Growing and Changing
So we've grown as a team and a company by a considerable margin over the past 13 months, and we've hit some big milestones in the product, process and personel departments recently, and we're moving our Main Digs to a bigger/cooler/better space this weekend. I'm super excited, it feels like a big step in a series of big steps that just continues to get me jazzed every single day that I wake up that I get to work for the company that I've helped build into my model of an amazing environment -- the company I'm helping build, and the engineering/development org I'm building, is the same one I'd want to be in regardless of my level or where I'd fit into it. I think that's an important distinction. If you're building a company based off of someone else's philosophy, someone else's framework, and it's not what an org that you'd LOVE to be a part of, in any capacity, what the hell are you doing?
I only bring this up because so many folks we've brought in have been so shocked that I wasn't trying to sell them a line -- that this actually IS a haven for passionate, motivated and dedicated nerds. Now we have the palace for the nerds to live in, and I intend to live it up to the fullest.
Interview? Me? Huh?
So, the good peeps at
Grid7 pulled me down to their office (conveniently located about 2 blocks from the Palacial vSocial Estates) to do an interview. I sound like a goofball, but my message is super clear -- I love where we're going, what we're doing, and the company we're forming.
Check out the
interview here.
In the case of Products v. Services
So, the latest Refresh Phoenix meeting was last night. I showed up about half an hour into it, as
some of us have to actually work. Ahem. Anyways, the topic of conversation was surrounding the Refresh Conference that AP, Ritz, Josh and Archer have cooked up, and it spawned a lot of interesting discussion as to how and what it should be.
I'll be honest, I was pretty disheartened by the whole thing.
Let me explain that, because I'll probably piss a few folks off with that. The focus for the main planners to this point has been about bringing SMB owners, developers, designers, et al. together to have a big day of talking and networking.
ARG!I gave my speech about how the Valley (Phoenix, that is) is still primarily a service-focused tech industry. People want to custom and one-off everything. Guys, I hate to pop your buzzword bubble, but that's not what Web 2.0 (hate that term!) is about! We should be busily working towards the point where professional services are pretty much about just design and implementing products that are hosted by folks that do what they do and do it far better than your/our/anyone's one-off is going to be. Integrate things that folks have built into a product that you roll out that's self-service. Would you rather have clients that demand pixel-specific changes and are whiny "I know what I'm doing" babies, or 10,000 people using a platform or product that you can iterate and service across your customer base -- but they maybe only pay you $30, $100, or $250 each a month?
I really take issue with the short-sightedness of my peers here locally. I think they're realy smart guys, but man are they missing the boat on how to really apply that talent and those smarts to being long-term succesful. Trying to rope a local company into a $50K custom web build is just less and less honest every day, and eventually that's going to be really obvious. Plan for the day when those services just are complete fiction, guys, or you're going to be doing a lot of catching up.
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