If you’re into Open Data and in the Toronto area on Monday, you’ll want to catch my fellow Shopifolks Edward Ocampo-Gooding and Daniel Beauchamp at TechTalksTO. They’re going to be talking about how you can (and should) write apps that make use of open data — that’s public information that’s been put online in a form that applications that use, crunch and mash up. It’s out there, it’s free, and it’s there for the public good, so get out there and make the most of it!
Here’s the description of the event:
Wondering what your next big project should be?
Need some ideas for new and innovative features?
Work on something that matters. You’re bright and hungry to sink your teeth into using new tech all the time. Instead of making yet another X, build something for yourself and for your neighbours & city. Do it with open data: public records now online in an easily hackable form.
Edward and Daniel will talk about how making cool and interesting art & tools backed by open data has catapulted Ottawa hackers into the limelight with coverage & support from the City of Ottawa, CBC, newspapers, local radio and TV stations, and a *lot* of citizens. We’ll show you what’s worked for us, what the scene is like and how you can make open data work for you in your city.
Edward Ocampo-Gooding’s awesome titles include Developer Advocate at Shopify (talk to me about APIs and apps) and lead Organizer at Open Data Ottawa (talk to me about APIs and apps). Daniel Beauchamp is a developer at Shopify and one of the core members of Open Data Ottawa. Along with Edward, he has given several talks on open data, and has recently helped organize a hackfest spanning 76 cities worldwide.
I’ve been travelling quite a bit this week.On Monday, I moved to Ottawa for the summer, spending the better part of the day on the road in miserable weather. My first week at Shopify was a short one, running only from Tuesday through Thursday because I spent all of today in transit, flying from Ottawa to Minneapolis by way of Toronto. I took the above photo earlier today on the Ottawa-Toronto leg. (I will have to write about the Shopify new employee handbook sometime; I’ve never seen anything like it at any of my other workplaces, or at any of my friends’ workplaces.)
As I write this, I’m in Minneapolis, getting ready to go to the MinneBar pre-party to catch up with my fellow BarCamp Tour representatives as well as a number of Minneapolis-based friends. The actual MinneBar event takes place tomorrow at Best Buy Headquarters, after which I’m sure some form of mayhem will ensue. I’ve been shooting pictures like mad on my new camera (a Canon PowerShopt ELPH 300 HS, and it’s a pocket dynamo) and along with the photos will a lot of blog entries.
Speaking of blog entries, my article That’s Not OCD, You’re Just a Slacker racked up 79,000 hits on Global Nerdy yesterday and 47,000 today thanks to StumbleUpon. The comments have been quite interesting — the photo on which the article is based might as well be a sort of Rorschach test based on the variety of responses.
The DSM. Look hard enough, and you’ll find something that you’ve got.
Introverts vs. extroverts. North American society favours and rewards extroverts (and yes, a good chunk of my career as a tech evangelist is based on cashing in on this trait, a relative rarity in high tech).
“Normal” vs. “abnormal” behaviour. A tricky thing, and I remember a lecture on cognition where a psych prof told our class that being slightly manic is probably a good trait for living in 21st-century North America.
The importance of “It depends,” the most important phrase in consulting. Without knowing a little bit more about the back story of the medical student in the question, it’s hard to make a good diagnosis. Sometimes there’s little to distinguish someone having a bad day and someone who’s bipolar (it’s also hard to distinguish between “bipolar” and “asshole” at first glance).
Here’s the comment:
I’d be wary of labelling this chap as possessing “obsessive-compulsive traits” without more information than the vignette provides. His lack of delight in partying may simply be because he is relatively introverted, rather than extroverted. Another normal trait.
The problem with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders (The DSM) is that there is no entry for “Normal Personality”.
If the mythical medical student did happen to have OC traits then he was using them constructively. Perhaps this was the point the examiner wished the students to understand, but there is insufficient context to know whether this is true.
As a health professional I would certainly not want to “treat” this apparently well-functioning individual unless his “traits” caused some problem that was not included in the brief description.
One of the things I tried to teach my interns was a healthy skepticism about what was “abnormal” behavior, given the environment and the circumstances of the situation in which it was expressed, and a health skepticism about interpreting elevations on standard personality scales without knowing the patient’s history and background.
If a patient throws a tantrum in a waiting room when told that this Xray has been cancelled again (for the fourth time) this does not necessary mean that the patient is suffering from a personality disorder or impairment of the parts of the brain that regulate behavioural expression. A sick person who is struggling with pain and indignity is entitled to this type of behaviour in the circumstances.
When a group of intern psychologists, but not the intern medicos, get blips on the personality disorder scale of a well-known test it does not mean that the psych group are all deviants who should not be practising psycyology. It probably means that they are good researchers who have been trained to question authority.
I hope the professor who set the test made this kind of thing clear.
Thanks for the comment, Another psychologist! And to all of you, please feel free to keep the discussion going.
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
Of all the random pictures floating about the internet that I’ve run into in the past few weeks, this is the one that really got me:
Here’s the text:
A 23-year old medical student makes lists of all the tasks that he must accomplish each day. He spends hours studying and refuses to go out with his colleagues even when there are no tests on the immediate horizon, preferring to spend his time looking at specimens in the laboratory. He keeps meticulous notes during all his classes and prefers to attend every lecture, not trusting his colleagues to take notes for him. He is doing well in school and has a girlfriend who is also a medical student. Which of the following disorders does this student most likely have?
A. OCD
B. Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder
C. Obsessive-compulsive traits
D. Schizoid personality disorder
E. Paranoid personality disorder
[and written in] F. Fuck you, that sounds totally normal. Asshole.
Even I, Mr. Bon Vivant, have turned down outings to do the computer programming equivalent of “looking at specimens in the laboratory”, and you know what? It paid off in spades.
The medical student in this essay question doesn’t have obsessive-compulsive disorder, it’s just that in the age of slackerdom and ADD, diligence and focus looks like OCD. The question is also a sign of the greatly mistaken notion of the primacy of talent. Yes, talent is important and can give you an edge, but a whole body of studies shows (as does centuries of observation from pundits of all stripes) that in the long run, effort trumps talent. As I should say more often, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
If you’d like to read more about how effort trumps talent, take a look at Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, K. Anderson Ericsson’s The Making of an Expertand this bit of advice from Vince Lombardi:
The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.
As for making lists and preferring to take your own notes, I think they’re the best way to stay organized and to learn.
Finally, the medical student in the question is at least sociable enough to have a girlfriend. The fact that she’s also in med school shouldn’t be a surprise: in university, you’re quite likely to date someone who’s in the same field of study as you.
So bravo, unknown psych student with a blue pen. The authors of that textbook may think you have the wrong answer, but you just passed the only test that matters. I salute you with a filet mignon on a flaming sword!
Just as BarCamp turns conferences upside down, the BarCamp Tour turns conference (or more accurately, unconference) sponsorship upside down. Rather than simply throwing money and logos at a gathering like most sponsors would, the sponsors who make up BarCamp Tour follow the rule of BarCamp that states there are no spectators, only participants. We actively and enthusiastically join in, assist the BarCamp organizers in putting together their events and do what we can to help make each BarCamp we sponsor a success. In return, we get exposure and a chance to meet up face-to-face with people who might want to use our software and services.
BarCamp Tour is made up of five startups:
Batchbook – the social CRM for small businesses and entrepreneurs
Grasshopper – the virtual phone system designed for entrepreneurs
MailChimp – the easy do-it-yourself tool for email newsletters and campaigns
Wufoo– the easiest, fastest way to build forms for your websites
and the company for whom I work, Shopify – helping you build awesome online stores
And here are the faces of BarCamp Tour (minus mine, because we hadn’t yet announced that I’d joined Shopify):
Read About Us in Inc.
BarCamp Tour was recently covered in Inc., in the article Sponsorship as Participation, a title that I believe sums up our philosophy quite nicely.
In the article, Jonathan Kay, Grasshopper’s “Ambassador of Buzz”, explains that BarCamps are great places to find entrepreneurs, small business and other people who are likely customers of our companies’ wares, and how nontraditional gatherings call for nontraditional sponsorship:
"We bought beer afterwards to enable people to network and chat. The feedback we got was unbelievable. We had one on one conversations with 50 or 60 people, living our mission. We hate the idea of traditional sponsorships. Most sponsors pay money and don’t show up—we paid, showed up and participated.”
First up is MinneBar, which takes place in Minneapolis on Saturday, May 7th. Minnebar bills itself as “an (un)conference aimed at getting those in Minnesota’s tech and design communities together to discuss topics that interest them,” and that’s right up our alley. One of the local organizers is my friend Luke Francl, whom I’ve known since The Bubble, back when he was a specialist in lizard image detection algorithms.
A couple of weeks later, we shimmy down to BarCamp Portland, which happens on Friday, May 20th and Saturday, May 21st. They bill their event as “an unconference for the Portland tech community, produced BY the Portland tech community. Interesting topics, cool people, great networking opportunities, wifi, and more! Building an active tech community in Portland, Oregon.”
It created almost 1,400 new businesses, all of whom were entrants in the contest
Those businesses’ Shopify stores took in 67,000 orders
Those orders totalled up to over $3.5 million
And the winning company, DODOcase (they make cool-looking protective cases for tablet computers) claimed the grand prize of $100,000.
This year, we’ve (See? I’m already using “we”! Do I get my bonus now?) upped the ante. How up is upped? This upped:
I will repeat that: over a half-million bucks in prizes.
“What sorts of prizes are we talking here?” you might ask.
I would reply “Lots. The details of all the prizes are on the Build-a-Business Contest site, but what say we just focus on the grand prize for the time being?”
The Grand Prize, Part One: Filthy Lucre
The grand prize – the ultra-mega-super-Kahuna prize, is so good that I’m beginning to wonder why I took a job with Shopify. Maybe I should quit, open an online store, win the contest and walk off with…
…$100,000 in cash! That’s a nice little bonus on top of the money you can make with your store.
The Grand Prize, Part Two: The Big Apple
However, this is no mere raffle – this is the Build-a-Business Contest, and as I said earlier, we’ve upped the ante!
We think that “a hundred large”, while nice, just isn’t enough. We want this prize to be awesome. Like gangsta rapper video awesome. How about we throw in some trips? Say, to…
…New York City! (If you win, I will give you directions to the coolest obscure little rooftop bar, right in the shadow of the Empire State Building.) We’ll cover airfare, hotel and even throw in some “walkin’ around money”. That’s how hard we rock.
The Grand Prize Part Three: Power Lunch
“But what about food, Joey?” you might ask. “And not just food…I need scintillating conversation with my meal!” I would usually respond by saying “Wow, there’s no pleasing you.” But this is the Build-a-Business Contest, and we’re all about pleasing you, so we’ll throw in:
…lunch with Seth Godin! And no, not some silly thing where you meet at a restaurant; that’s for lightweights. We’ll do one better: Seth will cook you lunch himself. And all you thought he did was write great business books!
The Grand Prize, Part Four: V for Victory
“Not enough!” you cry, and I look at you with great incredulity.
“What more do you want? I’ve given you a hundred grand, a trip to New York and lunch with Seth Godin, which by the way, he is cooking himself.”
“But I’ll need help growing my business! Couldn’t you hook me up with an expert on the subject?”
At this point, I’d slap my forehead in frustration. But this is the Build-a-Business Contest, and we’re going to make it rain by giving you…
…a one-hour power session with Gary Vaynerchuk! Gary’s done a killer job helping other people build their businesses with his advice and books like Crush It! and The Thank You Economy, and now you’re going to get an hour of one-on-one time with him. Gratis. You’ll learn more from him in an hour that a lot of people I know learned in four years of business school.
The Grand Prize, Part Five: We’re Bringing Plex-y Back
“But that’s only the East Coast, Joey!” you might say. And under normal circumstances, I’d reply by saying “Dude, isn’t that enough?” But this isn’t normal! This is the Build-a-Business Contest! And we will give you the West Coast too, in the form of:
…a trip to Google! As in California. As in a tour of one of the most amazing high-tech campuses in the world. And we’ll also throw in a personal AdWords consultation to help boost your business.
The Grand Prize, Part Six: The Four-Hour Fix
I stand in front of you, my arms wide, wearing a big open-mouthed smile, awaiting your response.
You say: “Okay, Joey, the Build-a-Business Contest grand prize is sixteen different flavours of awesome. But…”
My smile fades. “But…?”
“Couldn’t you…you know…add one more business guru? I mean, you had a couple on the East Coast, and this is the West Coast and all…”
I compose myself and rub my temples, resisting the urge to admonish you for wanting so much. Why? Because this is the Build-a-Business Contest, and our motto is “Go hard or go home”. And we’re not going home!
“Good. Now here comes the hard part. You have to win the Build-a-Business Contest, and you need to do the following in order to get your shot…”
The Build-a-Business Contest in Four Steps
It’s pretty straightforward, really:
Are you an artisan? Got a line on some killer sauces and spices? Perhaps you sell accordions? If you have an idea for a business in which you sell things online, you’ve got step 1 down.
On to step two…
We’re cool with giving away prizes, but there’s a reason we’re holding the Build-a-Business Contest: we want you to build online stores using the Shopify platform. It was built with making it easy to start and run an online store – in fact, we were our first customers! Take it for a spin…we think you’ll love it.
Once you’ve done that, the next step’s pretty easy:
You can’t win if you don’t enter. So once you’ve got your Shopify-based online store up and running, enter the Build-a-Business Contest!
And finally:
We don’t succeed if you don’t succeed. So we’re committed to helping you take your Shopify business and grow it. As a tech evangelist with Shopify, I’m going to be part of the team that does just that, and you should check in with this blog, because I’ll be posting lots of advice, tips and tricks for getting the most out of Shopify.
And Why are You Still Reading This?
Don’t get me wrong, reading is good. But you should be scurrying over to Shopify’s Build-a-Business Contest site, where you can get all the details about the contest…
And watch this blog, because I’ll be posting regularly about the Shopify platform, the Build-a-Business Contest and more.
If you’ve got a vibrant tech/design/entrepreneur community in your city and they’re holding a BarCamp, we want to help make it even more awesome! 
