Twas the night before Christmas, it was 2008

I was looking forward to the next year I knew it would be great….

But the year started slow, the economy tanked…

Luckily paroon had planned and we had plenty banked!

Then came powwow, conference of the year

What an amazing turnout we had, with customers smiling ear to ear!

As the summer continued we soon found out, Karissa and Preeti were pregnant throughout!

Dave and Andy struggled with sales, Sarah saved the day and we all hailed….

As fall came, Chuck and George buckled down…

The new form builder module was preparing to astound!

Then there’s matt, clever as a cat…

Busily making Verona resound like a bell, as he furiously codes like a bat out of hell!

One of our newest developers, his name is ning,

He surprises us every day, you should check out his Chinese version of bing!

We were sad to see Bill and Manan leave, but we all remember them as we gather here this eve…

And we always appreciate Gail, Anne and Kim for without them, there’s no way we could win…

Shane and Nathan always fun in the hall, I’m ever grateful they showed me how to paintball

My office was pranked and I said boo, I asked all around but never found out who…

I suspected Chuck and Nick, and covered their desks in foil real thick…

As everyone knows, I’m bound to get even…if I were you I’d watch out…Steven. J

As the new year approaches and the economy turns around, Stephanie and Tim’s excitement already makes us all…jump up jump up and get down!

Janet is on the phone with customers all day, we love your work and wouldn’t ask for it any other way

Awesome having everyone here tonight as we dine, what a year it’s been in 2009

What a difference it makes between now and then, we look forward to starting off great in 2010!

Cheers to Passageways, what a company we are, with all our might…

Merry Christmas to ya’ll and have a good night!

Twas the night before Christmas

and everyone was there,

all through the new basement, none of Sarah’s Christmas lights yet needed a replacement.

And all through the hall, Tim’s Rock Band Magic was heard all the way up in the financial mall.

danced not a developer home, not a donut left untouched, this place called Passageways must love us a whole bunch.

Not a coffee machine was out, our new employee Chuck smiled as Passageways rocked, no doubt!

And all through the hall, Steven and Tim were having a ball. When we work we conquer the highest hills. When we goof off we enjoy Tim’s’ rock band skills.

Shane dimmed the lights as Charles locked up his desk,
A couple days off and a well-deserved rest;

And all through the hall, everyone was laughing and having a ball

The computers were silent, their screen savers dim, the latest copy of Photoshop had just arrived for Kim.

The customers were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of their new portal danced in their heads.

Shane in his shorts, and I in my suede, had just hunkered down for a server upgrade.

When out in the staircase there arose such a clatter, Lee sprung from his desk to see what was the matter!

Away to the staircase he flew like a flash, forgetting his badge in his curious dash!

He stood in the hallway and looked all about, when the door slammed behind him locking him out.

He looked for a miracle from a man like St. Nick, No one was there not even our newly married Nick.

He stood there and thought to himself, Stephanie jokes and brings customers on board…

While Steven flies around and enjoys free room and board!

When we work we conquer the highest hills. When we goof off we enjoy Tim’s’ rock band skills.

When what to his wondering eyes would appear,

But a bunch of sales and support guys all full of beer!

Now Andy! Now Sarah! Now Anne and Tim! On Dave, On Anna, Karissa and Kim!

To the top of the market, to the top of them all!

Now Dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!

You see, we can always count on Anne solving problems and jumping through hoops, until she finds a bug then I say oops!

Congratulate Anna on her newly earned degree,

She’s sure to have a holiday filled with glee!

Matt and Manan, they really are quite the pair

Shaun, should we give them a mac book air?!

And there, in the twinkling, I heard George and Chuck, the phrases and cheers of the code no longer running amuck,

as I thought in my head and was turning around, they threw in another build and jumped up with a bound!

They sprang with their cool software, Matt cheered and pulled a muscle, and away they all flew with their hustle and bustle!

I thought to myself, a Special Thanks to Gail and Bill,

For making Passageways anything but, run of the mill!

Last but not least I must think about Paroon

He who walks on his hands

And shoots for the moon

He’s been like a brother to me and all of us

I wished him a safe trip to India, having fun over there is a must!

Awesome having everyone here tonight as we dine,

We look forward to starting off great in 2009!

Cheers to passageways, what a company we are, with all our might,

Merry Christmas to all of you and have a good night!

Passion can be found in business, software, and even food as I recently discovered...

Remarkable.  It’s the one word I use when I experience something that is truly worth “writing home about”.  That word is appropriate to describe a recent restaurant experience I had with my wife during our 1^st Anniversary trip to Las Vegas.  The both of us watch the Food Network often and had seen an interesting episode of Top Chef featuring the “Chef of the Century” Joel Robuchon.   Neither of us had ever heard of him.  The thing that stood out from this particular show was the way every contestant and the judges reacted when he entered the room.  Sitting in our living room watching the show, filled with culinary masters in types of cooking and publications like Wine Spectator Magazine and Food & Wine, we were in awe to see everyone so nervous and in awe of Mr. Robuchon.  We knew this guy had to be extra special in the culinary world. 

Joel Robuchon is apparently world renowned for his talent and artistry in innovative French Cooking.  He apparently retired in the late 90s only to open his only restaurant in the United States in Las Vegas.  He apparently stunned most food critics by opening in Vegas rather than New York or Los Angeles or other food hub.  Apparently, once his place opened at MGM, Vegas began to attract high-end restaurants and now sports plenty of top names including Emerils, Wolfgang Puck, and Fleur De Lys from Chef Hubert Keller. 

So, when it came to our first anniversary trip, I was very interested to visit this restaurant and see what all the attention was about.  I had read online in the weeks prior that their pastry chef in particular was pretty incredible.  So, during our trip I made reservations at the Joel Robuchon Restaurant at MGM Grand. 

I had no idea what the both of us were in for.  This experience would prove to be the most astonishing dinner experience of both our lives.

Both Sonia and myself have had many dining experiences at some of the best restaurants in the country and abroad.  We are fortunate enough in our lives that we work hard and save a lot in order to make experiences like that possible.  We also really enjoy fun life-changing experiences and so we choose to spend our money when we can on those.  This turned out to be a good choice.

The first thing that was nice is that the restaurant offers complimentary limo service wherever you are in town to and from dinner.  That was cool and a nice perk, but your entire world changes as soon as those giant glass doors open and the hostess brings you into their world.  The restaurant is located right within the MGM casino so it’s loud and smoky and there are all sorts of things going on.  The restaurant’s façade sport two enormous giant glass doors that open into a small atrium where perhaps the most courteous and best hostess I have ever met greets you and welcomes you.  Immediately you notice the entire restaurant is extraordinarily quiet and not smoky.  You also notice that all of a sudden all the stress of walking and being out and about seemingly melts away. 

We were seated right away and a corner plush blue velvet table.  Attendants arranged our belongings, and settled us into our beautiful seating arrange filled with plush pillows, an enormous amount of individual space and a perfect view overlooking the entire restaurant.  The entire place by the way only seats about 15 parties, with 6 tables seating for 2 so the place is small.  The music playing is classical, the volume of everyone talking is incredible.  You can talk and laugh and have a great time and not get interrupted by everyone else’s talking.  The room is filled with brilliant chandeliers and elegant arrangements.

There was no formal waiter throughout the evening.  Rather, roughly 12 attendants tended to everyone in the single room.  Everyone had a very specific set of specialties.  For example, I was not familiar with how to pair the French food with what wines and I was curious for a recommendation.  After asking in the beginning, the attendant immediately summoned a wine specialist who very nicely paired several for me and mentioned I wasn’t under any etiquette or taste obligations to pair anything with every course.  I ended up pairing only 2 items.

Then dinner began and one of the attendants brought out an impressive bread display featuring over 35 types of bread made only a few hours ago.  She then asked us to select any or all of them to try.  We selected maybe 8 and she promptly went into the kitchen to heat them for us.  That bread was simply impeccable.  Delicious crunch and the variety of flavors were amazing.

After about 20 minutes of just enjoying the bread, we placed our order.  The menu is ridiculous and contains tons of items I had never heard about and includes up to an astounding 16 courses!  But I was determined to enjoy so I tried plenty of things. 

To begin, they bring you a delicious small tin of caviar on top, a layer of crab meat underneath, and a layer of fennel at the bottom.  You dip your fork in all the way and bring all three layers into your mouth.  I had had caviar before but had never been a fan.  I was a fan of this blend for sure.

One thing we noticed about every single course was that the dish in which the course was served was matched perfectly to the food, color, texture and all!  During one dessert for example, there were red chocolate flowers on the dessert and there the exact red-colored roses on the plate and red sand underlying the topmost plate (that dessert had several layers of dishes!).  I later learned that each plate takes roughly 25 minutes just to prepare not counting the actual cooking!

Sonia had a salad that looked more like a cool childs toy than food but ended up being very good!  It was basically a single tomato slice with some amazing stuff on it and a dish to the side with a crystal clear jam-like substance covered in very small dots of fresh mozzarella cheese.  It was quite a beautifully prepared dish and we ended up taking a picture of it.

During this time, we began to talk to some of the attendants as they were very friendly and also foodies.  One of them even had a friend who was a food stylist on the Food Network that we had seen so that was fun talking to her!  I commented that I heard the pastry chef Kamel Guechida was supposed to very good here.  She was excited to hear that and went to the back and brought him right out to meet us!   He really was very nice and pleased we were into the food.  I embarrassingly asked for a picture and he said he’d be happy to but only at the end of the meal.  He also invited us back to the kitchen for the photographs and to see firsthand what happens in the back!  We were absolutely thrilled to be invited by him, you rock Kamel!

For one course, I had ordered duck with apple and foie gras.  I had heard of this ingredient many times as it’s almost always used in the Top Chef plates but had never experienced it before.  I was determined to try this new ingredient I had not yet experienced.  The duck came out with a slide of apple and two mint leaves on it and something else that looked like meat as well.  I thought the two mint leaves were foie gras but then I learned (through a quick glance at my phone on Wikipedia) that it was in fact duck liver and that meat-looking thing was actually the famous gras.  I told myself, okay that sounds gross but looks amazing.  I decided to combine all 3 items as the attendants had described for us (thank you guys for doing that!).  As soon as the perfectly made duck combined with the apple and foie gras, my mouth exploded with flavor.  My face lit up and I could not believe what my palate was experiencing.  The combination was easily one of the best things I had ever eaten, period.  I’m now a huge fan of foie gras!

I could go on and on about this place, but it really is quite a dramatic transformational experience from a loud smoky casino into an elegant, nearly silent, total immersion of food that is so well cared for by everyone involved.  While in the kitchen, the over 40 chefs scurrying about were very conscious of such things as the draft from the hallways tainting the food.  In fact, there are no open flames anywhere in their kitchens, only infusion cooking!

We simply cannot wait to return, thank you to Kamel, Claude, and the rest of the crew that night, you all were simply fantastic and provided a truly amazing dinner experience!

http://twitter.com/beltranchris

Many of the things I think about when considering new software systems revolve around a central concept of connecting the value software provides as close as possible to the user consuming the value.  In my opinion, anything that stands between the code executing and the user enjoying the results of that execution is "friction".

There is a concept that many small software start-ups, and non-software start-ups oftentimes do not think about in their first few years of business.  While there are many things a small budding company needs to think about and usually only 1 or 2 people available to think about all of those things, having confidence enough in yourself to think about enormous scale is very important and can result in incredible cost-savings later on.

Designing a company with scale in mind can seem unnecessary when you only have 2-3 customers, especially because sometimes scale can mean having to give inconvenient news to customers like them having to log into a system to download an update.

The phrase "Distribution Friction" is a very important concept as it relates to how software products actually arrive to the user.  In the software industry today there are a lot of developing movements around removing as much distribution friction as possible.  Distribution Friction to me is anything that makes it slower for software to be used by the user. 

Examples of things that usually contribute to distribution friction are:

Direct Sales
Having direct salespeople is very personal and can results in great relationship-building, however it also means software takes longer to reach lots of users because individuals can only support a certain number of prospects at any one time.  Companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft have all empowered developers to cut out the physical salesperson by offering mechanisms ot bring applicatons to users.  Apple's App Store and Microsoft's XBox Development Program are great examples of systems designed to bring millions of apps to users directly without having to rely on physical salespeople at retail stores.  These systems can "sell" 24 hours a day anytime and anywhere.

Download Updates Websites
Websites online that offer the ability to download an update to software installed on your system slows down distribution enormously.  A great example of this are Microsoft IE Browser Updates.  Windows Update from Microsoft is terrific but many users don't use it and so wait to experience a bug, then resort to eventually downloading the patch online.  Google's Chrome insists on delivering updates to the user behind the scenes so the user enjoys the value of the update as fast as possible.

Installation Checklists
Many of our support teams who install our software products have these checklists that tell them about the "gotchas", manual tasks, and settings they need to make sure and check during an installation to ensure the software was installed correctly.  These checklists, and the time the installation person is taking to do them is friction and only causes the customer to wait further before they can begin to use the software.  It also introduces a manual set of tasks which introduces risks in the stability of the installation. 

Software developers need to consider this and to ask others to perform as few manual steps as possible when deploying their software.  The importance of great installers is a hugely important topic and is best spoken abotu in another article. 

At Passageways, one of the best systems I wrote in our first year of business was LiveUpdate.  I did not want to think about having to call each customer and manually update them each time we released a patch or fix.  At the time, I was responsible for quite a bit of daily operational tasks and I simply didn't have the time to update customers.  I did however want them to get the updates as early as possible and with as little chance of failure as possible.  LiveUpdate is a system that behaves very similar to Windows Update in that any of our financial institution customers can "scan" their corporate portals anytime.  The system, launched from a website we control, calls home to our servers and figures out what updates are needed.  The IT Administrator can elect to apply certain updates.  LiveUpdate automatically downloads the updates and applies them, however does ask that manual tasks like SQL Scripts be applied manually.

This single innovation at Passageways has enabled us to develop a large number of news products, keep our development staffing low, and has allowed us to deploy updates anytime to any portal located anywhere.  That is a very scalable system and one that has proved over 5 years that thinking ahead can dramatically reduce your distribution friction.

One of the newest initiatives at Passageways is Project Verona.  One design goal of this project is to reduce the distribution friction of information between organizations. 

Currently, within our customer base for example, people meet physically at our annual PowWow Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana.  After the conference, they usually want to connect and talk about what they learned and share best practices.  A system like Verona might allow them to connect to others in their industry right form their corporate portal.

Anyone starting a new business should think about scale from day one.  Everything from the format of your purchase agreement numbers to your software distribution systems should be thought of in terms of hundreds and thousands of customers, not just 1 or 2.  Once you establish these inital systems, you will be surprised how long they remain untouched in your company and how many many people come to rely upon them. 

Be Passionate about Your Company, Your Life, and Yourself!  Reduce that friction and provide the smoothest path for your customers to the value you provide!

Scrum is a terrific set of ideas for getting work done of any kind. It’s mostly used as one set of concepts in the Agile Software Development way of thinking! Here at Passageways, I introduced Agile several years ago as a way for us to better react to changing needs amongst customers and being able to nimbly address those needs rapidly, without compromising code quality and stability.

So part of our process is the idea of a scrum meeting. The origin of this comes from rugby and describes a situation in which the entire team interlocks their arms and attempts to move a ball in a single direction forward. This analogy works well for team-based projects where teams are trying to move the project in a common direction.

When teams get to be more than 2 people, there is a communication need that arises that if not done correctly can result in team members doing work that is not relevant and may eventually be thrown out because team members misinterpreted something or were not in sync with other team members. This can be very costly to the project, and in the case of software development, very expensive with developers being some of the most expensive resources in a software company.

The scrum meeting is designed to provide the team a scheduled forum in which to sync up quickly and keep things from going too far off the deep end. The basic idea is that the team decides on a specific time every day to meet. Generally, this is the first meeting of the day so possibly 8 or 9 a.m. Some general rules for the meeting format are outlined below:

Rules for a Scrum Meeting

• Should take place at the same time each day
• Timeboxed at 15 minutes maximum
• Every team member stands (no sitting allowed)
• Nothing is discussed, only answers to 3 questions are given (discussions and follow-up happen after the scrum finishes)
• Each team member answers the following 3 questions
• What I did yesterday
• What I plan to do today
• What obstacles are preventing me from doing my work

Keeping the meeting at 15 minutes ensures everyone listens and only answers their questions. The “why” for discrepancies is answered after the scrum meeting breaks up.

Alleviating Obstacles

Generally each team has a team lead or project lead. It is this person’s responsibility to listen to each member’s obstacles and then after the scrum finishes, to remove those obstacles. The primary role of the project lead is to remove obstacles so the team members can do their work and move the ball forward!

The idea of having this very informal scrum meeting each morning seems like a fun exercise but not one that will be productive….at first. Try it, you’ll be surprised how much more in sync your team becomes after doing this every single day throughout the project. Again, scrums are not status update meetings, but rather are sync-up and report meetings. Your team members will remain focused and will always be aware of what others are working on. That ball will move towards its goal faster and if you are the project lead, you’ll look amazing! Plus your team will like the experience and appreciate being kept in sync too!

Other Scrum Resources

http://www.controlchaos.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(development)

http://www.scrumalliance.org/

So this year, we once again made the Inc 5000 list! I was surprised to hear this but excited at the same time! Last year was our first entrance into this list and we made it into the Top 500 overall and Top 30 for Software Nationwide! That really excited us! Since the ranking are based on growth rates over several years, it’s very difficult to maintain high rates year after year so the list changes often and it’s common for companies to simply fall off the list right away. In a year like this, even though we’ve been doing well, I simply didn’t think we’d be on the list still, but there we ended up.

Focusing on high growth rates is something that is naturally somewhat foreign to software developers, but also built deep into our blood as well. Most developers focused on architecture of systems embed scalable ideas into everything they do. At Passageways for example, one of the earliest decisions I made was to separate the installation and deployment of our software from the development of it. So, we wrote an update system that would take care of deploying updates to any portal out there regardless of how many we had. This allowed us as a company to focus our dollars on scaling out the sales team and support staff and keep the developers busy writing new products and upgrading current versions of products. By allowing sales to focus on developing new markets and deploy large amounts of new products to a virtually unlimited market relative to where we were at the time 6 years ago, this was awesome.

There are so many new initiatives at Passageways, it’s great to see growth still be a center of what we do. I can only hope that our continued focus on the sales and partnership side and our incredible customer base will help continue to grow this very unique and interesting company!

http://www.lafayette-online.com/business/2009/08/inc-mag-2-prp-companies/

Over the last 6 years of leading the product development group of a successful software business, I’ve learned that every few years the group needs to take a look at their software factory and make some deep changes. At Passageways, we discovered several years ago that ago that our platform had much more potential than the add-on modules we were able to market. Many customers often requested add-on modules that we simply didn’t have time in our team schedule to do. While the platform does ship with a PDK, and many of our customers do use it, sometimes their developers simply don’t have the time or the organization itself just doesn’t have developers at all but are still willing to pay for the add-on module. So, Passageways introduced the idea of a consulting arm to help address these requests and it was immensely successful! Very quickly we learned though that building custom solutions for customers, sometimes very large solutions, and then selling multiple copies can confuse the market and our own staff as to what is a product and what is not.

At Passageways, we also began to reach a point where the number of enhancement requests and ideas was simply too much for the teams to handle in a reasonable period of time and we had to begin making tough choices and prioritize our work! For a small team of excited individuals, this can be more challenging than you might think! The realization that we simply can’t do it all and we may have to tell someone “no” is a very difficult thing for anyone running a business!

As you continue to grow, you also realize that your development teams have to keep up with the ever-changing technology marketplace and need to attend seminars and workshops so they are aware of what our industry is doing and can apply new technologies to the products they are creating.

So, there were a multitude of things happening all at once for us. So, I decided it was time to pump some energy-juice into our group and for the first time in our history, attempt to resolve every major problem area facing our development group today.

It’s important that developers feel like they are clear on what is expected of them, excited at trying new technologies, understand the focus of the business and its long-term strategy, and ultimately enjoy what they do day-to-day. It’s equally important that the rest of the company be clear on the progress development teams are making, what projects they are working on, and when to expect bugs and enhancements to be addressed, even if the answer is “we can’t get to that anytime soon”.

And so begins Project Rock and Roll….an attempt to make our software machine so focused on our business goals and really begin to once again knock the market out of the park! So far it’s been immensely successful and has not yet launched but stayed tuned as the launch approaches in the next few weeks!

In my short years as a software business owner, one thing I've learned is that in order to innovate and truly change the way large numbers of people think and conduct business is to first have the deepest of passions for what you do. In the software world, you have to first have the most basic fundamental understanding of how software operates its impact on the way someone interacts with a screen, and ultimately the benefits it can provide for a person. In developing new ways of businesspeople working together and bringing together organizations in new ways, some of the highest-selling products and the most popular features are always the ones that required the purest ways of thinking and feeling.

For example, one of the most used features in all of our products is a very small, out-of-the-box, island called a Rich Text Editor Island. The only thing this small application allows you to do is to place formatted text onto the screen to be shared with co-workers. It doesn’t have a fancy workflow attached to it or even stored past versions of its content; however it remains the most popular feature across our 15+ products used by over 40,000 people nationwide. The reason why this is our most highly used feature is that it plays to a very deep need we all have as human beings that we need to feel significant in some way and we need to feel certain about things. The certainty aspect relates to us needing to feel like we have the ability to publish a web page without having to know HTML or “codes” as MySpace users call them. The other attribute is our need to feel significant. By being able to easily publish formatted text on a screen and then share that with others, we automatically feel empowered. We are empowered to think of new ways of using this newfound power and it’s very exciting for a businessperson who is accustomed to only working in Microsoft Office most of the time.

Passion is what drives software designers to create the very core of our innovations. Google Groove, Google’s Search engine, Apple’s iPhone and more are all projects stemming from small tight-knit groups of very smart and practical people who had extremely high levels of passion for the problem they were trying to solve. These products and more solve very fundamental needs and as such have mass appeal and drive tremendous value towards the companies that created them. It is so much fun to create products that really make huge impacts and make businesspeople feel empowered by software, building on the passion of its creators.