Blog – carchrae.net

Icebergs and Estimates

tom — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:55:34 +0000

One of the challenges in planning anything is knowing what is involved and how long each step will take. We like to believe that a good plan is best practice, but in reality, any plan is based on assumptions and perspective; “that is not a big iceberg” or “this will take a week”. Sticking to a plan is sheer madness. Constant analysis and updating of the plan is considered best practice in software and business.

The ultimate question though is not just one of creating and maintaining a perfect plan. It the ability to understand when the original goals of the plan are no longer valid have shifted.

Are you picking the right nits?

tom — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 19:16:45 +0000

Most times I have conversations with Overlap Matt we riff on something good. I was lamenting over nit picking and slow development progress, to which he replied, ah, but are you picking the right nits?!?

Yet another

tom — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 10:58:42 +0000

I’m still astounded by the number of web-apps I keep finding on employee scheduling. Is it a case of you see what you focus on, or is it really there are so many of them? The real question is how long do any of them stay in existence.

The art

tom — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:57:51 +0000

Aside from coding and talking to customers, I’ve spent a fair bit of time learning business. I wrote a business plan, just to say I could (well actually it was required by a course), and then I wrote a one-page business model . The balance, I think, is somewhere between the two. I feel better for having explored both extremes. I roll my eyes at fundamentalists who cannot pick and choose the valuable.

“I developed The Great Teacher Theory late in my freshman year. It was a cornerstone of the theory that great teachers had great personalities and that the greatest teachers had outrageous personalities. I did not like decorum or rectitude in a classroom; I preferred a highly oxygenated atmosphere, a climate of intemperance, rhetoric, and feverish melodrama. And I wanted my teachers to make me smart.

“A great teacher is my adversary, my conqueror, commissioned to chastise me. He leaves me tame and grateful for the new language he has purloined from other kings whose granaries are filled and whose libraries are famous. He tells me that teaching is the art of theft: of knowing what to steal and from whom.

“Bad teachers do not touch me; the great ones never leave me. They ride with me during all my days, and I pass on to others what they have imparted to me. I exchange their handy gifts with strangers on trains, and I pretend the gifts are mine. I steal from the great teachers. And the truly wonderful thing about them is they would applaud my theft, laugh at the thought of it, realizing they had taught me their larcenous skills well.”

Pat Conroy – The Lords of Discipline. New York: Bantam Books, 1980. p 271

Liftoff

tom — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:58:13 +0000

When I woke up from dreaming, I fell into two amazing programs. The point of departure was applying and getting into the BOSS self-employment program at Capilano. This required me to commit 10 weeks of business boot-camp. I spent the time reading everything I could to become a business hacker. I emerged with altered perceptions on business and the skills to make it work.

I often wonder if I am just lucky or observant. When it came time to leave Capilano and go out and build and sell my product, Maura, Jeff and Sonia were launching a space called bootup.ca/garage. The timing could not have been more perfect. The interactions with other startup hackers and the awesome mentor contacts and seminars have been great. Vancouver is a small town and bootup really helped to fast-track me into the Vancouver startup scene. Spaces like bootup are a vortex of people, ideas and opportunity.

Dream

tom — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:50:54 +0000

I’ve had an amazingly liberated year. I finished two big things in my life, my (last ever?) job and my PhD. Both concluded in the same week, and fortunately, at the beginning of summer. It was a great time to think and dream.

Short

tom — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:38:05 +0000

I have very little free time in my day. As a retired internet forum junkie (and previously mailing lists… heck, I even ran a BBS way-back), I’ve really hesitated to jump into the fray of social media.

I’m inspired though, by Seth Godin and his ability to write short blog posts that contain meaning and value. Clearly subjective of course, except the short part. I will keep it short. If there is no value, then at least it was a small time cost.

Welcome

tom — Wed, 12 May 2010 12:50:25 +0000

This is the website of Tom Carchrae, that’s me. I’m not sure I’m ready to blog, but if I do, this is where it’ll appear. In the meantime, please check out the other pages on my site that tell you a bit about me and what I do.