TEDxSalem

Ideas worth spreading

2015

Rhea Stadick: Bringing Humanity to Software Development

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Some­times the only thing stand­ing in the way of suc­cess is doubt, accord­ing to Rhea Stadick, soft­ware devel­op­er and orga­ni­za­tion­al coach at Intel. “Just assump­tions that it can’t hap­pen, it won’t hap­pen, or there’s a rule against it,” she says.

There’s a lot less in your way than you think, she says, if you just have the courage to try some­thing new.

For her TED talk, Stadick will dis­cuss her efforts to bring a new man­age­ment approach to soft­ware, one that focus­es more on col­lab­o­ra­tion, adapt­abil­i­ty and inno­va­tion rather than con­for­mi­ty, dead­lines and “deliv­er­ables.” One that encour­ages “out-of-the-box” think­ing. It’s called Agile Devel­op­ment, and it promis­es not only bet­ter pro­grams for end users, but a bet­ter life for pro­gram­mers.

“It’s about bring­ing human­i­ty to the work­place,” says Stadick, sit­ting in her team room at Intel’s Jones Farm cam­pus, where she over­sees the company’s efforts to imple­ment Agile man­age­ment strate­gies. It seems espe­cial­ly odd to see robots posi­tioned around her as she says this. But those robots – in essence stands with mon­i­tor screens – help to mim­ic face-to-face meet­ings with pro­gram­mers who may be in oth­er coun­tries, part of Agile’s empha­sis on direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion. In and around the room there is a 3‑D print­er, couch­es, and a large white­board with var­i­ous Post-It notes on it, and ideas scrib­bled across its sur­face. A large wall-size win­dow opens to trees, leaves wav­ing in the wind.

It’s a breath of fresh air for pro­gram­mers, to have such an open space that encour­ages indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and cre­ative prob­lem-solv­ing.

And it’s a stark con­trast to the tra­di­tion­al­ly heavy-hand­ed, bureau­crat­ic and par­ti­tioned approach to soft­ware that defined the indus­try in the past, an approach infa­mous­ly por­trayed in the 1999 movie Office Space. Think exas­per­at­ed engi­neers — “I am good at deal­ing with peo­ple!! Can’t you under­stand that?!” – sep­a­rat­ing devel­op­ers from the company’s clients. Think Bill Lum­bergh, hand­ing out week­end work and enforc­ing cov­er sheets for TPS reports. Think Peter Gib­bons, drown­ing in a sea of cubi­cles every morn­ing, doing just enough work to not get has­sled.The Old Way

“Six-by-six cubi­cles are not nec­es­sar­i­ly what humans are designed to do,” Stadick says.

As a new soft­ware hire 10 years ago, she saw first­hand the frus­tra­tions of just cor­rect­ing defects instead of pre­vent­ing them, and spend­ing “crazy hours” on the job and at home, just to achieve the same aver­age suc­cess rate, nev­er bet­ter.

“I saw how painful some of the ways we ran projects and teams were for peo­ple,” she says.

Today, with Agile Devel­op­ment, Stadick is hop­ing to dri­ve change not just at Intel, but across the indus­try.  Her suc­cess could not only rev­o­lu­tion­ize the way we lead our projects, but also the way we lead our lives.

There are still some obsta­cles, she con­cedes, not sur­pris­ing when try­ing to uproot an assem­bly-line man­age­ment strat­e­gy that hear­kens back to the Model‑T. But Stadick has faith in her team.

“We work with the some of the most intel­li­gent peo­ple in the world,” she says.

“We can do pret­ty amaz­ing things; there’s not a lot of things hold­ing us back.”

Vickie Hardin Woods: “Hi! Do you like pie?”

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Ac6-12-2015cord­ing to Vick­ie Hardin Woods, “if you’re going to give a gift, [a pie] is about the right gift.”

“If you give some­thing that is too valu­able, then the per­son feels oblig­ed to give some­thing back,” she said. “But you also want it to have enough effort and val­ue” to show that you care.

Two years ago Woods was inspired to per­fect the gift of giv­ing, one day at a time, with a lit­tle help from her oven. Over the course of a 365-day peri­od, begin­ning with a lemon meringue, she baked one fresh pie each day from scratch and deliv­ered it, unso­licit­ed, to friends, neigh­bors and even­tu­al­ly even com­plete strangers. She gained noto­ri­ety in local news by pho­tograph­ing each pie and its smil­ing, occa­sion­al­ly dis­ori­ent­ed recip­i­ent as part of her blog.

For her TEDx talk, Woods will dis­cuss how sur­pris­ing peo­ple with pie gave her both a deep­er under­stand­ing of com­mu­ni­ty, and insight into her own sense of pur­pose after retir­ing from a 30-year career in local gov­ern­ment.

A pie-a-day blog – Seems daunt­ing, but is it real­ly? Here are some key ingre­di­ents, and tips to make yours a smash hit at your next ran­dom encounter…

What you would need:

  • (137) dif­fer­ent pie recipes
  • Fresh, local, whole­some organ­ic ingre­di­ents
  • A Tum­blr blog
  • Be retired
  • Option­al: (5) grand­chil­dren to occa­sion­al­ly help deliv­er pies.

Break the ice. “That was on many days the hard­est thing I had to do,” she said, “to find some­body, and then approach them and give them the pie.” It’s impor­tant to estab­lish a con­nec­tion, even if it’s brief, she said.

“You can’t just walk up to a stranger and say, ‘Here’s a pie.’ You have to build some sort of rela­tion­ship, no mat­ter how short it is.”

Some were more recep­tive than oth­ers, she said. Some­times small talk would not be enough for a skep­ti­cal stranger; more often than not, though, Woods’ pie pitch would find a will­ing par­tic­i­pant.

“There’s some­thing about break­ing through that bar­ri­er,” she said. “I don’t know how many times I had peo­ple say to me, ‘This is the best thing that’s hap­pened to me today!”

Fail­ures hap­pen. “Usu­al­ly if [a pie] didn’t turn out, I fig­ured it was me, not the pie,” Woods said. She remem­bered a par­tic­u­lar pecan pie she tried to show off at a cook­ing class she was tak­ing at Carl’s Cui­sine on Chemeke­ta St. In a hur­ry, she had failed to give the pie enough time to set. “I opened up the car­ri­er and there’s this gooey mess all over the bot­tom.”

Blend until ingre­di­ents come togeth­er. Woods sees pie giv­ing as “less as grat­i­tude than just a gift, free of all encum­brances, grace,” she said. It took rough­ly a month to work up the nerve to approach her first stranger, she said. But the reward of mak­ing peo­ple hap­py made the chal­lenge worth­while for her.

“I got the sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing that I touched someone’s life,” she said.

For Woods, pie pro­vid­ed struc­ture to a life in tran­si­tion. It forced her to get out into the world. And in hand­ing home-baked good­ness to peo­ple some­times far from their home, she brought the world a lit­tle clos­er to hers.

“Each pie is its own jour­ney,” she said, from her kitchen to points unknown, and the sto­ries told and expe­ri­enced in between.

“That’s what life is about, our sto­ries.”

 

– To see Vick­ie Hardin Woods and oth­er TEDx Salem 2015 speak­ers, get your tick­ets here.

 

World domination one TEDxSalem at a time

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TEDxSalem 2013
Par­tic­i­pants did­n’t know what to expect dur­ing the first TEDxSalem, but they left feel­ing con­nect­ed, ener­gized.

Salem expe­ri­enced its first TEDx in 2013, when orga­niz­ers Car­lee Wright and Bri­an Hart launched the event with 14 talks, 100 par­tic­i­pants and a whole lot of faith.

“It was a first for us, and it was a first for all of them as well. They didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know what to expect, and they came ready to expe­ri­ence it,” Wright said.

For her, that day was a blur of run­ning around and answer­ing ques­tions. Hart han­dled the flow back­stage, and he could hear laugh­ter from the auidence and feel the crowd’s ener­gy dur­ing the speak­ers and recess when audi­ence mem­bers became active par­tic­i­pants in the exchange of ideas.

“You can feel it when stuff is real­ly going well, and it’s kind of a mag­i­cal day,” he said.

“We were like, ‘This is exact­ly what we want­ed.’”

It wasn’t until Wright saw the pho­tos and videos from the event that she appre­ci­at­ed the scope of what they had accom­plished. She hoped that peo­ple would step out of their bub­ble and expe­ri­ence some­thing new. The pho­tos showed peo­ple engag­ing with one anoth­er and once strangers chat­ting away.

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In its sec­ond year, TEDxSalem grew to 300 par­tic­i­pants and includ­ed extras such as a spe­cial mes­sage record­ed by AJ Jacobs, known for the TED Talk “The world’s largest fam­i­ly reunion,” just for the Salem audi­ence.

 

Now the team behind TEDxSalem is ramp­ing up for its third event Sat­ur­day, Oct. 3, this time at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter with 13 speak­ers and pos­si­bly 500 or more par­tic­i­pants.

The first two events helped lay the foun­da­tion, and now orga­niz­ers have turned their focus to mak­ing it bet­ter and bet­ter. This year, they are part­ner­ing with Enlight­ened The­atrics, a Salem the­ater com­pa­ny, to offer a unique, hybrid per­for­mance as a lit­tle some­thing extra. Hart was mum on the details because he didn’t want to ruin the sur­prise.

Look­ing ahead, both Hart and Wright would love to bring more high-pro­file speak­ers to Salem. Wright said she wouldn’t mind hear­ing from author Neil Gaiman or fil­mak­er Tim Bur­ton if they hap­pen to be read­ing. Hart  wants the big game-chang­ers in a par­tic­u­lar field, such as the ones lead­ing devel­op­ments in brain sci­ence or tech­nol­o­gy.

At the same time, it’s essen­tial to keep spots for local speak­ers, too, he said. They also want to devel­op new ways to expe­ri­ence TEDx and share those ideas with oth­er com­mu­ni­ties.

The end goal? World dom­i­na­tion, of course.

“Our goal is not just to be one of the pre­miere events in Ore­gon,” Hart said, “but the world.”

Give it anoth­er three years. There is no telling where TEDxSalem might lead.

Don’t miss the ear­ly bird tick­et price for this year’s TEDxSalem:

Get $10 off the tick­et price if you order before June 18th at https://tedxsalem2015.eventbrite.com. After that tick­ets are avail­able for $50 for gen­er­al admis­sion and $40 for stu­dents. One tick­et includes a full day of talks, enter­tain­ment, recess activ­i­ties, swag, snacks, lunch and an after-par­ty.

 

Happy New Year…Save the Date!

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TEDxSalem Buttons
TEDxSalem But­tons

Hap­py New Year!

A great deal of thought is put into every aspect of TEDxSalem, from the speak­ers to the loca­tion, the recess activ­i­ties to the food served. One of the most excit­ing aspects of plan­ning our event each year is pick­ing a theme. But sur­pris­ing­ly, it is not always as easy as it sounds.

The con­cept of theme is some­thing in the back of our minds all year round. We want an idea that is focused but open, unique but under­stand­able. When get­ting down to busi­ness for select­ing this year’s theme, we talked about it for days. Back and forth, a few ideas here and there. A thought ran­dom­ly in a mes­sage. A note scrib­bled in the mid­dle of the night.

TEDxSalem theme graphics by Von Glitschka
Past TEDxSalem theme graph­ics by Von Glitsch­ka www.vonglitschka.com

As my co-cura­tor Bri­an Hart will tell you, the themes for our first two events seemed to come to us pret­ty easy, but this year it was hard to find the right word for TEDxSalem 2015.

“We want some­thing that push­es bound­aries, some­thing that doesn’t sound too com­mon, but is instant­ly rec­og­niz­able and gets you in the right mind­set,” he said.

Sit­ting at the Gov Cup, where the mag­ic hap­pens, bounc­ing ideas off one anoth­er. The con­cept of courage was brought up, but courage just did­n’t have the right ‘oompfh.’

Then we start­ing brain­storm­ing. It went some­thing like this…

Car­lee: brave, brav­ery, courage, fear­less, adven­tur­ous…

Bri­an: That’s it! FEARLESS!!

After the ini­tial excite­ment sub­sided, we thought about it fur­ther to make sure it was indeed the right word — the right theme.

“It passed every test,” said Bri­an. “I imme­di­ate­ly thought the ques­tion: ‘What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?’ I think about this ques­tion often and I try to live life as if I could not fail at any­thing I want­ed to accom­plish. Way back, when we were cave­men and women, our fight or flight instincts saved our lives, but now a lot of our fear is hold­ing us back from our true poten­tial. I thought about how fear­less our speak­ers are for get­ting on stage and shar­ing their idea worth spread­ing, how our plan­ning team and all of our vol­un­teers are fear­less, and how our atten­dees are fear­less leav­ing their inhi­bi­tions at the door and look­ing for­ward to what the day will bring.”

It takes courage to be fear­less, but being fear­less holds some­thing a lit­tle more than just courage. It is that extra step, that abil­i­ty to face any­thing, to take on the most dif­fi­cult sub­ject or task with a cer­tain ener­gy.

Be fear­less.

And mark your cal­en­dar. We look for­ward to see­ing you on Octo­ber 3 at TEDxSalem 2015.