Improving Visual Communication for Remote Management

The world feels like a different place from just a couple weeks ago, but it's not. The United States is still in the same place it has been for a long time, if you're a minority. Randy and Don discuss the Black Lives Matter movement, police accountability, racism, privilege, guilt, and where they might fit in to not being part of the problem.

Right before the COVID pandemic hit, Randy was asked to take on the management of two new teams, which changed his typical role of manager-developer to strictly people management, meetings, and project tracking. Don and Randy discuss the change as it affected Randy and what he thinks is the most important factors for folks in the same boat.

Don and Randy continue their discussion about the business plans in the Big Idea Gator Business Plan Competition, this time about the best entries and how the competition played out. Coconuts!

Don brings in a few examples from an upcoming Big Idea Gator Business Plan Competition in which he's playing the role of a judge. We discuss the importance of good writing, identifying the problem, and setting reasonable goals and metrics to give folks the notion you have some idea what you're doing. In Part 1, we discuss the weakest entries before tackling the better ones in Part 2.

Don and Randy talk about what's been going on with the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has affected their firms, jobs, and side projects. What does it mean to talk to folks under your wing? What kind of leadership does it take when the real world seems out of your control?

Don asked Randy about what he's working on, lately, and Randy exclaimed, "nothing fun," which actually turns out not to be true. Randy details the additional mix of people, communication, and risk management around mature application development and it becomes the setting for a larger-picture discussion on how things change with app dev as you age.

Randy is making efforts to improve the communication of visual examples via remote video meetings. We discuss his first attempt to achieve online whiteboarding using a Macbook Pro, a Wacom One tablet, and a Google Jamboard.

In Don's role as CTO for AspirEDU, he has a number of security audits posed by potential customers and increasing complexity around third-party hosts. Randy keeps wanting to talk about the XFL (Part 2).

Randy pitches to Don an approach for a CMS project and then rifs on the cool new toy he recently purchased for the kitchen: A sous vide cooking device.