Archive for November, 2008

ProRubyConf08 Wrap Up

This past week I attended the Voices That Matter Professional Ruby Conference in Boston with three of my co-workers from Sports Technologies. I learned a lot from all of the speakers and it was great to meet other Rubyists and hear about the types of things they are working on.

ActsAsFlinn and Myself talking to the guys from ThoughtBot
ActsAsFlinn and Myself talking to the guys from ThoughtBot

Some of the best things I took away from the conference were to focus on testing, and push to improve the process of the product cycle where I work. I also got a lot out of watching the guys from ThoughtBot talk about refactoring code. They had a lot of good tips.

Nick Quaranto (pictured on the left in the photo above) did a great job live blogging the conference and took notes with all the sessions.

Matt Bauer did a talk about Berkeley DB and used a cycling related application he is working on called Pedal Brain for some of the examples. I talked to him briefly about it, and I am excited to see what comes of it. Hopefully I can help beta test!

Disruptive Innovation and a Sense of Urgency

For much of my career as a web developer I have worked within or for organizations that might be described as “old media”, whether that be television or publishing companies. Sometimes the wheels of change for adapting to new technology or trends can be slow. With the current popularity of “social networks” or “social media” sites like Facebook and Twitter, it is interesting to see how old media adapts to, or uses social media.

This past week I have come across a couple of ideas or terms that I really liked. One is the idea of Disruptive Innovation, and the other is the importance or having a Sense of Urgency.

What is Disruptive Innovation? It is described as a different way of doing things that create new markets or transform an old market by making things more simple. Below is a playlist of a few YouTube videos that better explain Disruptive Innovation.

The other concept that I came across this week is the importance of having a sense of urgency within an organization. I first watched a conversation with John Doerr from the 2007 Web 2.0 conference. He talked about the ingredients that made Google successful, and those included technical excellence, going after an under served market, and having a sense of urgency.

Harvard Professor John Kotter wrote a book called A Sense of Urgency and explains better than I can what it is.

These types of things always inspire me, and this week I think I have come up with a couple of ideas that have the ingredients of disruptive innovation, but now I need a sense of urgency to get them done.




About Brent

I have been a Web Developer since the early '90s working on some of the highest traffic sites on the internet such as MSN.com and ESPN.com. Since 2007 I have been using Ruby on Rails while working for Sports Technologies, a small internet company in Connecticut, developing features for FanNation.com and Fantasy Sports applications for Sports Illustrated.

I am interested in all things related to Social Media, User Experience, and creating great Web Applications.

I am a Cycling enthusiast who raced competitively for many years, and still try to get out and ride as much as I can. I created the site BikeRide.com and have developed some other cycling related sites in the past.

I am a husband, and the father of two girls. I grew up in western Washington, but now live in Connecticut.