Tuesday 27 March 2007

Juxtaposition: Kathy Sierra / Personal Branding

It's ironic that Kathy Sierra's experience of the downside of being notable on the internet comes at the same time that people are talking about how employers increasingly see a lack of personal branding as a negative when hiring.

My daily Computerworld column, IT Blogwatch, has more today (but I redacted all the names of the alleged perps. -- don't want to repeat unproven accusations).

Monday 26 March 2007

Bill Gates Evangelizes Small Teams

In 1989, Bill Gates gave a talk to Computer Science Club of the University of Waterloo. It's recently been made downloadble. An at-times-fascinating listen, he makes this interesting -- yet ironic -- point.

Small teams are good. Organizing software development in small teams keeps your business focussed, efficient, and nimble. In my experience, Bill is right on. All the best and most productive dev teams I've worked on (and with) were between two and four people.

What a shame Microsoft today doesn't practice what Bill preached 18 years ago.

Update: Christophe de Dinechin makes a similar point. HP Integrity VM? Isn't that what used to be called HP Virtual Vault? Wow, small world. Anyone remember OpenMail Anywhere?