Ian On The Red Dot

This last few days have been crazy. A major system is going live and as usual, lots of things which didn’t go wrong in testing are suddenly causing problems. Sigh.

Anyway, everyone from the different teams are sending emails back and forth. A reports a problem to B. B forwards the mail to C asking for details to help. C forwards it to D saying ‘hey, didn’t you say this was ok’. D forwards it to A saying ‘I thought you told me to tell C it was ok.” and on and on it goes…. Every mail of course is CC to the bosses so that the record shows we are all doing our job. Grrr… damn stupid. Half the time people spend protecting their own backsides that no work is really done.

Anyway, it reminds me of this game we played in primary school. Actually two games. The first is poison ball where one team is surrounded by another team which tries to hit them with the ‘poison ball’. If you get hit, you die and you are out of the game. Corporate life seems to be like that. I see people avoiding phone calls, stay away from the desk and shunning the boss…the key is if the boss can’t see you, hopefully they will move on to another target.

The second game is pass the package. The game where you don’t want to be caught holding the package when the music stops. That is the email game we seem to be playing. Keep emailing and forwarding hopefully it isn’t your turn to answer when the boss starts taking notice of all the messages in the thread.

Oh well…. being the new guy here, I can just sit at my desk and do what I enjoy - trace the code and fix the bugs. But my seniors… they are in front of the firing squad but credit to them, it seems that my team is more interested in solving the issues than anything else

Haven’t blogged for sometime. Been busy wrestling with jBPM at work. I’ve realised how important an active (and nice) community is for any open-source project’s success or failure; well written code libraries isn’t enough. Documentation is also really important. I’ve also started learning how to use Google’s GWT and the learning curve has really been much faster than compared to jBPM. While the difference in the complexity and the use of the two libraries might be significant enough to make any comparision unfair, I do feel that GWT’s learning curve was much kinder to me because of the documentation and the community that is engaging each other in the forum. Having said that, it isn’t that jBPM has been impossible to learn, just that I’m reminded of what Nathan (one of the panelists for Nexus) shared about the success of open source and creating the necessary culture and structure for collaboration and contribution.

I also learnt about Comet through one of the posts in the forum for GWT. Apparently, it was already news at eTech 2006. Comet is life after Ajax and is knowledge that should be added to the arsenal of any web developer.

Pssssttt… risking my life bringing this report from behind enemy lines.  I was talking to one of my Indian colleagues, sharing with him about my difficulty in convincing our boss to take a certain direction for one of the projects I am doing when he said, “Sell the idea to him.  You Singaporeans are supposed to be good at Marketing.”

Now I know what we are supposed to be good at…..

At work, I have to use Java.

At home, I choose to use RubyOnRails…

Why?

Because its a real pain to configure everything you need in Java.

Its hell…

Convention over configuration…  Sweet sweet convention….  I miss you at work…

My friends ask me why I chose to work at an Indian IT firm. The pay isn’t as high as the western MNCs. In fact, its lower than the market rate prevalent in Singapore.

One reason I gave is that since Indian IT firms were supposedly such a threat to the industry, one could benefit from working in it to understand what is going on.

After 7 months of working here, I have come to the conclusion that we as Singaporeans need not be overly worried about the supposed all powerful twin threats of the rise of India and China. Sure, things will get more competitive, but the key thing to note is (like in this case) an Indian IT firm is just like any other firm - it has its strengths and it has its weaknesses.

We also should not worry about an influx of these foreign talents. The thing is, these people provide opportunities for Singaporeans. Take my industry for an example. The allowance of an influx of foreign IT personnel have allowed companies in the finance industry to plant their regional headquarters here. Singapore has qualities that attract these companies such as our legal, corporate and governmental infrastructure, but wages might have been a deal breaker. Also, we might not have had enough IT personnel for all the companies wanting to establish their regional IT headquarters here. Allowing the foreign talents to come in to fill the IT positions helps push the decision in Singapore’s favour.

What happens now is that there are positions in management that Singaporeans can go for. A good number of my peers have joined the IT departments of such companies that manage the projects done by companies like mine.

The thing is, we shouldn’t compete for positions at the bottom of the value chain. These foreign talents do allow Singaporeans to move up the value chain. Of course, there is also the argument about Singaporeans losing out on management positions going to other foreign talents.

I can’t comment on that because I don’t have personal experience with that. Anyway, one thing does come to mind - when does foreign talent become foreign labour. Like for my industry, would we consider the programmers from Indian foreign talent or foreign labour?

Anyway, this post started out with the intention of talking about the Cricket World Cup. It is a big thing, and because of the influx of foreign talent into Singapore, it is actually a big thing to a significant number of people in Singapore.

I remembered how during the Soccer World Cup, there were enterprising businesses that took advantage of that period by catering to fans. Maybe Singaporeans could look into how we can cater to the needs of these foreign talents too. I’m sure there are opportunities to do so and to actually do well.

For example, my colleague subscribed for the package which allows him to watch the matches live. I think the package costs more than $100. He told me that back in India, he might have spent more during this period, but since he is here, he is just going home to watch the games. I don’t know, but that sounds like an opportunity to cater to a need by providing him a better experience of watching the Cricket World Cup.

In any case, I guess I just wanted to say don’t be discouraged about this change in Singapore society, but look at it as opportunities waiting to be seized.

I needed to do some research so I went to the National Library Site to search for books related to the stuff I needed. I totally hated the interface. And when I did find a book I might be interested in, the information given was not enough for me to make the decision if I should go down to the library to borrow it. Maybe the information was there and I wasn’t used to the interface so didn’t know how to get it.

Then I remembered BookJetty created by Herryanto Siatono of Pluit Solutions. BookJetty was a site I knew about for sometime. When I first discovered it, I thought it was a really cool and impressive mashup. That was it.

Today, I’m in love with it. Totally. In. Love. I guess it takes a moment when you really need a useful tool to appreciate a site like BookJetty. I got the needed information easily, without needing to look for how to get the information. This site is more than a mashup. I apologise for ever having thought of it just that way.
It makes you wonder how a national organisation like the National Library Board with all its resources cannot produce a tool as useful as BookJetty created by a one man team with presumably less resources (then again, intellect and ability are resources too, so I guess …).

Finally debugged what was wrong with my usage of POI from Apache Jakarta.  Sometimes I forget what a pain pointers can be when you’re not careful.

I recently finished reading a case study done by Jane on the game “I Love Bees“. This case study introduced to me certain aspects of the concept of collective intelligence that I never knew existed and I couldn’t help wonder about certain stuff.

During my schooling days, there was a concerted drive to encourage and increase class participation. One of the problems we had then was the putting up of hands in the sense that very few people did so to contribute an answer or ask a question. I guess there was also this strong sense of face and no one wanted to ask a dumb question or offer the wrong answer.

There was always this sense though that if more of us had dared to ask the ‘dumb’ question or give the ‘wrong’ answer, all of us would have learnt more. Jane talks about this when she shares what one of the players of the game said, “There’re a lot of trees to bark up the wrong way before hitting on anything.”

I wonder whether because of our national consciousness to constantly seek for results that innovation suffers because we do not allow ourselves to bark up the wrong trees.

I’m not sure about the students currently in our education system, but I hope things have changed so that they can grow more than we did in the classroom and become more than passive sponges.

Jane also goes on and shares about how everyone in the game contributed in their own way with their own skill sets and played a part in the increasing the collective intelligence - the game empowered players of all skill levels, natural abilities, inclinations and interests to achieve success. I think in the Singapore context, the education system has tried to evolve to provide such a framework for our students where all of them are empowered to succeed and not just those streamed to the gifted, special and express programmes.

The thing that struck me in context of the above was the players of the different skill sets were brought together by the game to achieve success together. In the Singapore context, I can’t help but have the feeling that although now more of us are empowered to succeed, it is more of individual success and not group success.

One reason why I have this feeling is because of my university experiences. There was a tendency for people ( who weren’t friends but only course mates ) to only share their knowledge if you explicitly ask them and they would only offer as little as possible. There was no open mutual sharing of knowledge within the people of a course except between those who were friends and that is a small subset.

I think this is because of our famous kiasu mentality where we always just want the best for ourselves and we believe that in order for one to succeed, another must do worst. Our overemphasis on grades and ranking does not help change this mentality.

Another thing I noticed about my university days is that there was a tendency for people not to put in effort (or keep it at a minimum) during group work. The focus in any semester were the modules where you’re individually graded. If people could, there was a tendency to contribute as little as possible to the group project in terms of time, ideas and energy. Things weren’t so bad if you did a project with friends, but with course-mates there was this sense of guarding oneself from being taken advantage of.

I was trying to solve a coding problem at work today and as usual I searched all the open repositories of information. And a thought struck me about the contribution of Singaporeans into the open source community. Again, I couldn’t help but think most of us are just passive consumers or maybe I’m just superimposing my own guilt of just being a sponge in this area.

The thing is I think most of us do not just want to consume. I believe even on the net, despite the increase in people blogging and user-generated social media, there is still the fear of putting up the hand in certain contexts.

And so back to the question in my title. Can we be collectively intelligent? Are we collectively dumb? Can Singaporeans come together and solve a game like “I Love Bees”. Would we be like what we always joke about in kungfu movies? The kind of “masters” that teach only 9 movies and keep the 10th killer one so that we still have a trump card. Do we have the skill sets to search, collect and analyze information as a group independent of some guiding hand?

This I believe is an important question especially in light of the MDA’s $500 million fund to drive the development of an IDM hub because I believe that even though each team will be working on their own project, the success of all the teams really depend on how much all of us as a community come together and help each other. Maybe instead of the teams seeing themselves as independent entities racing towards a prize, they can see themselves as part of a bigger collective reaching out for a common goal.

How about a wiki where all the startups involved with the fund can contribute their experiences, share their roadblocks and solve them together?

Will we be open to share ideas and not be afraid they get stolen? Will we be receptive to other people’s contributions? Do we all know how to share without coming across overly critical resulting in communication breakdowns? Do we know how to share without being smug? Do we know how to create our own channels for collaboration?

So are we collectively dumb? Can we be collectively intelligent? I don’t know. But I can’t help but imagine the possibilities if we could all come together the way those players did. Honestly, what they did is amazing and it blows the mind.

There are standards and processes.  And there is ‘do it this way cos its the superior’s way’.  Subscribing to standards and processes isn’t wrong.  In fact, it is a good thing.  But once you start conforming to a certain pattern of thinking because a superior wants things done only a certain way, then there isn’t a need to bring your brain to work.

Didn’t manage to go for the launch of MDA’s IDM initiatives, so yesterday’s sharing by Aaron was really informative.  I don’t think it was possible to leave that session without feeling excited.  Got some of my colleagues from work to go down and they left excited too.  Did some sums today and we realised that the mentioned $50,000 cap per year (I think its per year…) wasn’t a lot of money for a team of four people.

Which is a good thing.  Just enough to survive with food, transport and lodging but not too much such that you get all comfortable and complacent once you get the money.  With a team of four people doing it full time, the money is not enought to cover the significant opportunity cost in terms of salary and I think only the really really passionate (and I’m sure my relatives during CNY will say crazy) will give up a job to try to pursue this dream.

Didn’t attend that session with the people from Sg Entrepreneurs on the two towers of web 2.0 but my colleague who did said it was really really educational.

I did attend bits and pieces of the presentation by Wisheus.com.  They shared about the plans for their company and one of it was being able to allow people to donate money to a pool which can be used to buy an item from a person’s wish list.  The way I heard they would allow such a functionality is to put something like a button on the person’s wishlist and people can contribute by clicking on it.  This is my simplified understanding.

Sounds cool.  But you know what I really need.  I need a birthday gift buying organiser.  Not sure if this was suggested when I wasn’t in the session.  The idea is I see one of my friend has an item on the wish list that I think might be affordable by a group of us who are the friends.  I log into Wisheus.com and create an sms campaign by keying in the numbers, emails and names of the friends who I believe will be willing to share in buying the present.  Then I blast that campaign.  My friends will receive an sms asking them if they want to contribute X amount.  If they reply yes, their handphone bills will be charged that amount and a pool of money is created so we all can chip in and get the present for that person.

I’ll definitely use such a service.  Why?  Cos it is damn hard to collect money once the present is bought and given.  Suddenly, everyone disappears!