Corvus Consulting

If you weren’t at BarCamp Vancouver just over a week ago, you likely didn’t hear about the little product jam session that Darren and I kicked off that fine Saturday.

The gist was simple: there are people coming to Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics who need a place to stay, and there are people who live here who’d rather spend the event somewhere else, and want to rent their place out. Surely there’s a lucrative web enterprise waiting to be born of this happy circumstance? At the session we talked feasibility and high level requirements, and it went well, as you can see from our notes (props to Julie Szabo, by the way, for driving the whiteboard to help us capture the ideas).

There was enough interest to spin off a project-specific wiki, and we’ve snagged the big meeting room at WorkSpace tomorrow evening to continue creating a project scope and to see if a motley crew can put together something cool. The fun starts at 7 sharp.

It takes all types to get this kind of project off the ground, so it’s a come-one, come-all invitation, with one rule calling for constructive participation. If this sounds interesting, come on out.

In June I began working with DreamBank, a Yaletown based startup with a unique idea for reducing waste in gifting by using the social web. By posting a dream, members describe something they truly want as a gift, usually for an upcoming event like a birthday or wedding. Bringing friends and family to the dream, the dreamer can collect contributions towards the goal, foregoing the ‘buy something and hope they like it’ route. It also saves a shopping trip or 10 for those who make their contribution through the DreamBank.

That’s what I’d tell you in the elevator. Others have already blogged about DreamBank and painted a more detailed picture (youtube), and the website itself is generously self-explanatory.

DreamBank’s social model places a high value on being inspired by each other, with lots of opportunities to come across and keep in touch with the aspirations of other dreamers. I’ve been pitching in through product management role, and in early July we went from internal alpha to a well-received beta.

What stands out the most about DreamBank for me is the straightforward focus on creating beneficial outcomes on both small and larger scales. It happens at the personal level by reducing waste and guesswork in gift-giving while making it more collaborative. Across its community and beyond, DreamBank truly embraces a win-win-win business model; for each contribution towards a dreamer’s gift, members benefit by getting a bit closer, DreamBank benefits by sustaining and growing with transaction surcharges, and a charitable organization chosen by the dreamer receives a contribution from each dream.

The balance of positive benefits is more than a stated goal; it’s built into the core of what DreamBank does. As such. it really works to realize the promises of making a better world through the web. It’s one thing to bring people together and hope they do something good when they meet, but it’s something different, and I think more promising, to build that intention into everything you do. With that, I think DreamBank can go far.

But for now it’s the hard work of beta, the excitement of seeing early members explore and try out the service, and being able to work with the DreamBank team. As a bonus, I’m glad to be working again with Darren and Julie of Capulet Communications. It’s been great having them back in the Vancouver area, and to put our heads together on an innovative and interesting product.

Just a quick posting here to help a new client find a solid, intermediate-level LAMP developer. If you know someone who fits the bill, send them our way.

Here’s the posting:

Can you dream big while keeping your feet on the ground? DreamBank, a Vancouver-based 6-person web startup is seeking an intermediate-level LAMP developer to join our team.

Working from our Yaletown office, you’ll join the senior developer in maintaining and growing our brand-new web serivce. With a focus on making dreams come true, working with DreamBank will present opportunities to both brighten your portfolio and make the world a better, happier place. We’re a tight team that communicates well while working with passion and determination. DreamBank offers a basic renumeration package to start, and have a roadmap for significant growth that we want you to be a part of.

Can you fill that seat? If you think so, contact us at gro.knabmaerdnull@ofni with a letter of introduction and links to live, viewable projects you’ve worked on. No resumes, please.

I thought that the winter/spring conference blitz was over, but one more caught my attention today, and I couldn’t say no. Open Web Vancouver, complete with a dual-logo of green jellyfish and red pirate skull, is coming mid-April. Like Northern Voice, this 2-day event is a low-cost local gem, for just $150 (I added $20 for a jellyfish t-shirt).

The sessions are fairly programmer-centric, but there’s more than enough for the softer side of open web development. I was going to jot down the sessions I’m planning to take in, but realized that typing all that out is for chumps in the age of Skitch. I’ve marked up the and schedules to show my choices.

If you’re interested in open web tech and the people behind it, this one seems too good to pass up.

In February I’ll be wrapping up full-time involvement with Ma.gnolia, my longest and, by far, the most fulfilling gig to date as an indie contractor. I’ll still be a member of the Ma.gnolia community, and I have a couple side projects going with Ma.gnolia’s founder and my close friend, Larry Halff. I’m very proud of what we’ve built in Ma.gnolia, all the way from its inception through design, launch and the growth of a smart and friendly web community.

Almost every assumption I’ve held about application design and how people connect through the web has been challenged or changed by this project, and I like to think I’ve grown quite a lot from the experience. I also learned to wear and quickly change hats: on any given day I’d be manning the front-line of member support, talking with the Ma.gnolia community, designing new features and evolving existing designs, writing newsletters, co-managing development tasks, and of course keeping that classic sense of humor in play. Insert dreamy, retrospective montage here, perhaps set to a Jack Johnson tune.

Since we started Ma.gnolia, so much has changed, and there’s still a long way to go. The walls between websites that were once taken for granted have crumbled significantly with the rise of APIs, OpenID, Microformats, OAuth and the widening adoption of web standards. Software designers and even some business are seeing and serve the fact that people don’t act as atomic units, but as members of social groups where the relationship trumps all. Things change, and yet somehow feel familiar.

My role as Ma.gnolia’s product manager has introduced me to many interesting and honestly good people, and provided the chance to work with some very talented folks. The new perspectives and methods I took away from those contacts that have proven themselves over and over. Chris Messina and Tara Hunt of Citizen Agency, specifically, have profoundly changed how I think about many aspects of my work, from feature design to business policies to the right and wrong ways to engage with online communities. In a way, it’s been like a graduate course in web app design and product management.

What’s next? As I mentioned, I’ll still be hanging around the Ma.gnolia community. I’ve also begun some work with the Citizen Agency crew, and will be looking to engage more with the Vancouver development scene. Though I enjoy working in distributed teams, I think the soul does best when there’s more face-to-face interaction in the mix, so I’m really looking forward to that. But most of all, I’m excited about being able to bring what I learned in working with Ma.gnolia to new projects, taking that flower power far and wide.

Hey all y’all Vancouver web geeks, we’re doing a northern version of the Ma.gnolia birthday party here in Van this Thursday, March 22. This is really short notice, but if you can make it to Gastown around 6pm, then we’d love to have you stop by.

Details are, of course, bookmarked at Ma.gnolia.

In the absence of the time to write something substantial this week, I’ve opted for a two-part budget blog post.

The first part is for Mac Mail users. I discovered by accident today that you can change the highlight colour of any mail message or entire thread. Just open the colour palette, select the messages to highlight and pick your colour of choice. Voila, instant colour coding.

What’s interesting about this hidden gem of a feature is that it enables a simple form of a process (categorization) that most software would make more involved. It allows for ad-hoc categorization without any kind of setup, much like tagging systems do. Users can easily formulate and recall coding systems of 7 or so items, typically indicating priority or a workflow step, without having to articulate that system to the software in some kind of category setup. It’s the perfect example of ‘just enough’, and reflective of some deep thinking on the part of Mail’s designers (but not too deep).

The second part of this budget post is to let you know that I’ll be at Web Directions North on behalf of Ma.gnolia, and joined by Larry Halff, Ma.gnolia’s founder. If you see us around be sure to say hi.