Playtime in New York

So.... my time in New York has come to an end for now....

Between Christmas and now I did have a little bit of time to play though in New York.

Tim came out for the Martin Luther King long weekend which was awesome. Here's some of what we got up too...

Hung out in a very frozen Central Park...

Ate some yummy vietnamese food at OBao in New York...

Hung out in Bryant Park drinking Champagne watching the ice skating....

Wandered past the Rockefeller Centre....

And went to a Rangers Ice Hockey game and the magnificent Madison Square Garden...

I also went to a new exercise class that they do at the gym I went to in New  York called Glee Club! You dance... and you sing.... We learnt the dance moves to Thriller. I'm sure that will come in handy one day.
It was pretty fun. It was pretty much exactly like the show, some nightmare broadway/diva types, some flamboyant guys and a few more round but super keen ladies (i.e. me). This is the video of the class...
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4385954/glee-club-workout?r_src=ramp

Also my lovely team while in New York threw me a wicked leaving party. I was presented with this spangly tiara, we ate lots of yummy Italian food and then proceeded to ride a mechanical bull.... I still have the bruise to prove it and it's been a week! A great send off.


And last but not least I've been meaning to get a picture of this for ages.... we my new found paparazzi skills this is what I mostly look like now...

Christmas and New Years in the UK

So I spent just over a week back in the UK, mostly in Devon but we spent New Years Eve in London.

Wonderfully we got into the UK in between the snow storms, and it was actually our most on-time arrival in Devon from the US so far. Go Figure. We even packed an extra carry-on full of clothes thinking that it was highly likely that we would lose our luggage. Didn't happen thankfully.

The first few days were pretty busy. We didn't get to Devon until the 23rd December. We had our obligatory pasty at Paddington train station in London before standing (!) all the way down to Devon on the train. Got to love British Rail and the holidays, and to think that they are putting UP the fares. Madness.

First up on arrival to a VERY snowy England was the Simmons' Family Christmas Meal. Me, Tim, my brother, step-mum and my Dad's side of the family. Always great to see everyone even if it is only once a year.

Tim and I at my family's house in Devon and Christmas Day

Christmas Eve was spent at the bar that my brother Mike works in at the moment. Good grub there thanks bro and then in the Bell.
Christmas day was spent at Mums. Usual strange (but awesome) traditions of Champagne in the morning, Whiskey and Pork Pies (for Ken's Midland roots), presents, walk to the pub (which we skipped this year... ), much napping and then a turkey Christmas dinner.

Tim and my brother Mike during Christmas Dinner

My big present this year was a DSLR Canon Rebel T1i Camera from Tim and my Mum. It's awesome. I've been wanting a fancy camera for a while now and Tim has been making me put it off so that he can get me one for Christmas. I did, admittedly become a member of the paparazzi though over my time in the UK. I decided that I was determined to catch all the things that happen over Christmas that we just take as "normal" but then one day realise that we have no pictures of. I'm definitely having fun with it though. So far I'm still just trying to figure out what all the settings mean, but its such a nice camera sometimes nice ones just happen without me even trying. I'm all about black and white and portrait people photos at the moment. Watch this space for my new hobby!

Usually on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas), my brother and I go surfing. Last year we dragged Tim along too. Although this year we broke our reasonably long running tradition. There was snow on the ground and Mike had the flu... didn't seem like our most sensible idea ever. Although we did go for a nice walk on the beach instead. I really love going down to the sea in Devon. It's a beautiful part of the world if you ever get the chance to visit it you should. This does mean though that I haven't been surfing for a year and a half. Boo. Hawaii in April should make up for it!

Mum, Ken, Mike and Tim on Saunton Sands

Tim and I walking on Saunton Sands

Then we headed off to my Dad's for dinner. This has turned into quite the feast of lots of our favourite food and often results in us being pretty hammered... No less than 8 courses later, fun time was had by all.

Dad's flat for Boxing day dinner

The rest of the time in Devon was spent mostly lazing around, eating and of course, included the obligatory trip to Squires Fish and Chip shop and a trip to the Thatch for a pint. I got to drive my old car for the day too! So happy, haven't driven for at least a year and in my own little car too. Brilliant. Even with My Dad, Tim and Mike crammed into my little Fiesta. Good times.

Squires Fish and Chip Shop in Braunton

The Thatch Pub, Croyde

Dad and Mike looking over Croyde Beach

Our last night in Devon was spent in our local at The Bell for the quiz night. We weren't particularly good but it was great that for the first time in years my 3 childhood friends were all in the same place at the same time. Really great to see them, even if the first thing Neil said to me after hugging me was "Wow your accent has changed" and then walked off. Hmmmm. I guess it had to happen at some stage.

Tim and I then left Devon to spend New Years in London where we were to be joined by the lovely Miss Danielle. The very helpfully do lots of railworks on the route from Devon to London in between Christmas and New Year so we persuaded Mum to drive us up to London for a much more eventful than liked journey. Half way along the M4 motorway we had a puncture. Nightmare. Tim changed his first ever car tyre right there on the edge of the motorway! Eventually we made it to my cousin Jasper's house to meet his new addition baby Thorin.
Then Tim and I got a cab to our hotel to meet Danielle. After much of a cluster later, someone had already checked in as me and taken our room and then the next room they gave us already had someone in it, sigh. Much annoyance later we had a room in the hotel opposite Danielle.

Tim and Danielle outside Tim's favourite coffee shop in London

To top it all off at this point I seemed to have contracted Mike's bug and was developing a pretty hefty cold. Determined not to let everyone down I probably trekked around London for two days too long and made it worse, only to fly home on the 1st and have so much pain in my ears as we landed that I have been rendered useless with an ear and sinus infection for the last week, not able to go and join to my project in New York.

We spent New Year Eve itself in both the Winter Wonderland in Hyde park in the very impressive beer garden and in Covent Garden too. The crowds were too crazy to get too close to the London Fireworks so we saw the top of them over the buildings in Covent Garden, took part in an impromptu ring of people doing Auld Lang Syne and found a camper van full of hot Somerset Cider to hang out in. Pretty Good fun.

The cider van!

Hyde Park Winter Wonderland

Danielle and I at Hyde Park Winter Wonderland

Now I'm back in Chicago spending the week here recuperating from my stupid cold and looking forward to the exciting year I already have planned! We are going skiing in Breckenridge for a weekend in early Feb, my Dad, Mike and step-mum are coming over to go skiing in Park City, Utah for a week and then a few days in New York on the way home, a week in Hawaii in April with Tim's family and two weddings to attend and thats just up to May! All very exciting!

Ooooh the weather outside is frightful.... But the fire is sooo delightful

(A slightly delayed post...)

So Wow, December has come and almost gone.... amongst a sea of Christmas Parties, Work and Flying.

I wanted to say...


Happy Christmas and Have a Wonderful New Year!


Literally I have been at a party of some kind (at least one) every weekend so far in December. Which for generally unsociable me, is quite the feat. It's definitely been fun though. Two TW christmas parties, one in Chicago and one in New York, the DRW party with Tim, and a few house parties and a birthday thrown in for good measure.

This is Tim and I's tree in our apartment in Chicago. There's been lots of snow there but I've mostly been in NY, where we haven't had any big snowfalls yet. That's fine with me, keep the snow on the mountains!

I'm currently sat at O'Hare airport in Chicago waiting to meet Tim and we are about the fly out the the UK tonight. Can't wait. Thankfully it seems that the snow and travel madness in the UK has somewhat subsided and so far (touch wood) our flight looks to be on time and leaving!

Tim came to visit New York last weekend, so we had fun soaking up NYC at Christmas. We were stupid enough to try to go skating at the Rockefeller plaza.... unfortunately thousands and thousands of people had the same idea. Couldn't even get close enough to see the rink let alone skate on it! Thankfully we headed to Bryant park instead and found the outside bar that was serving spiked hot drinks to sip on in rocking chairs under heat lamps. Awesome. The next day we also discovered the Food Hall inside The Plaza. Lots of good grub.

These are some pics from both the New York and the Chicago Holiday parties

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2010

In early October this year, 2100 (mostly) women in technology congregated in Atlanta for the 10th Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. 900 of those girls were students.

ThoughtWorks sent a small troupe of us ladies down to Atlanta for the week mostly for recruiting and networking but also to enjoy the many sessions that were happening throughout the week. I am really grateful for the opportunity to go and to become part of (what I now know) of the Grace Hopper phenomenon. We were a mixed bunch, Julie and Yewe from recruiting, fabulous Tarsha from HR, our CTO Rebecca who had specially come back for the week from her sabbatical in Uganda, that's how much she is a fan, Joanna, April, Smitha and myself. We had a super fun time and worked hard too of course!

Grace Hopper was a remarkable woman, She was a “mathematician, computer scientist, social scientist, corporate politician, marketing whiz, systems designer, and programmer,” and, always, a “visionary. [Howard Bromberg]. In 1953 she invented the compiler... yes you heard... she invented the compiler. This lead on to the development of COBOL. Hopper’s work also foreshadowed or embodied enormous numbers of developments that are still the very bones of digital computing: subroutines, formula translation, relative addressing, the linking loader, code optimization, and symbolic manipulation. [The Anita Borg Institute website] And if that wasn't enough in her spare (!) time she was a Rear Admiral in the Navy. The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is about celebrating the achievements of women in computing and to pledge ourselves to extend them. In computing more than other disciplines, women in the right place at the right time have made an enormous difference. If computing has led the way in making space for women’s participation on an equal basis, it is because the discipline was pioneered in large part by women like Grace Murray Hopper. What was true for Hopper is all the more true for women today because of her work. [From the Grace Hopper Celebration website]

Tuesday was mostly the career fair. We had a wee stand and were very busy... (admittedly lots of people thought we were Yahoo! who had the stand next to us, but we chatted to them and told them about ThoughtWorks anyway, whether they liked it or not!). We had had special t-shirts made up with a shoe logo that was made out of a tag cloud, initially we thought maybe this was even sexist, but turns out lots of the attendees spotted our advert and loved the shoe and wanted to come talk to us because of it and we were constantly getting stopped and asked who were were both because of our t-shirts and because we were having a lot of fun and people wanted in!

I have to say that before this career fair I hadn't really given much thought into how to explain what ThoughtWorks does. After the hundreds of times I explained it during the career fair, pretty sure it came out differently every time. How can you explain our special sauce in an elevator pitch without it just sounding like BS. Hard, it turns out, answers on a postcard please.

The career fair was actually probably my highlight of the whole week. It was so energizing to meet so many excited, enthusiastic and extraordinarily bright young ladies looking for a great place to start their careers. I was in their position just two years ago, and it really hit home home much I have grown since I became a ThoughtWorker, it was simply amazing to be in a position where I could give advice and put people at ease.

Us at the ThoughtWorks booth during the Career Fair

Two big things that I have been thinking a lot about recently are:

•  I have been lucky enough to work with lots of amazing people at TW, who have been in the industry for 10/15/20 years. I have learnt an awful lot from these people but you naturally then compare yourself to them thinking "well if they are this good at blah, I should be too, I work alongside them after all", only to be supper frustrated because of course I can't know everything now that I will know when I've been doing this for 15 years. It's madness. What is perhaps just as important is having people who are 1 - 2 years further down the track than you that you can look up to and realistically look at and think "that is where I want to be in a year". For whatever reason I feel that TW are lacking in devs that are in the 2-3 year out of college mark. Being at that career fair it suddenly dawned on me that I could be that person for these girls, there were a standout few that made a great impression (we've since hired two...), and I offered my support to and we're still emailing. It's a great feeling and I'm excited about keeping in touch with them, whether they end up joining TW or not.

•  The other is that women coming out of computer related degress still think that a career as a developer will mean you are locked in a basement with no windows or men that wash, not allowed to speak to the business or heavon forbid a customer. To be honest thats what I thought too at the time. As girl after girl told me they had a PHD in computer science but wanted to be an analyst (no offence), I always asked why, and they all described that they like coding but that it would lead to a life like I described above. Watching their faces and their excitment as I told them that at ThoughtWorks being a developer does NOT involve the above (unless of course you really want to I guess), as I told them about my role and what I did on a daily basis they all started changing their minds and wanted to submit their resumes as devs instead. I feel like the industry as a whole is really missing this education, but from a TW marketing perspective we could really play on that misconception.  I was giving a quick lightening talk about our experience at Grace Hopper on Friday to ThoughtWorks and I was talking about this topic and one of my co-workers mentioned that he believes that it's Agile that's keeping women in technology. He said that many of the women he know wouldn't be in technology if it wasn't for the open communication and collaboration that is at the heart of Agile. I had never thought of it that way but can see that that definitely helps!

On Wednesday the sessions kicked off, getting into full swing on the Thursday and Friday. As a lot of the attendees at Grace Hopper were Academics, there was an interesting mix of content. I was expecting techy, QCon type content, but instead there were lots of topics that people were studying for their PHD's as well as industry tips and tricks for surviving as a women in the IT world. Each Grace Hopper celebration has a theme and this year it was "Collaboration Across Boundaries". I will follow up this blog post with two of the sessions that I particularly liked.

Rebecca Parsons during her Panel Discussion

I am super excited to say that recruiting have been amazing this year at following up with people that we met and loved. We have offers out to a few Hoppers already. We all felt like there wasn't much representation of Agile, or what it means to be a consultant so we are already plotting and planning on how we can make a bigger impact there at next year Grace Hopper Celebration and hopefully I can go again too! 

Where is Anne now?!

Since my Canada vacation my new project has me in New York City!

I'm consulting for a small investment bank here. I have finally become a "real" ThoughtWorker, constantly flying!

Although I must say I don't have it too bad.... ;-) I have a lovely little corporate apartment on E 63rd St, and I'm hoarding airmiles for some emergency ski trip at some stage! And hey, New York  on expenses, Hoorah! Below are some pictures of my apartment:

My life is mostly now, fly from Chicago to La Guardia on Sunday night, work 10 -12 hours each day, attempt to go to the gym (normally fail if I'm honest!), and fly back on Thursday night. It's nice to be home for an extra day and normally I head into the Chicago office to say hello.

My new team are lovely, it's a bit of a boisterous banking environment, so of course I fit right in! And I'm back doing .Net with a tiny bit of Ruby thrown in which is a nice change. Not to mention the fact that I really knew nothing about banking.... Yay for new things.

The other great thing is that I can fly people out to visit me if I want to stay the weekend. So right when I started Danielle and I had a girly weekend here, which was awesome fun, and then Tim came out last weekend, great to have him here. And here are some pics from Danielle's visit.

Finding The Strengths in Your Team

Strengths Finder 2.0

(This picture is taken from their website linked above)

I rolled off my previous engagement with ThoughtWorks in mid-August. I had a brilliant time on that team, which felt like one of the most well bonded team that I, and many others have come across in a while. (admittedly biased). We had gelled well and were pretty productive, but I think that we all also learned a great deal about ourselves and grew enormously throughout the 9 months we were together. On paper we were a pretty mixed bunch of people but I guess we all had a similar goal of work hard, deliver great software to our client and have fun doing it. I could harp on forever about some of the things that we took away from the project but I want to focus on a tool that really helped us work better together.

One of the exercises that we did do as a team was take the Strengths Finder test. Some co-workers had mentioned that they had done it and thought it was great and so one by one each of us gave it a go. At the time also I had started pairing more frequently with one of the others on the dev team, we were also down to 3 people now making pairing that bit harder. The two of us felt like we were worlds apart in our approach and were admittedly driving each other crazy with our dysfunctional pairing. One of the things that really helped was the results of the strengths finder test, once we understood where each others strengths were and where they were coming from it all suddenly seemed to make sense and we've since (through a lot of hard work and honest conversation) become very effective pairing partners and awesome friends.

How does it work?

This book summarizes that as a world we spend far too much time focusing on our own (and other peoples) shortcomings that we are seriously limiting out own growth. "What's more we had discovered that people have several times more potential for growth when they invest energy in developing their strengths instead of correcting their deficiencies". While I don't believe that you should stop working on your weaknesses, this is a great theory.

You have to buy the book (see below) and you get a code that you can take their online test with. You rate a hundred or so questions on how much you agree with the statement, and the strengths finder then comes out with your top 5 strengths, and a personalized action plan, among many other things. There are a total of 34 different themes. You can get a lot out of reading the whole book, but you can also get what you need by taking the test and referring to the sections that apply. 

What did the results show?

Well these were my top 5....

Empathy 

Harmony 

Arranger 

Responsibility 

Restorative

Go figure. I suppose those of you that know me won't be too surprised. Initially I was annoyed at how "fluffy" my strengths were, and was jealous that I didn't have things like Maximizer or Woo (self deprecation is my number one weakness...), but my team mates (and the book) helped me realize that I am lucky to have these strengths, that don't come as easily to a lot of people.

There is a chapter on each strength, there is a description, examples on things that a person which this strength might say or do, some ideas for action, and in my opinion, the most useful three bullet points of them all, "Working with others who have X". By each of us reading about how to work with the strengths that the rest of the team our understanding of each other went up exponentially. This is an extract of the "Working with Others who have" section from one of my strengths, "Responsibility", it certainly explains a lot...

•  This person defines himself by his ability to live up to his commitments. It will be intensely frustrating for him to work with people who don't. 

• This person dislikes sacrificing quality for speed, so be careful not to rush him. In discussing his work, talk about it's quality first.

•  Help this person avoid taking on too much, particularly if he is lacking in the Discipline talents. Help him see that one more burden may result in his dropping the ball - a notion that he will loathe.

This is just one example of the great things this book has to offer. It really helped out team and I help that it can help yours too. Or just for some self reflection.

I have also included a chart that shows all the different strengths across our small team. Quite a mixed bunch, but we almost all shared at least one strength with someone else, which I think is what really helped us gel and gave us such a rounded team.

Canada Vacation - Edmonton, Nelson and Calgary

During the last week of August Tim and I ventured back to Canada for what felt like a well earned week long vacation. The project that I was on at work since coming to Chicago had just finished and I was definitely in need of a break. In classic Anne and Tim vacation style, it involved lots of flying, good friends and hanging out with family. But this time it was Tim's!

We spent the first weekend in Edmonton, attending one of Tim's university friend's weddings. Theres a pretty large group of them that have been friends since collage and still meet up at each others weddings. They're a nice crowd and have been pretty friendly to me as the newcomer to the bunch. Some of them I've met a few times now and so that made it easier :-S. It was a lovely wedding and it was nice wandering round Edmonton seeing all the places that Tim used to hang out and work in during University and for a year or two afterwards. It was also blissfully cold in comparison to the boiling Chicago summer that we had been having.

Next stop was Nelson, which is in British Colombia where Tim's sister and parents are now living. To get there we had to fly Edmonton to Vancouver (which looks lovely must actually go there one time...), and then take a little plane to Castlegar which is in the heart of the southern BC Canadian Rockies. Tim's parents picked us up and then took us back to his sister Kim's gorgeous house. Kim and her Yorkshire husband Wes moved to Nelson from Alberta and picked an amazing spot. They have done their house up themselves (helps that Wes is an electrician) from what sounded like a dump initially, and now have a 3 story house with a wrap around deck, and a self contained basement that Tim's folks now live in. Tim's mum has done an amazing job on the garden which has a massive veg patch and loads of fruit trees, which, as this is serious bear country, get ravaged every night, much to their annoyance.

The house is located just up and across the road from the West Arm of the Kootenay Lake, a huge freshwater lake that runs down the middle of this part of the Rockies. They have an enviously slow paced, outdoorsy life. You can't help but be relaxed the minute that you get there. I could of quite happily stayed. Tim and I spent most of the week lying in the hammock on the deck, enjoying the sun and reading books. Fantastically self indulgent. We also ventured into Nelson itself to see the Farmer's Market, which turned into marvelling at how Nelson seems to have an awful lot of Hippies per square inch, possibly only challenged by Glastonbury Festival. As there have been lots of bears this summer Tim and I were too chicken to go out hiking, which would of been fun, but actually relaxing, and admittedly napping for an hour or two every day, seemed like a pretty good alternative. We also managed to go Kayaking one morning too. It was super hot while we were there so we dragged ourselves out of bed early enough that it was still cool. It was pretty windy and the lake was pretty choppy, I loved it, made me think I was at sea, Tim, not so much!

Tim's Mum also mothered us well, it was lovely to have some "mum cooking". It was really great getting to see Tim's family. He hasn't seen them much for a few years so it was good to just hang out. Wes and I had a lovely time bantering over the north/south English divide, and Kim and I are frighteningly similar despite the 12 or so years between us. It was just what we both needed.

Next stop was Calgary for the final weekend. I desperately wanted to catch up with old friends there on our way home. We had a pub night in my honour (hurrah!), organised by the awesome Miss Patricia, and a great turnout, it was amazing to see you all, I miss you all very much. It felt like a long long time ago that I lived there, despite the fact that it's only been 9 months. Lot's of life changes in that time I guess! Talking of which we had a great time catching up with the newly Canadianified JJ and his gorgeous fiancee Sara, seeing their new pad, eating at the Farm and catching up with Sara's little critters. Also the soon to be parents Jason and Andree (they had their gorgeous little boy just a few days after we left).

A lovely week away and great to see so many friends.