Celebrating milestones

Developing software can be very stressful. Development cycles are getting shorter and management expect frequent deliveries. As a result, the teams are under constant pressure to provide results. When the results are constantly delivered, it looks obvious to the management.

But it is not obvious.....

And management should make the efforts to show gratitude and to ease the pressure. One of the things that can be done is to celebrate when major mile-stones are met.

In schema, we are celebrating whenever we release a new version of a product (Every 4 month).

We invite all the workers (Development teams, QA, Marketing, Technology teams, GUI design and Documentation) to a half day event. The event includes a fun part and than a dinner/lunch in a restaurant. The celebrations are part of the culture and are long remembered.

Here is a list of events that we already done:

1. Cocktail making course in a professional bar school


2. Playing Billiard


3. Kart racing


4. Cooking courses (Italian, Sushi, French)


5. Movie


6. Bowling

Today we celebrated the first release of our Mentor Server. We watch the movie National Treasure: Book of Secrets in the Cinema-City. Then we ate in the VIP room at Black Bar 'n' Burger.

I believe that software development should be fun. I suggest to celebrate whenever you can.

Creative capitalism

On January 24th, Bill Gates called for new "creative capitalism" for businesses to help stamp out global poverty and diseases. He suggests that corporations should add a mission of solving the problems of the poor world to the mission of making profits.Is this a good solution for the problem? Is it in the hands of corporations?I believe that this is a naive approach... Most of the poor countries don't even try to play the capitalist game. Most of the time, it is a cultural problem that cause those countries to be left behind. And it results in billions of poor citizens.The solution is to change the culture of those countries and give them tools to manage their economics in better ways. Till this is done, the corporations generosity will not get in to the pockets of the poor.This is a mission for governments and for world leaders. But without the good will of the poor countries, nothing can be done. Especially not by corporations.

Desktop Tower Defense 1.5 - pure fun

Sometimes I need some time-killer. I feel that I need to have some fun without any meaning. It is a mode where I don't want to read books, magazines or news. No social networking, blogs or TV. No small talk, friends or family.
Just put your brain in neutral and enjoy a simple casual game.
I have a perfect game for this purpose- Desktop Tower Defense 1.5. Since I am still fighting a jet-leg, I used it to kill several hours yesterday.
It is fun, fun, fun.....
But be careful:
IT IS ADDICTIVE!

p.s.
Another game from this family: ZUMA
Enjoy :-)

What is the meaning of Blogous?

What is the meaning of Blogous?


Well.... It all started when my 5 years old boy (Ofri) was asked what he would like as a present for his birthday. After exploring the options, he said "Blogous". It took us some time to figure it out. He tried to say Globous - the hebrew word for Globe (גלובוס).


We were very proud that this was his request. It is much better than any other plastic gifts that are filling his room. And, it is very useful to show him the places that I am traveling to.
This year I have been at USA, Canada, Italy, Finland and Turkey.


I belive it is a great name for a blog. It will remind me that mistakes are ok. Sometimes it can lead to inovation.

And, it will remind me how cute is my son....