Women remain outsiders in video game industry. Marleigh Norton was attending a technical lecture on software architecture in video games last year when the presenter, an established game designer in his late 30s, clicked on a PowerPoint slide innocuously entitled “Dialogue Trees in CRPGs.” She found herself staring at a close-up of a voluptuous female buttocks. For Norton, cofounder of and game developer at the Cambridge-based Green Door Labs, the slide and snickers that rippled through the predominantly male audience were reminders of the “boys locker room” mentality that permeates much of the video game business. Continue reading below “If you are a woman in the industry, there are all these little signals that you are not part of the club, that this is not your tribe,” said Norton, 35.
The billion-dollar video game industry is growing quickly with the explosion of mobile gaming, but women remain outsiders. “What you can pick up from women who work in the industry is that it’s not a fair place for them,” Loew said.
Incident Response at Heroku. As a service provider, when things go wrong you try to get them fixed as quickly as possible. In addition to technical troubleshooting, there’s a lot of coordination and communication that needs to happen in resolving issues with systems like Heroku’s. At Heroku we’ve codified our practices around these aspects into an incident response framework. Whether you’re just interested in how incident response works at Heroku, or looking to adopt and apply some of these practices for yourself, we hope you find this inside look helpful.
Incident Response and the Incident Commander Role We describe Heroku’s incident response framework below. When an incident occurs, we follow these steps: Move to a central chat room. Designate IC. By default the IC is the first person to notice the problem, but for significant incidents the role is usually transferred to a dedicated IC. Update public status site. Send out internal sitrep. Assess problem. Mitigate problem. Coordinate response. Post-incident cleanup.
Leadership. Writing for the Reader. Get better data from user studies: 16 interviewing tips. One of my favorite parts of my job is interviewing a huge variety of people about their habits, needs, attitudes, and reactions to designs. I like the challenge of quickly getting strangers to talk freely and frankly about themselves, and to try figuring out new designs and products in front of me. User research shouldn’t be like the boring market surveys they read from clipboards in the mall. Great research interviews should be like listening to Terry Gross on Fresh Air — engaging and insightful. That’s what I aim for. Here are some tips and techniques that have helped me get the most out of user interviews. 1. Get into character Before I conduct usability studies and research interviews, I take a minute to consciously shift myself into my Researcher Persona. 2. Before I greet a research participant — even for phone interviews — I take a deep breath and smile. 3. Like a good host, my Researcher Persona also strives to be fascinated by whatever participants have to say. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Viral Video Aims to Inspire Girls to Enter Science and Tech Fields. Errol Morris Captures Parental Hopes, Angst for Unilever's Sustainability Project | Creativity Pick of the Day. The scientific case for office gossip - Quartz. Hyundai Motor has made an “unprecedented decision” among global automotive makers, the Korea Herald reported today—it is eliminating the “cigarette lighter jack” from all its vehicles sold in Korea and replacing it with a USB power point.
The next step, the paper reported, may be to make this replacement in all the cars it sells globally. Charging a smartphone with the newly-attached USB charger would take one hour, Hyundai said, “seven times faster than when using a separate portable charger.” Tobacco accessories have been slow to disappear from autos; back in 1994, Chrysler “made a splash” by introducing the first cars without ashtrays since the 1930s. Now, if Hyundai’s substitution catches on (and tech writers like David Pogue have been begging for it for years) it may be the beginning of the end for the ubiquitous car cigarette lighter socket. One of many accessories for the car lighter socket. And for smokers, all is not lost—you can always buy a USB-powered cigarette lighter. Untitled. 4 Questions Successful People Always Ask. Surviving being senior (tech) management. I’ve got a short list of things I tell people they need to do to survive being senior management.
This list has come up a bunch in the last week talking to different folks. So I’m writing it down so I don’t actually have to remember it. That’s sort of unfortunate because there are some alternate versions that exist in a super-positional state, but I think having it written down outweighs the flexibility. I’m sure the list isn’t especially unique to being senior management but there are a few things that are unique to being senior management, that makes it particularly relevant: it’s a job where your ability to cope with your demons is critical to the success of everyone who works for you. It’s a simple list. 1.
The ways most of us cope with stress are toxic. 2. There are two variations of have someone to talk to on this list. It can be a coach, a therapist, a good friend, potentially a very patient and saintly spouse (not recommended). 3. 4. Maybe you used to be a coder. American men are the worst offenders of free riding in the workplace - Quartz. This originally appeared on LinkedIn. You can follow Adam Grant here When people come together in groups, there’s usually at least one member who slacks off. Whether you call it shirking or social loafing, it’s a major source of misery, and it prevents teams from achieving their potential. It turns out that the worst offenders are American men. When psychologists Steven Karau and Kipling Williams carefully analyzed 78 different studies of free riding in groups, they found that it was more common among men than women, and in Western than Eastern countries.
When you’re stuck working with free riders, how can you motivate them to step up to the plate? 1. People often slack off when they don’t feel that the task matters. 2. Sometimes people simply don’t realize that they’re doing less than the norm. 3. When working in a large team, it’s easy to question whether individual efforts really matter. 4. 5.
When it’s impossible to see who’s doing what, people can hide in the crowd. 6. 7. A List Of Fallacious Arguments. Butting Heads: Why IT and Business Don’t Get Along. By Aki Iskandar It's nothing personal. But it's getting worse. Published September 2011 Have you ever worked for a company in which the IT department and the business side (that is, non-technical managers and senior staff) actually got along? If you work in IT, the answer will almost inevitably be a resounding "No! " Why is this the case in so many companies that write their own software to support their operations? This article will attempt to answer that question, and briefly explore first steps toward a solution. The Problem The tension between the IT and business camps within companies is the result of incompatible life cycles.
For the sake of this discussion, let's begin with working definitions for BLC and SDLC, and an agreement that even companies that are not in the business of selling software still require software to manage their BLC. That Was Then Figure 1 1981 - 1990: The BLC, on average, was 7 years. This is Now The problem is evident and getting worse.
The reason is simple. How To Remember People's Names (Communication Skills) This film will show you the basic tricks to remember someone's name - and what to do when you forget! A great six step guide to make sure you have no embarrassing situations of forgetting names. Step 1: Repetition, repetition, repetition. When you are first introduced, repeat your new acquaintance's name - three times will cement it in your memory. "Tom, Tom, Tom. " The trick is to do this without them noticing. First, repeat it directly. After this, occasionally throw their name into conversation to keep it fresh in your mind. Step 2: Association During your first conversation, subtly study their face and clothing, paying particular attention to any distinguishing features.
Anchor their name to a particular feature. Next time you see them, that feature will remind you of their name. Step 3: Find a rhyme Alternatively, try making a simple rhyme out of their name. If you can tie this in with a distinguishing feature, then you've got yourself a double-whammy. Step 4: Ask someone else.