Michael Slater

The Joys of Gardening

Sun, 12 May 2013 10:43:00 GMT

The past six months have been perhaps the most challenging time in my life, from moving my house and reinventing my business to the death of my mother and step-father.

Working in my garden has been immensely helpful in preserving a semblance of sanity, and I've found myself pondering why it is so satisfying.

Creating things has always been a driving force in my life, whether it's a book, a website, a computer program, a business, or a garden. There is a special quality to gardening, though, that feels very different from these other activities.

The big difference is that the garden does so much on its own. As the gardener, I don't need to design the flowers, or understand their inner workings. For a few dollars, I can bring home a six-pack from the nursery with little plants that embody millennia of evolution. Only a basic understanding of the plant's needs is required; the plants do all the "thinking" on their own and grow from little seedlings into spectacular creations.

With all of my other projects, virtually all of the creation process is up to me (and my colleagues, if a team is involved). Very little happens on its own. This is the big difference with gardening: it taps into the wonders of nature, and one needs only to guide it along. In a very real sense, the garden creates itself, and I am just the curator.

Gardening provides an unending stream of surprises, many of them pleasant ones. I could never design or create from basic components the flowers, fruits, and vegetables that plants so effortlessly produce. With some basic physical labor, a little tending, and a minimum of thinking, I get to enjoy these wondrous creations.

The world of the web, as much as I enjoy it, is an entirely man-made place. While it has many intriguing aspects and creating things on the web can be very satisfying, it can never provide the same sort of satisfaction as watching a garden grow.

Gardening in Public

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 20:53:00 GMT

For 22 years, we lived on a 5-acre property a few miles west of Sebastopol. It’s a beautiful property, which we enjoyed tremendously. But we were ready to move to town to have a lot less to maintain and do a lot less driving.

It’s been five months now since we moved. It’s great walking to work, walking to a restaurant or the market, and spending days without using my car.

Town vs. Country Living

The things that do and don’t bother me about living in town aren’t quite what I expected.

I hate noise, and I thought that the racket from cars and neighbors was going to drive me nuts. So far, it hasn’t—though we’ve mostly been in the windows-closed season.

I certainly don’t miss maintaining the well, filter system, storage tank, and septic system. Public utilities are a wonderful thing.

But Oh, the Views

One of the things I miss most about our old house is that every room had big windows with beautiful forest and garden views. I grew accustomed to this splendor and am still struggling with getting used to seeing fences, the street, and other houses instead of forest.

We also have a much smaller, simpler garden at our new house. After a bit of a rough start, I have come to enjoy the new garden.

We had perhaps half an acre of gardens at our country property, all of which we installed and redid more than once. We had koi, water lilies, lawns, fruit trees, and perennial borders. I miss the gardens, but I’m delighted not to be backflushing pond filters, maintaining a vast drip irrigation system, and being dependent on paid help just to minimally keep up with the garden’s needs.

I’ve also found that the smaller garden is easier to stay connected with and feels more personal.

Connecting the New House to the Garden

Our new house has a reasonably private backyard with a nice assortment of trees, as well as an extensive native plant border on the street side of the fence. The house itself, however, was entirely cut off from the yard—the only path to the yard was through the garage or down the driveway, and all the windows facing the yard were small.

One of the first things we did when moving in was to put a sliding door in the master bedroom, connecting it to the yard. It was transformative. The yard needed a lot of work, but it’s been fun to reshape and plant it this spring. And I once again have a nice view out the window, even if it’s not a forest.

Gardening in Public

The whole idea of having a front yard, and facing a street with people and cars going by and neighbors all around, is something of a shock. I’m still getting used to the fact that not every car that drives by is coming to our house.

A few weeks ago, I mowed the front lawn for the first time, and weeded some of the front garden. After all, I now have an image to maintain for the neighborhood!

Gardening in public feels odd, after 22 years of gardening in our totally private space.

It is not without its compensations. As people walk by, it becomes a social experience—something that could only have happened at our country property if someone was very seriously lost.

Remembering My Mom, Helen Slater Zager

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 20:49:00 GMT

My mother, Helen Slater Zager, died on March 10. She was 92, and led a very full life.

In the weeks since then, I've thought a lot about how much she has influenced my life, as well as that of many others.

While I don't feel equal to her endless creativity, enthusiasm, and enchantment with all the beautiful things in the world, a good dose of it rubbed off on me.

From an early age, I have always been driven by projects that I wanted to do. Her unending confidence in me, as well as her own example, powered this drive.

I've been self-employed for most of my career, as have my brother and sister. All during my childhood, my mom was a self-employed ceramic artist. I'm sure that the model of her working in her studio in the garage, following her own agenda, is a big part of why I've chosen this path and have often worked from home.

Gardening has been one of my enduring passions, and this too I learned from her. Not only a love of gardening in general, but a passion for the unusual and obscure.

Relationships were always important to my mom, and she put a lot of energy into her friends and her own personal growth. When I was a teen in the 1960s, she was getting Rolfed and going to encounter groups. She passed along the attitudes and values that are surely one factor why all three of her children are still married to their first spouses after 30 years or more.

Another enduring value I absorbed from her is the importance of design. Both a love for great design, a desire to be surrounded by it, and a disdain for badly designed things.

She cherished her photos (something else I inherited from her) and left behind an amazing collection. There are still many thousands yet to be sorted through. I've put up a small selection of them on her former website, now serving as a memorial site, at www.helenslaterdesign.com.

Helen's final years

During her final years, she needed a lot of help, and it was gratifying to see how many people contributed. Her many decades of being a friend and mentor to so many people gave her many returns, not only in the joy she took in being connected with their lives and reveling in their accomplishments, but in the care and attention they gave her when she needed it most.

Mom never lost sight of the beauty of the world and her joy in being part of it. Even in her final months, when life was very difficult for her, she would comment on the beautiful trees, or an interesting house, as we drove down the street. In her final weeks, her biggest joy was the birds that came to her birdfeeder.

As her body declined over the past decade or so, she dealt with her challenges without becoming depressed or bitter. It was only as her mind began failing that life became so difficult for her. With both Ray and her mental clarity gone, she desperately wanted to "move back home" -- she wanted a life full of people, and gardening, and clay, and it was impossible for her to accept that much of this was now beyond her reach. She would talk about getting a volunteer job, taking in a few children, getting back into clay.

An inspiration in so many ways

I can only hope that if I make it to my 90s, I can remain as positive as she was, and have such a loving, supportive community of family and friends.

I will miss her forever, and take comfort in being inspired by her memory.

Welcome to Michael's blog, reborn!

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 22:30:00 GMT

I started this blog a bit over six years ago, when I left Adobe to figure out what was next.

In the first few years, I wrote a hundred or so posts, mostly technical. For the past few years, I've managed only a few posts a year, mostly about events I or my family am involved in.

What's a blog good for, anyway?

Personal blogging is sort of an odd beast. Back in the day, it was de rigueur for anyone serious about having an online presence. Today, it has been largely overtaken by Facebook updates and tweets, or Stack Overflow and Github for developers, while multi-author "blogs" have turned into online magazines.

I've never been able to sustain any frequency of social media updates for more than a few days, being more drawn to long-form pieces and lacking the urge to tell everyone where I went for lunch. So a blog, while out of vogue these days, is a better fit for me.

So, why?

Which brings me to why — who am I writing for, and for what purpose?

I never quite figured that out in this blog's early years, but I had some ideas. I wanted to try being more public, and see what became of that. I wanted to share some the things I was learning, and some of the things I've learned and done in the past. And I wanted there to be a way for potential business partners or other colleagues to be able to check me out.

As my startup, Webvanta, became ever more all-consuming, and my personal life became busier and more complicated, I just didn't find the time to write.

Changes

The past year has been the most challenging of my life in many ways.

In the fall, we sold the West County country property where we'd lived for 22 years and moved into town (Sebastopol). Sorting through and packing up a collection of stuff that spans raising two kids, building three businesses, and enjoying a couple of large-scale hobbies literally took all my time for more than a year.

We gave away vast amounts of stuff, sold a few things, and still have a storage unit full of boxes. But we are, at last, minimally settled into our new house.

Just a week after moving the house, we moved our office. This was a great move, to a wonderful space for Webvanta, but it neverthless added another layer of craziness to an already hectic life.

The end of a generation

Last November 6, my step-father, Ray Zager, died of a stroke. After a month, it became evident that my 92-year-old mom could no longer live on her own. So right after moving our office, we moved her into assisted living — my third move in four weeks.

Her health deteriorated rapidly, and in February we moved her once more, this time into skilled nursing. She died two weeks later.

I've always been close to my mom, and I spent a lot of time with her during her final two years. Being with her during her decline and passing has been the most sustained, intense experience I've ever had. It was full of wonderful times of connection, some very painful moments, and lots in between.

But that is a story for another post.

Now, back to "why"

During these past few intense years, I didn't find much time to write, but I never stopped writing blog posts in my head. Earlier in my career, I wrote many hundreds of newsletter and magazine articles, as well as several books. Writing ceased to be central to my business, and in the press of priorities I didn't find time for it, but the urge persists.

My step-father was fanatic about his diary, which he kept for decades. He also wrote several books about his experiences (see www.diarylibrary.net). It struck me, upon his death, how many stories and memories he left behind for others to read. Had he not been such a motivated writer, it all would have been gone forever.

My mom's death further intensified my thinking about what each of us contributes, and what we leave behind. In my mom's case, it was a vast body of ceramic art (see www.helenslaterdesign.com), and dozens of friends and apprentices she supported and mentored.

Which brings me back to thoughts of writing. I have always enjoyed writing, and I have all these stories running around in my head. I now feel motivated to try giving them a life outside me.

It feels good to write. I'm not entirely sure why. I sort of hope someone is reading, but I'm not sure it matters.

That's it for the setup. Now come the posts. Soon.

BoatingSF.com 2.0: SF Bay's Best Boating Site

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 20:45:00 GMT

I've recently relaunched the largest site that I personally manage, BoatingSF.com.

First built more than 6 years ago in PHP, the site has established itself as one of the best resources for Boating and Sailing on San Francisco Bay.

The site has more than 1,300 photos of boats, the bay, and the shoreline, as well as extensive listings of all the marinas, boatyards, fuel docks, fishing supplies, and more in the central bay area.

It also includes a directory of boat rentals, yacht charters, fishing charters, bay tours, and much more.

And now, we've started covering the America's Cup activity in San Francisco.

Rebuilding this site in the Webvanta CMS took several months of part-time work, but it's been worth it. The site is now much easier to extend, and I'm adding content several times a week.

Take a look and let me know what you think!

North Bay Web Design Conference Coming Up

Sun, 06 May 2012 10:26:00 GMT

Last year, I created the North Bay Web Design Conference to provide a focal point for the web community in the north bay, including not only Sonoma County but also Marin and Napa. There's enough of us up here that we shouldn't always have to go to San Francisco! There's also a lot of value in having a local event because you get to meet all the local people.

This year, I didn't have time to organize the event, and Joshua Simmons and a number of his colleagues agreed to take it over. They've put together a great program, and I'm thrilled that the event will live on.

This year's event will be held on May 20, at the same venue as last year: the Sonoma Mountain Village Event Center.

I will be giving a presentation at the conference on taking advantage of the mobile opportunity, and also co-chairing panels on designer/developer workflow and tools.

Today is the last day to get the early-bird price of just $99, so you if you haven't yet signed up, now is the time!

Gregory's Performance at the Magic Show in Santa Rosa

Sun, 06 May 2012 10:24:00 GMT

My son Gregory's new act:

Juggling Festival in Santa Rosa May 26

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:04:00 GMT

Did you know that Santa Rosa has a juggling club? Not only that, but there's an annual festival where you can go see some amazing juggling, and maybe even learn some yourself.

The Sonoma County May Madness JuggleFest is Saturday, May 26, 2012 from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm in Juilliard Park in Santa Rosa, CA.

Check out these pictures of previous events.

Annual Santa Rosa Magic Show May 5

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:21:00 GMT

The annual Comedy Magic Show produced each year by Ken Garr is coming up May 5. There's a shorter version for younger audiences at 3 pm, and the full show at 7:30 pm. Tickets at the door only. It's at Field's Fellowship Hall, as usual, at 1551 Mongomery St. in Santa Rosa.

My son Gregory will be in the show again, with an all-new act: no masks or fire this time, just pure magic.

I hope to see you at the show!

New Online Courses for Web Designers: HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, and Mobile

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:38:00 GMT

Teaching has long been one of my favorite activities. In the past five years, most of the teaching I've done has been online, through the Learning Rails podcast/screencast and many web design webinars I've done for Webvanta.

I've recently assembled a new series of courses in response to the needs that I've seen helping dozens of designers build great websites. These courses cover the trio of technologies that make up the foundation of the web: HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript/jQuery. In addition, there's a course on mobile design, which has become increasingly important.

If you're interested in developing your skills in these areas, I think you'll find these courses to be a very productive use of your time. Follow the links below for details.

Moving into Town!

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 21:21:00 GMT

After more than 20 years on our beautiful country property, we have decided to take the plunge and move into town!

We've enjoyed the property immensely, having raised two kids and built three businesses here. But it's now much more space than we need, and the wonderful grounds are demanding.

Now that my office is in downtown Sebastopol, and Amanda is at Analy High School, it's come to seem very enticing to move to a smaller house in town. I know we're going to miss our gardens and woods and total privacy, but after more than 20 years we're ready for a new adventure.

So if you know anyone who is looking for a fantastic country estate just 10 minutes west of Sebastopol, here's the listing for 11224 Occidental Rd.

We've been cleaning up, packing away non-essentials, and fixing all those nagging little things you never get to, for the past 6 months, and the house and gardens are in their best shape ever. It makes it that much harder to leave!

We hope to be settled in a new house in Sebastopol in the fall. Just in case you know of anyone who is thinking of selling, we're looking for a 3-bedroom house, within walking distance of downtown Sebastopol, in a reasonably quiet location.

P.S. Here's a little website I built for our beautiful country property in west Sebastopol.

Comedy Magic Show in Santa Rosa April 30

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 12:01:00 GMT

It's time once again for Ken Garr's annual Magic and Comedy show in Santa Rosa. The show is an annual tradition and always great fun. Ken is a wonderful comic and magician, and the performers include many of the people who have gathered and trained for years at the Mostly Magic Shop. This year, once again, the performers include my son, Gregory Slater, performing a rarely-seen mask-changing act.

The show in April 30, 2011 at the First United Methodist Church in Santa Rosa. There's a matinee at 3 and a longer evening show at 7:30.

See the Mostly Magic Shop site for detais. Tickets are available at the shop, and at the door.

The First Annual North Bay Web Design Conference

Sat, 05 Feb 2011 14:16:00 GMT

It's been a while since I've managed to post anything here. One of the things that has been consuming my time is putting together the first North Bay Web Design Conference.

This conference is being co-sponsored by my hosted CMS company, Webvanta. We'll be covering a broad range of web design issues, however, not focusing on Webvanta any more than other content management systems.

If you're a web designer or developer anywhere north of San Francisco, check it out!

Spooktacular Magic Show in Rohnert Park

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 21:15:00 GMT

Don't miss this weekend's magic show in Rohnert Park:

Spooktacular

Shows on Sunday Oct. 24 at 2 pm and 7 pm

Featuring Ken Garr, Gregory Slater & Friends

Details

Moved to Webvanta

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 17:34:00 GMT

Until recently, this blog has been running on a Ruby on Rails blog engine called Mephisto, on one of a dozen or so virtual servers on a dedicated server at Rails Machine.

I've now rebuilt this blog using Webvanta, the hosted web content management system that my company produces. Webvanta can do much more than blogs, but it is a great blog system as well.

Setting up Mephisto was my very first Ruby on Rails adventure, when I was on my way out of Adobe back in the fall of 2006. I was one of the early customers at Rails Machine, which is a great Ruby on Rails host. I once ran two dedicated servers there, and then one, and soon none. They've been very reliable, and their support is excellent, but I've been able to move almost all of my sites on to Webvanta and can no longer justify the cost of the servers.

At the same time, I've redesigned the blog. If you come across a broken link or a missing image, please let me know.

Note about the RSS feed: If you're subscribed to the blog's RSS feed, I suspect you're going to see a new version of all the old articles showing up in the feed. This should be a one-time occurrence.

Gregory's Stage Debut: Mask Change

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 17:30:00 GMT

Last night my son Gregory was in Ken Garr’s annual magic show in Santa Rosa. He’s been hanging out with this community for many years, and it was great to see him on stage—and with a spectacular performance!

Comedy Magic Show in Santa Rosa

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 04:52:00 GMT

It’s not often you can see great comedy and magic in Santa Rosa. But once a year, Ken Garr, proprietor of the Mostly Magic Shop in downtown Santa Rosa, puts on a show that features his friends, colleagues, and students. My family has gone every year for many years, and we’ve always enjoyed it.

Get the scoop on the Comedy Magic Show starring Ken Garr and friends.

This year, my son Gregory Slater will be performing in the show for the first time, with the debut of an ancient oriental trick never before seen in Sonoma County.

The show is April 10, at First United Methodist Church in Santa Rosa. There’s a one-hour matinee show at 3 pm and a full-length evening show at 7:30 pm.

I’ll see you there!

The iPad: Imperfect, But Enough for Me!

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:58:00 GMT

I’ve been lusting after a great tablet device for a long time. The iPad has its faults, but it’s the first that really appeals to me. Bottom line: I can’t wait to get one.

Is it an entirely new category of device, as some have claimed? It’s true, of course, that it’s not much more than iPod Touch Jumbo. From a technical perspective, it’s cool, but not earthshaking.

From the perspective of how it will be used, however, I think it will create a new category. It is the most intimate merger yet of computing and consumer electronics.

A Clear View, Not a Short Distance

A dozen years ago, I wrote an editorial for Microprocessor Report about tablets being the future of news, and suggested that they would become common living-room appliances. As futurist Paul Saffo is fond of saying, never mistake a clear view for a short distance. My vision was clear, but the distance was a decade more than I anticipated.

My previous startup, PhotoTablet, was founded to build a tablet that would be a consumer’s digital photo world. For a variety of reasons, it wasn’t realistic, and PhotoTablet turned into Fotiva, a software company.

So it was with some interest that I’ve watched the emergence of the iPad. As usual with any major Apple introduction, it was way overhyped by some of the press, and it’s been attacked by many in ways that just miss the point.

An iPod Touch Jumbo is enough for me, and I expect it will be quite successful. I think this will be an excellent living-room device. It feels (or, I should say, it looks like it will feel) much friendlier than a notebook computer for reading the news while drinking my morning coffee, or to share photos while sitting on the couch, or to casually look something up on the web while away from my computer.

I expect it will also give eBook readers a run for their money. Will users choose a dedicated device without color or video but with a lower price, longer battery life, and possibly an easier-on-the-eyes display, over one with many uses and color video? My gut is that most will not, and that over time Apple will match or exceed the available libraries for the dedicated devices.

Not Without Its Limitations

It does have a number of limitations, of course, but as the first member of a family it looks pretty darn good.

The limitation that frustrates me the most is the lack of Flash support, which makes Apple’s claim that this is the best Web experience ever just wrong. Apple could surely put Flash on it if it wanted to. The lack of Flash support must, I believe, indicate some sort of pissing contest between the two companies. There is no shortage of bad blood between Apple and Adobe, and there is every appearance that Apple would like to see Flash die, though I don’t understand their motivations.

I don’t see this as a business device, or as something I would take traveling. If I’m going to take something this big, I’d take my MacBook. It is not just the lack of a keyboard and physical protection, but the lack of multitasking and rich applications. I would take it over to a friend’s house to share pictures, though.

The Long Road

No company could have built a device like this from scratch. Apple was able to do it by cleverly extending its product range over an extended period.

The iPod started out as nothing more than a slightly better MP3 player, which was catapulted to dominance by its iTunes integration and great marketing.

Then Apple added the ability to play tiny videos.

The big leap was merging with a phone and adding applications, which initially were proprietary Apple apps only. Apple would have had a very hard time jumping into the phone business if it were not for the iPod, which gave lots of people a strong reason to buy an iPhone independent of its quality as a phone.

Then Apple opened up the App Store, and the iPhone became the most important new computing platform since the Mac and Windows.

And now Apple is leveraging all of that design evolution, and the momentum of the iPhone, to create the first really exciting consumer tablet.

It’s the kind of strategy that few companies have ever been able to execute on so well.

Videos and Entertaining Criticism

In case you haven’t seen it, here is the official video, which is full of hyperbole but gives a good feel for the new apps:

Of all the spoofs and criticism, I found this to be the funniest:

The Fake Steve Jobs live blog from backstage also has some nice comic relief.

And the name, of course, opens Apple up to all sorts of ridicule. Most amazing is that people started the jokes years ago, before there even was such a product; this MadTV video is more than three years old:

Webvanta Financing Closed!

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 06:41:00 GMT

Following a marathon effort, I’m delighted to announce that we’ve closed Webvanta’s Series A financing. It’s very exciting, and quite a relief, to have this behind us and to be able to really focus on growing the company in 2010.

Webvanta has been so different from my previous startup, Fotiva. We financed Fotiva (originally called PhotoTablet) in early 2000, in the final days of the bubble. We had nothing but a PowerPoint deck, yet we raised considerably more money than Webvanta has raised, and at a higher valuation. Times certainly have changed.

Fotiva existed for less than two years from conception to the sale to Adobe. In retrospect, it was amazingly quick, though it didn’t feel like it at the time.

Webvanta has already been in business for longer than Fotiva’s entire existence, and we just now closed the Series A. We’ve had our product on the market for several months, we have paying customers, and we’re well on our way to 2.0. And we’ve done all this on a fraction of the capital that Fotiva consumed.

By building the company more gradually, instead of being urged on by the VC-driven “get big fast” mentality, we’ve been able to explore market opportunities and evolve our product strategy more naturally. Keeping the company small has had its challenges, but it’s also been empowering.

We’re well set for great growth in 2010. I’m grateful to everyone who has played a part in making this possible: my family, which has endured a dramatic reduction in my income along with long work hours; my business partner, Christopher Haupt, who has done most of the real work of building our product; our board members, David Hehman and Greg Seal, who have been extraordinarily supportive; the angel investors who have provided the capital; and the designers and site owners who have been our pioneering customers. Thanks!

Mose Allison Performs

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:36:00 GMT

I’ve been a Mose Allison fan for more than 40 years. He’s now 82 and still playing clubs around the U.S. —this year, he performed on 75 days! With more than one performance on many days, that’s probably more than 100 live performances this year. I hope I have that kind of energy when I’m 82.

If you get a chance to go see him, don’t miss it. You may not get another chance. His schedule is posted at MoseAllison.net, though as of this writing there’s only one 2010 date listed.

We recently saw him at 19 Broadway in Fairfax. Here’s a clip of “You Are My Sunshine” from that performance.

10 Years Later: Thoughts on PhotoTablet/Fotiva/Adobe

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:51:00 GMT

The First Two Years: Conception

It was 10 years ago last week that the idea for PhotoTablet came to me—an Internet tablet that takes care of your pictures. The day that name came to mind, I bought the domain and started writing a business plan.

Four months later, I had quit my job, had $2 million in venture funding, and was building a team.

Another four months later, we realized that the tablet idea was not going to work (as a business), and we transformed into Fotiva—a PC software company.

Within a year, we were in discussions with Adobe about selling the business to them. We had the product nearly ready to take to market in the fall of 2001, but with venture funding in a serious drought, we didn’t have a lot of options.

Two years after conception of the idea, we completed the sale of the company to Adobe. In retrospect, it seems an incredibly short period, though it didn’t feel that way at the time.

Last month, Adobe laid off the last of the original Fotiva engineering team, marking the end of an era.

My Stint at Adobe

A year after the acquisition, the software we built at Fotiva debuted as Photoshop Album. After two more years, it was rolled into Photoshop Elements as the Organizer, where it lives on today in version 8.

In my first year at Adobe, I was focused on getting Fotiva’s software turned into a shipping product. After a year in product management, I moved into engineering, managing a small research team and doing technology acquisitions.

For five years, I tried to find or create a role at Adobe that I enjoyed, and I can’t say I ever really succeeded. Although there were some great times and lots of good people, my entrepreneurial spirit and Adobe’s big-company culture did not mesh well. In the fall of 2006, I left Adobe to focus on the Web—something that I found almost impossible to do at Adobe.

Adobe and the Web

From the start, the PhotoTablet/Fotiva vision was for software and an Internet service working in conjunction to deliver the complete product. After the acquisition, however, Adobe senior management was totally disinterested in the online aspect. After pushing on this issue on and off for a few years, I eventually got support for building an online photo service. A dozen people worked on it for nine months—and then Adobe decided not to fund its rollout.

Another year later, I tried again, and once again saw projects started and then canceled before shipping anything. About the time I left three years ago, yet another online effort was underway; I left because I had no confidence in the way it was being approached. This project too ended without shipping anything.

Finally, in 2008, Adobe delivered Photoshop.com. Aside from the “third time’s a charm” aspect, I think the reason Adobe was finally able to launch a photo service was that the driving force was the creation of a Flex showcase. Unfortunately, it was too late to make much of an impact.

Adobe had plenty of engineering folks with a passion for building web services for photography, and a few products have made it to market. But the heavy-weight process and infrastructure, combined with top management that is often unsupportive of web initiatives, has kept Adobe from being a significant player in the online photo world.

Team Shifts

As part of this web initiative that began in 2006, the Organizer code base that had its roots in Fotiva’s code was transferred to a team in India for future development. What remained of the engineering team that I had built, and which Adobe acquired, was redirected to work on Photoshop.com.

In some ways, this was a great opportunity for the team, but it also meant a loss of continuity in the Organizer development. The people who conceived and built multiple versions of the product were no longer responsible for it. The results have been predictably uninspiring, though whether this is due to the transfer to India or to an overall reduction in resources is hard to tell.

I no longer use Photoshop Elements Organizer, after leading its creation and importing more than 70,000 pictures. I just doesn’t perform well enough, and Lightroom is closer to my interests. (I use iPhoto for video clips, since Lightroom frustratingly doesn’t support them, but that’s another story.)

The Annual Purge

More years than not (since 2000), Adobe has conducted an annual purge of employees toward the end of the year. The past two years, this purge has been especially deep, driven no doubt by the sagging worldwide economy.

I understand the need to realign resources when strategies change. But the frequency and vigor with which Adobe rearranges and lays off people leaves a lot of casualties. Having worked there for five or ten years, produced consistently good work, and supported the company through previous transitions is not enough to keep your job when management shuffles priorities again.

I don’t want to get into the debate about the merits of offshore development, but it is a fact that almost all of the Fotiva engineers were eventually laid off, and their work moved to India.

The Power of a Small Company

Aside from my five years at Adobe, I’ve mostly run small companies. After leaving Adobe three years ago and starting Webvanta a year later, I’ve been struck again by the incredible efficiency advantage small companies have.

Two or three people, juggling half-a-dozen roles, can get more done than a team of ten at a big company like Adobe. The absence of the innovation antibodies that are an epidemic at Adobe is a huge boost, not to mention the elimination of most meetings.

But the most important difference of all is having the people with the ideas and passion be the same people making strategic decisions.

Webvanta Update

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:42:00 GMT

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted here, so I thought I’d at least give a brief update.

On September 8 we officially launched Webvanta, and that’s kept me swamped. It’s going great, with about 35 sites up now, about a dozen more that we’re involved in building, and a steady stream of designers signing up. There’s hundreds of user accounts and dozens of sites being built by folks we don’t even know—it’s a great feeling to see it taking off.

The level of activity has noticeably picked up in the last few weeks, and the custom development side of our business now has about a 6-week backlog.

We’ve launched our first ecommerce site (SimplySlater), and we’ll have another one launching within a week or two. We’re near completion of a large site for a local non-profit that is converting over from Drupal. This project has driven us to polish up a lot of loose ends with our information portal features, so many customers will benefit.

We also recently announced the Webvanta Design Contest—we’re giving away a MacBook Pro for the most innovative site built with Webvanta, plus three iPod Touches for the runners up. Please help us spread the word!

Is Facebook Ready for Business?

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 15:00:00 GMT

I’ve been working lately on creating a Facebook presence for my company, Webvanta. It’s been a somewhat painful experience. You can see the primitive results so far.

Facebook has “pages” for businesses, which are like profiles, but for non-humans. This seems like a good idea, but they’re missing some core features to support the way businesses work.

For example, it appears to be impossible to remove the person who originally created the page as an admin. So if someone creates your Facebook page and then leaves the company, well, too bad, they still have access to modify the page.

I’m not alone in this concern. There’s a discussion thread on this issue in their so-called help that has posts by 73 people, going back two and half months, all struggling with this problem. No one from Facebook has replied, and no one has proposed a fix.

There’s plenty of other ugly corners. When I try to change the profile image for the Webvanta page, for example, it takes me to the profile picture for my personal page.

Because we have less than 1,000 fans, we can’t get a vanity URL, so the URL for our page is the lovely http://www.facebook.com/pages/Webvanta/70984967800?v=wall&viewas=0. (For my personal page, I was able to get www.facebook.com/mzslater.)

Facebook clearly has lots of work left to do before they’re really ready for businesses. But with more than 200 million users, they have their hands full, and they’re riding a tidal wave, so I doubt they’re worrying about it too much. And, of course, there’s no way to actually contact anyone and get a question answered.

The platform is full of awkward bits like this, and I’d like to say that someone will step in and do a better job and displace them, but the reality is that they have reached critical mass in terms of user adoption, and the vast number of people on Facebook is going to make it very hard to displace. As a business, if you want to participate in social marketing, you need to go where the people are, so you really have no choice about whether to go elsewhere.

My request for Facebook: please charge me $100/year for having a business page, and use that money to provide appropriate features and a support line. Or take some of that $200 million you just got from the Russian investors and use it to provide better support.

The pains of creating an online store

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:48:00 GMT

I’ve recently been helping my sister put together an online store, using Volusion. It has been eye-opening how complex they make it and how clunky this system is. This is a product that is ripe for being replaced with something a lot cleaner.

We looked at Shopify as well, but their business model of taking a cut of the transaction was a turn-off. And there’s always Yahoo Stores, but they tend to be, well, ugly.

On the surface, an online store is pretty simple. We can build simple ones with Webvanta, using PayPal or another third-party shopping card, but it’s not a complete ecommerce solution. The tricky bits come when you need to deal with tax by county, shipping options, returns, out-of-stock items, fulfillment workflows, etc. In time, we’ll make Webvanta a good solution for this, probably by integrating an existing third-party solution.

Do you know of any great solutions for simple online stores, either complete sites or hosted shopping carts that we can integrate? I’d like to be able to refer people to something great.

And just in case you’re looking for some inexpensive and very cool outdoor furniture, check out the Classic Butterfly Chairs at SimplySlater.com.

Update: my sister gave up on the Volusion store. We rebuilt the store using Webvanta, with FoxyCart as the shopping cart, and it has worked out well.

A Brief History of the Web, and a Glimpse of Its Future

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 03:59:00 GMT

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of speaking at Ignite Sebastopol, the first-ever local Ignite event. Started a couple years ago by O’Reilly Media, Ignite talks use an unusual, fast-paced format: 20 slides, 5 minutes, and the slides advance automatically every 15 seconds so there’s no such thing as running over. It’s a challenging format but it sure keeps things moving. The event was packed, with more than 150 people at the Hopmonk Tavern.

Here’s the video, courtesy of Empire Report. The slides are available at slideshare, but they’re sort of dull without the talk track.