Carmen Ferrara’s Weblog 2.0

I came across this piece recently about the inner workings at Google. The article goes on to describe some of Google’s work practices, which have mostly been a mystery to outsiders. The piece I found particularly interesting was the importance placed on innovation, and the techniques and tools Google uses to drive innovation throughout the organization. I attended the Babson Forum on Entrepreneurship and Innovation 2005 conference last Friday. I will be posting my notes as an iPresent presentation and as a podcast on what I learned. I found many similarities between this article and what the speakers and panelists had to say.

A view into Google’s inner workings by ZDNet’s Dan Farber — Douglas Merrill, senior director, information technology at Google, entertained a sleepy Vortex 2005 crowd, offering a view into his company’s inner workings. According to Merrill, who joined the company in 2004 and was previously at Charles Schwab, Price Waterhouse and the RAND Corporation, for Google information is “enlightenment” (not power) and the entire organization is compelled to [...]

I posted my thoughts on releasing software as early as possible, in an effort to get feedback from customers as soon as possible, over at JoelonSoftware, in this thread:

I thought I’d also add it here.

First off, you seem to have thought out the product quite well, and you have made great progress thus far – so keep going.

I agree with what others have said: (paraphrasing) - “Freeze your to do list”, “Start thinking about marketing”, “prioritize what remains”, and “just execute”. But, I also wanted to comment on the merits of “release early and often”.

I am a firm believer in this credo, particularly in a bootstrapped situation (which I assume is the case for most on this board). True, you need to get the base features into v1.0, but the benefits gained from releasing as quickly (though prudently) as you can outweigh the negatives in my view. Releasing early offers:

1. Feedback from the customer. This is so critical in mind, particularly for a new company with its first product release. As entrepreneurs, we think we know what customers want/need, what features are important, and how to implement functionality, but until we get our product into customer’s hands we can’t be sure

2. Time to market – you mentioned this as a concern in your blog. Well, releasing something early addresses that

3. Confidence – getting your product out there, which begins to illicit feedback (hopefully positive), and sales will build confidence and momentum that you can build upon

As a bootstrapper, everything is tight; time, money, resources – but you can use that to your advantage. You can move quicker or change direction on dime more so than that of a larger competitor that needs to get projects approved, teams assembled, resources allocated, etc. Releasing “early and often” is something that can be a competitive advantage for small (or tiny) organizations.

I think your idea and product sound great. Good luck.

Just to add, generally speaking I subscribe to a software project/product philosophy where less is more and getting things done is more important than over analyzing everything. Hopefully, this will hold true as I get closer with iPresent Producer.

One of the hardest things a new company must overcome is how to best articulate its product/service offering. It sounds easy, but it isn’t. You’ve got to be able to clearly, quickly, and cleanly answer the question “What is it?”. Well, here is my attempt at that. I’ve just published a rich media presentation that was created using an early version of iPresent Producer (our soon to be released, first product). This is an audio with slides presentation where I am the speaker. It is meant to provide an overview of our product and services, describe our value, and offer a sneak peak at the product.

What’s nice about our software is that I can actually use it to describe what we do. As the company progresses, I plan on doing a lot of that - using our own products on a daily basis. Sometimes referred to as “eating your own dog food” - it is something I firmly believe in.

Please take a look at the demo and let me know what you think.
iPresent Demo (7 Minutes 39 Seconds): www.ipresent.net/demo