Best Parting Gift Ever

This afternoon at lunchtime, I received the most amazing goodbye gift from my co-workers. It's a giant scrapbook photo album reflecting on my time at AV-Base. It's so thoughtful. It's definitely the best parting gift ever.

Cam Tran spent a whole bunch of time putting it together over the past three weeks. A lot of people pitched in to contribute on various pieces. It includes farewell comments and letters, pictures from the past year, comics, mementos - like my ever-present Pizza Pocket boxes - and a whole bunch more besides. A ton of thought went into it from everybody. It even comes with a CD with digital copies of most of the contents.

There were numerous photos included, so I'll show a few group shots here. In this first one, I'm towering over (from left to right) Cam Tran, Michelle Pedden and Lori Worthington.


Here's a nice friendly shot of Scott Murphy and Lindsay Laforge. Scott's the only employee that's been at AV-Base longer than me, and Lindsay's been with me since the good ol' days as well.

And finally, here's a picture of the four regular chess players. That's Peter in the bottom left corner, Jeff just above him and Andrew is in the bottom right corner. Invariably, I sat in that exact corner every single lunch time and the other three guys rotated each day. Yeah, the anchor is gone...

The scrapbook also had printed copies of a bunch of my blog posts. I was surprised to see how much I have written about my experiences at work. As you've been reading lately, I've learned a lot of lessons throughout my years at AV-Base, both professionally and spiritually. However, this post from back in January 2006 sort of sums up the biggest lesson that I learned during all of that time. The biggest thing that has changed is me, and I thank God for that.

Love Is All You Need

This morning at church, the theme for the service was love. (Here are the sermon notes, and an MP3 file will be posted there soon.) Several times during the service, we split ourselves into small groups of 2 - 4 people. We discussed the opening questions, related our own stories, read passages from the Bible, shared communion and prayed together.

There are three types of love that are usually described: agape, phileo and eros. Agape is usually described as unconditional love with no expectations of anything in return. Phileo is brotherly love, like the city of Philadelphia, and this is a mutual thing. Eros is the root word for erotica and represents romantic love.

This past week, I was talking with my dad about the word agape. Even in this google link, it's usually described as the kind of love that Christians are supposed to have for all humanity. My dad was making the point, and it was reiterated during the Sunday service, that love is a verb. Love is an action. We have to do something about it.

We don't actually have agape love for Joe Schmo from Idaho if we have never met them. We may have warm and friendly feelings towards strangers in general but we can only say that we love them when we do something for/with them. In fact, the only person that can love everyone in the world is God since he sent his son Jesus to die for each of us. God also demonstrates his love for everyone of us regularly in tangible ways every day, which then leaves the question of how we respond.

That's the setup and explanation. The most important part of this service, for me, was the first discussion that we had together in our groups. One girl related that she has always fought with her parents and she moved out of her home in her mid-teens. Even phone calls that she made after that point would quickly devolve into arguments and hurt feelings, and something as simple as saying "I love you" was incredibly difficult for either her or her parents. She said that she has been praying about it for the past six years and it's only recently that they have been able to have normal phone calls and express those three little words to each other.

Another girl in our group talked in vague terms about an experience that she had three months ago when a close friend of hers betrayed her trust in a severe way. She said that while this wasn't a "forgive and forget" type of thing, she at least has worked through what it means to truly forgive her friend. She said that forgiveness is easy for minor things like arguments or rude behaviour from your friends. It's when you face something serious, something that you don't want to forgive, that you really test what the term means and then you get a better understanding of what God has done for us.

In response to the first girl, I related my experience with my brother. We had a lot of animosity between us throughout our teenage years. I was the goody-two-shoes elder son and during that time, I continually snubbed my brother and placed myself on a pedestal. It took ten years for us to work through it and it was only in our mid-twenties that we really dealt with those feelings and that history and became friends. I expressed this story to the girl to show her that it is possible to restore family relationships and things can work out in her life.

In response to the second girl, I swallowed hard and told her about how I was the one that had broken the trust of my own friends. One act of indiscretion on my part and I blew apart years of friendship. I explained that I had been on the other side of her kind of story and it took me and my friend about a year to deal with it and restore that bond. Forgiveness was one issue but rebuilding trust was another thing altogether.

Our group discussion was only about five minutes long and we each related only the barest of details. Even so, they said that they saw God working in their own lives in each of these situations, working out what love really means. I also feel like sharing my own experiences allowed them to see the big picture and have some hope about where their relationships were going. For such a brief discussion, we each seem to have gotten something meaningful out of it.

To quote the Beatles: "Love is all you need." Is that true? Maybe, but it depends on what you mean by the word "love."

Lessons From The Office: Part III

Lesson #3

Good managers make others better.

I only have seven more days left at work before I leave to help start my new company, Justice Financial Group. During my last month at AV-Base Systems, I'm gradually providing training and documentation for various people so that they can take over my duties. The staff that I have supervised will be overseen by other managers. The procedures that I have developed will now be used by others.

During this process, the fruit of my work as project manager and superviser become quite apparent. Did I try to make myself indispensible by hoarding knowledge and controlling too many things? Did I break down by employees or encourage them and build them up? Did I micro-manage my people or did I empower them? These are important questions for me as I evaluate my career at AV-Base and as I prepare to take on even more responsibility and authority at my new company.

Over the last year, I have overseen the Quality Assurance Team. The two girls, Cam Tran and Michelle Pedden, handle the majority of our software beta-test cycle. This past week, there were two major opportunities for them to prove themselves as the superb QA team that I know they are. I couldn't help them in these tests, it was all up to them.

In the first case, they needed to provide printed evidence that the month-long testing project that we're currently doing is going well. They pulled out their test document (22 pages) and their test results document (18 pages). Perfect. They came out of that meeting having proven that they have a good process, that they are highly knowledgeable about the software and that they are good at what they do. I couldn't have asked for a better presentation. I saw this as a make-or-break meeting: Can we trust the QA team to function on their own without me? And the answer was a resounding yes!

In the second case, Michelle had to provide software training for this same project to our owners and a few others. Generally speaking, Michelle has not led many meetings at AV-Base and this presentation was highly technical. She and Cam worked together to prepare and then, at the last minute, Michelle was told that she had to do the presentation on her own. This time, she was so impressive that my boss went out of her way to tell me about it later and to congratulate Michelle personally afterwards. Home run, out of the park.

I tell you, there's almost no greater satisfaction for me than to see my QA team do well, on their own terms and without me as their safety net. I see my small role in what they have done and it's a wonderful thing to see them flying on their own. I almost can't describe this feeling, but maybe it's what a parent feels like when they see their kids succeed. (I look forward to that day, too.)

Back about a year ago, I used to give them a fairly constant stream of feedback. I used to jump in to help with QA and to review our progress and specific results. As time went on, I gave them some minor suggestions about how to implement some of their ideas. I gave them the chance to lead certain meetings and training sessions, to work on new documentation that we needed. I gradually gave them more and more autonomy and instructed them to use their own judgment. Eventually, I got to the point that I could merely give them a gigantic one-month project with little to no instructions otherwise and I was confidant that they could organize and complete the work effectively and efficiently. And here we are, ready for me to step out and I know that they will be fine without me. More than fine, they will great.

I relate it to the years when I led and taught the youth worship team at my old church, FCCC. I always had a very specific goal in mind: I wanted them to be able to prepare and lead a worship service by themselves from beginning to end without me helping in any way. I wanted the youth to fully use their gifts and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. I wanted them to minister in a meaningful way to the congregation. I did indeed achieve that goal - or rather, they achieved that goal. By the end, they were capably leading monthly Sunday worship and I was able to hide in the the congregation and just worship God. It was the same feeling for me then.

Give people the instructions and tools that they need. Give them the encouragement and training that they need. Allow them to stretch their skills and gain new experience. Walk beside them as they take some of those first few dangerous steps on their own. Give them the best opportunity to succeed.

And then get out of the way!

Introverts Unite!

"Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

If so, do you tell this person he is "too serious," or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?"

That's a quote from this article. That pretty much sounds like me and to this I say: Introverts of the world unite!

Yesterday, I wrote this post in which I described how bad I am at chit chat and small talk. I thought that I was making a minor observation for amusement's sake only. What do you know, more people responded to that post in a single day then have responded to my posts in the last month. (Some responded by e-mail.) Many of the responses agreed that I need to do better with casual conversations and that I should get over myself 'cause it's rude.

I agree but only to a point. That is, after all, why I wrote my post in the first place. However, I would like to note that most people are extroverts and social conversations are therefore important to them. I am not an extrovert and it's somewhat chaffing to be squeezed into that box of social norms. Extroverts may take lack of small talk as a sign that introverts do not care about them, but introverts may take the judgment that we're rude as a rejection of who we are.

So I tell you what. When I have conversations, either in person or on the phone, I'll keep in mind that others value some unrelated pleasantries about life in general. In return y'all can recognize that it requires extra work for me to do so and you can either lead the conversation or allow me my space after a while. Heh. Good compromise?

Chit Chat

One of the few skills that I never really learned during my years at AV-Base is phone manners. Not to say that I'm not polite, it's just that friendly chit-chat on the phone has never been my forte. It seems that a lot of people spend at least a little time discussing the weather, or how tough work was in the past week, or some major event in their families' lives.

Me, I'm much more to the point. I regularly need to call our clients to ask them design questions or to answer a particularly difficult question about our software. I usually open with an introduction, ask if they have five minutes to talk and boom, I'm into the main subject. Once it's over, I offer my thanks and that's the end of the call. It's efficient but it's all business, no fun.

I find that I act that way during my personal phone calls as well. My main motivation is that I don't want to suck up too much time from someone. (That's right, I don't want to suck.) I have no idea what the other person was doing when I called them or when they called me. Perhaps they have someone standing there waiting for them, so who am I to take up ten minutes?

Of course, most people probably would like to chat for a while. Even if I allowed for this, I'm still not good at it. I don't know what to do with meaningless chit chat. I don't really care to discuss the weather. I don't know why anyone would care basketball was cancelled at the church yesterday because no-one showed up.

Granted, I have quite often taken the lead in opening up conversations with new people. Throw me into a group with one new person and I can easily strike up a funny "get to know you" conversation for fifteen minutes. I would say that this is a learned behaviour, though, so that the group doesn't sit there silently for a long time. I haven't really learned how to do this effectively with people I know casually.

However, once in a while I do have a friend like Richard or Joel Terry that calls for the sole purpose of catching up on things. These conversations easily stretch towards one hour and they're a pleasure for me. The difference, though, is that the intention is clear and these are my close friends. I still find it difficult to chat with an acquaintance for five minutes or more on the phone.

Funny enough, I can sit down and type up a blog post for more than a half hour. It's just these real-life conversations that are tricky. Heh.

Facebook & Failing

The count down has begun. Only three more weeks until I leave AV-BASE, the only company I've worked for in this chosen career of mine.

I got sucked into facebook.com a few weeks ago, quite by accident. I have a blog, a photo website, a mySpace site and a few other miscallaneous "social" sites. I like to set them all up just to make it easier to find me on the internet.

I'm impressed with facebook so far, though the interface is a mess. It's the new mySpace. I was already aware that university students tended to use facebook but high schoolers still prefer to use mySpace, from what I can tell. MySpace is better in that it offers your own URL and you can music samples and videos. Facebook is handy because it shows you all of the latest changes from your friends so it's easy to keep up to date.

Shout out to Ashleigh and her blog. She recently joined my cell group and is in the Christmas choir at church with me. Nice girl, she fits in well with our weekly group.

More Beef For Your Buck: Steve relates his experiences with the double-beef Big Mac - that's right, it had a total of 8 patties. He compares it to the triple-pattie bascon cheeseburger from Harvey's. He has a lot of nice stomache-churning details.

Congrats to all of my various licence-toting friends. Alma got her G2 licence last week and Joel Terry got his G1 licence last week. Catharina Terry got her G1 last month as well. Joel was always a little freaked out when I allowed Tara or Catharina to drive my van when we were all packed in there. Now the gas pedal's on the other foot and we'll see how he does.

Point of triva: I actually failed my first G test back in the day. I was still in Wawa at the time, one month before I moved down to London. In Wawa, the testers have to come in from Sault Ste. Marie so they only come once a month for a single day. There were no street lights in Wawa and there were no four-lane roads. It was the easiest test ever, and I didn't even do highway driving because the only two-lane highway out of town was under construction. And the main reason that I failed the first time? I didn't turn my head to look both ways while driving through intersections, though I did move my eyes to look both ways. Thankfully, I took my test again one week before I came to London and I passed.

My Life at AV-BASE: Part I

It has been more than seven years since I first joined AV-BASE Systems and now it's time for me to go. I have submitted my resignation and I will be leaving near the end of November to help found a new company. I wanted to give all of you a letter explaining how much I have loved being with this company all these years, and explaining why I am leaving. You can feel free to talk to me about all of this as well.

My Life at AV-BASE: The Beginning

Back in May 1999, I had just finished my first year at Fanshawe College in the computer programming course. I was looking for a placement with the co-operative education program and I had not succeeded in my initial interviews. The school term had ended and my interview with AV-BASE was actually scheduled for the next day. If I didn't land this co-op position, there was nothing else available. Not only that, but I was competing against one of the top students in my class at the time.

I had my interview with Bert and Helen at their office in Lambeth. After the usual series of questions (there were no interview tests back in those days), we began discussing my experience of creating a Room Booking program for my church. We discussed the fun and the problems of designing software and then having the user add a dozen new requests afterwards.
We really connected based on my real-life experience and a few days later I was informed that I had the job!

I complete my first co-op position over the course of that summer in 1999. Bert and Helen then allowed me to work one day a week while I completed my third term and then I returned for my second co-op term on December 20th, 1999. I then completed my fourth term at school and immediately started working for AV-BASE full time.

When I first started, AV-BASE was about six months into creating the new Windows-based version, which they called WinAir. We were rebuilding the AV-BASE DOS product from scratch, maintaining only parts of the original dBase DOS database. It took us about one year to create this new WinAir Professional version and we have been developing it ever since.

Visual dBase 7.01 was entirely different from dBase for DOS and it took a lot of learning on everyone's parts. Those were the early days when almost every co-op student tried to persuade Bert and Helen to switch to Visual Basic or Visual C++ with MFC or some other language. Despite the whining, no-one ever cared enough to prepare a business case proving that other languages would be more effective. Bert and Helen were the ones forking out the cash for one year of development without a sale for WinAir so they needed serious reasons to make such a drastic change.

For my part, I immediately loved dBase and I'm sure you all know that I love it to this day. The native integration for database support was phenomenal and it was so easy to use. Rapid Application Development (RAD) indeed. Within three months, I had ripped apart my existing Room Booking program. I converted it from a Visual Basic program using an Microsoft access database to a Visual dBase program with a BDE-driven dBase database. I even stole the treeview-style menu that we use in WinAir because I liked it so much.

So I came in with little experience but I had crazy ideas about Object Oriented Development and Relational Databases. One of my first projects was to design the databases and algorithms for the Template MCN Links system, which actually worked out very well and we use almost exactly the same system to this day in WinAir.

Back then, I didn't know much about anything. The "Reliability" screen that still exists in WinAirSQL was my design and I can't help but laugh at myself when I look at that screen. I had a long way to go in terms of my visual design, in terms of understanding true OO development and figuring out what a multi-tiered system actually looked like.

My Life at AV-BASE: Part II
My Life at AV-BASE: Part III

My Life at AV-BASE: Part II

It has been more than seven years since I first joined AV-BASE Systems and now it's time for me to go. I have submitted my resignation and I will be leaving near the end of November to help found a new company. I wanted to give all of you a letter explaining how much I have loved being with this company all these years, and explaining why I am leaving. You can feel free to talk to me about all of this as well.

My Life at AV-BASE: Professional Growth

I started as a student programmer and I've come a long way from there. I eventually took on various roles that included: junior programmer, senior programmer, design team, project manager, director, QA Team lead, with plenty of Tech Support and Training thrown in.
I have been Project Manager at least four times. That shows both the growing process for AV-BASE as a company and the growing process for myself. If there's anyone that is an example of what not to do, it's me. I used to come into work at 6:00 am and leave at 2:00 pm. I used to come to work in jeans and a t-shirt and put my feet up on my desk. I used to have really smelly pizza pockets that stunk up the whole office and I used to whip Skittles out the window in Lambeth. Heh.

The key that allowed me and AV-BASE to succeed in this growth process is that we did try to grow together. There were no problems so large that we couldn't deal with them. As long as I listened to my bosses and their advice, I would be fine. As long as I realized that there were better ways to do things and I improved, we were able to move on from there. My technical skills improved, my professional skills improved, my logical thinking improved, my interpersonal skills improved, my management skills improved...well, I doubt that there is any part of my professional life that has not improved since I joined.

I am eternally grateful to Bert and Helen for the opportunities that they have given me all of these years. I am the man that I today because of their generousity, because of their support, because of their corrections and because of their leadership.

I love this company and I love the people at AV-BASE. I joined the company when there were only five people. Within a year we had doubled in size and we had to start renting a second office in Lambeth. After a few more years we doubled in size again and we decided to move to Unit 10 in London. Then we had to expand and take over Unit 21 and now we're expanding again to take over Unit 13 as well.

Scott is the only one that has been at AV-BASE longer than me and he joined back in 1996 when Bert and Helen were still working out of the airplane hangar at their house. Soon after I joined, Dejan came in 2000 and Lindsay joined later in 2001. I've had numerous close friends come and go during that time. We have even seen babies born to many of our staff over the years. The growth of our company just hasn't stopped and I expect AV-BASE to keep going strong for many more years to come.

My Life at AV-BASE: Part I
My Life at AV-BASE: Part III

My Life at AV-BASE: Part III

It has been more than seven years since I first joined AV-BASE Systems and now it's time for me to go. I have submitted my resignation and I will be leaving near the end of November to help found a new company. I wanted to give all of you a letter explaining how much I have loved being with this company all these years, and explaining why I am leaving. You can feel free to talk to me about all of this as well.

My Life at AV-BASE: Time To Go

I am helping to found a new company that will help disabled people, a company named the Justice Financial Group (JFG). In brief, we provide all kinds of help and support, both financial and personal, to people that seriously injured in accidents. We want to step in if these people or their families are unjustly denied their rightful insurance benefits after they experience a disabilitating accident or death.

It's amazing how often this situation happens to people and we want to be there to do what we can. You can feel free to ask me for more details personally but suffice it to say we hope to have a major impact in people's lives.

I am helping found JFG with a few other people that I know from church. One of these people is actually in this type of situation right now and through his experiences this new company was born. I will be joining as Director of Application Development, which is a lot like my current role at AV-BASE. I will be responsible for creating the software infrastructure to support all of this. Our eventual goal is to help hundreds of people across North America get what they are rightfully owed and let them and their families lead fulfilling lives in spite of the disabilities.

As a note, my exact date of departure is still unclear. Due to the vagaries of starting a new company, I will probably be leaving sometime between November 20th and December 1st. AV-Base management has been kind enough to permit me some flexibility regarding my final date.

Thanks for reading my retrospective of my life and my years at AV-BASE. I will always look back fondly on my time at AV-BASE and I wish the company and everyone the best. I hope that AV-BASE continues to grow in every way and that WinAir continues to be effective all around the world.

So long and thanks for all the fish!*

My Life at AV-BASE: Part I
My Life at AV-BASE: Part II

*Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Lessons From The Office: Part II

Lesson #2

We're all different. Use that to our advantage.

Did you ever hear this old children's song?

Hello, my name is Joe and I work in a button factory.

I have a house, and a dog, and a family.

One day, my boss said to me, "Hey Joe, are you busy?"

I said, "No."

He said "Turn the button with your left hand."

(Repeat and add a new action each time.)

Sometimes, it's very easy to treat all employees as if they are identical. We're all just named Joe and we're all doing the same job in the button factory. Oh sure, Joe #1 uses his left hand and Joe #2 uses his right foot but we can train them on how to do each other's job. After all, neither job is too difficult and the most important thing is that we treat everyone equally, right?

That standard and those asumptions do not hold true for parents raising their kids. It's doesn't hold true for teachers with a classroom of students. And it should not hold true for employers with their employees.

Each employee has their own unique abilities and personality. Each employee has something that they bring to the table that no one else has. Our job is not to fit the person to the job, it's to fit the job to the person. Don't devote too much time to trying to fix the weaknesses, put the effort into accentuating the strengths.

There are some people that are good at implementation, there are others that are good with the big ideas. Great. Put those people together, work out the plan and let each person do what they do best. That's the whole point of the HOTS personality tests that we do at work. Each personality has its own advantages and none of the personalities can do the complete job on their own. It's when we combine our efforts and those advantages that the best results are achieved.

The common joke is that managers are always promoted one level above the level they're actually good at. We take a computer programmer and try to make them into a software designer. We take a software designer and try to make them into a manager. Sometimes these changes are necessary. Often times the person makes the best out of it and learns the necessary skills to get by. The difference is that the talented designer will never be as great a talented manager, yet too often we put them in that straight jacket anyway and then we're displeased when they don't measure up to expectations.

We need to learn about our own strengths, our own personality and our own preferences. That will allow us to excel in the things that we're best qualified. Apply that analysis to others and communicate it properly and we can empower all of the best parts of our team. The whole becomes more than the sum of its parts.

It's like our button factory. Hey, some people are good at the repetitive button pushing. Some people are good at multi-tasking and changing buttons all the time. Some people are good at being the boss. And some people are good at chanting the song with the kids.

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