To Do Something Cool

Now that I have kids, I easily think in terms of schools years. Fall is the beginning of the year, and I am excited. Having been very sick in the last year, I want this year to be my best year in technology. Over the years, I have had the chance to work with bright people who have had great ideas. If only I had had the chance to work for companies that understood and knew how to use the ideas.

I am not saying that I understand business, or that I could have sold the ideas myself, but things never came together. However, I have been watching trends, and it is starting to happen.

When I was working for a forest products company on a supply chain application, I constructed an application that used AJAX. At the time, these techniques were called “remote scripting”. When users entered a price forecast into a page that looked like a spreadsheet, the data went into the database right away. I also provided a callback for the server to use to pass back a revenue forecast based on the production forecast for the same period. Users loved the application, and they loved not having to press a submit button.

Other developers were concerned that I was trying to rebuild Excel as a web page. Somebody once said about me: “Jim thinks Javascript is a programming language.” To see Excel functionality see Google Spreadsheets.

Ajax, and the host of new services that are being offered by Google, are part of a trend many people are calling Web 2.0. This trend is about people. It is not about functionality. It is about usefulness and ease of use, and it is about collaboration. I am excited.

When I was the director of R&D at Blastradius, I told my product manager that I would love to hire an anthropologist to be part of our product team. Designing a new product was not about technology, as far as I was concerned. It was not even about economics or marketing. How can you study the market for a service that has never existed before? How can you predict what will happen. If you have a sense of adventure, you try to make something new happen.

New things are happening now. This time it is not about the money, necessarily. The ideas are just so cool. The code is cool. The people are young. The people who were young in the nineties are now the old farts who do not get it. I cannot tell you how many non-disclosure agreements I have signed in the past 10 years. However, I can tell you one true thing: “Do not worry that someone is going to steal your ideas. If they are really that good, you are going to have to shove them down somebodies throat.”

I do not know who said the above, but I have seen it attributed to a few people. The point is: do not expect people to fall down at your feet because you have a good idea. It may take a while, but, if the idea is good, the time will come.

At the very least, I want to have some fun coding this year. My work has been getting dull. It is time to spice it up.