Recent Posts

Ruby on Rails hosting with Nginx

November 22, 2006

Let me just say… that our customers are awesome.

One of our favorite customers, Timothy Bennett, has posted some documentation for running Nginx on your PLANET ARGON hosting account. If you’re already playing with mongrel, lighttpd, and pound…. you might look at Nginx.

“Nginx is a proxy/load-balancer that also is able to serve static files (and is a good deal faster at it than mongrel). It’s more complicated to setup than pound, but results in a faster setup.”

Stop by our new online forums (powered by Beast) and/or our IRC Channel to meet some of our great customers!

Don't Over Promise

November 18, 2006

This was from a discussion a few weeks ago on the Dialogue-Driven Development mailing list.

Bob listed five things that promotes dialogue.

  1. Active Listening
  2. Agenda Control
  3. Trust
  4. Follow-Up/Follow-Through
  5. Don’t Over Promise

“Don’t Over Promise; In business, it seems about half wait until the last minute and the other half hasn’t a clue about what’s really involved in making any sort of quality effort at something (look at the dismal record on software project performance in the CHAOS report and others). If you overpromise/underdeliver against expectations; you’ll damage both trust and future dialogue. Don’t commit to situations where there’s any doubt in your mind regarding your ability to perform. It doesn’t matter as much about capability (since we all like the challenge) as much as it does about raw capacity (in terms of time) to perform within the established timeframe.”

The list has been about as dormant as my blog has the past several weeks. I’m currently reading through King Arthur’s Round Table, by David Perkins, which focuses on different conversation styles and Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together, by William Isaacs. I hope to share some of what I learn on my blog and with the list. :-)

This Week in d3: 2

October 20, 2006

I missed a week… but last week, Brian wrote about one of the Principles of d3: simplicty.

“As a principle of d3, we want our client interaction to be simpler. So we want to talk about problems with our clients. We want these to be the concrete, explicit elements we dialogue about.” (read more)

Today, I asked on the Dialogue-Driven Development mailing list, “What are some elements in group interaction (clients, colleagues, users) that prevent healthy Dialogue from taking place?”

“The biggest element that I’ve seen that harms dialogue is an emotionalattachment to some idea or decision… …When people are emotionally attached to one particular point of view, they have a difficult time making objective, rational decisions.” —David Goodlad


“The biggest problem that we have is semi-literate users thinking too soon about implementation details about the solution, rather than considering the true nature of the problem instead.” —James Adam

This resulted in me thinking up a new term for this horrible infection… implementitus.


“One of the biggest problems I’m continuously having to overcome is physical proximity. I’m a firm believer in kicking off a project with a face-to-face meeting, but when working remotely, and not having an on-site customer to easily communicate with your skills has a communicator must be greatly increased.” —Josh Knowles


“Fortune-telling the user’s reaction.

“The user wouldn’t like this.”

“This user wants this button there.”

“That would confuse the user.”\

Of course, user opinion should be critically important, but in my experience it’s often used as a veto that doesn’t have to be explained just because someone doesn’t like an idea. I’ve done this, myself.” —“Brasten Sager”:http://www.ibrasten.com


I’m really excited to get the interact with other people who are facing the same types of obstacles that we are. Being a successful developer requires a lot of discipline and it’s our goal to enhance our communication skills… so that we can reach shared meaning with our colleagues, clients, and users.

If developer to client, developer to developer, or developer to user interaction is important to you… come talk with us in the Dialogue-Driven Development project.

Teams Need Healthy Collaboration

October 18, 2006

A few weeks ago, I was explaining some of the concepts behind Dialogue-Driven Development to Michael Buffington and when I said that we were working to create patterns of Dialogue. his immediate thoughts were on code. I don’t remember the exactly how he worded it.. but he basically thought we were working on a parsing tool for grabbing requirements out of emails, messages, etc. I quickly explained that d3 had nothing to do with actual code and was merely a practice that we as developers and consultants are using to think about our interaction with clients, users, and amongst ourselves.

Just last night, I was chatting with a friend of mine about d3… (names changed to protect the guilty)

context: Harry works in a development team[^1^](#fn1){#fnref1 .footnote-ref role=”doc-noteref”} of about ten people and Paul is one of his “team”mates.

RubyURL hits 10k

October 15, 2006

Just happened to notice that RubyURL passed the 10k mark recnetly. :-)

“10044 happy rubyurls to date”

I think it’s time for a rewrite and an API. :-)

Rails applciation caching with memcache

October 14, 2006

Courtenay has posted a step by step tutorial on using memcache within your Rails application. He not only discusses caching… but also how to _“precache the data so that each page load is blazing fast without sacrificing user experience._”

Read more about it on the caboo.se blog.

The Circular Perspective of BDD

October 12, 2006

A few weeks ago, Brian Ford was in my office and we were discussing BDD and how we can make this process even easier for our clients to understand… much less our own internal staff. With all concepts, each person has their own idea about what it is, why it is important, regardless of whether or not it’s accurate. This can cause some people to not find a good need for some practices.

During our discussion, Brian grabbed one of my whiteboard markers and drew diagrams to explain how he saw BDD vary from TDD. He has since posted an article on his blog titled, what’s it worth to me, and discusses his circular view of Behavior-Driven Developent and the importance of using Dialogue to evolve shared meaning.

Portland Public Transporation and the Zen of Office Management

October 10, 2006

One of the coolest parts about my job (aside working with cool people everyday..). is getting a say in where we spend some of our money as a company. One of the things that Allison and I decided that we really wanted to do as a company was encourage sustainable business and growth in our local community. Everyone here loves Portland, Oregon.

This screenshot was taken after we took headshots for our transportation passes.

Head shots for public transportation
passes{width=”240” height=”150”}

Our awesome Office Manager, Nicole Fritz has started a blog, which she plans to, “…not only to let people know what goes on behind the scenes at PA, but to give other startups hints and tips about cool admin things that I have learned along the way (from taxes to how to get the right people “on the bus”).”

Nicole has posted an article, which introduces people to some of the great tax credits that small businesses like PLANET ARGON can take advantage of… in particular how we are now taking advantage of a tax credit for public transportation, bike storage, carpool programs, and more.

If you’re a customer of ours or are running a small business… you might consider subscribing to her feed.

Dialogue versus Debate

October 10, 2006

How many times have you participated in a conversation with someone and realized that you really didn’t understand what they had said. Or… perhaps you’ve been talking and even though the other person is nodding, you’re not confident that they’ve really heard what you’ve been saying. Yet, you might find yourself nodding in agreement when they speak… and walk away… totally clueless about what you just talked about.

Were you really listening? Were they speaking over your head? Were you speaking over their head? Perhaps you were distracted? Whatever the reason… it’s probably worth thinking about. We all do it from time to time.

Even worse, you were only thinking about how they were wrong and you had the right answer already in your head…

In Dialogue, there are rules for participation, which we’ll explore in future writings.

One might wonder if we’ve been trained to work this way. In school, we had classes that taught us to debate one another… further cultivating a society focused on you versus I. But, what about the community? What about the team? What about us? Sadly, most of the teamwork that we saw encouraged was in the form of sports. To be fair… we did have debate teams… but the purpose was to argue for one side of an argument… not to find a way for both sides to work together. One might wonder our society would be like if we encouraged Dialogue in the same way.

Perhaps we need Dialogue teams. ;-)

Dialogue allows teams of people to work together. It’s a process that cultivates learning and discovery. Dialogue is not a process that encourages the passing of judgement or pushing for specific outcomes… the aim is to share understanding. Through empathetic listening and questioning, the seeds of trust are planted.

Dialogue-Driven Development is about building trust.

I came across this great table, which contrasts Dialogue and Debate. It’s worth taking a few moments to review.

Here are a few that caught my attention…


Dialogue Debate Dialogue is collaborative: the sides work together. Debate is a type of fight: two sides oppose each other to prove each other wrong. In a dialogue the goals are finding common ideas and new ideas. In a debate the goals is winning with your own ideas. In a dialogue you contribute your best ideas to be improved upon. In a debate you contribute your ideas and defend them against challenges. In a dialogue you listen to each other to understand and build agreement. In a debate you listen to each other to find flaws and disagree. In a dialogue you may consider new ideas and even change your mind completely. In a debate you do not admit you are considering new ideas and you must not change your mind, or you lose. Dialogue encourages you to evaluate yourself. Debate encourages you to criticize others. Dialogue promotes open-mindedness, including an openness to being wrong. Debate creates a close-minded attitude, a determination to be right. ——————————————————————————– ————————————————————————————————————

There is something to be said about the art of Dialogue, which is why we’re so excited about the d3 project.

This Week in d3: 1

October 06, 2006

As overheard on the d3 mailing list.

_“My strategy so far is to unemotionally ask them to step back for a minute from the “I want this feature” phrase. Start thinking about value delivered to the user; start thinking about HOW the user is going to use whatever information or functionality you’re delivering to them.”_ —“David Goodlad”:http://david.goodlad.ca

_“People have emotional attachments, pet ideas, favorite ways of doing things, and they are quick to impose those, under the guise of “business requirments”.”_ —“Brian Ford”:http://blog.brightredglow.com/

“Dialogue-Driven Development has the opportunity to step up in this environment and redefine the interaction between customers and developers.” —Brasten Sager (link)

..we’re just getting started. ;-)

If developer to client, developer to developer, or developer to user interaction is important to you… come talk with those of us involved in the Dialogue-Driven Development project.

Pictures from AJAXWorld 2006

October 06, 2006

It’s only been a few nights since James Adam announced his newest plugin for Ruby on Rails.

Hoff
2.0{width=”240” height=”160”}

I don’t have proof yet… but I’m guessing by the following picture that llor.nu became the first Rails application to use acts_as_hasselhoff.

Hoff and
Buff{width=”240” height=”160”}

If you can get yourself to look past Hasselhoff… here are a few more pictures from AJAXWorld 2006 in Santa Clara, California.

Joe O'Brien, Michael
Buffington{width=”240” height=”160”}

Eric Hodel, Joe
O'Brien{width=”240” height=”160”}

James Adam, Ryan
Davis{width=”240” height=”160”}

Yes… that is Eric Hodel, Joe O’Brien, Michael Buffington, Ryan Davis, and James Adam.

Want to move to Portland?

October 05, 2006

While at AjaxWorld, several people asked me about our team, processes, and if we had any job openings. The answer to that is… “yes!”

We’re always looking for more developers. There is one catch though… we want you to be located in Portland, Oregon. Many people have responded to our ads as remote contractors, but what we’re really after is great people to join our team here in Portland.

If you’re interested in joining our team, send a thoughtful cover letter and your resume (plain text… no word docs) to jobs@planetargon.com.

Update
Since a few people emailed to ask more about Portland. here are some interesting facts and links. :-)

  • Portland is home to more breweries than any other city in the world.
  • [Cool people live
here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Portlanders) (Sally
Struthers! hah)