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!.

The Show must go on...

A little bit of Panic  

Panic - The Smiths
I can't put my finger on it but, there seems to be a little panic in the engineering community at the moment. The need to do more for less is not new, in fact there's not much new in most of the current developments. However it is getting difficult to get new people in  For some reason the highly experienced community are pulling back and instead of reassuring and leading, they are retiring or changing career. 

Options and Possibilities. 

For new recruits the reality is that the work pace is so fast due to cutbacks and understaffing that only the swiftest can keep up. Retention is proving difficult even in the current climate. First to leave were women who couldn't find an acceptable work life balance or sufficient flexibility after having had children to be able to continue their career. In software we have been more accepting of team members with versions often not classified as autism and aspergers but it is getting more difficult for them to be selected for the new teams due to the pressure,lack of support or just understanding. As the intellectual community talks of ethics and diversity, the man on the street as a result of economic crisis, is becoming more demanding and less accepting. This attitude reflects a retreat from risks, real or perceived means a very real shutting down of options and possibilities. A cult of individualism believes that it is possible to exist and heroically achieve great things alone, that it is not necessary or inadvisable to get involved with the community, and in some cases this is believed to be detrimental to the individual. When an individual has good health, and a good source of income, and little dependencies, this system of belief may prevail.

If all the world is a stage..

A cult of individualism looks for a hero or a star. I have worked with heroic and brilliant engineers and also some excellent stage actors that had incredibly powerful star charisma. Although both can make a good project excellent, neither could replace the structure required to ensure a productions success. A good project like a theatrical production is a complicated organic and willful beast.  To explain the need for cross discipline teams and high engagement, I keep looking for answers in the arts, in particular the theatrical spectacular. Having been involved in amateur dramatic productions in the past in different roles actor, stage manager, director, set-painter. I am still in awe of how many hours of effort is put in by so many, to bring a performance to the stage for sometimes just one one evening.

Prepare to Recover 

One play - (which i have mentioned in a previous blog) had so many setbacks including the loss of venue, players,illness and romantic liaisons it seemed  a good outcome was impossible. Even now I am not sure how it succeeded but I do know it was not myself that "pulled the rabbit out of the hat". It was the most disparate group of people I had ever worked with, - well almost ;) - from opinionated pensioners to sulking six year olds, who at the start were not particularly easy to get on with. At the end, we had a full house on all three nights with the highest praise from the author himself. What was interesting of course is that no-one was paid anything to do this. In fact people mostly covered their own expenses and gave their time for free.

Big Community

So what relevance does this have to space. Space is not the "big community" referred to by politicians looking for free support services, although some do volunteer their time for free, people also have to be paid in order to make a living. Space has a community in the real sense with diverse groups of stakeholders and part of it is the space industry, it must be able to pay its way, there must be the ability for people to get paid work in space. Having said that for most people I know that work in space, they are not there for the money.

Lessons Learned The Hard Way

So if there are lessons to learn it would be for me the following, the space industry is a creative industry, therefore all the planning in the world cannot always predict the kind of problems that will arise in new technology projects. Developing the ability to recognise and recover from errors or mistakes of judgement as quickly as possible is essential. I have also found the following advice very useful.

• Limit the expectation from the individual. 
• Make it possible for people to contribute in the way that they want in the amount they can.  
• Have a plan and be prepare to change it when its wrong. 
• Keep saying thank you, you should never underestimate the effort that people are making, most people have other responsibilities than your activity.
• Don't make assumptions about anything, in particular technical or creative meanings- "get it from the horses mouth" as they say.   
• Make sure everyone gets something out of it. Even if you don't get a moment in the limelight your contribution should be recognised by the community.
• Talk about and advertise what you are doing. Never pass up the chance to tell people about what you are doing and how you would like them to get involved. It is important to share your enthusiasm.
• Be careful about the non-negotiable - if you find yourself in central role, don't bet everything on one project this includes your family/your health. Space industry complexity relies on you having more than one project to refine your skills.
• Some teams you work with, have different tools, deadlines and languages, the skill is to ask them to translate the important things they want you to know well, and for you to translate your stuff in a suitable accessible format for them.

Finally..

• Always remember why you are still working in this industry, people such as musicians, writers & actors amateur and professional alike, believe their work is highly important, work in the space industry has significant importance to understanding how to protect humanity, as space workers we need to put in the best performance that we can in whatever circumstances that are thrown at us, humanity requires it -  the show must go on.

The Show Must Go On..

When a Project Fails.

I guess if you work in any industry long enough eventually you will work on project that fails. I have worked on two which failed in different ways. Both were painful to leave, but it was only by leaving  that some remnants of sanity was retained.
The first project was first the one that I worked in related to the space industry. I was around 33 and had had quite a few varied jobs (at least 10) before starting work there. It was a huge culture shift from being the oldest in a dept to becoming the 2nd youngest. In my last job my colleagues had gone on holiday to the usual overseas destinations, in my new team Wales and Devon were the most common destinations, and office romance was not an option here.

Up until then I was used to coding a good few pages of modules every day.when I arrived in the office my PC had no compiler on it and I had to sit for three weeks with documents to read - pages of abbreviations and document trees to learn. I started  to look for another job immediately but home life was difficult at this time so I stuck it out.

Over time I got to interact with the teams, there were two other women in the dept and approx 18 men. Everyone seemed to want to code but most were doing documentation. I didn't want to do code at this time but ended up getting the job leading a small cross-site team designing and coding simulations. The project was a precursor to a bigger project so politically it needed to succeed in case we lost the follow-on.  The project was large and complicated by legacy systems and they recruited a contractor to create a large UML model of the system, UML was a new methodology at this time and due to a colleague going on holiday - I got to go on the training session (with his nametag -he was a Dr.!). I was the only one to get the training which caused some problems reading the model.

The model grew and was managed by the contractor located at the other site. The network link to the other site was slow and the model grew harder to open. Eventually the model was so large no-one could open it. It was at this point they decided they should start the coding up in c++,we discovered that there was no-one at the other site that could code in this language, they decided to send some of the team on training. The project did not want us to code these functional modules at our site even though there was expertise there.

As it turned out that there was no money ring-fenced for the simulations work, and we had no equipment to put them on, luckily the other part of the site had upgraded their pcs and we took these pcs out of the skip, I was coding in visual basic using a free cover version from pc world we couldnt get the project to pay for a licence at our site.

We had a meeting at the other site and discuss the critical design review. The engineering manager was not present, he had starting to disappear on a regular basis and made excuses to not turn up to meetings. The contractor that had created and managed the UML model had a serious breakdown and left the project. I hadn't noticed, but the disintegration that was becoming contagious. I told our dept head i thought our team leader was having difficulties. The dept head told my team leader what I had told him. My lead wouldn't speak to me he was having family problems, he became increasingly off-sick and eventually went into extended therapy.
My dear friend and colleague who was a c coder was asked to do some c++ started to not talk to anyone about anything and became increasingly agitated. After a family bereavement he couldn't get it together was off sick for a long time, as he was a contractor he had to leave the company. The oldest chap in the dept. was starting to drink at lunchtime and slept all afternoon, he was one of the most experienced in the equipments but difficult to work with. In spite of the setbacks we managed to create a simulator product that simulated 100s of equipments with the help of three excellent sw engineers. Then the project was canned.

We had a meeting, the engineering manager had caved in and somehow the information got to the customer there was an "uncertainty" about our deadlines. This was most unfortunate because we all believed that we could have pulled this off, these were some of the most experienced and brightest engineers I had ever met. My sleepy colleague would start the morning with the times crossword and the telegraph one would be finished by 10 O clock. Then the brain teaser puzzles would be sent round by email. I was always playing catch-up.
The young debutant project manager gathered us together and gave us the bad news. The subcontractors would be let go and there would be a review for possible deployment of the permanent staff.
So what did I learn from this project?. Even now I don't know what I could do to make things go better, I think the recognition of the disintegration the small things that hold people together when things get stressful are important. This turned out to be the morning tea break where everyone squashed into the kitchen. Also the start of working in pairs. We implemented this on the next project to stop managers being able to put the blame for the delay of a complex item on one engineer - insinuating a capability problem. I also would say my trust in the wisdom/integrity of elders or senior members of staff is not as easily given.


Ultimately there is a limit to everything, no-one pushed the team harder than they pushed themselves -good management should have managed this culture before it imploded. There were people in the team that hadn't taken a holiday for years, this should never happen in a well managed company. In recent years I speak about breakdown and stress where I can, at work, in team meetings/general conversation. I know some people find this irritating, but 12 years on we are still no more sophisticated about mental health and stress working in this industry than we were then, we still don't consult psychologists/doctors in the workplace. I still hope things will improve, I believe talking about it in the workplace community, in particular putting it on the agenda at the company decision-making levels will be a start.

A 100 years Plan for Space.

Today I printed off the brilliant diagram from Rockwell International (discovered thanks to sc-ifi/sw tweep @StevePoling)100 year space plan  that shows the time line stretching from 1983 forward a hundred years. Its a vision of interdependent events leading finally to interstellar travel.
I put the diagram (after sellotaping it together in A4 pieces) on the corridor wall at work . Each time I looked over, someone new was studying it. Some projects that people had actually worked on were identified, and highlighted, and of course the rovers, were of great interest. Most importantly for me was that someone however madly optimistic they might have been, had tried to articulate something, that even now we are struggling to describe - a global space future.

You Are Here.

The problem for many of us working in the space industry is that the "You are here" relationship mapped to the rest of the project or industry in general is not immediately obvious. It is possible to work at one desk for many years with out really getting a grasp of what the people working in the bay next door are up to, or the where the project is currently heading. Although we have much better communication tools and technology it is not clear that gaining understanding of inter-dependencies and production complexities are any better addressed than they were 20 years ago. In fact there's a strong possibility that due to a number of factors, it could be much worse.This is an opinion of course ;) but in the space community there appears to be a "clicky" culture in that you will belong to one group or the other either by nationality,discipline, gender, culture or all of them. If you're not in a group you're on your own and in general this is not a good place to be in space even if you're quite self sufficient. As a female software engineer I am used to being a bit of an outsider, but its also possible to identify many other outsiders not defined by gender.

Nice To Have, Difficult to handle

I tried to do a bit of investigating on why this happens, and there is a lot of research on-line on building effective communities based around -bit of a jump here - "diversity in schools". It appears that by bringing in different more balanced quotas of genders,race,class, culture or nationality does not necessarily bring an integrated community, in fact it can increase gang membership and bad relations in the community. mcgraw-hill article To counter this behaviour it was found that it was effective to build infrastructures where individuals could collaborate cross-community, this consisted of projects specifically set up to increase the possibility of socialising and working across the different community groups. Great care was taken to ensure that these collaboration projects were supported and given a high priority in the day-to-day planning. None of this information is rocket science of course but for some reason in the industry there still a belief that community interaction is a "nice to have" and not a necessity.

Heros and Villains

For the community in space there is an added element to the understanding cross-cultural behaviours, there is often the need to explain something complex a concept, details or other difficult elements to the other group. Language, behaviour and attitude in the cross group relationships becomes an essential part of the outcome. One aspect that is difficult to ignore is the stress. The space industry like many other industries is often underfunded for the almost impossible requirements,that now need to be satisfied, to achieve our new space project objectives. Some people behave well perhaps even heroically in a stressful situation and other do not.  If looking for a good project outcome it is advisable to prepare with some kind of "health check" for both behaviours!. 

How many lifetimes?

Anyway back to the 100 year plan - when i look across and see the effort made by one small group of people to explain a vision of the next 100 years and its complexities it helps to put things into perspective. Each of us has such a short time to contribute to this vision that requires many lifetimes to fulfill. Following in the footsteps of engineers that started this task, it is humbling to see how much was achieved with so little. I believe that much past achievement was realised by teams of engineers working closely together. I hope working against the current cult of the individual, we too can achieve this high level of collaboration required to face the challenges ahead in space.

Tough Without a Team

A few weeks ago, I was having my hair cut in "Ayshes" in the Stevenage indoor market when there was a power cut, not all the market, just the shop units on one side, which included the hairdressers. Its an old-style hairdressers womens side on one half of the shop, men on the other -around 6 chairs on each side. In the dark without hardly any discussion, (apparently this had happened before) they picked up the chairs and I found myself seated in a "bus like" arrangement in the middle of the market place with my grey nylon cape and wet hair.
Sitting surrounded by the quiet industrious hairdressers in the market place made me think how much I missed working in a team.
A team of individuals
In the sort of environments I work in, usually the "team" really is a group of individuals with different and sometimes conflicting objectives. Improving the team spirit is difficult as the individuals on the team are highly competent, and educated, and often do not see the need to collaborate, and some feel that they will be be slowed down by working in a collaborative way. For some this of course may be true.
It is interesting that there is often a focus on a modern advance or tool which appears to be a desire to leapfrog a community or discipline to avoid interacting or consulting whether this is a secretarial or administrative group or technical group usually proposed as a cost saving exercise. Under the pressure  to make quicker decisions the decision-making groups  round the table are smaller and less diverse and more increasingly compliant to senior management sentiments.
Skeleton team
Increasingly due to costs, the skeleton team is now a mainstream approach which means you may be in highly skilled team but there will be only one member from each discipline. In the current crisis there is a resistance to take on trainees or lesser-skilled people as there is no time designated for people to train them. The lack of a technical community to discuss your problems can be stressful, also,when arguing cross-discipline it helps to not be the only one in disagreement. If no-one else understands your point of view you can be seen as obstructive or difficult. Having your work peer-reviewed by your own community helps build your confidence and promotes discussion. Processes are difficult to enforce on the wider community ie. adhering to naming conventions/configuration control if you are the only one in support of this sort of basic quality, improvement initiatives, you may just be seen as being  "picky".
Pushing the Limits.
With a tough isolating work environment that is currently evolving it is also important to have good emotional support at home, family pets etc. (easier said than done!). Its now common to build technical community networks that transcends a place of work. Techies usually belong to interest groups on the internet, although this is a great source of support for an individual, it is not always possible or desirable to use this a replacement for the workplace social environment. As technical work becomes more complex, the levels of finance low and the expectations increasingly high, it maybe that a return to working in teams becomes once again becomes more desirable due to the limits of the human individual and not least because of the deep human need for people (scientists,engineers & hairdressers ;)) to work with each other.  

Escape from Colditz

• A Room at the Bottom

There was a great program on tv the other night about a engineering team recreating an WW2 escape from Colditz. Most interesting (apart from the glider building) was the interview footage with the escapees. This was shot in 2001. I was immediately taken back to the time when I worked at the Imperial war museum 24 years ago when I worked in Sound Records dept. I worked in a very small room at the bottom of the directors carpeted stairs in a sound-proofed room. My job was to re-record and archive tapes made by our resident interviewers sent to interview wars veterans from up and down the country. When I started I used to listen to the interviews usually 8 reels worth a day, by the end of the first few weeks until the end when I worked there 4.5 years later I rarely listened, i used to turn them down to a low hum. War is a difficult subject especially close-up.

• The Queen

There were two of us, me and my ancient (I thought) boss of 34, working in the department we were also audio-visual dept. a new arm of the newly re-developed war museum. I spent the first few weeks walking around the building site with a hard hat. The war museum is housed in "Bedlam" -Bethlehem hospital a Victorian mental institution it was quite spooky at night- some of the renovators wouldn't work on the night-shifts they didn't like the sounds of "the chains"- their words. Shortly after my starting work, the Queen (Elizabeth II) came to re-open the museum, this was my first museum function, I was working the PA.system for the Queen. I had stickers with queen on fader 2 and so on - yes really!.

• Jobcentre plus cynicism

 I was still in shock at getting a real job as a few weeks earlier at 20 I had been officially unemployed or "resting" as a photographic retoucher artist/musician. I had to open my first bank account, borrow some money from my boss to buy some clothes for the event, it was the first time I had been paid monthly since Id left school at 16. The man at the Deptford jobcentre wouldn't believe I had 6 O'levels, I had to argue with him to get the application form.

• My Marvellous Boss

Luckily my new boss at the museum- although he looked like an accountant with an oversized suit- was an ex-record producer that had built a recording studio in his house (may cover this in more detail at some point) I have to point out this was folk rock genre ("didnt we have a lovely time etc.".). He didn't mind my lack of formal education if i could splice tapes and work a soldering iron, which I could (I had been playing/recording with bands since I was 13).

• The interview

When I had my interview there was a panel of three people sitting along a trestle table and I sat opposite  them. (Luckily I believe I thought that this was standard interview practice- havent had an interview like that since!). I was asked the dates of the second world war and what sort of music I wrote. I failed the first question ashamed to say and replied "love songs" to the second. We were a post punk band but I didnt think that would go down well. Not sure even now, why i got the job, although the museum superintendent was also a ex-musician from quite a famous 70s band so there were a lot of musicians and artists around at the time. I am eternally grateful to these open-minded people for taking me on.

• Evening functions

I learned electronic engineering (day release) and started software programming on Amiga machines,created animations and wrote music for some of the museum AV displays. I was asked to compose something to accompany the Belsen exhibition as this was being put together at the time, I composed a piece for this, but I am eternally grateful that the then director Dr Alan Borg said there should be no soundtrack as the film is too visually powerful to show with any music or voiceover.
We were incredibly lucky as the new corporate function industry took off around this time and many organisations hired the museum in the evening. Even the Rolling stones came by one evening (my night off) - if only twitter was around then!! We did have the medical students from the Royal College one evening and I remember someone had been sick in one of the tanks, this stopped any future Uni dos.

• The Unruly & Independent

Anyway back to the original reason for the post. We had an evening function, it was a re-union for the Colditz prisoners, I couldnt do this evening for some reason (what was I thinking?). The following day I asked how it had gone."It was terrible!", my boss had complained, "we had a presentation but when it started no-one would sit down. We tried to get them to be quiet for the speeches but no-one listened. When they did sit down some of them would get up again". Well, what did they expect?...I'm glad the ex-prisoners  and serial escapees still were unruly and independent, even in their 70&80s..

• In Relentless Pursuit.

Looking at the current difficulties for young people to get into work, I hope we can always find a place for people who don't fit somehow. Looking back over 20yrs ago it would seem we were more open to risk, in the future if we keep putting hurdles in the way (financially,academically or otherwise) of some groups of people from being able to contribute to society its own potential & capability will be weaker and the outcome would be that everyone's quality of life will be diminished. The Colditz escapees were relentless in their escapes, unwilling to bow down against an oppressive regime.Watching the program I hope that ordinary people may be inspired to be as relentless in their pursuit of a possibility of bringing improvement,diversity,fairness & transparency to future societies that may suffer the threat of oppression.