VDubinator Coder

Every year MasterControl holds a summit called the Master's Summit . This is a time for current and prospective users of MasterControl to see the latest features in the software, network with other MasterControl users and professionals in their field, learn how to better use MasterControl in their company, and listen to some of the best minds in the industry. As an employee, I enjoy going to meet users of the software I write and gaining a better understanding of how people use our software. It's always an illuminating and enjoyable experience. This year we even did a hack-a-thon and implemented four features that customers requested. This year, I was helping out with what we call, "test drives." This is where we set up 20 or so laptops with MasterControl installed and running with access to everything and let customers take them for a spin. Customers can come and go as they please and look at any feature they want to in MasterControl. This is nice for customer

Recently I've been reading The Happiness Advantage  and it's been very interesting. I've always believed our brains our powerful and that happiness is good for us, but this book is really illuminating on just how powerful our minds can be and just how impactful happiness can be in our lives. In the book, the author references a wide number of studies that show just how important our perception is and just how large of an impact happiness can have not only on our perception of the world, but also on our actual performance in whatever task we undertake. In this article, I'd like to briefly discuss one quality that can help give us small moments of positivity or happiness throughout our day: Gratitude. Now, I know what you're thinking. This is just a Thanksgiving post. And you're definitely right. Even still, I do think gratitude is important any time of the year and in just about any circumstance and isn't just exclusive to the end of November. So, why be

Ownership The topic of ownership has been on my mind recently. It's not a new topic. I've written about it before as well as many others such as James Shore , Martin Fowler , and Pierre Raynaud-Richard , to name a few. Most of the time, when talking to software engineers about ownership, the focus is on code ownership. While that should be a big focus, I think the issue of ownership does extend beyond that. Not only does ownership affect how we think about the code we work with, it also affects how we think about everything at our job. So, what is it about Ownership that's sparked so many people to write about it? Why has it been on my mind of late? How can ownership help you in your career? What does that word mean? I took a moment to Google that word and found one definition that really made the meaning of ownership clear in the sense that we use it in business: An attitude of accepting responsibility for something and taking control of how it develops I think t