Category: Leadership
Buttergate, or the Importance of Metrics
Is butter harder? This has been the focus of many Canadians lately, as their butter isn’t spreading across bread or club crackers (which I personally love) as they expect. But, what I don’t love is crackers breaking as I spread butter on them. Harder butter makes that more likely, so this hard butter issue is…
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We Are All George Costanza (We Are All Michael Scott – Part 2)
We are all Michael Scott. That was what I explained in a blog post from a few years back, and I stand by the statement. Michael Scott is the main character on The Office for most of the seasons. He didn’t see himself as an evil boss, intentionally making his employees miserable. He wasn’t trying…
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Introducing the Don’t Panic Labs Advanced Continuing Education Program
Businesses across the country have adjusted to the realities of our current environment. Don’t Panic Labs is no exception. While our professional services business made adjustments to remote work rather quickly, continuing our Software Design and Development Clinics required some additional thought and effort. These classes were designed around in-person settings, so their structure needed…
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A Capstone Project for Good: Teamwork, Communication, and Success
If you keep up with the happenings of Don’t Panic Labs, you’re likely aware of the Nebraska Dev Lab Pipeline Program. It is an educational partnership between us and Doane University. Our goal is to help address the shortage of software development talent in Nebraska by turning a small cohort into quality, entry-level software developers….
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How NOT to Wait for an Online Meeting to Begin (and What to do Instead)
While waiting for online meetings to start, we often find ourselves passing that time in various ways. Unfortunately, this can distract us and possibly lead to us not being as engaged as we should be. There are things you absolutely should avoid doing while waiting for others to join an online meeting. As a person…
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A Time to Listen and Learn: A Message from CEO Doug Durham
The countless tragic deaths, most recently of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, and the recent violence we have seen play out have reinforced the need for our society to participate in some difficult conversations about who we are and who we want to be. As we witness powerful expressions of grief and anger…
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Developing for Good: A Quick Look at MyLNK
The team at Don’t Panic Labs has worked on a lot of software over the years (10 years last month, by the way). We have stood up numerous new applications and platforms for our customers and have transformed many platforms into more modern and stable platforms to help customers grow their businesses. But the single…
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Back to School: My Semester Lecturing at UNL
I have always enjoyed teaching people how to write software. And teaching people how to write software that runs in the cloud hits two passions of mine. This semester I am a guest lecturer at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, teaching a 400-level course on distributed cloud systems. I have taught courses at UNL…
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Book Review: Range
Like many readers, I have enjoyed many of Malcolm Gladwell’s books. His book Outliers has been very influential on our culture’s thoughts. The 10,000-hour rule is known by most of us at this point; it has almost become a rule that people believe to be true. But in the book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in…
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Quick Thoughts on My Time at the IDesign Architecture Clinic
Doug Durham, Andy Unterseher, and I recently returned from an IDesign Architecture Clinic held in Kansas City. This week-long class was taught by Michael “Monty” Montgomery, who has a very engaged and driven approach to education. He provided a lot of real-world / from the trenches feedback that I certainly appreciate. We started the week…
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