Developing UX

As I mentioned earlier I was invited this month to be a judge at the Sabre Hack Day event. It was a huge honor and a lot of fun. I love these events, but even more I love the fact that Sabre’s senior management see the value in giving their employees the flexibility and freedom to participate is such a great event.

I’ve been to several companies where the theory de jure seems to be around developing a “COE” or Center of Excellence. Unfortunately, most of these COE’s end up being very self-serving and inwardly focused.

I’ve been an advocate of developing a different type of “COE” for a while now. Companies need to look for ways to develop “Cultures of Excellence” or “Communities of Excellence”. That’s the sort of COE’s that are important and that is the sort of thing that Sabre is helping to accomplish. In other words, COE’s need to be outwardly focused – raising the bar for everyone.

In honor of Jawbone releasing a new version, I thought that I’d finally post my thoughts on my favorite blue tooth headset ever.

As was noted last year by Christoph, I love my Jawbone Bluetooth Headset, it is quite possibly the best headset in the world! Seriously, it’s fantastic. The first time I tried it I was driving down the freeway with the AC on full and all of the windows rolled down. My wife couldn’t tell if I was in the car or not… “Have you left yet?”. Awesome. That’s a great headset.

Like most things, it could be better. Here is my list of 3 features that I would love to see in a future version of the Jawbone.

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To commensurate a recent realization that Improving Enterprises, Inc is now the #1 link on google and live when searching for "Improving" (go a head… try it. give it a whirl!), a couple of the guys that I work with were discussing other ways that our name and slogan *could* be thought of… so without further ado, here are the rejected Improving slogans:

Improving… we’re getting better. Really we are.

Improving… not as bad as we used to be.

Improving… ’cause that’s how we role. yo.

Speaking of Improving: We are hiring! David O’Hara described what we are looking for:

"a pinch of architect, a splash of Castle, a little MVC goodness, a bunch of OO, and a good amount of humor. Viola!"

if that’s you, give us a call!

Improving… It’s what we do!

Today I’ll be out at the Sabre Holdings Southlake, TX office for another Hack Day. It actually started yesterday at noon, and will not end until 1pm today. (24 hours of pure coding with whom ever and on what ever you want to hack out) I attended the last one and it was a lot of fun. This year, my friend and global Hack Day organizer extraordinair, Jay invite me to participate as a Judge! (I’ve heard that Giovanni Gallucci will be there as well!) This is a true honor and very exciting for me. I can’t wait to see all of the crazy hacks that come out of today!

From last year: