Archive Page 2

The crashing of the waves is intense and reverberates across the lania (Hawaiian for balcony). My feet are up, a Guava juice with a wedge of lime and a bowl of rice chex at my left. I have the Wordpress iPad app open. We landed 2 days ago, with a brand new ipad but short one functional macbook pro. A little flick of the wrist and a full glass of water spilled across the keys. The screen flashed white and immediately went dark.

I screamed. Then opened the chassis, poured out the water and set it to dry. A quick trip to the apple store right before our flight, and the tech just shook his head, wished me luck and sent me on my way. His advice, wait 3 – 5 days, say a little prayer and hit power. Today is day 4. Perhaps this exercise will end tomorrow.

Now in full disclosure, Peter, dear man that he is, raided my house and brought an ancient computer and my backup drive to SF. Phew. Except that my fairly new time capsule backup was corrupted. Four hours of internet research later and only a few hours to go before our departure, I gave up. No sleep for me. I did bring the old lappy with me, but as it really had almost none of my software or my development files, its basically good for watching Hulu and little else. A tangent but Hulu really should get an ipad app, which I would gladly pay for it – even repeatedly. Heck, I pay $17 a month for netflix.

In the end, I found myself on the ipad, trying to run a company. Now if I was a full time technician, this would be a disaster, at least for now. I have yet to see MAMP (IAMP?) on the iPad (wouldn’t that be sick?!?). But, those days are slowly fading and now I am a full time freelance art-director / project manager / sales person. I spend the day communicating. For that, the iPad has got me about 80% of the way there. Ok, onto the good and the ugly (or just plain uninformed).
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We are super excited to announce that gigaom.com is a finalist in the Business Blog category for the 2010 Webby Awards! Our team has been working tirelessly (ok, fine we did get pretty darn tired at some points) to redesign all the sites in their network, launching GigaOm late last year.

Please lend us your vote so that we can go party in New York at what Reid refers to as the “Oscars for Geeks”.

Vote for GigaOm in the 2010 Webby Awards!

http://webby.aol.com/category_groups/marketplace/categories/blog__business

Shane and I had a great time at South by Southwest (SXSW) this year.  As the event slowly becomes more distant in my memory I’m attempting to post some of the learnings on the blog.  In this post I’m going to address the session titled, 10 Strategies for Building a Happy and High Performing Team, lead by Beth Hallmark and Drew Scherz.

Let me start by saying this was one of 2 sessions that we attended in a small room.  Both were extremely engaging because everyone had a voice in the conversation.  I highly recommend attending some small sessions if you plan to visit SXSW.

Beth and Drew work as team leaders in the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts overseeing Susan Combs’ award winning Window on State Government site.  Here’s what they handed us at the session:

1. Know what people like most about their jobs
2. Expect high performance
3. Find and hire high performers
4. Promote the power of the team
5. Share success and failure
6. Embrace the importance of dreams
7. Reign in the Ego
8. Celebrate Differences – especially among high performers
9. Remember, there are no guarantees
10. Know that “happy is” as “happy thinks”

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Looking for news and tips about our open source plugin? Follow Shane on twitter @justlikeair.

Update: Thank you so much for all the nice emails and interest we have received. If you are looking for technical support, please read through the support forum and if you don’t find your answer create a new thread.

We have just open sourced two plugins and would love a review / thoughts for future directions, improvement and any wisdom on promoting an open source wordpress plugin.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/the-events-calendar/

The Events Calendar plugin enables you to rapidly create and manage events using the post editor. Features include optional Eventbrite integration, Google Maps integration as well as default templates such as a calendar grid and event list for streamlined one click installation.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/eventbrite-for-the-events-calendar/

Register attendees and gather money for your events. Eventbrite is FREE for no-charge events and takes a small commission for each ticket sold. This is the easiest and best way to manage your events and now it plugs directly into Wordpress!!!

Eventbrite for The Events Calendar adds Eventbrite integration to The Events Calendar. This plugin depends on The Events Calendar and has no standalone functionality. Both plugins need to be activated in order for Eventbrite functionality to work.

Warning: helpfulness can be inspiring and contagious.  I’ve been hit with the bug since our star designer and PM, Reid Peifer, launched his beautiful new project, REMAKERS.

REMAKERS is a center dedicated to bringing new media to non-profit organizations.  As Reid puts it in his mission:

REMAKERS strives to be a resource, sounding board, and source of inspiration to groups and individuals working to make the world a better place.

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The Opportunity

We’re looking for a talented Wordpress developer with extensive plugin experience to join our crew on a handful of upcoming projects. This is a freelance position – we’re game for people located anywhere in North America.

Are you clued into the latest wordpress happenings and developments? Have a hankering to extend Wordpress in new directions? We’re currently working on high-profile Wordpress implementations that range between conventional to seriously bleeding edge. We will want to see plugin code examples – public plugins are ideal. We want people that are able to develop code that can withstand high profile sites and intense loads. You should be comfortable working as part of a team – your code will have to integrate into an existing architecture. If the tightly optimized code get’s you excited – you’re probably a good fit.

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gek slap [gi-k sl-app]
noun / verb

1. A socially correcting blow delivered through the demonstration of superior technical knowledge. Denotes playful to serious disrespect for the person being geek slapped as they are just not worthy.

Examples: Shane complained that firefox kept putting œ in his words, which he claimed must be a bug as that character doesn’t even exist. Reid IM’ed him http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Œ, then told him to change his spell-check dictionary back to English from French and to consider himself geek slapped.

Often I find that when pressures mount my first reaction is to defend myself.  Take, for example, a recent conversation between me and Reid.

Reid: Peter, when you have a moment, I could really use some dev support to spec out a small plugin for one of our clients.  It’ll only take an hour tops and would really help me a bunch.

Peter: I’ll get you some dev support as soon as our dev projects calm down in a couple of months.  We’re working as hard as we can and you’re not the only one who has need you know?  I mean I’ve barely slept in like 5 months and have started to BUY laundry and dishes instead of cleaning them because of these deadlines that we have to meet and oh my god you’re totally STRESSING ME OUT WITH YOUR INCESSANT DEMANDS!  CAN’T YOU SEE THAT WE’RE DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN? AHHHHHHHHH!

Reid: Um…  I’m sensing that this is not the best time to ask you about this.  When can we talk about this again?

Peter: I’m sorry Reid, I don’t mean to be wigging out so much.  I’m really not that stressed.  But I don’t know when I’ll be able to help more.  I appear to be double booked for every appointment i have over the next 6 weeks and I just can’t think about this right now.  I know it might not seem like it but I’m working really hard and you should know that I’m working hard, can’t you see that I’m working hard?  What more do you need from me?  AHHHHHHHHH!

Obviously this slightly dramatized interaction could be improved.  There are any number of ways to better address Reid’s request, but one stands out to me in particular: an open call for help (possibly paired with some anti-psychotics).
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Sometimes I really debate writing about some of our more successful techniques. What if someone actually takes our advice and does something with it? Make our competitors smarter? Then I remember that there really is enough work for all of us (I absolutly believe that) and I unclench my ass.

The fact is that starting a conversation with a stranger is uncomfortable for most people. For the developers I know, it is often more so. After all, they did not choose a people oriented career. The problem we often face when recruiting: How do you make small talk with developers in a public space, get them to come out of their shell and talk to you? Our solution: Hang a sign around your neck.
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Two weeks ago, Peter & I finally stepped out on a long overdue corporate retreat. We have been running in survival mode since my daughter Serenity was born in March. A busy company, little sleep and a smaller (but much wiser) management team caused us to focus upon our clients, but severely limited our time to put thought into the business itself.

Despite all the possibility for disaster, projects went relatively smoothly. We learned a few good lessons and as a result, our terms and conditions grew.  Time to update the old contract.
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