A word about 'users'

When Zen was first presented to the unsuspecting public it was at a conference for users of a Unisys technology and my particular contribution was billed as being from a 'User. It was at this point that I began to realise that 'User', a word we use to describe our customers, is a term of abuse. To me the word 'User' brings to mind two images, firstly that of a junkie - a drug user;











...and secondly, as one of those people we build systems for who cannot make up their minds what they want and who act as if they have just had a lobotomy;

That's right, the people who drive us berserk with their constant demands, their lack of foresight, rant, rant, rant! The following photograph was once put up on the department door to try and discourage some of these traits;

Copyright

But the good news was, at least for me, that the presentation was well received, in fact requests followed to rerun it four or five times during the mid 1990’s, in Birmingham (the one where they have strange accents, oh I see, well OK the one in the UK), Nice, Helsinki, Gothenburg and Copenhagen. This became the 'Zen World Tour' and led to one of the reasons behind these writings, more and more people wanted to hear the original presentation and I had a day job to do!

Now for the bad news, the organizers of one of the conferences I was scheduled to present at was concerned that, 'if it went well' ('if indeed!) the audience would expect a similar style session in the future, and so was born;

ZEN II
-The Son of Zen -3D
- This time it’s personal
- In software no one can hear you scream
- Just when you thought it was safe to develop software

(all done to the theme tune to Jaws – do-do do-do do-dododododo)

ZEN II was really the bits leftover from the original presentation, but also included some of the more outlandish stories from earlier times. As the amount of material grew a number of friends and colleagues persuaded me to collect my thoughts in a more structured way and' WRITE IT DOWN!'

'WRITE IT DOWN!' was not going to be as simple as it seems, you see the original Zen (ZEN I) was multimedia and involved images, text, sound, morphing, video and animation together with a huge number of 'props' such as a bucket with 100 table tennis balls in it (see Downsizing for an explanation of this particular image). So, would it be possible to recreate a true multimedia presentation in writing? I don't know, we'll have to wait and see «««GOTO # 247 FOR DISCUSSION ON INTERRUPTS

First; In amongst these random ramblings I have littered some fundamental rules, some axioms for a better life, here is the first;

W.C.FIELD'S FIRST RULE OF ACTING - "Never work with children or animals".
THORPE'S FIRST AMENDMENT TO W.C.FIELD'S FIRST RULE;
THE FIRST RULE OF PRESENTING - "Never work with children or animals OR multimedia!"

Why? Well, multimedia in presentations deliberately develop problems immediately prior to the scheduled start time, they run out of memory; they develop obscure graphics problems, and generally misbehave. In fact the use of technology in presentations should be used as a bench marking procedure for robustness.

A_Word_About_Copyright

I have to be honest, the Zen presentations were not the first I had ever done, in fact over the years I have given quite a few. Over those years a good friend of mine Colin McGavin from Christchurch, New Zealand, had used some of the ideas I had put forward. Can you imagine my surprise when I first saw a diagram I had created being used in another context on another continent? It is to keep Colin under control that I now use the copyright symbol wherever possible;

Terence Thorpe

End_A_Word_About_Copyright

In the beginning

HOW DID ALL THIS START ANYWAY?

"Here comes the sun" - The Beatles

The first question any sane person would ask when looking at this blog is 'why?' Why would anyone want to put together such a random collection of thoughts and stories? Well, it is said that some tales grow in the telling, and this is certainly an example of one that has. But, you may ask, if this is a 'tale' then are the stories true? Well although some would describe them as apocryphal I would not, mainly because I didn’t know what apocryphal means;

apocryphal (a'pokrifal), a and sb. A. adj. Of doubtful authenticity; spurious, fictitious, false, fabulous, mythical.

“Fabulous”, “mythical”, maybe this is apocryphal after all, although in my experience, real events often turn out to be stranger than fiction, but perhaps these things only happen to me, perhaps I'm unique, - I don't thing so!

So, where did this 'tale' begin, was it round the campfire, or while 'riding the range? No, it started in a bar. Let me explain, have you ever been away from home on a seminar or training course, or on some assignment. And while you were away, did you go to a bar, or pub, or restaurant, or cafe with some colleagues, other Systems professionals? If you did then at some point in the evening, or early in the morning (usually well past one a.m.), having consumed the required amount of beer, or wine or vodka, you discover that you can solve all the worlds IT problems. The trouble is that you discover that you’ve forgotten all the solutions the following morning. Not to be beaten, you vow that the next time you will write it all down, and you do, the next time you carefully document all those carefully constructed solutions. But there is a problem, and the problem is that you discover the next morning that you cannot make head nor tail of the random scribbling you have found in your pocket. One reason for this is that all writing equipment in bars and restaurants is designed to soak up spilt liquids; you can peel the printed surface off a beer mat but your writing will be ineligible. Napkins, tablecloths, they all exhibit the same problems. A solution would be to have peel off beer mats – the “peel it ©” (please take note 3m).

This particular event that started this was a conference in Seville, for some strange reason this city is actually pronounced Seviyha, and then there is Barthelona. Given that 332 million people speak Spanish, that’s an awful lot of people with a pronunciation impediment, and then there’s Birmingham. The particular bar in question was called the Forum, and I spent so much time there over a week that there was a rumour going around that I had bought it. I hadn't, but I had invested a considerable number of Pesetas on the owner's future liquidity.

So it was that it eventually happened. I found that the morning after a particularly productive 'solve all the world's problems' discussion I was able to remember the previous night's solutions. As you may expect, the conversation had not been totally serious, in fact it was hysterical.

A few days after the momentous occasion in the Forum Bar I was asked if I would like to give a presentation at a future conference. 'Why not' I thought, after all I could now share my new found wisdom with others. But how would I describe this presentation, 'Discussions in a Bar', 'A Funny Thing Happened to me at the Forum', 'Anarchy in the IT.', 'A Hitchhikers Guide to Systems', or 'The Thoughts of Terence Thorpe'. What I needed was a title which gave the audience some advance warning of the strange ideas which were going to be presented, and also the way in which this was going to be done. In the end the title picked itself, it had to be 'Zen and the Art of....'

And so 'Zen and the Art of Software Development' was born, and six months later saw the light of day in front of a small audience in Geneva. To say I was nervous about the reaction would be a gross understatement, I was petrified and wondered why on earth I had volunteered to do this, and having volunteered why didn't I decide on a more conventional subject; 'A User's Experience of CASE Tools' or 'The Design of Large Scale Systems' or something like that, a presentation that would not be risky, where people could nod wisely (or even nod while they were sleeping) and applaud politely at the end. Instead I had created a monster, no one would like it, it was too controversial, it questioned current views, and worst of all - it was supposed to be funny! In Geneva! In Switzerland! At a computer conference!