Steve doesn’t have to listen to users. Mark Hurst and others say you must talk, and listen, to your customers. Do you listen to customers? Do you give them what they ask for?

Of course the answers yes and no. No you should never listen to what users are asking for, then go off and build it for them. Yes you should always listen to, and effectively solve your users problems. What’s the difference?

Almost universally, a user does not know, and therefore cannot express, their root problems and the most effective way to solve them for your community of users. They do, however, know the symptoms they’re dealing with and they may have even dreamed up a potential solution.

Think of it in terms of problems, or symptoms, and solutions. People will rarely talk to you in terms of root problems. They just don’t know their problems. People instead like to talk about symptoms and potential solutions they’ve dreamed up.

Look at doctors. You go to your doctor and say you can’t hear properly and you’re coughing a lot. He crams some hearing aids in your ears to amplify sounds and gives you some cough syrup. You die two weeks later from a nasty chest infection. No, good doctors don’t blindly treat symptoms. They instead use them as clues to find and understand their root causes. Doctors also have patients who diagnose themselves. “Doc, I’ve got the flu, I need some medX” Again, the good ones take that potential solution as a clue, ask more smart questions to learn the real problem and then treat it properly.

Technically the doctor metaphor doesn’t even apply here. In building software products, we’re practicing epidemiology more than plain old medicine. We have to look at the health of our community and solve the problems for that population not an individual. (Wow, apologies Andria for utterly trivializing what you do…)

Yes, listen to users but assume what they’re requesting is one potential solution to a real problem. Your job is to keep working, ask smart questions, practice the 5 whys, talk to more users and ultimately learn what the root problem is and solve that in the best way possible.

A lovely simple explanation, with examples, of how to use variable length arguments in python. Of course there’s always the ugly version as well.

Thanks for the pic Rannie, see all mesh08 pics here. I think I look grumpier in medium format?

Interesting read by Charles Stross that a friend sent along. In there, he briefly discusses the history of flight and transportation in general. It got me thinking about early adopters in general. Anyone involved with a software startup should be thinking, and worrying, about early adopters.

Think about the very first planes. Think about the pilots that flew them, how they used flight. Now contrast that with modern aviation. Modern airports, 747’s, red eyes, and food courts. Early adopters rarely, if ever, use technology in a way that the eventual masses will. All I’m saying is keep it mind when you’re writing those fancy features for that flock of early adopters.

Leah Culver from pownce was at Mesh08. Her software pownce is obviously compared to twitter in practically every conversation. As she openly admitted, it’s great for pownce. Most articles published about twitter inevitably mention pownce.

She also made a point of saying several times how much more you can do with pownce. Disclosure time, I’ve never used pownce so I’m talkin out my #s$, however, I have used twitter and I think I get the two. Here’s my take, if you’re competing with something like twitter, you will never sell me on a competing product by adding more features. The one reason I think twitter has any value at all is it’s lack of the features pownce is pimping. Not to mention twitter’s about the people using it. If twitter allowed longer posts, files, music, images, etc, I’d run for the hills.

Flip this around. I met the guys behind spreed at mesh08 (I can’t find a link, will post later). Spreed enforces speed reading and effective reading comprehension practices by only presenting a few words to you at a time. You can’t drift by looking ahead or pause and stare at one word for a minute.

What’s my point? Well let’s say spreed’s app was the first online reader ever built. At some point someone would build a competitor named sprounce. They’d listen to what users are asking for and add some features to compete. They’d give their users ‘more control’. “Let’s allow our users to see ALL the words in an article. They can then choose the speed they read and how much or little to comprehend”.

In this light, spreed is actually reducing the control their users have. Like riding a single speed bike, a lack of control can actually be a freeing experience. So while I’m on the fence about twitter as having any real use, please don’t sell me twitterPlusMore because the only thing it’s got going for it is the freedom it’s lack of features brings us all. I need more features in twitter about as much as I need more gears on my bike.

I’ve been using Mark Hurst‘s gootodo for over a year now and I can’t imagine work life without it.

I’m not sure if Mark’s a fan of GTD but the app certainly supports it if that interests you. I think it’s keys are the ubiquitous smtp interface and it’s calculated simplicity. It’s a simple, some may say oogly, application that works.

The quick story. It’s a web-based task application with an smtp interface. That allows me to send an email to today@gootodo.com with subject “eat a good lunch from McDonalds”. Or tomorrow@gootodo.com “eat a better dinner from Harvey’s”. This allows me to easily push tasks onto my task list from any email client including my blackberry. As well I can easily forward emails, pictures taken on blackberry, links, and other digital artifacts. It nicely supports the concept of 43 folders as well as an empty inbox.

Some quick examples of how I use it….

• Receive an email, no time to reply, must respond at some point…..Forward email to 2d@gootodo.com with subject “reply to jojo’s email”.
• See a cool shelf I’d like to build…..Take a picture with blackberry and forward in email to tomorrow@gootodo.com with subject “print shelf picture”
• Browse a site about an interesting conference with registration closing in April….Email site link to march15@gootodo.com with subject “decide about conference”

Oh, did I mention it’s a whooping $3 per month.

The vibe most people I know picked out from the recent Wired article on 37signals is that of arrogance. Personally I love their approach of not making too much revenue from any one client. It protects you from having to pander to a few rich clients which inevitably happens, especially when you enter the so-called ‘enterprise’ space.

What I think is insane, and what came across in that article, is to be a dick about it. Sure, you have a core set of clients and you take a strong stance in building your products for them. Clients on the fringe who demand features that don’t serve those core clients lose out. Having low license fees allows you to survive when they walk away.

Maybe it’s just spin but instead of saying “we don’t do that, you’re only paying us $150 a month, tough luck, we aren’t adding those features you need”, could you not speak to migration? No we aren’t planning to add those features as they don’t serve our core clients, it sounds like you’re ready to move onto another product such as product x, y or z. You then provide a migration path or tools to make it smooth for those clients to migrate off your product onto the one they choose.

If you did that, and clearly showed me this isn’t about lock-in, then I’d feel comfortable using your products. I won’t, however, put my data into a product who’s owners proudly claim that they ignore their clients.

I love working in an open source programming language. That’s a serious perq python has. You just see cooler stuff in open source software, it has more character. It’s the kind of software you’d talk to at a party.

It also sucks, crashes, includes applications with hideous design and usability but so what? So does every other piece of software. With a language, it’s direction is governed by volunteer nerds who use it everyday. That results in an experience far different that what’s produced in a corporate piece of software.

I have no idea how FOSS will fair long term and it’s certainly not for everyone but when it comes to programming languages it seems to make some sense. What other industry designs and builds their own tools? I’m not talking about having a say, like a mechanic informing wrench design, I mean software developers developing software they use to develop software. Wow, too much dr seuss with the kids.

Car designers design cars to design cars?…no
Home builders build homes to build homes?…no
Robot builders build robots to build robots?…hmmm…maybe..

Mark Roseman turned me onto a great article titled “Getting to We“. Mark also does a great job of summarizing it in his post.

“Roberts notes that the students eventually got to collaboration, but not before they had exhausted the alternatives of authoritarianism and competition.”

They go on to talk about the idea that “people fail into collaboration“. As a result, it’s only the “wicked problems” that ever reach the collaboration stage. I love that quote, “fail into collaboration”. It’s just so true of human nature. We always start on our own and fail our way through several stages on our way to collaboration.

The concept of ‘wicked problems’ reminded me a lot of a great book Mark recommended to me a few years back titled ‘Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities‘.

“Scaling up the known collaboration processes to country or world sizes will require significant advances in collaboration tools and networking”. While we’re starting with company not world sizes, this is part of our mission at brainpark. All of it hopefully leading to the “hallmark of successful collaboration is the experience of solidarity and new energy: a ‘we'”.

The article also gets me thinking about the entire *Camp movement. Whether we’re freelancers, early startups, or people working in traditional companies, if we want to move up and start tackling the wicked problems then we have to move beyond information sharing, coordination, and cooperation and on to true collaboration.

DemoCampGuelph6 is booked for Wednesday July 9th. Please talk the event up and sign up to attend here. As always, we need interesting demo’s, if you know anyone interested please have them contact me here asap.

With this being #6 I’m seriously concerned about my health. I hope NOT to follow in David’s footsteps. Health-wise that is, fashion wise I’m always scampering along after David.