For the longest time I’ve wondered what the painters across the street were doing.

Now I know.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/arts/design/08voge.html

I’ve been doing a little introspection on my work habits lately and I’ve noticed how they differ in different settings.

For instance, I’m starting to find that in many cases, I would rather walk over to a local expert in my office than search for what I’m looking for on Google. The local expert is usually within my vicinity, many times in the same room, but Google is always right there, right at my computer. My question is: Am I a technical extrovert — a fancy name for a social butterfly in a field of (stereotypically) moths; or am I habitually lazy, consistently bugging the person who knows?

I would rationalize myself as an extrovert, and it turns out Myers-Briggs would too. But lazy?

Some habits at work are:

• Ask someone before searching Google.
• Walk to the person who will know the answer rather than talk over AIM or IRC.
• Talk to people in meetings (or spontaneously create them) instead of use email.
• Take notes on paper because I will forget many of my coworker’s “quick fixes,” like what command to use, or how to use it.

Put those in contrast with my habits at home:

• Google my error messages extensively.
• Research how to solve my specific task.
• Try out my hypotheses or find examples.
• In many ways, learn by doing.

And put that in contrast with my undergraduate career:

• Remember every word the professor said, taking notes that I probably won’t read.
• Learn by doing, especially when given specific homework assignments.

Is the difference in behavior the time pressure of the work environment? The effect of having knowledgeable people directly in my vicinity? An attribute of my extroversion? The result of having an authority figure?

I don’t know. And whatever it is, it’s ingrained, because I don’t think about it — or, I have to work to think about it when in context. But maybe that’s why they call it work.

Regardless. It’s clear I’d rather walk and talk than sit and research.

I’m going to start something we’ll call a Flash Forward.

Whoa Doc. This is heavy. — Marty McFly

That’s right. In an attempt to flesh out some career possibilities I’d be interested in pursuing, I’ve decided to blog about the ones that may have actual footing in reality.

The first is Medill’s (Northwestern University’s) Knight Foundation Scholarship. It seems the Journalism program at Medill has recognized the ever-increasing influence of the Internet, and has at the same time realized the opposite decline in print media. To keep up with the times — or to boldly go where no one has gone before (let’s face it; this is cool stuff) — Medill is giving away full rides to students interested in fusing technology and Journalism.

What’s great about these scholarships, and what makes Medill a clear candidate for my first Flash Forward, is it’s an actual possibility. Given my technical background, my interest in writing (this blog) and the timeliness of the opportunity — the deadline for January 2010 is this June, and the program is only a year long; I can see myself jumping for it.

But it’s true: As Doc Brown said, the future hasn’t been written yet. Stay tuned for my next Flash Forward, where I introduce you to Dr. Coulter (in training) and a few ideas for graduate study in Software Engineering.

On the heels of James Bach’s Buccaneer Scholar, a new idea, book and blog where he details his experience with exploratory thinking and learning, comes my own wrestling, not only with how I learn, but what I should learn. Due to recent events I’ll make clear in a few weeks, this question has begun to capture all of my spare CPU cycles — and it won’t quit.

The crux of the question, I think, is this: When I was thirteen, I set a goal to go to college, get a degree, and work for Microsoft (then the most popular software company in existence). While in college, I latched onto open-source software and the free software movement — happily ditching Windows for Gentoo, Mandrake, then finally Ubuntu — and gleefully traded Microsoft for a slightly newer and more exciting company called Google. Google had free food, funky office chairs, and they fit the goal I previously made when I was thirteen. My sense of self was intact, no harm done.

When it came time to interview, though, things were messier than I expected. I was still trying to finish school — to graduate, move out of the dorm and wrap up all the extracurriculars that consumed most of my spare time; and I was, on the more personal side, simply trying to grasp what was happening as I made the transition from college life to real life.

It was all too fast. Not only was I not accepted by Google (that’s a story for another time), but I didn’t know where else to go from there. In magicians terms, I made all but the prestige of my childhood goals, and I was left like a confused audience member contemplating whether I should stand up and applaud.

But, prestige aside, I realized my longstanding goals ended after college, and whether or not I was employed by Big Popular Company mattered little to anything but my ego. Even if I did achieve my goal, I’d still be left with the same question: What happens next?

When I learn, I need to know the big picture. I like to know where I’m going, why I’m going there, and in general, how to get there — but not always. I know the devil’s in the details, but I like figuring out the details as I go along.

Looking back, I had more or less achieved my goal — college, degree, employment — but I didn’t have the big picture telling me where to go next. I still don’t. I’d assume even James’ Buccaneer Scholar, with his exploratory state of mind, would have some type of charter, though I can’t believe he’d always know where he is going. James, I’d like to hear you expound upon that if you haven’t already.

This leads to the more practical dilemma: Of my interests, which path do I choose? The following is a list of career paths I could be interested in taking. Though I run the risk of taking the totally incorrect approach to, well, life, of these career paths, I can’t help but be interested in their prestige. Here goes:

• Independent test consultant.
• Product Manager/Test Manager for large software engineering projects.
• Ph.D in Software Engineering or Cognitive Science, researching and teaching software engineering and/or software testing.
• Software Developer for cutting-edge, Web 2.0 technologies (I am that now).
• Entrepreneur for my own software development company. (I’ll probably need an MBA).
• Entrepreneur for my own software testing firm. (Again, an MBA).
• Tech Journalist for popular blogs and magazines. (I’ll probably need to study journalism).
• Politician. (I’ll probably need to study political science, though this brings me to my next interest…)
• Something in the arts, say, acting.

And as an aside, this whole process feels like one big game of Twister.

Inspired by coworker Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock’s personal brand, I decided to spend some time this weekend working on a brand of my own.

The result became www.timothyjcoulter.com.

I’m pretty happy with it. At first, I was simply going to link to my blog, put up some contact information and make my resume available. Instead, I got excited about syndication, and decided to parse the RSS feed in Javascript while making the whole thing work cleanly without a page refresh.

If you turn Javascript off, you’ll see my original idea.

Now that this brand is there, timothyjcoulter.com will be where I point people to for information about me. oneofthewolves.com will stay my blog — there’s no way I’m giving it up — but timothyjcoulter.com will contain more general information that’s not available on oneofthewolves.com.

The photo is courtesy of Chris Tanner.

Update, 10/6: It’s now functional in Internet Explorer 6 & 7 (though I gotta fix that darned loading icon. )

Becky Fiedler is going to jump for joy when she reads this — likely because I give her so much flak — but due to work’s Get Everyone a Laptop campaign, I am now the proud user of a Macintosh computer.

(“Hi, my name is Tim, and I use a Mac.”)

Now, before you get all excited, I need to preface it a bit: I’ve already installed Ubuntu, and it happily lives alongside OS X.

Though I’ll likely be using Ubuntu for most of my day-to-day work, getting a Mac gets me some great perks:

1. I can play with Mac OS X anytime I want.
2. I get great Mac hardware (it looks sexy, and actually works well in both OS’s).
3. I can switch between Mac and Ubuntu for browser testing (Safari, anybody?).

The biggest win, however, is I can take it home. My old clunky Acer is going to get very lonely very quickly.

People have told me many times — especially since I’ve been to New York — that I look like Wolverine, or more recently, the actor known as Hugh Jackman. I’m not totally sure that’s true. Even so, whenever I’m told I could be Hugh’s stunt double, it’s almost always followed up by, “It’s the sideburns.” And it is the sideburns: I have long, Wolverine-like sideburns. To my benefit, they get attention.

Similarly, TOPP, the company I work for, has had some growth of its own also worthy of attention. On top of hiring plenty of awesome people and putting our feelers out for a new office, our website’s got a new do. I must say, we’ve got a pretty attractive website. If I saw it in the street, I’d do a double take. It looks professional.

So, in short, this post is to simply say, “Good work guys and gals. You’ve got a growth on the side of your head that looks nice. You should be proud.”

And we are.

I am happy to announce that my organization, The Open Planning Project, has released version 1.0 of the Livable Streets Network.

The Livable Streets Network is a conglomeration of five websites: NY StreetsBlog, LA StreetsBlog, StreetFilms, StreetsWiki, and LivableStreet’s Groups. All together, they help urban planners and community members alike work together to make our city’s streets a better place to live.

Applause to all for a great run!

After two days of managing — though one day of actually focusing on it — I’m realizing that this time, I’m keeping my hands clean.

It’s different than before. Last time we did this, I kept a close watch of the people I was managing, had long and detailed debriefings, and coached as much as possible. This time, it’s more: “give them what they need up front, and let them go off on their own.”

I can’t say I have enough information as to which approach I like more — so I won’t even begin to hint as to which approach we should do — but I’m gaining some insight here.

Without long and detailed debriefings, I’m seeing:

• A higher bug-duplicate rate than before.
• A lower understanding (in my head) of what’s actually being found.
• Less drive on my part to jump the information hurdle.
• And more of a desire to let bug reports speak for themselves.

On the same token, I’m seeing greater personal drive from testers to self-manage, which could be a big plus.

Though there’s good and bad here, it’s important to note the context changes:

• I have all new testers (i.e., they haven’t worked with me on testing before).
• Reports that they write are going directly to the manager I was supposed to report to, meaning there’s no apparent need for any “high level” reporting.
• Managing is lower on my totem poll time-wise, as I’m only supposed to spend two days a week doing it.

Although it pains me, in general, to not be as involved as I’d like, the outcome of this could be very informative. In simple terms: I think we’re on our way to finding our sweet spot, and by the time this is all over, we’ll have some good insight to share.

Good news! It seems, for the next two weeks at least, I’m back managing a testing group here at TOPP. I won’t be managing every day — only two days a week, due to other work — but the testing group will be going all five.

Our context is a bit different than before:

• We’ve got two (maybe three) weeks until deployment.
• We’re running risk-based charters, focusing more on changes and less on regression.
• We’ve got a few more resources ready than before.
• We’ve already got buy-in on the process.
• We’ve got responsive management who sympathize with the testing effort.

I recently coordinated the group today, and from my initial impression, we’re going to make waves in testing these next two weeks. I’m genuinely excited.

As a side note, it seems the presentation I gave about testing had great effect. It gave me a chance to introduce more testing ideas — along with the performance testing ideas that were the impetus of the presentation — as well as make me more confident when expressing these ideas to others. For example, I’ve had management tell me that “testing is an investigative process,” and then plan work with the general understanding that the testing group’s job is to inform.

I’m not really sure what happened, but the ideas are spreading like wildfire.

No guarantee I’ll give weekly updates like before, but I will keep you updated on the status of the testing group. So far, it seems like testing is a priority from management on down — even if we were only given two weeks — so among other good feelings, I’m starting to feel like we’re headed in the right direction.