Some Background

If you’re lucky, you’re one of those people who’ve known exactly what your purpose in life was since high school or college. If you’re extremely lucky, you’ve known since you were a kid. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that way for me. I barely figured it out this morning, after a little more than 37 years of being me. That’s almost 20 years AFTER joining the workforce, where I was supposed to be executing upon that purpose.

For some, their purpose in life is wrapped up in a single goal or series of related goals. For example, “I want to be the best basketball player…on my team” then morphs to “…at my school” and then “…in the (W)NBA” and lastly “…of all time.” Now, for me, my purpose is not like that.

For me, my purpose in life is something that I’ve been hoping for to provide guidance. I like to do many things as evident in these two separate posts. A lot of different things make me happy. I have a ton of crazy ideas, and I get more ideas all the time. In fact, I just had a great new biz idea this morning. When the ideas hatch though, I invariably ask, “Will this make me happy? Will this be fulfilling for me in the long run?” Most of the time, I would answer, “I don’t know” because again, I didn’t know my purpose so how could I know if this would work towards it?

I tried running conferences with a really good friend of mine, who still does a great job at running ‘em. I sold out to him because I realized that it wasn’t what I wanted in life. And now that I know my purpose, it’s very clear that running that company would not make me happy. Afterwards, I thought that I wanted to go back into training, but really, that wasn’t it either. It’s close because of some ideas I have around the delivery of training, but training itself isn’t really part of my purpose.

Visions are not purposes in life, but more sneak peeks of what’s to come

I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating in this post. When I was in 6th grade, I had a vision. It was such a clear vision of me in the future, that I knew it was not a dream. In the vision, I saw that I was a great businessman. I woke up the next morning, went to school, walked up to my friends and said, “I’m going to be a great business man someday.” The looked at me with confusion. I continued, hoping to dispel the clouds of uncertainty from their minds.”I’m not sure what the business will be, but I’ll will run a great company someday.” They blinked a few times, said, “Whatever” and started talking about things that 6th graders normally talk about. Ever since then, I’ve been studying to be that great businessman. I’ve launched a few businesses, wondering each time, “Is this the one? Is this the business that will bring to life my vision?”

Now, I realize I had it all wrong. The vision isn’t the end goal. It’s good that I thought it was though, because I’ll need the information that I’ve learned over the years to help me execute on my purpose in life. Recently, I’ve thought that either Area 161 or OmegaOrtega Consulting would be the “one”, the company I saw myself being in charge of so many years ago. I used to be frustrated that the vision didn’t include what the company was or did. “If I knew what to do, I’d do it and be done.”

After this morning’s eye opening experience, it makes sense to me now why my vision was so vague. It wasn’t there to say, “Go be a great business man.” Instead, I think it was trying to say, “Find your purpose and know that when you do, you’ll be a great business man.”

Which brings me to the point of this post: my purpose.

“Enough alluding! What is your purpose?”

My purpose in life is simple. It’s partially vague, but is much more narrow than “anything under the sun.” My purpose in life is:

To make people happy through the application of technology.

I know, it may not sound that revolutionary or even that far off from what I’ve done for the past 20 years, but it truly is. This explains why I didn’t like the following jobs/businesses:

• Being a newspaper delivery boy – There was no technology or people involved. Just me, a shopping cart and my dad (cuz he felt sorry for me but wanted to support my business endeavor).
• Stocking clothes at a retail store – I don’t like fashion because the happiness of it doesn’t stem from technology. Plus, my job was opening boxes and hanging up the clothes that came in them.
• Cook/Character roles at Chuck E Cheese – We watched a video that showed how to use technology and methodologies to make the perfect pizza. My coworkers didn’t follow the methodology and I was frustrated. I can see it was because it was going against my purpose of applying technology. They moved me to character duty, where I dressed up as Chuck E. While it did have perks of meeting the ladies (LOL), I still wasn’t happy doing it because no technology was involved. Now, if I was making games or animatronic puppets for them, I bet I’d be happy.
• Running conferences – We used technology but we didn’t really apply technology to the business. I liked the people aspect, but the inability to quickly iterate (like you can when applying technology) frustrated me.

It also explains why I never executed well on the following ideas:

• 3D Animator – I bought a $10K computer in 1997 to run Softimage and learn 3D animation. I gave up on it though. I can see why. I was looking at it from a “lemme get a job as an animator” perspective vs the “Let me use this technology to tell a story” one. Today, I realize that those few ideas I have for 3D shorts may indeed be good, but that I’m better off hiring people to animate them vs animating them myself.
• Teacher/Trainer – I’ve written a lot about how I want to help teach/train people. I’ve never really done it full time nor made it my primary focus, but it wasn’t because I didn’t want to help others. Instead, it was because what I really want to do is create a new way of learning utilizing technology. Now I can see that it’s not the topic that matters, but more the format in how I deliver the information people want to learn.
• Musician – I’ve always loved music and wondered why I was never good at it. I even have an electrical guitar that I play with now and then. While you could say that playing an electrical guitar is a form of “making people happy through the application of technology.”, it’d be a stretch. Instead, the purpose there is “making people happy through the application of music” and the electric guitar is just the instrument.

But it does explain my success in the following areas:

• Rewriting a DOS app for Bank of America- My first consulting gig in 1998 was to replace a DOS app that wasn’t Y2K compliant. Instead of simply upgrading the app environment, I redesigned the app based on user feedback. I increased productivity so much, that my app later saved the division from being shut down.
• Consulting vs Full Time – I’m a better consultant than full time employee. Part of this is because as a consultant, you use technology to make people happy. Whereas in a full time job, your primary purpose is to be a cog in a machine regardless of technology.
• Game Programming – I have a very interesting post over at the game company. It explains why my hesitancy in moving full steam ahead on game dev; It also explains why my favorite part of prototyping is figuring out the technical magic that makes people smile and say, “Wow, that’s neat.”
• Tech in Hospitality – I finally know why I’m constantly coming up with ideas for technology in the hospitality space. That is one of the main points where the application of technology can truly make people happy.

Looking for your purpose? Take a look at things you like and dislike for clues

Now that I know my purpose, I can actually see clues throughout my life that point towards it. I now understand why I like certain things and despise others.

Things I love because they are enabled by technology to make people happy:

• Traveling - Whether it’s a road trip, flight around the world or a several day cruise, I love to travel. I found myself very fortunate that I live in a time when we have these 3 modes of getting us to where we want to be. Plus, we’ll probably have private space travel before I die as well! Not only has technology made it possible, but technology also plays a large role in making the trip within them even more enjoyable as well.
• Skyscrapers – Ever since I can remember, I’ve loved skyscrapers. I’ve loved going as high as I can and enjoying the magnificent views that they afford. Without technology, skyscrapers would not be possible. And with technology, skyscrapers will continue growing their reach up into the heavens.
• Debit Cards – I know many people see this a bad thing, not a good thing, but I couldn’t disagree more. It’s so nice having 24 hour access to your money. I remember when debit cards first started to be accepted. There was a limit on how much funds you could spend in a day and I thought that was just silly, hitting it several times before they finally got rid of daily limits.

Things I despise because technology fails us over and over:

• Pay phones – This one isn’t so relevant anymore with cellphones, but I had a pet peeve that would send me into an internal rage. (And if you know me, you know that it would take a lot to make me rage.) If I called someone on the pay phone, I’d get an answering machine sometimes. I’d hang up and my 35 cents would not be returned. Oh how that boiled my blood. Why the telephone company couldn’t figure out that a machine answered and that I never spoke perplexed me to no end.
• Event awareness – I have music on my computer; I rank songs and iTunes keep a count of how many times I listen to each song. I read articles through a browser, bookmarking and adding them to “read later”. I buy and rank books on my Kindle; heck, I’ve even reread a few of them already on my Kindle. Yet, for some reason, no one has figured out how to collectively use all that data without my intervention to alert me of concerts by my favorite musicians, conferences based on my favorite publications/topics or book signings by my favorite authors. My phone has GPS and so I should be notified of these events when at home or, more importantly, when abroad. I’ll likely know the local ones, but the heads up when traveling would be priceless.
• Irrelevant ads – I’m one of the few people who don’t mind ads…as long as they’re relevant. What perplexes me is how more often than not, the ads in no way shape or form pertain to my life or the activity I’m doing. I’m a pretty simple person; Heck, I would even be for creating a shared profile that all advertisers could use. I don’t mind sharing info if it means I can benefit from the few minutes of filling out a questionnaire.

Take a look at things that make you happy and things that send you into a rage. I bet if you take a step back and analyze why, you’ll find your purpose in life.

So now you know, now what?

That’s a good question. I’m not sure yet. I’m sure overtime, the benefits will become numerous and clear. However, as of this morning, there was only one benefit, albeit it’s a big one.

I can now easily and quickly judge whether or not an idea is worth my time. I can now see if an article is worth reading to me. I have a test to run all distractions by. EDIT: Thanks to my friend Doug’s comment, I just realized that I should link to an old post where I talk about how I could use technology to possibly help make the world a better place. I can now see that those things would indeed be a valuable use of my time as they pass the test. You can find the post here.

Now, if something doesn’t pass the test does it mean I don’t do it? Of course not. I still have hobbies. I’ll still do things that do not apply to my purpose in the slightest, like cooking. I love to cook french food and don’t see myself giving that up anytime soon.

Hobbies are there to let us explore other facets of life: Things that don’t fall within our purpose, but that we find fun nonetheless.

Note: Family and church are not distractions and are my reason for living over all. They trump the professional purpose any day. They get attention because they make me happy in and of itself, they just don’t provide income for me…especially the family part, they rather pull money in the opposite direction! LOL

I’m a Silicon Valley fanboy. I admit it. I’m a geek, so it’s really hard not to be. It’s a magical place to me, but not for all the reasons that most people think. Silicon Valley is home to a lot of great companies. Companies that have generated massive amounts of wealth for their founders and those that fund them. This is one of the few places where you can come in with an idea and get the funding to build it. That’s what most people think about when they hear “Silicon Valley”. However, that’s not why I like this place. If anything, those are the reasons why I left.

The thing I like about the Valley is the rare moments of originality and ingenuity. It’s the proverbial guys in the garage. It’s the guys hacking all night til they drop. It’s all the “Ah ha!” moments that happen in this tiny patch of land.

I visit places of nerd interest here, like eBay, Google, Computer History Museum, etc. This last time, I hit up Mozilla and Xerox PARC. If there’s one thing that the Valley understands is a great setting. Check out these picts.

The view from Mozilla at night

The rolling hills surrounding PARC

I’ve always had a thing for views and great settings. The only apartment that was strictly mine had an amazing view of the Space Needle, Lake Union and Downtown Seattle from the 15th floor of a residential highrise. Should the day come that I have a lot of money, I’ll likely buy a bunch of homes that have great views that my friends, family and I can just hop around to when we travel.

Great settings don’t necessarily spur great ideas. I get that and I think companies get it too. Else we’d have companies in the middle of the jungles of Hawaii, at the base of each national park, etc. What I do love about amazing views is how quickly they can clear your mind. I can look out on a beautiful view and my mind goes blank. It doesn’t take the breath away from my lungs, but it certainly takes all the crud away from my mind. Much like meditation, it gives my mind a moment of silence where it can speak to me before the clutter comes falling back in. The only other time that sorta happens to me is right when I’m drifting off to sleep, but I fall asleep so fast that I don’t catch those moments very often.

The other thing about the valley is how optimistic everyone is. In the more established companies, there is a bit of politics and belief of not being able to get things done. However, for the most part, people feel like they can change the world. This view/mindset of “I can do great things” is what drives the innovation that takes place here. People try to figure out how to copy Silicon Valley, but it’s hard because while you can copy physical views and fun workplace settings, you can’t copy the “We can change the world” mindset that exists there.

Do great things happen outside the valley? Of course. Do you have to be there to do great things? Of course not. Do you have to change your view of self-doubt into a “I’ll change the world” mentality? Of course. Is that easy to do alone? Of course not. Therein lies the crux. I’m trying, but it’s a daily struggle to keep the view great and not muddled by self doubt.

“Twitter, you’re dead to me.”

I have another post in draft that I’m working on, but I needed to get this out of the way pronto.

I was with twitter for quite sometime, but realized that they’re not really here for me. They’re here to make money off of selling my data to advertisers. That’s cool. That’s their biz and I can’t blame them for trying to make a buck. I run my own business, I know how that goes.

However, I don’t like it nor the way they treat 3rd party developers. Therefore, I signed up for App.Net, which is an alternative to twitter that you pay for. The purpose of paying is so App.net knows who its serving: you – the user, not them – the advertisers. I like the idea, so I paid for it awhile back while it was prelaunching. Thing is, I never gave up the twitter.

Shame on me.

I didn’t put my mouth where my money is. Instead, I kept being a lemming and kept on tweeting. Thing is, I tweeted back in the day when only a few of my professional friends were on twitter and it was fun. Now, I realize that the same friends I followed then are on App.net as well. Therefore, I’m making the switch.

This blog post is for my lazy twitter friends. Eventually, they’ll say, “Hey, why hasn’t Tom tweeted anything lately?” Then they’ll head over to my timeline, see my last tweet with a link to this, read it and know where to find me.

Some people may ask, “But what if they don’t look at your last tweet to track you down?” Well, then it’s pretty obvious that those people and I weren’t having a conversation to begin with.

Am I giving up on all other social media sites/communities? No. The answer to that is complicated but basically what it boils down to is this: I used twitter as my platform/soapbox for random thoughts, ideas and sharing things. It went hand in hand with my blog in my eyes. If it was short, it went on twitter. If it was long, it went on my blog. Sure I conversed with people I follow and with people who followed me, but it was primarily seen as an outlet in my mind. An outlet that in the end doesn’t look out for me. WordPress.com looks out for me, that’s why I’ve been with them for ages and will likely continue to stay with them. App.net has said it will look after me and I believed them so much, I paid ‘em. Therefore, I now have to go get my money’s worth.

Follow me over here at https://alpha.app.net/lordbron

See you there!

My biz card with a quote I wrote

Our Time Is Short, So Have Fun

I’m not sure what got me thinking on this tangent. It could’ve been my daily analysis of life. It could’ve been me contemplating what to do professionally. Regardless, for some reason, I started to boil down what makes me happy as a person.

For those of you that have met me in person, and hopefully for those of you that just met me via this blog, it’s probably obvious that I’m a simple person with simple pleasures. While I often cloud my life with drama, stress and desires for false happiness (via some new gadget), there’s basically just 3 things that make me happy:

1. Sharing a good meal
2. Getting lost in the written word
3. Learning to solve a new problem

I’m usually happy, so clearly I partake in all 3 of these items often. However, now and then one of these items will start to suffer. Along with it, my demeanor will also suffer and become foul. I’ll start to shut off the world around me and I’ll internalize my frustration with life. This frustration will often cause me to snap at those around me. It’s a flaw of mine I try to work on, but sadly will likely be with me ’til I die. I hope not and I do work on changing that (with some pointers from my faith). However, I’m human and thus I’m probably flawed for life.

While each of those items are deceptively simple, there’s “some ‘splaining to do” about them. Else, this would be a pretty short and boring blog post! LOL I’m also going to include something of a goal I’m going to strive for in each of the three categories.

Happy Item #1: Sharing a good meal – Family & friend time

I LOVE to eat. To put it more truthfully, I really enjoy tasting. If it’s crappy food, I can probably do without. My made up diet (which I need to get back on) was based around tasting and enjoying food versus shoveling it down your throat at breakneck speed.

My favorite food is probably French, in particular, their sauces. If you’ve never had a really good velouté or allemande sauce, you have not yet lived. (I’ve also written on how french cooking has made me a better programmer as well.) I also love BBQ, Indian, Mexican, Italian and Southeast Asian cooking. Yeah, I pretty much like every type of food.

The best part about eating, for me at least, is that most meals are not eaten alone. Some of my greatest memories revolve around food. In fact, I learned one of life’s greatest secrets in my grandmother’s kitchen. When I was very young, barely old enough to run around, I can recall my mom’s mom in the kitchen as we grandchildren infiltrated to snatch the just made flour tortillas. My young aunts would get mad and whine to their mom about us stealing the efforts of their labor. Every fresh tortilla we stole was more work for them to replace, because grandma wouldn’t let them stop making them until this giant container was full. This memory has probably had the greatest influence in my life and not because of my aunt’s whining or the taste of the tortillas (oh and they were ahh-mazing). No, instead it had to do with my grandma’s reaction. She just laughed and said in her sweet spanish voice, “Just let them be.”

This one incident instilled so many great things within me that people love to this day. Let me just list a few:

• Putting up with crappy, whiny coworkers (even upper management) – If you work with me, you realize that very rarely does work ever get me down. It doesn’t matter how much complaining, in fighting, etc. is going on in the office. As long as I have challenging work (more on this down below), I can laugh off the rest, just like my grandma laughed off my aunts.
• If simple things keep kids happy, let them be happy – I tend to forget this at times, but I do remember it more often than other parents around me. If the kids are content using a wooden spoon to bat a balloon around the living room, let them do it. If your kids are happy just sitting in your lap watching a cartoon, then stay there and enjoy the time. It doesn’t take much to make a kid happy, but they’ll treasure those happy moments forever.
• People will be endeared to you if you watch out for their happiness – I loved my grandma to this day for fighting for us. She died almost 20 years ago (wow…that long) and my love for her is just as strong today as it was when she let us keep snatching those tortillas almost 3 decades ago. I knew she wanted nothing more than for me to be happy and thus I wanted nothing more than to be in her presence.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Have you ever noticed how important things revolve around meals?

• You invite your boyfriend/girlfriend over for dinner to meet your folks
• One of those boyfriend/girlfriend later join you and more family for an engagement dinner
• There are “power lunches” in the workforce
• Brunch is a meal we made up just to celebrate the relaxness of the weekends
• Anniversaries are celebrated over a meal
• No birthday is complete without cake and ice cream
• Many a business are formed via a sketch or numbers written on a napkin in a bar/restaurant
• We “catch dinner” with our distant friends when we travel to their parts of the world

To me, it doesn’t matter if the meal comes from my kitchen, a friend’s kitchen or a restaurant’s kitchen. To me, the important thing is that people gather together in a place to talk and create memories. I used to hate eating alone, but now it’s not so bad. With social media, you can post details about your meal and some friend will likely pipe up. Still though, I prefer that all my meals happen with others. There’s one exception to the rule, but I’ll talk about it in a bit.

Goal:I’d like to someday have my own kitchen staff. I’ve read how both Hearst (of Hearst Castle fame) and Carnegie (of robber baron fame) both had huge homes that could house guests. The point of these grand palaces were probably twofold. First to exude their wealth, but secondly (and more important) it was to provide a place for friends to stay and partake in grand dinners. I can do without the first reason (flashing wealth), but I sure do love the idea of the second reason (grand dinners). Now too often, people say, “Oh no, I’ll never setup a guest room because then people will want to stay in it!” I hope to one day have a home where people can come eat like kings/queens and be treated like the royalty they deserve to be treated as.

Happy Item #2: Getting lost in the written word – Personal time

This speaks to the INFP in me, since the “I” stands for introverted. As I said before, as much as I love you people, I’d much rather be writing or reading a book. I can get lost in either aspect. It doesn’t matter the genre, type or style either. I love to read and write non-fiction, fiction, poetry, plays, etc. I’ve never really been into drugs. I dabbled in college, but nothing hardcore. However, I am willing to bet that the euphoria I feel when I write is probably as good if not better than the high from some narcotic.

To put it in perspective, one of the greatest memories of joy I have involves writing. I’m sitting in the first apartment that I shared with my wife and I was writing a short story. I was so lost in my made up world, that my eyes were closed shut, my head looking slightly up at the ceiling, with a huge smile on my face.  Everything tingled and to this day, I love that story. You can read it here.

Writing blog posts, articles about technology or tutorials isn’t quite as euphoric. I think this has to do with the fact that when I write non-fiction stuff, I’m writing for others. I have to work hard to be clear, to get my points across and to be understood. Where with fiction, it’s all about transferring to paper that story that lives in my head. Literally, when I write fiction, I rewind the scenes in my head over and over to capture all the right details.

On the flip side, I take joy in other people’s written word just as strongly. I love to read so much that I’ve own several hundred books and 2 different Kindles (plus the Kindle app on my iPhone and iPad). I love to get lost in a good book. Time is often so short with work, family, church, etc that I rarely have the time to read. It is the *only* thing I miss about having a long commute. When I used to travel 60 to 90 minutes each way to work, I would read a lot. I’d read on the way up and read on the way back. It was a great primer for the day and a great relaxer after a day of work.

I realize that reading and writing are 100% selfish times for me. Sure, sure, you dear reader, may benefit from something noteworthy I may share, but rest assured. I didn’t really write it for you. Instead, I wrote it for me.

Goal: I’ve already written a lot of things, such as almost 600 poems for my wife, a ton of short stories (a few are here), a novel (it’s not good enough to share) and a handful of technical articles. However, I still want to write more. I have this vision of a 5 part fantasy novel series. I’ve been noodling it for years and years. I’d like to write that series before I die. Here’s the poem that will be on page 1 of the 1st book to introduce you to the world.

Happy Item #3: Learning to solve a problem – Work time
One of the joys that I am lucky enough to have is loving what I do. I’ve programmed for almost 20 years now (dang, I’m old) and I still love it to this day. The part of it I love is taking an idea someone has and building something from that idea that then helps them be successful. I take great joy in knowing that someone’s life is easier and more productive, because of something I’ve done.

Case in point was my stint at Bank of America in 1998. I was a contractor in the Business Tax Division. I won’t bore you with what they do, but they had an old DOS app and I needed to convert it into an Access application. (Come on, it was ’98! And they chose the tech, not me!) I looked at the existing app and said, “Okay, I can recreate this in Access. Do you want me to make it look exactly like the DOS one?” The manager paused and answered, “No, you can make it look different.” That was it. Her simple answer set my mind into motion. I began interviewing all the employees. I asked them what they did, asked them to show me how the did it with the DOS app and asked how I could make it easier. At first, many were threatened, thinking I wanted their job or wanted to replace their job. I convinced them all I wasn’t there to do either, but instead help them be better and thus work less but get more done. After 6 months, I completed the project (my first contracting gig) and moved on. Years later, I get a call from the Senior Vice President. He called to tell me that because of my going above and beyond in making their app, they all kept their jobs. I guess in the NationsBank merger, they were going to shut down the BofA Biz Tax Division and keep Nation’s. However, someone decided to compare the size to work completed ratio. When they did, they realized BofA’s was far more productive. They attributed this fact 100% to my app that I had written.

There I was, in my early twenties, and I had saved not just one person’s job, not two people’s jobs, but a whole freakin’ division of about 30 people. People that I not only worked with, but knew on a personal level due to my time I spent interviewing each one. When you learn early on in your career that you have the power to affect the lives of people in significant ways, it’s gonna lead you to love your job. I think this is probably why I don’t like full-time work as much as I like consultant work. When you’re full-time, you get trapped in the system and you have no power (usually) to have a great affect on anything. You’re just a cog, spinning along in the grand machine. When you’re a consultant though, you’re automatically granted this special power. You get paid big bucks to come in and do a highly specialized job. Management is more inclined to give you the power and authority to affect great change because they’re paying you so much money.

It’s this feeling of being handed a problem and being asked to fix it. The problem could be something existing that’s broken or it could be just an idea on paper that needs to be manifested into some working, usable piece of software. In either case, the endpoint is the same. At the end of the project, there needs to be something that works and makes people happy. It’s this blend of both tech and people in a programmer’s life that I live for. You give a lot of yourself to make sure others can be successful, whether they fully appreciate it at the time or not.

Goal: I think the best thing I could do is be a consultant from now on. I always flip-flop between full time employees and consulting, but rarely does the full time thing work out for me or my employer. A lot of my best qualities shine only when I’m consulting. I’ve made the shift from consultant to full time employee for a few different jobs, but after the transition both me and my employer were disappointed with my performance and attitude. I lose my edge and my “go get it” drive when I make the switch to full time. Now, there have been exceptions, a few full time jobs I have loved and rocked it, but they are few and far between.

Live Long and Prosper

Now, clearly these are the 3 things I live for. You probably (and should) have your own 3 things you live for. It’s what makes you…well, you. The key though is to uncover those 3 things. This way you can fill your life with as much of those things as you possibly can.

I think the best insight I can offer those who don’t know what 3 things they live for yet is this: Figure out what 3 things make you the happiest, then figure out the most effective way to keep your daily life filled with those 3 things. For those far away from all 3 things, all I can say is keep at it. It’s why we’re here. Like my business card says, “Do what you love and people will love you for it.” I believed that when I wrote it years ago and I believe it even more so today.

A year ago, I was given a preview by the Motorola Mobility team behind all this great stuff. During that meeting, many things struck my core:

1. Caliber of the dev team working at Motorola Mobility
2. Thought process that went into the framework design
3. Amount of effort/support put into the project
4. Supporting tools to aid the app developer
5. Experience from building those tools in Montage

As you’ll see, it was the combination of all these things that softened my hardened heart against the HTML5 technology I was wary of. I was completely surprised at that meeting. I expected something different and thought I’d walk away thinking Motorola didn’t get it. Instead, my experience was quite the opposite.

Caliber of Dev Team

I’m not going to go through each team member, one by one. Instead, I’m going to talk more about the composition of the team and what that meant to me.

The first thing that is very clear is that the team comes from different tech spheres, the two biggest being Apple and Adobe.

On the Montage (i.e. the framework) side of the house, you have veterans of Apple. These are people who have worked on WebObjects, Core Apple Frameworks and  are the HTML5 gurus that made Apple’s website look so good. These are people who already have an understanding of what application developers need to do their job. When you give them feedback, you rarely get the: “Why would you need something like that?” response, which is typical for a framework maker who hasn’t built many applications.

On the Ninja/Screening (i.e. the tools) side of the house, you have veterans of Adobe. These are people who have worked on Flash Authoring, QA and product management. For them, it’s not a question of “What would a HTML5 authoring tool need?” It’s more of a matter of, “We know what an authoring tool needs, how fast can we get something into users hands to start getting feedback?”

Aside from those two camps, you’ll see people who have participated in W3C committees for various technologies. People who have invested significant portions of their lives, trying to make the web  a better place to do things.

The Framework Design

Montage is unique in the sense of how it uses many core web ideas in ways that just make sense.

There’s the .reel concept that I explained in yesterday’s post. It says, let’s use HTML to layout our component pieces, CSS to style those pieces/create effects, and let’s put the brains of the component into JavaScript. In addition, there’s a serialization process that takes place in a component. It uses JSON syntax that is familiar to any web developer these days.

In addition to client side stuff, Montage also uses Node.js to allow for JavaScript usage on the server-side.

All of this just points back to the fact that they thought things through. They said, “Hey, these great technologies already exist and people like them. How can we put them all together in a way that makes sense and will help others get things done fast?”

There are also some features that haven’t yet been built that have me even more excited. As they come to fruition, I’ll call them out so you can share the excitement.

Effort and Support

No offense to one man armies who build frameworks in the off hours. Many great products were born that way and so we love ingenuity like that. However, if you’re going to build an application that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to help run your enterprise, do you really want to gamble on this one guy? My experience has always been, no. Management does not like the idea of the lone maverick.

Motorola got that. They are an enterprise, so they know how enterprises think. Therefore, when I visited a year ago, I met a team of about 20. One had been working for almost a year on Montage and the others had joined him along the way. Now, here we are a year later. This is roughly 2 years of real world time that Montage has been under construction. But if you were count up the man hours involved, it is very significant.

Another thing that was interesting was who was behind the project at Motorola Mobility. This wasn’t some low-level employee, 20% project. This was a top secret team within the company funded by higher management who understood what the world needed. This helped the team recruit the caliber of people they got, because there was such great support internally.

Supporting Tools

There are two tools, Ninja and Screening, to support your Montage development efforts. The fact that they exist prove how serious of a tool this Framework is.

Ninja is the HTML5 authoring tool. Imagine being able to keyframe your HTML5 animations. Imagine being able to manipulate WebGL views for playback. Imagine being able to drag and drop components onto a canvas and manipulate their properties like you would in any other authoring tool. The power this provides an application development team is priceless. It allows you to build engaging web or mobile experiences in a very quick manner.

Screening is the automated testing tool. If you’ve done any serious development, you realize that automated testing is required. In the Flex world, automated testing is very hard and no solution is complete. The first time I saw screening in action almost made me cry. So many bugs and regressions would have never existed if I had a tool like this during my dev cycle. It is a tool that will become not only QA’s best friend, but one I think developers will use to ensure their code is better before handing it off to QA.

Proven Experience with Montage

The reason I use the word “Proven” is not because the tools prove that their serious about app development. While that is true, that would be a stretch. No, I use proven because Ninja and Screening are built *with* Montage.

In so many cases, application frameworks are built in a silo where the ideal conditions exist within the minds of the framework developers. The framework then gets used in a real world project and all hell breaks loose. “What were they thinking? How can I build an app with that logic in place?” I know a lot of the early frustration with the Flex framework was like that. (No offense to the Flex team as people. They were great and their intentions were good.)

What I like is that when the Montage team said, “Hey, we’re gonna need some tools to support the framework” someone (I don’t know who) must have said, “Well, then why don’t we build those tools with Montage to ensure that we’re making a robust and usable framework?” That person deserves a free dinner on me.

This last little facet of the team/process is what sealed the deal for me. Not only are these guys trying to provide a framework to make our lives easier, they’ve also taken it upon themselves to put the framework through a few application development life cycles. They’re ironing out the kinks and rough edges so that we have a better framework when we embark upon our first Montage journey.

Wrap up

As you can see, Montage is not “just another HTML5 framework” as many stated on twitter yesterday. This framework is unlike any other framework (HTML5 or otherwise) out there. And to think, all of this stuff has happened prior to its first release. Can you imagine the great things they have planned for future releases?

It’s an exciting time to be an app developer: whether in the mobile space or web space. Your choices of toolsets are numerous and it’s hard to find which ones are really going to help you get the job done. For me, it’s pretty obvious that Montage is the top contender in the HTML5 world.

HTML5 Framework by Motorola Mobility

Just like Flex, only HTML5

Montage is a HTML5 application framework released by Motorola-Mobility. It is released under the BSD license and the source is available on github. I first encountered Montage almost a year ago, but was sworn to secrecy at that time. Now, recall, this was before Adobe announced the end of Flex. Once Adobe announced they were giving up on Flex, I wanted to shout from the rooftops about Montage. I even asked the Montage team for permission to hint at something to help calm the Flex Dev masses, but was asked not to, so I didn’t. Well, Montage was finally released publicly today, so now it’s time to share my thoughts and impressions.

In my almost 20 years as a developer, I’ve played with countless technologies. However, the shortlist of technologies that made my heart skip when I first saw them are limited to three:

1. Adobe Flex – I had spent a 1/2 year building an app in Flash. After Flex was released, I rebuilt 75% of the project in Flex over one weekend. I knew it would change how to build business apps for the enterprise and it did. The ability to build once, run in any browser was extremely powerful. It has had and, believe it or not, still is having a great run.
2. Apple iOS – I built a simple tic-tac-toe game as my first native app. I didn’t release it, just built it to see what the environment was like. Building for iOS devices is truly magical. When you touch your app, feel it under your finger, and see it respond. It’s like no other dev experience. After spending years of interacting with my work through a mouse, this change in experience was powerful. I knew the first time I built an app that the world was going to change and mobile computing was gonna be at the forefront of that change.
3. Motorola Montage – A year ago I was shown Montage and amazing apps built with Montage (more on those later). The thing I hate about most HTML5 frameworks are they are crazy JS driven and thus ugly (JQuery and EXT/JS), plus they’re made uglier by supporting every browser under the sun regardless of how stupid it is, from a business standpoint, to support them. Montage said, “We’re building for modern browsers only.” They were building for speed and making no concessions for older tech. They target modern browsers for desktop and iOS/Android for mobile. If you’re building an app, you have to focus on users that make sense to you and that can appreciate what you’re trying to deliver. While supporting IE 6 and Symbian devices is nice, the likelihood of them being your target customer of your modern business app is next to nil.

Now, I’m not claiming to be some great fortune teller. Nor do I claim to be a technology futurist. I can only tell you what technologies excited me in the past when they were introduced. You can then check history to see how well those platforms have taken off. My first two were great successes from a professional standpoint. There has always been great paying jobs and interesting work in both Flex and iOS. I foresee the same for those who take up Montage and I’ll explain why.

Keeping it Reel

Unlike the other HTML5 frameworks out there, Montage is the first and only who has said: “Hey, why don’t we use the technologies of the web in a way the creators intended.” Instead of putting layout, styling and logic all into one technology (JavaScript), why don’t we spread things out a bit to make it clearer to understand and to keep a separation between church (styling) and state (logic).

The .reel extension is what you add to a directory so that Montage knows that what’s inside makes up a component. In the image above, you see that there is a text-slider.reel folder and nested under it are the files that make up the component. There are 3 files types that can be used to create your component:

1. .css – This is 100% pure, CSS goodness (with support for CSS3 included, of course). You can hand this off to the designer and let them go hog-wild on it. They can play with it for however long they want for that pixel perfectness and you don’t have to care. They can swap it in at the last-minute and you don’t have to fret. But more importantly, you no longer have to change values in your source for that 31st version of the background color: just to make sure it “pops”.
2. .html – This is your typical html code syntax. You know, Div, Spans, Lists, Inputs, etc. You create a file that identifies all the pieces of your component, tagging them with IDs to uniquely identify them to the Montage Framework. Your html file is where you also serialize your objects using a standard JSON format. This helps set up data bindings, identify which Montage components go with which Div, etc.
3. .js – This is where the JSers can finally go to town. Your functions, variables, component logic, etc all go in here. This is still where the bulk of the work is gonna go and where you’ll find the bulk of other people’s component logic. However, it is CLEAN. There’s only component logic and that’s it. No “If this browser, do this else do that” crap cluttering up the whitespace.

To see these files in action, check out the text-slider.reel over on GitHub. Note: While you can (and probably should) break up your component like this, you technically don’t have to. However, I sure as heck ain’t gonna help you figure out how to write crap code like that.

Flex’in Your Knowledge

Now, if you’re coming from the Flex world, I can hear the gears starting to turn. You’re starting to mumble, “Hold on a second, this sounds strikingly familiar.” And you’re absolutely right, it should and here’s why:

1. .css files in Montage = .css files in Flex (only better since it’s *true* css!)
2. .html files in Montage = .mxml files in Flex (a simple way to layout the pieces of your component)
3. .js files in Montage = .as files in Flex (plus they’re both ECMAScript based, sweet!)

I’ve heard over and over again from Flex developers that they don’t want to learn HTML5 because of browser support/logic. With Montage, you don’t have to. The deployment target just has to be a modern HTML5-supported web browser: WebKit (Chrome or Safari) 100% supported right now, others to come. For mobile, iOS and Android are fully supported, not sure on the others (are there others? LOL).

Update: An earlier version of this post erroneously mentioned Montage would be WebKit only. That’s not true. Read details on supported browsers. Sorry about that.

More to Come

As I said early on, I’m very excited about this technology and am glad that I can share my thoughts about it publicly. This is just an intro to the Montage technology for those coming from Flex. It’s very high level and just touches the surface of Montage. You can find out more about Montage here.

In upcoming posts, I’ll talk about some of the other features of Montage that I find exciting. I’ll share some samples of Montage code I’ve written. Plus, I’ll highlight two amazing tools built to make Montage development easier.

First off, there is DevConnect, a conference dedicated to the future of the web: video and mobile. This one day show will take place on April 2 in NYC. I’m slowly becoming a pure mobile convert. Other than programming and blogging, everything I do on a computer I do on my iPhone. My iPhone is not only my primary internet connection, but it’s also my primary camera (for stills and videos). All of this points me to the fact that mobile is the future and desktop will be for the few heavy lifting tasks we rarely do. I’ll even go out on a limb and say someday, I’ll probably blog and program on my mobile device even.

I think mobile devices will forever change the fabric of society. Aside from the obnoxious users at dinner or the movies, I mean they will bring about change for the better. It will change how we perceive the world and how we see our place in it. I think the start of that will be when these devices help bind us together with those in our local communities. Desktops kept us locked in offices or sitting in chairs in the den. Mobile allows us to explore our surroundings, meet new friends and help take care of our neighborhoods in ways not possible a few years ago.

I’ll be presenting at DevConnect. I’ll be showing a proof of concept app. Utilizing the Kaltura platform, my presentation will cover how we can put the “local” back into local news. Again, this will draw us closer to our neighbors and, as a by-product, help bring down this mass media trap we’ve fallen into.

Next up, April 15-18 is 360|Flex. This show will always have a special place in my heart. John and I gave birth 360|Flex, back in the fall of 2006. I have a lot of good friends in the Flex community and it’ll be great to see them again. John still runs the show amazingly well, proving that I must’ve been a useless cog getting in his way of doing this conference thing.

Flex is still a huge role in my daily dev work. The need for good Flex devs hasn’t stopped, regardless of what Adobe has decided to do with the technology. Companies realize that it’s still one of the best ways to deliver a solution, so they’re sticking with the technology. The work is out there and plenty, so if you’re wondering whether to continue with Flex, I’d say definitely. There’s still a lot of life left in it.

Lastly, I’ll be going to Vegas at the end of the month for MicroConf 2012. This will be my first time attending MicroConf. The show is basically about entrepreneurs that want to keep their businesses small. Note that doesn’t mean small profits, just either running the show all alone or with a tiny group of people. It’s interesting to me because that’s how I see the future of business. Sure, sure, we’ll always have some huge businesses for some things, but I honestly see a lot more tiny businesses springing up (and succeeding) in the future. One of which is me. I’ve operated a one man consulting company for a few years now and before that it was John and I running 360Conferences. I’m looking forward to learning from the speakers who have experienced massive success and insightful failures. I prefer that other folks make the mistakes and I just learn from them.

There you have it. You can join me at the first two and I hope you do. The last one, however, is sold out. I’ll be there, probably being a little more reclusive than I was in the past. I live out in the sticks now, so I don’t get out much among big groups. Therefore, I lean more and more towards my introvert tendencies now than when I lived out in Silicon Valley. It wasn’t that I was extroverted back then, I was just better at playing the part.

Much like a legal document, let’s define something at the start to ensure we’re on the same page. When I use the word System (note the capital “S”) in this article, I’m referring to mass media and big business. I’ll leave the topics of Wall Street and our government for some other (far distant) day.

The only way to bring down the System is by depriving it of life. Yes, this could be achieved by violent actions, but I’m not a violent kind of guy. Instead, I’m thinking of something that will bring about the same effect, but will use positivity and humanity to starve the system of the money it needs to survive. Because more than anything, the System craves one thing and one thing alone: money.

And who is going to bring about this change? Why you and I, of course. For if not us, then who?

Problem: Mass Media

Solution: Local News, Real News with Highlights or Uncut Editions

I think the internet and society is finally getting to the point where this can become reality. Mass media is just that, news for the masses. Sadly, every major news organization will cover Kim Kardashian’s 72 day marriage because the masses do care about that crap. Kim has over 11.5M followers on twitter. I’m sure Kim is a nice person (I’ve never met her, so I honestly cannot judge her), but you can’t blame mass media for providing what the majority wants.

With Netflix though, we’re seeing something that will help bring down the establishment. Many people are canceling their cable TV (my family included) and are finding themselves happy without it. Think about it, they don’t have the Basic 150 or the Complete 500 channels and life is just as fulfilling. What Netflix requires though is an internet connection, and what can ride in with that connection is the opportunity to provide real, intellectual news and local area news.

The cost of high quality digital cameras are coming down dramatically. There’s no reason high schools, community colleges and local universities can’t start broadcasting as part of their journalism curriculum. Why study about journalism when you can actually go out and do journalism?

Sure, the first few outings will suck but they will get better over time. Like when I started recording my Flex training sessions and putting them on the web, I knew they’d suck. I purposely made them suck by not preparing at all for the first series. The reason I did that was so that others could see my output and think, “Oh I can do better than that” and go do better. It worked as many other User Groups followed suit and started providing their own training. The same will happen with this new journalism movement.

YouTube and Vimeo are still in their infancies, the same goes for uStream and other streaming video sources. As these tools evolve, so will the ability of the new journalists to replace a lot of the current trashy content with high quality content. Tosh.0 (whether you like him or hate him) is a great example of what is possible with today’s tool set. What he does it a macro level for laughs, new journalists can do at a micro level for impact. Imagine the day when a local event (high school football game or a dignitary’s visit) is captured by over 100 angles from as many cameras and cell phones. This new wave of journalists will be able to edit all that footage into an easily consumable format that show the highlights of the event as well as a link to the full coverage.

Eventually, the mass media will either have to give in and cut the crap to gain back viewers. Or dig themselves a deeper hole by covering even more crap since all they have left are the clueless masses. Regardless of which, their power will stem and dry, leaving the System with nowhere to broadcast their message.

I had dreams of creating the website to help bring about this change. I even bought the domains RewatchTheMoment.com and MyCamerasView.com to help bring about this change. However, I realize that while I can help, I’m not a journalist. We need a journalist to bring about this change. I’m more than happy to help from a technical side, but we need a voice of the new journalism to step forward to show us the way. If you’re that voice, feel free to contact me and I’ll do what I can to help you start this revolution.

Problem: Massive, Faceless Corporations

Solution: Local Markets and Tiny Businesses

I buy local fresh eggs from a neighbor and pork from the local butcher. My wife has been part of various local farm shares. I prefer to eat at local dives vs fast food chains. My wife mainly shops online bazaars for things like cloth diapers for our baby. We support local craft boutiques.

Ideally, we’d do all those things above, all the time. We don’t, however. We shop at supermarkets and Walmart. We use Amazon quite a bit. We drive an automobile and live in a home, both made by huge corporations. We have our money in a huge, mega banking institution and we are indebted to similar institutions via credit cards.

While the internet and society has helped us drift away from knowing our neighbors, I think it will come full circle. I see a time soon where an online map of your city/town/suburb/borough will list places to shop local owned businesses: bakers, chefs, butchers, craftsmen, tailors, etc. Technically, online maps do now but they’re not curated or easily digestible. You’ve got to pick the locals out from the megacorps on generic search maps or you need to seek them out via review sites.

Sadly, we can’t depend on the government, even at the local level to create these maps for us. By this, I’m not saying government is evil. I’m simply stating a fact that their hands are tied. They need taxes and jobs from Walmart and other big-box stores to sustain local economies. The traditional Main Streets of yore have died out long ago, but I think they’re on their way back only modified. Main street is no longer going to be an actual street but more of a map of your own local shops that you have to “visit”. My guess is that a lot of these virtual stores will only be open once a week (i.e. sorta like a garage sale), have only pickup or only do deliveries.

Let’s put to rest one notion, right here, right now: Walmart will beat the local shops on prices. If you are literally counting pennies, then it’s going to be tough to switch. You’ll likely have a “What’s in it for me?” attitude. Which is selfish, but honest and a real question as we have families to feed and bills to pay. I bet there are some things you can do without, but budgeting aside, I think there’s more compelling reasons.

We humans are meant to be happy. One way we are happy is to do what we love. I’ve watched a lot of businesses over the years. A lot of people shouldn’t be in business, but they are. Not only are they in business, but they have a life-sustaining business for many, many years. If you looked at their books and saw how borderline they were to folding every week, you’d really think they shouldn’t be in business. However, these people love what their businesses do/produce and that love/passion helps keep the business afloat.

Think about it for a moment. A lot of our purchases (alcohol, movies, books, food, cigarettes, clothes, etc.) are comfort purchases. We live miserable lives so we attempt to spend our way to happiness. Imagine if we loved our jobs because our jobs were our businesses. Imagine if we had the entire family involved in our business until they branched out in their own businesses. That’s why people who are passionate make for good business people even if the business isn’t making them rich. Let’s face it, if we’re all shopping locally none of us are going to be rich, we’ll likely just have enough to get by BUT we’ll be happier every day.

Most people would start a business if they knew how. We need to dispel the notion that businesses are meant for the “smart guys”, because they’re not. We need to reconsider our notion of “business school”. We don’t need to pay $168K for a 2 year MBA from Harvard to start, run or own a business. We need a $200 (or less) workshop that shows people the basics of how to run a business.

Isn’t running a business expensive though? Yes, there are costs associated with a business, but we can help each other disperse those costs. Here are some random ideas to change things up:

• Shared space: Whether it’s a restaurant, office space or salon space, chances are you don’t need it all the time. However, rent for space requires you use it all the time because you pay for it whether you’re using it or not. Therefore, have a restaurant space that is actually 7 different restaurants (a different one each day of the week). People don’t eat out every day anyways, so why not only open your restaurant once a week? Let six other restaurants use it the other nights of the week.
• Shared staff: Do we all need a bookkeeper, receptionist, janitor, etc? No, hire a local small biz to do this stuff. I don’t mean hire you local Molly Maids or AccountTemp personnel, but I mean look for a neighbor who’s passion/business is that task you need.
• Shared Supplies: Everyone needs a printer, fax, paper. Every restaurant needs napkins, plates, flour, sugar, etc. The more you can buy, the bigger the savings. That goes even at the local level. Of course, not all supplies will be locally made nor will the ever be. It’s pretty tough to make a printer or laptop locally, but when you can buy things together, you can share the savings and maybe start to compete with Walmart’s prices.

The other thing that I’ve found is that your business doesn’t have to be your full-time job. You can try out your business, especially if you’re sharing space. Most of us need the income of a job to keep us afloat while we lockdown our business. Once the business takes off, then we can take a bit more risk. Why quit before you know if the business will do well or before you are even sure you really want to do it?

As more and more of our purchasing power goes to local shops, we’ll starve the big box shops of their needed revenue streams. It’ll be okay though. As they shrink, the local businesses will grow and thrive. Some will hire those laid off workers. Some of those laid off workers will start their own businesses as well.

I’d like to point out what my wife does quite often. She shops from small businesses via bazaars on the internet, only they’re now called forums. She buys fabric, diapers and headbands from people running businesses from their home. Heck, she even bought out one of the businesses she shopped from. She hopes to continue to provide that service she loved enough to buy the store of.

The internet will be the friend to this new way of shopping. We’ve luckily seen the downfall of the WebVan and Pets.com businesses. But little shops that were around on the internet back then are still online now. When you have low overhead costs and love what you do, you’re a pretty unstoppable force to be reckoned with.

It’s like that scene in “A Bug’s Life”, where the ants realize they outnumber and thus overpower the bullying grasshoppers. We may be small, but in time, we’ll wake up, unite and take down the big guys.

Again, I’ve thought about trying to bring about this change. Today I finally registered the domain MyOwnShops.com to be the placeholder for the business to bring about the change. However, I’m not meant to be the guy to bring about the change. I’ve got tech skills, but I don’t have the rallying power to bring about this change on my own. If you’re interested in being the one though, let me know and I’ll help you out as best I can.

In Closing

Just to reiterate, I’m in the same boat as you. I think there’s a lot of good in what I’ve said here, but I’m still a few years out from being able to fully stand behind all those things I talk about.

I’m also not saying this is a black and white type thing. I happen to love Pixar movies and they’re owned by Disney which owns ABC and ESPN. I also love the Apple Mac Pro I’m typing this on with the Intel chip it has inside sending data bits across Cox’s wires to get this on the internet. “Oh so those big businesses are okay?” I can here you ask. I’m not perfect. I’m human and thus am hypocritical by default. I know all this and that’s okay.

The future will not be without mass media or massive corporations. However, it is up to us to make sure that the power of the System doesn’t continue to grow larger and larger. We must take responsibility for our actions. We have to put our necks on the line. We have to be those early journalists that will be laughed at. We have to start those tiny businesses that will fail. We have to do those things so others can stand upon our slumped over shoulders to achieve greater things. And when they do, we’ll find the strength within ourselves to rise up and push them that much higher.

I talk about business with a lot of people. The concepts behind a business: the whys, the hows, the wheres and the whats. One thing that has always boggled my mind is exit strategies. Some companies are clearly built to be flipped (i.e. sold early on), while others are intended to be around for a long time.

In an interview with Dropbox CEO, it was brought to light that Steve Jobs wanted to buy the online storage company. Steve told them, “You don’t have a product, you have a feature.” Clearly, the team at Dropbox disagrees, but that got me thinking.

Build to Sell or Build to Grow?

Up until fairly recently, I didn’t understand people who built to flip. Yet, at 360Conferences, I really did want a bigger media company to buy us. I wasn’t building a company to flip, I just thought that while we were good at doing conferences, we’d be better applying our mentality inside a bigger media company with the resources to fund wild ideas we dreamt up. John was definitely more of the “I want to do 360 for life,” which is why I sold out my half to him.

Looking back at a restaurant software idea I had, my exit strategy was to sell out to a Point of Sale company, merge with one or buy one. I saw my product offerings as being good on their own, but realized they would be better as part of a bigger suite of software/hardware offerings.

I think the decision on your exit strategy stems from how you see your offerings. If you see them as a feature of a larger collection of things, then you should expect to be bought or sell out someday. In particular if you never intend to build those other things. However, if you see it as more of a standalone product, then you’re better off building up a company to sustain it for years to come.

Feature or Product? Or both?

Now, here’s where it gets tricky and you have to watch out. Sometimes, you can be seduced into thinking your product is a feature. Look at say Turbo Tax with Intuit, Hotmail with Microsoft or PayPal with eBay. I’m sure both we’re not seen as features but as products by their founders. However, a suitor came along and sang sweet nothings of perfect pairings and enriching customer lives (and founders’ pockets). Heck, even Intuit itself was for a briefly a feature of Microsoft, until the Department of Justice said, “Yeah, no.” (Rumor has it that the lead ruler in the matter owned both Office and Quicken. “The people who made that <pointing at Office with disdain/> want to buy this? <looking lovingly at Quicken/> Yeah, I don’t think so.” Again, that’s just a rumor…that I just made up, but sounded too good to pass up. LOL)

If you think about it though, this natural progression makes sense. I mean, even Compaq, a huge company making lots of products, got convinced that they were really a feature of Hewlett Packard. (The irony is that HP recently announced that they’re likely gonna ditch their PC division aka Compaq.) There must be similar logic behind every multi-million/billion dollar merger, or they wouldn’t happen. Right? Some CEO convinces another CEO, “Look. You guys may or may not be doing alright, but look at how much better y’all could be!”

“My business is my baby!”

There’s a common comparison of business to children. You give birth to it, you nurture it, you watch it grow. Sometimes it dies, but other times it grows up to stand on its own. It takes on a personality similar to its founders/parents. It has good days and bad days. Much like life, business is full of good things and bad things: vendettas, people using others for gain and the rare long-lived friendships. Here’s some examples of those things in the business world:

• Someone will take on a new lover to scorn a past one – Apple wanted to buy AdMob, but lost out to a rival bid from Google. They bought Quattro instead, to pretty much show AdMob how much they screwed up.
• Some people use others to get ahead in life – Microsoft had Windows NT which they really wanted workstation manufacturers to start using, but the manufactures ignored it because nothing powerful ran on Windows NT. Therefore, Microsoft fixed this by buying Softimage, a powerful 3-D animation software package. They ported Softimage over to Windows NT, which got manufactures on board. This move helped contribute to the demise of the once mighty Silicon Graphics Inc. SGI had a very expensive vertical stack of processors, OS, machines and even graphics software, which toppled to low-cost solution provided by Microsoft and it’s partners.
• Lifelong friendships do exist out there – Think of McDonald’s and its supplier, Golden State Foods. When Ray Croc and the McDonald’s brothers decided to go the franchise route, they specifically did not want to sell all the food products, just the restaurant concept. Hence Golden State Foods was given the opportunity to become a huge company supplying the actual food in the McDonald’s restaurants. (Sidenote: Golden State Foods actually “created” the Big Mac sauce, which I have to admit is one of the few things I like in McDs.)

If you take this analogy one step further, you come to this realization. Generally speaking (I’m not here to argue philosophy of life), a child is raised to get married and repeat the process. So by that logic, mergers and buyouts are simply a way of life while some “greats” go at it alone. Much like life, these are the companies so focused on their goal that they have no time to even ponder mergers, because all they think about is their offerings.

“Hey old man, get with the times!”

Now again, one point of marriage (philosophy aside) is to make babies. So, it should come as no surprise that after a merger, many a startup are born. Whether by people who meet because of the merger, get let go as “cost savings” or because the new company gets to be so slow that employees have no choice but to leave and start their own to get something done.

The irony to me though is in the cycle of startup to corporation to startup:

Step 1: Idea Phase – “Hey, I bet we could do that better.”

Step 2: Startup Phase - ”Let’s start something. We’re faster and better than those giant corporations.”

Step 3: Discovery – “What exactly are we building? Who’s going to pay for it?”

Step 4: Growth – “Awesome, we’re getting customers by the boatloads! Let’s hire folks.”

Step 5: Management – “Hmmm…we have a lot of people, someone should manage them.”

Step 6: MegaCorp – “We can’t do that! We have legacy products to support and committees to go through.”

Step 7: Stagnation – “We know our customers and employees. They want this and nothing else.”

Step 8: Rinse/Repeat- Select customers and employees head back to Step 1 to repeat the cycle.

For awhile there, I thought all businesses were doomed to repeat that cycle. To which, I thought, “I don’t want that to happen to my business.” However, what are we to do? Businesses grow and as they grow you have to do things. Well, yes and no. If you gamble, err, I mean, play by Wall Street’s rules and go public. Yes, you have to do this. Which got me thinking. What if you don’t ever want to go public? What if you just want to stay a privately held company forever? Could you do it? Would it work? What would that look like?

I would start to get depressed about this stuff. Then, things started to change and hope brightened the horizon.

“I’m a feature and I’m proud of it.”

The best thing to come out of the recent generation of startups are not the WebVans, Pets.com, GroupOns or Zyngas of the worlds. Rather it’s the “Start small, stay small” mentality of owner/businesses like Marco Arment of Instapaper, Patrick McKenzie of BingoCardCreator, John Wilker of 360|Flex/360|iDev, etc. These are people who understood from the get go what I just discovered, and fly in the face of it. They know they’re a feature, but since it’s only them, it doesn’t need to be a suite of products. As long as they have enough to get them by, they’re happy.

You have to admire people like that. They may seem crazy, but they are the ones slowly changing the (business) world to make it better. They give hope to the masses who sit in a cube farm frustrated with the inadequacies of the companies they work for. And when they finally reach the tipping point, they’ll venture out on their own. Only now, with alternative models to look up to, they may finally break that vicious cycle.

So solitude can mean introspection, it can mean the concentration of focused work, and it can mean sustained reading. All of these help you to know yourself better. But there’s one more thing I’m going to include as a form of solitude, and it will seem counterintuitive: friendship. Of course friendship is the opposite of solitude; it means being with other people. But I’m talking about one kind of friendship in particular, the deep friendship of intimate conversation. Long, uninterrupted talk with one other person. Not Skyping with three people and texting with two others at the same time while you hang out in a friend’s room listening to music and studying. That’s what Emerson meant when he said that “the soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude.”

Introspection means talking to yourself, and one of the best ways of talking to yourself is by talking to another person. One other person you can trust, one other person to whom you can unfold your soul. One other person you feel safe enough with to allow you to acknowledge things—to acknowledge things to yourself—that you otherwise can’t. Doubts you aren’t supposed to have, questions you aren’t supposed to ask. Feelings or opinions that would get you laughed at by the group or reprimanded by the authorities.

This describes my deepest held philosophy. It explains why I have far more fun now at 360Conferences events then I did when I ran them. It explains why the thing I miss most about 360Conferences is spending nights chatting with John about business, life, dreams, goals, etc. It explains why I can spend almost all my time with Nathan Eror at one 360|iDev, then spend just a few minutes in passing at the next one.

This will help explain me to a lot of you that know me, but whom I probably perplex at times. I like to focus on one or two people at a time. I like to get to know them deeply, talk about dreams, failures, life lessons, etc. I get to the meat quickly and often forge a friendship quicker than most others do. There is a certain intimacy (not the sexual kind) that comes with my relationships. I don’t want to talk about the weather or the latest gizmo or SDK, though I often will because they are common bonds. What I really want to know is the things deep down within you that make you the wonderful person you are. These are the things that are so unique to you that I can’t help but remember them, even though I may forget your name (because those tend not to be unique).

There are so many people and I don’t have unlimited time. Therefore, I have to focus on one or two people to the detriment of the many. I think this probably hurts many of your feelings, and that’s not my intent. This hurt stems from how I spend 4 days practically at your side then the next time we see each other, we barely hang out for more than a grand total of 30 minutes over 4 days. It’s not that I don’t like you anymore, but rather that I’m getting to know someone else just as intimately. I think my family suffers most here. I’ll hang with one aunt or cousin and thus others will not get any face time at all.

It may seem unfair, not because I’m so great and I think everyone should be blessed with my presence. Quite the opposite, all of your are so great that I shouldn’t be allowed to hog up all your time every time we meet. Plus, there’s only so much time in the day and many people we have to meet.

When I get to know you, rest assured that everything we discuss in neatly packed away into a mental box and stored safely. I’ll come visit that box during my times of true solitude. I will revisit conversations we had, ideals we discussed when I ponder something early in the morning while sitting in my office chair. The next time we do have another conversation, don’t be surprised if I bring up points from our last conversation. It doesn’t matter to my mind if we left off a year ago, when i open that box when we meet again, those discussions vividly come back into memory like they happened just yesterday.

One quote that demonstrates this clearly is one that a dear friend from high school said at our 10 year reunion. “I feel like I’m 16 again.” is what she said after we danced to an old favorite tune and had a conversation where I brought up discussion points that we left off on in high school.

I think it also explains my youthful demeanor. My wife says I’m more like one of the kids than I am her hubbie. I’m sure (or hope) that she’s jesting, but there is some truth to that. To me, to my mind, I’m no different today then I was when I was 16 or heck, even younger. Sure, things have changed but the core of who I am and what I stand for are the same.

How do I know this? Through hearing myself talk during these intimate conversations with dear friends. The things I say now are echoes of the things I’ve said back in my teenage years and during all the time in between. Yes, my life has changed from single to married, from kidless to 3 kids, from drunk to sober, from Catholic to LDS, but the core tenants are the same: I love life and the people who fill it. I still have the same dream of being a great businessman that I hatched back in 6th grade. I still want to be the best dad that I can possibly be, like I did when I read the “How to be a great parent” book when I was 8 or so. I still want to be the best husband/brother/son/friend that I’ve always strived to be.

This is the thing we need solitude for: to (re)discover ourselves. This is the reason we exist on this planet: to help each other grow but still stay true to our inner selves. Therefore, take the time to have that special one on one time; Not just with me, but with others in your life. Let your dear friends help you grow into the person you know deep down inside you want to be. Become that leader in whatever space you want to succeed in. We only have one life, so let’s make it the best we can for ourselves and those around us. While one person may change the world, it takes the world to create that person.