Carsonified

A large chunk of our business comes from our events and we felt it was time to invest in the backend that runs the sites and bookings for Future of Web Apps, Fuel, Future of Web Design, Future of Mobile and Carson Workshops.

We currently have this barely-functional thing we call the ‘CMS’ which was built in a hurry and is basically a pain in the ass. Its worked pretty well up until now but we’re noticing that bugs are starting to appear and it lacks a ton of the functionality that we need.

The first step

The first thing we did was sit down and decide what we loved and hated about the current system. We had to be careful here because it would’ve been easy to get carried away with adding superfluous functionality (’It be great if it did ….’).

We basically came up with a very rough list of things the system should be able to do. Once we all agreed, Adam constructed a flow diagram of the booking process.

Our main goal was to make life easier for everyone when they’re booking tickets to our events. Therefore we started with the Booking Page. Adam did a very rough layout for this (we didn’t even bother to wireframe it).

The first obvious step was to break the booking process down into steps. Previously it was just one huge, long page and it was very unwieldy. By showing the person booking the seat that there were four basic steps to complete, it would give them an idea of where they were in the process and that it did indeed have an end :)

View full size image.

By the way, you may be wondering why Adam is working on the events backend when we hired him to work on DropSend. Well, the truth is that after he joined us, he realized that he left the company he started a little too soon, without giving it a chance to really take off. It was nothing to do with us, he just realized he should’ve given his own company more of a chance before leaving it. Of course we were surprised but he’s super talented so we decided to keep working with him. This was the perfect project to team up on. Anyway, back to the story …

The power of Rails

I’m an ex-PHP developer with a Computer Science degree, so I’ve never touched Ruby or Rails. Of course I’ve heard about how you can build apps much faster in Rails, but we’ve never actually used it at Carsonified.

Holy crap, I’m a believer.

We went from a visual of the booking page to a roughly functioning app in two days. TWO DAYS. Here are a few screencasts of the system in action.

Event Stream - Part I from Carsonified on Vimeo.

Wireframe to working app in seven calendar days

Just three days later, we had added the design skinning to the process and it was looking really great. We still have quite a few copy and design tweaks, but it’s basically there. Seven days - unbelievable. And keep in mind that’s calendar days not week days.

Carsonified’s new web app - Event Stream from Carsonified on Vimeo.

What’s its name?

We’ve decided to call this system ‘Event Stream’ and we’ve done a temporary logo for it.

Once we have more time, we’ll probably redo this logo, but for now, it’s great to have another Carsonified Web App.

Well, I’ve got a ton more to share with you about the system. We’re so excited about it!

Every company is desperate for good PR - we all want (and need) to get coverage in the blogosphere, television and printed press. So what’s the secret? How did 37signals get a 4-page feature in Wired? Why is Zuckerberg being interviewed on 60 Minutes?

37signals, Facebook and others aren’t spending money on advertising so how are they getting this coverage?

The answer is pretty simple, actually. They’re remarkable companies. They’re different and they’re not afraid to talk about it.

One of my favorite quotes is “Marketing is the price you pay for being unremarkable” (Robert Stephens, founder of the Geek Squad) and we really believe that here at Carsonified.

We’ve been fortunate to get coverage on TechCrunch (Amigo launch, FOWA Miami Panel, FOWA digg announcement, FOWA Pownce announcement, FOWA Miami Panel (again), Web Apps 101, DropSend sale 1, DropSend sale 2), New York Times, Read Write Web, GigaOm and an upcoming TV show on a major UK network.

I recently got an email from a UK production company who came across my article on A List Apart about our 4-day workweek. They want to do a television show where I go in and ‘fix’ a company with whose culture sucks. Our 4-day workweek, Idea Week, nice gear, and relaxed environment make us special. The production company believes that our company culture is remarkable, therefore worth doing a television show about.

And we don’t even have a PR company.

I’m not trying to brag about our media coverage. I’m simply pointing out the power of being a small, yet remarkable company.

I love that - being different is more exciting and it helps you get coverage in the media. What more could you want?

Why not spend some time today brainstorming how you can make your product, service and company remarkable? Just doing a good job isn’t enough any more.

Last week at FOWA Miami we announced the results of our survey to find the web’s favourite application.

We were amazed to receive over 3,000 votes in just a few weeks, and it showed that people are certainly passionate about their apps.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week the interwebs have been alive with the sound of the so-called ‘touch icons’… a low hum possibly produced by them gently jiggling away on your homescreen.

Like many a designer looking for the frequent digital distraction, I’ve been creating some icons for the Carsonified sites. Earlier in the week, almost right after the iPhone / iPod Touch software update was announced, Dan was on the case and his walkthrough was a more extensive guide than the one on the Apple Developer Connection. Shortly after, Nathan experimented with larger image dimensions than the 57×57 recommended by Apple, and - after a few experiements from and on behalf of readers - found that 60×60 was the ideal size. Huzzah! Cue a lot of happy web designers, all making shiny new icons for their sites.

However, this was only the first stage. Drew came up with a bookmarlet to address the fact that we wouldn’t normally be able to edit icons for sites we don’t manage, only to have it improved upon by Rob to override websites’ existing icons (and then re-tweaked by Drew). Then, just when we thought we’d achieved the highest possible state of ecstatic icon-induced nirvana, Cameron modified the bookmarklet even further and made the whole process a doddle for the average user. (His article is also a rather nice summary of the work done by others.) Finally, we’re now seeing all kinds of sites pop up (such as Andy’s iclypso.com) that offer a number of icons ready for the end-user to install.

Phew! Now that I’ve worn myself out with a blow-by-blow account of that week - which will no doubt be out of date by tomorrow - I thought I’d show you the Carsonified icons (styled here so as to mimic their final rendering on the iPhone / iPod Touch) that I’m in the process of rolling out. They should be on all of the relevant sites by the end of the week.

Every time we sit down at the beginning of a new Future of Web Apps planning session, we seem to ask the same question: which are the killer apps right now? Which apps are the ones that people really can’t live without?

We turned to the web to see if it had the answer - but try typing in ‘popular web apps’, ’successful web apps’, ‘most used web apps’, and the picture you get is far from conclusive.
So with that in mind, we decided to do some research of our own, and behold, the first Web App Charts

Our aim is to get a definitive idea of the most popular web apps out there - as used by real people. Please visit the site and vote for the single most wonderful web app that you use and couldn’t live without - it could be the most useful, the most brilliantly designed, the best value for money. And when you’re done, please mention it wherever you can so we can get as many votes as possible. One voter will be selected at random to win a shiny new Nintendo Wii!

The results will be announced at our next event, the Future of Web Apps Miami, 28 April - 1 March 2008.

Paul Graham just posted a lengthy post in response to my on-stage rebuttal to his talk at FOWA. I disagreed with what he said during his talk at FOWA so I felt compelled to stand up on-stage and respond very quickly.

One of the main reasons we organize FOWA London is to encourgage people to build web apps here in Europe. We want people to feel encouraged, equiped and connected after the show. Saying “Well, you’ve got a better chance if you just move to Silicon Valley” makes my blood boil. It just isn’t true.

I won’t try to summarize his post here, as that wouldn’t do it justice (please take a minute to read it). However, I’ll try to explain why I think he’s wrong.

Silicon Valley vs The Rest of the World

In Paul’s talk at FOWA, he essentially said that startups have a better chance of succeeding if they are located in a ‘Startup Hub’ - a city where there is a large amount of support (funding, legal, news coverage and social). I fully agree - startups have a better chance at succeeding with support.

But I don’t think that’s the whole story.

I just spent 14 days travelling around various cities in Europe on our FOWA Road Trip. I shook a lot of hands and had a ton of great conversations with folks who are building web startups.

It was amazing how many people are launching web apps outside the US / English speaking market. They’re excited, motivated and many have already launched their apps. These folks are getting more and more support from movements like Seedcamp and investors like 3i, Index, Advent and Accel.

Events like FOWA, dConstruct, Mix and Max are also equipping people in Europe - the level of support is skyrocketing. There are also a ton of BarCamps and Open Coffees sprouting up. Not to mention the excitement around mobile (Mobile Mondays, Sweedish Beers, etc).

It seems crazy to discourage that growth by saying that people should move somewhere else. How can we get to that critical level of support here in Europe if we always have people saying everyone should move to Silicon Valley?

Look at last.fm (£140 Million!) and moo - if you ever needed an example that you don’t need to move to Silicon Valley, they’re surely it. I’d like to also humbly put forward DropSend. We’ve managed to succeed and we’re not even in London.

100 Million vs 1 Million

Paul didn’t clarify in his talk or post whether he was referring to startups who are funded or those that are boot-strapped.

This is a vital issue to clarify. If a web app is boot-strapped (as DropSend was) you really don’t need to move to a startup hub. Why? Because if it’s a decent idea and you’ve got a little bit of business sense, you can turn that into a product that is worth upwards of $1 Million (depending on the idea and market). If you’ve thrown $35,000 at a web app and you can eventually sell for $1 Million, that’s a pretty damn good return on your investment.

That’s the crux of my frustration with Paul Graham’s attitude. I almost felt as if he was saying “Yeah, for you little guys, you can stay wherever you are. But if you want to be a real startup and play with the big boys, better get yourself over to Silicon Valley.”
There’s way too much pressure in the web app industry to be the next $100 million dollar company. Screw that. Let’s all focus on being passionate about our great ideas and growing them into viable, profitable businesses. There’s nothing wrong with that :)

Paul’s a smart guy, but just because he says you need to move to Silicon Valley doesn’t mean it’s true.

I’d be interested to know what you think - looking forward to the discussion :)

(Thanks to flickr.com/photos/sergiopepe for the photo)

I came across this vitriolic thread about me this morning. Wow, what a great way to start the day :)

So I’d like to give everyone an update on my original post titled Why you need to get rid of your freelance developer ASAP.

We couldn’t be happier

Since we decided to stop using freelance developers and invest in building a development team in Russia, things have gone really well. We’ve made huge improvements to DropSend and the backend to our events system.

In case you never read my first post, our setup is fairly simple. We have one manager who works 20 hours a week for us and he speaks fluent English. His name is Alex and he manages our full time LAMP developer (who is named Marat). Alex is super friendly, happy to help, very professional, and overall, a joy to work with. I’ve never actually emailed Marat directly, but I’m sure he’s a nice guy as well ;)

Whenever we need a new task done, I put it on a list in Basecamp. The higher up the to-do list, the higher priority it is. It works great. Occasionally, I’ll wireframe something if it needs detailed explanation.

The challenges

The hard part about having a team off-site is that you have to specify things in detail. You can’t just lean over your shoulder and say, “How’s it going? Oh, that’s not quite what I meant … Let me draw a sketch for you.” etc etc.

I find that when I’m asking for a brand new module to be built, I have to thoroughly think through the details and do a lot of sketches. Ironically though, this has helped us to avoid some snags that we would’ve encountered if we hadn’t specified things carefully.

Overall, it’s rocking and I’m so glad we’ve got Alex and Marat on the team! We might even be adding another developer and increasing Alex’s (the Manager) time to 80 hours a month.