I found it interesting that the same thought can be applied in the context of technology startups. Pre-release expressions of interest can immensely help Lean Startups gauge interest in the (yet unbuilt) product and what features consumers may find most appealing. It can also help startups ascertain the actual scope, perspective demand and real-world audience of the product, all of which are very important factors for effective monetization. After all, the first goal of a startup is to find those first 50 paying customers.

A big part of the problem is that no one knows what will work with the consumers and what won’t. No amount of market research, case studies or investment will ever substitute a real-world trial. So you start with a bare bones product that requires minimum efforts to build & release for a “preview product”, and hence reduce the time to market.

Building this “preview product”, or a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) as Eric Ries likes to call it, is essentially based on minimizing total time through the Lean Startup feedback loop:

Bootstrapping, rapid prototyping, customer driven development, iterative improvement, eliminating waste (muda), unit testing and continuous deployment are all essential components for building a MVP. Much of this paradigm is also derived from the Toyota Production System.

For example, having a paid account availability notification in your application is a tiny yet nifty approach to a MVP. You build a smaller product, or rather, you build a single feature. You incrementally improve it based on early feedback from interested users. And during this lean startup loop, you measure the actual value of the product by inviting users to pre-order your lean product.

In the field of human-computer interaction, a Wizard of Oz experiment is a research experiment in which subjects interact with a computer system that subjects believe to be autonomous, but which is actually being operated or partially operated by an unseen human being. A related true story I read about an ad-hoc approach, similar to what an MVP can often employ, goes like this:

There was a guy who wanted to sell cars online. But it was a huge system to write from end-to-end, and moreover he didn’t know if it would work or not. So he made a simple website with basic content and forms etc., but he processed the entire back-end work by hand. There was no real automated backend, but the customers got the impression that the entire thing is pretty much automated. This experiment provided him the feedback he needed for expanding his business processes and automating only the essential components.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

What’s also amazing is how much we can learn about ourself in time just by paying a little more attention to that sound in our head. After a year of pondering and progress, mistakes and accomplishments, I felt that I should share what I really learnt this year:

1. Just do it, and more importantly, do it fucking now! Create stuff that excites you. Do stuff that scares you. And, if you think you haven’t found your passion…

2. …Procrastinate. It ain’t that bad, as long as you have a desire to start somewhere. Most people never follow their dreams because they are shit scared to open their eyes. Start small, grow organically. The key is to start. Start!

3. Never argue with a fool. They will drag you down to their level, and then beat you with experience. Same goes for pseudo-intellects and pedants.

4. Health is wealth. I quit smoking for good this year. Took up swimming instead (after a halt of around 10 years). I’m nearing a kilometer of a swim daily, but what’s significant is that mentally and physically I feel rejuvenated.

5. Have positive people around you. I don’t think that people are inherently “bad”, but some people have a tendency to measuredly create naive obstacles to restrain you from doing what they couldn’t or can’t do. If you fail in your repeated efforts to make such people understand the reality, then at-least don’t react negatively yourself. One persons oasis is another persons reality.

6. Wife is always right. But that doesn’t stop me from doing what I want anyway, or so says the wifey.

7. If you are wrong, say sorry. If you are right, shut up.

8. Never do anything for money alone. Do it for a reason you believe in. Do it for your passion. Relatively, don’t be a miser but be frugal.

9. If something doesn’t excite you (makes you say HELL YEAH), then don’t do it. Family commitments are exempted.

10. The most important things in life are not things. An African saying suggests: “If you want to walk quick, walk alone. But if you want to walk far, walk together.”

11. Let bygones be bygones. The only way is forward, so move on. If others want to constantly whine on past grievances, then let them do so. Eventually, they’ll see the bigger picture.

12. The most effective productivity technique that works for me is to just have one goal in a day. If you happen to complete it, then have a second smaller goal, but never have more than one goal a day to start with and more than two goals to end with.

13. Make the World a better place. Again, this doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Don’t expect to change the World over-night. Reduce wastage. Help begins at home and neighbourhood. Start small with Kiva and World Vision. Giving is a good criterion of a person’s mental health. Generous people are rarely mentally-ill.

14. Not everybody agrees to the same things as you do. One must always respect other opinions (so please excuse my rant if you don’t really relate to much of it). Great things happen when people share their opinions, discuss them rationally keeping the larger goal in mind, and reach a simple solution. An interesting thing I took from one of my company meetings was that to make things happen (in an organization or with-in a group of people in general) you need 100% commitment but only 80% agreement.

15. Thank people.

Kudos to some really smart people like Paul Graham, Derek Sivers and many TED speakers who inspired me to prune and spruce my thoughts, and put it all to action in my everyday life.

May the New Year 2010 bring you happiness and good health. Merry Christmas.

While doing some coding in my spare time lately, I’ve had a strong craving for listening to some new music. So, I took some time out to basically mix and record my own tracks, mainly electronic rock stuff composed using digital synthesizer software.

I’m sharing a few tracks below. All mp3’s are downloadable under the Creative Commons license. Some are also featured at Opsound:

Racket In the Rain (Extended)

Landing on Queepa 76

Avatar From Copenhagen

End Game Republic

Enjoy.

Research tells us that only 7% of all communication is impacted by the content or the words used. The rest is all non-verbal — body language and tone. At the stand-up, we did a few basic exercises to highlight the basis of good communication, why we communicate (the way we do), with whom we communicate (internal and external parties), how we communicate (the modes and tools) and a few case studies of good and bad communications in the real-world.

From that discussion it made me wonder if most poor communication or mis-communication occurs when things go wrong, and most good communication occurs when things are going well. So essentially, communication is driven by the environment.

In chaotic situations, specially those which are life-threatening or time-sensitive, communication becomes harder by multitudes. When the Black Saturday bushfires (as many as 400 individual fires) were burning across the Australian state of Victoria in February 2009, millions of SMS messages warning of extreme fire danger conditions were sent by the mobile phone companies, on behalf of Victoria Police. However, a lot of people in the affected area didn’t receive the SMS messages, and a lot of people in the unaffected areas received the SMS messages. Some were spooked by the SMS messages and considered them an over-reaction. Others, mostly who were around the impact zone, felt the SMS messages were not relayed in a timely fashion.

A month later, amid global economic worries, the Australian Prime Minister announced a cash bonus for more than 8 million Australians as a way to stimulate the economy. Because this “desirable” action was communicated well, pretty much everyone who I talked to knew about the payment, who was eligible and even how & when the bonus would be paid.

Communication is effective when it’s intentful and well-guided, and communication is ineffective when it’s mostly unintentful or mis-guided. At some level, we are all likely to boost the success, achievements and pleasing actions, but put the failures and shortcomings under the carpet or atleast delay their communication. I guess the important thing, specially for businesses and government agencies, is to communicate consistently and become more open.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

This beautiful Buddhist proverb is a true declaration of an open mind, a mind of a learner. Ever since I heard this proverb, I often wondered if it reflected more than what meets the eye.

A few years ago, I discussed with some friends about our quest for a “teacher”. In our individual lives, our hive-less minds, we need a teacher to guide us. We deliberated, we concurred. But we could never find the real answer. I always considered this proverb on Prima facie, until today, when I realized that I’ve been looking at it differently all along.

After reading Rands’ words on challenging oneself, the proverb made more sense:

You’re in a hurry

Maybe you’re waiting for validation. You’re waiting for that someone you respect to say, “Yes, you bright person, you should do that thing.” It was your parents when you were you kid and then it was your first boss, but now it simply needs to be you.

What you need to understand about these people that support you is that they’re not here to slow you down, they’re here to get the hell out of your way so you can brilliant. You need discover the moment when you actually know better than everyone around you — when you make the first move without asking permission.

We all long for a validation. A validation, that we are taking the right decision, the right choice, at the right time, in the right place, around the right people, and for the right cause (or effect). But we wait. We wait for the teacher to appear and validate our thought. We are spoon-fed to the teacher’s nod, or rejection.

But, the real teacher is within. The real student is within. What we seek is within. What must grow is within.

Validate yourself.

Duct tape programmers are pragmatic. Zawinski popularized Richard Gabriel’s precept of Worse is Better. A 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer than a 99% solution that nobody has because it’s in your lab where you’re endlessly polishing the damn thing. Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.

Joel’s views triggered a series of rants and responses on the pros and cons of the “release early, release often” pattern and the “analysis paralysis” anti-pattern, a phrase that describes exceedingly long timeframe to solution delivery. While I personally prefer the “quick ship” approach, I do utilize the benefits of iterating analysis. Maybe it makes me a diplomatic drone, but I care more about an uncomplicated outcome.

The debacle around the “duct tape” approach to programming led me to a different question. What if the duct tape is red, or more precisely, how does patent-driven red-tapism affect software and technology development? Essentially, why do some programmers patent their work?

Kas Thomas described the concept of a role-based favicon, and why Novell patented it:

I was granted a patent (U.S. Patent No. 7,594,193, “Visual indication of user role in an address bar”) on something that I whimsically call the rolicon.

Okay, but why do this patent? The answer is simpler than you think (and will brand me as a whore in some people’s eyes). I did it for the money. Novell has a liberal bonus program for employees who contribute patent ideas. We’re not talking a few hundreds bucks. We’re talking contribute ten patents, put a child through one year of college.

I have two kids, by the way. One is in college, using my patent bonuses to buy pepperoni pizzas as we speak.

It was a bit unsettling for me, because Novell has been continually contributing to open source projects, and most marginally good programmers I know don’t believe in patents.

Undoubtedly, Michael Jackson was a great performer. He had actually invented and patented the shoe design used as part of his famous Moonwalk.

It makes him a “hacker“, but his “method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion” could have had wider benefits if he would have not patented the design so that other innovators could make the most of it. I can already think how this could have improved the condition of people with arthritis for example.

An anticipated social benefit of patent law is that it creates an incentive to innovate. Ironically, the patent law severely restricts innovation and healthy competition. Patents stimulate monopolies, like Microsoft and many other self-indulgent technology companies. We need to acknowledge that patents should not be a marketing strategy, but unfortunately they are so in consumerism.

Some may suggest that we should abolish the patent system altogether, but I don’t think the big fishes would ever let that happen; otherwise they’ll lose competitive advantage in a lot of lucrative areas. But what if patents were self-expiring? A patent would auto-expire if isn’t used within a certain timeframe less than the default 20 year term of the patent. This should hopefully satisfy the corporate schemers, and all programmers regardless of the colour of their duct tape.

Just a few days before the interview, a team of representatives from the same company met with the business executive from the government organization, at their high-rise conference room overlooking the pier. RFP’s and RFQ’s were already out of the way, and so were the product specifications. The company won the tender because they already had a base solution in the form of a customizable product, and the industry-specific expertise to go with it. It was just a matter of signing the dotted line, with fingers crossed.

What my acquaintance, and the large government organization didn’t know was that there was no such flagship product in existence, at-least in a functional form. The whole proposal was a farce, filled with enough fluff to have lasted as a year’s stock of toilet-paper. In a sense of over-estimation the company did have the technical capability to develop the solution from surface, but realistically it was impossible. The fact of the matter is, almost always — things take longer than they seem, and money lasts shorter than you plan.

Fearful, but not rare. This mechanism, how so ever unethical, is not uncommon in the Enterprise landscape. Garbage-disposal giant Waste Management is still embroiled in a $100 million legal battle with SAP over an 18-month installation of its “fake” ERP software. Waste Management claimed SAP executives participated in a fraudulent sales scheme that resulted in the massive failure. What did a $400 million upgrade to Nike’s supply chain get the world-renowned shoe and athletic gear-maker? Well, for starters, $100 million in lost sales, a 20 percent stock dip and a collection of class-action lawsuits.

The problem lies in three broad facets: people, perspective, and process.

People, at all levels in an organization (large or small) need to rationally answer a question: if I were a business owner, would I invest gazillion dollars on bloated software that takes years to implement, then years to fine-tune, by when it doesn’t solve the ever-transforming problems. Perspective, in terms of the scope and scalability of a solution. “We want to build more features than our competitor”, is a very common notion. Keeping the feature-set minimal may sound like a joke to many corporate vendors and business executives. But, minimalism really promotes iterated execution; which eventually saves money, time and efforts. And finally, process — the end-to-end software engineering approach, which I think is a big factor for so many spectacular failures and huge spending nightmares. Software engineering is relatively young, hardly a few decades old. Compare it with dwelling construction, which originated from the era of the cave man, and you’ll probably understand what I mean.

So you overheard from the cubicle next to yours, “it’s not that simple“. Well, that’s right. Complex ideas result in complex software. The bigger an object, the more energy is required to change its direction. In order to finish a project on time and on budget, without reducing the level of quality, we should ideally implement less and iterate more often. Under-do, and you will make successful software that is lean and opinionated.

Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare (best known for developing Quicksort in 1960) said:

There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.

“You see this goblet?” asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master.

“For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’

When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.

Intriguingly, _why’s online persona disappeared on 19th August 2009. The person behind the pseudonym has simply decided to erase his online presence, along with all his projects.

In a post-modern culture, an author (programmer) has the right to do whatever they want with their work (code). Many artists have a tendency to whimsically create a world of fiction around them, then tear it down when they get bored with it. But, when a programmer, of _why’s calibre, just vanishes hastily, with his open source projects removed (repo mirror), it raises questions around the motivation and reliability of the community and the individual.

Never-the-less, it’s a loss for the Ruby community, and for many other enthusiasts like me who have considered code to be an art-form, as it was reflected by _why’s work. I think John Resig has put it very eloquently:

If there’s any analogy that I can make about _why, his online persona, and all the works that he’s produced over the years it’s to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of the sand mandala.

Sand mandalas are incredibly intricate works of art that take many people many days to construct. They’re very expressive, but fragile, works of art.

After a mandala has been constructed – and displayed – it is ceremoniously deconstructed – which is meant “to symbolize the Buddhist doctrinal belief in the transitory nature of material life.”

_why’s entire online presence and code was presented in the sand mandala that was ‘_why’. The person behind ‘_why’ simply decided to move on and close that portion of his life.

Reading through _why’s old blog, I came across several interesting posts, some poignant, and a few eccentric. It gave me a slight glimpse into the person’s mind. Programming aside, I wish I could write as well.

i love working on an obscure book. people cling to ideas, because they’re supposed to be vouchers for a million dollars. no, write an obscure book. build something outside all that pressure. i guess treehouses for kids qualify.

The first person to live to be 1,000 years old is certainly alive today … whether they realize it or not, barring accidents and suicide, most people now 40 years or younger can expect to live for centuries.

Sounds overly optimistic? A Cambridge University geneticist, and many other researchers, think it’s possible.

Immortality is one of humanity’s oldest dreams. We seem to think of life as being on a conveyor belt. You get on, travel to the end, then get off. The phenomenon we refer to as aging, has been researched extensively — both medically and psychologically.

A few months ago, I watched a documentary titled ‘How To Live To 101 Without Trying‘. It explores the towns where people live the longest:

In Okinawa (Japan), the residents actually age more slowly than almost anyone else on earth.

It’s what they don’t eat that may be at the heart of their exceptionally long lives. The Okinawan’s most significant cultural tradition is known as hara hachi bu, which translated means eat until you’re only 80% full.

Scientists call it Caloric Restriction (CR), but don’t entirely understand why it works. They think it sends a signal to the body that there is going to be a impending famine, sending it into a protective, self-preservation mode.

Eating less, does have huge merits. Some may argue, but I feel that living to 100 years, or 1000 years for that matter, may be possible through natural mechanisms such as CR. Such a diet can put the body into survival mode, causing cells to be extremely efficient, boosting the process by which cells remove damage. Research has shown that these unrecycled or damaged cellular components can lead to age-related decline.

If at all, we do end up living to 1000 years, what will be the implications? One significant transformation I expect to see is how the risk of living itself will increase with a longer lifespan. Mundane tasks like driving a vehicle or swimming in the ocean will suddenly become dangerous.

Is aging really a disease, for which we need to find a cure? Is eating less the perfect cure? Will extending the human lifespan result in social betterment? I guess it’s questions like these, and their answers, which will unravel in the near future.