I’m here in Rome this week, presenting a two-day seminar on  “Managing Death-March Projects” for Technology Transfer Institute. You should be there so you can hear whatever clever jokes may occur to me while I’m presenting my material, as well as the comments and questions from the other participants. But if you’re stuck in some other part of the world, or you couldn’t persuade your boss to send you to Rome, you can click here to download the (17MB) PDF version of the presentation, which has a whole  bunch of embedded links to other presentations, publications, books, articles, websites, etc.

As usual, I’ve provided several different ways of downloading the presentation materials. None of the material is copyrighted; it’s all “open source,” and you’re welcome to use it, modify it, share it with friends and colleagues, and collaborate with me to improve it in the days to come. For a simple overview of the presentation, you can click here to download the one-page, 24-megabyte PDF version of the “mind-map” shown below. This is likely to make more sense after you’ve seen the full set of materials, but it’s a nice concise summary of the key elements of the presentation.

You can also click here to download a 10.4-megabyte PDF version of the 19-page presentation itself; all of the embedded hyperlinks have been preserved, so you can follow the references to wherever they lead you. You can also find this version on my Slideshare.net page, which makes it easy to share the material with other people in your own network.

A couple days ago, in Ft. Lauderdale, I also made a Powerpoint version available; but I discovered that moving a Powerpoint file from the Mac to Windows is problematic, especially if you’re using something other than the usual boring Arial/Helvetica fonts; and since I find Powerpoint to be a pain in the neck anyway, I’ve thrown it out. If you have the good sense to be using a Macintosh and iWork, then you can click here to download the 15-megabyte Keynote file of the same presentation (which has the animations and builds that you won’t see in the PDF version, plus the native ability to modify the material). And finally, if you’d like to see the “collaborative” version (which is much uglier, but nevertheless sharable), click here to see the Google Apps version of the same material; if you actually want to modify this version, send me an email and I’ll add you to the list of collaborators.

Hopefully, this will be sufficient to let you view and access the materials in a way that’s convenient for you. If you have any questions or problems, please let me know. Meanwhile, enjoy …

For a simple overview of the presentation, you can click here to download the one-page, 23-megabyte PDF version of the “mind-map” shown below. This is likely to make more sense after you’ve seen the full set of materials, but it’s a nice concise summary of the key elements of the presentation.

You can also click here to download a 9-megabyte PDF version of the 19-page presentation itself; all of the embedded hyperlinks have been preserved, so you can follow the references to wherever they lead you. You can also find this version on my Slideshare.net page, which makes it easy to share the material with other people in your own network.

If you’d prefer a Powerpoint version of the same material, click here to download the 18-megabyte Powerpoint file. If you’re lucky enough to have a Macintosh and iWork, then you can click here to download the 13.2 Keynote file of the same presentation. And finally, if you’d like to see the “collaborative” version (which is much uglier, but nevertheless sharable), click here to see the Google Apps version of the same material; if you actually want to modify this version, send me an email and I’ll add you to the list of collaborators.

Hopefully, this will be sufficient to let you view and access the materials in a way that’s convenient for you. If you have any questions or problems, please let me know. Meanwhile, enjoy …

To download the 20.5-megabyte PDF of the mind-map summary of this presentation, click here (or on the thumbnail icon above). The hyperlinks are preserved in the PDF file, so you’ll see clickable links that you can pursue to get more information on 18 recommended books, and 41 other references (articles, websites, blog articles, etc.) on key aspects of software engineering.

For the fans who follow this blog closely, you may recall seeing a similar mind-map for a “Top Ten” presentation that I did in Jacksonville, Florida a couple weeks ago. Here is a summary of the additions/changes I’ve added to that material for tomorrow’s presentation in Albany:

1. For the mind-map branch that refers to Google HR strategy, I’ve now found an interesting article in the Oct 21, 2007 issue of The New York Times, entitled “The Google Way: Give Engineers Room.”
2. As an additional reference on “peopleware” issues, I’ve included a relatively new book entitled Leading Geeks.
3. For the mind-map branch that refers to “evidence-based scheduling,” I’ve found a better reference: a very detailed Oct 26, 2007 blog posting entitled “Evidence-Based Scheduling” (duh!) by Joel Spolsky, of New York City’s Fog Creek Software. Highly recommended!

Let me know if you have any suggestions for improving the material …

If you’d like to download a 18.4-megabyte PDF of the one-page mind-map for the presentation, click here. And if you’d like to see the Google Docs version of the presentation, click here. Because Google Docs presentations are sharable, there’s an opportunity for you to revise, enhance, correct, and generally improve the material. In order to do that, you’ll need to be added to the list of “collaborators” for the document; send me an email at ed-at-yourdon-to-com, and I’ll add you to the list.

But if you think Google Docs presentations look ugly, you can download the 6.2 megabyte Powerpoint file created as an export from my mind-mapping tool, by clicking here. And if that’s not enough, you can download the original 13.7-megabyte mind-map itself, by clicking here. But the mind-map document won’t do you much good if you don’t have the mind-mapping tool with which to open it and manipulate it; it’s called MindMap ConceptDraw. You can buy it for $119 (or get a free trial copy for 30 days) by visiting the ConceptDraw website (I have no business relationship with ConceptDraw, and receive no commissions, royalties, or financial remuneration of any kind from sales of their products).

Let me know if you have any questions or problems…

Here’s a summary of the additions and changes I’ve made to this version:

1. I made a number of minor cosmetic changes to clean up various items on the 32-page mind-map, in order to make it easier to read and understand.
2. On the “Cultural Issues” page of the mind-map, there’s a branch labeled “People Power,” with a sub-branch titled “Citizens,” and a sub-sub-branch titled “Products get used in unexpected ways.” To that sub-sub-branch, I added a link to a New York Times article explaining how Craigslist is now being used by prostitutes in various parts of the U.S.
3. On the “Miscellaneous books” branch of the “References-Books” page, I added an thumbnail icon, and a link to the appropriate Amazon page, for David Weinberger’s book, Everything is Miscellaneous.
4. Also on the “References-Books” page, I added a new branch titled “Books I haven’t read yet,” which lists 10 relatively new Web 2.0-related books … which I’m hoping to read, but probably not in the next month or two. I haven’t provided Amazon links, but if any of them look interesting, you should be able to find them easily.
5. On the main “References” page, I added a number of new items to the “conferences” branch — with links to an AJAX World conference, the Web 2.0 expo in Berlin, the Web 2.0 expo in Tokyo, a London-based conference called “Future of Web Applications,” a Paris-based conference called “Le Web 3,” an “Asia Web 2.0 Conference” in Singapore, a link to next year’s Wikimania 2008 conference (for which the host city has not yet been chosen), and a link to the upcoming Boston-based Enterprise 2.0 conference. This is in addition to several existing Web 2.0 conferences, all of which suggests that the topic has now become fairly “mainstream” in Europe, North America, and Asia.
6. On the main “Technology” page, there’s a branch labeled “Design Guidelines, best practices,” with a sub-branch titled “Agile.” To that sub-branch, I’ve added a new sub-sub-branch with a link to a blog posting by Scott Rosenberg (author of Dreaming in Code, which I discussed in several blog postings earlier this year, starting with this January 15, 2007 entry), in which Rosenberg argues that most of the Web 2.0 products and services actually have a 5-year development cycle.
7. On the “Google” branch of the “Big Vendors” page of the mind-map, I’ve added a link to an article in the Economist titled “Who’s Afraid of Google?“
8. On the “Wikipedia” sub-branch of the “Wiki” page, I’ve added a new sub-sub-branch with a link to an article noting that the 2 millionth article was added to the English-language version of Wikipedia on September 12, 2007. By contrast, Encyclopedia Britannica has approximately 100,000 articles.
9. Also on the Wikipedia sub-branch, I’ve added a new sub-sub-branch with a link to an August 19, 2007 New York Times article about “Wikiscaner” entitled “Seeing Corporate Fingerprints in Wikipedia Edits.”
10. On the “Business Issues” page, there’s a branch titled “Government,” to which I added a new sub-branch, with a link to a September 2, 2007 New York Times article entitled “Logged In and Sharing Gossip, er, Intelligence” about the creation of something called “A-Space,” which is roughly analogous to MySpace for the various intelligence agencies of the U.S. government.
11. Also on the “Government” branch, I’ve added a new sub-branch with a link to a poll currently being conducted by Federal Computing Weekly, entitled “Is the government ready for Web 2.0?“
12. Also on the “Government” branch, I’ve added a new sub-branch to an article entitled “IBM on governmental blogging.”
13. On the “Introduction-Overhyping” page, I’ve added a new branch, with a link to the Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator — which helps you come up with catchy phrases, like “integrate user-centred blogospheres” for your new Web 2.0-based product or service. And it’s free! Think of the millions you would otherwise be spending for creative marketing geniuses to come up with the same phrases!
14. Along the same lines, I’ve added a link to the Web 2.0 Company Name Generator to the “Small startups, small vendors” branch of the “Products-Vendors” page. Now you’re really ready to launch your own Web 2.0 company, create a lot of attention, and then sell out to Google for gazillions of dollars. Heck, maybe I’ll do that — and stop spending my time updating this damn mind-map!
15. On the “Political Commentary” branch of the “Intro-Society” page, I’ve added a link to a new article entitled “2008: the Web 2.0 election?“
16. Also on the “Intro-Society” page, I’ve added a link to a May 7, 2007 C|Net News.com article entitled “American public: wired, but not Web 2.0? That’s normal, study says” — which notes that roughly 73% of American citizens have Internet access, but only 8% make active use of Web 2.0 products and services.
17. On the “Cultural Issues” page, there’s a branch titled “Generational Issues,” where I’ve added a new sub-branch that provides a link to an August 23, 2007 Wired article entitled “Rise of the Silver Surfers: The Over-50 Social Media Opportunity.”
18. On the “Trends-Social/Cultural” page, I’ve added a new branch, with a link to an August 18, 2007 blog posting on the O’Reilly Radar site titled “Revenge by Gadget.” I think I’ll get me one of those gadgets.
19. On the “IBM” branch of the “Big Vendors” page, I’ve added a new sub-branch with a link to an August 23, 2007 article describing IBM’s acquisition of Web conferencing service provider WebDialogs.
20. On the “Reactions and trends in large companies” page, I’ve added a new branch with a link to a blog posting called “Knowledge Worker 2.0.”
21. On the “Yahoo” branch of the “Big Vendors” page, I’ve added a new sub-branch with a link to a September 17, 2007 Infoworld article describing Yahoo’s recent acquisition of Zimbra.

I could probably have added another hundred links, branches, sub-branches, and assorted details in addition to all of this, but I’ve run out of time. Hopefully this will keep you occupied for a while, and I’ll create yet another update in the coming weeks. I’ll be giving a two-day seminar on Web 2.0 technologies in Rome on October 29-30 (for more details, click here), so it’s almost certain that I’ll have at least a couple of additional updates between now and then.

Happy mind-mapping!

Basically, Chapter 3 discusses the evolution of Chandler’s vision, purpose, and software architecture. It’s written in a sufficiently non-geeky fashion that any reasonably intelligent person above the age of 13 should be able to understand it. Whether they’ll want to read it is an entirely different question; I found the discussion interesting, but that’s because I’ve spent my entire adult life doing this stuff. As my family diplomatically reminds me from time to time, there are several billion people on the planet who really don’t care about the nuances of object-oriented programming, or the reasons why one programming language is better than another. But as I’ve suggested in earlier blog postings, the pervasive influence of computers in today’s society — in our iPods, our cellphones, our digital televisions, in literally every product and service we use in day-to-day life — means that the non-geeks should be interested, if only for a brief time, in how all of this software stuff gets put together.

This is not a new theme; it’s a modern variant of the “two cultures” theme espoused by the late British scientist C.P. Snow back in 1959. At Snow said at the time,

“A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?

“I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had.”

Well, the issue here is not the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but rather how a bunch of savvy, experienced software developers could organize their thoughts, and their technical strategy, into a plan for building a better PIM — maybe not a Microsoft Outlook-killer, but maybe that would elicit the same gasp of delight that most of us felt when we first began using Web browsers 10-12 years ago, or when we first began interacting with Google 5-6 years ago, or (more recently) when we first had the pleasure of using Google Maps. Whether you’re an experienced programmer or a technophobic Luddite, you simply cannot use Google Maps without muttering to yourself, “Wow! How do they do that?”, followed by gasps of delight as you move the map around, zoom in, and zoom out. (And if you think that’s fun, check out the Earth Sandwich project, as explained in this hilarious zefrank video, and assisted with the Find The Opposite tool)

As Rosenberg describes it, OSAF founder Mitch Kapor “had a clear picture of the program he wanted to build. Like Agenda, it would be a PIM, or personal information manager, a tool for managing email, appointments, addresses, tasks, and notes. … And it would be explicitly designed so that any developer could add new capabilities to it. Open source programmers could code new modules or ‘parcels’ for, say, managing digital photos or music collections. And nontechnical users would be able to add new categories and labels to the program on the fly.”

While the “vision thing” is obviously a crucial part of any software development effort, so is the architecture and choice of implementation technology. To explain how the Chandler project made its decisions in this area, Rosenberg takes us on a historical tour of programming languages, ranging from binary code to assembler, to FORTRAN, and ultimately to the two languages that the Chandler team seriously considered: not Java and C++, but rather Python and Perl. It’s a fairly lengthy discussion, but I enjoyed it … and you will too. I command you to enjoy it; resistance is futile!

Finally, Rosenberg gives us a brief history of the unveiling of the Chandler project — to the world at large, especially as it hadn’t even been built, but to the Silicon Valley geek community. I must admit that I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but that’s probably because I don’t live in Silicon Valley; but apparently it began with an October 20, 2002 article in the San Jose Mercury News by respected technology journalist Dan Gillmor (whose website is here, and whose current reporting efforts are largely focused on the Center for Citizen Media blog).

Rosenberg tells us that “Gillmor’s October 20 column reported: ‘An early version of the calendar part of the software should be posted on the Web by the end of this year, and version 1.0 of the whole thing is slated for the end of 2003 or early 2004.’”

And, as Rosenberg tells us in the final sentence of the chapter, “The guesses proved more than a tad optimistic.”

Stay tuned…

Reviews of earlier chapters of “Dreaming in Code”
Preface
Chapter 0: Software Time
Chapter 1: Doomed
Chapter 2: The Soul of Agenda
Endnotes