This is great! I love to see people exploring mood tracking and looking for correlations and insights. I hope you write more about what this helps you discover.
<shameless plug> I built Moodprint (http://moodprint.com) to do the same sort of thing. It's using random sampling as well, though it's personal as opposed to team-based, and it allows free-form mood entry. Some people have been using it for >6 months, and it's helped find patterns around work and relationships, for instance.
Sorry -- we're still setting up, so things are a bit muddled. I've moved the welcome message onto the homepage and made the discussions public, so you should be able to get a better idea of what's going on now. Thanks for the feedback!
Good luck! I traveled that road for a few years with a site called MyPullList (2007-2010, RIP), and had a heck of a time with ... basically all of it. I did have a lot of fun talking about the data model and its challenges during the height of the NoSQL hype, though.
Gawande is one of my favorite non-fiction authors; I've learned a ton from his books and articles. I second (and would third and fourth if I could) the recommendation for The Checklist Manifesto here.
Had the flights been issue-free, I would have started out neutral. Had BigCo had someone watching out for me and fixing problems proactively, I would have started out with a hugely positive impression of the company. Either way, the in-person part would have done a good bit to reduce those feelings, as it was formulaic and role- rather than person-focused.
I should also mention that BigCo gave me one of the worst phone screens I've ever experienced (bad for the same lack of regard for me, personally), so I thought seriously about declining the in-person visit.
I ... suppose? I like to think that I've interviewed and been interviewed enough to know when the other side has any interest at all in having an actual conversation, though.
Sorry you didn't enjoy it! In all honesty, the travel is what stuck with me more than anything else about that entire process, though, and it's what started solidifying my thoughts about all of this. Hiring has a user experience like everything else, and in a lot of cases travel will take up more time than you ever spend talking to someone.
It's usually interpreted to mean that you need to respect that other people have ends of their own; they aren't just there for your benefit. I mentioned dating as a context where this sometimes happens, and I was thinking specifically of the pickup artist community.
To the link: are any of the major CM toolsets not backed by a company? Opscode, Puppet Labs, Ansibleworks, SaltStack... they all have corporate backing.
(Post author here) Re: agents -- yep. I should've called that out explicitly, as it further supports the provisioning vs. ongoing factor in my decision-making.
(Post author here) Absolutely -- I developed my entire setup in Vagrant. It was fantastic, especially in the early stages where I'd just share my playbook folder into the guest machine and run them locally.
Talk selection varies dramatically from one conference to the next (as it should). That said, there are ways to get your content out there without going through a formal CFP process:
* Many conferences have lightning talk sessions, which are much more open to speakers (though they're much shorter slots).
* Local user groups are almost always looking for willing speakers.
* You can record yourself giving the talk and post it online.
<shameless plug> I built Moodprint (http://moodprint.com) to do the same sort of thing. It's using random sampling as well, though it's personal as opposed to team-based, and it allows free-form mood entry. Some people have been using it for >6 months, and it's helped find patterns around work and relationships, for instance.