At Flux Capacity, I specialize in helping companies make sure that they're using their development resources as a means of achieving specific & measurable business goals. Sometimes, it looks like this!
After dinner, I hid away in the bedroom to get some work done! After a few weeks of meeting with Yipit and discuss various projects that I might be able to help with, they hired me to help them define the scope and functionality of their very first mobile app and then help them find an iOS shop to get it built! They were Flux Capacity's very first client (besides Yodle). After I made some flow sketches...
This is what is what working from home looks like! Woooooo! (I like this photo in contrast to the previous photo! Mystery drugs! Chocolate croissants! I like to hold things up to my camera!)
I woke up on Friday morning to an email notifying us that our recently launched Pictimonial app got its very first customer in the wild. We were excited!
On Wednesday me and the Pictimonial team hit the streets of NYC with flyers trying to find some local businesses willing to beta-test our app and give us feedback!
...my prototype design for a line of t-shirts called Temporary that have designs on them that slowly wear away and change over multiple washes.
My idea was that you'd use two different iron-ons on the shirt. The first iron-on would be permanent, then on top of that first layer, you'd iron-on a second, semi-permanent layer that's designed to slowly wear-away as you wash it....
Until one day, the top layer is completely gone and you're left with what's underneath! I put together animated GIF versions and was all gung-ho about doing a KickStarter project for a while, but then I got busy with all sorts of other stuff! Here's the animated design for Human Skin & Bone.
I asked Vin if he could do one of children playing turning into tiny skeletons! I love the drawing he did so much! I still think it's a really neat idea for a run of t-shirts, but I got busy with other stuff.
On Wednesday night I attended a start-up presentation someone invited me to. I wasn't really feeling up to it, but in the end, I sucked it up and went!
Friday was my last full time day of work at Yodle! I started as head of product back in April of 2008 back when the company was around 45 people! In the three years I was there, the company grew to 800 people! Can't saw enough great things about the place, but after all that fast-growth, I was ready for something new!
...called Pictimonial. (Despite me leaving as a full-time employee, I signed an agreement to continue working with Yodle part-time and help them see through a few projects)
On Monday morning I came into Yodle to discover that according to my secret countdown-list, it was my last week of work! (I left Yodle to start my own product consultancy called Flux Capacity!)
...so that Grant could call into a radio show to chat about an opinion piece of his that had recently been published about Canadians and the Queen of England!. Hard at work on a Monday!
A few weeks earlier, I secretly resigned from Yodle, but agreed to stay on for an extra six month period before announcing my departure. Here's the sneaky little "countdown" chart I made and printed out to keep track of how many weeks I had left so that I could make sure I transitioned all my projects before leaving.
Patrick's face says it all. Our three-man team had a long day at the office putting final touches on a prototype. T-minus two working days until launch.
I arrived at the office to find Patrick all dressed up in preparation for taking his girlfriend out to dinner and proposing marriage after work! Eeeek! Congrats, Pat!
...we quietly took this photo and let him wake up on his own pretending we hadn't noticed. About 20 minutes later, we emailed him this picture. Hahahaha.
Not enough hours later, I had to be at work the next day! I arrived to our team's office to find that Patrick had drawn awesome caricatures of us. Haha.
On Thursday at work I met with a small group of developers for a lunch time presentation on Kant's Deontology put together by (future Glos.si co-founder) Dan Goldin.)
Pounding the pavement and trying to meet with small business owners is HARD WORK. We spent four hours walking around and returned to the office exhausted.
On Thursday afternoon Patrick, Mark and I went out to lunch to before heading out on the streets to try to find local businesses willing to give us feedback on a beta website-building product we were prototyping for Yodle.
This is when ironically icing your co-worker was making the rounds. Turns out someone had opened up Jeff's computer, removed all the RAM, inserted a bottle of Smirnoff inside, and then put the side-cover back on. When he tried to boot up, he got an hardware error - when he opened his computer up to investigate. He found a nice warm bottle of malty badness.
On Friday morning, Patrick, Mark and myself took over one of the small conference rooms at Yodle to work on our startup-within-a-startup. (We were working on a prototype for a small-business web-site building service called StepStarter). Here's Patrick sitting at his side-by-side workstation with Mark.
Anyone who was interested in having their speed measured could sign up to do a run. The goal was to sprint as quickly as you can within the 30 meters space that they'd set up.
On Friday at work I noticed that Dan, Leilei and Greg were all wearing similarly-hued Polos and asked if they'd pose for a group photo. Here's the tough version.
Audience members voted on companies by downloading an app that gave them "virtual shares" in each company. Game participants were encouraged to buy or sell shares of the stock based on how good of a product each company had. The price of each company's shares were projected in real time so you could see how each new company's presentation affected the value of the preceding companies!
Was down in NC to get feedback from the Charlotte office on a new piece of software called Ad Copy Library that we were beta testing. Jeff and I went to IHOP for lunch!
On Thursday night I went to Yodle's Holiday Party! In 2009, the company had added more than another 100 employees and had to be held in an even larger venue. We took it nice and easy compared to last year's extra-drunk ankle-spraining extravaganza!
So I went back to my room and decided to go with room service. The only items on the menu without meat were the salad and mozzarella sticks! (Oh, and I also got a brownie with ice cream)
On Thursday afternoon I headed out to NJ with Mike DeLuca, Yodle's head of sales to pitch a large client about a partnership. The menu maze at the diner where we ate lunch was a real brain buster.
