• Desire – Want it more than anything else.
• Dedication – Single-minded commitment, focus. Ability to block out the minutiae.
• Dependability – stead-fast, tenacious responsibility

Herding Chickens – Social media enables pipeline to talk to all groups of people at once. Share insight of person and company.  Fills in cracks of little ideas that hold a company together.

Don’t forget to fly the plan – Flight school puts you in crisis scenarios. Lots of warnings and signals. New pilot pays attentions to bells and whistles, but forgets to fly the plane. Regardless of those, got to fly the plane.

Choose to be profitable – small business is a lot like personal checking and savings account. Can save money by paying bills, then save or always save upfront. Only real way to save is to do it upfront. Need to do the same in business. Profit needs to be an expense line item.

Work Hard

3 Es

• Energy – drive, stamina. Gotta have pluck damnit!
• Excitement
• Enthusiasm – zelous conviction inwhat you’re doing

It’s not free – social media is a marketing tool. Don’t forget name of business. Increases frequency of marketing. Takes time, energy, thought. Should be a line item on your budget

Risks - Ent. take risks, it’s what makes them successful. Agrees but it’s not gambling. Not Vegas style. Ent. have info or an idea that’s just a little bit different. Might appear risky on the outside

Failure - Not an option… that’s wrong. Fail just a little bit. Lets you know you’re trying hard.

Marketing - Continuity and number of impressions is everything. Rather market to 1 person 100 times, than 100 people once.

ROI times 10 – Giving is getting. It’s return on involvement. Donate, donate, donate. Give time, energy, money… doesn’t matter. Invest where you work, live and play.

Have fun, help people.

Work Hard – Ent. work hard that’s why they’re successful… maybe. Everybody works hard. Need to make better decisions, that’s the hard part. Okay to make mistakes. Try to make them just once. Small business is a race against your own mistakes.

The Future of Social Commerce

Presenter: Erik Qualman

http://socialnomics.com
Twitter: @equalman

Erik Qualman is the author of “Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way we Live and Do Business.”  Socialnomics made Amazon’s No. 1 best sellers list in the U.S. & UK after three weeks of publication and is consistently on the top 100 best selling business books list. Qualman is a frequently requested international speaker for the Fortune 500 and has been highlighted in numerous media outlets.  His video, “Social Media Revolution,” is one of 2010’s most viral YouTube videos.

Qualman is an MBA professor at the Hult International Business School. He has helped grow the online marketing and eBusiness capabilities of many companies and brands including Cadillac, EarthLink, EF Education, Yahoo, Travelzoo and AT&T.  He is a columnist for ClickZ, while also owning the social media blog socialnomics.com. Qualman has a BA from Michigan State University(MSU) and an MBA from the University of Texas.  He is currently the global vice president of Digital Marketing at EF Education. He was Academic All-Big Ten in basketball at MSU and still finds time to follow his beloved Spartans while living in Boston with his wife.

It’s a people driven economy stupid…

Maslo heirarchy of needs. After security, comes need to belong. That’s Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare is. How much we’ve wanted that has been extraordinary. 96% of Millennials have joined a social network.  Don’t have a choice to do social media, it’s a matter of how we do it.

Emaiil is now passe. Do you like what social media is saying about your brand? 78% trust what our peers think. Only 14% of people trust advertisements. SM isn’t a fad. Listen first, sell second… Dale Carnegie, not Mad Men.

Only at the beginning of the revolution. Social commerce is next. QR codes on products to show ratings from friends on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Multiple individual redundancy. Don’t perform same task our friends have done. Huge time saving for individual. Re-purpose savings back into society.

Google knows this is coming. That’s why they integrated Twitter. We already have the technology. Facebook currently making a lighter touch. Consumer has more power in social commerce. “United Beaks Guitars” video by Dave Carroll.

What is the ROI on social commerce? What’s the ROI of your phone? Tidal wave is coming. Great companies are swimming with that tide. Companies that do social  media well will survive the next 5 years. Whether individual, small company or big business, need to adjust to it.

Lifelong Learning from 10,000 Feet

Presenter: Patrick Retzer

As a entrepreneur, flight instructor, homeowner and full time Western Michigan University (WMU) student, Patrick Retzer is always staying busy. After earning his private pilot license at Lansing Community College (LCC), he continues his aviation training at a number of various schools and has advanced certifications as an instrument, commercial single and multi engine pilot, flight instructor and advanced ground instructor.

Outside of school Retzer has successfully established himself as a flight instructor in both Charlotte, Mich. and Lansing, Mich. He founded a training school, Capital Aviation, with Aric Newstad and Steve Blocher at the Port of Lansing Airport. Retzer also aims to develop flight training services at the Charlotte Airport with his company Great Lakes Air Ventures.

Retzer’s passion for aviation is only matched by his keen interest in engineering. He’s also passionate about music, being both a bass guitarist and booking agent. Retzer’s band, Batteries Not Included, plays in the area at local clubs and events.

Learning should be taking place at every given moment. Look at entire idea of learning.

Lifelong learning, lifelong enjoyment, learn to fly.

Your perspective is from the ground. Can’t focus on just learning. Perspective from 10,000 feet allows you to take it all in.

Learning

1. Listen – focus on what the person is saying. Enjoy the silence. Listen to the world to catch the nuances.
2. Observe – Texting ban is to make sure we’re observing. Not just watch out for danger, but look out for opportunity. Need to see big picture.
3. Perceive without barriers – Learning based on perception. When you put up barriers you prevent yourself from learning.

Difference between day and night. It’s not just the trees, but also the infrastructure.

Lifelong commitment to learning. Find your passion. What will take you to 10,000 feet.

Innovation is an Act of Love

Presenter: Ross Emmett

https://www.msu.edu/~emmettr/
Twitter: @rossemmett

Ross B. Emmett is a professor in James Madison College at Michigan State University (MSU) and co-director of the college’s Michigan Center for Innovation & Economic Prosperity. His teaching deals with the central question of comparative economic governance: what is the relationship between basic economic institutions and their legal, cultural and political contexts? His research concerns both the history of how modern societies have answered that question and how today’s answers affect liberty, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Emmett is the lead editor of Research in the History of Economic Thought & Methodology, a research annual published in three volumes a year by Emerald. In 2009 he published “Frank Knight and the Chicago School in the History of American Economics.” He has edited five collections of material about the history of economics, including the “Elgar Companion to the Chicago School of Economics” and “Great Bubbles.”

Trying to foster a more innovative and entrepreneurial Michigan. Through conversations with policy makers, community members people saying need to optimization, efficiency, incentives, resource utilization to increase innovation. That is the language of economics. Life is not all economics.

Innovation is something economics has done a really bad job of explaining. Love is similar, so tried to connect love and innovation. Looked at how sites have used the two together. Things they love, love to talk about, love to see happen. None talked about innovation as an act of love.

What makes for a society of innovation?

What makes for a society in which people can express love to others? Not optimize, incentivize, etc.

If everybody loves, does everybody innovate? Heart of society that fosters love, fosters networks, community and opportunities to express love. Same for innovation. When did you last engage a student to share your passion/love?

Love conquers the world one relationship at a time. So does/should innovation.

In this session:

• John Hill – Affiliation Nation: Powering Up TEDx Lansing’s Interconnectivity
• Justin “Bugsy” Sailor – Road tripping: A journey of people
• Sam Singh – Seven Continents, Seventeen Months
• Allie Merrick – ARTiculation, the Art of Speaking

Opening Remarks

Ryan Knott gave some opening remarks to kick things off. Lots to share the entire day. TED videos with a special connection to Michigan will be shown throughout the day.

Affiliation Nation: Powering Up TEDx Lansing’s Interconnectivity

Presenter: John Hill

http://www.linkedin.com/in/msuaajohn
Twitter: @MSUAAJOHN

John Hill is director of alumni career services at Michigan State University (MSU). He works with MSU’s 420,000 alumni with heavy reliance on online social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. In his travels to various locations in Michigan and across the country he as helped organizations capitalize on the leverage provide by Web 2.0 technologies and solutions.

Affiliations… stand if you know:

• Brett Kopf
• Betsy Weber
• Etc.

Lots of people standing. Make a new affiliation with TEDx Lansing on LinkedIn. Ryan Knot is playing guitarr for a so far unspoken presentation.

Main point, get connected. Do something to help out a fellow TEDx attendee… to innovate, etc. A guy who makes a living speaking doesn’t talk at all. Cool presentation.

Road tripping: A journey of people

Presenter: Justin “Bugsy” Sailor

http://www.bugsyrocker.com/
Twitter: @bugsyrocker

Justin “Bugsy” Sailor, a native of the Upper Peninsula and MSU alum, has always thrived on setting out on his own, achieving one idea after the nex.  After graduating from MSU he toured all 50 states over the course of  a year to create the Hometown Invasion Tour. He stayed in over 100 homes with complete strangers. Exactly one year later, Sailor returned to Michigan having written over 400 bog entires and 12,000 photos documentary his adventures.

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land. -G.K. Chesterton

Drove 29,000 miles. 1/12 of year in some form of transportation.  Goal of trip was to document as much as possible. Took 12,000 photos. Moved into 114 households, almost 300 complete strangers.

Slept on one kitchen floor and only had one water bed.

It’s all about the people, doesn’t matter where you are. Stops in Hawaii, Miami, NYC were not always the best. Can be in North Dakota with dynamic, engaging people and have a better time than being in Hawaii with a bunch of boring people.

Early on in the trip, stayed with 50-year-old-ish married couple. Frantic phone call informing a relative had been murdered. Cemented this wasn’t just a sight-seeing journey. Anything can get you pulled close to people. Wasn’t visiting strangers… just friends you haven’t met yet.

Gladys is 81 and has lived in the same house her entire life. She’s never left the state of Delaware. The most content person Bugsy knows. She knows about the world, just chooses to enjoy where she’s at.

Traveling the country is much more insightful than watching the even news. Seek out the familiar.

Find those friends you’ve never met.

Seven Continents, Seventeen Months

Presenter:Sam Singh

http://www.singharoundtheworld.com/
Twitter: @singhsam94

Sam Singh recently pulled the trigger on a life long dream and explore the world. His website and blog document a journey of his travels along with a lot of reflection on his experience. Singh traveled to more than 25 countries on all seven continents. Singh was living a life changing experience, and wants to share it with the world. He also volunteers with Habitat for Humanity.

Made a pact with a friend to tour the world. Made it happen. Initially, was about the world trip from reading National Geographic as a kid. Realized there was more to it.

Had the opportunity to see presidential elections around the world. One woman said America used to be the moral center of the world, now it’s just the economic center.

Talked to a mayor in Romania. He’s now prime minister of the country. Celebrated election of Obama in Africa. Cyber cafe at Mt. Everest basecamp.

What is Citizen Diplomacy?

Each individual has the right, the responsibility to connect with others. “Volun-tourism” is becoming one of the larger segments of the travel industry.

Volunteerism can create tolerance. HfH allowed ability to for Hindus and Muslims to connect to build a home.

Learn from unintended consequences. Economics of charity and aid. International aid can stifle business. Other countries know how to make clothing, but sending free clothing donations prevents them from being sold. Donating mosquito nets for fighting malaria killed the local manufacturer’s business.

Transition to democracy is hard. Worked with HfH in Romania. Community was still struggling after 18 years trying to be a democracy post-Communism. Family forced to relocate after following the rules of previous government. Need to think about those transitions

Philanthropy is social action. Dissidents thrown in jail. Amnesty International came in to help. Had to sign document admitting guilt. Non-profit people held longer, but fought for the right to challenge the government.

Power of the Internet. Went to Lesotho. Facebook post asking  about visit connected with a Peace Corp volunteer. Able to get donation of books shipped over through others helping to pay for shipping and transportation fees.

Power of connection.

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” -Mahatma Gandhi

ARTiculation, the Art of Speaking

Presenter:Allie Merrick

http://www.postcouture.org/
Twitter: @alliemerrick

Merrick, a performance poet, has been writing and reciting for more than 10 years. Giving words texture and depth, she uses her voice to engage and enlighten.

In this presentation, themes such as technology and design are introduced as elements of speaking, while Merrick demonstrates how engagement must proceed enlightenment.

Poetic presentation. Could be tough to take notes here. Just going to listen. Sorry, you should be here.

Don’t use templates from Excel or Word to make her thoughts.

Silence is a rare commodity. Too much communication. Want to be heard? Raise your voice. The value of your voice. Words are with more than you understand. Past, present, future. They define the moment… this moment.

Own the moment.

You have the ability to speak.

Step 1 – Engagement. Make the connection.

1. initial intension – don’t just introduce yourself. declare why you’re speaking
2. common denomination – acknowledge a common concern
3. personification – step into your message. become your word, become your message. not about you, it’s about articulation

Step 2 – Enlightenment

1. multi-faceted – language is visual and verbal. you must talk with your hands. learn to speak from those who have no voice
2. repetitious – content needs to punctuate the point periodically. need eye-contact, voice and body
3. passionate – necessary to feel the message

In any case, I’m pumped for the event. I prepped blog posts for the 4 separate sessions and that got me to look through the presenters again. It looks like a great line-up. So, I’ll be heading to the Wharton Center in the morning for the 9:00am (sharp!) start time. Three Internet-capable devices will be in tow and wi-fi will be provided, so hopefully I can at least get a few comments tossed through the tubes. You can use this post as an on-ramp to the other posts. Here’s a break down of the 4 sessions or go to the schedule page on the event site:

Session 1 » 9:00 – 10:08

Session 2 » 10:18 – 11:22

• Bob Fish – Random Entrepreneurial Thoughts
• Erik Qualman – The Future of Social Commerce
• Patrick Retzer – Lifelong Learning from 10,000 Feet
• Ross Emmett – Innovation is an Act of Love

Session 3 » 1:22 – 3:13

• Bryan Ritchie – Dismantling the Shark Cage
• Karl Gude – Visualizing Information
• Mark Wilson – Fair Sins and Virtues
• Dirk Schweitzer – Genetic Genealogy
• Chip Brock – Mass Confusion: The LHC Challenge

Session 4 » 3:33 – 4:59

• Betsy Miner-Swartz – Be a Hero, Will You Save a Life Someday?
• David Murray – Michigan, Leading the FutureMidwest Movement
• Rory Neuner – Creating a Livable Lansing
• Matt Dugener – The Thing About Cheese and Underoos

I’ll add links to the session posts as I initially publish them. The plan is to save comments along the way during the presentations, so the posts will grow as things progress. They’ll probably need some touch-ups later on, so I’ll go back and clean things up sometime this weekend. If you want a more polished read, probably best to wait until then.

So, anyone else going to this event? Whether you’re going or not, which of these presentations seems the most interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let me know!

Menlo is a software development firm that primarily focuses on consulting-based projects. It started up in 2001 by four partners. One of those partners was Rich Sheridan, who is Menlo’s president and guided us on the tour. Upon arriving (despite the heavy rains) we all piled into their “lobby” area. We were greeted by Rich who gave us a brief history of how Menlo started and some of his background about why he started the company. Then, at 10:00 on the dot, a buzzer went off in the back area where we heard constant hustle a bustle the whole time we were up front. Stand-up time!

And Now For Something Completely Different

We were brought back as everyone was working themselves into a large circle that was forming around the work area. Our group of 15 was assimilated, almost adding half again the size of the entire Menlo staff (could be off here, didn’t actually count, but sure seemed that way). Passing a large-horned Viking helmet around, pairs of people stated what they worked on since the last stand-up (i.e., the day before). Once all the Menlo people were done, it was our turn. Being we already do stand-ups everyday, we gave our status update and passed the helmet without skipping a beat. Oddly, no one really flinched at me saying I “nuked the current sprint” for one of my teams as part of my report. 12 minutes and 45-50 people later, we were done. Everyone went back to work. Rich started in on the meat of the tour.

Now as people were sitting back down, we got to take stock of their office arrangement. It was literally just tables, computers and chairs. No cubes, no doors, no offices, no walls period… Okay, I mean internal walls… in their work area. It’s a VERY open environment, which explained all the “noise” we heard during the tour introduction. You can basically hear what anyone is saying from anywhere on the factory floor, as they call their work space. Definitely different from all the environments I’ve ever worked in, but certainly seemed kind of neat to be setup that way. My first thought was that being a relatively small company certainly helps to allow that, but I’ll get to the biggest element of their “seating chart” in a moment.

Primarily acting as a ScrumMaster in my current role, having a PMP cert and being generally interested in process related to creating software, the next part is where I really wanted to hear about how Menlo works. Rich proceeded to walk us through how Menlo Innovations creates solutions for their clients. Amazingly, it’s not just sit down and bang out a bunch of code. There is a TON of process behind their efforts.

Menlo practices a form of software development known as Extreme Programming (or XP). XP is one flavor of what are known as Agile methodologies and it has several key traits. Menlo adheres to those traits very judiciously, keeping in line with XP’s mantra of “if some is good, more is better.” No production code is written without having a second person working with you at a paired workstation. In fact, with very few exceptions, there are only paired workstations across the entire company. There are no personal workspaces, desks, what have you. The team working on a project or even as a pair are liquid, and there is at least weekly shuffling of resources to adjust for the various project schedules.

Menlo is also extremely disciplined in the other areas of XP. Comments are not put in code; the code needs to speak for itself. Unit tests need to be wherever and whenever possible (they claim95% code coverage with their tests). Additionally, they make use of continuous integrations for their builds, QA follows immediately behind development. Work is organized as prioritized and estimated user stories which are written on paper and pinned up to a cork board in 1-week iterations (increments). There are other elements and nuances, but those are the big ones in my mind.

I suppose your initial reaction could be: Woah! That’s a lot of rules for a process that calls itself “Agile.” On a cursory glance, I get that, but let me dig in a little further after I wrap up the tour. The whole time, we were constantly peppering Rich with our questions. He either fielded them with thoughtful answers or handed several of them off to other employees; usually questions from developers to developers. Everyone at Menlo knows their process very well, so they all could generally deliver the answer Rich was expecting, even if it took them a moment to catch their bearings to be interrupted and put on the spot. And as Rich declared when we first began, we would have more questions than time. But, I would declare we ended up with a great conversation between us and them considering the relatively short time we were there.

Field Trip in Review

As already noted, what it was that Menlo shared with us on the tour, is exactly the type of stuff I’m interested in professionally. Just seeing another company in action creating software and trying to do it on time, while accomplishing the right goals and solving the right problems was extremely cool and insightful. I believe it’s safe to say everyone from our group had the same impression, albeit for potentially varying reasons. Big hats off to Menlo for their generosity in opening their doors, which they’ve done since the company’s inception. (Fun side note: they codename all their projects that have wall boards up on the walls so they don’t reveal actual client names during tours. Clearly a bit of creativity was put behind picking the codenames.)

As far as major takeaways from the excursion, I’m still trying to pin down specific things I feel I could try with my teams. I think something’s there, I just don’t know what that is and I don’t want to force anything if it doesn’t make sense. Granted, teams at my company are usually actively working on improving our processes and learning new ways, which is why so many of us went to Menlo in the first place. There are a couple items worthy of note, though.

Menlo as an entire organization seems to be quite tyrannical with itself in maintaining discipline over the key elements of their process. And from my view, that’s a good thing. Rich shared a story of an intern yelling at one of the company’s first employees over putting a comment in the code. They keep every single sheet of paper that has a completed user story from every week-long iteration of every project they’ve ever worked on. What I glean from that is really the discipline of using their process is what makes Menlo successful. They could using a totally different methodology (Scrum, RUP, Lean, Kanban, etc.) and as long as they maintained that same level of strict discipline, I bet things would work just as well for them. I couldn’t get myself to say that out loud while we were there, though. They’ve been doing XP since Day 1, and I wasn’t exactly sure how sheltered their lives were in knowing about the existence of other ways to do what they do.

Second, their frequent shifting of resources from one project to another seemed cool. It’s the mandatory pairing that enables that shifting. Having one person you can immediately sit with who has context/knowledge to share with you essentially eliminates pure ramp-up periods. That even goes for new hires, who get a 5-minute introduction then start writing production code right away. We’ve done some of that resource sharing of late. It’s been more along the lines of a person or two, or creating an ad hoc team from different existing teams to research, but I think it’s still in the same vein and has provided benefits in every recent case.

A final thought is that while the general concerns are the same (e.g., make great software), a primarily consulting-focused environment as opposed to making commercial software products presents some differences in how effective specific approaches can be. As far as determining what to work on for the next iteration, it’s relatively easy to go directly to the specified stakeholder on the client side to get that priority set versus divining from hundreds of thousands of users who may or may not be giving you their feedback as to what they want in the next version. Likewise, the notion of billable hours lends itself to more clearly defining accountability to get planned work done.

I don’t say any of that to make excuses, build up a wall of differences or even say Menlo has it “so easy”… I’ve done consulting, so I would never say it’s easy. I’m merely pointing out that’s a current hang-up I have in translating elements of the process in their environment into reasonable facsimiles in my environment. Obviously, things like pair programming and unit test coverage don’t need a lot of translating, but I’m looking for more subtle tweaks that will continue our forward progress. Maybe I shouldn’t. I’m also not looking for a silver bullet. Not even Menlo claims those exist.

Conclusion

Menlo Innovations is indeed extreme about their Extreme Programming. But despite all my ramblings, you should really see it in action for yourself. They provide free monthly tours of their operation, and I highly suggest you take them up on the offer. We got a special “just us” tour, but I’m not sure how that all worked out. I was just along for the ride and rather enjoyed it.

Plus, I’m intentionally keeping some of my thoughts about the trip to myself. I don’t want to even attempt to recreate the whole experience and spoil it for you. I would be very interested to see if some of your observations line up with mine or if you completely disagree. If you are so incited either way, drop a comment below or hit my contact page to send me a message.

This probably would have been written better if I was paired with someone, but thanks for reading anyway!

To that end, I am attempting to resurrect some of my social media outlets to build my personal brand. No, I’m not looking for a new job or plan on starting a solo business next week. I just buy what Gary has to say on putting yourself out there, so that’s what I’m going to do. We’ll see what happens. I’m already 10% of the way toward Gary’s recommended 50 blog post ideas for content, so I’ll be working on creating those and coming up with the other 45.

So, look out second half of 2010. You won’t know what hit you!