I hate it when people say “tell us how you really feel.” Hate it. Why wouldn’t I tell you how I really feel? You asked. Would you rather I lie to you?\
We’ve been having this internal discussion about passion, how to change things inside the company, and how things could be better. It’s been going on for a while, but a presentation I did with a bunch of pals last week (called Guerilla Web 2.0 – I’m going to see if I can release the audio and slides publicly) really sparked something, and I keep coming back to that statement (which people have said to me a lot recently, which is why it’s stuck in my head)… “tell us how you really feel.”\
If you want to change things, don’t stay silent. If you’re passionate about what you do or what you want to do, don’t hide it. The only way things change is if people speak up. I’ve had this quote from Angels in America on my phone for ages and peek at it every once in a while:\
bq. We won’t die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens… the time has come.\
Now, that’s about something a lot more serious than technology, but the line has stuck with me. If you want something to change, don’t suffer in silence. If you want something to change, get off your ass and make it happen. If you can’t convince anyone, or fail the first time, then go back and find a new message that will. People assume that things are the way they are for a reason, and they’re just not. A lot of times, they’re an accident or an unintended consequence of another decision.\
There’s a flip side to that: that we need to “protect” management from issues. Nope. If something’s broken and it’s important, they need to know about it. They’re not fragile, nor are they immune from mistakes (and if they are fragile, they probably shouldn’t be managers). Most of them are human beings, and if they know something is broken, they’ll try to fix it. If they’re decent (and I think 95% of them are), they’d prefer to have happy employees than disgruntled semi-postal ones.\
The next time someone asks you to tell them how you really feel, tell them. Don’t be hostile, don’t embellish or hyperbolize, but dammit, tell them the truth. Nothing will ever change if you don’t. If we keep it to ourselves and suffer “secret deaths”, there’s no one to blame but ourselves. If we speak up, at least we’ve made the first step in making things better. If others fail to take that information and do something with it, it’s on them.
Category: development
-
Tell Us How You Really Feel
-
Point Out the Good Stuff
I don’t normally blog about work stuff (well, I have recently, but it’s an anomoly), but I have to point this one out because it’s such an improvement. There’s a new AOL Webmail beta, and it’s really cool. I’ve been using the current webmail at home on the kitchen computer, and while it was better than the one that came before it, it wasn’t great. The new beta? It’s great. It’s speedy once it loads, and I can view mail without having to open a new browser window. Check it out… really. It’s good.
-
Check Out My Face!
A pal at work today told me to check out this thing called the AOL Image Organizer. I did, and it’s pretty cool. It’s over on the Greenhouse (which I love… give people a place to put out things that aren’t quite done, get them seen and get feedback), so it’s really not done. But, it does one really cool thing – it recognizes faces! I threw in a bunch of pictures of people from my Flickr stream, and it did a pretty damn good job of picking out people.\
Check it out, and let ’em know how you like it… keeping in mind that it’s not done (I couldn’t figure out how to add new face boxes to photos it didn’t see a face in originally). And yeah, it’s only for Windows. But, you could go download Cheshire (a very cool collection of AOL-related Mac apps) or my AIM Fight Dashboard widget. -
AOL and OpenID
John spilled the beans so I will too. AOL is doing OpenID! AOL is currently an identity provider (meaning you can log in on third-party openid-enabled sites using your spanking new OpenID URL, for example: http://openid.aol.com/kplawver), and we’re working on accepting OpenID logins on AOL products, but that’s going to take some time. See John’s post for all the details.\
This is really exciting for me. It’s another sign of us opening up, supporting emerging standards and trying new things. It means I won’t be all alone next month when we launch the super-secret Rails project, which will accept OpenID logins.\
Now, back to work so we can launch this thing on time and I can tell you all about it. -
Bring Me Your 48×48 Buddy Icons!
For our soon-to-be-a-launchin’ Ruby on Rails app, we’re looking for services that provide 48×48 buddy icons (you know, like AIM does). So far, it’s surprising how many different social networks and web apps have them, and it’s equally surprising how few of them have APIs to get at them. So far, I’ve got AIM Buddy Icons, Flickr buddy icons, and Twitter icons – because they’re really easy to get at (some easier than others). If you know of more services (or happen to run one) that has APIs for getting buddy icons (that are 48×48), please let me know! We’ll give you a link and make your users happy in the process, because they get to use their cool icon.\
One of my early goals with the project was to reinvent as little a wheel as possible:- I don’t want to store passwords, or make users remember another one, so we’re supporting AIM and OpenID logins
- I don’t want to host, resize, handle uploading, a bunch of images, because that means users have to upload yet another one (hence the question above).
- I don’t want to make people fill out a big long nasty profile, so we don’t have them (they’re short and funny).\
We’ll be launching the new blog in the very near future, and the product hopefully before SxSW. I’m way too excited about it. I even posted a sneak peek of the logo because I couldn’t take it any more (oh, the design on this thing… it’s gorgeous – the best looking web app I’ve ever been associated with, and I’ve been involved in plenty).
-
I’m Steppin’ Out on Ya’
My pals over at dev.aol.com asked me during Mashup Camp to start a blog over on their site. I’ve wanted to start a geekier blog to do more long form posts on all things web, but just haven’t had the time or drive to really get it set up (you know, I can’t use default templates, it’s just not me). Well, here’s my chance, so I said yes (you know, I don’t think I’ve ever said no to Naveed – must ponder that one). I posted my first entry tonight. My goal is to post over there at least once a week – though two a week would be great. I’ve got way too much going on right now (product managing and writing a lot of the code for a new product, trying to write 1/3 of a book, taking more pictures, preparing for two sessions at SxSW, a couple other possible conferences, etc), but I think this is a good thing to support and to help out with. So, check it out if you want, and let me know what you think – suggestions for stuff you’d like me to write about would be greatly appreciated.
-
Mashup Camp Three Recap
Mashup Camp 3 wrapped up a couple hours ago, and as far as I’m concerned, it was a gigantic success. I’ve had more fun at this “unconference” than at any conference since SxSW. Everyone was really into what they were doing, and there was a minimum of people there purely hawking their own stuff and not participating (which was my main problem with the last one in Mountain View). There were great sessions, and I was so geeked about everything, I ended up spending all of Tuesday building a mashup so I could share it at Speed Geeking. I ended up building a mashup of a feed reader and your buddy list that I unfortunately called Buddy Stalker, even though there’s very little “stalking” involved. It’s just a way to get a feed reader filled with things you’re likely to care about (the content your buddies create) without the initial setup cost of finding feeds, adding them, pruning them, etc. I ended up in the bunch of third place winners, which was great, when I consider that I did it in one day and that it was the first thing I’ve ever launched using Ruby on Rails.\
I met some great people, and had some great discussions. Here are just some of my favorite people from this week: John Gerken from IBM, David Janes, the Herrens, Nate Ritter and Chris Radcliff from Eventful, Kaliya, Raj Bala, Frank (if you’re out there, I never got your last name… we’ll find you a Ruby Users Group in Little Rock, I promise) and Shimmy from Angelwish, just to name a few.\
I think I ended up overdoing it a little… I ended up proposing and/or running four sessions, doing one presentation at Mashup University, and speed geeking for two days. My poor throat is shot – between talking too much and the cold dry air, it’s a raw mess. But, it was totally worth it. I got to talk about microformats, standards, the semantic web (both lower and uppercase), and in the last session, ruby on rails. It’s been a full week to say the least.\
There are pictures to go look at, and lots and lots of stuff to think about and work on going forward. There are several more posts in me to discuss all the stuff we talked about this week, but they’ll have to wait. I need to pack and get some sleep. -
Twitter
I don’t like Twitter.\
Yea, I said it.\
Whatchu gonna do ’bout it? -
Digging in With Rails
It’s the end of our first full week of development on our big Rails experiment, and I couldn’t be happier with how things are going. We have 90% of the admin interface done (user management, static page stuff, moderation, etc), have user logins working using a really cool upcoming AOL open API (should be able to talk more about it later this week, but it’s one of the best web services I’ve ever used and I’m not saying that because I work there), and users can edit their own content now in a limited manner.\
Rails makes things so easy. It takes all the obnoxious bits out of building web apps: the plumbing. I no longer have to write hundreds of lines of code before I can actually do anything important.\
This is also my first experience with Subversion, and I’m loving that too. We’ve been using svnX, and I’m loving that too. It took a minute to get used to, but I love smart mode. It tells me what I’ve changed so I don’t have to go digging for it to make sure I’ve checked everything in (so Jason can keep his stuff in sync and mostly working).\
We’re still planning on launching before SxSW. wish us luck. -
My Job… on Rails!
There are times when working at AOL is hard to defend, like say, when we give out lots of personally identifiable search data, or when our customer service is patently horrible. There are other times when I wouldn’t dream of working anywhere else. Today is the latter. I am extremely lucky. Why? I can’t say everything, but I can give the basics.\
I’ve been playing with Ruby on Rails for a little while, just tinkering in my spare time, until I came up with an idea. This idea was big and complex, but I figured it would make a good “class project” to really get to know Rails. Once I started getting into it, it turned out to be too big and too complex, so I came up with what I think turned out to be a better idea. Better not only because it was simpler, but because I don’t think anything like it exists out there yet.\
After playing with it after work for a month or so, I realized I didn’t have the time between work, travel and family, to really do it right. So, I brought it to work and proposed it. And, we’re doing it… in Rails. I have a small team of folks I hand picked to work on it, and their managers have graciously allowed me to steal them for a couple months. Cindy, Ari (Ari, do you have site?) and Jason are the best (which is why I picked them). We’re playing startup: very little interference, almost no process, and incredible executive “cover”. We’re doing out best to keep it simple, pare down the featureset to what’s absolutely required to make it cool, and throwing out traditional AOL project roles. We’ve making incredible progress and I’ll hopefully be able to unveil the final thing before SxSW. It will be unlike anything I’ve ever built for AOL before.\
Even with the layoffs, uncertainty and swirl, it’s still a good time to work at AOL.