Since the announcement that Merb was being merged into Rails 3, Yehuda Katz, an Acts as Conference 2009 speaker, has been doing a superb job of communicating how he is working with the Rails core team to improve Rails. You can read all about it on his blog, Katz Got Your Tongue, and then come see him at Acts as Conference 2009.
Acts as Conference 2009 is just around the corner, and things are heating up. I am sure that everyone has heard that Rails and Merb are coming together for Rails 3. We’re lucky to have the two guys as speakers who can tell you all about it - David Heinemeier Hansson, and Yehuda Katz. David will be answering your questions live via video for an entire hour on day one, and Yehuda will be speaking about Merb, and hanging out after that. This is your chance to ask these guys your questions. You won’t want to miss it.
If you’ve already registered, help us promote AAC 2009 with a badge on your site. If you haven’t registered, register today. With all the buzz around Rails 3, and the chance to ask David and Yehuda questions in person, we are sure to sell out again.
See you in February.
A big thanks to our platinum sponsors Engine Yard and New Relic for helping make this year’s Acts as Conference a big success.
I encountered this bathroom a few days ago. It’s located right by a pretty busy 7-11. I immediately had to wonder if someone miscommunicated the requirements for this bathroom. Those plants you see aren’t an addition to the inside of the bathroom, the stall area is wide open to the elements. Privacy anyone?
When you’re communicating with customers, colleagues, or anyone for that matter, be sure that what you are telling them is getting across accurately. Otherwise, you might end up with something missing.
I saw this little number on the CNN.com site the other day and thought it was pretty cool of Chrysler to thank us.
Happy new year from the ADS Crew!
We’re happy to announce that Cloudspace has become a gold sponsor of Acts as Conference 2009. A big thanks goes out to Cloudspace for helping us to make AAC 2009 a success.
Who is Cloudspace? They’re a team that specializes in designing & building web applications using agile software development in Ruby on Rails and PHP/MySQL frameworks (LAMP). Learn more at http://www.cloudspace.com.
Thanks also goes out to our platinum sponsors Engine Yard and New Relic. You guys rock!
The guys over at Phusion, the team behind Phusion Passenger (mod_rails) and Ruby Enterprise Edition (REE), are having a second sponsorship campaign to continue work on REE. We’ve joined the growing list of donors, and encourage you to do the same. The $2K that Phusion is looking to gather will go toward:
Help them out and let’s keep this valuable resource going.
The above are two pics I took inside a small noodle shop in the Ginza District of Tokyo, Japan. When a customer to this noodle shop walks in, they are greeted by the above machine. They pick the menu item they want, pay for it, and receive a ticket that they then hand to the cooks behind the counter. Within minutes a steaming bowl of delicious noodles is sitting in front of them. Thirsty? There’s a water cooler looking machine that dispenses hot green tea and water, along with glasses.
Rather than providing a large menu that might cause questions of what the shop does or does not serve, the machine explains it all. And for we who cannot read Japanese, there are pictures. There is also one outside the shop, in case you want to look before stopping in.
We ate at this noodle shop three times within four days.
If you have a communication problem, figure out how to remove the barrier. To enable the flow, look to remove, not add.
I follow a number a question and answer sections on LinkedIn. A recent question asked was:
How do you know when a startup is ready for a Tech Support (community) forum? I’ve identified the ideal tool (vBulletin); I’ve identified which subforums to have and the owners (support engineers/develop/writer) of each subforum, and the list goes on. BUT, How do you know when a company is really, really ready for a community (public) forum? What makes a forum successful? Why do some forums fail and others don’t?
My response was rather straight forward:
If you have a product with more than one user, then you need a place for them to go and get support, and offer feedback. The right time to start is right from the start.
With all of the products in the ADS AppSuite, we created support sites on Get Satisfaction. Our initial product, expens’d, has gotten a number of great comments and feature suggestions that we have implemented.
So, when do you start listening to your customers and interacting with them? Right from the start.
Hello from Thailand!
This holiday season my wife, daughter, and I are traveling to Japan and Thailand. We’ve been in Thailand for a few days, after spending four days in Japan. The culture of both countries is great to experience. And they are so different.
The picture on the left my family and I at the Sensoji Temple in Asakusa, Japan, near Tokyo. On the right, my wife is posing with her mother (holding Palamee) and three of four of Palamee’s cousins at our hotel in Nakon Phanom, Thailand.
If you can get to either Japan or Thailand, definitely do so. The culture, people, and food are great.