Loved this comparison between two types of cereal packaging.
Do we need that slot?
29 May 2013
Want to have lunch with me?
29 May 2013
Once upon a time, I found myself struggling with a few business ideas and problems. How do I win more project bids? How do I find new clients? Should I get a new full-time job and drop this “Planet Argon” thing? How can I improve my coding? Am I… Should I… etc.
Taking advice from friends, I reached out to a few people that I admired in the industry. I offered to take them lunch in exchange for their time to bounce a few ideas and questions off of.
Out of the, roughly, ten people that I wrote, a few people said they were busy and said, “maybe in a few months when things are less hectic.” One person agreed to meet the following week. We met up during lunch, had some food… and I got some great feedback on my ideas and questions. When the bill was put down on the table, they said, “My treat. You’re a young entrepreneur, you shouldn’t be spending your money on people like me… yet.”
That was ten years ago.
Admittedly, over the past few years… I have had a number of people send me similar introduction emails. I, like the folks who replied to me, have found myself being too busy to schedule lunch with them… but last week… one person caught my attention with their introduction. It stood out from the usual copy/paste “help me!” email… and I ended up accepting their invitation1, but only under the condition that they let me buy them lunch.
They have better things to spend their money on right now.
Having said that, I would like to put out a formal offer to the people in the Portland area. If you are a motivated and young (say under 30?2) entrepreneur who wants to bounce some ideas and/or questions off of someone who has been running an agency for nearly 11 years… then I invite you to introduce yourself to me, pitch the topics you’d like to cover, and I’ll schedule and buy lunch for you3.
I owe you that much.
1 ProTip: Finding out something unique about the person you’re writing by a simple google search will go a long way to not getting filtered. In this case, they said they enjoyed my old band’s music… flattery works. ;-)
2 Give or take… I’m targeting the twenty-somethings because I might be able to better explain how I got by on paying myself a lot less when my personal expenses were lower. (not that you can’t keep expenses down when you get older… but you get the idea)
3 Limited to five people.
The future...
21 May 2013
This is fascinating stuff.
The lack of
14 May 2013
In part, it’s not your fault. If you grew up and went to school in the United States, you were educated in a system that has eight times as many high-school football teams as high schools that teach advanced placement computer-science classes. Things are hardly better in the universities. According to one recent report, in the next decade American colleges will mint 40,000 graduates with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, though the U.S. economy is slated to create 120,000 computing jobs that require such degrees. You don’t have to be a math major to do the math: That’s three times as many jobs as we have people qualified to fill them.
Admittedly, I don't know who has a college degree in computer science on our team. I don't.
Modern Web Development Workshop
7 May 2013
Yesterday, we hosted the first Modern Web Development workshop here in Portland, Oregon. Jack and Brian took attendees on a tour of Bootstrap, Sass, Git, and Jekyll.
I snuck in and took a few photos…
Argon Trail
6 May 2013
On April 28th, 2013… we rented a bus to take nearly 50 Ruby on Rails developers who traveled to Portland for RailsConf 2013 on a hike. Here is a group shot of nearly everyone.
We hope you had as much of a blast as we did!
Did Google kill RSS?
13 Mar 2013
The truth is this: Google destroyed the RSS feed reader ecosystem with a subsidized product, stifling its competitors and killing innovation. It then neglected Google Reader itself for years, after it had effectively become the only player. Today it does further damage by buggering up the already beleaguered links between publishers and readers. It would have been better for the Internet if Reader had never been at all.
My RSS consumption was at an all-time high in the few years prior to Google Reader coming out. Once I migrated from a desktop RSS reader to Google Reader, I found myself opening it less often. Over the years, it's fallen off my radar. I only check a few times a month. Did Google kill RSS? On purpose? Accidental? Is RSS dead? Do we all need to rely on the sites we "follow" now via Facebook, Google+, and Twitter? Better? Worse? Inevitable?
What is your compass metric?
21 Feb 2013
My old early-Rails adopter friend, Tobias, of Shopify shares how they the share their reporting metrics with the organization.
Inviting you to attend our first Modern Web Development Workshop
21 Feb 2013
We’re pleased to announce the first scheduled date for our Modern Web Development Workshop, which will take place on Monday, May 6th, 2013 in Portland, Oregon.
Planet Argon Shake
12 Feb 2013
A remix of our Danse Gooshers video from 2009.