Shanti’s Dispatches

You can read my latest over on the SproutIt weblog.

Chris Bauman of SproutIt.com is liveblogging SXSW 2006 over on The Big Act (our weblog).

I don’t really know what SXSW is all about. Bands … geeks … music … food … austin … and this year … ajax !

The panel at SXSW includes the coiner of the term ‘Ajax’ (thank god we don’t have to keep saying XmlHttpRequest ad infinitum) … none other than Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path.

Here’s a peak at the liveblogging of SXSW so far: ajax: what you need to know, ajax, cont’d and ajax, pt. 3

Charles Jolley has a great post over on The Big Act (SproutIt.com’s weblog).

He talks about the shrink-wrap software development lifecycle. It’s not uncommon, as he describes, to only release a new update every quarter.

Can you imagine … a bug in GMail or some really popular web app … and Waiting. Three. Months.

Now, Charles on web apps, such as Mailroom:

The other night I happened to be working when someone reported a bug they found Mailroom. I immediately knew how to solve the issue, so I fixed the problem and emailed the person back within maybe 10 minutes of their report.

Three months to deliver a fix down to 10 minutes. That’s service! Think about that the next time you find some nasty bug in the software you use for your business and you have to wait for the next release to have it fixed.

This is one of the things Joel is really going to have to grok soon, if not already, following the release of Fog Creek Copilot.

Of course, Paul Graham understood this way back in the day, when he created one of the world’s first web apps. (the first, he claims. :))

What is a *REAL* Programming Language?

I got into a bit of a pissing match back at my old company, because one of my fellow developers decided that scripting languages (you know, powering many if not most of the new innovative web apps coming out these days), are not real programming languages.

Only compiled languages like C++, Java, and … wait for it …. C# are real programming languages.

Do we all remember COBOL? Mainframes?

What do we think hardcore, diehard C++ programmers will be like in 8-10 years? Hmmmm….

I’m really bad at this.

I used to check email constantly throughout the day. It would just never seem to stop piling up!

But being a GTD-freak (a lot more so lately), I’m really trying to keep that inbox within the 1-page (visible) range, of mostly actionable / pending items.

So today I didn’t check / respond to email at all! Yes, not exactly earth-shattering news.

But I got an incredible amount done, including ripping apart my Ruby / Rails / Postgres installation on OS X and basically starting from scratch. (We’re using Ruby 1.8.4 over at Sprout and edge Rails, baby! Umm yeah, we like to live dangerously.)

… and, now here at 5AM, relaxing in bed with my lappy, I’m finally wading through all the email from the day. Sorry for all the “late” replies!

In less than 30 hours, I’ll be moving on from my current employer.

It’s been a fun little ride, but other opportunities have presented themselves and it’s really just the perfect timing for me.

I’d like to give a big shoutout to my pals here at the office — Thomas, Ed, Jim, Ron, Scott, Eric and the whole gang. Sorry I won’t be continuing with ya’ll, but Ruby on Rails, web app development, and early-stage startups are where my heart lies at the moment.

Starting Small, Finishing ….. ? with Sprout

I have the domain name StartSmallFinishBig.com, which I haven’t decided quite what to do with yet. Maybe a small biz blog, or local small biz networking group, who knows.

The thing I dislike about the term small business, though, is that it can:

1) Imply that what you’re doing is small. When clearly small teams can do big things.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead

2) Imply that you’ll always be small. This is obviously not the case, but the picture I have of a “small business” is one in which the owner is struggling very hard to get things off the ground.

That first 1-2 years can be incredibly difficult and many (or most - I think like 80%) do not make it.

I hazard to guess that two years of struggle, stress and just barely making ends meet … is not the reason small business entrepreneurs went into business for themselves.

The Ideal Small Business

My ideal small business would be 100% automated, or backed up by a dedicated team of on-call support reps. So that, you know, I could take 2-month long vacations in Fiji and the Virgin Islands. Then stop off in Vail for a nice little snowboarding session.

E-mail and Internet access would be used to login and see the latest stats — how many new clients had signed up or how many new sales were made. (Oh, another $2,236 today, w00t!)

So, small is just a state of mind. It’s a stepping stone. That’s all.

The Big Act - Sproutit’s Weblog

You can follow along with our journey over on The Big Act - Sproutit’s weblog on small business, technology, our software and doing what you love.

Gabriel and I first started Niner Niner about a year ago after some initial success at collaborative blogging. (Our first was HIPAA Blog, a nice little niche.)

Since then, I’ve come to realize the biggest drawback of starting this kind of project, which is, you have to cater to the needs of three distinct groups of people:

• Your Readers
• Your Writers
• Your Advertisers

Yes, AdSense goes a long way, but you still need advertisers to make it a business as opposed to a hobby. (at least in our case)

Niner Niner has been an awesome endeavor and we’ll continue smoothing out its rough edges and working on it when we have time. Gabriel has also been doing some great work with customizing a WordPress Multi-User installation for a related project. (can’t talk about this one yet, I don’t think…)

But the appeal of subscription-based services such as Basecamp, Backpack, Flickr Pro and soon Mailroom is what drew me to Sprout.

These kind of apps also fit right into the sweet spot of Ruby on Rails.

I’m proud to announce that I’m the newest member of the Sprout development team.

I’ll be working with Sprout on a part-time basis - hacking Ruby on Rails code and working on integration with the core application development being performed by Scott Barron.

Scott’s a core member of the Rails development team, so, I think I can learn a thing or two from him.

What Is Sprout, You Ask?

Sprout is creating a suite of web apps for small businesses and startups that do more with less.

Simple and elegant, yet powerful - it’s the new black.

The Big Act

Be sure to check out The Big Act, Sprout’s weblog.

The Story

This page does an excellent job of explaining the opportunity and reason for Sprout’s existence.

There are 20 million businesses with 10 or fewer employees in the United States alone. Our mission is to build a suite of web hosted business applications uniquely designed for these very small businesses.

Stay tuned for updates.