Going Bedouin

Last Updated on Tuesday, 31 October 2006 08:22 Written by Steve Tuesday, 31 October 2006 08:17

Greg Olsen is starting up a sofware business called Coghead. He’s trying not to follow the path of the typical Silicon Valley startup, which if they succeed tend to end up in a huge, opulent headquarters.

For many rapidly growing technology companies, “new opulent headquarters” seem to mark the point where a once innovative and agile company has become big, slow, and distracted.

Could a company “make it” but resist the ossification that comes from growth, overhead, and all the administrative details that come with it? Coghead is going to try a new path he calls “going bedouin.”

Any reduction of distraction or complexity that is due to operational infrastructure is a good thing. The goal of “going Bedouin” is to create a low inertia business that takes less capital to get started and that can react with greater agility to changing conditions.

I was just talking with Gideon last week about how it sure would be great to get rid of a lot of our infrastructure. Why do we have a phone system in our server room? Couldn’t we use a virtual one? Or use VOIP? Or use cell phones? Why do we have 7 servers in a closet? Are they all necessary? We need Active Directory and Exchange, but do we really?

The thing about servers and phone systems is that they make a ton of sense. We need them. But Olsen makes the point that maybe we only are used to needing them. As times change, there will be a point where we no longer need these things to live in our office, requiring our care and feeding. Maybe that time is now.

Almost everything costs less than it did in ’96 (except possibly the attorneys), and there is an ever expanding set of service-based alternatives to building operational infrastructure. Most companies seem to be employing these new capabilities incrementally.

I’m interested in something more radical. By focusing almost exclusively on service-based infrastructure options, a business could operate as a sort of neo-Bedouin clan – with workers as a roaming nomadic tribe carrying laptops & cell phones and able to set up shop wherever there is an Internet connection, chairs, tables, and sources of caffeine.

In my work I get to talk to a lot of people who are responsible for complex technology. They are the “database” person at their nonprofit. And they usually don’t like their job 100%. The main reason they don’t like their job is that they are in charge of a critical asset of the organization and they don’t have the tools, expertise, and time to do it well. They know that. And it stresses them out. If the database dies, the organization will suffer, and there’s not much they can do about it even though it’s their responsibility.

I feel that way about a couple systems I’m in charge of. We really aren’t doing good backups on one of them. And it’s getting to be a few revisions behind the lastest release. But I don’t have 20 hours to backup, upgrade, migrate code, etc. I likened that system to an airplane–at any one moment it’s hard to tell if it’s flying or falling.

So here’s to paring down. Here’s to using services. Here’s to removing stress and administration from all our lives. Let’s all go bedouin, if only just a little bit.

Plone Conference in the books

Last Updated on Monday, 30 October 2006 12:39 Written by Steve Monday, 30 October 2006 12:38

Jon’s got a nice wrap up of the Plone Conference over on his blog:

We sold out, with over 340 people from 35 states and 20 countries.  We held three two-day training classes with over 130 students.  We ran over 45 sessions.  We had three keynote speakers, including Dr. Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center, who connected the dots between the free software movement and the long human struggle for democracy and freedom and literally moved many of us (including me!) to tears.  (Think about it: an intellctual property attorney who moved an audience to tears.) 

Congrats to Jon on pulling off what I’m hearing was the best Plone conference ever!

Bill Mahr on talking about being number one

Last Updated on Monday, 30 October 2006 10:15 Written by Steve Monday, 30 October 2006 10:15

Bill lends his usual wit to America’s penchant for proclaiming itself “number one” in the face of statistical evidence to the contrary. Claiming greatness is not greatness. Maybe we can stop resting on our achievements from the 50′s and start creating a better 21st century.