Building a site for people with big imaginations

I set up the talk by presenting the issues that come with web development, which are usually new product development issues. Basically you don’t know what you are building until you build it, so embrace the unknown and plan for it. Even in a sea of change there are things that help you get to market, these include:

1. Good People – look for proactive people who communicate well
2. Good Tools – there are lots of great tools that help get things done quickly and cheaply, so use them
3. Simple Development process – use an agile methodology, they are well thought out but hard to get right
4. Ship it – if you don’t ship code, you don’t have a product
5. Fun – make work fun if you want keep your people and get the most out of them (and you!)

A pretty simple premise really, but it amazing me how easy it is to get this wrong. Usually I see companies get good people and then give them good tools and build a really overweight process around them so it is impossible to push software out of the organization. It’s a hard problem and this is why successful web apps (and software in general) actually comes about.

If you did see my talk then please leave a comment, I’d love to hear what you thought of it. But if you didn’t I’m also interested in your thoughts on my uploaded presentation.

If anyone has any photos of my presentation I’d love to get a copy – it appears that the official photographer was in the other room during my talk.