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Better Brainstorming

Last Sunday, Mike and I had to prepare a 10 minutes presentation that we wanted to give on Monday to a group of entrepreneurs. The presentation was on the market research that we did for Ajah, our project to help Canadian non-profits to find sources of funding.

For such a short presentation, we did not expect many problems, which is probably why we waited until the last minute to prepare the whole thing. We were sitting at the table with paper pads and printouts of published research, both of us having a pretty good idea on what we wanted to talk about, but we could not quite communicate effectively the outline that we wanted. Indeed, by writing down and striking out items that we wanted in there, we ended-up with messy notebooks in no time but the outline certainly did not standout.

That's when I recalled an interesting approach to brainstorming that Erik Wright from Akoha had told me about: use post-it notes on a large wall. You start by dumping a bunch of ideas, each on their own post it note and you stick them all on the wall in no particular order. Then you try to form groups with what goes together, and finally, in the case of a presentation, you re-order them to represent the chronological order of the talk.

I really like this idea because it gives a visual representation of what the presentation is going to look like and it allows every participant to have his own stack of post-it notes and to contribute new ideas in parallel. We gave the presentation yesterday and we got very good feedback from it so I presume that the post-it brainstorming was useful. Why don't you give it a try and let me know how it goes for you?

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You won't need a blow off tube until you do. With 19L batches you'll be fine with an airlock most of the time but as mentioned it depends on the specifics of the batch. Anyway, as Denis says, you're not a real home brewer until you have cleaned the ceiling with a mop. Down the track, make sure to post the inevitably hilarious pictures of the batch where your airlock blocked up and in hindsight you should have used a large diameter blow off tube instead.

Anthony Wilson, on the MontreAlers mailing list

Brewing is full of challenges. Among other things, you have to deal with organic ingredients with relatively short shelf life and with qualities that varies from one harvest to the other, you need to move large volumes of hot liquid, and you have to handle sticky fluids under high pressure.

While patience is a virtue when brewing, it happens that you have to rush a batch a bit because you want it ready for a particular event. That's when being part of a club is very helpful. Experienced brewers know tricks that are not written in books and they will readily share then when you ask the right questions.

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I'm a brewer. I like to brew beer, I like to share the results, and I like to incorporate the feed back that I receive in order to improve. I am fortunate because we have a great brewing club here in Montréal and it's a very effective source of informed feedback.

Being part of a club means that you have a bunch of brewers of different levels who can give you advice. Once in a while, we meet and samples each others brew and comment on what could push these brews a little further on the greatness scale.

Senior members of the MontreAlers also team up with the Canadian Amateur Brewers Association to organize a yearly brewing competition and for the first time, I decided to submit an entry.

Daniel Haran is the former lead organizer of the Montreal.rb ruby user group, I am the lead organizer of Montréal-Python, but when I met him for the first time, instead of talking about user groups, we ended up talking about food. It turns out that Daniel is also a chocolate home roasters. He is very knowledgeable in the different quality of various cocoa beans and we agreed to work on a project together: Vénus Noire, an Imperial Chocolate Stout.

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What I'm about to write will seem remarkably obvious to many but incredidly strange to others. Furthermore, I beleive that those who will find it obvious will still find it strange that it took so long for me to write it.

I closed my Facebook account.

I've never been a Facebook heavy user; I opened an account just to see what it was all about without looking to get in touch with anyone. For a time, it was all good, not terribly useful but peacefully pleasant, just like a barren snow field. Then I started to have Facebook "friends".

One big problem is the low barrier of entry to send a friend request. On Facebook, you get friend requests from people who could not care less about you and whom we've not talked to for more then a decade, from people whom you've only exchanged a glance with. On retrospect, the best thing to do is to ignore those, but that won't solve the root of the problem.

Most people suck at Facebook. It's not that they have bad intensions or that they are dumb -- I've seen incredibly smart persons suck at Facebook -- it's that Facebook rewards annoying behaviors. I won't say much about games, because it should be obvious to anyone that there is no way in hell that I should find it interesting that you've established and imaginary drug cartel on some imaginary island in the middle of an imaginary nowhere. If you think otherwise, imagine me calling you every time I solve the Rubik's Cube.

And then there's the status update. In the best case, it's used to broadcast irrelevant trivia about someone's life, which is annoying but not particularly harmful. But it does not stop there because the status update is a poweful tool to reach instantly a broad audience, and that's the root of the problem. As soon as someone in a particular network starts to use the status update to promote stuff, where stuff can be anything, and not necessarily stuff for sale, others see that opportunity and the wave goes on. From there, the noisy TV turns into a blinking billboard.

I decided that it was too much for me when I realized that I was doing the same. When you reach that point, it's clear that whatever benefit there is to Facebook certainly cannot outweight the damage that it does to you.

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It's conference time once again. In two weeks, I'll be attending PyCon, a conference that no Pythonistas should miss, then one week later, I will be at ConFoo, a conference that we are organizing at Montréal-Python along with other local user groups.

If you've been to a multi-track conference, you know the drill. As the speaker wraps up for his conclusion, instead of paying attention, you rush to unplug your laptop and to reach for your annotated program. Indeed, you've got only a moment to find out in what room the next talk that you planned to see is.

But this year is different.

One week ago, PyCon unveiled a very nice track selector application. It's very nice because it allows you to select in advance the tracks that you don't want to miss, to add them to you calendar application or to share your schedule with friends. That way, no more last minute rush to find where you go next.

I was really happy to see that so I shared the word with the ConFoo team, mentioning that it's the kind of things that we should develop for ConFoo 2011 next year. Well, it turned out that Anna, the ConFoo webmaster, really liked the idea and she came up with a schedule builder for ConFoo after only 48 hours. Both selectors have their own strengths and weaknesses but at least they get the job done. Hopefully more conferences will follow the trend of implementing track selectors; this is the kind of simple features that really improve the user experience.

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I just released mini-fract 0.6, the mostly standalone version of fract. This is a minor update to make it use ZPNG, the supported successor to salza-png that I was previously using. Adam Majewski wrote some introductory notes on how to get started for someone with very little experience with the Common Lisp programming environment. Enjoy!

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Since I'm coordinator of the Python track at ConFoo.ca, I like to keep track of what's going on at other Python conferences. PyCon recently published the list of selected talks so I decided to summarize it into a few high level stats:

• 96 sessions, that's 32 per day;
• 69 presenters, 1 for 3 sessions, 8 for 2 sessions, 60 for a single session (there are panels and sessions with more than one presenters);
• 75 sessions of 30 mins, 20 of 45 mins, and one that my scraper missed somehow;
• 27 'beginner' sessions, 60 'intermetiate', and 8 'advanced'.

How does that compare with PyCon 2009? Honestly, I don't know. Quick like that I can say that it's going to be a larger PyCon and that the level of the talks is increasing but that's about it.

How does it compare to ConFoo? Hard to say since we have not selected the talks yet but it's sure to influence us on the number of talks per speaker and on the level of the sessions. By the way, the ConFoo call for speakers was extended by a few days so it's not too late to submit something over the weekend.

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A friend of mine just started a series of blog posts on the anatomy of a failed software project. He has an interesting opinion that contrasts the value of technical design to the importance human factor and the way team dynamics can make or break a project.

Some of you might be able to recognize the company but please respect the author's choice to leave it unnamed.

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Today I had an extremely busy day with the end of the ConFoo.ca call for speakers looming. It's now that everyone asks questions and that we notice all these great people that have yet to be solicited. Also this evening was the ConFoo.ca weekly status meeting so I went back home with very long TODO list. Having painstakingly crossed a few items of my list, I headed toward my fridge for a well deserved glass of homebrew.

Horror! I opened the fridge only to be greeted by the sight of a see of malted beverage. One of my keg leaked and spilled around three liters of beer at the bottom of my fridge and around it. After all the mopping and the cleaning, I consider what is left in that keg to be some of the tastiest beer that I had in years.

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Something is brewing it the developers community of Montréal. More specifically, ConFooBBQ spawned a renewed interest in home brewing among developers. Yesterday, I was at the ConFoo.ca organization meeting and I learned that Francis Bégin just bought his ingredients to start a new batch after several years of idleness, and that he is looking at buying kegs, Mathieu Chartier confirmed that he is willing to team up with me so can brew a W3Québec beer together for the next ConFooBrew, and that two Ruby developers want to come to my place next time that I brew so they can get a feel for what's involved and get started on their own.

I'm all for coaching people but if you are just going to watch some other guy brew, you might as well watch it on you tube. Brewing, like cooking, is nice in itself because it fills your kitchen with the aroma of fresh ingredients being transformed but the real motivation come from the end-product that you are looking forward to taste. For that reason, I'm going to invite these brewers to my place but what we are going to brew will be their Ruby Red with the explicit condition that they have to serve it at their next Montreal.rb monthly meeting. That, dear readers, is how you tie strong bonds between communities.

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Since many of you are still sending me news of very interesting Python projects, it's time for me to do a status update. I've met many persons in the last few weeks and beyond the fiery passion of everyone working on solving hard problems, I was deeply inspired be the aspiration of owners and founders. One thing leading to another, I got in touch with great cofounders who were looking for a partner with some experience in technical lead so I decided to team up with them.

The exact details of what we are working on will start to transpire in the coming weeks but suffice to say for now that we are working on a Python-powered Internet application that will considerably help the non-profit sector. Stay tuned.

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I just recieved some very sexy business cards for Montréal-Python. Design was done by Sylvain Paré.

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I saw this bad-ass claw in front of UQAM on my way home. I'm not sure what it's used for but I really like it's you-won't-escape style.

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I've been brewing a lot since I got back to beer making. Last weekend, I started my eighth batch since my amber ale. I brewed a blonde, two stouts, an IPA, a Belgian Brown, an Orval clone, a wit, and the latest, an American Pale Ale inspired by Sierra Nevada.

Brewing beer is easy. It takes some elbow grease to scrub and sanitize all your equipment but if you can bake a cake, you most certainly can brew beer. That's what I've been telling my friends and I'm glad that a few of them have started brewing on their own.

Since brewing beer is easy, there are no reasons not to do special brews for special events, just as one would bake a cake for a birthday. You only need to plan a bit to take into account fermentation time and your good to go.

It's Yann Larrivée of PHP-Québec who first pitched the idea of having homebrews from members of the developers community at an informal BBQ. So I brought a buckwheat Belgian brown at the latest PHP-BBQ and it was a huge success. Beside the unexpected party suitcase keeping the keg and CO2 cylinder out of sight, people really appreciated the fact that they were drinking a brew that was prepared just for them. That got me fired up.

As there are many thirsty developers in Montréal, got my stove into high gear and started brewing seriously. As I write this, I have three batches in various stages of preparation. From left to right on the above picture, we can see:

• an Orval clone that is currently maturing with Brettanomyces yeasts;
• an American Pale Ale that I plan to bring to the next Montréal-Python;
• a Belgian wit that I plan to bring to ConFooBBQ, the BBQ for developers.

I like how the wit is clearing up. It started extremely hazy, something that is to be expected when you brew with wheat, but after five days in the secondary fermenter, it's cleared up a nicely with only the bottom third exhibiting intense fogginess. I followed a recipe that called for Irish moss, which help to clear up a beer. The trick is that you want a wit to be served somewhat hazy so you have to balance the amount to Irish moss so you don't end up with a crystal clear drink. Let's see how it turns out at ConFooBBQ.

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Today was my last day as lead-developer at Pivotal Payments. As the company decided to phase out in-house development, a good chunk of the dev-team got "down-sized", as they say in this economy. I still don't know what I'm going to do; I will probably take it easy for a few weeks then I'll start looking for interesting consulting opportunities.

If you're working on some interesting Python project, let me know now, before I get involved with something else.

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There is a Debian Meetup tomorrow at pub Ste-Elizabeth. I'll be there and I hope to meet other GNU/Linuxers.

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Me and Antoine are now certified lead climbers. W00t!

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Finally back into Montréal; Las Vegas was exhausting, thats the least that I can say. Presentations at Defcon were very interesting but I was particularly impressed by what was available as side activities.

First, there was the hardware hacking village where people were working on the badge hacking contest. It's true, the Defcon 17 badge is hackable; it features a Freescale microprocessor, an RGB LED, a microphone, and a bunch of IO ports. To help the contestants, the full schematic of the board and the source code of the flashable chip was included in the conference kit. There was also the lockpicking village where people could learn about this fine skill and practice with a very wide variety of locks. I have to say that with proper coaching and with good tools, picking locks is seriously not that hard and that I am now be a bit scared to leave anything of value protected by a padlock that a novice like me can pick in 30 seconds. There was a Capture the Flag competition where opposing teams would hack into each other's servers, there was a hacker oriented Jeopardy, there were DJs, many contests, many smaller villages, and there was beer. A lot of beer.

Defcon is in Sin City and in Sin City, you can drink pretty muck where ever you want. People walk down the streets past police officers with beer cans in their hans, you get offered free booze at the casinos, you can buy drinks at the many watering holes that are scattered on the hotel floors, and if that's not enough, you can buy bigger cans at the several liquor stores. You just happen to have a drink in your hand when you're in Vegas; there is no wrong time or wrong place to enjoy a drink, here and now is good for many and so you see hackers sipping their huge cans while lining up for the 10 AM talk.

There's a lot more to mention but that will be it for now since after being a sinner for so many days in a row, my body is calling for a well deserved rest.

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