Going Backward to Go Forward-Your Tech Community Needs You

Sometimes to go forward you have to go back they say, this is of course true with regards to trying to pull all your experience together to make better judgements. Sometimes no matter how long you have been looking at a type of problem there is a new one that just doesnt fit into all the old categories.
Now I am not doing so much coding I am dealing with people and feelings and the delicate issue of how people work best within a tech community. This is all quite a new experience so I am trying to find a formula to follow where my judgment seems to limited. To be honest I liked being a techie without too much human interaction, but we have run out of people to represent us so I have found myself shuffling to the front of queue to defend our behaviour and culture and just why we can do great things without too much intervention or at least why we are not and never will be the service industry.


It is difficult when you turn round and you are the oldest, when only you can remember this or that breaking technology. When all the senior managers even the directors start to be younger than you. This is where I guess, you have to step up. This transition is difficult.  Some of start trying to dress a bit better. Scruffy is ok when your a techie - who cares, when you're young its even a bit glamourous - over forty its not the same thing. What to wear can be problematic and to be honest if you don't really like/care about clothes or the way your look its like a complete surrender to the enemy or at least a slow torture.

Anyway get past the trying to tart yourself up enough to pass unnoticed in the business community is a good thing. Then you can start making small impacts and influences, by attending the meetings that many of us techies are not invited to ( usually for fear of making a scene- or divulging some terrible techical faux pas a customer or subco/director may have made) anyway usually we're persona non grata - translated that's software engineers. I just wanted to say really, that all due respect to people that go for this option, its not a betrayal we do need you. At this point we are desperate for people that can explain

 the complexity of a task, to senior management and the protection and needs required for the teams that must carry out its implementation. We are looking for philosophers to explain the values of certain approaches and psychologists to demonstrate how people need to be supported to be able perform to the levels we need them to perform. Above all we need people that respect the mental health, wellbeing and stability of the technical community however eccentric and demanding it may seem to business management. This kind of representation can only come from within. As a techie be prepared to represent your software community, your community certainly needs you.

The Sound of Mathematics

Keeping it simple

We were talking today at work about holding some lunchtime learning sessions. My colleague offered to give a lecture, this will of course be really interesting, but as an experimentalist physicist his slides usually have lots of equations. I asked if he could keep the equations to a minimum  just to keep most of the audience with him. He agreed this would be possible but he said perhaps to retain interest for the average engineer he could try to animate the equations. I looked this up seems its an old idea equation animation -I guess good mathematicians can read the equations like musicians read the score of complex orchestral piece, they can interpret the notation directly in their head as they read. 

A picture speaks Wordles 

This sparked a thought in which a general audience could benefit from the visualisation of his equations in perhaps a "wordle" type visualistion where the main actors appeared in clouds of different sized text. Dealing even more with abstraction I wonder if it is possible to visualise a set of equations purely by colour. Where repeated numeric constants or functions could be represented by muted or bright tones. If it is possible to view groups of types of equations would they have a distinct patterns of colours. Would the patterns describe anything/mean anything to us.To research these results would we need new disciplines artists/digital retouchers with pantone charts to tell us more about the results from discerning different hues and intensities.

The Sound of Mathematics

Following that train of thought, if we substituted sounds for different, repetitive functions and constants would we be able to hear the difference between a groups of equations from different disciplines, would they sound different - would there be a coherent or recognisable sound. Would we need teams of people with perfect pitch to analyse the differences between the "musical" pieces these groups would
 produce. I am not sure we could say immediately if this would be of any benefit to anyone. I hope we can try this out, I am looking forward to the new lunchtime learning sessions, looking at these equations from my colleague if we are translating these ones to colour maps I may need to bring my sunglasses!.