Brain Breach

I keep tabs on the FOSS offerings in a casual way.  It’s always interesting to see new projects, new intentions and money being put into software.   Take a wider angle with me for a moment.  Do we really need it all?  Allow me to argue that these intentions are misplaced, and that most software gets worse for a very specific reason.

Axiom: Complexity for the user invites simple competitors

That’s the part that is important.  However, the second part could read “those competitors will soon make their user experience complex”.   There is more than one thing becoming complex in older software: the user experience and the code. The main reason we train in software engineering is to keep complexity controlled. Complexity, if not controlled, is confusion.  So if a user, or an engineer is working with software, and they don’t feel in control of the core functionality of it, they might move on, or companies might re-do the effort to compete with it.

Starting is sexy.  Building on a legacy, not.

The company, or individual says to themselves “Why not create this software better”, rather than purchasing/using existing code, and going on from there.  Starting, that’s sexy.  Remember when you first fell in love? Nothing like it! Until you do it again, right?  Taking an old piece of software that does everything you want, just not the way you want, that’ not sexy.

Want proof?  Take a look at SourceForge, and the available content management systems written in PHP.   See, the user experience of every one on there is really bad, OR, it is quite easy to use, but doesn’t have any power.   Think of the reason for this:  A single author gets inspired to create a new CMS (because, that’s just sexy and fun), because they think they can do it better.  In fact, their thoughts on how to do it better are most likely an improvement over the system in question. So they create it, know it in an out, and it turns out, most likely, alright to lame.  We haven’t touched on the problem yet!

Collaborative will and enthusiasm is killed by confusing software

When the next fellow comes along to help with the system, that might work, if they can grasp it quickly.  If the system is overly complex, they might create their own system from scratch, just to avoid a confusing experience.

The other part of the problem:

Without a nagging champion for simplicity on your team, software will evolve into a confusing experience

We know that creating software is by nature complex.  Also, creating simple, and powerful user experience requires very complex software.  Now we have two things going against us: The inherent complexity of software engineering, and, the complexity of engineering it to be simple for the user.  Wait, let’s add a third!  The complexity of creating a intuitive, and understandable experience for the programmer.  That will keep the program moving forward into the future.  Build opposite, and all your programmers will treat you like a mean dictator until you allow them to rewrite it.

The answer to the problems above, well, those are tricky I think, and I couldn’t fully answer them.  However, if we are looking out for the problems, that’s a good start.  We seldom see companies that are willing to invest properly into achieving simplicity.  I hope to be one of those.

As a dedicated software adventurer, Chandler has been on my radar for a very long time.  Since 1.0 came out today, I thought I might give it a go.

What Chandler is: a project that hopes to sync with great services (gmail, outlook, etc) and is therefore quite welcome.

What Chandler is not: functional or useful

Ouch!  I am quite sorry to give such a review of this project.  I know what it takes to pull something like this off, and how much Mitch Kapor’s heart has been poured into it.  Let’s hope this isn’t a pattern for later releases of Chandler.

Four Reasons why Chandler 1.0 is found wanting

1. It doesn’t do anything that I need

Sure, it syncs my to-do’s and calendar with other stuff, but does that matter when the to-do’s aren’t useful, and calendar has nothing new to offer?  In other words, who wants to sync something they don’t really don’t need? Sync a mess at home, and it will appear at work also!

2. Tasks are a mess

Chandler is supposed to follow the GTD paradigm.  The problem is it just uses the most minimal implementation possible.  So if you want to mark something beyond just now/later/done, you have to schedule it on the calendar.  This poses a few problems. Mainly, there is no abstraction, which is really the heart of GTD, i.e. “don’t stress over that now, you can only do one thing at a time”.

Thankfully, they do have “note”(the universal item in Chandler) categories. You can’t even drag/arrange tasks.  Their idea of abstraction is a star. Your note can have it, or not.  Well, after you mark a dozen of those, they start to loose their meaning.

With so much competition in the tasking arena, Chandler is certainly nothing to get excited about.

3. No contacts

Really, this program wants to be a PIM (personal information manager).  It’s my opinion that nothing is really going to take over this market until they take a truly SMART comprehensive view of PIM. There have been many brave attempts, but since there is a large gap between great ideas and solid implementation, we probably have to wait for a couple more years before something killer comes along.

So how are you supposed to link a to-do to a contact to a calendar entry?  You can’t right now.  I bet you a nickel it’s in their plans, but that doesn’t help us today.

4.  Memory Muncher

The Python runtime jumped to 140 mb after some very average usage in Chandler. Python has its own memory management, but how well will it do under heavy usage?  Remember Python on the desktop isn’t a terribly popular scenario, and Chandler could find themselves with low level programming they aren’t ready to handle.  But, that is a risk I bet they have wagered well.  You have to take risks to move ahead in the tech world.

Really, I do hate to be so down on fellow entrepreneurs and developers.  Truly, I wish them the best.  Please, own this category! Until then, I am sticking with ToDoList and a medley of other apps.  My prediction is that Google will be the first to confront the ugly monster that is PIM with poise.

+ update : I found Thinking Rock, and so far, I really love it. It will probably take the place of ToDoList.

Evidently there are good and bad flavors of perfectionism. Learning this was eye opening because I always thought that perfectionism across the board was bad. Perfectionism that is based on what others think is mal-adaptive. In other words, it can’t adapt to your expectations of their expectations, ever.

Adaptive perfectionism(the good one) is the type that learns from others, and is continually improved by ones own vision of perfection, knowing that it will never be fully achieved, but always held as the target.

Resources:

The subject is interesting and merits more study. Here is a neat article on the subject

Some things are in-your-face obvious: Finding great information quickly on the web is difficult; a tun of choices makes of lengthy research, and most of us would prefer just a few great ones; Myspace is visual mess.  Complexity and clutter server to alienate customers. 

Some brands see complexity as a bad thing, and profit by offering a simple alternative. Research proves that this could work:

one study shows that customers would pay an 8% premium for a simpler consumer experience, and 50% would switch brands for it. ref

This is where I find confidence in the direction we are taking ScreenBird.  Sure it has worthy competitors such as SlideRocket, PowerPoint and Keynote, but we are offering something that none of these are; utter simplicity.  This is my gamble, that allowing the customer to drop in text and media with clarity, in an uncluttered environment, will win the customer. 

Distribution, not product development is my largest hurdle coming up.

Also, see Lee’s article on Banner Blindness.  A good read for web interface developers or directors.

It’s not terribly common these days for managers and employees to have learning time built right into their job description. What if the paradigm was shifted a bit to allow this for huge company benefit?

My employees are allowed to study, on my clock, based on how expensive their decisions are. Managers make costlier decisions, and warrant more study time. See, folks that do a good job in management, don’t have to get a terribly large amount done day to day. Managers at a McDonalds, or other store front have a different situation, and don’t justify as much on going training in the theoretical. Folks in say, a lead architect position, or head of marketing shouldn’t be consumed with daily tedious tasks. When would their brain rest and provide me with those great breakthrough ideas?

The more theoretical, the more expensive the decision, the more they should be treated as scholars than janitors. This is in regards to study and brain rest time of course, not respect for the position or person.

This leads to problems though. It might not feel right to the CEO to see high paid managers or other C level folks reading with their feet up on the desk, or taking long walks everyday. “I just paid that guy $100 to get a sun tan!!!!!” are the words I imagine. It should be so clear to them.

Think of a decision that could cost the company $1,000,000, with the potential to make $2,000,000, or $0. Let’s say your head of marketing is making this decision, and has spend a total of three months of combined paid time walking or reading over the last year. That’s simple math! He or She is most likely going to make a much more informed decision with deep contemplation and study. So maybe his time and study materials costs $50,000. Wouldn’t that be a fair price to raise such odds?

Forcing this person to fill their time with menial work, just to keep busy is completely counter productive to bottom line of the business. Our best decisions come from little phrases we read in books, or something that comes up in thought or conversations. Put more of those tokens in the brain of you manager, and reap the rewards.

Scott Barttell (Director of World wide sales operations at Adobe) offered a tour of their headquarters. Are you kidding! Sign me up! So a couple weeks back I got to make the trip. Impressive.

Adobe one of the best technical companies of this generation, and their thoughtfulness and expertise in meeting needs/wants certainly translates over to their headquarters. Certainly the three towers are lavish where it counts. These towers host 3,000 well trained employees, and seem fit for them. Interesting the office spaces are humble. I signed a 3 page NDA twice about not giving away the Adobe secrets, or something, so, I hope I am not breaking that!

Lunch was great. There were a dozen gourmet chefs lined up waiting for our lunch time commands. It was fantastic! All the meals were $5-$9. The grass was beautifully trimmed, the seats comfy, the glass sparkling. Such thoughtfulness and good process management goes into all this, it’s amazing.

Well, I could go on, but I think you understand how impressed I was. I am inspired to care about the little things in the same way they did. It helps you recognize the big things!

This is best illustrated with a story.

ScreenBird Presenter was in its alpha stage, and had little traction in the presentation community, so I went to advertise on GoogleAdwords. What quicker way to get customers for my program? Having seen the effects good Adword campaigns, I know it was a sure bet. Sign up and registration was very straight forward, as was the actual process of setting up the campaign. There is however a learning curve to the whole program. In fact I have watched the creator of Adwords give a lecture, so I appreciated the complexity that goes into the whole program.

What do you know, it worked! For the paltry sum I put into the effort, I was able to show successful installs of ScreenBird. So now it’s time to spend a bit more cash elsewhere, and get a taste of the landscape. Thus we are lead to Yahoo!

Sign up first. Ok, simple, I have three Yahoo! id’s, so I will just use one of those. REJECTED! Hmmm, I will suffer, make yet another i.d. for some reason. With all the Google services I use, I have but one id. Now we go to setup the campaign. That wasn’t too bad, and I would say comparably nice to Google’s tools. I am on a roll now, and pause……. I get an error page during the very end of the process. Too many questions; did my new i.d. take, or do I start over again? Do I just wait for something magic to happen? Is my campaign live? I reload the page to get the same error.

Well bugs happen, but such a large one on your main revenue stream? Three days later I get an email welcoming me to the ad service.

That my friends, is righteously bad after-marketing!

The problem is the message took so long to arrive, and the processes of enrolling was just uncomfortable enough that I am reluctant. The experiential side of their after-marketing was the problem. I haven’t given them too much of a chance to try their other after-marketing techniques on me.

This is similar to buying a new product, and receiving a terribly written manual to jump start your experience. If Yahoo exercised great after marketing in this one little area, they would have my measly cash, and others that maybe shared my experience.

After-marketing happens after the buy-in or sale.  Experience can also be categorized under aftermaketing.  Aftermarketing one of those things that helps retain customers if done well. A 5% decrease on customer desertion can lead to 25%-80% revenue gains, depending on your industry.

There is such a great marketing opportunity after your customer has bought in, and it can be wasted with a bad experience and poor planning, or a great one with opportunities to pitch upgrade services.

I love good blogs, and important indicator for me is blog’s insight. Good information is important, but good insight is the ability to communicate the information in a different and compelling way. Insight is the one or two sentences you read the whole book for. One blog that has good insight is YoungEntrepreneur .

This blog reminds me of my previous post, “hire slow, fire fast”. Finding good blogs is similar to finding good employees in that you can find good blogs by reading good blogs, and you always have to fire, or remove the lowest 10%. I guess the parallels stop there.

YoungEntrepreneur is worth the reading just for their Modeling Masters section alone. In this section you get small nuggets of entrepreneurial gold from the masters of business. From Warren Buffet, “The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.” From John H. Johnson “Dream small dreams. If you make them too big, you get overwhelmed and you don’t do anything.”. Tasty, I know! Read the Modeling Masters section alone and see if you aren’t locked on the screen screen for 30 minutes.

I happen to be a young entrepreneur, and they really pegged me good as their target audience. In my opinion, this is a much more useful site, in my current stage, than many other highly touted ramblings.

Thanks for the blog YongEntrepreunuers, and keep the insight coming. Oh, and thanks for not posting about iPhones.

The fun part about business is the raw challenge of having to face SO many important decisions. It’s not that these are simply a sea of inch-deep and mile-wide decisions, but truly miles deep and wide. It’s like drilling for oil. Look at the decisions you have to make today: you can create a new product, you can re brand your old one, you can expand or change your target audience, you can hire at a low or high wage, you can school or buy books, you can buy books from well established authors or fringe insightful ones, you can get take funding from the big guy, go find a few small guys, or bring your product to market and self fund. I faced all those this month! There is seemingly no clear path. Ambiguity!

To illustrate, consider Microsoft and the Zune. You have to ask yourself, with the billions they spend in R&D, don’t you think some important decision makers in the Microsoft team thought “hmmm, we could make mp3 players much better”, even before the iPod? I am sure of it. However, they didn’t release their mp3 until 5 years AFTER the iPod.

The sea of ambiguity takes style, and intuition to navigate. Microsoft lives in the same world that Mac does, and with way more capital, but the didn’t display the clarity of mind. Maybe all their market research is hurting them! Steve Job’s isn’t big on market research for a reason. I don’t think he is any type of strategic genius, just a great sense of what he wants.

Interestingly, Warren Buffet dealt with ambiguity by lessening it. When living in New York he told reporters he had 100 ideas a day come across his desk, when he only wanted a good one every year. That’s why he moved back to his home town of Omaha. Not a bad system.

Look at so many large companies today that started of with such clarity. Some still have it, others don’t. Ford was maligned for doubling employer wages and cutting hours. That move shortly double Ford’s income. Though, they don’t seem to display that same clarity now don’t you think?

The Success Commandment prevails: Thrive in Ambiguity. Enjoy the sea of decisions miles deep and wide, and know what you want out of it. The folks that can’t will never be seen as powerful leaders.

Naming a piece of software in a very busy name space (the web), isn’t an easy task. If I was naming a pizza parlor in Fresno California, my home town, I could easily come up with 100 names that wouldn’t step on any toes. Easy! Try such names on the www, and you hit a wall: you are forced to create a great name, or a super lousy one! My current task is to find an appropriate name for SpiceRack .

Difficulties naming on the web

• Instantly can cause problem with other large companies
• Has to be search-able – try and name your product “Audience”
• Needs appropriate domain availability

General Naming guidlines

• Sizzle factor / likability
• Positive image association
• Protect-ability
• International considerations – bad example

Naming Guidelines specific to my software

• Must be Gender neutral
• Should have link to product category

SpiceRack, as a name for desktop slide presentation software isn’t terrible. Among others, one problem lies in that it doesn’t have any association to the product category. This wouldn’t be a problem if I was creating the software for Mac, to be packaged with a well known software suite. Keynote is packaged with iWork. Keynote is a great name in fact, but I don’t (yet) have a multi-billion dollar vehicle to transport such abstract a brand as SpiceRack. Look at the abundance of abstract or arbitrary names found in the dead pool . It certainly can work, but I am playing it as smart as my little brain will allow me. This is a brainbreaching exercise!

After many hours of the naming game and input from my wise mentor, we are left with a couple of nice names: ScreenBird, SlideQ and ScreenDuo. In that order. It’s a close race between SlideQ and ScreenBird for me, but ScreenBird is so brandable, and has such positive image association: flying, soaring, elegance. Slide is a bit more sleek and technical. Check out the logo contest going on for ScreenBird
In addition, all those domains were available for me to purchase. “Let your presentation soar” would be a great slogan, if folks actually cared about those. This is a strong start, and more to come on the subject.

If you should find yourself in this worriment, check these out:
NameBoy
Bustaname
MetaGlossory