For the past year and a half I (Mark) have been part of an Ann Arbor, Michigan based group named GO-Tech. The common thread among the group members is that each of us is interested in making things using technology (combining hardware, software, metal, wood, etc.). I refer to it as “Do It Yourself Tech” (DIYTech). The group meets monthly to present projects and have interesting discussions. I attend when I am able; it is a fun, enriching after hours activity.

At the most recent meeting that took place on January 13th, there was a contest in which everyone was invited to build a device and demonstrate it at the meeting. As Dale (the group organizer and leader) described it:

The Five-Minute Timer Contest goal is to design a timer to time presentations at our meetings. It should semi-accurately time the presenter, and give some audible or visual indication when their time is up. Portability, coolness, and robustness will be helpful. Cool prizes supplied by O’Reilly, publishers of Make.

I created a traffic signal based timer that I named “5 Minute Signal.” The time is actually settable to one minute and up (in one minute increments). To build it, I hacked an inexpensive plastic traffic signal (about one foot tall) that I purchased from Oriental Trading Company. To control the signal and provide accurate time keeping, I used my trusty Bare Bones Board (BBB) Arduino-compatible microcontroller board. The hardware is fairly simple (the BBB, a pushbutton control switch, and 3 relays to control the red, yellow, and green lights) and the software was fun to write. I put the whole thing together the weekend before the GO-Tech meeting.

Basic operation is as you would expect: Push the button to start the timer. When the time interval is set to 5 minutes, the green light will stay on for the first 4 minutes, followed by one minute of yellow, and then red at the end of 5 minutes (the green and yellow intervals are shorter when the interval is 2 minutes or less). More details are available in these documents:

• Presentation: presentation.pdf
• Schematic Diagram: schematic.png
• Arduino Source Code: source-code.txt

The other contest entries included a very clever and well-made artificial sundial timer (by Jim) and another with a large servo-driven dial (by Don) that, if the presenter went too far over the allotted time, popped a balloon to get everyone’s attention. The meeting attendees voted and in the end I tied with the sundial for “Best Timer” and the sundial won the “Coolest Timer” award. I walked away with a copy of the Best of Instructables book (thanks O’Reilly).

There was one more 5 Minute Timer project presented at the meeting (it arrived too late for the contest). Peter put together a traffic signal based timer similar to mine that uses a full size (reclaimed) traffic signal that he purchased on eBay. His impressively polished project includes a wireless remote control (something I considered but did not have time to include), a custom printed circuit board, and a wooden project box. Schematic (PDF).

The meeting also included an interesting talk about EMC and some other presentations. Overall, it was a creative, fun and informative evening. If you are in the southeast Michigan area, I highly recommend that you attend an upcoming GO-Tech meeting

• Think about your “Top of the Mind Awareness.” What do people think of when they see you? What comes to mind when your name is spoken? What do you want them to think of? Think about about your personal brand.
• Keep the Rule of the Sevens in mind. When you meet someone:
  • In the 1st seven seconds you need to create a good first impression
  • In the 2nd seven seconds you need to create interest (for example, tell them what you can do for them).
  • In the 3rd seven seconds you can begin to tell your story.

  If you still have the other person’s attention after those first 21 seconds, you will have a successful interaction.

• Your behavior is never an accident. In other words, you have the ability to control it, and people notice what you do — so pay attention and adjust your behavior on the fly as needed.
• When you attend a networking event where your goal is to meet and greet people, follow these tips:
  • Place your name tag on your right side so people can see it when they shake hands with you. About half of us get this wrong
  • Try to maintain eye contact no less than 40% and no more than 60% of the time. Too little eye contact will label you as shifty and not to be trusted. Too much will make people think you are overly aggressive. If someone starts to back away from you, you are probably being too aggressive and making them uncomfortable.
  • When you make eye contact with someone in a business setting, focus on the triangle of space defined by their two eyes and a point in the center of their forehead. That says “I am engaged, I am authoritative.” Avoid looking at their mouth (that is good for social interactions where you do not wish to have command of the situation). And definitely avoid letting your gaze wander up and down their body — that is an intimate gaze that says “I am checking you out and I am not really engaged with what you are saying.”
  • There are a lot of nuances to a good handshake. Denise recommends a “web to web” handshake (not at the tips of the finger, avoid a bone-crushing experience). Extending your hand first puts you in a position of authority (most of the time you want that). And make sure your hands are free to shake hands with people (put down that drink and save it for later).
  • Honesty is often the best policy. If you feel trapped in a conversation and you need to go meet other people, tell the person you are talking to that you have a limited amount of time and that you need to circulate (and offer to meet them for lunch or another time to talk more).
• A good formula for success in your business interactions is to have Self-Confidence which allows for Rapport building, which leads to Trust (the cornerstone of any good relationship), and mutual Respect.

There were a lot of people at the event. Maybe they came to enjoy the catered lunch from Zingerman’s Deli. But they most likely went back to work having enjoyed a full serving of personal development ideas.

The conference opened with a keynote address on Thursday evening which I missed. Here are some tidbits from the sessions I attended on Friday:

• Keynote Address by Sanjay Pol (Cisco VP). He talked about the previous “waves” of network-enabled applications we have experienced (static content, reengineering of business processes, dynamic content) and how Cisco and their customers are thinking about the next wave. From his point of view, the network will become much more intelligent with complex policy being enforced by Cisco gear. For example, some phishing attacks can be prevented or at least mitigated at the network level. All in all, an interesting talk. Full disclosure: I own a small amount of Cisco stock.
• Panel Discussion on Digital Identity. The panelist were an interesting collection of technologists (IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign), business/financial experts (VISA), and legal experts (Sonnenschein, Nath, & Rosenthal). The discussion was moderated by Phil Becker from Digital ID World who did a nice job. Unfortunately, the topic of digital authentication alone more than filled the space allotted. Whenever I hear people talk about public key cryptography, smart cards, etc. I always come back to the fact that these technologies do not lend themselves to “bottom up” deployment as well as most of the other things that have been widely successful on the Internet. But I guess we will get there someday, or someone will invent a better mousetrap.
• Tech Fair. A lunchtime event where business people and students showed off their products and services. I had an interesting discussion with Jake Braly from Outfoxed about the wacky world of Firefox extensions, the Outfoxed user interface, their business model, and so on. In general, I am a little skeptical about social search taking off among the masses, but the idea is interesting. Outfoxed will need to balance the needs of the community they build with their corporate need to bring in revenue (e.g., selling ads and user-preference information vs. maintaining a network based on trust).
• Keynote Address by Michael Wilens (Thomson CTO/COO). Michael was a very entertaining speaker. He described the four businesses his company is in (Legal & Regulatory, Scientific & Healthcare, Learning, Financial) and how Thomson has moved from a traditional publishing company to a content + software + services company. He told some great stories about how different (and difficult) it can be to innovate in an environment where all of your customers are risk-adverse. Apparently, the only group that is more risk-adverse than doctors are lawyers. Michael mentioned the challenges — and costs — they experience each time they introduce an new user interface (his advice: instead, add value by making deep, functional changes under the covers when possible). He gave an analogy for all of us who own digital cameras: having the correct white balance setting is crucial, and while many cameras let you adjust the white balance, most of us just want to “take the damn picture.” His job is to help his customers do the same thing with Thomson’s content products.
• Panel Discussion on the Future of Social Networks and eCommunities. Moderated by Paul Resnick from the UofM School of Information, this was a wide ranging discussion where nearly all of the questions came from the audience. Panel members included Sunil Thakur (WahIndia), Lada Adamic (Asst. Professor in the School of Information), and Kurt DeMaagd (Slashdot). Everyone agreed that while we have come a long way, social network is in its infancy. Is there value in the network data? Yes. Do most companies at some point have to struggle with the “what’s good for the company may not be good for the community members” problem? Yes. There also some discussion of content creation by community members and how that is starting to have a big impact at sites like MySpace.
• Panel Discussion on the Future of Mobile Broadband. This was the last session of the day, and my notes are shorter. Panelists included people from Research In Motion, Sycamore Networks, AeroWire, and Cisco. The discussion was wide-ranging, sometimes optimistic, sometimes pessimistic. Technology problems are just a small part of the picture as people are fighting the lack of standards, the control exerted by the large wireless carriers, and the risk that the scarcity of licensed spectrum will limit who can play in this space. None of these are new problems, but they do not seem to be going away. One interesting thing that came up that I was not aware of is the push to use technologies like WiMax to bypass the local copper and fiber and allow competitive local carriers to reduce costs and sign up more customers. The panelists also touched on the issues with multiband devices (battery life is a killer right now, but integrated chips are starting to appear now). And security and privacy remain near the top of the list of concerns for businesses who are using wireless technology.

During the conference there was also a “quick pitch” business idea competition that took place at the same time as another session I attended and a few additional panel discussions. I would’ve liked to see more give-and-take with the audience in some of the panel discussions, but overall it was an interesting day. There was no charge to attend this year’s FuturTech conference — a real bargain considering the nice venue and the fact that breakfast and lunch was provided. Oh, and they gave away an iPod and a Blackberry during the keynote talks.

In the morning, Ed and I looked at GraphViz and talked about Gettings Things Done by David Allen. Ed does a better job of managing his inbox than I do, but Ed has motivated me to make some progress and I hope to reduce my inbox by 50% or more by the end of the week. Most of my inbox is old messages that need to be appropriately filed. Later in the day, I think someone mentioned a Thunderbird extension that helped with “getting things done” but I didn’t hear its name. Please comment below if you know of such an extension.

We also talked about technology-oriented organizations such as the Ann Arbor IT Zone, GLIMA-WALA, AACS and others. There really needs to be an online calendar for the area that covers the technical events held within each of these organizations as well as at the local universities.

For lunch, we went to Eastern Accents. The crowd for lunch included: Ed, Lou Rosenfeld, David Bloom, Alan Guiterrez, John, Larry Kestenbaum, Mark, me and a few people I didn’t know. Larry shared the new directory of city, township and county officials. We took turns introducing ourselves and telling where we had met Ed or in what communities we had lived. I saw Carrie Hensel and Catherine Hayes from Inner Circle Media but I didn’t have a chance to say hello other than with a wave. The nice people at Eastern Accents made a special cake to celebrate Ed’s birthday so we sang and enjoyed the cake.

In the afternoon, we met at the Ann Arbor library in a reserved room. We pulled chairs into a circle and talked about open meetings and brainstormed some topics. The circle included: Ed, Mark, me, David Bloom, Murph, John, John from the library, and Matt Hampel. We listed interesting software. We talked about Ann Arbor, communities with universities, Ann Arbor vs. Palo Alto, how some people are attached to a place than others, and so on. It was interesting that so many of us had either:
* received jobs offers but refused to leave the area or
* lived in the area, moved away and returned.
I shared some copies of Dan Cooney’s “The Simplicity of the Semantic Web” which I had printed onto postcards. Thank you for the beautiful artwork Dan!

Later Ed asked people to go into the library and retrieve interesting books. Some of these books Ed would take home (others were taken home by the person who selected them). We talked about the books. There were many books and I didn’t capture their names. Karl Zinn joined us near the end of this conversation. After I introduced him, we talked about the current production by UM Gilbert & Sullivan Society “The Sorcerer.” Murph had worked on the lighting for a previous production of the show and was especially interested in details of this year’s show. There was talk about Gilbert having differing views from Sullivan on tenors.

At this point, the group planned to move to another location and I needed to leave to meet up with some other people. It was a very enjoyable day; I hope we’ll have another “camp” in the area soon.

Happy Birthday Ed!

Sample result:

• Company name: Zimkorati
• Product: cellphone-based web services via api mashups