Come and See

My wife recently returned home from an extended weekend in Salt Lake and brought back with her a packet prepared by the Relief Society designed to be used as a study guide over 40 days. The theme of the packet is "A Journey with Christ" and it guides the reader basically through the New Testament. We decided to go through this as a couple and we had our first session tonight.

In it, there's a talk from Ezra Taft Benson with this rather profound quote:

"We are meeting the adversary every day. The challenges of this ear will rival any of the past, and these challenges will increase both spiritually and temporally. We must be close to Christ, we must daily take His name upon us, always remember Him, and keep His commandments."

When I read the word "challenges", my radar picked up because for me that word has some depth. Let me explain. If you didn't know, I currently work in the software industry, and one of the constant themes as I talk with my colleagues at work is the need to seek new "challenges" and opportunities to grow. We want interesting "problems" to solve. Engineering is fundamentally a career where you seek out problems and find new cool and exciting ways to solve them. We want to solve puzzles essentially, we want to get better, we want to hone our craft.

So, when I see the word challenge, it triggers something positive in me where others might see a negative. I feel compelled to offer an alternative interpretation of this passage different from the more common default one.

In so many ways, the world has shifted drastically. It used to be that we could be content finding a factory job working with the same company for thirty years, retire with a pension and be taking care of all of our lives. Most of the time, these jobs were somewhat deadend, with few opportunities to really grow, but we had security. That world, for many reasons is gone.

Instead, we have many, many more opportunities. For a programmer in between jobs, they can now bid for work over the intenert. Not to mention the many, many businesses being run out of someone's home using ebay, amazon, or etsy.

I'm not saying any of this is easy. It's a harder world, it requires a certain amount of fearlessness and engagement that they don't teach you in school. But it's also a more exciting world, a more empowering world, and yes, a more challenging world.

I love Seth Godin's blog because in it, he acts like a cheerleader encouraging you to embrace this new reality.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

What Did I Ship in 2010?

In my last post I linked Seth Godin but I didn't read carefully and I missed the last part of the post:


"Your turn to post a list somewhere... You'll probably be surprised at how much you accomplished last year. Go ahead and share with your friends, colleagues or the web... don't be shy."


Then, my friend Helena posted this in the comments:


"I look forward to Sara telling me all your great new goals. I also look forward to seeing what you "shipped" last year, if you plan on posting it. I think I'd have a hard time claiming something like that, especially after reading Seth's(?was that his name?) list."


So, I challenged her, I'll make my list if she makes hers.

Here's a partial list of what I shipped in 2010:

Church Calling Related

• The ward's Father's And Sons Event


• Spring Barbecue for the Elder's Quorum


• Summer Pizza and Splash Pad Event for the Elder's Quorum

Brief note about the last two: These are two events that have become a tradition for the quorum, we've done them now for three years or so straight, and they've always been pretty well attended. I organized them originally because I've been in Elder's Quorum callings now for a while and I just had this voice whisper in my head - be aggressive, be aggressive. Which is another word for just shipping. And that's what I did.

Work Related
I'm a little timid to go into too much detail here, but in 2010 I was part of a team that delivered two major releases - the first is on the live site right now and if you paid with PayPal in 2010, chances are good you hit some code I wrote. The second will be released in 2011, but we turned it over to test before the holidays, so I'm counting it.

The second major work thing I did was to present a 40 minute tech talk to the Scottsdale development center. It was my first, and I hope to do more this year.

Home and Family

• Laminated three of our four bedrooms


• Was the assistant coach of our son's soccer team


• Organized a violin concert for our oldest daughter to raise money for JDRF


• Led a team to raise $2000 for JDRF for diabetes research.

Those are my major "shipping" accomplishments for 2010. I look forward to hearing about yours.

Helena, you're now on the hook.