Author: Jason F.

Nice UI touch from the New York Times. There are plenty of ways to approach this problem, but I like this novel solution. It grabs your attention in a way a simple list of articles wouldn’t.

Want to meet other people who’ve read REWORK? Want to talk with other business owners (or potential business owners) who believe ASAP is poison, meetings are toxic, planning is guessing, and inspiration is perishable? Or maybe you’re just curious about how these ideas can apply to your own business. Sound interesting to you?

Then check out a REWORK Meetup. They’re happening this June in nearly 100 cities across the world. These are face-to-face meetups in bookstores, cafes, restaurants, pubs, libraries, or anywhere else people agree to meet up and discuss REWORK and the ideas within.

I’ll be at the Chicago Meetup on June 3rd. Which one will you be at? Check out the REWORK Meetups, pick your city, sign up, and meet your fellow readers, thinkers, and doers.

It’s a lot easier for a small company to happily grow into a large one than a large one happily downsizing to a small one. When you’re small you have options – you can stay small or go middle or go big. But once you’re big, getting smaller is almost always out of the question unless you’re forced in that direction. This is the problem when companies grow too fast – they skip right over their options and set themselves up for big or bust.

Beautiful shot of Frank Lloyd Wright with his apprentices at Taliesen. Photo by Ken Hedrich, 1933.

When REWORK was released we launched a “REWORK in the Wild” promotion. We asked people to upload a photo of their physical (or digital) copy of REWORK. We said we’d pick our favorite and send that person an iPad.

Check out all the submissions at Flickr.

The winner(s)

We were originally going to pick one winner, but we decided to pick three instead. Some people got really creative.

From Adamsentz

From Victor “Scott”

From holmjohnii

We’ll be in touch with the winners over the next few days.

Thanks to everyone who submitted a photo. And thanks to everyone who’s read REWORK. We hope you’ve enjoyed it.

Construction on the new office continues.

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About a month ago we shared a video of our new office space under construction. There’s been a lot of progress since (new video soon).

I thought it would be a good time to share some more details about the new office. We’re aiming to move in the first week of July.

Why?

First, why are we getting a new office space? For the past seven or eight years we’ve been sharing an office with Coudal Partners. It’s their office, we just rent a strip of desks and share the the common areas (conference room, kitchen, etc.). It’s been great in every way. We’ve made good friends, worked on some great projects together, and started a company together (The Deck).

But it’s time for us to move into our own space. We’ve got 9 people in Chicago now, and only 5 desks at the office. We’re getting in Coudal’s way (they haven’t said this, but we definitely feel like we are). And we need privacy — currently we have to leave the office and talk in the hallway whenever we have a private call to make. It’s just time.

Also, this is a luxury item for us. When we launched 37signals in 1999 we shared an office space for about two years. Then we got on our own temporary raw space for a few years. That space was right up against the train and we used doors for desks. Then we’ve been sharing the current office with Coudal for the past 7 years. So in many ways this is a luxury purchase for us. We don’t need this space — we could continue to work the way we work today. It’s definitely getting cramped, and people don’t have the privacy they need, but we could have continued to get by with what we had. But we decided that eleven years into our business we could afford to experiment with a dedicated space built out just the way we wanted. We believe it will pay off.

The idea

When we started thinking about what we wanted out of our own space, we realized we didn’t just want a place to work. We wanted a place to share our ideas and learn from others. We used to give workshops a few times a year, but we stopped because it was a hassle to book venues and deal with all that crap. We wanted to get back into the flow of doing semi-regular workshops and master classes. We wanted our own venue.

We also wanted to make sure the work environment followed our general principals: Open in general, quiet when we need it, and easy group collaboration without interrupting other people. We also wanted to set up dedicated spaces for private phone calls, recording audio/video/screencasts, and room for expansion – specifically for our customer service/support team.

So those were the big picture ideas. We selected Brininstool + Lynch as our architects and worked with Grubb & Ellis to help us find a space. We looked at a variety of spaces – everything from house-like spaces to raw floors in empty loft buildings. In the end we took an empty floor so we could build out the space exactly as we wanted. We got a lovely corner space with tons of natural light.

The floor plan

View full size

The wall of windows on the bottom faces north. We have 12 desks lined up against those windows. Along that window wall there is a build-in full-length credenza for extra desk space and storage for each desk.

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If you design web sites, order this book. Informative, fun, direct, clear, practical. It’s everything you want in this kind of book. This is the first book from A Book Apart (from the Zeldman crew who bring you A List Apart). Ships soon, in June.

They put it perfectly:

The HTML5 spec is 900 pages and hard to read. HTML5 for Web Designers is 85 pages and fun to read. Easy choice.

1959 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray. Photo credit: Peter Harholdt / High Museum of Art in Atlanta

We just launched a redesign of the 37signals Job Board. From start to finish we spent 10 days on the project. Jamie Dihiansan designed it and Josh Peek programmed it. We love how it turned out.

We had a few goals for the redesign:

1. A fresh coat of paint. We didn’t want to add or remove any key functionality, but we wanted to redesign the look and feel to freshen it up. Modernized, cleaner, and clearer. We also experimented with Typekit for the first time.
2. Remove distractions and make our Job Board customers the stars. With our product logos, a big black footer, and our standard header, the old design was too much about us and not enough about the companies listing their jobs on the Job Board.
3. A better purchasing process. We wanted to make the purchasing flow friendlier and easier to use – especially the preview step.
4. WYSIWYG. We wanted to add WYSIWYG editing to the job description field. This gives people the tools to make their ads — especially ads with bullet lists — look nicer.
5. A proper thank you. The old Job Board dropped people back on the home page after they posted their job. The thank you only came in the form of an email. The new design thanks them properly and gives them some helpful information and tools to promote their position.

Job listings BEFORE the redesign:

Job listings AFTER the redesign:

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Diaspora, the “open Facebook alternative” (NYT story for background if you aren’t familiar), has raised Over $170,000 from over 4600 people in just a few weeks. All for an idea.

That’s an impressive start if victory was measured in press coverage, cash, and cool. Here’s the problem: Diaspora has all the wrong things at the wrong time. Competition that kills isn’t pre-announced — it catches as unsuspecting incumbent by surprise.

They have too much money

They’re at $170,000 today (Sunday, May 16, 2010). They’ll likely continue to pile up the donations until their Kickstarter campaign ends 16 days from now. All this money without an actual product is a liability. Money gives them too much time and too much comfort to take on a fast moving incumbent like Facebook. Their cash to code ratio is out of whack. A good enough first version will take longer to produce with $170K than it would have with $0K.

The spotlight is on too early

You want attention after you’re good, not before. Obscurity is your friend when you’re just starting — especially when you don’t even have a product yet. You don’t need the pressure of outside opinion or the press breathing down your neck before you have anything to show. Millions of eyes — including your competition — watching you every step of the way doesn’t help. All this attention is a distraction. Ship, then seek the spotlight.

Expectations are too high

Some people are really pissed at Facebook right now. Those people are looking for a way to channel this negative energy into a movement. Along comes Diaspora. Diaspora becomes their horse in the race. They want that horse to win. They believe it can win. Their unlimited hopes and dreams of the anti-Facebook are transferred to Diaspora. Diaspora becomes everything and anything to anyone who wants to believe. How can anyone deliver on boundless expectations? Diaspora can’t match the fantasy of Diaspora.

I love the underdog, but I fear for the product-less underdog that has all the wrong things at the wrong time.

I think they would have been better off releasing something first. Let people play with it. Let people see that it’s possible. Then drum up press and public support. Until there’s something real to use, fantasy will just get in the way.