Chet Hendrickson & Ron Jefferies

User groups with lots to say, interviews and more, no way, sharing great ideas in the tech community, fascinating conversations, a plethora of information, find out for yourself today at uktastic.com. All right, great. So, one second. This is going to be a fun one. Hi, it’s Mike with Uktastic. I’m at SCNA 2013, and I’m sitting down with Chet Hendrickson and Ron Jeffries. Did I say that in the right order? I don’t know. Okay, so we’ll find out in a second, but they give a talk about the nature of software development, and also we’re on the panel yesterday about, oh, what was the panel? On software quality. So, thank you very much for taking the time to sit down with me. Would you pronounce your name and your company again, please? Uktastic. Uktastic. That’s interesting. I wouldn’t have guessed that. No, a lot of people just say Uktastic, which is fine, as long as you say it. I don’t really care. I’m just happy that anybody’s even thinking about it. But we do interviews with people who are doing interesting things in the software development community, and I think you guys know who this is. I think you guys are known for one or two things that are interesting, and certainly your talk on software here at the end of SCNA, one of the things I had to say I kind of got a kick out of was the simplicity of your images. Everybody else tries to make these really super fancy typography slides, whereas to convey the information, it was simple drawings that could be… clearly understood and were not very… Not very artistic or… Not really very good. Not really not good. But it reminded me of Sarah Gray, who I just interviewed, when she talked about Harold and the Purple Crayon, that you can use simple imagery metaphors to convey a lot of information without getting bogged down in noise. Is this something that you… Well, tell us a little bit more about your thoughts on metaphor. Well, that’s… Now I’m messed up. But I just was curious, is this something that you’ve been using for a long time? It actually is. Ron bought a tablet PC, I don’t know, eight or ten years ago, and we started doing talks with just him drawing. Mostly little graphs. Little graphs. If you do good, it’ll go up, and if you do bad, it’ll go down. That sort of thing. About that. And so, and eventually I bought one and didn’t use it as much as Ron, and it sort of evolved until now we do stuff on the iPad using a tool called Paper, which allows you to draw very simple things. So it’s a very nice little product. I wish we’d got some kind of kickback when we mentioned their name. It would be cool. But it’s a simple little drawing tool that works really well in this environment because there’s not much to it. You pick a color, you draw, as opposed to all kinds of stuff that is standard drawing. Which that becomes, well, now I have to learn this tool, and it’s crazy, and it’s confusing. Well, but we are, as you see with the pictures, you’re still left with the fact that I can’t draw very well, which is why the pictures are all so simple, really. But it’s enough. I would really probably draw them simply even if I were able to draw something that looked real. Because the idea is to catch attention. Illuminate the idea, not have people stare at it the way they would stare at great art and not listen to us, because the point is perhaps to listen to the words as well as to see the pictures. And our main purpose in giving a talk is to entertain ourselves. It’s up to the audience to entertain themselves. And so we enjoy having these funny little pictures and saying funny little things about them. And in the way you did your presentation, it was back and forth and back and forth. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody ping pong a presentation quite like that. We’ve been giving presentations about this kind of subject. I have actually the poster for the first one we gave in 1998. So we’ve been doing this quite a lot. Not this talk, but giving presentations together for 15 years. And so we have developed a style which kind of works for us. And oddly enough, this is sort of how. How we work anyway. It turns out, for example, we were coming back from the Netherlands and they interview you on the way out of the country to see if you’re a terrorist or something. And they asked Chet if we were traveling together and he said yes and so we came up. And the guy would ask us a question and one of us would start the answer and the other would finish the sentence. And he said, well, why are you here? And he said, well, we said we were there to teach a class. And he said, well, what are you? I said, well, we’re business partners. We’re partners, he said. I said, business partners? And he said, what kind of partners are you? And we kind of tried to tell him we were business partners. So we kept doing this ping pong back and forth while we were being interviewed. And at the end of the thing he said, I think I know what kind of partners you are. So apparently we’re too good at it. So the next time we went to the Netherlands we took our wives. And hoped to meet the same guy. In hopes of saying, look, we have beards. We haven’t done it for a long time. We tend to finish each other’s sentences. And it works for us and we hope it works for the audience. Yeah, and it seemed to definitely be well received. And just continuing on with the images, I just wonder if with some of the – in a lot of the talks I’ve observed people obsessing over typography and creating these very – what they think are professional looking where really what I think it is is the message is what – defines a professional talk and a professional communication. Do you see going to other people’s presentations where they have very elaborate fonts, colors? I think – Here’s an example of our typography if you can see that. This title is intentionally left blank? Yeah. You can run it in my hand right now. Yes. You know, we intentionally don’t do that. I suppose, you know, I would think – you probably think we’re not very good at doing those things. But if we spend a little bit of time, I’m sure we could do as well as everyone else does. We tried various tools. We did some stuff in Prezi years ago to discover that, you know, when you do that, everyone throws up at the – sometime during your presentation. Not because of what we were saying, because of the tool. The tool. And so we most – Oh, the one that spins around. Spins around. Yeah, it’s really cool. Yes, you know. It’s cool. It’s like an e-ride at Disney World. And so we have gone to this style. Mostly because I believe – I believe that we’ve learned long ago that the movement and the words convey the story. We come out of the old XP small talk world where CRC was used. The card – the class responsibility collaboration technique. And, you know, we were taught to do CRC by – Ken Beck, who was one of its inventors. If you’ve ever learned it, have you ever done this technique? I’ve – when I was going through Agile, I was learning – Ken doesn’t write on the cards. Yeah. The cards are blank. Really? And he just moves them around and talks about them. Because the words don’t matter. It’s what you say and what’s going on. And after a while, you know that this one, that’s the employee over there. It doesn’t say anything, but it’s the employee. And that one is the department, or whatever the relationship is. And so it’s the motion that gets the – Yeah. That’s the employee. Yeah. Yeah. That’s the employee. Yeah. Yeah. That’s the employee. Yeah. That’s the employee. So I think we kind of pick that up. To the point where, in the middle of the conversation, when it becomes clear that there should be another object, people will point to a blank space and say, “This guy right here.” Right. Because everybody’s got it in their head, and it’s clear that the guy that you’re talking about should be in this hole where there isn’t any object. So you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And you’re trying to get an idea into people’s heads. And the beautiful picture doesn’t necessarily do that. If it’s too good looking, people will just look at it and be all taken over. And people are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. Now, we did do a talk one time where the slide was all done with pictures of cats, and we were talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. People are talking about the slide. They’re talking about the slide. talk about as we went along. So those are like your reference more like your notes? Because people like to have something. Oh, that they can walk away with. That they can walk away with, you know, and mostly we say stuff that’s in them. But we do it live because it’s that that we think generates the knowledge. If you’re just standing there talking about the slide, the people check out. But if you’re there talking to them and you’re using some tool to help you then visualize what it is you’re saying, that works better. And the more that’s done in the moment, we think that the better it is. And so as you described it, you’ve been doing talks for over 15 years. As far as is the landscape of conferences and big technical get-togethers to discuss our industry, do you have anything that you’ve seen that’s changed in particular that either for the better or for worse? Yeah. The big conferences we’re finding more and more boring. Not because of the many beginners who always show up because there’s always new people coming into the field and that’s fine. But because they have become so commercialized and so many of the ideas are canned, you know, you must do this and follow this rule and use this tool and so many things like that, that we find that the content is mostly not interesting to us. And we think almost harmful to many of the people who show up. There’s a huge number of people who are there from a big enterprise because they want to have a flag that says they’re agile and they don’t have no intention or ability to do it or at least have no understanding and probably no ability to do it. So we’re trying to come to smaller conferences like this one because there you can talk to people and they’re interesting and they’re more full of people who are really excited about doing stuff. Now, I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting. I don’t know whether I believe this or not, but I have a feeling that those conferences are going to be mostly developer conferences, that it’s going to be difficult to find a conference that isn’t heavy in the developers that we find exciting.