Firstly - thanks to everyone who has reached out to me in the last three weeks via email, phone calls and comments since I shared the news of my pursuit for the next adventure - I have really appreciated everyone's support and interest in my next steps.
The great news is I'll be joining Intuit as a Group Manager working in a fast growing start-up team responsible for leading the Intuit Partner Platform. Below is a snippet and some links to blog posts and articles that should give you a fairly good idea about where my focus will be a week from now.
Although I'll be working from the Orem office (Utah) to start off with, the plan is to ultimately move to the greater Boston area - another new adventure. I've visited Boston three times in the last year or so and have loved it more and more with each visit, so watch out Boston!
This is a fantastic opportunity for me personally - the team has ambitious goals and an amazing set of existing assets to leverage (see some of the numbers below) in becoming a significant player in the cloud computing space. I look forward to sharing stories of my new journey with you.
"The Intuit Partner Platform not only gives developers the opportunity to build Web-based applications, but successful SaaS businesses by taking the complexity out of managing infrastructure, hosting, user management, integration and billing. Now developers can focus on developing innovative on-demand software solutions that solve unique and important problems for the four million small and mid-market businesses across the U.S. that use QuickBooks and the 25 million employees that work in those companies.
The platform-as-a-service offering allows developers to combine the powerful open source Flex framework and Adobe Flex Builder and the proven database of Intuit QuickBase to build rich Internet applications that work with QuickBooks data. They can also leverage Adobe AIR to provide additional desktop-like functionality in their applications, such as pop-up notifications, local file system access, local data storage, and the ability to create a fully branded user experience.
"We have now accepted more than 1,000 developers into the program and it is exciting to hear their ideas and energy about what they want to build," said Alex Chriss, business leader for the Intuit Partner Platform. "Customers will benefit greatly from the imagination and expertise that developers use to solve problems facing their specific industries." "
Well, the great Bungee Jump has come. Martin Plaehn, CEO of Bungee Labs has shared the news of the company the letting go of 15 regular employees and contractors. Unfortunately, I am among this set of affected Bungee Labs employees.
A Voyage of Discovery
As Martin explained in today's post, Bungee Labs has been on a voyage of discovery. There are many lessons for me and the company to take away from the whole experience of the last year or so, but the bottom line is that we were overly optimistic about what it takes to achieve the rate and scale of developer adoption - real traction - and therefore the development of killer apps by the developer community that would drive the platform and the business forward at the velocity that makes a VC-backed venture "interesting".
So where does Bungee Labs go from here? Well, I think Martin eluded to the key clue:
"Over the next several months, Bungee Labs will lay out the course for a business object solution framework for user configurable enterprise-class applications that demonstrate these principles"
It'll be very interesting to see how this manifests and the impetus it will provide to the platform's adoption.
No Regrets
No regrets, none at all. When I considered the opportunity of joining Bungee Labs (and by doing so leave a relatively safe harbor in order to do so) I knew of the risks involved. Bungee Labs' mission was - and still is - of the kind that aims to "change the world". To have been a member of the team tasked with realizing the company's hugely ambitious mission has been nothing short of an entirely worthwhile and educational pursuit.
In my mind at least, Bungee Labs has made its mark in the brave new world of cloud computing. It has opened the eyes to many in the industry about what might be and can be. It has made cloudy ideas and visions more concrete and helped to define the concepts a (Platform as a Service, or PaaS) and memes that are contributing to the next generation of cloud computing platforms.
I've learned a great deal in the past 16 months working closely with a very talented, smart and creative set of teammates. And although it is probably unfair to call out individuals - for it implies those not mentioned weren't of similar caliber (which is not the case) - I do want to thank Martin Plaehn, Bungee Labs' CEO in particular for his mentorship during my tenure at Bungee Labs' and from whom I've learned an enormous amount management and leadership. I'll also miss the inane banter with Ted in those podcasts we put together (and the "Shushee" lunches).
What Next?
And so...on to my next adventure. What will that be exactly? Frankly, I have no idea yet...but whatever it is, I need to know I'll be trying to change the world :-)
I'm open to ideas...so if you have some, please get in touch.
Pablo Castro has recounted some of his timelined memories about how "Project Astoria" evolved from a lunch time conversation to bits in .NET 3.5 SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 now known as ADO.NET Data Services Framework). Nice write up.
Three memories of my own to add to the story:
1. I was reading up on the whole REST thing in the summer of 2006 - its origins, philosophy and design patterns. I knew there was something interesting going on and some potential dots to join, but I wasn't sure which dots...So I collated and circulated a bunch of research / links to the team, then blogged the links (I liked How I explained REST to my wife. More recently see Explaining REST to Damien Katz). I got a few proverbial (and some literal) blank stares as I shared my enthusiasm for REST, asking how we could apply the ideas to the various projects we were working on. It was Pablo, and (as Pablo attests) Britt Johnston (now a PUM for SQL Business) who were able to develop the initial conceptual leaps into something more concrete like a Think Week Paper and a prototype demo.
2. When it came to brainstorming the code name, the team agreed on a "cloud" theme. A number of proposals were floated around along with their rationales, including "cumulus" and "cirrus". We were then advised that city and town code names were legal-safe. So there we were, struggling to agree on some city or town name we all liked (or at least not hate nor be confused by..."how about Nameless?"...), and then Mike Pizzo's proposal came in: "Astoria - hey, it's the cloudiest city in the USA!" (at least it was in 2006). Sold.
3. I think my favorite memory of all is the reaction Gary Flake provided (of Microsoft's Live Labs) to the prototype Pablo demo'd at one of the pitch meetings: "As God himself would have designed it!" Dr Flake exclaimed..."Cool", I thought to myself - "but does that mean no REST for the wicked?"
About 10 years ago a friend gave to me a book as gift. We were sitting on the deck of a canal boat on a Friday late afternoon set for a weekend of lazy meandering with friends and family along the Thames, when he handed me his own copy of Godel, Escher, Bach. "You'll love this" he said.
Willem was was right. Godel, Escher, Bach not only tickled my penchant for self-referentialism and recursion ("It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account"), it also reinforced an odd conviction I've held that "magic" happens where these oddities exist (all around and within us).
Last week, (thanks to Nick Carr), I was alerted to Douglas R. Hofstadter's latest mind-bender, I Am a Strange Loop. The book arrived today, unpacked and on the table when I got back from work this evening...inviting me to another voyage with this great mind:
"Deep down, your brain is a chaotic seething soup of particles. On a higher level it is a jungle of neurons, and on a yet higher level it is a network of abstractions that we call "symbols." The most central and complex symbol is the one you call "I". An "I" is a strange loop where the brain's symbolic and physical levels feed back into each other and flip causality upside down so that symbols seem to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse.
For each human being, this "I" seems to be the realest thing in the world. But how can such a mysterious abstraction be real--or is our "I" merely a convenient fiction? Does an "I" exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the all-powerful laws of physics? These are the mysteries tackled in I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas R. Hofstadter's first book-length journey into philosophy since Godel, Escher, Bach. Compulsively readable and endlessly thought-provoking, this is the book Hofstadter's many readers have long been waiting for."
I'll be taking part in one of the Cloud computing panels at Web 2.0 Expo New York this September, details below. If you want to meet up, let me know.
Building in the Clouds: Scaling Web 2.0
Jason Hoffman (Joyent, Inc.), Alistair Croll (Bitcurrent), Alex Barnett, Dwight Merriman (10gen), Jinesh Varia (Amazon Web Services)
10:30am - 11:20am Thursday, 09/18/2008
Performance & Scaling
Location: 1A23 & 24
Cloud computing is self-serve outsourcing for web companies. Clouds give even the smallest startup access to world-class infrastructure that can grow as needed. And developers build apps faster because they start with the building blocks of online applications: authentication, storage, messaging, and the social graph.
But the range of Cloud offerings is daunting. From self-contained development tools to virtual “bare metal,†selecting the right layer of Cloud offerings fundamentally changes how you run your business, what tools you can use, and ultimately how much control you have over your future.
Join this panel of Cloud computing innovators for the silver linings—and dark sides—of the Cloud.
Two new interview podcasts to share (recorded by me and Ted) for the Bungee Line:
Nate Bowler, CTO of @Task
@task (or AtTask) is a Utah-based tech company providing a comprehensive, web-based project and portfolio-management package delivered in both a SaaS and on-premise model with a very rich web API set. We talked with Nate about the evolution of their web services design and @task's future product plans in light of the market opportunities presented by the availability of the increasing number of 3rd party programmable web services.
Steve Bjorg, Founder and CTO of MindTouch
Prior to founding MindTouch Steve worked in advanced strategies at Microsoft focusing on distributed systems and web services. We talked with Steve about the MindTouch platform, its rich set of web APIs and the implications of a programmable wiki. MindTouch goes beyond providing open source wiki collaboration and content management - it's delivering a leading edge application integration and development platform called MindTouch Deki. Michael Coté, an industry analyst with RedMonk (analyst firm) picked up on both the podcast interview and news of the latest release of MinTouch Deki.
(About The Bungee Line: The audio podcast for web developers, covering web API's, software development, and the creation of (extremely) interactive web applications.)
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Fbungee-media%2Fimage%2Fbungee-audio-logo_80.png)
Three videos that made me think:
How it feels to have a stroke (TED Talks)
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.
Craig Venter: On the verge of creating synthetic life (TED Talks)
"Can we create new life out of our digital universe?" asks Craig Venter. And his answer is, yes, and pretty soon. He walks the TED2008 audience through his latest research into "fourth-generation fuels" -- biologically created fuels with CO2 as their feedstock. His talk covers the details of creating brand-new chromosomes using digital technology, the reasons why we would want to do this, and the bioethics of synthetic life. A fascinating Q&A with TED's Chris Anderson follows (two words: suicide genes)
BMW GINA Light Visionary Model: Premiere
With the development of the BMW GINA Light Visionary Model the BMW Group presents trendsetting solutions. Chris Bangle gives us a first impression of the ideas behind the process of sculpturing an experimental study. This is the story behind this innovation!
About a year ago, I took part in a meeting where the question: "What does open source "mean" in a SaaS world?" came up in conversation.
A year later, that same question is becoming increasingly pertinent as the IT industry's move to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud-based computing accelerates.
For Bungee Labs (I work there), where
we provide an entire platform-as-a-service (PaaS) developers create, share and re-use code and deploy apps in the cloud developers "consume" and program against third party web apis and will create their own
...the "meaning" of FOSS is central within these different contexts and has many possible answers with many non-trivial implications...Three dimensional chess as it were.
For this post, I want to share some of the considerations relating to # 1) above: the context of open sourcing Bungee Labs' own system (Bungee Connect). Last month we stated that:
"Bungee Labs is evaluating several Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) licenses for the software components that comprise the complete Bungee Connect system. However, the task of reviewing the various FOSS licenses, and then identifying which of them best aligns with the software components and subsystems created by Bungee Labs–as well as ensuring compatibility with third-party components upon which Bungee Connect relies–requires considerable review and source code preparation. And we want to do this right, with the community’s involvement."
Since and before that announcement, Ted Haeger (who runs the Bungee Connect Developer Network) has been discussing some of the issues at hand and some of the options we see before us with some very "FOSS savvy" communities at events such as Socal Linux Expo, LugRadio Live USA and LinuxFest Northwest and of course with Bungee Connect's own growing developer community.
Today there's an interesting conversation going on between Ted and Simon Wardley, ex-COO of Zimki / Fotago who resigned last year over the company's decision not to open source their platform (the video of his announcement at a OSCON 2007 talk he gave "Commoditisation of IT and What the Future Holds" makes for entertaining and informative viewing all of its own...Simon discusses open source in a SaaS context. Update: Simon let me know of this video which also includes the slides
Anyway, back to the thread:
All three posts (and more to come no doubt) make an informative and interesting read, but I want to highlight one of the key issues in discussion.
The SaaS Loophole
The issue goes back to the question: "What does open source "mean" in a SaaS world?" and specifically the licensing issues. I'm going to quote and edit from Ted's post somewhat liberally (Ted owes me a Sushi, so we're quits now :P ) and isolate an (if not "the") open source licensing issue in the context of SaaS (my emphasis):
"Personally, I think that GPLv3 is the wrong license for freeing any SaaS or PaaS offering. The Free Software Foundation has a better license for this purpose.
GPLv3 is inadequate because it does not mandate that modifications that others make be opened. Originally, GPLv3 was planned to close up the “SaaS Loophole†(a.k.a. the “ASP Loopholeâ€) in GPLv2. However, as I understand it, several large companies pressured the FSF to remove the key clause that would have closed the loophole.
What is the loophole? It’s this: if you take free software and offer it as a hosted service, then you are not conveying the software, and are therefore not obligated to reciprocate your modifications to the original code. In the context of service providers, GPLv3 is effectively the same as the BSD license. Many companies, Google among them, live inside this loophole. (For now, Bungee Labs is also in that camp.) Some remain there deliberately. Others are in it simply as a matter of course…that is, where they are in their business development process."
So that's the "SaaS loophole". Where's the loophole now? Ted explains:
"Perhaps the argument could have been made in the age of GPLv2 that the SaaS Loophole was an oversight, but now that GPLv3 has the loophole by design, it’s really no longer a loophole. The latest version of the license supports the practice. (And just to be clear, I am not advocating this for Bungee Connect.)
...Say Bungee Labs opens Bungee Connect under GPLv3. Is there a danger that small companies could replicate our offering? I don’t think that’s the case. But could a well-funded company do the same, fork the code, and then fund an engineering team to outpace the original inventors?
...The Free Software Foundation also provides the GNU Affero General Public License version 3, or AGPLv3. AGPLv3 specifically closes the SaaS loophole. Instead of being triggered by conveying the software, AGPLv3 is triggered by accessing the service. This helps to reduce the risk that a company could not branch the code and then out-engineer the originators, as the vulture company would be obligated to share-alike terms with their derivations."
So, is the AGPLv3 the right license for Bungee Labs to pursue? Is it the right license for SaaS providers? Is it enough on its own? (back to Simon Wardley's point in his post). Each company has their own unique circumstances and they each need to think through the 3D chess game. We're still working it out at Bungee Labs.
For us at least, I think some of the potential answers are becoming clearer, and others not yet. But it is the kinds of discussions that Ted is having with Simon that are a critical part of Bungee Labs' decision making process around FOSS. It cannot be an insular process.
I'm thoroughly enjoying David Weinberger's Everything Is Miscellaneous (The Power of the New Digital Disorder).
Weinberger has a canny knack for taking a subject matter I feel I'm already familiar with and yet illuminating and expressing facets of it in such a way as to greatly further and deepen my understanding of it. I'm storing the following quote from the chapters "Lumps and Splits" as I'm sure I'll want to reference it again - a great description of how knowledge and information is being transformed in its organization and interface:
"In the third order of order, a leaf can hang on many branches, it can hang on different branches for different people, and it can change branches for the same person if she decides to look at the subject differently. It's not that our knowledge of the world is taking some shape other than a tree or becoming some impossible-to-envision four-dimensional tree. In the third order of order, knowledge doesn't have a shape. There are just too many useful, powerful, and beautiful ways to make sense of our world."
If you haven't already done so, I recommend reading Weinberger's two other books, Small Pieces Loosely Joined and (co-authored) The Cluetrain Manifesto. And that reminds me, I need to update my LibraryThing.
Here's some classic Raymond Chen:
"Apparently I've been promoted by mistake all these years".
I spent some time this morning watching the Charlie Rose interview with Wired's editor, Chris Anderson, discussing FREE.
The interview covers the economics and ideas driving the Internet's current (and future) state: the Gift Economy; the Attention Economy; and the Reputation Economy. Rose leads the conversation into topics such as covering the Freemium business model and consumer perceptions about the value of privacy (or lack of thereof).
The interview also moves to the topic of the Yahoo! and Microsoft merger. Rose asks: "Why is it that Yahoo! can't recruit the people at Google - through some extraordinary salary offers - that would let Yahoo! replicate what Google has?"
Anderson's answer (paraphrased): "There is a basic philosophical difference between Google and Yahoo! Google is a Machine company. Google believes that data, machines and the Algorithms will drive the company's growth. Yahoo! is a people company - it believes content created by people and the conections made between them with its drive growth."
"And what about Microsoft?", Rose asks. Anderson responds (again, paraphrasing) - "Microsoft is a pre-web software company that philosophically wants to be somewhere in between Google and Yahoo!" An oversimplified analysis, surely (hey, it's a TV interview answer), but I think the Anderson's conclusion is pretty accurate at its heart.
Although I made it to Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week, I didn't make it to a session Matt McAlister blogged about by Twitter’s Alex Payne and Michael Migurski of Stamen Design who presented learnings from the perspective of an API provider.
But I can see the slide deck discussing the Twitter API and so can you:
More Web 2.0 session slides available here. Recommended:
Videos of sessions here. Check out Clay Shirky's session, author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (a good read btw).
As I've come to learn while living in the US, the American English language is more efficient than its British English cousin. The difference between the two languages is more than just fonetic phonetic simplification - the general rule seems to be about using fewer letters and words as a whole. Here are some of the examples I've bumped into:
American English British English Diff count Links to notes
Four hundred twenty Four hundred and twenty 3 notes
Delimiter Deliminator 2 notes
Oriented Orientated 2 notes
I use less words than you You use fewer words than me 1 notes
anesthetist anaesthetist 1 notes
program programme 2 notes
aluminum aluminium 1 notes
As we know, most rules have an exception, and the "using fewer letters and words" rule is no exception:
American English British English Diff
count Links to notes
Triple 2% grande double mocha vanilla extra hot latte add non-fat whipped cream Cup of tea -67 notes
(pic from Color vs. Colour - The Great Spelling Battle)
About four years ago I wrote a post (on my old blog) about some of the verbal tics and language use I encountered at Microsoft (memetic habits I inevitably picked up myself).
My observations centered around the use of the word "so", example:
"So, here’s the thing: do I use the word ‘so’ a little to start a sentence? Absolutely! Do I also like to ask a rhetorical question to make a point? You bet. So, can I combine both techniques into one.? Bingo. Right, so...Now, there, in fact just now, we used an example of a sequence of at least 3 words that acted as delaminater from one thought to the next."
I was reminded of this by an article at Seed Magazine called "So", researching the various theories relating to the use of the word (published this week and found via memeticians). Not the "so" as in the intensifier (so expensive), or the "so" that joins two clauses, but the "so" that introduces a sentence. The article cites me and the idea where "so" acts as a "delaminater" (not "deliminator"). Michael Erard, the author of the Seed article picked up on this word play:
"Alex Barnett wrote on his blog that "so" was a "delaminater" word. To him an idea was a concrete object, much like an onion. "So" was the word a speaker used to convey that another layer was peeling back. This metaphor implies that ideas have a kernel that one could reach with enough "so"s, a notion surely enticing to the problem-solvers and the goal-oriented. I prefer to think of "so" as a vehicle across a landscape of knowledge. It lies not so much in between points on a terminal trajectory, but more on perpetual journey across points of understanding. In this sense it shares some qualities with the infinite "why"s of a two-year-old. Another "so" can always follow the end of a thought. The trajectory is endless; the rabbit hole has no bottom. There will always be more questions for science to answer.
So, would it break Michael's heart to learn that my use of the word "delaminater" was a double typo error on my part?
Three big pieces of Bungee Connect news to share with you this morning:
1. Bungee Grid now running on Amazon EC2 and accessible to Bungee Developers
Bungee-powered application hosting on Bungee Grid-EC2 using Amazon’s Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) infrastructure is available today upon special request for deployed Bungee-powered applications. The Bungee Grid-EC2 option is in addition to Bungee Grid-US, Bungee Grid-Europe. As a live example of a Bungee-powered app running on Bungee Grid-EC2, we've now deployed WideLens.com on Bungee Grid-EC2. Pricing model and other details available here.
2. Announcing Bungee Application Server
This is sweet: Developers wanting to deploy Bungee-powered applications on their own servers will be able to download a complete single-server Bungee Grid as virtual software appliance called the “Bungee Application Serverâ€. The Bungee Application Server uses VMware technology and operates as a single complete management and delivery server for Bungee-powered applications. The Bungee Application Server will be first made available in June 2008 to BCDN Early Adopter Program (EAP) members. General Availability for sustained commercial deployment is expected in Q4 2008. More details including pricing and licensing info here.
3. Community Source Code Licensing plans for Bungee Connect technologies
Bungee Labs will make the source code available to the Bungee Application Server and the Bungee Pulse Client under several software source code licenses.
Two of these software licenses are available as of today in ‘draft form’ to facilitate community feedback prior to formalization in June 2008. These draft licenses are:
We're also answering this question:
Q: Is Bungee Labs is considering Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) licenses for the software components that comprise the complete Bungee Connect system?
Great question. Answers here...
--
Btw, I'm at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco this week. Let me know if you want to hook up!
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