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Synchronized, sealed, variable, interface and even tool. These words all conjure up very specific things in the mind of a programmer or IT person. Much to my surprise they hold very different meanings for non-technology people - well at least the word "tool". This last week, I was invited to attend a meeting of the Arlington Business Council. It was their spring kick off event and it was very well organized and attended.
The variety of the business people present was quite amazing - from Creative Facilitating to Marketing Professionals to a Personal Concierge and even a Photographer and that was just my table! To put this in context, I am used to attending programmer events or Microsoft Partner events where everyone is either into C#/VB.NET or AppDev (Application Development), BizDev (Business Development) or Managed Services (those wonderful folks who manage your servers and networks for your small to midsize business). I promptly sat down at the table where the conversation was to be "Tools for your Business" thinking that I could learn the pains of different businesses and what software we could build to solve these issues - yes, I admit it, I was looking to sponge off some smart people for ideas.
We started with a pleasant green salad with raspberry vinaigrette. Introductions went around the table and then a conversation began on tools to use to grow a fledgling business. The central idea that emerged was delegation. In growing Thycotic, delegation has been key in moving to each next level so I was very much in agreement but then it hit me. They considered delegation a tool ... we then moved on to further tools such as Asking for Referrals. This was clearly not what I had expected ... in my mind a tool is a BlackBerry, mobile device or a piece of software. I would consider delegation simply a technique or process but not a tool. Maybe it is just my immersion in technology or my lack of exposure to non-technology focused people but I struggled a little with this leap.
Needless to say but I did not get any new software potential ideas from the group but I did gain some insight on the world outside of IT and how sometimes our ideas and thinking do not translate well. This is definitely food for thought (by the way, the hangar steak, risotto and desserts at Restaurant Vero were also fabulous!). I think any Independent Software Vendor (ISV) should consider this carefully when looking to solve problems in the real world. Remember to think in terms of business, pains and solving real day to day problems rather than simply technology. Remember also to understand and communicate in the language of your customer.
Have you had any strange technology moments with non-technology people?
Jonathan Cogley is the CEO and founder of Thycotic Software, a .NET consulting company and ISV in Washington DC. Our product, Secret Server is a enterprise password manager system for teams to secure their passwords. Where do you keep your passwords or do you still use the same password everywhere?
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This will be the first year that Thycotic has a vendor booth at Microsoft TechEd. This is an exciting milestone for the company and we are busy with preparations for the conference. There will be four of us from the team going - the flights and hotels are booked. Dan Parker and I will be staffing the booth during regular hours and are planning to meet lots of interesting people. Kevin and Pouya will actually get to go see the sessions and then will be helping out on exhibitor night.
As if all the first time big conference plans aren't enough, we have also decided to get Secret Server 3.0 out in time for the conference! This is going to mean a lot of hard work and intensive quality assurance in the weeks to come. Our feature map for 3.0 includes mostly hotly requested customer features and also some long awaited product growth gems such as multilanguage support. One of the hardest parts of our release planning has been deciding which features to leave out as we simply won't have enough time.
If you are a Secret Server customer or are just interested in good security for your passwords then please stop by the Thycotic booth in the Exhibitor Hall. See you there!
Here is a teaser of the initial draft layout from our graphic designer for Secret Server 3.0.
Jonathan Cogley is the CEO and founder of Thycotic Software, a .NET consulting company and ISV in Washington DC. Our product, Secret Server is a enterprise password manager system for teams to secure their passwords. Where do you keep your passwords or do you still use the same password everywhere?
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This last Saturday morning, the Thycotic team headed to Richmond at a bright and early 6am. This alone wouldn't have been too bad but some on the team had been busy until 2am on a client project! For the first Richmond Code Camp ever, it actually didn't rain (it rained all day for the last two).
John started out with his presentation on NHibernate which drew a large audience. I watched Hal Hayes (of Acritech) present on XQuery which is an interesting session that I have somehow missed at the various local usergroups over the last year. Then I caught up with Frank at his Tablet PC session - he confirmed my suspicions that the handwriting recognition has been greatly improved in Vista. He also pointed me towards these great tablet applications which I just had to try - Ink Art allows you to paint in oil on your tablet! Frank was showing it on Vista but it doesn't seem to be included in the Experience Pack for Vista ... Frank?
I did find ArtRage2 in my quest which seems to do a similar job. There is something incredibly cool about painting on a tablet.
Unfortunately I didn't get to attend any further sessions since I was presenting for the last two slots of the day. Which also meant that I missed John's second session (Lucene.NET) and Kevin's first presentation at a Code Camp where he covered Cryptography and Hashing which is something he knows a great deal about - Kevin did the second round of Cryptography work in our Secret Server product. I also heard wonderful stories about our other presenting team member, Bryce, whose laptop wouldn't cooperate and he had to wing his entire session on Code Access Security with no code or slides (this was also only his second Code Camp presentation ever - nice job Bryce!).
My two sessions were Refactoring (a hands on session using Bob Martin's Prime Generator example) and Unit Testing with RhinoMocks. Session slides should be posted on the Richmond Code Camp website soon. The Refactoring session worked out really well with the sizeOfArray and primeCandidates variables naturally emerging as the instance field candidates - the audience also got very involved and yelled out lots of ideas. Working with code line by line and generating discussion is always fascinating.
Thanks to the folks at the Richmond Code Camp for organizing another fine event.
Jonathan Cogley is the CEO and founder of Thycotic Software, a .NET consulting company and ISV in Washington DC. Our product, Secret Server is a enterprise password manager system for teams to secure their passwords. Where do you keep your passwords or do you still use the same password everywhere?