introspectiveH

Unless you have been living under a rock since last December, you have undoubtedly heard about Nintendo's latest generation game console, Wii. Wii has taken the world by storm with it's innovation and simplicity.

Perhaps the most intriguing feature of the system is the Wii remote control, also known as the Wiimote. The Wiimote looks like a TV remote controller with a directional pad on the front and a trigger on the back. The Wiimote uses a combination of Bluetooth, infrared, and accelerometer technology to provide the player with a unique experience of game play using actual body movement to simulate realistic action. I have played the Wii and it is extremely fun. Using real, natural movement makes the playing experience really simple and very interactive. If you have never seen the Wii in action, check out this two minute trailer:

I was first introduced to the Wii by a coworker and friend, Mark Szczerbaniewicz. One Friday, he brought the Wii into work. After the work day was finished, we hooked it up to a projector and Mark, Dan McWeeney, Phil Young, and myself were swept away into Wii Sports bliss for a couple of hours. We were instantly hooked. It was a game playing experience like we had never had before.

Being the enterprise geeks that we are, it wasn't too long before we asked ourselves if this same kind of technology would ever be applicable in the business world. After some research and hacking by Mark, he actually found all the necessary components to get the Wiimote to simulate a PC mouse. Yep, that's right, there are the tools available to cheaply turn your Wii remote into an interactive interface for controlling the PC.

Using our newfound shiny object, we just had to experiment and introduce the Wii to the enterprise. We decided to integrate the Wii remote with an existing Ruby on Rails application connecting to an SAP BW backend. More information on the Rails application developed by Dan can be found here. The application is a resource planner that enables a manager to easily view and plan his upcoming projects, requirements, and available resources with an easy to use drag and drop interface, while utilizing SAP BW planning cubes for it's model.

Check out the video below for a high level overview and quick demonstration of what we did; however if you want to try this experiment on your own, hop over to Mark's site, WiiProjects.org, where he was nice enough to provide a complete, step-by-step tutorial.

Stuff

1. SAP 6.40 NetWeaver 2004 w/ BW 3.5
2. Ruby on Rails using Script.aculo.us
3. Wiimote
4. Bluetooth dongle
5. Bluetooth drivers
6. Homemade Infrared sensor bar
7. Carl Kenner's GlovePIE emulation software (Glove Programmable Input Emulator)

Demo

I can hear you now questioning if there will ever be any real world business applications that this might actually be useful for. Well, I'm not sure we are on the brink of seeing your CEO hopping to and fro around the office while wavin' his Wii "in the air like he just don't care", but as you can see from this demo above, it may not be totally out of the question. I would love to see a scenario with a management team sitting in a conference room, Wiimotes in hand, planning their important projects for the year. The managers could collaborate together, each having his own Wiimote to interactively analyze different scenarios and data results.

So maybe this is a little off the wall and the enterprise is not ready to hire the Wii just yet, but we had fun with it nonetheless. We are interested in hearing other opinions and ideas about where something like this or something similar may or may not be useful.

-ewH

PHB disclaimer: we did this little side project 100% after work hours. =)

Popularity: 100% [?]

I often wonder what meetings and presentations were like in the business world before there was PowerPoint. I believe that PowerPoint can be effective when used properly, but why is it that 95% of all presentations are boring with some monotone person standing in front of the room reading off bullet points?

A colleague, Dan McWeeney, and I have been trying to follow a new rule we made called the no-presentation rule for presentations; it states that:

If I can send you my presentation and you can understand it by reading through it, then you don't need me to waste time by presenting it.

Since then, I stumbled upon a blog by Garr Reynolds called Presentation Zen. It is a great blog with a lot of good tips. I found that Dan and I are not alone with our no-presentation rule. Here is the second presentation tip listed on Garr's personal site:

The best slides may have no text at all. This may sound insane given the dependency of text slides today, but the best PowerPoint slides will be virtually meaningless with out the narration (that is you). Remember, the slides are meant to support the narration of the speaker, not make the speaker superfluous.

Many people often say something like this: "Sorry I missed your presentation. I hear it was great. Can you just send me your PowerPoint slides?" But if they are good slides, they will be of little use without you.

Thanks Garr, I couldn't have said it better myself. In my college presentation skills course, PowerPoint slides and transparencies were termed visual aids. At what point did slides become the entire content and the speaker minimized to be an audio aid only? Most people that I talk to prefer slides that have very little text, very few bullet points, and are not up on the screen for more than a minute. Amazingly enough, we do not always create slides for our own presentations the same way we would prefer to see them if we were sitting in the audience.

Recently, Cote asked his readers whether he thought agenda slides were appropriate for presentations. The responses that surprised me the most were the ones that stated agendas were good so that the audience participant could know early on whether he wanted to leave or he would at least know how long into the presentation you were along so he could decide whether he needed to stay. The question that comes to mind for those responses is how did that person get invited to the presentation if it didn't concern them in the first place. It's safe and easy to invite everyone to your meeting, but in the end, you only wasted their time and yours. If you stay focused on the point, speak and not read, and keep the length to a minimum (preferable 6 - 15 minutes) , then most people won't have the need to constantly refer to the agenda wondering when they can get the hell out of there.

As we sit in our standard template, bullet-point ridden, text filled presentation hell, hopefully there lies ahead a future where we see more of the likes of Lawrence Lessig, Steve Jobs, and Guy Kawasaki. All of these presenters are not just audio aids, they actually make their presentations enjoyable and interesting. What a crazy thought that a presenter would actually be essential to a presentation. So do your part the next time you have a speaking opportunity and try to apply the no-presentation rule for presentations.

-ewH

Popularity: 8% [?]

How many people have you encountered that you would be confident enough to run a small 2-3 person startup with? To make the question a little more interesting, let's say that company was going to be 100% funded by you or your mom (assuming you actually like her). Try to think of some of past/present colleagues, classmates, or friends that may fit into this category. You may be surprised how few people make the cut. Now take the rest of these mates and put them into other groups.

The groups that I came up with for my purposes were as follows:

1. Would run a small startup with
2. As a hiring manager, would recommend or hire
3. Would work with again
4. Like to avoid if possible
5. Could care less

Unfortunately, there were some in the #4 category, but this post doesn't concern those so we will ignore them. The majority went to group #3, as potential people that are nice to work with. Group #2 was a bit tricky because the circumstances of the company that was hiring is not specific, but in the end, there were quite a few people who fit into this one as well. Now back to the top dogs in group #1. How many people did you put into this bucket?

Well, let's continue with our experiment. Let's say you withdraw all your life savings for your new company, but you only have enough for you to get the company's essential equipment and provide living expenses for 3 people, including yourself, for a six month period. If the company doesn't show serious promise by then, it's back to the daily grind in your canvas covered box in corporate America. Who did you pick? Don't say these out loud, because you coworkers may be near and may get mad if they didn't make the cut.

What qualities do you find in these two people that set them apart from everyone else? Most certainly, they are honorable since you are willing to trust them with your life savings and your success. Surely they are hard working, because when it comes to your hard earned dollars, you don't have tolerance for slackers. I assume they are pretty intelligent too, since they fall into your top 2. OK, so they are honorable, hard-working, and intelligent. That's fine; however, I assume at least most people that fit into groups 2 and 3 also share these characteristics. I can't answer this question for you, but as for my top dogs, here are some of the common traits. They

• are very innovative
• always ask why not instead of why
• believe that if something sucks then they can make it better
• are very technical
• are very well spoken and love to speak/present/mingle with others
• read, read, and read some more
• constantly keep up with their industry and fight to stay current in their knowledge
• are perfectly capable to communicate both written and verbal
• are driven naturally towards success
• are smarter than me and constantly challenge me
• TAKE PRIDE IN THEIR WORK AND ARE TRUE CRAFTSMEN

You may notice some of the things that didn't make the list were knowing how to call meetings, doing performance reviews, forwarding emails, and other trivial management skills. When you are running a small company, you can be damn sure that everyone on the team is willing to and knows how to get down and dirty.

I have worked with a couple of excellent managers, but they probably wouldn't be in my top 2. So what makes them excellent and when would I hire them? Well, first we need to determine what really makes these managers so excellent. Let's try to break some of these down. They

• take fire and provide cover so you can focus
• are good at talking the talk and playing the game to the outside, so you don't have to
• trust you and give you the space needed to be innovative
• believe in you
• rarely talk about themselves and always make you feel as if you are their #1 priority
• are concerned for their people above themselves
• know that their success is dependent on the success of the team
• are not concerned with personal power, just the team
• ARE LEADERS NOT MANAGERS

I can't help but notice that the manager qualities that didn't make the first list, seem to still be missing off of this one. Meetings, performance reviews, emailing, micromanagement, and personal power trips are not qualities that you look for when trying to start an efficient, profitable company. In reality, these traits are something that you would never look for when hiring.

Let's revisit our startup for a moment. Your company is starting to grow legs and take off a bit. Good job, you picked your partners wisely. You have done so well, that you now have enough in the budget to hire 2 more people. So here is the conundrum… when do you hire these excellent managers that you have encountered? Do you hire 2 more workers, or at some point, do you bring in a manager? You will want to keep your top dogs focused on the work, so you have to decide what they need the most. At some point, you will need someone to handle all the outside duties such as dealing with lawyers, accountants, etc, etc.

This is where your excellent leader comes into the picture. Who better to deal with everything else while your big dogs keep pumping out innovative products? This is a person who is used to running cover, doesn't care about personal power, and knows that their success is only accomplished through overall team accomplishment. They know that this can only be achieved if the big dogs can continue to do what they do best.

These guys are very important and can be key in the company's success, but not because they have power, need to keep people in line, love meetings, and make you put cover sheets on your TPS reports. It's because they have qualities as a leader that are found only rarely these days. They put the team over themselves at any cost. They are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure growth and innovation, no matter what task they are assigned.

What's most interesting about our imaginary startup is that leaders/managers were brought in to support our technical people only when we had the extra budget. This is definitely not the model that you would see in the typical work environment. To climb most corporate ladders, you need to "grow up" and become a manager at some point. If you want to succeed, you must leave anything technical behind or be doomed to always just being a lowly laborer. As a manager, you can have power and feel important with other pointy-haired bosses while drinking Starbucks around the conference room table, but in the end, you will not really be contributing to anything worthwhile.

It's really no mystery why typical corporate workplaces are plagued with stagnation, inefficiency, low moral, high turnover, and general discontent. Most managers, whether they admit it or not, act as if workers are expendable, easily replaceable, and need to be constantly monitored and managed. True leaders know they exist only to stay out of the spotlight and run cover for the team while they get down to business and actually work. There is a serious need to turn the attention away from office politics and personal power campaigns and refocus on what's most important, the craftsman.

-ewH

Popularity: 6% [?]