Hamstaa!

Not far from our offices in West End is a heavy transport recovery company. You know, the sort with really big tow trucks. As such, I was pretty surprised to see this sign near the entrance to their business. I’m guessing they’ve had problems with people parking across the driveway.

It just goes to show that even if it's obvious, you sometimes still have to spell it out.

Back in 2007 I published a post about "Capability versus Competence" in which I espoused the virtue of Capability over Competence in IT and the difficulty in measuring it during recruitment but the value it can provide.

I recently had a comment on my original post. In it the author indicated that "Competence" in their opinion was far better. As they put it,

Capability always indicate the “possibility” that the person have to do something, but may be he can not really do it.
“I have the capability of speak in Chineese because i have all the neccesary for this, but i can not because i dont know chineese language”.

Competence is always the capability but shown in practice, This is not the ” possibility” its real, practical.

While I agree, someone who may be capable of performing a task may not really be able to do it, in the real world of IT, there are many situation where limiting yourself to just a set of competent skills may be detrimental. For example, it may mean you overlook an outstanding developer with the right development mindset but not a particular language, who would be able to take you and your business along with the changing landscape in IT.

The other problem I have with the comment is the example. I don't believe you can draw a parallel between a spoken language and a computer language. For one thing, the grammatical rules or "syntax" of a spoken language are significantly larger and more complex than a programming one. Now while I can speak, I therefore have the Capability to speak another language, I don't yet have that Competence. However, I am Competent in many computer languages, and therefore have the Capability to quickly and easily master a new one.

In the IT world, competence does play an important part, but I believe if you rely entirely on that alone in your decision to hire someone then you are selling yourself very short.

West End has a long history of multiculturalism and artistic creativity. Post Expo'88, Southbank changed significantly from the industrial part of central Brisbane to a trendy new place to be and be seen. This change has been progressively spreading into West End, with trendy new restaurants/cafe's and apartments taking over however you can still find the "old" West End along with artistic outbursts if you look.

I found this example of a "Can Critter" on a power pole between a shiny apartment complex and one of the older timber homes that were originally in West End. Love the use of an DB15 connector for the mouth.

We are getting our bathroom renovated at the moment, and the completion date has been extended by a couple of days.

I guess it should have been expected, but what was interesting was that it seems the delay is not due to unexpected issues in the fit-out (as in water damage, etc) but rather the delay in the supplier getting the taps to the company doing the work.

Talking to the plumber, the problem lies in the suppliers not having stock sitting in local warehouses. Now this wouldn't have been a problem, but the time from agreeing to do the project, and it starting was very quick. As such, the time for the delivery of taps was longer than the time until they were needed. So if we weren't able to kick off this project so quickly, then they could have ordered those items in advance enough to get them here in time.

This got me thinking about Lean development practices and the “Just in Time” approach. If we consider that the aim is develop something “just in time” for when it is required, then it is possible that an opportunity may arise that, to take advantage of, would reduce the available time to develop and subsequently cause delays.

Of course the trade-off of doing “Just in Time” is that you aren't building a stock-pile with all the inherit costs and problems. It does however mean that the critical path analysis for taking advantage of a sudden opportunity does require you to know the “Just in Time” periods that could affect you.

I was recently watching a great show called "Kevin McCloud: Slumming It". In it, Kevin investigates a slum in India and discovers that while the people are in squalor, they have far more sense of community and use of common space than we in the west do.

While there doesn't appear to be the available common spaces and subsequent community in most cities, I was really happy to see a Community Garden in my recent wanderings around West End.

Sometimes a holiday is more than just the opportunity to see something new, or achieve some project at home, sometimes it all about you.

My wife and I recently had a two week break, the first holiday since Christmas last year. We had originally intended to do some travelling down into New South Wales, with some camping and walking through the National Parks, however at the last minute we decided to scale it down. What we did instead was spend the entire two weeks in Hervey Bay in a holiday house just minutes form the beach. We weren't there to Whale watch or see Fraser Island, but instead to do as little as possible.

While we were away, I read an article in the local paper that used the term "Mental Health Break" and I realised that was exactly what we were doing. It's been a big year for both of us work wise, so this break was needed to recharge the old mental batteries. Being away from home stopped the inclination to "just do X around the house". Being without internet access stopped the "I'll just check my email". Both us love to read, so with no distractions I was able to read 6 books, more than I've read in the last 18months.

So, if you have the chance, take a "Mental Health Break". It will leave you refreshed, re-focussed and ready to get back into it when you return.

Earlier in the year Ephox, after many years in Paddington, moved it's Brisbane office to West End. Whenever I find myself in a new location I like to go for walks around the area to get a feel for it. On a few of these, I came across interesting or amusing things, and so I thought I'd create a new category (West End Wanderings) on my Blog for them.

For the first one, I thought I’d introduce my favorite place to get coffee.

Local Coffee

A key requirement of all software teams is access to good coffee. While we have a great machine in the office, a good barista will always produce better coffee and besides, it's an excuse to get outside and stretch the legs.

Stove is just up the road from us in an unobtrusive little building. The staff are brilliant and the coffee is too. Oh, and if you find yourself there, their fresh made muffins are wonderful, but be quick, they disappear rapidly.

We recently had two new businesses move into the offices next door. Looking through the doors highlighted to me how important the first impression of an office is to the energy you bring when you walk in the door.

One of the offices is very evidently a call-center. It’s clad in shades of grey and blue with small cubicles. It seems to suck the energy out of you just looking at it.

The other (pictured) seems to draw you in. In fact, upon entering, I had not idea what they did¹, but you felt that it would be an interesting place to work.

It may seem obvious, but it’s important to consider the impact your office environment has on potential employee’s as well as the current ones.

When recruiting, if a candidate walks in the door thinking, “wow, I want to work here”, or compares favorably your office/team with their current office and team part of the hiring process just got simpler.

For your own staff, having a place that they want to work in, along with an outstanding team to work with brings it’s own rewards. Higher productivity, less down-time due to illness and greater retention to name just a few. These rewards have value not easily measured but a lot higher than what it can cost to make a great environment.

1 – My wife’s first guess from the photo was travel, but it turns out they are a tattoo artist.↩

Ephox is 10 years old and to celebrate we flew everyone in from our US and UK offices to where it all began … Brisbane.

The celebrations kicked off with a party on Thursday followed by a weekend away at the Hyatt Coolum for employee’s and their partners.

While the weekend away did provide an opportunity to talk shop, it was the personal conversations that I feel pay the biggest dividend.

At Ephox we make great use of digital communication tools like Skype, e-mail and instant messenger to keep in touch. There is something however about talking to someone face-to-face, that allows you to connect on a different level. It’s the conversations over breakfast, the corporate dinner, pre-dinner drinks and while playing tourist that allow you to connect with our colleagues in a way that electronic means just can’t achieve.

In this relaxed environment, you find yourself talking about previous experiences and roles as well as sharing a joke or two. Add to that the ability to meet and talk with your colleagues partner and you begin to build a more complete picture of the person.

So what does this mean for us now we are all back home? The personal connections made enhance our business relationships and communication. The insight gained allows us to filter digital communications through their respective personalities, enriching the experience. In addition, the “back-story” of each person will allow us to better utilise their previous experiences/skills.

Despite the GFC (global financial crisis) Ephox is continuing to grow. We were recently honored with a FastPrivate 2009 award for increasing revenues by almost 230% in the last year.

This means the R&D team in Brisbane, Australia is expanding. We are currently looking for outstanding Java developers who are graduating soon to join the team.

We’ve got an amazing team building a great product in Java using Agile practices.

If you think you have what it takes and want an opportunity to really kick-start your career then check out our ad on Seek.