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Thoughts and Inspiration February 20, 2007

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From Signal vs. Noise (37signals)

“If a major project is truly innovative, you cannot possibly know its exact cost and its exact schedule at the beginning. And if in fact you do know the exact cost and the exact schedule, chances are that the technology is obsolete.”
-Joseph G. Gavin, Jr., discussing the design of the lunar module that landed NASA astronauts on the moon.

Similarly, if you’re sailing a ship named the SS Entrepreneur, do you want it to travel inside a track like the Pirates ride at Disneyland, or would you like the freedom to change course? I think you do. The pirate ship in that ride sits in the same place everyday, raiding the same castle, and the captain keeps calling out the same insults. That’s not how I want to live my life. It’s also not how I want to run my business.

Now, turning a big boat is harder than turning a small one, and turning a whole fleet of boats is harder than one or a few. Hence, come up with one thing to focus on, one set of sails to keep full, until you’re secure in the knowledge that there is someone there to keep the ship on course. After you’ve made a few successful sea crossings, people will give you more credit as a navigator. Hell, they might even fund your expedition. Not everyone gets a Queen Isabella to their Chris Columbus.

There’s a guy who knew when he had a good thing. Went looking for India, found something completely different. Take the team over at Riya for example: they think they’re going to build this great identity search engine, and how they’re a shopping site. They maintained the ability to change course and decide when they’ve found something more valuable than what they originally started looking for.

And myself? I thought I was going to bring local bands into the spotlight - it ended up being less of a passion of mine. I see now that I like all parts of Orlando equally - places to live, shop, eat, create, have fun and learn - I want to learn about everything local and share it with everyone. Still, I felt like the town had so much to offer, and there were so many ways to look at each person, place, thing or concept that I should get some other people involved with sharing. So witness the birth of Orlando Scene TV.

On March 4th, I’ll show you the first of many installments of my latest vision. Around the same time, I’ll give you a chance to meet the people involved and start a conversation with them. Afterwards, you’ll have a chance to produce an episode yourself.

When I first created Liberatr I created a channel called Open Forum hoping that people would discover it and create their own podcasts - they could make a one-off opinion piece, respond to something we made or even create a recurring show without the burden of having to set up the hosting and promote the show. This is the same concept with a distinct spin - make it about Orlando, and show us what you’re passionate about. That’s all.

Florida Creatives Happy Hour - Dec 18th December 7, 2006

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Florida Creatives » Blog Archive » Florida Creatives Happy Hour - Dec 18th
The first post here on Florida Creatives will be to announce our first networking event! One of the goals of this podcast is to serve the community of entrepreneurs, filmmakers, thespians, bloggers and podcasters, artists, designers, architects - all are welcome at this event. The goal is to start a discussion amongst these groups and stir things up in Florida.

You can get directions and more details for this event over at Upcoming.org.

Monday, Dec 18th
Dexter’s Thornton Park
5:30PM - 9:00PM

David Heinemeier Hansson + Jason Fried = Jim + Tammy Faye Bakker? October 26, 2006

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Thank you for 37 Signals. I’ve been watching David Heinemeier Hansson’s RailsConf 2006 Keynote Address about CRUD and REST, and some of these quotes are great for people who have been in the trenches.

If you’re defining a new schema [in Rails], and you want to use composite primary keys, YOU’RE INSANE!

…and he’s right! By creating constraints, they’re creating a new generation of competent, agile, powerful programmers.

Also, back to my rant about personalities selling products, services and ideas:
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson are the right people to bring a Rails way of thinking to the world. Their personality, opinions, practices and public faces are the things that are making this different than a framework. It is more like a religion.

If you think you’re the mastermind who can create the perfect pressure cooker and close the lid just once, you get Java.

I am not saying they’re going to get sent to jail and become tabloid fodder or anything, but I find it very interesting the number of people who pay such close attention to these guys. It’s almost like there are a lot of college Computer Science teachers out there who maybe didn’t get their job done right, or that we need a new class of college professors to train the up-and-coming web-savvy developer kids of the future.