The K Unit

Waze – Twitter for navigation

by kelvin.kang on Jan.08, 2010, under Gizmodoodats, Social-Experiment

Lately I’ve been addicted to a pretty neat application called Waze. It brands itself as a social navigation app and has apps for the iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian. I actually played with both the iPhone and Windows Mobile app and both work pretty decently. The app is pretty addictive. You essentially get points for numerous activities such as simply driving around, sharing event such as speed trap, recording new roads and yes, even editing the map. The mobile app works like it’s supposed to although I surprisingly had more problems connecting to the GPS with the iPhone than I did with the Windows Mobile which is quite rare. The web application is simplistic. You have a dashboard that shows you your previous trips and then you can choose to click them to view those trips. You could also choose to use those trips to enhance a current map by filling out roads that are missing and so on. I like the idea of editing my maps but I find the experience quite frustrating at times. Hopefully over time, they will continue to improve on it. The mobile app also integrates with both Twitter and foursquare.

Although maps are pretty sparse in Toronto and thus rendering navigation pretty useless in my area, it is easy to see the use of Waze. Every once in a while, I’ll get an alert stating that segments of the 401 have medium traffic followed by the speed of an anonymous user at the time. People can also report various things such as accidents on the roadways. One of the issues is that it’s technically illegal to operate Waze while driving so it works best when you have another driver in the car with you. For me, I typically just turn on Waze before I start driving and keep on driving. The neat thing about this is outside of giving up some privacy, it typically doesn’t really detract me from doing what I normally do anyway.

To me, what is probably most intriguing about Waze is the social experiment it represents. I’ve always been of the opinion that most people are most interested in controlling their privacy and not so much containing it. Most people are willing to give out information about themselves usually if it benefits them in one way or another. Given its ability to provide real time data to its users, it’s the equivalent of Twitter for navigation

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Tweaking my Apple Magic Mouse

by kelvin.kang on Jan.02, 2010, under Gizmodoodats

One of the biggest change in my technology profile after working for Zoocasa is that I’ve now started to become quite a Macbook fan boy. When the Apple Magic Mouse was released, I opted to get one because one of the things that I really like about the new Macbook’s is that I really like the gesture concept on the trackpad. I was hoping that the Apple Magic Mouse would offer the same. However, I was quickly disappointed with the minimal amount of gestures offered by the Magic Mouse out of the box. It really offered no more features than any other mouse in the market.

Enter three handy utilities that extend the functionality of the Magic Mouse: MouseWizard, MagicPrefs and BetterTouchTool (BTT). MouseWizard is not free but it’s relatively cheap to obtain – it’s only $2.50 to purchase it. MouseWizard actually doesn’t come with many additional gesture support – all in all, I count 5 new gestures but the one cool thing it can do which I like is that you could do your whole hand to call the screensaver which I use to lock my Macbook. That is neat. MagicPrefs is free and definitely more extensive at least in terms of available gestures that you could invoke. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get most of them to work for me. My favorite is BetterTouchTool so far because it allows you to not only configure the gestures on your mouse but also on the multitouch touchpad of your Macbook.

For the time being, I have programmed my mouse to activate Spaces on a two-finger tap, Show Desktop on a two-figer swipe up and Application Expose on a two finger swipe down for the mouse. For my mouse, I have the five finger tap setup to show the login screen.

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Happy 2010

by kelvin.kang on Jan.01, 2010, under This-and-That

Happy 2010 or specifically, Happy Twenty Ten. Apparently, this is the proper way of calling this year. It IS simpler to say admittedly. 2009 went by really fast but with some major changes in my life both personally and professionally.

Personally, we welcomed David into our lives in late October. I usually don’t talk that much about my personal life on thekunit.com for personal reasons but David is a massive change in my life. It’s really easy to understand why babies are called a “bundle of joy” because they simply are. They love so unconditionally and falling in love with your child is the easiest and most natural thing to do. However, they do require a lot of care but as parents we do it with so much joy because they are that worth it. Since David has been in my life, free time isn’t as readily available and between work and caring for him, there’s very little time for extra-curricular activities.
Professionally, I’ve left Zoocasa for Canpages.ca. I leave Zoocasa with a heavy heart because there are a ton of really good friends I’ve left behind like Saul Colt, Jason Lewin, Angelo Berios, Gerry Power and Tanzeeb Khalili who have all made huge impacts on me personally and professionally but I look forward to the new challenges that come in my new role. Canpages has traditionally been a phone directory publisher but it has designs to be something more. As an example of this, it’s recently purchased start-ups like ZipLocal and Gig Park. Canpages is a relatively unknown company in Ontario but it’s quite renown in the Vancouver area. I’m quite excited to be joining Canpages and look forward to the year that’s ahead of me. 
While I’m not necessarily a fan of New Year’s resolutions, I typically like to set goals for myself. For 2010, here are some of the things that I hope to do.
Blog less and more
I’d like to blog more frequently but probably not as many long blogs. The truth is that I do write a lot but very few blogs make it to the site because they are never in the state of completion in my mind. Given that I no longer have the hour commute to work, my blogging time is reduced greatly. But I still would like to blog as I explore new tools, technologies or thoughts. So I’ll try to shorten my blogs and make them into a series of blogs tied through a topic or tag. I still hope to blog at least 12 times a month. That’s the goal and we’ll see how well I do on that.
Be more present
One of the big differences between my role at Zoocasa and my role in Canpages is that I see more of an opportunity to explore other technology opportunities for Canpages. In my role at Zoocasa, my role was mostly limited to just trying to execute development. While it’ll be my primary role here at Canpages as well, I’ll also be able to try to explore other technologies and potentially form partnership with other organizations as well. I’m quite excited about this. So I’d like to be more present for start-up events. It’s also a great way for me help build the Canpages tech brand which I’m actually quite excited to do.
Be more social
I seem to have shrunk into a corner socially after March of last year. I think it’s time for me to re-engage the social media universe. 
With that, happy 2010 everyone!

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Process and Structure

by kelvin.kang on Nov.07, 2009, under People-Engineering, This-and-That

Coming from a development background, I understand the disdain that comes from the words – process and structure. Often times, most processes and structures hinder rather than help people to do their jobs. In my observation, one of the reasons why this is has to do with the fact that processes are created reactively in large organizations. They are often written to stop certain actions or behaviours. Most people who move from large organizations to small organizations often understandably cringe at the thought of having process and structure created. However, the lack of process and structure is still process and structure; just very bad ones. Over the years, my career has evolved from being a developer to focus more on management and the creation of IT organizations. I’ve found structures and processes to be very powerful “people engineering” tools. The key thing about making these two tools work is to use them for what they are best at.
 
The best execution of the lifecycle of a process in my career was the first one I had the privilege to help create. Much of the principles on which I use to create processes from stem from that experience. The project was the second Application Development, Maintenance and Support (ADMS) project that Deloitte had won for this particular client. The second project was to build a support team that was global in nature – we had support teams comprised of over 70 team members that would be situated in Japan, Singapore, India and Canada. My team would be made up of 48 of those team members. I had been part of the first project and executing the process as part of the support team was extremely frustrating. The process had a lot of flaws and the tool that was chosen to execute the process was implemented inadequately. It’s not uncommon for processes to start like that. What made it extremely difficult was how difficult it was to make recommendation for changes that would benefit both the client and the support team. When I was asked to help setup the second project, I requested to be involved in the creation of all the processes that would impact the support teams. The process development team was more than happy to take the input and together we developed the process for the second project. Here is what drove the process development.
  1. Understand the business problem and ensure that the process solves the business problem
    This really is not very different from developing a technology solution for any business. Like all solutions, they need to resolve a business problems. In this particular case, there were multiple stakeholders and each of their needs were different. The stakeholders comprised of the client’s business management team, the client’s technology management team, Deloitte’s management team and the Deloitte’s support team. The client’s business management team required to receive adequate support in a timely and consistent manner. They had a business to run and their own clients to support. The client’s technology management team required to be able to justify that outsourcing was a viable solution to provide similar levels of support to the business while drastically cutting their ongoing technology costs. The Deloitte management team required to be able to report the support team’s ability to meet the agreed to Service Level Agreement by quantifying quality, identify issues and react to them accordingly. The Deloitte support team required to be able to do their job without being caught up in the process. The process should be a by-product of the support process and should not take up more than 10% of a support resources total day.
  2. Involve the people who are going to participate in the process
    This often sounds simple but it often isn’t done well because it is time consuming. We had the luxury of developing and implementing the process in about 3 months. This was reasonable and acceptable to all stakeholders because this was a major change for the client. There was a lot of negotiation between the client business, technical and Deloitte teams to come to a process that was acceptable to all. The solution was compromise for all parties but the reality, like most development projects, is that most good solutions is a result of compromise. What makes them good solutions is that is the solution is acceptable by all parties albeit grudgingly. I had a Project Manager who once taught me that a sign of a good negotiation is when all parties come out as though they have given up more than they should. It means true compromised has happened.
  3. Make conscious effort to improve the process
    Knowing that my team was going to find any kind of process burdensome, I entrusted the ownership of improving any processes back to the team. It gave them ownership of something that they found cumbersome but they were also the ones that would be the group that would most likely be able to suggest relevant improvements. Doing this indicated to the team that the promise made at the start of the project that we would be making process improvements more than just lip service. My role in improving these processes was to understand the change, ensure they met the business objectives and then negotiate the changes with the rest of the stakeholders. The key was to make this a living process. The process had to be relevant to all stakeholders.
  4. Accept that documented processes are best used as a communications tool not a problem solving tool.
    It is useful to help communicate to new members joining a team what is typically expected of them. It is also useful to communicate expectations of when and where other parties are interacting within the same workflow. I’m a big believer that processes should not solve all problems; they should provide the general guide and not meant to resolve every question or issue that the team will face. You have to trust that the team you have is talented and intelligent and the process has to be flexible enough to allow team members to make appropriate decisions to resolve issues creatively without ignoring the process.. It is much better to replace a resources that isn’t performing than to try modify a process to deal with a small number of members that aren’t performing.
  5. Keep the process simple
    The reality of complex processes is that they will fail. Complex processes are cumbersome and are difficult to maintain. A process should enable the team, not restrict them. Complex processes are generally very restrictive.
The most difficult responsibility that any manager has is his orher people. Structures are meant as another enabler to team members. Inexperienced people managers are often a big fan of a flat structure. On the surface, it makes sense. Everyone in an organization should be considered equals. The problem with traditional structures is that the structures are more bureaucratic and less functional. The bureaucracy often creates a layer that does not help the team. The organizational model that I think that is most efficient is the consulting organization at the delivery level. Levels are driven more by experience and capability more so than responsibility at the firm level. You are more likely to have certain roles based on your level. However, those roles are determined by your function within the project. One of best examples of the effectiveness of this kind of concept is that I had the uncomfortable responsibility of sending stern emails to a manager who was two-levels above me at the firm level but we were peers at the project level. While this was an individual I deeply respected, we didn’t see eye-to-eye on the execution of a particular work item but it was in my realm of responsibility. He apologized publicly and we moved on from the issue. No egos were bruised because it was the right thing to do. Every organization I’ve built all have had different elements in them because the business needs were different and the team needs were different. However, they share some common elements.
  1. It’s difficult to properly handle the growth of more than 8 individuals
    This is speaking mostly from personal experience. It’s hard to help mature and grow the talents, skill and professional maturity of any individual. Each individual requires an investment of certain amount of time and energy in order to do it well. And all this has to be done in conjunction to the other responsibilities that you have as a manager. My magic number is 8. This number is derived from me taking about an hour of the morning or afternoon for each individual. 4 days a week allows me to focus on 8 resources leaving Friday to catch up with my own needs or issues.
  2. Democracy is ineffective in team management
    Democracy is great in politics but has no place in technology management. I’m personally a believer in hiring the right team and that often means hiring a lot of smart people. The biggest benefit of having a really smart team is that they are going to have a lot of great ideas. The biggest detriment of having a really smart team is that they are going to have really good ideas that are going to contradict each others and chaos typically ensues in a flat structure. Technology decisions should be driven by purpose. You need someone to make the decision that aligns to the technology vision of the company otherwise the result is a fragmented solution that becomes difficult to support and extend over a period of time.
  3. Nobody is an expert in everything
    Beyond accountability, there also is the issue of expertise. You want to pick the best solution/technology for the problem on hand. When developers are stuck on an issue, they have the tendency to not want to go for help. Creating functional responsibilities around areas of expertise helps you as a manager. You need to have go-to individuals for expertise when you have to make a decision. The team is no different. The team should have go-to people to accelerate the solution of certain problems.
  4. Roles and Responsibilities are the minimum requirements for individuals
    Most people look at formalized roles and responsibilities as limits to what they can do. In most consulting organizations, fulfilling your prescribed roles and responsibilities guarantees that you don’t get fired only in the good years. In lean years, most consulting organizations will look at individual performers and keep anyone who is performing above and beyond what is expected of them. Roles and responsibilities should be used as the MINIMUM requirement for any individual. To be eligible for additional reward, you have to perform above and beyond what is expected of you.
  5. Responsibilities is not a reflection of value
    A manager has different responsibility from a developer but it doesn’t in any way reflect the developer is more valuable than the manager. A good manager cultivates that culture by fostering the growth and mutual respect for every member of the team regardless of responsibility and title. In certain organizations, I’ve created lead responsibilities within a team that are meant to rotate from member to member. I’ve also created special teams where in those projects I would function as a business analyst reporting to team members who would otherwise be reporting to me in the overall project.
Like most engineering tools, it’s up to the individual to decide when, where and how these tools are used. People engineering is not different in that perspective. Process and structures has the right uses for them. The key thing is to understand the purpose, strength and failures of these tools. Used in the correct fashion, it is an effective means to run an organization otherwise it will grind your organization to a painful and grinding halt.

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Sucking down

by kelvin.kang on Oct.12, 2009, under People-Engineering, This-and-That

This is a re-post of one of the first blogs I ever wrote. As I started the People Engineering category, I thought it was a good time to re-publish it again.
Guy Kawasaki is one of my favourite blog writers. I don’t know that much about him outside of the short blurb that is written on Wikipedia. I enjoy his blog because his topics cover a gamut of areas such as ethics, enteprenuerism, business smarts and even social smarts. In many ways, they all link together but it’s nice to see someone link these concepts together and how they are relevant to be successful in today’s world.
 
The second paragraph of his most recent blog entitled “The Art of Sucking Down” caught my eye. The entry talks about why it’s important to treat people without the big titles with respect because they are the ones that make the world run. So often we get frustrated with customer service reps or front-line staff when things go wrong. We wish that they would just “do their jobs.” Maybe they are and that’s the problem. What we really want them to do is to go above and beyond the call of duty but how do we do motivate complete strangers with no relationships with us outside of the fact that we are a customer of their employer. Guy goes on to outline 9 simple but relevant concepts that makes sense by going through the lifecycle of persuading someone who is not a celebrity/upper management/CXO type to do something for you.
 
This story from the Blackout of 2003 comes to mind when I think of this topic. It was on a Friday afternoon when someone alerted me that most of the East Coast of the North America had been completely blacked out. I had been in the San Francisco area for almost a month without coming home at that point and was anxious to get home. So all of us from my Toronto team – Jay Helmer, Jonathan Kwan (JK for short - he’ll be the main character of my story), Sarbjit Bath, Keith Tran and myself – decided to chance it to go home that Friday afternoon. When we got to the AC counter, we were automatically told that we wouldn’t be let on. JK in typical JK fashion went through his usual tirade when he doesn’t get what he wants. It’s typically pretty entertaining in general and definitely worth the show :) But ultimately, it didn’t really help our cause that day. It didn’t help at that time that not one of us had status at AC but luckily we had previously purchased Keith and Sarbjit business class tickets and we were able to pack them onto a plane to get home. That just left Helmer, JK and myself to deal with. We were able to hook up with Livia, Eddie and Deepika as well who were at the same client but different project. Fortunately, Livia had status. She gave us her number to use. So while we couldn’t get to Toronto on Friday night, we were able to get ourselves a little closer – we had found our way to Chicago on a flight the next morning. At least when we got to Chicago we would have a number of options. One of them would be to drive home if absolutely necessary. It would have been extremely expensive but at this point the problem stopped being cost; it was a race agaisnt time because all of us would have to be back on a plane that Sunday night on the way back to San Francisco.
 
When we got to Chicago, we had to go through the same ordeal. All the people who had flown earlier that day were now stuck in Chicago trying to fight their was back to Toronto. So as usual, we sent JK back into the fray to negotiate a seat for the three of us – you’d think we would have learned our lesson ;) . However, JK used a different tactic this time around; maybe because this ticket agent was a female, maybe because he had decided a softer approach for different results but the end result was that we had ourselves booked on a flight that would get us back into Toronto late Saturday night. As a gift for the ticket agent after completing the transaction, he bought her a bunch of chocolate because he recognized that she hadn’t eaten the entire time we were there. The entire ordeal took over 6 hours. I thought it was nice of him to do that. The story doesn’t end there. Livia and Eddie were booked to go on an earlier flight but that wouldn’t leave for another couple of hours so we decided to have a quick bite to eat because we were all exhausted. By the time we were done eating and gotten back to the waiting area long before the supposed departure time of Eddie’s and Livia’s flight, Eddie’s and Livia’s plane had already left! You can imagine the dismay and anger of Livia and Eddie. Missing a plane that day was like shooting yourself in the head. We had no idea when they would be able to fly back again. So once again, we sent JK back into the fray. JK went back to the ticket agent to negotiate on Livia’s and Eddie’s behalf and miraculously they were on the same flight as us. While I don’t think the stewardess thought that she owed JK something for the bag of chocolates, I’m pretty sure that his kind consideration stuck out in her mind and it was in some ways a way of bonding through human understanding between them.
 
While the topic of “sucking down” is definitely appropriate for selling and negotiating, I can’t help but think about how relevant this topic is to leadership as a manager. As a team lead, you still have a lot of direct influence over any paticular problem or situation that you could be facing with. You could physically do the work in order to get something accomplished. As a manager, you start to have even less. You could at best keep an eye of a paticular issue but as a director, you now have multiple issues that need your attention as much as the next. The reality is that you are extremely dependent on the people who report to you. So here’s how I would “twist” Guy’s article to how I would relate it to my working experience:
 
1. Understand the dynamic. Guy talks about appreciating the fact that while the person you are facing is a “lowly” ticket agent, they are in charge of your fate right now. This is no different than facing an escalation at work. While the person across the phone or across from you may be a “lowly” developer, this is the person who will ultimately control the fate of your issue. As much as you as an individual may have the capability of coding your way out of the mess, that will come at an extremely high cost because your eye needs to be on multiple balls at the same time. Empower your team, build their confidence and let them know that you trust them – then get out of the way. Ultimately you really have no choice.
 
2. Understand their needs. The key goal here for Guy is to emphatize with the person whom you need to help you. In the IT world, I would look at this for someone in a management or senior management role as clearing the roadblocks. Assuming that your team is going to do what it takes to get it done, you have to make sure that you understand what they need you to do. These are usually things like getting direct access to environments, ensuring that are direct escalation paths to third-party vendors or key client personnel and access to required expertise within the firm. This is probably the single largest value that you can bring to an escalated situation.
 
3. Be important. Guy describes the importance of building equity with a vendor in this section of his entry. Conceptually, this is no different for a manager or director. You are important in title and your title will only carry you until your first “battle.” After that, you have to prove that you are worthy of the title that you carry. A couple of things come to mind in this area. It’s part of understanding the needs of the team – in an escalation, what the team needs is to be focused. So being “important” here means that you shield them from the heat that is coming from the client, upper management and/or business counterpart. Get the team what they need and get it to them quickly. Usually if you do your job well, the team should never hear it directly from you. This is one key way of building equity with your team; this is how you earn their respect. Another important lesson I learned from JK on this project was understanding the visibility of your role. When I step into a situation where it’s teetering between being escalated or not, it is automatically escalated by my sheer presence. What goes through tme mind of the client is why else would I be there if the situation doesn’t warrant my attention? Another side repercussion is that it takes away any confidence or credibility of your team lead because you are now the focal point. Let the issue be the team lead’s show and come in at a time when you and your team lead decide you can bring direct value to the situation (or when the client demands it which is usually bad :) ). Another key point here is that constant communication is always important. Ultimately, it’s your ass or your boss’ ass on the line. And trust me, when it’s your boss’ ass on the line – it’s STILL your ass on the line. That’s part of what being important is about.
 
4. Make them smile. The all important ice-breaker, the first impression with someone who could open the door to a plethora of opportunities. From a team leadership perspective, it is slightly different here. Yes, the first impression is key. For me this is usually a losing battle since I look like I’m 18 half the time and it scares the heck out of the team :) So the key here in my mind is really not make them smile but keep them smiling. It is the act of building an ongoing relationship. It’s tough to do with everyone. My tactic was to build that concept with my regional managers and team leads, and then hope that they would then share that concept with the rest of the team.  Fear shouldn’t be the default motivator for your team. Joke with them, laugh with them. Remember that you are going to need them to walk on hot coals and sleep on a bed of nails. You have to motivate them to do this for you for the best results. I’m personally not a big fan of the motivation by fear. The result that you get from bringing a person from scared to more scared is minimal compared to the amount of effort that it takes them to get to that state in the first place.
 
5. Don’t try to buy your way in. When I read Guy’s section on this topic, it speaks to me of devaluing the person by quantifying their worth. It is always a losing battle because you can never get that amount right without an established relationship. What may be important or valuable for one person will be completely different for another. The other issue I have with this approach to leadership is that this also establishes a  precedent of “reward me before I produce an outcome” type of thinking.
 
6. But do express your gratitude on the way out. A little gratitude goes a long way. And gratitude comes in many forms. Sometimes it can be a form of recognition by sending an email out to your boss, along with the entire team. Sometimes it’s just giving them what’s reasonable like a little time off after working for 72 hours straight. I’m personally a big fan of the sliding scale of reward because each individual is different but it does introduce the complexity of how do you make each reward equal. Personally, I haven’t been in a situation where we haven’t been able to deal with it yet although it has come up from time to time. But it goes back to the point – express your gratitude for a job well done. It puts a deposit into that emotional bank account that as a manager or director. Always remember that you are going to withdraw from that bank frequently.
 
7. Never complain. Summarily, Guy’s point is that it is really pointless to complain. It is quite unlikely that one person’s complain is going to get the person fired at that point in time. If the person is incompetent, he or she may eventually get fired but it really doesn’t help you at this paticular moment. From a leadership perspective, it’s tough to complain because who do you ultimately compain to when things go wrong? You are a manager for a reason. Don’t complain – reflect, evaluate, seek feedback and then act. If something goes wrong, in all likelihood something needs to change and it’s your job to figure that out. Suck it up! :)
 
8. Rack up the karmic points. This is probably one of my favourite of Guy’s points because it really talks about the concept of doing good for the sake of doing good. I identify with the concept of “karmic points”. Here’s also another way of looking at this – we tend to attract people with our behaviour. In general, if we are generous, kind but wise about it, people are more likely to reciprocate. If we do it often, more people see that side of us and there is a stronger likelihood of having it being reciprocated. I personally believe that we tend to attract people of like characteristics. If you think most of your friends are asses – take a good look in the mirror and ask yourself why is that (LOL).
 
9. Accept what cannot be changed. I also liked Guy’s point on this.  One of my favourite terms that I’ve learned over the past few years is – it is what it is. You can’t re-index a 20 GB database server in 20 minutes no matter how hard you try or how many bodies you throw onto the issue. Sometimes your client is going to be an ass no matter what you do :) Sometimes you just have to accept things for they are, do what you can and move on. There are other battles to fight that day :) .
 
So that really summarizes my last few years of managing and leading a team. While I’d like to take complete credit (bad or good) for my thoughts, much of the credit goes to observing my senior managers at that time do the very same things for me. It was easy to reciprocate to the team leads and regional managers what I was already receiving and learning from my superior. And of course, it goes without saying that I also had the opportunity to learn from my team as well. People like JK taught me a lot over the duration of those years.
 
Back to Guy, between his article of “The Art of Sucking Up” and “The Art of Sucking Down,” the moral of the story is really be good to who you meet. The Golden Rule still applies today although it feels as though it isn’t being practiced much.

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People Engineering

by kelvin.kang on Oct.11, 2009, under People-Engineering

There have been a number of different events in my life right now that have caused me to start to looking back in my career. One of the biggest changes for me is the switch from having a very technical role to non-technical roles. Looking back, the change wasn’t as revolutionary in my career as I first thought; it was merely evolutionary. The main reason why technology development appealed to me is because it is one of the few ways that I can actually be creative in the way I solve a particular problem. When I first started out in development, much of the problem solving and creativity was isolated in the sense that both the problems and solutions were constrained to technology. The nice thing about technology is that it is binary. Things either work or don’t work for the most part. As my career evolved, my problem solving involved a mixture of business and technology; I was now using technology to focus on solving business problems. The business problems were interesting because the answers were not as concrete. There were a lot more variables to consider. In the past few years, my career has been more about building technology teams by setting up people, process and tools.

 

At first glance, my current career path seems to be inconsistent from my experience and reputation as a technologist. In earlier parts of my career, I was usually the person that people leaned on in a technical crisis. Even now, I still have 4 full 4U servers in my basement mounted on a server rack at home. While understanding technology comes rather easily for me, my passion really is in problem solving. Setting up organizations, building teams and implementing tools are simply a different way to solve a much broader and complex set of problems. At the heart of it all, the key to success for what I do now is people. Both tools and organizational structures are required to help people be sucessful at what they do which in turn helps me be successful in the problem I’ve been tasked with to solve. I call this people engineering and a big part of what is required for anyone to be successful in a role that involves organzing people is leadership. While I’ve written some blogs in the past about people or thoughts that have inspired me about leadership, I’ve decided to dedicate a whole section that focuses on my experience and struggles with people and leadership.

 

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Customer Experience Required in Canada’s Wireless industry

by kelvin.kang on Oct.10, 2009, under TechnoFrazzle, This-and-That

One of the worst kept secrets in the Canadian Mobile industry is that both Telus and Bell are going to be launching their W-CDMA network in 2009. The launch is now imminent with the announcement that both Bell and Telus will soon be launching with iPhones on their networks in the not so distant future. Competition for wireless in Canada is about to get really hot in the next few months and maybe even years.

I won’t claim to be an expert on wireless; I’m more of an observer. My sense tell me that when the dust settles in a few years, price points would remain about the same as they are today. We will get more features due to the evolution of technology but they will eventually stay about here. A large reason for that will have to do with our Canadian geography, the lack of population density and lack of population mass making this business a relatively expensive venture to undertake in comparison to other countries. Companies like Rogers and Bell might be in better shape to provide content delivery by leveraging their media divisions but in general, every other company will have very similar risks, costs and revenue opportunity.

The one factor that every company has control over is the customer experience. Being someone who is very interested in mobile, one of the Twitter searches I follow is “#telus #bell #rogers” and with a medium like Twitter, they can be vocal about how they feel. One thing in common is that people are extremely frustrated and are looking for alternatives from the big 3 today.

Good customer service is the tip of the iceberg for a great customer experience. This starts all the way from the start of a sale all the way through the time a customer chooses to leave a service. I can’t speak for any other service as I’ve been solely a Rogers customer for about 8 years now. Rogers has vastly improved its customer service from when I started using them. It used to be a pain to call them because customer service reps (CSR) could be extremely rude and unhelpful. Today the fear of calling 611 is no longer there and Rogers has gone as far as to hire a Social Media team to help deal with issues on Twitter. It’s still early on but I have high hopes of its success.

Beyond customer service, this is where Rogers falls down and needs to seriously shore up the organization to stem the tide of negative comments. It’s frustrating to call a CSR to know more about plans, features and products of the company that the CSR is representing. It’s also frustrating that there is more knowledge of Rogers on sites like HowardForums.com then in Rogers itself. This problem also extends to the technical side too. One such incident that sticks out in my mind is right after Rogers announced that they too were now able to send and receive Tweets via SMS. The transition was rocky at best. For myself, it took almost 5 days for it to work. One particular person on Twitter had an iPhone and the technical support rep insisted that the problem was with the iPhone and had the individual call Apple multiple times for support. It was pretty clear that if the person was receiving other SMS messages that the iPhone was not the issue. The resolution for the issue ended up being an issue with Twitter not entering all area codes needed to send via SMS. CSRs and Tech Support reps need to be armed with information and knowledge that will make them effective in their job especially when it comes to new high profile features. The truth is that things go awry and customers can accept that. What customers don’t expect is incompetence.

 
One of the most common tricks that you read about online about calling Rogers reps is to keep calling until you can find a representative who knows what you are talking about. This points to an inconsistency of training of the customer reps. For me, I should be able to get what I need whether it be information or purchase of features with one phone call and not many. With Bell or Telus now offering similiar technology, the next phone call might very well be Bell or Telus.
 
The one thing that really baffles me is the philosophy regarding customer retention. For Rogers, it is typically a reactive customer retention strategy. Another way to get good deals with Rogers is to typicaly call to cancel and at that point, Rogers typically offers you very good plans to retain you. Sometimes it’s too little too late. Customer retention should be on-going and it’s not the big things but the little things that matter the most. Also, calling me up once every few months to extend my contract by offering me phones I would never use is not a good customer retention strategy. In fact, it just aggravates me a little bit more. Good customer retention is to call me to tell me when plans are improved. When I first started paying for data, I used to spend $100 for 500 MB of data. If I never upgraded my plan, I would be still paying for the same. Rogers went through many iterations of plans before I called to have to manually change the plans myself. Typically Rogers offers approximately $100 discount every couple for an equivalent discount for a hardware upgrade. There have never been a phone that I wanted from Rogers until the HTC Magic. Although I have been a customer for Rogers for over 8 years, this is my first hardware upgrade; Rogers never took that into account. I liked Fido’s Fido Dollars policy better. You build credit over time and you should have the ability to spend it in the way that you want.
 
I can’t speak much about other companies but I know that Rogers is putting some serious and genuine efforts to try to make its customers experience better. Hopefully Rogers can at least fix these areas.

 

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Microsoft Courier – Potential Paper Notebook replacement

by kelvin.kang on Oct.04, 2009, under Gizmodoodats, Perfect-isimo

 

I’m really excited about the Microsoft Courier. If you’ve read some of my previous posts, I have reluctantly gone back to using my Asus R1F tablet and have indirectly given up on my Macbook Pro. Don’t get me wrong – there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the Macbook Pro or OSX. It’s still my desktop OS of choice. Everything just seems to work on the Mac.

Given then I’m no longer a developer, a lot of my work life is involved in meetings with the business team or the dev team to discuss new ideas, work out issues or discuss design. In meetings, I often find it a lot easier to use a notepad instead of typing on a computer to communicate or describe ideas. The tablet is both the happy medium and extension of these two solutions. It has the flexibility of a notepad and the ability to store and distribute digitally. The downside of my current tablet is that it is extremely heavy weighing at almost 7 lbs. The weight isn’t bad if all I’m doing is lugging it from home and to work. It’s a bit weighty to be lugging it around the office and sometimes across the street. The weight is not bad if you consider what it does but today, it is more powerful than what I need it to be today.

Here’s where I think Microsoft Courier comes in. From the demos on Gizmodo, the product looks more like a paper notebook or portfolio which I take to my meetings right now. It has two “pages” and the way it is designed to work is that one page is used for searching and research while the other is used to work on. The form factor is ideal and I love the idea of having both stylus and finger touch. The really interesting thing about the product is that most of the function that is being displayed here already exists within the Microsoft realm of products. The note writing, embedding of images, handwriting recognition, OCR and concept of pages is embeded in a combination of OneNote and Windows 7. If you’ve never tried, the tablet function in Windows 7 is phenomenal. The gesture support is already used in the Microsoft Surface products.

 

Courier User Interface from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

As there are still a number of things that are unknown about the product, there are also a number of things that I’d love to see incorporated into the device. Synchronization to a central service is key. Notebooks are really good to start ideas however at some point, most ideas need to be finished on a computer. Also for me I tend to work on multiple computers and other peripherals so inter-device accessibility is key. I’m not sure I would install a lot of different applications on the device but the additional applications that I would use on this device are instant messaging, email and multimedia player. Bluetooth integration would be a nice touch to connect to a wireless headset. While having the ability to do both multi-touch and stylus is really nice, I hope that the hardware is able to differentiate the two as when writing, my hand tends to touch the paper and could cause the device to go awry. The biggest unknown about the product is hardware. For me to be able to use it, it would need to weigh at 2 lbs or less. It also can’t be too big or too thin as this would be a device to supplement my MacBook, not replace it. Given that I’m usually moving around for meetings, it will need to last at least 4 hours and have the ability to change batteries.

 

At first glance, I’m not convinced that the Microsoft Courier is built to compete with existing PC Tablets. Think of the Microsoft Courier as what the iPhone is to the MacBooks. While the Courier is supposedly getting the full Windows 7 treatment, it’s use will be limited by its form factor. As for the Apple tablet, it looks like it’s going to be more of a multimedia device whereas the Courier looks to be more of a productivity device. All in all, I’m still very excited to get my hands on the product.

 

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Zoompass – Zoom me please

by kelvin.kang on Sep.17, 2009, under Perfect-isimo

Angry face

 

While I’ve had a Zoompass account for a few months now, I haven’t really had a chance to use it. I like the idea of it and just as importantly, it is a Canadian venture that as far as I can tell is based out of Toronto. This blog fits more under the ‘perfectissimo’ category rather than a review since I am writing based on how I think I will use it rather than the experience of using it.

First off, a little bit about me to understand why I am excited about it. In general, I don’t like dealing with cash but even less with debit cards. Too often have my friends been victims of debit card fraud. At the same time, the issue with using credit cards is that unless I’m checking constantly, it can sometimes be a surprise at the end of the month how much I have spent on miscelaneous expenses. Not sure about other countries, but there are quite a few services that offer “no fee” banking but one of the issues with that is the one I use in particular does not offer the ability email money transfer.

Looking at the services offered, I think that Zoompass offers a service that bridges the gaps in the financial services provided to me by the providers of my choosing. Here are some of the reasons why I am attracted to Zoompass

Transfer money to another person at a reasonable cost

Zoompass offers the everyday person the ability to securely transfer money from one person to another via money in their Zoompass account or a credit card attached to their Zoompass account. Zoompass to Zoompass transfers cost very little money. We have Email Money Transfer in Canada but for those of us who aren’t banking with the big 5 banks, the cost per transaction is quite high and quite inconvenient. Zoompass assists with this.

Act as a cash account that is integrated with PayPass and Mastercard

One of the things that I thought was very useful was the ability to use my “octopus” card (equivalent of TTC Metropass) in HK to pay for transit fares and other miscellaenous purchases. PayPass brings the same concept to Canada. It is also integrated with a Mastercard giving me maximum flexibility of payment. What I like best about this concept though is that it is truely a cash card. I like the fact that I can limit how much money is on the card. If the card is ever stolen, there’s a bit of a cap on how much money there is on the card. Also, it’s a good way to manage my incidental expenses. My issue with using cash is there its not tackable and the issue with using a credit card is that I don’t check for how much I spend until the end of the month.

A couple of things that I would like to see is the ability to transfer money to and from my credit card to Zoompass. I know that the reason why they don’t do it is for fraud prevention but it would be a nice feature nonetheless. In general, I’m paranoid attaching my personal bank account to any thing on the web and it is one of the reasons preventing me from using this more. Another thing that would be interesting and perhaps it’s just a matter of time is to use a service like Zoompass to facilitate micro financial transactions. I personally think there is a huge market opportunity there. Right now the only way you can transfer money via your mobile device is via an installed app or via the mobile app. SMS money transfer would also be an awesome service although I would be quite curious to see how they would deal with stolen phones or wrongful access of your phone.

I love the potential of Zoompass and definitely hope that it lives up to its promise.

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Don’t send me SMS messages; please use Twitter DM instead

by kelvin.kang on Aug.29, 2009, under Social-Experiment, This-and-That

This is really a follow up post about how I got my mum to use Twitter exclusively to message me. Since then, I’ve started to really like the combination of Twitter on SMS. It hits a bit of a messaging sweet spot for me.

It’s like instant messaging. The nice thing about having a 140 character limit is that direct messages tend to be concise. Messages are brief and I can decide if and what I am going to respond. Messages also come instataneously if it is tied to SMS.

It’s like email. One of the best things about email is that I can access it any where with any client. Because it is web-service based, I can access it over the web, a desktop client or mobile client. One of the things that I do now is that I leave my work phone in my home office when I get home. Since it is the primary device that I use for communications, I often miss personal SMS messages at night. I can however check my DMs from whereever I happen to be at that moment.

It is SMS with benefits. Since it is tied to SMS, I have it instantly on the device of my choice. Additional benefits of being Twitter is that it isn’t a random number. I have used the moniker firsttiger for over 15 years now so it’s easy for most people to remember my handle. I also change my phone numbers often but I am not likely to change my Twitter handle. Another major benefit for Twitter DM over SMS is that it leverages Internet infrastructure and just uses cellular infrastructure for the last mile so this makes long distance texting cheaper. When I travel, I often use a local SIM card in order to save money on telecommunications. However, long distant SMS messages still apply when I text home. With Twitter DM and some set up, it allows me to just incur local text charges to communicate with people back home.

So if you can, please Twitter DM me instead of texting me. You’ll find that I am more responsive :)

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