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Recent Posts
Category Archives: Business
fire alarm
The fire alarm in our building was going off when I woke up this morning. It’s not hooked up to the local emergency services system; you would still have to actually call 911 to get a fire truck to show … Continue reading
big and little
I think that powers of ten serve as a great metric for dividing up companies. First, you’ve got a company of 1–a sole proprietorship, which can be anything from a hugely successful public speaker to a guy driving a cab … Continue reading
frequency, brevity, and timing
Apparently, the best time to publish new blog posts is on Friday and Saturday mornings. However, there is about a four-fold increase in unique views if you publish more than once a day. I have also heard that two paragraphs … Continue reading
I’m back!
I’ve been away from blogging for a bit, as you can see. It’s not the first time I’ve put the keyboard down for awhile; this time, the main impetus is a career realignment. I’ve decided to close up shop as … Continue reading
mini-cases: controlling the source
When you’re working on something by yourself, life is simple. But add just one person to the mix, and everything gets a lot harder. You want to keep track of what changed, when, and who was responsible, and to do that, you need source control. Continue reading
Posted in Business, Life, Mini-Cases, Tech
Tagged collaboration tools, management technology, mini-cases, open-source, project management, source control, Subversion, versioning
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mini-cases: better to beg for forgiveness, part 2
In this mini-case, I did not have official approval for my idea. And it was simple: I was working for a business that, among other things, allowed users of a website to search for airfares across multiple providers—pretty innovative, at … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Life, Mini-Cases
Tagged approval, flight, mini-cases, pricing, projects, skunk works, skunkworks
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mini-cases: better to beg for forgiveness, part 1
This case is about a time I should have started a skunkworks. While the historical origin of the term “skunkworks†is lightly disputed (it most certainly references a comic strip called “Li’l Abner†and stems from military projects in the … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Life, Mini-Cases
Tagged approval, flight, mini-cases, pricing, projects, skunk works, skunkworks
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mini-cases: support your core
The new content-management system was done, and we breathed a sigh of relief. We needed it to support our ambitions of providing even more specific content to our users, who came to our site for our well-informed professional recommendations in … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Life, Mini-Cases
Tagged cms, content management system, core business, mini-cases, publishing, publishing systems
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mini-cases: things take time
My manager uttered a phrase that, to a software developer, was simultaneously thrilling and terrifying: “It’s time for an upgrade.†I was working for a company in the financial services sector; their core business involved a proprietary system for predicting … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Life, Mini-Cases, Tech
Tagged mini-cases, project, resources, schedule, software upgrade, time management
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mini-cases: keeping the lights on
You know your job is in trouble when you can’t log on to the Internet, and the Internet Service Provider tells you that the bill hasn’t been paid in months. Such was my situation at a small government contracting company. … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Life, Mini-Cases
Tagged cashflow, contracting, creditworthiness, mini-cases, survival
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