Jun 20 2007
Probably down to a very select few: there just aren’t enough posts here to warrant the specificity of some of the categories.
I’m thinking something like the following should be sufficient
Popularity: 2% [?]
Jun 20 2007
Okay, so you’re a commercial software company. You have some good products, and they’re highly extensible by the users, but you’re constantly being chased by a competing open source projects: every time you come up with a good idea, the open source community gangs up on you and produces another bolt-on project to do the same thing. How do you get that boost — that little nudge forward — to keep ahead of the open source competition?
The simple part (which Atlassian does well) is to consistantly provide excellent support and service, so that bugs are fixed quickly and people don’t feel abandoned.
The genius part is to have a contest. $4000 in total prizes to the biggest and coolest plug-ins that people can write. And, of course, they have to be liscensed so that Atlassian can package them up and send them out the door.
For $4000, they got 40 complete plug-ins. Assuming that each plug-in took 40 hours, that’s 1600 hours of work they got for $4000 — or $2.50/hr. You can’t outsource for cheaper!
Freakin’ genius. Seriously: someone deserves a raise.
EDIT: An Atlassian representative sets my numbers (and assessment) straight in comments.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Jun 20 2007
Does any of the readership know anything about the “Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE)” development methodology? I just bumped into it for the first time. I’ve heard people talk about how cool Best Buy’s development environment is, but never really got any details. Now I’ve bumped into ROWE as something being used at a start-up, but I don’t really know anything about it. Leads?
Popularity: 3% [?]
Jun 20 2007
Ted Neward shares a history lesson on Vietnam and insightful analysis on why ORM is hard, brought to my intention by Reginald Braithwaite@Raganwald.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Jun 19 2007
After a long time, I am finally ramping up towards seminary again. I am slotted to come under care of the Presbytery Committee on Preparation for Ministry (CPM) in August. Either in July or August, I should come under care of Bryn Mawr’s session. This basically means that I will be starting the process towards seminary, which is really refreshing.
One thing that I wasn’t ready for was the sheer amount of paperwork necessary to start this process. I mean, I served on the CPM for a while, and I saw the paperwork once it was filled out, but it’s totally different when it comes time to write it yourself. There are literally dozens of pages of paperwork, including a lot of introspective essays and a few whacky psychological assesment tools.
Once upon a time, I would have loved the opportunity to talk about myself and play with whacky psychological assessment tools. But that time isn’t really right now — now it seems like a lot of effort. This is kinda weird, I guess, because I blog quite a bit and still hit these heavy issues on online communities…but getting into a formal and critical analysis of my psyche and lifestyle really doesn’t sound like fun.
Popularity: 2% [?]
