Umamiblog

I got back last weekend from almost 2 weeks in the US of A traveling about with Sarah and Jeff. This time, purely for fun and fun it was

We covered some fairly impressive ground too. San Fran to Chicago to Indiana to Columbus to D.C. to New York and met some really cool people along the way.

Some highlights for me were:
- Seeing my old hometown in Indiana for the first time since 1993
- Visiting the Threadless retail store in Chicago
- Going to an Ani DiFranco gig
- More Apple stores in San Fran, D.C., 5th Avenue, and SoHo and buying one of these bad boys (oh yes!)
- Experiencing ZipCars (totally needs to come to Wellington)
- Ice Skating in Bryant Park
- Driving a Pontiac on the freeway for hours in a dead straight line at 90mph
- Finding really friendly people in New York and seeing it snow (LOVE that city)

Had a really good time and I think I’m really starting to fall in love the States. If anyones knows how hard or easy it is to emigrate there I’d love hear about it.

The TUANZ Business Internet Awards are on tonight and I have the pleasure (?) of seeing two sites I’ve worked on reach finalist stage.

The DoC site is a finalist in the Information Architecture category and Ponoko (with Origin) are finalists in the User Generated Content category.

Poor old Sal (who, funnily enough, also worked on DoC) had an unmovable appointment with our public health care system yesterday. So it was up to Jase and myself to try and convince the 5 judges we are the generalissimos of the user-generated content generation. We’ll know later tonight if we were successful… wish me luck.

Update: We didn’t win our category but we did pick up the Craft Award!

We’re on the lookout for a (or is it an?) HTML/CSS rockstar to join the team here at Ponoko. I’m keen to find someone who leans towards the design end of the spectrum rather than development – possibly you have experience in design production too.

If you’re keen to get out of a services company, to work in the chaos that is a product company going global from Wellington with a truly game-changing idea, then we’d really like to hear from you. We can promise you chaos, experience, “frickin’ lasers” and a small bunch of fun crazy people to work with.

So the choice is yours. You could work with Jeff… or you can work with me

Get in touch if you’re interested: john dot lewis at ponoko dot com

This is probably the earliest I have ever turned up to an airport, ever, so I have some time to kill and hopefully an opportunity to try and make sense of my thoughts from the last week. As I type, someone nearby is listening to my iTunes library – I wish I could see what songs they’re listening to.

San Fran rocks. Period. There appears to be far less homeless people than what I remember as a kid in the early 90s. Would be interested to know if that’s just my memory or the truth. I had forgotten how cheap food can be also – although I’m feeling fairly toxic and a few pounds heavier as a result.

WiFi is available everywhere. It’s great. Even better when you have a WiFi enabled device like the iPod Touch. I’m very interested to see what features I end up using the most. So far, using Safari for email has been a lifesaver.

TechCrunch was a blast. Met some very cool people and lots and lots and lots of money – and it makes me want to move here. Now. Can a Kiwi company actually be successful without moving here? I don’t think so.

That said, Silicon Valley has little originality. Most presentations from TechCrunch were companies that were taking an existing process and making it better, or faster, or easier. There were few ideas that were trying to fundamentally change things. Don’t get me wrong – they’re really smart people, some of them will make a lot of money and their users will thank them for making their own lives easier. Operating from 10,000 miles away in a land full of sheep might not be such a bad thing.

People are unable to tear themselves away from their iPhones/Smackberries, etc. That said, having cell networks that support the efficient use of those devices is a major plus. Did you know iPhones, when you have a couple hundred in a room, all try to find the WiFi and thus crash it?

The Apple Store was a life-changing experience in terms of thinking about brands, tech, and how they can relate to and involve people. This was a massive highlight for me.

Yes, the coffee was shit – can’t have been going to the right places. Good coffee must exist somewhere.
Tequila shots don’t exist – they come in glasses and are hazardous. Proceed with caution.

Hammer was cool – Steven was lucky enough to get a photo with him. I had an absolute ball with Mr APHH ripping around the city and the conference with him.

Kawasaki is funny and a genius. Telling Xobni: “That’s a dumbass name. I hope you didn’t pay for it. If I was your investor I’d shoot you.”

Meeting people that burned through $50million during the last boom and are back for more (and investors are willing) blows my mind. Meeting other business and tech celebs was crazy but thats probably more to do with being a Kiwi and so far away than anything else.

The companies I liked the most were seldom liked by others. Kerpoof, for instance, was brilliant (or so I thought) and was aimed purely at kids to be creative online. WooMe was another where I thought “Cool!” – but others were less impressed than I was.

I’m humbled by the response at TC, online, and back home to Ponoko appearing at TC. Amazing. Engadget crushed our blog, not to mention Ars Technica, Boing Boing, Read/Write Web, etc. It blows my mind. A little gutted I didn’t bump into Peter Griffin at the conference.

Being told by a Kiwi millionaire to “forget about the f…ing Govt” was humbling and has made me think hard about my perspective on myself and NZ.

Oh, and I can’t forget… I’m need to send some Curiously Strong Mints to the people at Ink Comms.

Customs coming into the States wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. We’ll see what it’s like on the way out in a few hours.

Now that it’s past 9am California time we can finally announce something we’ve been wanting to talk about for a little while now…

Ponoko is part of the TechCrunch40, and we’re one of the companies presenting. Huge achievement by the team to get selected and invited over. They received over 700 applications and personally interviewed over 175 companies to narrow it down to 40, of which Ponoko is a part of.

Geeking out at The Palace – stay tuned.

Arrived into San Fran yesterday and made tracks to the Apple Store pretty much as soon as we could:

It was a mind blowing experience as far as a retail store goes. It wasn’t that large but was laid out well – the store was heaving with staff and people of all ilks. Upstairs, part of the area was laid out like a lecture theatre… but someone was actually there giving a lecture and people were actually watching it. It’s crazy!

But I am now the proud own of one of these babies. Very cool, very pretty. In Apple heaven.

My go bag:

Found at Ajaxload.info.

If you need a spiffy Ajax loader, like this… …then it’s a very handy site.

Neat idea, beautifully shot. Can you spot Air NZ’s koru?

I wrote this post last year and saved it as draft only to promptly forget about it. The links are to older posts and I know this has been continuously discussed since then – but I still think it’s relevant. Enjoy

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Did you know multitasking makes us stupid? It really does. Research is starting to pour out on this point and I get the feeling too few people are paying attention. Consider the way Itzy Sabo puts it.

How quickly would you be fired for being stoned on pot at work?

Or to rephrase this, how quickly would you be fired for multi-tasking at work?

Research found that people who completed an IQ test while multitasking actually scored lower than people who took that same test while stoned.

And he’s not the only one to start attacking our culture of multitasking. Alexander Kjerulf of Positive Sharing talked about a CNN study into the work and time habits of 12 reasonably well known leaders.

His favorite answer was this one:

I know that it’s de rigeur for executives to start the day extremely early, but frankly I feel I make better decisions and relate better to people when I’m well rested. So I usually get up around 8 after a good night’s sleep.

I also make sure to work a standard 40-hour week and never work in the weekends. This is important to me for two reasons. First of all, I have a life outside of work. I have a family who likes to have me around and friends and hobbies that I also want to have time for. I find that the time I spend outside of work recharges my batteries, expands my horizons and actually makes me more efficient at work.

Secondly, if I’m always seen arriving at the office at 6 in the morning and leaving at 9 in the evening, not to mention taking calls and writing emails late at night and all weekend, it’s sure to send a signal to my employees that this is what the company expects, that this is “the right way”. But it isn’t.

It’s a simple fact that for most leaders and employees, the first 40 hours they work each week are worth much more to the company than the next 20, 30 or 40 hours. But those extra hours spent at work can harm your private life, your family and your health. Which in turn becomes damaging to the company.

Frankly, if you can’t structure your time so your work fits inside a 40-hour week, you need to get better at prioritizing and delegating.

Only, not one of the 12 leaders gave that response – or even came close… It makes for interesting reading.

For your reading:
The cult of overwork – Chief Happiness Officer
The cult of overwork again – Chief Happiness Officer
Multitasking makes us stupid? – Creating Passionate Users
How quickly would you be fired for being stoned on pot at work? – Email Overloaded

With a few minutes to go until the judges announce the winner of the first FullCodePress, I think the Kiwis (aka CodeBlacks) have done it.

Compare the CodeBlacks:

To the Aussies:

Update: The CodeBlack win (of course!)

For the first half of this year when I was still at Intergen one of the major projects I was working on was ActionThis. It was a load of fun and I learnt a tonne from working on it. Indeed, the most popular post on my blog at the time of writing is the post where I introduced ActionThis for the first time.

I visited the website today and got excited to see the site had changed – including this groovy looking button on the right of the homepage above the fold:

Cool! It’s a free trial and I can sign up now. I clicked on the link and was led to:

Hang on, you said I could sign up now. You didn’t say I’d have to wait for a few weeks!

People are ruthlessly brutal with their expectations these days and you really only get one chance (if you’re even that lucky) to make the impression you want. Any mistake you make, and remember this is purely in the eyes of your potential users, will be paid for.

You can’t really afford to do anything expect put your best foot forward… and then do better.