Clark Sell

Throughout my career I’ve always been interested in how people learn. I personally don’t feel like I am very good at learning. Honestly I struggled in school, I suck at taking tests and like you found myself in a career where studying it one of the core pillars of what we do.

Show 50 on Developer Smackdown Mark and I kicked around the notion of how do people learn. Personally I have a lot different method, and I am always trying to refine things. Newsletters are one important part of my learning process.

Idea’s happen when you least expect them too.

This past Saturday I was messing around with the kids when I had this idea, Metro-Weekly.  I personally try to read the
“news” every day for at least an hour. I use a number of different sources one of which has become two different newsletters produced by Peter Cooper, JavaScript Weekly and HTML5 Weekly. Peter does a great job of curating the news around a given topic and I look forward to reading them every week. So I figured I would follow in his footsteps and produce one based on everything Metro, i.e. Metro Weekly.

Metro, Metro, Metro…

I feel like a bit of a broken record because I find myself always telling people that these  are exciting times to be a software developer. New hardware form factors, the interconnectivity between things, browser wars, focus on user experience, and on and on and on. Think about it, as web developer you can actually write some HTML5, CSS3 and JS and actually produce for almost every platform.  That is crazy, like mind blowing crazy.

My goals with Metro Weekly are simple. Help you grok everything GREAT going on with Metro. Things like, great apps, software libraries, news items, books, articles. Hopefully Metro Weekly will become something you can count on to help you grok Metro.

You can help.

I am just one person, and the community we work in is very important to me. As part of the launch yesterday, people can submit an article for review. I will review them and include them where I can, AND give you the credit for the find. In addition I plan to create a place on the site where we can list all of the user submitted articles for people to read as well. This is an overall area I will continue to expand upon.

The Metro Developer Show

I listen to a lot of podcasts.  A few months back I meet Ryan and Travis Lowdermilk over at The Metro Developer Show. If you’ve never listened to their show it’s a must and very well done. Between their show and this newsletter there is a lot of areas for partnerships. We know it and are actively working on the best ways to share information between each other. I am personally very excited about working with the two of them.

This is just the start. I would love any feedback you might have.

Who? what? Can’t figure out who’s who? Well follow both and just call me Chris. No seriously I will answer by Chris.

Thanks Pat for pointing out that our pictures are well… You get the point.

August 2nd 2000, the day “csell5” was born. My name is Clark Sell, officially Clark Paul Sell. As it turns out, I am the third Clark Sell in the family, following my dad who followed his. When the birth certificate was written, my parents granted me the middle name of Paul to distinguish me from my dad. They had the right intentions.

Imagine if you will, sitting in the dentist chair. The dentist walks in, has your chart in hand asking you what appears to be valid questions.

"Hi Mr. Sell. How’s your teeth?"

"Good?"

 

"Anything been bothering them?"

"No not really."

 

"Ok, Great. Well, we will just get this shot ready and start working on that tooth."

"WHAT, WHOOOAA. SHOT?"

 

"Yes. Standard practice before we work on a cavity."

"Umm, sorry doc. I think you have the wrong chart.”

 

“Clark Sell right?”

“Yes, but the one who’s 30 years younger and I was just here for a cleaning."

 

"Opps. That would have been funny."

"Right, funny. You should sit in my chair and hear the laughter."

This didn’t just happened once, it happened all the time. In fairness, more so when I was growing up and had the same address. Although, I am the youngest member of AARP with an official card. They swear I am retired.

Oh yea, back to August 2nd. Sorry, I was setting the stage a bit.

So, my dad and I clash with things like names. WELL. It also happens to turn out, he’s into this whole technology thing too. I can remember seeing MSN Messenger thinking that was the most awesome stuff. It was like ham radio for geeks and without all those damn tests. So I signed up and it went a little something like this:

UserName: csell

> Sorry already taken.

"Damnit Dad"

 

UserName: csell1

> Sorry already taken.

"Ah common, are you kidding me"

 

UserName: csell2

> Sorry already taken.

"screw this"

 

UserName: csell5

> Available

"Finally"

Man the creativity was just pouring out of me that day. Now remember, this was before the whole social grid. Before we knew better than to put numbers or oddball characters in our user names. BUT, it managed to stick. Back then, everything became csell5. I thought I was making it easy. I guess I should have just made it Chris.

Then came this whole social revolution, and keeping, I kept. I never thought about it and people started to get used to just trying csell5 @ X. I never thought it would be an issue. Well it is, specifically that #5. It turns out having a number in your username isn’t really a good idea, at least on things like twitter and especially when people confuse you with non other than Chris Sells.

Then one day… Boom! My head exploded all over my desk.

Holy $h!t. That 5 looks like an S. { hands on face } People are going to think I am some weirdo dude who stalks Chris, has a similar handle, twitter picture. Quick, I will just go change it…. twitter.com -> login -> change user name -> "DAMNIT DAD".  Chris, just in case I managed to freak you out, I’m not actually trying to stalk you, but it sure is starting to look like it.

So why not just switch now? Well as I alluded, my dad already has it. You can follow some random dude who doesn’t use @csell, my dad at @clarksell, Chris at @csells and me @csell5. Now I just need to find some hipster who can create me a new identity.

Enjoy…

FWIW, after a few times of that dentist screwing up the reason I was there, I decided to switch dentists. And while I was at it, I switched any other medical related service where my records couldn’t \ shouldn’t be confused with one another.

Well hello caption obvious, welcome to the party.

Ok seriously, Chris is a cool cat, one of which I have a massive respect for. Like most, I have followed his work, learned a lot from him and been lucky enough to meet him. BUT…

I am not him.

We’re not related. My first name isn’t Chris. My last name isn’t plural. He is a legend, writes books, very public, and is just all around badass. I hear he even understands XAML.

I am not him, or the other brother of sellsbrothers.com.

This may seem odd to you at first, but people call me Chris all of the time. I honestly don’t get it. Why? Chris, Clark, yea,,, not even close. Ok yea, they both start with C. Nope, still don’t get it. On the flip side, I can understand putting an ‘s’ on the last name. I hate it but it seems to be common practice to just pluralize things. I get called Clark Sells all the time.  Yea I hate that too.

But wait for it, things get’s better.

I get people who thank me all of the time for his work and I have even seen him get thanked for my work. Some of these “people” have even been on my direct team. Seriously?!?!? This is all so odd to me. Does it bother me? Well at first it did but now I am just rather used to it. The bigger problem, it happens almost every week, at least to me. I am SURE people are not going up to Chris and calling him Clark. I can just see it now. Hey Clark, awesome podcast on Developer Smackdown. Chris stands there with a look on his face that I give on mine when trying to understand the magic behind XAML binding.

Seriously for flipping sake, take a half second and just pay a little more attention. After all it’s kind of rude, and embarrassing for all parties. When you send an email take an extra second and just look at what you typed into the TO: line.

I know, this is all coming from a guy who isn’t very good with names, but this is just different. I do try and try very hard. I will at least recognize when I screw up, and then apologize.

Moral of the story? Take an extra second and figure out who you’re actually talking to. It’s really not that hard. If you’re reading this and you thought I was Chris. Sorry for the disappointment I have no caused, but hopefully you will keep reading. You can find Chris at sellsbrothers.com.

Image was taken from Bing Images who took it from somewhere on Chris’s website.

Last night we held the second Angle Bracket meeting or as we like to call it </>. It was flipping awesome to see a number of people return as well to see a few new ones.

This is a user group, it’s about YOU , it’s about US. Each and every meeting I am going to ask each person: what do you want to get out tonight? You’re spending your free time to come out, so dammit be greedy. It’s 2+ hours with friends, speak up, try something different, and most importantly walk away feeling like you accomplished something and had a little fun along the way.

I want to take a moment and talk about that I like and what I want to continue to work on.

What I liked:

• All of the interaction between people. Seriously this is the best part I think.
• Diversity of tech that people we’re exploring.
• Informal structure. I sure don’t want things to feel like work. Were there on our own time, it should be enjoyable.
• The after meeting. For me the conversation at the bar is great. We share stories, talk tech, and tell crappy jokes.

What I want to work on:

• The overall format.
• Find better focus on real world aka midwestgeeks.net. I know personally when there is something real to work on it pushes you to do more, explore more and not just forget about it. This is just one way to apply something\anything to something that is real.
• Sharing. We’re not doing a good job of coming back together and sharing what we learned. For instance, last night we should have at least shared:
  • Adam, explored what happens when you pop the 5meg limit.
  • The Robot Brothers, we’re playing with Phone Gap and WebSocket. Learned it wasn’t working like they expected. They we’re also showing off Windows 8.
  • Louis, was deep into storage exploring the namespaces
  • Sean, I learned just submitted a jQuery plugin for multi-touch drag and drop.
  • Myself and a few others we’re struggling with Sprout Core working with MidwestGeeks.net

That is all awesome, but we didn’t seize the opportunity to share all of that better.

Once again the meeting was great. If you live around the far northern suburbs of Chicago, come on out, write some code, and have a few beers. Help us out and share the word: angleBracket.net

Our next meeting is March 15th.

I’ve now been at Microsoft almost 7 years. When I started, I honestly didn’t think I would even make it 5. I’ve meet a lot of great people, traveled to some cool and not so cool places. I’ve meet Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer hugged me and I have made a number of *very* close friends. Like most, I have a few "war" buddies who share a few of the same "battle" scares.

2 year’s ago I meet this hipster from Austin by the name of Brandon Satrom. If you know us, then you know for the past two years we’ve worked pretty damn close together. We’ve had a lot of fun and meet some awesome people. We’ve covered most of the central region telling bad jokes and trying to spread some web love. From creating a few open source projects, writing articles, speaking, to even throwing our own conferences. We’ve managed to accomplish a few things in such a short amount of time. Together, I even think we’ve managed to change Microsoft to be just a little better than it was two years ago.

Today was his last day at Microsoft. 

Yea that sucks… I would be lying if I said it didn’t bother me, cause it damn sure does. It’s not because he made the choice to move on. I get it. If I we’re in his position, it would have been a very difficult for myself. For the past couple of months now ( or so it seems ), Brandon’s confided in me, as he worked through this. We spent many many hours talking about jobs, careers, job attributes and so on. It feels like it’s been a long two months. 

Why do I say this?

The past two months have reminded me to look at oneself and run the chkdsk. WTF are you doing? Why are you doing it? Is it aligned with you? Are you having fun? Etc. For me ( and I know Brandon too ) there are a few common threads which help keep one grounded. I wanted to share:

• Family and health are first.

I have worked my ass off, and at times at the cost of my family. I will not do it anymore. Does that mean I will not work hard, no, not at all. But it does mean, family and health are always first and I will say no without feeling bad. When I first started at Microsoft ( week one ) I got put in a position with my wife. I will never forget a teammate of mine, Ben told me, "There are things you can do one time, anytime, and things you can do one time, and one time *only*." I don’t think he meant to be inspirational but rather help me make a decision but damn it stuck and stuck hard.

Your daughter will never have another first birthday, your son will only have one first goal in soccer. They will never forget that you were not there to be part of that achievement.

• Follow your passion.

I have done a lot of different things over my career. Sometimes the thing I was doing, wasn’t really good for my career. I was good at it but it wasn’t what I was really passionate about it. Sure we may have succeeded as a team but it was at the cost of me. Don’t feel bad for being greedy. Stay true to who you are and if you don’t know, start doing some soul searching.

• Manage your career.

Look if you don’t, then someone else will. Don’t look back and regret it. No joke, Scott Guthrie many many moons ago ( before I came to Microsoft ) asked me to join the ASP.NET team. I turned him down, I regret not at least exploring the offer. I doubt I would have gotten he job, but you fail at 100% of what you don’t even bother trying.

• Lastly, have fun…

If you’re not having fun, it’s time for a change. Life is to short to wake up every morning and be miserable. There is so much negativity in our career already, why have more.

Yours may be different but have you run chkdsk lately? Are you caught up in the grind?

Back to Brandon…

He might be leaving Microsoft, but we’re still going to work together. Your career is bigger than the job you’re currently in. I wish him the best of luck in his new role and ironically he will be working with Chris Sells.

Since I don’t live in Austin, and can’t take him out for a beer, we had a virtual one over Skype. Ok we really drank beer just not alone. We decided to hit the ole record button too. You can find us rapping about career stuff on Developer Smackdown.

Brandon, thank you for pushing me, thank you for listening to me bitch, and thanks for the laughs. We’re still just getting started.