Perspective and insights into different aspects of leadership and management, especially as it pertains to building teams around software engineering.

Hack The North

Hack The North... What The Hack Is That? Hack The North is Canada's largest international hackathon. It's big. It's bad. It's awesome. Okay, but what does that even mean? The idea is that 1000 people get together from all over the world in an event where they're given 36 hours to create amazing technology hacks. There's a lack of sleep but no lack of amazing ideas and hacked together proof of concepts that show incredible innovation. Sponsors are present to hand out prizes for best usage of their product or API to competitors as well as mentor them and provide help with problem solving. This year, Hack The North was hosted at The University of Waterloo. Bro, Do You Even Hack?! This was my first time ever at a hackathon. I've participated in the Ontario Engineering Competition (OEC) which is much…

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Continuous Improvement – One on One Tweaks (Pt. 2)

Continuing With Continuous Improvement I wrote about continuous improvement before and how I've been trying to tie that into my leadership role through changes to my one on one process. To recap, at our organization we try to roll continuous improvement into most things that we do. We're well aware that we're not going to get things perfect the first time, so as long as we have a process in place to learn, reflect, and adapt, then we can make changes to better our situation. It's something that's ongoing and it doesn't really have an end. So long as your organization is growing and changing over time, or the environment in which your organization is changing over time, having continuous improvement baked into your culture is key to success. Previously, I mentioned that at Magnet Forensics I hold regular one…

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Leadership: What Does It Mean? – Weekly Article Dump

Leadership Everyone has their own variation of what leadership means. For me, leadership means empowering others to accomplish their goals and providing assistance when they need it. There were a few articles that came up on LinkedIn this week that I wanted to share with everyone and discuss how they fit into my perspective on leadership. Articles Does Your Team Work With You Or For You?: Kwame Manu-Antwi opens up the article in an interesting fashion. When I read the title of the article, I figured this was going to be the typical leadership vs management debate. However, Kwame goes into describing a scenario where he had a humbling experience from one of his team that made some sacrifices for him. This was truly an example of working for him. The entire second half of the article shares a bunch of…

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Happy St. Patty’s Day – Weekly Article Dump

Happy St. Patty's Day! I hope everyone who was celebrating St. Patrick's Day was able to not only have fun but stay safe doing so. Of course, when there is drinking associated with a holiday it can be easy to get carried away. It's always a great idea to have driving arrangements or the option to sleep at a friend's place set up before you head out to celebrate. This year I was able to celebrate with a handful of my university friends that I don't get to see as often as I'd like. I haven't been drinking much at all now for nearly half a year, so I stuck to my one Irish coffee to meet my liquor allowance. We all had a blast discussing where our lives have taken us so far, and it's great to see everyone…

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Snow Tubing with Team Magnet – Weekly Article Dump

Snow Tubing First off... If you haven't ever gone snow tubing, get off your computer and get to your nearest snow tubing park. Now that you're back from that, we're all on the same page. Friday was another one of Magnet Forensics' staff events and we were fortunate enough to go tubing at Chicopee Tube Park. I hadn't been snow tubing before--only water tubing--and I haven't even been on a ski hill or anything for years. To be honest, snow tubing to me seemed like a bit of a glorified crazy-carpet experience which would be fun, but get boring after a couple of runs. I'll be the first to admit I was dead wrong. Snow tubing was probably the most awesome way for the entire Magnet family to cut loose this quarter. Most people either love or hate the snow,…

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Recognition: One of Team Magnet’s Masterminds

Background At Magnet Forensics, I lead an awesome team of people with the mission of creating forensics software to help investigators around the world solve crimes. We're stacked with incredible people--and not only on the team I'm on, but company-wide. We do a great job of recognizing our achievements as an organization and as a team, but also on an individual level. If someone has gone above and beyond, we don't keep that a secret. I've been trying to make more of a conscious effort to recognize the people I work with, especially in ways that are unique to my own style. I think recognizing people in person is important, but you also need to consider your setting. Sometimes recognition in a public forum isn't actually appreciated or isn't nearly as effective as appreciating in a one-on-one setting. I find…

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Article Dump #24 – Weekly Article Dump

Article Dump #24 Welcome to the 24th issue of my (nearly) weekly article dumps. I don't have a theme or an update this week, so it's kept pretty short. I hope you find the following articles interesting though! Leave me a comment if you have any opinions on these Articles The 7 Values That Drive IDEO: In this article, the CEO of IDEO Tim Brown talks about the various values that his organization embraces to have a creative culture. Some of the ideas in the slides seem really high level or like generic fluff, but try thinking about what they would mean in your organization. It's one thing to glance at IDEO's list and say "Yeah, yeah... That's nice..." but when you actually think about how that fits in with your organization, you might actually realize you don't embody those values. Do…

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Be a Better Programmer – Weekly Article Dump

Be a Better Programmer It's a new year and that means it's all about resolutions, right? Well, I'm not a huge fan of keeping around a resolution that needs to wait for a new year, but I am a fan of reflecting on your goals and your skills. If you're a programmer like me, then maybe this will be a great starting point. In my weekly article dumps I usually would just provide a couple of comments on a link like this, but I felt I should dive in a little bit more. You can find the original article by Amy Jollymore over here. Please have a look! I shared it with the whole dev team at Magnet Forensics because I felt there was a little bit of something for everyone. Number one on this list, and perhaps the one…

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