Better Business Through Software

Tech Town

2008-11-09T18:13:00Z

My friend George Azrak has been bugging me to get down to Detroit's Tech Town for months. I found all kinds of ways to avoid doing this. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of Tech Town, but I couldn't see the point of going all the way to Detroit when Spark, GLEQ, and U of M Tech Transfer were all within a few blocks of my office. Boy was I wrong.

Last Friday, Anne Marsan and I packed up the car, made sure we had a full tank of gas, plenty of food and water, and headed for Tech Town. We ended up parking in the NextEnergy lot. Within minutes, I realized that I must return to TechTown if for no other reason than to get a tour of NextEnergy. The Tech Town building is across the street from NextEnergy. It's a very cool, old GM design building. It was built so that cars could drive all the way to the top floor. Upon entering, you're going to immediately notice all the various businesses housed in TechTown. I was pleasantly surprised to see Ann Arbor's own John Stout among the many businesses that are quickly filling this very large building in downtown Detroit.

Anne and I came to TechTown to attend a meeting where we volunteered to mentor startups (I forgot to tell Anne this) and then to attend the First Friday networking event which included Josh Holmes announcing the Microsoft Biz Spark program.

The mentoring meeting was very well coordinated and fun to attend. We were in a room with 20 to 30 very smart people all of which were volunteering their time to help Michigan Startups get off the ground. As you would expect, lot's of smart, very gregarious people, tend to talk a lot. The meeting moderator, Jan Gensheimer, did an excellent job of keeping things moving while at the same time allowing for just the right amount of discussion. The TechTown team had created a very specific set of well defined projects for the mentors to participate in. This made it easy for us to know what projects we could help with and also know how much time was needed. I volunteered as part of a project which was defined as needing 3 - 5 hours of my time.

After mentoring was a networking event called First Friday. This was out of control fun. I talked to so many different people doing so many amazing things that I actually ran out of business cards. I started giving away Anne's business cards with my name penciled in. I'm sad and pathetic sometimes. What I liked most was the excellent mix of startups and non-startups at the First Friday event. For those of us working in more or less stable businesses, the startups provide a kind of energy we just don't encounter on a day to day bases. Not only do they have these amazing ideas, they are working their butts off to turn them into something real. You just can't help but be inspired.

During my time there I encountered a lot of comparisons to Spark and GLEQ. Tech Town is trying hard to emulate some of the best of both. I also talked to Dianne Durance from GLEQ who was there for the First Friday event. I discovered that she actually needed mentors in Ann Arbor as well and was signed up on the spot. I'm not sure why I had to go all the way to Detroit to discover that I could actually help out a little more locally, but either way, I'm glad I did.

Josh Holmes announced Microsoft's new initiative to help startups who have software offerings. Josh's excitement about BizSpark was contagious. My company, SRT Solutions, is a network partner in the BizSpark program. Josh introduced me to the Founder and President of a startup that might just be perfect for BizSpark. Listening to her dream and what she had already done to make it come true, was once again a moment where I felt that if we could help, we definitely should.

After four hours, Anne and I finally packed it in and headed home. It turned out that TechTown wasn't as far away as I thought.

Thanks Tech Town, I'll be back soon.

The Pit of Success

2008-09-17T16:20:00Z

Through a link Anne Marsan sent several of us today I saw the "Pit of Success" quote for the first time and had to share it with others.

The Pit of Success: in stark contrast to a summit, a peak, or a journey across a desert to find victory through many trials and surprises, we want our customers to simply fall into winning practices by using our platform and frameworks. To the extent that we make it easy to get into trouble we fail.

-Rico Mariani, MS Research MindSwap Oct 2003.

Running Ubuntu on Vista

2008-09-04T14:41:00Z

I was able, with very little pain, to install Ubuntu on Vista. Using Jay Wren's advice I took a look at VMWare and downloaded their $189.00 VMWare Workstation for evaluation. VMWare Workstation setups up 1 or more Virtual Machines that can then be used to host Guest operating systems.

First I downloaded and installed VMWare Workstation, then I downloaded the Ubuntu ISO. VMWare allowed me to mount the Ubuntu ISO as a CD in the new VM. The VM booted like any computer, found the ISO and booted right into the Ubuntu Install. After that it was like a normal Ubuntu install, in other words, amazingly easy.

I work with Jay Wren

2008-06-29T19:31:00Z

I work with Jay Wren

Some of you are probably saying to yourselves "I'm so sorry, are you looking for a job?". A lot more of you are probably saying "That's so cool, how do I get a job at SRT Solutions?".

No matter what your thoughts, you have to admit, being able to tap Jay's knowledge (which normally involves me standing in front of his desk and talking continuously until he removes his headphones) is a huge benefit to getting software done and getting it done right.

Just last week Jay saved me literally days of work. Dianne Marsh and I where stuck on a testing issue using Microsoft Test. The application we where testing was using the AppDomain to find the private bin directory. This was an important part of how the application worked and needed to be preserved. For those of you have used the MS Test environment that ships with Visual Studio, you might know that it creates a brand new environment every time it runs. That new environment includes a brand new private bin directory. This made MSTest a very poor choice for our testing solution. Dianne and I where dead in the water, then Jay came to the rescue with NUnit. We went from despair to success (that green bar is something we Java developers need to survive).

Thanks Jay.

p.s. Jay is also the one who hooked me up with Resharper, which is a great way to make Visual Studio development palatable and immediately productive for those that love IntelliJ or Eclipse.

Ann Arbor Spark - $700 Million and 2,248 jobs

2008-06-25T13:43:00Z

In a recent article in MLive, Ann Arbor Spark reported that they brought $700 Million in investment into the community which would then lead to the creation of 2,248 jobs in the Ann Arbor region.

I'm not sure where the 2248 job number comes from, but it's obvious that Spark is doing good things for the community.

Solar Power in Ann Arbor

2008-06-11T20:40:00Z

A couple of Ann Arbor solar power projects have come to my attention in the last few days. First, The Great Lakes Renewable Energy Association is offering it's Go Solar program to Ann Arbor home owners. It's a way for multiple home owners to get together and purchase Solar products together. Second it looks like the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market in Kerry town is going to be completely solar by the end of July. The City is installing 156 solar panels capabable of producing enough power to supply five homes. The DDA is funding the project.

Ann Arbor is so cool (hope this also makes financial sense as well).

The Ann Arbor Rail Project

2008-06-05T12:38:00Z

The Ann Arbor Rail Project

If you're driving 23 south into Ann Arbor, this Bi-Level Passenger Rail Car could be in your future.

Details are still hard to come by, but more info has come to light about the proposed Ann Arbor rail project.

According to an arcticle in MetroMode, the plan seems to be to start in the fall with a single train running between two temporary stations, one in Ann Arbor on Plymouth Rd. and another at the border between Washtenaw and Livingston counties. The Great Lakes Central Rail Road, the company that owns these tracks, would make six trips in the morning and six trips in the evening. A trip takes 20 minutes from station to station.

Thanks to this MDot Rail Map, you can see the basic train route along the black line from Howell to Ann Arbor.

The train would have three passenger cars, each of which is a double decker car that can hold somewhere around 500 passengers. That means each trip, the train could carry around 1500 passengers. The capacity of the system would then be 9000 commuters a day if every train was full. That's 9000 one way in the morning and then 9000 back again in the evening.

Ann Arbor plans to provide bus service to and from the temporary station. I'm not sure about the other end of the line in Livingston, possibly that would be more like a park and ride.

Depending on how well the service works, there are plans to take it farther south into Saline and possibly Monroe and farther North to Howell.

I had to stop calling this the Ann Arbor to Howell rail project once I heard the latest news. I've opted for just calling it the Ann Arbor Rail Project for now.

My wife is on Wikipedia, is yours?

2008-05-27T15:15:00Z

Yes, it's true, Mary Heitzeg, my pretty and brilliant wife is on wikipedia. Not in some obscure post either. Just check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine.

Google App Engine

2008-04-09T17:55:00Z

There was a time, not so long ago, that I greeted every new Microsoft release with happiness and wonder. "How do they do it?" I would ask. "These guys are geniuses!" I would exclaim. I remember learning MFC for the first time and ATL, both were as exciting as a Christmas morning. Microsoft understood what developers needed and Microsoft was there to deliver it. To this day I tell people I owe my software career to Bill Gates and the Microsoft attitude of making things great for all developers, not just for those with huge amounts of money to spend.

I moved into the Java space just as .Net 1.0 came out. This wasn't because of Microsoft or .Net, it was because of customer demand. I still love Microsoft, but those days of wonder and excitement have passed (at least for now).

Yesterday I felt that same old feeling. I was sitting in the Las Vegas airport, waiting for a red eye when I learned that I had missed something quite huge. The release of Google App Engine.

What's so cool?

In a nut shell, Google App Engine is a way for developers to write applications without worrying about the deployment of those applications. You write the application, using the Google SDK (which runs locally, not on the Net) and you deploy those application in the Google App space. The Google App space takes the place of Apache, JBoss, MySQL, etc. running on your own hardware. In addition, Google offers a number of API's, including Data and authentication (using Google accounts like GMail).

Google's goal is to make application development faster, easier to deploy, and automatically scalable. I've only started working with the SDK, so I can't speak as to how good a job they've done so far, but it's definitely like Christmas morning again.

Check out Dave Winer's article on CNet or the Google App engine site itself for more info.