Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

Every morning in my final year at high school one person in the year read out the notes for the day. Being a religious school, this finished by asking some saint or other (I can’t remember if it was a saint whomever was reading the notes chose, or whether this came pre-chosen) to pray for us. 
It so happened on this very date in 1984 my one great chance to get a laugh in front of my whole year came, and I squibbed it. You see I’d realised it was of course St. Valentine’s day (which was far less of a deal than it seems to have subsequently become) and instead of beseeching St Valentine to pray for us, I chickened out, and asked whatever other random saint had been assigned me to so pray.

I wasn’t even sure St Valentine was a real saint, but it turns out he was (and like many early Saints a martyr), and in addition to being the patron saint of courtly love (no not the singer/actor, it’s a thing–King Arthur and all that) is the patron saint of epilepsy. (There’s also 11 other St Valentines as well. I’m super fun to talk to at parties.)  

On that note, Happy Valentines Day, and on with this week’s reading.

Oblique Ethical Strategies

The rightly lauded Brian Eno (producer of Bowie’s most celebrated albums, many of U2’s, and other renowned artists–and Cold Play–inventor of ambient music, all round genius) developed (wth artist Peter Schmidt) a deck of cards he used in the studio to foster inspiration and novelty, which they called ‘oblique strategies‘ (subtitled ‘Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas’). 
Partly inspired by oblique strategies (and partly by the series ‘The Good Place’), Laura Summers (who’s spoken several times over the years at our events) has developed a card deck titled Ethical Litmus Tests. Described as “Meditations, provocations and reflections for practicing our moral intuition” you can download the PDF right now (Cards against Humanity Style) or pre-order the physical set. Laura writes

“The accompanying activities are launched from the assumption that our character is voluntary, and we can improve it by practicing to be good. I believe that ethical behaviour and decision-making are the outcome of practice as opposed to an innate characteristic. I think it’s a capability we can encourage and nurture in ourselves and in our teams, like any other. 
Much like learning to code, it might feel uncomfortable or foreign at first, but may also become second-nature more quickly than we might think.”

Download, print out and ‘play’ with your team.

Writing Clean JavaScript

Who doesn’t want to write clean code? But isn’t the question of what makes code clean (or otherwise) a matter of taste? “Uncle Bob” Martin, or of the actors of the Agile Manifesto, and SOLID software engineering principles that were the subject of one of the presentations at our Summit in 2019, outlined software engineering principles that are widely considered foundational in his book Clean Code. Ryan McDermott has published an adaptation of these principles for JavaScript. 

“Not every principle herein has to be strictly followed, and even fewer will be universally agreed upon. These are guidelines and nothing more, but they are ones codified over many years of collective experience by the authors of Clean Code.”

Fostering a healthy culture on remote teams

Last week we looked at mentoring in remote teams. This week a relatively short but very worthwhile piece from Michael Boykin on one of the challenges of (and objections often raised to) remote teams–fostering a healthy culture and sense of connectedness.

Defining a Tech Strategy

Sarah Taraporewalla, speaker at last year’s Code Leaders conference (pre-release tickets end next Friday!)  routines the considerations she has in mind when working with CTOs and CIOs in helping them develop and articulate a technology strategy.