Hands-on CXX. 30+ year entrepreneur and technologist, blend of consumer and enterprise experience; deep passion for engaging directly with customers and building businesses that solve for multiple bottom-lines (financial, human, social, natural), with a special focus on products, customers, and systemic change; a key role in four exits (Rhithm,
Food on the Table,
Five Runs,
Sapling Learning); work featured in Lean Startup by Eric Ries, Running Lean by Ash Maurya.
Rails, Ruby and other Open Source Components - Better During the Downturn?
With the economic downturn, financial pressures increases on technologuy budgets (whether commercial, large / small enterprise, startup or non-profit).Increased productivity + open source + prevalence in the ‘cloud’ (regardless of your definition of ‘cloud’) bodes well for the Rails + Ruby eco-system.I’m biased, as are the rest of us at FiveRuns - but we’re not the only ones saying this.Â
Obama '08 for iPhone
Hot off the press - an iPhone app to accelerate the Obama ‘08 campaign!
Thanks to my friend (and open source guru) Raven Zachary, I had the privilege of beta testing the new Obama ‘08 for iPhone application. The idea, the potential and the implementation is tremendous - create grassroots opportunities to participate at the ’edge’ of the internet. In other words, let people participate in the campaign from their perspective, instead of uploading their data to a central place or getting anonymous instructions from a central place.
How specifically? The key feature is that this iPhone app looks at your address book, sorts your contacts by battle-ground states, presents you with those people and then keeps track of whether you’ve called those people. As the help says:
As you make calls, you can keep organized by updating the status of your contacts.I love this idea because it allows me to help in a more hands-on way, but without having to deal with trade-offs like being a parent and employed vs. spending five weeks in a battleground state. Your privacy is important: no personal data or contacts will be uploaded or stored. Only the total number of calls you make is uploaded anonymously.
Additionally, it serves as a nice central place for me to find out more about the campaign.
Kudos to Raven and his team!