Skip to main content

What Is Your Best Experience?

Amazing how a post on one topic really touches on so many others. Anil Dash posts aboutCommunications and Perception, defending his role as a marketer and communicator. The one line that hits home is "By starting to place importance on experiences and appreciation instead of objects and consumption, we become more sustainable as a society while also becoming more creative as a culture."

Just last night, Trish and I were talking about music and concerts we've attended and certainly the best concerts we've seen were the ones that delivered the best overall experience instead of just the big artist (that's why seeing a Beatles cover band in the Cavern ranks right up there).

The best place by far to have an experience is in person - and one of those places, this year, for FoxPro developers, is Southwest Fox, starting today. Instead of just building a product, the opportunity to see how others are using it, and experiencing it, is invaluable. Attendees of any conference always talk about the value of the networking vs the value of the sessions. Get out and talk around. And then share them with the world, via blogs, tweets or just talking with developers back at home.

This isn't a "touchy-feely" post - certainly there is absolutely a need for objects and consumption. But the real value should be in their experience and appreciation. Your product will make you feel better knowing how other people are experiencing it.

That experience will also make your product and your development better.

(disclaimer: I say this as I stay packed away in my office, sharing my experiences over forums, blogs and other items.)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Blogs and RSS come to Microsoft.com

MS has just introduced their portal and it's pretty comprehensive. Nothing quite like learning that some people use AIM instead of MSN messenger, or that there really may be a need for supporting 4 monitors ( Cyrus Complains ) However, it's really a great sign that MS is serious about supporting the blogging community which seems to have um, exploded in size in the past year. Blogs and RSS come to Microsoft.com

Elevating Project Specifications with Three Insightful ChatGPT Prompts

For developers and testers, ChatGPT, the freely accessible tool from OpenAI, is game-changing. If you want to learn a new programming language, ask for samples or have it convert your existing code. This can be done in Visual Studio Code (using GitHub CoPilot) or directly in the ChatGPT app or web site.  If you’re a tester, ChatGPT can write a test spec or actual test code (if you use Jest or Cypress) based on existing code, copied and pasted into the input area. But ChatGPT can be of huge value for analysts (whether system or business) who need to validate their needs. There’s often a disconnect between developers and analysts. Analysts complain that developers don’t build what they asked for or ask too many questions. Developers complain that analysts haven’t thought of obvious things. In these situations, ChatGPT can be a great intermediary. At its worst, it forces you to think about and then discount obvious issues. At best, it clarifies the needs into documented requirements. ...

Programmers vs. Developers vs. Architects

I received an email this morning from Brandon Savage 's newsletter. Brandon's a PHP guru (works at Mozilla) but his newsletter and books have some great overall perspectives for developers of all languages. However, this last one (What's the difference between developers and architects?) kind of rubs me the wrong way. Either that, or I've just missed the natural inflation of job descriptions. (maybe, it's like the change in terminology between Garbage man and Waste Engineer or Secretary and Office Administrator) So maybe it's just me - but I think there's still a big difference between Programmer, Developer and then of course, architect. The key thing here is that every role has a different perspective and every one of those perspectives has value. The original MSF create roles like Product Manager, Program Manager, Developer, Tester, etc - so every concept may pigeon hole people into different roles. But the statements Brandon makes are often distinction...