This is fantastic.

As for how to write well, here’s the short version: Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can; rewrite it over and over; cut out everything unnecessary; write in a conversational tone; develop a nose for bad writing, so you can see and fix it in yours; imitate writers you like; if you can’t get started, tell someone what you plan to write about, then write down what you said; expect 80% of the ideas in an essay to happen after you start writing it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong; be confident enough to cut; have friends you trust read your stuff and tell you which bits are confusing or drag; don’t (always) make detailed outlines; mull ideas over for a few days before writing; carry a small notebook or scrap paper with you; start writing when you think of the first sentence; …

Keep reading, it gets even better: Writing, Briefly.

Product and services documentation is now a core business asset that can drive revenues.

If your business hasn’t been paying attention to your documentation, you’re ignoring a sales tool and a revenue generator and you need to rethink your priorities.

Forbes just published an article I wrote on the importance of product and services documentation in driving top-line revenue, decreasing support costs and increasing customer satisfaction. It’s a good read regardless of your discipline. Let me know what you think.

That was a fun night. 🙂

Today I was flattered by an interview at OpenSource.com the Red Hat community news site.

One misguided fellow made the following comment about MindTouch:

That thing is not open source at all. On their site it says: “Software License: Shared Source”. As far as I know, that is code name for Microsoft quasi-open source licenses which are in conflict with section 6 (and some with 10 also) of open source definition.

What else to expect from ex-Microsofties…. openwashing.

I tried posting a comment, but Mollum is configured to disallow comments that trip it’s spam filter and I couldn’t.

So, here’s the response I was trying to post in reply to the above comment titled “Openwashing”.

Open washing? 🙂

MindTouch Core is released under GPL v2 but some components (MindTouch Dream) are released under Apache. Download here (Core is GPL2 and free). I write about Open Core here, which links to several other posts on the topic.

The gist is, you can think of MindTouch Core as an up-stack app server that is specialized in collaboration. MindTouch 2009/2010 is a commercial product built atop MindTouch Core. MindTouch 2009/2010 is designed to be the killer app for strategic (product and service) documentation.

I’m confident most, if not all readers, readers at OpenSource.com have used MindTouch before. For example, the Mozilla Developer Network is powered by MindTouch. There are many other documentation bases that are powered by MindTouch including those for Zmanda, Fonality, RightScale, Intel, Microsoft, Intuit, ExactTarget, AutoDesk, EMC and many others.

Anyway, GPL v2 and Apache…not open washing. 🙂

Perhaps someone at OpenSource.com can help me post this comment.

March, 7 was the San Diego Gran Fondo. They advertise: “it’s a ride, not a race”. Meaning, the roads are not cleared and you’re expected to obey traffic laws. I cycled the 53 mile route.

Click on map for interactive version

The weather was horrible. I arrived at the starting line a little after 6 AM expecting the Fondo to start at 7 AM as was posted. Rather the start wasn’t until 7:25 AM at which time groups of 200 were released to start. I didn’t get started until about 30 minutes later.

The conditions were awful. I was soaked through before I crossed the starting line. My toes, ears and fingers were numb ten miles in. This made changing my flat at mile 19 challenging. I gave up on changing it myself after I broke my tool for stripping the rubber off the rim. Thankfully, I managed to hitch a ride from a surfer back to the aid station a mile back and had it fixed at the Colnago sponsored support station. It seemed every mile there was, at least, one cyclist with a flat. Perhaps this is typical, but the Fondo being my first organized ride I’m not sure if this is more or less than usual.

The best part of the ride was through Otay Ranch where clouds packed the peaks of the Otay preserve. It was gorgeous. Shortly after Otay I somehow managed to detour off course. It took me ten miles to weave my way through traffic in old Chula Vista and National City to get back on course. In the end my detour added five miles to my ride and I cycled 58 miles in 3 hours and 35 minutes.

The Gran Fondo was very well organized. The aid stations were stocked with helpful support persons who braved the elements alongside those of us cycling with a smile. My only complaint: mark the course with more signs. The only signs I saw were at turns and often there was only one small sign. The organizers should mark the course intermittently with signs (not only at turns) and when there is a turn there really should be a few signs to mark the turn. I am certain I wasn’t the only person who veered off course as I heard several others complaining about how poorly marked it was.

All in all, the Grand Fondo was great fun, even with the horrible weather. Sign On San Diego has a write up about the event. I am considering the Sea Otter Classic Gran Fondo in Monterrey next month, but I’m not certain my work schedule will permit this.

We moved to new offices last weekend. Our last intergalactic HQ was woefully small for how large we’ve grown.

Previous MindTouch HQ at 555 West Beech St. San Diego 92103

In our last offices we did everything ourselves: networking, wiring, PBX (Trixbox) etc… It really showed.

This is Sarah’s desk. Throughout the office cables
hung from the ceiling

In the “Fishbowl”, a conference room, we had a NAS device whirring so loudly you have to shout to be heard.

We had so many people packed into the 5th floor (main) office that for lack of space I was sharing a conference room with Mark as an office. We turned a storage closet into a conference room, hence the name “the closet”. And Roy was holding conference calls in the reception area daily. Worst of all, I’m a little embarrassed to report that we’ve had so many bodies packed into such a small place the place smelled a little funky. Or maybe is was our old fridge that stunk regardless of how much we cleaned it.

Engineering had more space than any other department;
so, the above photo is not indicative of the tight confines.

Yesterday, Monday February 1, MindTouch moved to a new space, two block away from our last, in Columbia Center. It’s twice the size of our previous offices. To commemorate the occasion the sales and engineering team wore suits. I had meetings in San Mateo and missed the affair, but Roy shot some photos and posted them at his blog.

Maxim Mass and Roy Kim discussing pork futures.

Tim O’Brien undoubtedly closing a new customer. 

The new office is located across the street from the W Hotel and is half a block from Carl Strauss. We’ll be hosting an office warming party in the near future. I’m looking forward to entertaining on our amazing patio.

Photo of the MindTouch offices taken from the patio. Above are the conference and training rooms.

Last year I was in a nasty cycling accident. Scans of my brain uncovered a benign tumor. Well, more precisely a colloid cyst, which I named Lil Craig. I had new scans taken last month. Good news and bad news. First, the bad. Lil Craig is no longer with us. RIP. Our time together was so short. Good news is, of course, I no longer have a growth in my melon.

I requested copies of both the original and recent brain CT scans. Scripps denied my request. Then I asked again, this time even more nicely. They agreed.

The before photos:

and the after photos:

I don’t see Lil Craig in either set! Do you? I thought these would be pretty exciting, but I was disappointed. I will tell what is way more exciting than I expected. The CT Scan of my torso.

Now that is awesome.

Last week Tara and I took the kids to Disneyland for Ashby’s 4th birthday. We stayed two nights and thanks to a friend who works at Pixar we had our hotel for a fraction of the price. The whole trip was nothing short of magical for Ashby and the entire family.

I was amazed by the quality of service and professionalism at the park. I had not been to Disneyland since I was about 10 years old. It was the first time for everyone else. I’m excited to return.

Photo slideshow.

I spent the last two days with the MindTouch executive team. While sequestered in an undisclosed location in San Diego we plotted another year of remarkable success in 2010.

MindTouch 2010 executive offsite. Left to right: me in my favorite Debian tshirt, Mark Fidelman, Rion Morgenstern.

2009 was another great year for MindTouch. I love my work. We achieved most of the milestones that we set out for the company at the beginning of the year. We even hit some stretch goals out of the park. We more than doubled our annual revenue and revenue growth was not the most important achievement of 2009. I’ll be posting a year in review on the MindTouch blog later this week.

MindTouch has been enormously successful in driving adoption of our software, in generating revenue and in building a recognizable and respected brand. There are many factors that have contributed to our success, not least of which is our brilliance of mind and modesty ;-), but I want to share some of the less obvious.

Set and communicate goals and expectations. At MindTouch we do this top-down by setting annual and quarterly initiatives. These are high level goals not projects. People prefer to think in terms of projects rather than overarching initiatives. Thinking at project level makes it impossible to manage forward progress, guarantees distraction and restricts you to the tactical when you need to be strategic.

Once you’ve established your goals then define how success is measured. Once you’ve done this the projects you need to execute on and how you prioritize them is obvious. And you’ve created a system for tracking and measuring success. Everyone likes success. This reminds me of something I read as a kid: the answers are easy, it’s finding the right questions to ask that is difficult. 

This slide is from Mark Fidelman’s slide deck. With which he asserted: "Fuck strategy #2, I removed it"

Measure. If you can’t measure it you probably wasted your time. How do you know your resources were well spent? We measure and track damn near everything at MindTouch. This includes individual, departmental and corporate wide performance. In the last 72 hours I’ve examined dozens of key performance indicators (KPIs) of each department and the company as a whole. I have reviewed a hundred graphs and charts visualizing various aspects of our business. This includes several lead funnel conversions, site traffic analytics, ~20 views on revenue alone, software distribution and installation, customers (10 different ways), even individuals at MindTouch are examined to determine how we can improve. We make very informed decisions and we have a deep understanding of the mechanics of our business.

While MindTouch is a highly data-driven company not all business models can achieve the same level as we have. Personally, I don’t know that I will ever be interested in building a business that can’t be as data-driven as we are. Even in less data-driven models there are ways to track and measure performance, I encourage all entrepreneurs to do so, you’ll be better for it.

A side note, nothing pisses me off more than colleagues who make statements based on assumptions without, at least, anecdotal information to back it up. Commonly these are the same people who stubbornly cling to ideas even after data has proven them wrong. It is a demonstration of either laziness or stupidity.

Beware false KPIs. A common mistake of companies and people who wish to become data driven is that they’ll track for the sake of tracking. Meaning, they won’t actually measure anything useful. Be sure to set goals and measure the success of these goals.

This is the actual revenue graph for MindTouch

Love your coworkers. To say I care for my coworkers is an understatement. I love my coworkers, even those that piss me off. Seriously, you don’t have to like your colleagues, but you do have to love them. Some ways we express our love at MindTouch:

• Superlative benefits.
• Equity in the company.
• Honesty, Improvement and Pride. This requires its own blog post to communicate. 
• Every MindToucher has $600 a quarter to spend on professional development: classes, conference, books, etc. This is paid by the company.

In short, I want my coworkers to be the best human beings they can be. Professionally and personally. I will help them in any way I can to achieve this and MindTouch has done a good job of systematizing this.

Love what you do. If you do not love what you do you will never be great at it. Also, If you don’t love your work I don’t want to work with you. Not just because you won’t be great at it, but also because you’re a downer. Do whatever it is you love because life is too short to waste on bullshit, even if it pays less.

Four guys who absolutely love what they do. Left to right: Timo, Cote, Jevon and Aaron.

Few people know this about me, but I love to cook. I cooked for many years when I was a young backpacking dharma bum. I even received accolades in culinary magazines. I helped to open four restaurants (three successful) and I held positions as sous chef and executive chef. I worked as a cook from the ripe age of 17 to 24. I loved it. It was creative and fast paced. I had the flexibility to travel. Every several months I spent weeks on end camping or months on the road. Moreover, I had a lot of time with the people I love. Sure, my clothes came from Goodwill, my cars never exceeded $500 (American K-cars are awesome) and I didn’t live with the amenities I do now, but damn I was happy. If I didn’t love what I was doing I would, in a heartbeat, move my family to a resort town, like Ely MN, Meta Italy or somewhere in Costa Rica and live a simple life as a lowly cook. I wouldn’t have as much stuff, but I would still be happy. Do you work for stuff or because you love your work? Don’t work for stuff.

Surround yourself with people that love what they’re doing. It makes work fun and it increases the likelihood that your team will be incredibly effective. This alone usually nearly guarantees monetary success.

Follow all four of these tenants if you want to increase your odds at achieving monetary success. However, if all you take away from this blog post is the following two things:

1. love your coworkers,
2. and love what you do 

than you are guaranteed success. Perhaps not monetary, but you will be happier.