ErinQL In Time

What is a widget, if not able to be mashed up with another widget?

Does it currently net a profit? Good job!

Can it sustain an enterprise scaling of collaboratively licensed and individually monetized widgets from authors around the world to form the ultimate full-time bringer-of-bacon? Now you've got my attention.

Perhaps I should title this, 'Your Widget Is Solid Potato' or 'Peel, Boil, Mash' or better yet, 'I smell Bacon! Bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon! It's Bacon!'. No, not Bacn, but Bacon!

With everything we've done over the last nine months at Nth Penguin, we have yet to produce the IDE of dreams. Of course it drives us crazy. Of course we'd like to be inviting users for beta-testing already. But when you're putting together the most kick-ass group of people this world has seen since Bauhaus*, things ... take ... time.

*Like anything else in life, confidence is key. Comparing our little on-shoring consulting firm to the ultimate influence of modern design? Priceless.

Never the less, I'm very glad to hear that Bill Gates believes it will be a while before it becomes easier for the non-coder to develop their own situational applications. Okay, that's not exactly what he said. I'm translating a bit. But he has just granted us a breather for at least another month or so.

What is my point exactly? Getting there....

What if you could turn your Shadow IT Department into your R&D firm? Think of it - all your employees, knowledge experts in their department or role ("Ma-kin' cop-pees!") trying to be better at their job, in hopes that one day, the effort is rewarded. If they could generate little applications on the fly, that obeyed all the rules of IT, and actually improved productivity, cut costs or brought in more cash, legally, repeatedly, automagically, wouldn't you start booking your Paradise Island Villa now?

But it's not easy to generate apps on the fly, unless you can boil it down to the most intuitive of interfaces (perhaps culturally tailored). It's not easy to please the IT department either, unless someone is willing to test the app for all criteria of success AND guarantee it. Hardest of all is swallowing the cost of improving productivity or bringing in more cash. Bacon tastes waaaaay better.

Yet this is where we need to go. People need to put their ideas to the test quicker. They need the results faster, and they want to improve at the speed of light if it means increasing their paycheck. Yes, I do like agile design and development methods, thank you. :)

But if they can do it on their own, what's to stop them from taking it solo? If you're an expert, why work for anyone other than yourself?

First of all, the world isn't flat yet. Bill's not kidding when he proclaims it will be a while before people really adapt to a declarative model where you can code without knowing how. In our many demonstrations of our WebWidgetry framework and forecasting the potentials of a MashupStudio IDE, we have yet to see a twinkle in our audience's enterprise "eye" that says "we get it, we love it, we want it". I don't blame them. It's hard to understand without a better demo. It's also scary to think that all of the employees could be automating, licensing and monitizing their knowledge without your help. Or worse, without your consent. Yes, yes, we better get Legal on this right away....

Second, the software isn't there yet. It's close - oh so very close. If you watched the death of Teqlo, the rising of Mashery or curiously cool collabs of QEDWiki a year or two ago, you've had a taste.

Third, there's the whole trust thing.... who owns what? What would be your value layer? Can you really defend it? Why can't I screen scrape those social security numbers? Picky, picky.

So there's a long way to go.

Now, if you just happen to pick this post up and have never heard of anything like this before, I'm sorry to tell you that you're at least 3 years behind the curve of the current (geologically speaking) meme of techo-market strategies. On the other hand, by the time you catch up, someone should be coming out with a defendable product for your employees and like song-prophetic twenty-somethings at a Dave Matthews Band concert you can scream with glee "Dude I so called that one!".

On the other hand, if this post is so 24-Quants ago that you can only smile smugly in your supreme knowledge that you and your teammates at Google are about to unleash the world-flattening widget masher, then I bow to you sir. I bow to you.

But if you're like me, someone in-between, someone who knows the value of creating a Platform-as-a-Service, then I encourage you to start spending money on mashing.

Be a part of third-party PaaS-apps revolution, bare-footing it between break-rooms. Understand the new-found legs of your corporation before it runs off without you. Get excited! Learn to tie your widgets!

business

• noun 1 a person’s regular occupation or trade. 2 work to be done or matters to be attended to. 3 a person’s concern. 4 commercial activity. 5 a commercial organization. 6 informal a difficult or problematic matter. 7 (the business) informal an excellent person or thing. 8 actions other than dialogue in a play.

- Oxford English Dictionary

I'm concerned about making too much money. It's not too much of a concern yet - when you're not there yet, it's pretty hard to have that problem. And money solves many problems, for everyone that has it. Yet it's a universe of grey between not having enough and having everything you need. An endless universe.

If you're determined, you will find a way to comfortably take care of yourself and everyone that's important to you. But like sending a diplomat to a foreign country known for torturing first and making friends later, many people who have gotten 'out of the rat race' develop a sense of entitlement causing them to do whatever it takes to protect that nest egg. This builds fear in themselves and those around them. The kind of fear that waters down our moral food-store of the nest to the point that we can be flavored by anyone's taste if it means we'll be rich like them.

If you're not drinking the American-Dream sports drink, congratulations. Water is the best thing to drink anyway. That total lack of flavor is actually quite flavorful and refreshing. And when combined with constant activity, is better than any $5 cup of coffee will ever be. Ask any athelete.

Which brings me to the point - a 'solution' if you will. SPOILER WARNING: If you're looking to become independantly wealthy, you're not going to like it.

There is only so much money for everyone, and you don't need nearly as much as you think you do. If you're at the upper side of the middle class, and can see your way into the upper class, it's time to quit hoarding and start sharing a lot more of what you have. Allow me to state some possible objections you might be thinking of, and give you some re-assuring answers as to why this crazy concept is exactly what the world needs.

1. Why?

Because you know how to accumulate wealth, but you're keeping it for yourself. Your community needs you. Your world needs you.

Giving your money away reduces your fear of losing it, and puts smiles on many peoples faces. It makes you very popular (let's discuss that another time) and you can actually influence the world for the better if you choose. Ultimately, you'll help more and more people be warm, well fed, stay in good health, earn an education and be the next big contributors in society. That's kind of happening right now, but only in small circles. It's time to expand the circle to include neighboring circles.... but in a respectful way. Increase the size of the team, until there is only one team.

2. That's impossible. Why even try?

People who have all their basic needs met are much less likely to war against you. By 'war' I mean any action which takes your money away, or more importantly, threatens you and your dependants. In fact, they become your dependants, until they've learned enough from you to become independant. At this point, you have someone you can lean on, in case your own needs aren't being met.

3. How do I continue to take care of myself and my dependants if I'm giving away my money?

By continuing to work hard, smart and compassionately.

4. Isn't the point of working hard pointless if you can never cross the finish line?

Who are we kidding? Do the rich ever stop working to make more money? Do the powerful ever stop working to mold the world into their vision? No. Nobody ever stops working. They just call it something else, and still work hard to make their dream come true. It's still about activity. Humans that retire without a passionate activity are proven to decline in health faster that those who continue to 'work'. If you don't like how you're making money, I challenge you to spend some money and figure out how to transition to something else you would do forever. Or at least until you want to change again.

Hard work is tied directly to our most fundamental instincts. Satisfying those instincts feels good, helping others to satisfy them creates comfort, comraderie and trust. It creates friendship. It tears down walls. It allows our children to research & develop, not persecute. If you don't have children, it allows your community to work toward their dreams, not persecute. This is worth working hard.

5. What if my money is my tool to make more money? How could I possibly start helping more people, more significantly, if I'm cannibalizing my own machine?

How much money do you have? Are you earning more than $100,000/year per adult member of your group of dependants? Who needs more than $100,000 a year to live life to it's fullest? I'm assuming you're reading this currently in the 21st century. Next century, my digital-self will revise that number.

Honestly, out of all the most significant moments in your life, how many of them actually cost you something? Did you really have to spend that money to have that experience? I challenge anyone to post an 'experience of a lifetime' that is unconditionally in your top 10 list, that didn't lead to problems of it's own, that required lots of money.

Stripping out the Modifiers

I've always been accused of being unrealistic. Especially by those who have or want lots of money. Well, now that I have a business that is doing very well, and I'm about to make a little more money myself, I get to put my money where my mouth is. (future tangent discussion: Where does you mouth go when you do that?)

And thus this post is born. My resolution this year is to hold on to what I believe, in the face of that which would seem to require my concession on what I believe, to achieve what I believe.

Take a second to reset.

In other words, to be courageous for my sake and the sake of everyone I love.

I'd like to pull some words out of that Oxford definition of 'business' to help identify what I value in doing hard work:

person
occupation
trade
activity
organization
actions

What I see, and that my business partners will tell you I'm crazy about, it that business will eventually be back in the hands of individuals. Corporations will eventually transform to value each person equally, or die. I promise I will blog on that theory too, probably this year yet. If you're really interested, and more specifically want to invest $750,000 to help start Iteration 0 and generate Release 1 of that plan, please contact me.

So I trace that thought back to where I am now - I have great people working for me. Brilliant people. Hard working people. They deserve to earn whatever they can prove they are worth. I'm not even going to cap that at the $100k mark, because 1) no matter what I believe, everyone else has to draw their own conclusions about how to handle their money, 2) if someone is that capable of achieving the results that will earn them more than $100k a year, they deserve due compensation and finally 3) it'll allow me to hire more people that can do the same.

And what are we doing it for? The people.

We (myself and my 2 working partners) currently support ourselves and eight other households, many with spouses and children, plus a consultant who is also a student working his way through a masters degree. We pay their insurance premiums, and it's a very good plan. We buy good furniture, and good tools to do their jobs. We don't skimp on salaries, and we're dedicated to giving away 10% of the Gross Revenue to our employees in the form of sales bonuses, profit sharing and various perks.

To do this, we keep our company hungry, honest and working hard. Currently I translate that into three things:

Hungry: Obviously we're not cutting costs when it comes to people, and since we are a consulting business, this is our biggest cost. In addition, we grow whenever possible. But the money doesn't go towards luxury items for the office or expensive software if we can help it. It goes towards giving our people what they need to enjoy working hard.

Honest: We talk about the high risk of our company with all of our employees. Everyone knows that our minimum cash capital level is only two months of total costs. The excess goes to growth and the people. If you're reading this as a new employee, and I didn't have the chance to break this to you yet, here's why it's important...

Working Hard: Because our company provides a premium consulting service for bleeding-edge technologies (to quote an employee: "We bleed so you don't have to."), we must, Must, MUST be agile, innovative box-breakers that never tire of leaping off cliffs to find a landing spot in the fog. Keeping us two months away from closing the doors really weens out everyone but the most hard-working, confident and risk-embracing people.

(a note to the traditionalists: we started as 3 people out of various living rooms and porches in May of 2007, on just $20k. 11 months later we have quadrupled, with some in different states / countries, as we all love our job [notably, the company was in the black as of Dec of 2007]. We all communicate our successes and failures to each other every day [I encourage people to 'fail early, fail often' - hats off to Google for that one] to quickly figure out solutions together. 5:00 PM CST online gaming sessions of Half-Life 2 or Team Fortress 2 are mandatory for everyone, including our office manager. Okay, not mandatory, but who doesn't get a thrill out of sniping the boss? Our customers rave about us and our work, and this year we are slated to do 3.1 Million in sales).

And What Will I Do With My Cut?

Obviously, I am putting this in writing because I'm scared out of my mind to actually follow my believe of giving away anything over $100k. Heck I haven't actually even made that much money from the company yet. And to be honest, by my own suggestion, it would have to be anything over $200k, since my wife is not working, and deserves also to be making some serious ching for all her work as wife, house manager and mother of three. I'll be happy to make good on that when I come to it.

So yes, this post is about me committing to my beliefs.

From my personal profits, I am helping my cousin go back to college, without having to work during school, unless he wants to. My cousin has bootstrapped himself back into society after drifting away from a very promising career as a computer engineer or something else brilliant. He knows it can never be quite the same, but he continues to believe in himself after making many, many mistakes. There is no one else helping him aside from his family. His job is wicked-hard on his body, and pays no more than a good fast-food job. He is a hard-working, kind, loving man who deserves another chance.

From my vote on internal company cash, I am continuing to enforce paying our people well, keeping them healthy, giving them whatever they need to get the job done, and keeping us hungry (I don't have to tell you that the customer loves it when we're hungry).

So that's my mark. A statement of my beliefs about money, business and people. I fully expect these ideas to clash with the super-majority, and for things to be really hard going forward. But for at least today, for this moment, my experiment with the re-dispersement of wealth is paying off nicely. :)

Eman