Archive for the ‘Musings’ Category

Who to follow and when to follow. On twitter that is.

Friday, March 26th, 2010

In line with my last blog post, I am re-evaluating my relationship with the people I follow on Twitter. I started out on the right track by following those people I was genuinely interested in and then I started following anyone who followed me because I thought it was the nice thing to do. I came under the impression that it was rude not to follow someone who so kindly followed me and then I started thinking that to get more followers you have to follow more people. This has resulted in me never reading anyones tweets no matter how interested I am in them because I have to wade through a swamp of random, useless (to me) tweets.

I am now going on a twitter followee cleanse and un-following anyone I am not actually stoked to hear from. This may result in a backlash where I lose followers myself, but I don’t really care; quality not quantity eh?.

The point of blog comments

Friday, March 26th, 2010

I am torn on how I should handle comments on this blog. Should I disable comments all together? Should I only show the positive comments? Should I reply to comments? It is also difficult to tell which comments are authentic and which comments are from people who really don’t care about what you write, they just want their comments picked up by search engines or get a comment approved so that they can then spam you.

What is the point of blog comments? Are they just badges to hang on your site that say, “Look at how important I am, people are commenting on my blog”? To be honest, I think that is how I have been treating them up until now. After giving the subject some thought, blog comments in my opinion are for turning a one way dialogue (blog post) into a 2 way conversation; be that between blog author and commenter or between commenter’s themselves. With this in mind I am now going to make an effort to reply to every comment on our blog. After deleting the obvious spam comments I simply do not want to spend the time contemplating whether a comment is authentic or not, so I am just going to accept and comment on them all!

Let’s see how this experiment goes. And please don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate the time that anyone takes to comment on something that we write.

United we stand

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

Last Monday I had the horrifying experience of having my wisdom teeth removed. I was out of commission for two days straight and when I tried to come back to work on Wednesday I was confused and useless, after which I promptly developed dry socket and was again incapacitated. Suffice to say, it was as if I had vanished from the office for a week with no warning and no contingency plans in place. The effect it had on our company was of epic proportions for a company our size; absolutely nothing!

Wisdom Teeth

Do you know what this means? It means that we are one step closer to nirvana and passed a test that could have easily been very detrimental to Base-10. This does not mean that we can all go on sabbatical, but it does mean that what we have created is stronger then ever and will continue to grow. It is not about the individual, it is about the team. I spend more of my waking hours with Ramin, Thorsten, Negar, Fredrick, (anyone else I work with) etc, then I do with my family and I do not regret it, for they are also my family. In my mind Base-10 exists to enrich the lives of the people around us because this is what they have done for me. Who would have thought losing my wisdom teeth would give me such wise insight?

Use the tools around you

Friday, November 27th, 2009

In my opinion, far to many people continue to reinvent the wheel. There is nothing wrong with building a better wheel that is suited for your specific task, but don’t start from scratch just for the sake of starting from scratch. To continue my trend of hemorrhaging proverbs, suck it up and stand on the shoulders of giants. You will still be respected as alpha geek and your boss will be impressed because what really matters is doing it right, doing it well and getting it done. Chances are someone out there has already done what you are trying to do and they might have even done it better then you could yourself. This means that if you have the right tools and resources you don’t need to and should not sacrifice quality. Here are some tools we have used in various projects for a solid foundation to build from or even just use in our concepts and working demos. I have also included tools we use for debugging, development, design and other such tasks. I will continue to update this list as more come to mind: (more…)

We are what we work

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Capitalism’s language also says that our labor is a commodity to be bought and sold in a competitive marketplace. And it equates our personal identities with our economic roles in the market place. Think, for instance, of the intrinsically bizarre way we describe someone to a stranger. We usually say “He (or she) is an x,” where “x” is the persons profession.

– Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Upside of Down

I have often pondered this, but have been unable to articulate it myself. Capitalism has many pros and many cons, but it is a damn shame we have become defined by our professions. Should we not be defined by who we actually are? By our mannerisms, our temperaments, even our idiosyncrasies? Yes, I know, what we do is very much a part of who we are, but these days it is given far to much emphasis. I would rather be known as funny or a great snowboarder then a business owner or programmer.

Entrepreneur as an artist

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

I kept thinking that the entrepreneur is like an artist, only business is the means of his expression… He creates [a business] from nothing, just a blank canvas. It’s amazing. Somebody goes into a garage, has nothing but an idea, and out of the garage comes a company, a living company. It’s so special what they do. They are a treasure

– Bernard A. Goldhirsh, founder of Inc. magazine.
(From the final chapters of Small Giants, an incredible business book by Bo Burlingham. )

Sometimes we get so caught up in what we are doing, we forget what we have done.

Listening to those around you

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Why is it that it often takes external validation before you listen to what people have been telling you for a while? Our incredibly talented lead developer Thorsten Drobnik, has been telling me for ages to keep things simple, launch quickly and frequently, just get something out there, less software is better software, etc. etc. I kept brushing it off and not really paying attention. It is not that I didn’t agree, I just wasn’t taking it seriously or really listening. About 2 weeks ago I started reading the fantastic book, Getting Real by 37signals, which is all about these concepts. Since then I have taken these themes to heart and started to embed them into everything we do; you could say I have started to ‘Get Real’. We would have been much stronger as a company had I listened to Thorsten 6 months ago. It’s not even that Thorsten is just a random person, he has heaps of programming and development experience and is more then a decade older then me.

What else can I learn by simply listening to those around me?