Project Idealism

Episode #13: William Carleton and I discuss the JOBS act

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Wicklander) — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 22:06:00 +0000

After an extended hiatus, the Project Idealism podcast returns with William Carlton, a Seattle based attorney who specializes in startups. William and I discuss a variety of things about the new JOBS act, though much of our focus is on the crowd funding provisions.

For an excellent resource on the JOBS act and a variety of other topics, check out Williams home on the internet at http://wac6.com.

Big thanks again to William for taking the time to share his knowledge with me and our listeners!

As always, you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or listen to the show in your browser via the embedded player below.

Podcast Episode #12: Mike Hostetler and Jonathan Sharp of appendTo

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Wicklander) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 23:53:00 +0000

In this episode of my podcast I interviewed Jonathan Sharp and Mike Hostetler of appendTo, a JQuery development shop that was founded by the two in 2009.

They took the time to talk about the growth of their organization, how they go about getting clients, being a small business that works with big clients, and the point at which they turn business down.

We also talked quite a bit about pricing, managing teams that are geographically dispersed, and the benefits and challenges that come with working from home or in a small office.

Mike and Jonathan are really nice guys, and I'm very thankful they took the time to sit down with me to talk about their business, how they run it, and how they're going about growing the company. Thanks again guys.

As always, you can listen to the podcast right here in the post, or you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Thanks for the intro and exit music this time around goes to Peter, Bjorn and John. The Swedish band makes a bunch of their music available to podcasters at Music Alley.

Flash:

Quicktime:

Podcast Episode #11: Ryan Singer of 37signals

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Wicklander) — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:58:00 +0000

For this episode of my podcast, I was joined by Ryan Singer, a designer at 37signals who kids that his "cocktail title" would be a product manager. Much of what I know about web design comes from listening to what Ryan has to say on the matter, and I really appreciate the time he spent with me.

We talked about how teams work together, design, how work gets prioritized, and the kinds of things that influence their decisions - about both design and the process of getting their work done.

Ryan shares some great insights, and I hope you find the talk as valuable as I did. As always, you can listen right here in the post, or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Ryan writes regularly on the 37signals blog Signal vs. Noise and occasionally posts articles on his site feltpresence.com, where he's also posted some great videos of talks he's given. You can follow Ryan on twitter at http://twitter.com/rjs.

Thanks again Ryan, I really appreciate you joining me.

And lastly, as has been the case a number of times, the intro music comes by way of the Smashing Pumpkins and their Teargarden by Kaleidyscope project.

Links

The People and links Ryan mentioned:

Podcast Episode #10: Lance Walley of Chargify, Engine Yard, Parallax and more

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Wicklander) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:43:00 +0000

In my latest podcast episode I interviewed Lance Walley, who has been building businesses for over 20 years. Most recently Lance co-founded Chargify - a recurring billing system, and before that EngineYard - a Rails application hosting company.

Lance spoke candidly with me about launching new ideas, scaling a business, failure, success, investing, and more. It was great talking with him and he shared a ton of great information. You can follow Lance on Twitter at @lancewalley.

As always, you can listen to the show right here on the blog, or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Thanks a bunch Lance!

(Once again thanks to The Smashing Pumpkins for the intro and exit music.)

Podcast Episode #9: Nate Kontny of Inkling Markets

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Wicklander) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 22:04:00 +0000

I had the pleasure yesterday of Interviewing Nate Kontny, one of the founders of Inkling Markets, and co-creator of Tgethr and CityPosh, for my latest podcast episode.

Nate is one of my favorite bloggers, super intelligent, and a really nice guy to boot. I had a blast talking to him about starting projects, running a business, and the creative process that goes into building software and writing great blog posts.

As always, you can listen to the podcast right here (just give it a moment to load), or by subscribing to the podcast in iTunes.

You can follow Nate on his personal blog, the Inkling Markets Blog, or on his twitter handle.

Thanks again for the time Nate, it was great talking with you!

Lastly, thanks to the SmashingPumpkins for making their music available. I used "Lightning Strikes" as the intro and exit music for this episode. You can check out what they're working on at their site SmashingPumpkins.com

Podcast Episode Eight: Foiled Cupcakes

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Wicklander) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 22:38:00 +0000

In my latest podcast, I interviewed Mari Luangrath of Foiled Cupcakes, a gourmet cupcake delivery company based in Chicago. Over the course of about a year, Mari has built a fun, profitable, growing business without a storefront; leveraging Twitter and Facebook to get the word out about her company.

Big thanks to Mari for sharing some of what she's learned along the way. You can check Foiled Cupcakes out at http://foiledcupcakes.com and follow Mari on Twitter at @foiledcupcakes.

You can listen right here in the post, and of course, subscribe to the podcast in iTunes as well.

Thanks again Mari!

Podcast Episode Seven - What can a project manager learn from an author?

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Wicklander) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 03:00:00 +0000

In this episode of "What can a project manager learn from x?", I interviewed Tracey Bianchi, author of Green Mama - The guilt free guide to saving the planet.

I'm really grateful that Tracey joined me on the podcast.

We had the opportunity to talk about the creative process involved with writing the book, the path she took to get the book published, and some of the main things she learned along the way. You can check out Tracey's website at TraceyBianchi.com and follow her on twitter at @traceybianchi.

As always, you can check out the podcast in itunes or listen directly on the site by using the player below.

(Note: you'll need to give the player below a few moments to load up.)

Thanks again Tracey.

Podcast Episode Six - What can a project manager learn from programming?

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Wicklander) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 17:09:00 +0000

In my latest podcast I opted not to interview anyone, but instead talk about what I've learned so far from trying to learn Ruby on Rails. I talk a bit about feeling like I'm learning how to use a computer all over again, feeling somewhat more empowered, and how different people have been willing to help me with the project. As always you can listen right on the blog, or you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

I hope you enjoy the episode.

Podcast Episode Five - What can a project manager learn from a chef?

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Wicklander) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 13:41:00 +0000

In this podcast episode of "What can a project manager learn from X?" I interview Dale Levitski, Executive Chef of Sprout Restaurant in Chicago and Season 3 Top Chef runner-up on Bravo's wildly popular TV show.

We talked about the creative process involved with making a new dish, the challenges involved with running a restaurant, and the process of training new chefs, and a host of other things. I had a blast doing this interview with Dale and am really grateful that he took the time to sit down with me.

Dale also writes and video blogs on The Sprout Crowd, which has quickly become one of the most popular food blogs in the city of Chicago.

I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did and can take something away from it that can help you better manage your projects, run your business, make your music, write your software or whatever it is that you're working on.

As always, you can listen right here on this blog, or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Thanks again Dale!

Podcast Episode 4 - Announcing Version One for Everyone

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Wicklander) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 07:11:00 +0000

I'm announcing today a new service that is going to be provided by Ideal Project Group, and I'm calling it Version One for Everyone - which I'll also refer to as v1.4e1. I'm really excited about it. So much so that in addition to announcing it on this blog, I've also put up a special podcast episode where I discuss the reasoning behind providing this service in more detail. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes, or simply listen to the episode at the bottom of this post.

As regular readers of this blog know, Ideal Project Group has, until now, focused almost exclusively on providing project management services for a variety of organizations. In these engagements, we generally work inside a company to manage important projects, work with their people, coordinate with vendors and business partners, and drive a project to completion. We will still be doing this, and it is still a vital component of our business.

During the course of running our core business though, we've learned a tremendous amount about the web, technology, design and a host of other things. Most importantly, we've learned a lot about some great tools that can allow anyone to quickly and easily deploy amazing web solutions. Of course, you have to know about these tools, learn how to use them, and then implement them to launch your business, or service.

After listening to some very compelling reasons as to why businesses should spend time focusing on their by-products (another 37Signals inspiration/reminder), and recognizing that various friends and family members have asked me to build websites for them, I realized that I've been sitting on everything I needed to provide another service. I've gathered a ton of knowledge, and have obtained a specific skill-set that I could use to help other people quickly launch websites, blogs, podcasts, social networks, and a variety of other web/technology related things such as online payment solutions, web forms, and other things of that nature.

It took me a little while to get comfortable with this idea. I've worked within technology departments for so long as a project manager that my perception of reality had become a bit skewed. First, when you're an IT project manager, the default position is that the developers, data base administrators, and others are the resident experts in their field. As a PM, you're an expert - but in something else than the people actually creating a product. The other thing that happens when working within technology departments for a while is you begin to assume that everyone knows how to do what you're able to do. After all, I'm not a developer - I help developers. So if this is true, then everyone knows how to build a website with WordPress, publish a podcast, or integrate a simple e-commerce solution with PayPal right?

Wrong.

The truth is there's a huge percentage of the population that doesn't know a thing about some of the tools that are available to build websites. And, it's also true that I've become an expert of sorts on the web. Do I still have a lot to learn? Absolutely. But that should always be the case should it not?

The other truth is that when someone goes to a web design firm to have a website made, they often get a proposal for something that's going to cost $10,000 or more. For a lot of businesses, this cost is worth it. For others though, it's not. And if you're just getting started, your website should absolutely not be one of your biggest expenses.

The alternative is to learn how to make a nice looking site with Blogger or Wordpress or another similar solution. For some people this is great; it's exactly what I did for my business. But here's the other truth that people in technology forget sometimes: Not everyone wants to learn how to do this or spend time doing it.

A lot of times, surgeons and eye doctors don't want to learn HTML. Chefs often don't want to learn how to find, download and install Blogger templates. An outdoors outfitter may not want to spend time integrating an online reservation and payment solution.

It seems to me that there's a need for great web solutions, that can be implemented quickly with tools that already exist by someone that knows how to use them. If a developer needs to be brought in to hook things together, or customize a few things then that's great. But building everything from scratch is not the solution most people need.

So this is the new service we're going to provide. The aim is that for a really reasonable price we should be able to create and deploy a great web solution for most small businesses. We're beginning by outlining a few things we can create such as websites, blogs and podcasts, along with basic web services like setting up email addresses, domain handling and that kind of think. It may even grow into a sort of outsourced tech department kind of thing. I don't know where it'll go exactly, but this is where we're going to start.

You can get more details on this new service at http://v1.4e1.idealprojectgroup.com.

If you or someone you know wants to get a great website, podcast, or something else on the web up and running quickly, I hope you'll consider sending them our way.

Podcast Episode Three - What can a project manager learn from the director of human rights projects?

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Wicklander) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:32:00 +0000

Daniel Rothenberg is the Managing Director of International Projects for the International Human Rights Law Institute at DePaul University's College of Law, and he was kind enough to join me for Project Idealism's second full podcast.

Daniel oversees numerous Human Rights projects, and in this episode the primary topic of our discussion is The Iraq History Project. Taking a victim centered approach to documenting various Human Rights violations under Saddam Hussein’s regime, this project is one of the largest independent human rights data collection and analysis projects in the world

We discuss how a project of this size got going, how interviewers were recruited and trained, how the stories of victims were shared, and how that information was carried through Iraq - often times without power and always without internet access - to offices in Northern Iraq.

Daniel shares some fascinating information about the specifics of their project and provides numerous lessons not only for project managers or those in business, but anyone interested in how amazing people do amazing work.

Daniel has been a guest on NPR's Worldview, and is also the author of With These Hands: The Hidden World of Migrant Farmworkers Today.

I truly can't thank Daniel enough for his participation with the Project Idealism podcast.

Podcast Episode Two - What can a project manager learn from an artist?

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Wicklander) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 23:09:00 +0000

In this podcast episode of "What can a project manager learn from X?", I explore what a project manager can learn from an artist. I interviewed Harry Sidebotham, an artist who lives in Chicago, and we touched on how he goes from having an idea to a finished painting, the process involved in doing so, how he prices his work, and his advice for how to deal with other people's opinions.

Harry's paintings are amazing. You can check out a bunch of his work on his website at http://harrysidebotham.blogspot.com.

As always, you can subscribe to this podcast in iTunes or in any RSS reader. For those of you inclined to listen right from this site, you can simply click on the audio player below.

I sincerely hope you enjoy the show and would love to hear your thoughts.

Podcast Episode One - An Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Wicklander) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:43:00 +0000

I'm pretty excited to announce today that I have started a podcast. All episodes will be added right to this blog so you shouldn't need to modify any of your settings to hear the individual episodes. You'll also be able to subscribe to the Podcast in iTunes in a couple days after it's been approved by the folks over at Apple. The concept behind this show is "What can a project manager learn from X?"

"X" can be anything from a chef, to a professor, to a firefighter. The idea is that project managers and other professionals can learn a lot from these amazing individuals, the things they are creating, and the problems they are solving. Not normally considered "projects", they can teach us a lot about the projects we are managing and the businesses we are running.

In addition to listening to the show in iTunes or an RSS reader, I'll embed the file right here as well so you can listen to it right from one of my posts.