LessConf 3010 Day One

Originally posted 2010-05-22 08:39:08

I first met Steve Bristol in 2007 at the inaugural RubyJax meeting. I walked into the meeting expecting a typical tech gathering of strangers: people sitting as far away from each other as the room will allow, reading email on their smart phones and acting as if they’d rather be anywhere else, and hoping someone else would start the conversations. Steve (along with Jon Larkowski) set the tone for the meeting. He started the conversations, and was no stranger (though he was stranger than I expected). As people filed into the room, he acted as if his life had been leading to this moment, that he’d hoped to meet that person for so long and was as happy as a Macolyte on iPad-release day to finally do so. That night, he was open, fun-loving, needling, profane, unkempt, and raw, and has been so every time I’ve seen him. The RubyJax user group continues in that vein, and is the most social, smartest group of people I’ve ever hung around. It’s worth moving to Jacksonville, just to come to our meetings!

When I saw the announcement for LessConf 3010 and the lineup of speakers, I emailed my boss, a 37signals fan, and told him we should go as a management team. He responded that I and a coworker should go, so we signed up. My coworker realized late that he had previous plans to attend a wedding this weekend, so missed the conference. Two words: Mis Take. I’d have skipped my best friend’s wedding, my sister’s wedding, and would have considered hiring a proxy for my own wedding rather than miss this conference. You can always explain the pictures to the kids later.

Atlanta rains washed me to a runway in Birmingham while the first speaker–Chris Wanstrath, founder of GitHub–explained why your idea sucks, and why that’s a good thing. I feel like I missed a dosing of abuse and an affirmation that I’m OK, so I plan to scream at myself in the mirror tonight, and then soothe myself with a pint of mint chocolate chip while channel surfing for House reruns. I’m bummed I missed his talk, but maybe he’ll post slides?

I finally arrived at the conference and squeezed into the middle of Dan Martell’s talk. Martell is the cofounder of Flowtown, and talked about \”lean product development.\” Apparently he made a bundle with Spheric, and now seeks success with Flowtown, which takes your customer email list and sends you a bundle of information about them. Some highlights from his talk:

• Show mockups or prototypes to users before building your great idea
• If someone who is not your friend, family, aunt, etc., pays you $1 online, you have gone pro
• It’s not about marketing–it’s about product, so make a product that’s marketable
• Be ready to pivot from what you’re doing, but not jump
• Early adopters are important, because they’ll be patient with you
• Don’t fear competition, but don’t be distracted by it. See what your competitors’ customers are saying on Get Satisfaction or UserVoice
• Use metrics that are Actionable, Auditable, and Accessible
• They push code to Production 50 times a day, and anyone can push. A watchdog process monitors metrics, and automatically rolls back if it detects a problem
• Use UserTesting.com to see how real users are interacting with your site

Next up was Cameron Moll, author of Mobile Web Design and co-author of CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions. He’s a designer by both trade and passion, and he runs Authentic Jobs. He talked about good vs great design, and his passion for great design dripped from his presentation. He showed us some of the efforts he went through to make a poster of the Roman Colosseum with typography. He showed us a technique he uses to make sure his designs have the appropriate visual hierarchy: he removes the color, blurs the design, and makes sure the important parts stand out. He talked about influence vs inspiration, that influence is borrowed and inspiration is earned, and that you’d better schedule time to seek inspiration and have a plan to capture that inspiration anytime, anywhere. He recently started using Dive Slates so he can capture ideas in the shower. He talked about the importance of creative pause, when the body is engaged in some monotonous task and the mind is free to roam, and that this typically happens in bed, bath, or bus. When designing, be sure to understand the problem you’re trying to solve–don’t just jump in with your array of solutions.

Moll was running well into lunchtime, and said he would skip most of his talk so we could eat. A swell from the audience insisted he deliver the full material, however. No one wanted him to stop. We didn’t eat until 2:15, and no one complained.

A small group of us got to eat lunch with Peldi Guilizzoni, founder of Balsamiq, a mockup tool. He told us the story behind Balsamiq, that he was working at Adobe and needed a mockup tool, couldn’t find one he liked, and pitched his bosses on creating a tool for Adobe to sell. Adobe doesn’t touch things that won’t bring in at least $100 million, so he set off to do it himself. He said that the tool is nowhere near finished–he can’t believe people buy it!–but that he hopes to complete his vision of the tool this fall. He also said he’s embarrassed of his website, that he based it off some old 37signals design, but thinks maybe people like it because they can tell that it’s not backed by a big company, just \”some dude.\” He talked about the accounting pains of having two companies: one in California, where he started the company, and one where he now lives, in Italy. He has an office in his home in Italy, off his bedroom, where he and another employee work. There’s no phone jack in the office, so they used to carry the fax/printer into the bedroom anytime they needed to receive a fax, but they recently bought a 20 meter phone cord that they can roll up or string out as faxes demand. He was expressively Italian, open with his thoughts and experiences, and quick to laugh and poke fun at himself. He talked about how angry people get when your software breaks for them, but how grateful and supportive they are when you fix it quickly. He talked about his early beta group, that he has a release version and an early beta version, and that he’d built a group of passionate users that gave him great feedback on the beta, but had to start over after burning the group with a completely broken beta build. His American wife and children came with him on this trip, and they’re staying here for a two-week vacation but he flies back to Italy tomorrow. As he explained this to us, his face beamed and his fists punched joyfully upwards as a he slavered over two weeks of 20-hour coding days, though he hastily explained that he loves his wife and children. We all understood and openly envied his plans.

After lunch, he approached me and asked me if we’d met before, saying I looked familiar. For one fleeting, foolish, vainglorious moment, I thought perhaps his tech career had been sparked by The Definitive Guide to SWT and JFace, that my book molded his entire approach to developing software, and that he recognized me from my smashing Celtics-hatted photo from the back of the book. Alas, a quick probe revealed that he’d never touched SWT, but that Balsamiq boasted an SWT importer. We decided I must just have one of those faces or bald pates or something.

After lunch, Saul Colt from thoora spoke about how marketing is going to change in 2011. He probably caught us at our worst: long morning, full bellies, and ready to nap. The man apparently can’t be daunted, however, so he entertained and cajoled and got us moving. He approaches marketing by making people scratch their heads and think–sort of a high-tech shock jock–and his approaches defy convention. He claims to be the smartest and most handsome man in the world, and though he’s likely neither he sparks conversations with those claims. He confessed that he spends most of his time on the road, and often gets 10-12 hotel room keys that he passes out when asked for a business card (without revealing his room number, or so he says), just to start conversations. At zipcar, they forewent the budgeted, small, employee-only Christmas party, borrowed to the hilt, and threw a party/rock concert for all their customers. Break from the ordinary, he seems to say, and get noticed. He talked about knowing your customers (the more you know them, the less you’ll want to disappoint them), listening to them, and instead of just engaging them (which can be scary for them), empower them. He talked about the TupperWare-like party containers packed with Fresh Books goodies that they gave to Fresh Books customers so they could throw Fresh Books parties and do Fresh Books marketing. Transparency will be replaced by Invisibility, that instead of \”it\” kid rock stars being Twitter marketing celebrities, personalities will disappear and companies will just be doing great work. He said to find the niches where your customers go and go there.

In the days leading up to LessConf, some folks have pointed to the all-white, all-male slate of speakers, chosen by an all-white, all-male company, and have launched accusations of racism and misogyny at Less Everything. The panel contains more diversity than the critics acknowledge: David Heinemeier Hansson is from Denmark, Peldi Guilizzoni is from Italy, and Saul Colt is from a different planet altogether. True, though, that the panel has neither women nor people of color, but such strident accusations based on a nine-person slate, which has little wiggle room for adhering to statistical norms, seem unjustified. Bristol’s wardrobe attests to his colorblindness. Colt, however, didn’t help matters when he showed a slide of underclad lesbians kissing or about to kiss (I refuse to look it up), and that slide fell with a thud on the audience. You can be outrageous without offending. Colt muttered, \”OK, I need to remove that slide from this presentation.\” I agree.

After Colt, the 37signals folks took the stage for an interview with Bristol, where most was banter or rehashed information you can find elsewhere, but some tidbits surfaced. Years ago, DHH wrote editorial reviews for a video gaming site, grew tired of working with belligerent programmers to get his reviews published, and learned how to program so he could bypass the programmers. We owe Ruby on Rails to a few jerky programmers? Amazing! He then did some contract work for 37 signals, building Basecamp in 10 hours/week and proving how much you can get done when you focus. DHH also races a Porsche Cayman and wins often. Fried has two cars that he wouldn’t disclose.

With their recent book Rework, they’re trying to reach a larger audience than they have, and are succeeding. They revealed that the buildout on their new office is $1 million, but that this doesn’t flout the Getting Real concepts because they’re not spending other people’s money to do this. They’ve earned this by staying in substandard offices for so long, and are treating this as a luxury item. They’ll have an auditorium in their new office that uses 30% of the total space where they’ll hold seminars to teach others, as well as bring in others to teach them. Stay tuned.

The bacon pancake breakfast starts in five minutes, and I’m unshod and unpacked, so I have time neither to finish nor to edit, so this is coming at you raw–which, for a piece on a Bristol/Branch conference, seems appropriate. Looking forward to another great, raw day!