The 6 hour manager, funding infrastructure, microservers mind-mapping

(Hello there! I'm finally getting around to doing a newsletter-y thing. I like the ones I see, the single page of links. In the bricolage style of weblogging, if that word still exists, that I operate in by default, I thought I'd narrow down to a sort of "Selections from the Daily Wunderkammer" for the daily email. I'll try it for awhile and see if it works out.)

(The next iteration will drop this introductory text and just be the, you know, "flow." I'll put a little explanation in the sections below for this first run as well.)

Meta-data

(Here, I'll put any information about the newsletter and other "meta-data.")

Today this newsletter has 13 subscribers. If you're one, I'd love to hear what you like, dislike, your feedback, etc.: memo@cote.io.

Coincidently, I've read 13 books so far this year, that's better than 8 I read in 2013 - I know! - according to Good Reads.

See past newsletters in the archive, and, as always, see things as they come at Cote.io and @cote.

Sponsor

(There isn't really a sponsor, but I'll be true to form and pretend like there is, and just promote some 451 stuff.)

My work, 451 Research, is having it's big cloud conference, HCTS, this Oct 6th to 8th. I'll be there talking about building a developer relations program, mostly for cloud and service providers. That's just the sessions I'll do: there'll be lots of talk of cloud, big data, and the usual emerging tech, interesting stuff you'd expect from 451 It's a good conference, so you should sign up and come to it.

Tech and Work World

(Most of what I care about comes for the technology and "business" world, so here's what I like that I've seen today)

You should spend an average of six hours a week with each employee

From a summary of a study on how much time management should spend with each employee, each week:

Moving from one to six hours weekly contact with the boss increased employee inspiration by 29 percent, but after six hours inspiration actually started to take a hit.

From a study of 30,000 American and Canadian employees, executives and middle managers. The metrics of “good” are things like “inspiration” and NPS. Also, it says you can’t really manage more than seven people.

Lots of funding in systems management

Who has the best developer relations program?

Matt Asay asks for examples of companies with good developer relations programs, with some good answers. I have a report coming out on developer relations and marketing, so I'm always interested in this type of thing.

Cisco Relaunches Developer Network

And, speak of the devil, a developer relations program reboot!

For wider adoption, Chromebooks must unseat the MSFT white collar toolchain

Nice commentary on of one thing holding back wider corporate adoption of Chromebooks: the Microsoft Office toolchain.

Microservices and 12 Factor Apps

I like the idea of microservices as "SOA++" and the 12 factors give you a nice peer into the architectural mindset of web programmers.

All about that IBM/Apple Partnership

If you haven't heard it already, we did a good job discussing the IBM/Apple partnership of last week in the most recent episode of the Software Defined Talk podcast.

Fun

(There seems to be a world outside of tech, so the IRL and Fun sections will have fun stuff from those alien landscapes)

I finished reading The Ocean at the End of Lane by Neil Gaiman last night. It's a comfy little story with that urban-fantasy and weird, far-out thinking (sheet monsters!) you'd expect from Gaiman.