Low and behold, our Summer Internship Program has started! We’re happy to welcome aboard Allyn, Robert, and Erin #2 (and arguably Andy, who started with us a few weeks prior).

We started day #1 at the ridiculously early time of 9 a.m. Allyn, Robert, and Erin #2 arrived and we chatted for a little bit about this and that. Without wasting too much time, we dived right into talking about the interns’ summer project – code named the “Feisty Piranha Project.”

What’s this Feisty Piranha all about?

We’ll be releasing more details about the project’s purpose, goal, and overall meaning soon, but for now, you can check out the Interns’ blog at FeistyPiranha.com.

Everyone get to Work!

By mid-afternoon, much was talked about and Dusty’s voice was pretty much gone, so everyone moved to their workstations to start hacking.

We set up our two programmer interns, Robert and Allyn, in our old conference room, which turns out to be a pretty sweet workspace.

Our two designers are in the main room with Dusty, Erin, and myself. Surprisingly, even with 7 people here in our 900 sq foot space, it’s not as crowded as we expected.

Some Photos…

First Meeting!

Andy / Erin #’2 Desks

Robert / Allyn’s Desks

Programmers’ Whiteboard!

Our Weeks of Preparation!

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been busy preparing for the arrival of our interns.

This involved a lot of planning about the project and how we’re going to run it, in addition to buying a bunch of awesome equipment.

Since we’re all about treating our developers/designers right, we purchased 4x new desks, chairs, MacBook Pro’s, 24” monitors, and various mice and keyboards, based on request.

We have no shortage of equipment around the office now. As an added benefit, we can just turn on our fleet of 24” monitors this winter instead of running the furnace ;-)

We had our hearts set on getting some fashionable new Ikea desks. However, the closest Ikea is in Minneapolis – not exactly a hop, skip, and a jump away. Fortunately, Erin #2 and her husband Johnny happened to be in Minneapolis.. at Ikea… at a very opportune time! Thanks for bringing us our new Ikea desks!

As it turns out, assembling the desks was a breeze, but the file cabinets… Well, the first one took at least 2 hours to put together, and the other ones are still, um, under construction.

Anyone out there want to come in and assemble these things?!

All in all, we felt the Interns’ first day went really well and was even marginally fun. As for what the interns thought? You’ll have to find out by checking out their blog at feistypiranha.com!

Thanks to everyone who came out for our Open House Party bash. It was great seeing our family, friends, and business acquaintances all come together to celebrate our company. We hope everyone enjoyed the event.

More people turned out than we expected; at one point in the evening, there were about 50 people in our office!

By the end of the night, all of the beer and wine was consumed, as well the snack foods. (The Quesadillas only lasted a few hours.) All in all, we’ve branded the event a sweeping success!

We also had a sweet vinyl sign put up on our front window, compliments of Marlina. It seems as though we’re totally official now!

We spent most of that Friday preparing for the event: cooking, cleaning, moving stuff around, etc. Our thanks to Erin G., Erin H., Evan, Marlina (and Marlina’s sister who loaned us the Quesadilla maker), Shawna, and Jane for helping us out.

Now that we’ve got our open house party out of the way, we can move forward on having other fun and exciting parties. Such as the BrightMix summer slip-and-slide party and the BrightMix summer ice cream social!

Photo Time! See all Open House Party Photos!

Tommorrow is Cinco de Mayo, one of our favorite holidays here at BrightMix! (Its no secret that we really enjoy quesadillas!) Needless to say, we will be heading out for some fantastic Mexican food and margaritas.

Our current plan is for dinner at Guaca Maya, one of Omaha’s finest Mexican establishments. Anyone is welcome to join us! I’ll be posting exact times and place updates on Twitter, both for BrightMix and myself... Right now, its looking like 6pm-ish… more details to follow.

I’m happy to announce, that after what seemed like an ETERNITY of resume sorting, phone interviewing, in-person interviewing, and deliberating… we have selected the official interns for our 2008 Internship program.

Thank you so much to all that applied… We were really overwhelmed by the response that we received. We had over 120 applicants from a dozen or so schools, all vying for 3 spots, and there were some very talented individuals for sure. I must say, I was truly amazed at the response that we got.

The internship officially starts May 14th. We’ll be setting up a separate blog where the interns will write about their experiences, so you’ll get to meet them at that point.

Welcome Erin (#2), Robert & Allyn!

Explaination of the picture: Coffee fetching… Interns.. Get it? Funny, because our internship is decidedly NOT a coffee fetching, paper shredding internship.

Take a look at the following list of jobs that were posted on the Omaha Careerlink website a while back…

Here you have six developer positions, all posted by the same recruiter – Aureus Group. (Not to pick on Aureus… they’re fine people… Its just the best screenshot I could get) Many of these positions have the salary listed right in the job title. At first glance, you’d think “Fantastic! I can skim the jobs and only apply for the ones that fall into the money category that I’m looking for! Hurray!”

Click through to those jobs though.. Notice anything similar with them? Here’s a listing of the companies that you’d be working for in these great jobs…

• Leader in the online world
• Industry Leader
• Privately held Service Bureau
• One of the largest financial services firm in the world

“Industry leader?”.. What the hell does that mean? As Joel so eloquently puts it..

For the job seeker, the problem is the same: when they look on giant job boards they see a bunch of undifferentiated jobs, often posted by clueless headhunters that provide all kinds of information you don’t need (“A leading provider of whatever”) and none of the information you do need (what’s the name of the company? Do they make nuclear bombs? Will they give me a private office and a big monitor? Free M&Ms? Are they sloppy hacks or quality hackers? Can I use Ruby on Rails?)

It seems to me, that the concept of skimming jobs based on pay is a backwards approach to job searching. Yes, if you’re using the apply-to-as-many-jobs-as-possible approach, just to see if you can get a bite, then that may be great for you. But the truly great developers, the one’s that we’re looking for, would rather approach it from another direction.

It’s pretty much unanimous from developers that they want to know what company that they’re going to…

We’ve made promise after promise to friends, family, and business associates about having a fabled BrightMix Open House Party. After all, we’ve been in business for about 8 months now… it’s about time we celebrate the founding of BrightMix!

We’ve blocked of an entire Friday evening on which to hold the event. So, without further ado:

Our Open House will be on Friday, April 25th starting at 4:30PM

Feel free to stop by the office after work for some socializing, a drink or few, and some delicious snacks. We’ll be providing a keg of delicious beer and other drinks of both the alcoholic an non-alcoholic variety.

Similarly, we’re going to have some delicious finger food for people to snack on, probably Quesadillas (as seen in photo) and some sort of giant sub sandwich.

Yummy!

Sounds Good! What Else?!

In case you haven’t seen our place, we’ll definitely give tours. We also have a Pool Table and an awesome Foosball Table for people to play (just no spinning the rods!).

Want to RSVP?

Leave us a comment on this post, and be sure to say who you are. We’re looking forward to seeing you all!

If you’re a regular reader of the BrightMix blog (Google Reader anyone?), you are probably well aware of the fact that we do things a little differently here. Since joining the company a little over a month ago, I’ve quickly learned to love the BrightMix way of doing business. It’s pretty safe to say that I drank the Kool Aid, and now I am hooked.

As Kevin and Dusty have mentioned in previous posts, a lot of our business tools live on the web. Sure, we all have Microsoft Office, but I’ve honestly only used it once.

One product that I’ve enjoyed working with so far is Freshbooks. They offer web-based time tracking/billing software. My personal experience has been limited to the time tracking piece, but I really like their interface. In fact, one of the high points in my day is to receive a hilarious confirmation message when I log my time. Unfortunately, the function that determines your message limits your odds of receiving a funny message, and will often display “Hours Logged,” instead.

Egregious!!!

I recently went through a rather long drought, receiving nothing but “Hours Logged” for a couple of weeks. So I did what any good user would do – I made a feature request to give me more control over my messages. Freshbooks responded promptly, and has opened a new post for suggesting new funny messages.

Before clicking “Log Hours”

After clicking “Log Hours,” I usually receive the boring “Hours Logged” message

Greasemonkey – That Funky Monkey

The response was great, but fell short of my ultimate goal – ridding my life of the much too corporate “Hours Logged” message. Luckily, Kevin and Dusty value funny messages almost as much as they value me logging billable hours, and they gave me the green light to work out a script to override the Freshbooks function.

To do this, I used Greasemonkey, which is an Add-on for Firefox that allows you customize the way a web page looks or behaves using JavaScript. This was my first experience with GreaseMonkey, and it was rather enjoyable…

The process was pretty painless: find the function on the Freshbooks page that determines the confirmation message, create a modified version of that function in my user script, and have Greasemonkey tell the page to call my function instead of the one on the page. I think I spent more time brainstorming additional messages than actually writing the meat of the script.

Check out the sampler button below, which has been modified to never display “hours logged” and has some additional messages picked by us BrightMix’ers... (Note: if you’re reading this through a feedreader, you’re probably going to have to come to this page to see it in action.)

Try Logging your Hours! (click the button)

How to get your own custom messages:

Step 1: Use FireFox

Step 3: Download GreaseMonkey Here

Step 2: Download the Script Here

Step 4: Add custom messages to script as needed

This was suppose to be a six month post, but it got delayed on account of our being too busy to blog. So, here we are at roughly seven months of business, continuing to rock and/or roll…

Since our last post, at three’ish months of official business, a whole lot has happened.

We Hired an Awesome Developer!

Shortly before Xmas, we posted a listing to hire an ASP.NET developer, two months and a series of interviews later, we welcomed aboard Erin.

Erin just had her one month anniversary, and she seems to be enjoying her new position at BrightMix. She’s helped Dusty and myself adopt a new pattern for our ASP.NET development called Presenter First, a rendition of the ol’ Model View Presenter pattern. Presenter First has helped us write code that is inherently more automatically testable, something that is challenging to do in ASP.NET.

Erin also just recently launched her own blog, ErinHawkins.com. Good things will come from her blog, so add it to the feed reader nearest to you!

BrightMix’s First Company Outing (Many More to Come)

In line with our goal of providing an awesome place for developers to work, we had our first company-paid outing a few weeks ago. Since there’s only 3 of us working at BrightMix, we invited along some ringers ;-)

Why have frequent company outings? Well, because we like our employee(s), we want them to continue working with us, and we want them to feel appreciated.

If everyone is kicking booty at their work, it makes all the sense in the world to start the weekend early by taking Friday afternoon off for a fun-filled bowling excursion. Oh, and participate in the taking of some sweet jump shots!

Continuing Client Work

In early December, we began work with a company here in Omaha called Sojern. We can’t disclose any of the details about their company or product. But, rest assured, it’ll be a pretty big deal once it has launched, which should be happening shortly.

Similarly, we’re on the verge of launching another big website for our other major client. Details for that are also soon to come…

Ack! Apple Converts!

For the longest time, Dusty and I were big Apple haters. This was mostly due to our being forced to use the inferior Macintosh computers back in our younger years (Middleschool and Highschool). Recently, though, Apple has taken a drastic turn for the better, with its new PC hardware-based machines and unix-based operating system. We use MacBookPro’s exclusively for our Ruby on Rails development work now.

I also just recently jumped on the iPhone bandwagon. Oh iPhone, you’re oh-so glossy and lovable…

A Business Trip to Boston

In early January, Dusty and myself flew out to Boston to meet up with a potential client.

The result of it all? A new partnership and product under development, TripleSeat. TripleSeat will be a web-based application to help restaurants manage the booking and sales of their private dining rooms.

We expect to launch version 1.0 of TripleSeat this May, which is coming up shortly, so keep your peepers peeled.

Impending Summer Internship Program

Mostly recently, a lot of our focus been getting ready for our Summer Internship Program. The goal of our internship program is to create and launch a product of our own, as well as find some of the best up-and-coming developer/design talent around the area and hopefully teach them a whole lot about the creation and launch of a brand new Web 2.0 product.

We’ve had a ton of people send in applications – more than we ever expected. We’re currently in the process of conducting in-person interviews with our top candidates, and within two weeks, we’ll be making offers to three of them.

Party Pizzas and Foosball Anyone?

It’s the little things around the office that help differentiate our company from XYZ corp. A few weeks ago, while chatting with Erin, we (possibly just myself) determined that the office needed a toaster oven so we could actually bake stuff like party pizzas, pizza rolls, and chicken nuggs.

Additionally, at some point, it was determined that we needed a Foosball table for the front room of our office. Erin was extremely helpful in facilitating the attainment of the table; in fact, she pretty much found the thing and got it to our office – we just footed the bill. High five, Erin!

The Official BrightMix Open House Party

Since we started the biz, Dusty and I have touted how we’re going to have this glamourous, earth-shakingly awesome open house party. At first, we were going to host it at my house (since we used to work from there), but then we moved to a real office. Then, it got drearily cold for a few months…

Without further ado: the official BrightMix Open House Party will be on Friday, April 25th, starting at 4:30pm and ending… well, whenever it ends. We’ll be providing drinks (of both the alcoholic and non-alcoholic variety), delicious snack foods (quesadillas, chips, etc.), and entertainment. We’ll be sending out more formal invites to our giant list of contacts.

Well, that wraps up our last few months of busy, busy business – stay tuned for more happenings!

I wanted to bring attention to an Omaha event that BrightMix is pleased to be a part of…. Omaha Nexus.

Omaha Nexus is a non-profit philanthropic organization that hosts benefit events based on the accountable fundraising model. Our goal is to help others:

• Contribute personal resources (time and money) to charity
• Connect with people in the community
• Celebrate life in the city

This is the inaugural event for the group, with the proceeds benefiting Campfire USA.

Here at BrightMix, we’re excited to be a part of the Omaha community of young professionals, and we feel that the Omaha Nexus model is a great way for us to connect with folks, and also to give back. As such, BrightMix will be paying for each of our “employees” (all three of us), and our significant others to attend the event.

We’re excited to see this group/event grow and flourish! We’d love to see you there!

Who’s Your Omaha Nexus?

Friday, April 11, 2008
8pm – Midnight
1316 Jones Street

Tickets: $50 includes drinks, hors d’oeuvres, and donation to Camp Fire USA
Early Bird price of $45 until March 24, 2008!

We make no bones about borrowing ideas from other successful companies, and our most recent idea – the internship program – is no exception. For those unfamiliar, I thought I’d take a minute to outline some of the people that we feel are offering some pretty innovative things when it comes to internships in tech companies…

Fog Creek http://fogcreek.com/Jobs/SummerIntern.html

The mother of all internships. Joel Spolsky is a master marketer, and his internship is no exception. He (seemingly) successfully parlayed one of his first summer internship programs into a successful product for Fog Creek – CoPilot. Joel writes about his experiences in a completely transparent manner, which we love. If we can be half as successful as they are, we’d take it.

We always give our interns a big project working on real, shipping software. For example, in 2005, all four of our interns teamed up to build a completely new product from the ground up. By the end of the summer, they had launched Fog Creek Copilot to paying customers.

Jackson Fish http://www.jacksonfish.com/atelier/

These guys have a young company like we do, and we often link to them because, well, its some of the best writing around. This posting about their internship is everything that I wish our job posting could be.

What we also have however is a program that gives you the opportunity to ship actual software that your friends and family can see, use, and love. This is not an experience where you’ll help out on a small feature in someone else’s product. Instead you’ll build an entire piece of software, from conception to launch, that you and your fellow interns can deliver.

FreshView http://www.freshview.com/intern/

Creators of one of the most beautiful and simple-yet-extremely-effective pieces of web software out there – CampaignMonitor. These guys are in Australia, and have an internship program not unlike the others. Free lunches, fun projects, etc.

You’ll be given a real project to work on and get exposed to everything from coding, interface design, marketing, support and testing, all while mastering the mysterious art of ping pong.

What do all thse internships (and our own) have in common you ask? Well, the common thread amongst almost all of them is their emphasis on SHIPPING SOFTWARE. Hillel from JacksonFish sums it up quite eloquently...

Whether or not you come to Jackson Fish for the summer, make sure you go somewhere you get to ship. Shipping is what counts. Shipping is how you grow and learn. Shipping is what’s fun.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. I often tell people that our interns are actually going to do things. They’re going to create things. We’re not just going to stick them in the corner and have them shred papers. Nope, not unlike Joel’s interns or the others, we want our internship program to be about building a product. Because, well, that’s what would be fun for US, if we were interns; its a great learning experience, and a great resume builder.

Know of any other great internship programs? Link ‘em up in the comments, we’d love to hear about them!!

When Kevin and I were originally talking about starting our own company, naturally one of the major first decisions is what to actually name it. Today I was rummaging through our Google Docs, and I stumbled upon a list of possible choices that we contemplated, before finally settling in on BrightMix. Note, however, that this is far from an exhaustive list, but rather one of many “digital napkins” that we scribbled ideas on. It is, however, mostly unedited from when we originally wrote it many moons ago.

Name	Notes
BrightMix	plus homonymic britemix
TrueAnomaly	enigmatic!
RollingAhead	i actually think this could be a sweet product site… cars or something?? new age car searching meets web 2.0
SuperiorSimplicity	implies simplicity = good
Simplinity	???
Probably Not
TidyCoder	This would be a sweet coding resource site
RenovatingSoftware	Needs “Software” to work
EvangelizingSoftware	Needs “Software” to work
YeOldeSoftware	Ye Oldest name of all
ConvergingSoftware	Needs “Software” to work
Rhyzz	hard to spell and/or pronounce?
Definitely Not
RoflCode	Joke.. .haha. rofl
GhettoBlasterSoftware	joke… long live the ghetto blaster
BarelyLegalCode	The red light district of coding
InfusingCode	mmmm, delicious infused vodka
Anomical	i can’t pronounce this
CodeRehab	drug connotations
RollAhead	“roller head”, rolllingAhead seems better

Some funny ones in there, and the comments are priceless. My personal favorite? YeOldeSoftware of course. What a great name. As you can see, many of the choices that we made were cutting-edge names – some even enigmatic. Nothing generic like “blah blah solutions”, (which actually isn’t a terrible name, if you actually use “blah blah”). We’re not huge fans of completely generic technology company names. Rather, most things are “web 2.0” style—combinations of two unrelated words. You see that a lot these days, from many of the companies that we aspire to be like: 37 Signals, Jackson Fish, Fog Creek, Clear Function, Adaptive Path, Blue Flavor, Simple Bits, Logical Awesome... The list goes on and on. Two-word names are all the rage..

If anyone wants to actually use any of these names, let us know… We actually own quite a few of the domains .. haha.

For about a year leading up to starting the company, Kevin and I spent a lot of time in Campfire, and on Google Docs, brainstorming a ton of stuff. I’ll try to dig up some of the other docs that we put together, or chat sessions we had, which give great insight into the thought process that went into us forming the company.

We have had quite an enormous response to our first annual summer internship program. Soon, we will be calling people to schedule interviews and to make our final decisions. There are a few days left until the deadline (March 15th), so those of you who are procrastinators, you’ve only got one week left!

Any questions? Leave a comment or send an email!

After about a month of posting jobs and interviewing candidates for our first developer position opening, we’re happy to welcome aboard Erin! Hooray!

Erin brings to the table a lot of programming and leadership experience. Oh, and she’s nice and we like her!

We spent the majority of the day in the ol’ conference room. In the morning, we went over the in’s and out’s of our business, and in the afternoon, we went over a lot of the details about our clients and our current projects. There’s a lot more going on here than we expected—definitely way more than someone can absorb in one sitting, but Erin bared with us.

On a side note, we had to re-arrange the office in preparation for Erin’s arrival. In the process, we actually found a room arrangement that looks and feels a helluva lot better than our original layout. Sweet…

To celebrate Erin joining us, and the creation of our new whiteboard, we took some time out of our busy day to film a short time-lapse video in the conference room, an idea first presented to us by the cool people over at Carsonified. We felt the need to take the video just a little over the top, so we added in some Chariots of Fire. Enjoy ;-)

A few more Photos of our work…

It was just a few days ago that we first mentioned our summer internship program, and we’ve already received a LOT of applications! Keep them coming!

A couple of questions have come up though, so I thought I would address them here…

What’s the deadline for applying?

The deadline for applying is March 15th, 2008. Don’t wait till the last minute though! We’ll start calling people to do phone interviews well before that, so get your applications in as soon as possible!

When does the internship start?

We’re tentatively looking for the internship to start in the middle of May, and will run until the middle of August. It will be approximately 12 weeks long, and we’re flexible based on when people are getting out of school, or might have to go back to school.

Can you tell us a bit more about this “brand new web 2.0 application”?

The project is still a bit of a secret, and we will try to keep it that way throughout the internship to build buzz. I can tell you that it will encompass many of the “web 2.0” ideals, including social features, ajax, and rounded corners ;-) And, it’s public-facing, so you’ll be able to (and we hope you will!) go home and tell mom “Hey, look at what I did this summer!”.

What do you mean by “Build Buzz”?

Throughout the process, our interns will be blogging about their development efforts. While not giving away the specifics of the project, we’d love for you to share with the world the experience that you’re having as a BrightMix intern. Check out http://www.projectaardvark.com/ for a great example of exactly what we’re talking about.

What technologies?

On our job posting we mentioned that we’re looking for experience with Java/PHP/Perl + MySQL. The actual project will be written in Ruby on Rails... We feel that any bright individuals with LAMP experience should have no problems picking up Rails relatively quickly. For those unfamiliar with Ruby on Rails, I HIGHLY encourage you to check it out… http://www.rubyonrails.com It’s incredibly exciting and cutting edge, and we really enjoy it. We think you will too.

Is the internship only for students?

Ideally we’re looking for college students between their Junior and Senior years. However, we encourage anyone to apply. Its a fixed-length internship though, for 12 weeks during the summer, so it naturally lends itself well to students.

What kind of experience are you looking for?

We know that as students, you probably don’t have a ton of professional experience, and that’s not a problem. We’re more interested in finding the people that show true passion for programming (and for design). For instance, the folks that are hacking away at things on the side, and learning new technologies, because they enjoy it. We want to hear what classes you’ve taken, and which ones you enjoyed the most. We’d love for you to have a website/blog of your own, though its not strictly required. Basically, we’re looking for talented, smart and fun individuals, not unlike ourselves :-)

That’s about it for the question and answers for today. We encourage everyone to apply for the internship, and if you have further questions, don’t hesitate to email us at internships@brightmix.com or leave a comment below!

Update!

We have filled all the internship positions!. We appreciate everyone who has submitted applications and expressed interest.

We’re looking to grow our company by offering a few full-time, paid internship positions over the summer of 2008. We will be hiring a few talented programmers and one talented designer to help us build a brand-spanking-new Web 2.0 application.

What’s the Job Entail?

A lot of companies out there equate interns with cheap labor. Not us. In addition to compensating our interns fairly, we’ll be giving them some great work experience. Our interns will work together to conceive, execute, and publicly introduce their creation during their 10-12 week internship.

All too often, we hear depressing internship stories from friends and family: A whole summer wasted shredding paper in the corner or fetching coffee for a pushy manager? That sounds pretty boring… and not a gainful experience.

By the end of the summer, our interns will leave here having experienced all aspects of the software development process. They’ll also have created a live, publicly viewable website that they can show off to their friends and family (or potential employers).

What We’re Offering

• $650 per week salary
• Lunch provided every day (plus free snacks and sodas)
• Planned company outings (bowling, golfing, etc.)
• Sweet Office and Cool People
• Oh, and Having Fun at Work
• The potential for employment when you graduate

Are you a Good Fit?

We’re offering an exciting project, great fringe benefits, and a fun environment. As such, we’re truly looking for the best and the brightest individuals out there. This includes things like…

Developers: You will need to have some core competencies in front and back-end web development. The project will be written in Ruby on Rails, which is kind of rare around Omaha. You don’t need experience with Ruby on Rails (although it would be awesome if you did); competency in PHP, Java, Python, or Perl and Mysql should be sufficient.

Designers: You will need to be facile with all the standard digital tools of the trade, namely Photoshop. Additionally, the ability to write standards-compliant HTML and CSS will really impress us.

Interested?

To apply, start by sending an email to internships@brightmix.com telling us a little about yourself, including why you think you’d be a good fit at BrightMix. Be sure to attach a copy of your resume, and include any relevant URLs (blog, websites, past projects, portfolio’s, etc). Questions or otherwise? Feel free to Email or leave a comment below.

We’re excited to hear from you!

Update: We’ve received a handful of questions regarding the internship… We’ve answered a bunch of them in another post, and here are the two major ones:

• The deadline to apply is March 15th.
• The internship will run roughly 10-12 weeks, from the middle of May to the middle of August.

January is shaping up to be quite a busy month for us here at BrightMix! Not only are we busy with ongoing client work, and looking for a few talented developers, but we also kicked off a brand new project! There’s not a whole lot to be said right now, but Kevin and I were in Boston last weekend to hash out the details. Boston was a great time, and we can’t wait to go back! Though, next time we’ll go when it’s a tad warmer :-)

The details we can talk about right now? The website / software will be called Triple Seat (see http://www.tripleseat.com), and will be powered entirely by Ruby on Rails! That’s pretty much all I’ve got for now, as we’re heads deep in planning and wireframing the system, making sure we get the interfaces all hashed out. We plan on doing quite a bit of blogging around the development of this app, much like the guys over at Clear Function did with their One Month App blog.

Stay tuned for updates!

It’s coming to the end of 2007, and we want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

To get into a festive mood, Kevin and I decided to hang Christmas lights around the office, and put up a Christmas tree into our front window! Actually, we enjoy the lights so much, we just may leave them up for a while :-) They put off MUCH better light than the fluorescents that we currently have. Here’s a picture of our festive office, check out the Flickr stream for more great pics.

We’ve been extremely fortunate over the past few months—more so than I would have ever imagined. Thanks to everyone who has helped us get to where we are today.

We’ve spent quite a bit of time over the past few weeks mapping out what our 2008 looks like, and I’m confident its going to be an even more exciting year! Stay tuned for the official BrightMix 2008 “Resolutions”...

Update!

This job has been filled. We appreciate everyone who has submitted applications and expressed interest.

We’re looking for a talented software developer to join our team. The position is for full-time employment. Take a minute to read this post and see if you meet our qualifications and are interested in working with us.

We Require That You…

• Know ASP.NET, SQL Server, Javascript, and CSS extremely well.
• Are able to take ownership of a project.
• Are professional, disciplined, focused, and willing to have some fun at work.
• Are smart and able to get things done.

You Get Bonus Points If You…

• Know or have at least played around with Ruby on Rails.
• Read computer/programming blogs. Having your own blog gains you even more points!
• Define yourself as a developer, not just a programmer.
• Like us, live, breath, sleep and dream in code.

What Kind of Work Are We Offering?

Initially, you’ll be helping us out on a cool ASP.NET project we started a few months ago that needs continuing development. It’s written in ASP.NET 2.0, using Visual Studio 2008. It’s about as cutting edge as you can get using the Microsoft stack (without using Beta tools).

Further on down the road, you’ll help us out on other interesting projects that we have lined up, using the latest and greatest versions of ASP.NET and/or Ruby on Rails.

Why Should I Work at BrightMix?

You’ll probably enjoy working here if, like us, you dislike the stereotypical corporate work environment. You won’t find any cubicle farms, water coolers, or TPS reports here. We have a colorful and comfortable office space, and we’re working hard to make it a great place for developers to work.

We don’t have a complex command structure, either. You’ll get to work directly with the founders of the company. We’re pretty friendly and fun dudes, and we promise not to boss you around too much.

We’re also developers, not clueless, spikey-haired middle managers, and we’re avid followers of the business philosophies of people/companies like Joel Spolsky, 37 Signals, and Eric Sink.

Traditional Perks

• Competitive pay
• 3 weeks paid time off + sick time
• Health, Dental, Vision Insurance
• Flexible hours (start late, work from home occasionally, etc.)

Sweet Perks

• Free soda and snacks of your selection
• Semi-frequent company outings (lunches, golfing, bowling, Dave and Buster’s, etc.)
• Fun work environment (Pool table, drinks, video games)
• Top of the line equipment – new machines, dual 24” monitors, comfy chairs, etc.
• More to come…

Interested?

Think this job has your name on it? To apply, send an email to jobs@brightmix.com telling us a little about yourself, including why you think you’d be a good fit at BrightMix. Be sure to attach a copy of your resume, and include any relevant URLs (blog, websites, past projects, portfolio’s, etc).

We look forward to hearing from you!

Kevin and I are frequently asked why we started our own company, and it’s often assumed that we did it to become rich and famous, to have total freedom, to be the boss, or to (insert some other selfish reason). While these benefits were, no doubt, motivational factors, one of our greater reasons involves developer treatment. That is to say, we started BrightMix because we were tired of working for companies that did not treat developers like total rockstars. Period.

You see, we’re deeply committed to many of the ideas that Joel Spolsky has set forth. I guess you could say we drank the Koolaid – and liked it.

For the last five years I’ve been testing that theory in the real world. The formula for the company I started with Michael Pryor in September, 2000 can be summarized in four steps:

Best Working Conditions

→

Best Programmers

→

Best Software

→

Profit!

It’s a pretty convenient formula, especially since our real goal in starting Fog Creek was to create a software company where we would want to work. I made the claim, in those days, that good working conditions (or, awkwardly, “building the company where the best software developers in the world would want to work”) would lead to profits as naturally as chocolate leads to chubbiness or cartoon sex in video games leads to gangland-style shooting sprees.

It’s one thing to pay lip service to providing this kind of environment, and as such I think lots of companies would say that they are “developer oriented.” I mean, everyone wants to hire the best-of-the-best, but how many companies actually do what it takes? Kevin and I think that in Omaha, this concept is truly unique. We believe that the top developers can choose to work where they want, and we want them to choose to work here.

So, What Do Developers Want?

Different folks have different desires, but, as developers and previous employees ourselves, we’re pretty clued in on what it takes to keep developers happy… and how far most companies are willing to go to see that happen. Here are some example developer requests we’ve witnessed or made, followed by a typical response from ol’ Corporation XYZ and then BrightMix’s response.

Corporation XYZ: No. Then your chair wouldn’t match the rest of the chairs in the office.
BrightMix: Let’s go shopping!

Corporation XYZ: Those are only given to managers and people of higher importance.
BrightMix: Dual 24” LCD’s are standard issue here. Actually, we can probably get you a 3rd.

Corporation XYZ: Maybe, and only if it relates to what you’re currently doing. We can put in an order and have it here in 6 months.
BrightMix: Go for it. Here’s the company card.

Corporation XYZ: Egregious!
BrightMix: Have all the snacks and soda you want. We’ll even buy you the types that you like. Also, the company will buy you lunch frequently.

See where I’m going here? And really, it’s not just about money or other tangible things, it’s about providing things that the top 1% of developers want and deserve. This will keep them feeling challenged, important, satisfied, and happy. Some examples:

• Want challenging problems to solve? You got it.

• Want to create a whiz-bang ajaxy spell-checking thing-a-ma-jig? Go for it.

• Want to use the latest and greatest technologies? How ‘bout Ruby on Rails, or ASP.NET MVC, or The Next Big Thing?

Office Environment

On top of all of these things, we’re also trying to foster an environment that’s – gasp – FUN. We believe its possible to have fun at work; it shouldn’t be a place you dread going, but, rather, work should be a place that you want to go. Sure we’ll work hard, but we’ll play hard just the same, and nobody’s working 100 hour weeks (40 hour weeks are the norm). Again, Joel says it best:

The office should be a hang out: a pleasant place to spend time. If you’re meeting your friends for dinner after work you should want to meet at the office. As Philip Greenspun bluntly puts it: “Your business success will depend on the extent to which programmers essentially live at your office. For this to be a common choice, your office had better be nicer than the average programmer’s home. There are two ways to achieve this result. One is to hire programmers who live in extremely shabby apartments. The other is to create a nice office.”

In this regard, we’re already well on our way. We’ve acquired an office space that doesn’t look anything like the typical cubicle farm office building. We like to think it has a warm and cozy feel to it, and we want to outfit it with various fun amenities. There’s already a pool table/ping-pong table, and we’ve got plans for a dartboard and a Nintendo Wii. Of course, we’re also open to suggestions :-)

Great place to work = Great developers

Simply put, as we look forward at our company’s future success, we realize that greatly relies on us hiring the right people. Thus, we want to have the very best developers around working for us, and in order to find, hire and retain these developers, we’re creating the type of environment that they’re going to love.

In the coming days, as we prepare to hire our first official employee(s), we’ll be posting quite a bit more on our philosophies regarding hiring, benefits, work environments, and all things related.

More to come…

Not too long ago we had our one month of business anniversary. Well, actually… that was about 3 months ago :-)

We were talking the other day about how fast time has started flying for us since we opened up shop. But, on that same note, we’ve managed to accomplish a great deal in a short amount of time. Back when we were employees at corporations, time stood seemingly still and things happened at such a slow pace.

What have we accomplished, you ask? Here’s a run-down of the latest happenings since our 1-month anniversary posting.

New Office!

In case you missed it, we moved into a real office about a month ago. Apparently the ceiling leaks, which is kind of a downer, but our landlord should have that fixed soon. Other than that, we’re really enjoying the office.

The move was great for me because I can get out of my house and go someplace else to do work, and it’s great for Dusty because it’s closer to his place of residence.

We were initially wanting to have an open house party shortly after moving in, but we decided it wouldn’t be all that exciting because we don’t have much furniture yet. Plus, it’s crappy and cold out. So, we’re aiming to have an open house party sometime in the spring of 2008.

New Website + Logo + Hosting!

In early November we migrated BrightMix.com to Slicehost.com. Read more about our positive experience with Slicehost here.

Along the same vein, after being stuck in the logo design process for a few months, we worked with the Granger Group to finalize our logo. While we were at it, we re-branded BrightMix.com.

New Client!!

New business is always good business. In late November, we started working with a new, top-secret client here in Omaha. We can’t give out any details, as we’re under an NDA, but the idea is exciting and it’s being built using Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

New Hardware!

Also, Dusty managed to score us a rad printer from a family member. This new printer is replacing our older, also donated printer. It can print at a whooping 17 pages per minute, while our old one could only do a lowly 6. That’s approximately a 300% increase! Woohoo!

Full-time Hiring Positions

We’ve yet to announce this officially, but we’ll almost certainly be looking to hire 1-2 full-time developers to help us out. At a glance, we’ll be looking for individuals who are savvy with ASP.NET, SQL, Javascript, and CSS. More details on the positions and how to apply will become available very shortly.

BrightMix Summer of 2008 Internship Program

Additionally, we’re looking at hiring a small team of interns to help us out this upcoming summer. We believe we can provide an awesome, interesting, and, above all, meaningful internship experience, similar to the type of internship program you’d find at FogCreek or JacksonFish.

The fact of the matter is that many companies out there hire interns because they need a cheap, temporary employee to perform some lowly and boring task (paper shredding or coffee fetching, anyone?). While this is great for company XYZ, the intern isn’t going to learn and benefit from much of anything. Our aim is to have our interns develop a brand-spanking-new web 2.0 application, from start to launch.

We’re still hammering out the details of the program, but we’ll probably be making an announcement within the next month or two. We’ll likely be looking for 2 computer science students and 1 graphic design student. Stay tuned for more details.

Omaha Developer / IT Job Site

After perusing Omaha’s various big job search sites, we’ve come to the conclusion that there is no good resource for finding good local developer and IT staffing positions. We’re looking to solve this problem by creating a job site geared towards this particular market. More details on this are soon to come.

Where We’re Headed

Obviously, as indicated by our move into an office space and our plans to hire on developer help, we’re looking to grow BrightMix. Over the next few months, there’s going to be a lot of planning on Dusty’s and my behalf to get this stuff all figured out. At the same time, we’ll be focusing hard on doing exceptional work for our clients. Busy times, indeed!

That about sums it up – we’ll post again as soon as time allows.

Well, the time has come for a serious makeover to BrightMix.com. This website’s original layout was a slightly modified template for Mephisto, our blog software (go here and select “neon” from the drop down to see the original.) We received some complaints about it being a bit too weird… garish… and neon. However, before we were willing to take the time to redesign the site, we needed to get a real logo.

Our Logo Design Process

It took a good chunk of time for us to settle on a logo, partly because we couldn’t come up with any solid ideas and partly because our name doesn’t really represent anything. If we had picked a name like Blue Buzzard or Fog Creek Software, well, it would’ve been a little easier

Anyway, we were pretty certain that we needed an insignia as part of the logo; we didn’t know exactly what that insignia would be, other than something that was unique and representative of us.

So, we read a lot about other small company’s branding efforts and figured we’d try out similar brainstorming tactics. Here are some of our initial ideas:

Initial rough sketches and ideas by Dusty

We discovered that it was far too easy to put too much thought and meaning into a logo. I mean, it’s simple to say we want a logo that says we’re smart, cutting-edge, trendy, and fun, but portraying all of those descriptions, all at once, is very difficult. For instance, this logo is trying to portray just a little too much and becomes somewhat confusing:

Thinking outside the box? Hmmm…

Not really finding anything that felt right, we worked with our friends at the Granger Group to experiment and come up with ideas.

Some eyeball thing and BrightMix Anime? Just not right.

BrightMix eXtreme edition!

At some point, Bob from Granger came up with this and we really liked it. It was simple and had a cool and unique font:

We tweaked it a bit by altering the fonts and swapping out the little people out for real i’s (we felt they were too gimmicky). A couple of days later we had our final logo, which sits atop this page. A big thanks to the Granger Group for helping us find something we like!

Fixing the Site’s Colors

With our logo in the bag, we just need to integrate it into the existing site. After some color matching and graphics editing (admittedly, mostly done by Dusty), the site was looking pretty good. While he was at it, he revamped the blog commenting section, which is now much cleaner and allows for markup, and added a Flickr gallery to bottom of the page to show off some of the realness of our company.

Your Feedback Appreciated

We’d love to hear what you think about the new site. Is it good / bad / better / worse / terrible / you’d rather stare at flashing spyware ads? Leave us a comment!

Though we’ve talked a bit about what we do, how we run our business, and a few of the projects we’ve launched, little has been said about the people behind the curtain here. You know, the dudes actually running the business, writing code, drinking Diet Mt. Dew, and burning the midnight oil.

At the time of this article’s creation, we are two dudes: Dusty Davidson and myself, Kevin Zink. Together, we run/manage the business side of BrightMix and develop software.

Some Shared History

At our cores, we’re both developers. In fact, we first met and worked together as coworkers at Genesis Systems, another small software company here in Omaha, where we were both programmers. At Genesis, we discovered we had a lot of similarities in our views and beliefs on business and software development.

We only worked together for about a year, as I left the company to join a large corporation (read more about my job history on my blog’s about me page). But, this is where the seeds for BrightMix were first planted. Soon after my departure, Dusty also left Genesis for a corporate job.

Over the course of a few years, we talked a lot about how crappy our corporate jobs were; they were straight out of a Dilbert cartoon. We also talked a lot about how we could do so much better if we were to run a company. Well, last summer, we had both had enough and decided it was time to make a go of it.

So, that’s a brief history of how we came about. Lets take a closer look at us as people.

Dusty Davidson

Since Dusty claims he doesn’t like writing about himself, I’ll be doing the honors!

Dusty is sharp, opinionated, outspoken, humorous, and pretty hip.

Back when we worked as employees, Dusty claimed that he “just wanted to be a programmer”; however, he’s an incredibly gifted technical innovator and impromptu thinker. For Dusty, the term technical evangelist really fits the bill.

If you want to get Dusty excited, start talking about big picture ideas and Web 2.0 technologies.

Interesting Tidbits about Dusty:

• Backpacked around Europe for 6 months after college
• Built a cool Mame Arcade Machine
• Created a semi-popular photo annotation project called Photonotes
• Ran in the Omaha and Minneapolis marathons

Dusty is Awesome because he:

• Wears sandals a lot, even when it’s really cold out!
• Drinks a lot of Diet Mountain Dew, like 6 cans per day sometimes
• Drives a faded 1996 1994 Toyota Corolla
• Has “I’m getting married badge” on his blog... 6 months after getting married
• Is self-admittedly addicted to Google Reader

Kevin Zink

What can I say about myself? Well, I used to be really shy, but not nearly so much these days. I’m fairly smart, outgoing, and at times funny. I’ve been told numerous times that I’m really good at listening and understanding people.

On the technical side of things, I’m pretty far up there on the software development curve, probably not too far behind Dusty.

I’m very level-headed in my approach to solving problems; I’m good at “keeping things real,” so to speak.

Interesting Tidbits about Kevin:

• Big into Home Improvement projects
• Motorcycle Enthusiast
• Has more clothes than his girlfriend
• Fascinated by popping dance styles

Kevin is Awesome because he:

• Is unnaturally good at PC / Console games (Rock Band or Guitar Hero Anyone?)
• Fell through the ceiling in his house
• Is fascinated by “bling” and animated effects in business software
• Once wrangled an opposum
• Has his computer set up in the middle of his living room

You can read more about us on our personal blogs at Zinknation.net and Dustyd.net.

When we established BrightMix, a few months back, we got this blog/website up and running by throwing a Mephisto install onto Dusty’s already existing Dreamhost account. While working on our blog/website was kind of slow and sluggish, it worked, and It was bootstrapping at its finest…

However, we’re to the point where we need to able to host Ajaxy Ruby on Rails applications. Unfortunately, we discovered that while Dreamhost is sufficient at serving up static files, it’s less than ideal at hosting web applications (especially Rails) where responsiveness and performance are paramount. Arg! a troubling issue.

What’s a software shop to do?

In our search for an alternate hosting service, Slicehost.com was recommended to us. This company specializes in hosting for developers, Ruby on Rails developers in particular. It all sounded good, so we sign up for 1 year of service.

Service that Rocks the Casba

The sign-up process was completely automated and painless. After signing up, I was told that we would have to wait a month for a slice to become available. (They had a shortage of available slices due to demand.) No worries.

A month later, I received an Email indicating that our slice was available and ready for use! At this point, all I had to do was log into their slick dashboard interface, select which linux distro I wanted to use, and click “go.” Minutes later, our slice was up and running with a full Ubuntu install!

Awesome Documentation

Setting up things in linux can be a little tricky since there’s a lot of configuring to be done. Luckily, Slicehost has some really good tutorials and documentation to help you get your web server/applications rockin and/or a rollin’ in no time. I was able to get BrightMix.com moved and running on its new host after only a few hours. It was all pretty seamless.

Long Story Short

We’re extremely satisfied with Slicehost’s pricing and service. BrightMix.com is now approximately 2 gabillion times faster than it was on Dreamhost. If you’re a developer looking for a high-quality, yet affordable, linux-based host, we highly recommend Slicehost.com. It’s simply gravy!

A little over a week ago we announced our plans to move into a new office. Well, after a very exciting and lively week of planning, cleaning, and moving stuff, we’re all done and settled into our new digs.

Thurs – Saturday… Cleaning!

All things considered, the place wasn’t actually in that bad of shape, but we wanted to make sure that we started off all nice and shiny. So, Kevin and I spent the better part of Thursday and Friday making trips to Walmart to buy cleaning supplies, and doing the important cleaning. (ie, I cleaned the fridge, so we could get Diet Mt. Dew & Beer in there right away!)

I want to extend a special thanks to my family (Marlina, Jane, Dee Dee, Sara & Joey) for all of their incredibly hard work and help getting things cleaned. They spent pretty much all day last Saturday scrubbing walls and toilets and windows and floors. We couldn’t have done it without their help! Thanks everyone!

Last week… Settling in…

Last week, as a two person company, we had to get back to business as usual. That meant we had to get everything up as quickly as possible. Luckily, we are a young company with simple needs. We essentially moved our computers, did some configuring, and we were up and running! Gotta love being able to do that!

And furniture? Ah, who needs it ;-) We actually lucked out quite a bit on this… The guys that were there before us sold us some things, and left some more things. All said, the desks, tables, refrigerator, chairs & pool table were all left there. This naturally added to our ability to get things up and running quickly, as there was no “moving” to be done, per se. This also helped us to not have to outlay a bunch of cash. As a bootstrapped company, every dollar really matters in the early stages, and we’re excited now to be able to slowly and deliberately purchase the things that we need.

Picture Time!

I’ll leave you with a bit of a photo tour of the place… For all of our photos, be sure to check out the BrightMix photos page over at Flickr.

We’re pleased to announce that we recently launched our first major set of public facing sites since becoming an honest to goodness business... A series of sites for the Episcopal Church of America. Designed and spearheaded by our good friends at the Granger Group, this project encompassed a number a sites:

• A parish-level website – A site for the individual churches, where they can list events, upload photos, and connect with their members.
• A diocese-level website – A site for the ECUSA Diocese, where users can search for churches / parishes.
• A “resource center” – A “portal” where the churches can manage their content, learn more about marketing, and get help using their sites.

Under the hood, it’s a complete ASP.NET content management system for churches, so they can manage and update the contents of their websites easily. Beyond simple content management though, the sites are integrated together in a manner that will allow for rich interaction between the various Episcopal Church Parishes. Think social-networking-meets-episcopal-church. We’ve got some exciting ideas planned on this front, and these site launches are just the beginning. This first phase was important to get people using the sites, and to give us a solid platform to move forward on.

This project has been quite some time in the making, and we’re excited to see it go live! Our congrats to the Granger Group on the site launch, we look forward to working with them on future projects and site enhancements!

Resource Center – Visit Site

Sample Parish Site – Visit Site

Sample Diocese Site – Visit Site

For more information about the ECUSA web solution, visit the Granger Group.

It’s amazingly hard to believe, considering we just had our 1 month aniversary, but it’s official: BrightMix is leasing a real, honest to goodness office space. No sir, no longer will we be running our day to day operations from the confines of Kevin’s living room.

On Thursday, Nov 1st 2007, we officially move into our new digs at 5018 Leavenworth street here in Omaha!

Here’s an arial shot of our new place:

Interestingly, over the course of about 48 hours, the opportunity to lease this new office space arose, we deliberated and discussed it, and, after realizing that timing can never really be perfect, we coolly and decisively decided to go for it.

Some Questions We Asked Ourselves

Do we even need an office space?

This was an important one. We’ve preached about the benefits of “bootstrapping” our company by running lean and mean. And, to be perfectly honest, we’re completely content and comfortable where we’re at now. However, we’re in this for the long haul, and we have to move out of Kevin’s living room at some point, especially if we take on more people. So, we figure, why the heck not now!

How will we benefit from this office space?

One of the hardest things I’ve found that we deal with as a freelancer-turned- small-business business, is handling the stigma of the individual. That is, conveying ourselves as a “company”, and not simply some dudes who write software in their spare time… and happen to make money in the process.

While we believe whole-heartedly in the value of staying small, there’s definitely a fine line. In my opinion, nothing legitimizes ones business more than having an office. However spartan, however small, if you have an office, you’re the real deal, and you can avoid unfortunate scenarios like:

Potential Client: You guys sound like the rockstar developers we need! So where do you guys work from?

Us: Uh, err, um, from Kevin’s basement.

Potential Client: Ah.. yea.. hey, gotta run.. to do.. other thing.

Is this the right space for us?

We’re very particular about the types of offices that we like and that we don’t like. This space, with its “lofty” feel, and more importantly its “non-office” feel, fell nicely into the first category. There were other appealing traits, too. First, it’s only a 1 year lease. No long term commitments for us; it’s just to early to know what kind of growth we’ll experience. Second, we don’t have to do much “build out.” The previous tenants, the rad guys of the Divvy Collective, did an incredible amount of renovating and remodeling to the place. As a result, it’s in move-in condition and then some. Oh, and thirdly, did I mention it comes with a pool table? I think that pretty much speaks for itself.

Stay tuned for more pictures and stories from the move-in, as well as the date and time of our Open House!

P.S. Here’s a sneak peek at how the office currently looks (prior to us moving in)... This is the entrance / waiting room.

Boo, cubicles!

Simply put, we hate cubicles.

Cubicles suck for jobs that require personal concentration (engineering, accounting, most computer-based jobs, etc.).

As previous software programmers for both large and small companies, we've spent plenty of time in the proverbial dilbert'esque office environment. They exist everywhere, and it gets old... really, really fast. Of course, the reasons why cubicles suck have been repeated and enumerated many times over.

No door leads to mass interruptions and noise pollution

Many experienced cubicle inhabitants will tell you they get the most stuff done in the hours outside of 8-5--when no one else is at the office. It's really terrible in some office layouts where the programmers are right next to a whole raft of customer service reps whom are on the phone all day.

The private office as a badge

Typically, private offices are relegated to employees of importance or seniority. This is just bogus and unfortunate. Not only does this stink for the lowly employees, but it also reinforces the fact that your organization is built around rank and status. Boo and hiss!

Who likes dull colors and fluorescent lighting, anyway?

There are only so many cubes that can border a window (these cubes are also usually treated as badges). The rest of the cubes are stuck in the middle of the office space, sans sunlight. Couple this with the drab, unexciting color of the cube walls, and you have more of a dungeon than a work space. Nothing says workplace efficiency like a dungeon!

Alternatives to cubicles?

If you're not in a position to alter your current work environment, there is likely little you can do, aside from bitching and wearing headphones. Joel has some suggestions:

"Look for ways to get out of this environment. Take a laptop to the company cafeteria, where there are lots of tables that are empty most of the day (and nobody can find you). Book a conference room for the whole day... The next time there's a crunch on and your manager asks you what you need to Get This Done By Tomorrow, you know what to say. They'll find you an office for the day. And pretty soon they'll start wondering what they can do to keep that productive thing going year round.

Come into work late and leave late. Those hours after the rest of the company goes home can be the most productive."

However, if you are in a position of power, we suggest you create as many offices with doors as possible and steal some of the solutions that other successful companies have come up with.

Pixar, for instance, has replaced the lowly cubicle with small sheds/huts, which have a door, are insulated from outside noise, and have a high customization factor. How rad is that?!

What's the best set up?

There's no one best set up for all businesses. If you want boring, dull, and lifeless employees, put them in a boring, dull, and lifeless environment (not recommended). However, if you want creative, kick-ass employees, then put them in a creative, kick-ass environment.

Praise Jebus!

BrightMix has officially existed for one entire month.It was an exciting month, and it went by lightning quick.

Accomplishments for Month #1

Here are some of our major accomplishments during our first month of operation.

Set Up of Basic Office Services

In the spirit of bootstrapping, we aimed to keep our total monthly service fees low. These days, by leveraging Google and other web 2.0 companies’ services, it’s freakishly easy to get all of the basic services you need to run a small business for pennies on the dime.

Getting Bad Ass Development PC’s Up and Running

Unlike some of our previous employers, we consider the developer’s PC’s performance to be tantamount to getting things done quickly and efficiently. Accordingly, we purchased and hand-built two high-end, multi-processor PC’s with lots of RAM and fast hard drives.

We also believe that dual monitors (in particular – big monitors) are quintessential to software development work. Dusty’s set up has dual 22” Samsungs while mine has dual 24” Dells (it’s not compensation for anything – honest!).

As a side note, we set up an old spare PC to be our local database / file share / VPN / print server. It’s nothing fancy, but it gets the job done for now. It took us about a day to get up and running with all of our PC hardware.

Settling into our Office

We’re currently housed up in living room of my house. It’s spacey and nice but not located in or near any sort of businessy area here in Omaha. It didn’t make sense to go start renting/buying an office space from day #1, but, business has been good, and we’re already entertaining the idea of leasing a space.

Where’s our Whiteboard?

A good whiteboard is integral to our day-to-day planning and operations. After browsing through the Office Max most local to us, we determined that their whiteboard supply was 1) priced outrageously high and 2) not big enough. The solution? Bootstrap your Whiteboard! using Shower Board from Home Depot.

Step 1: Glue Shower Board to Wood Frame using Liquid Nails

Step 2: Write like it’s nobody’s business!

Establishing a Day-to-Day routine

It has taken us a few weeks to adjust to our new work style and environment. Needless to say, it’s a bit of a trip moving from the employee to entrepreneur. Meetings with clients take up a larger amount of time than we expected, working late into the night happens frequently, and the wearing of corporatey clothes has all but vanished. In fact, a potential new BrightMix slogan we’re throwing around:

“We haven’t worn shoes since we quit our day jobs!”

Consulting Work

Due to our massive sexiness and awesomeness, we’ve had a number of consulting deals come our way very rapidly. Our initial goal was to do just enough consulting work to cover the bills and pay ourselves the salaries that we had at our old day jobs. This would, in theory, let us spend about half of our time working on a software product of our own creation.

As it turns out, we’re on the verge of getting more consulting work than we can handle as a two-man operation. As such, we’re throwing around the idea of bringing in help in the form of interns, contractors, or possibly even employees (gulp!).

Things We Wanted to Accomplish

Some things that we wanted to do within the first month but did not…

Spending More Time Blogging

We originally figured that blogging would be an integral part of our operation. We do or find something cool—we post a blog entry about it, followed by a round of enthusiastic high fives.

Easier said than done. The cold, hard truth of the matter is looming client deadlines take precedence over blogging. (Note: this post was actually created a week after our official 1 month mark!)

Spending More Time on Internal Projects

We haven’t spent more than maybe a few days worth of time on some of our internal project ideas. Hopefully we’ll be able to dedicate more time to these endeavors soon.

Branding Ourselves

We’re in dire need of a logo and a new skin/theme for our website. We’ve had some “complaints” about the neon green theme of the site. Apparently if you stare at the page long enough, it gets burned into the back of your retinas. Our apologies… our intentions were never to sear your retinas!

Similarly, our complete lack of a logo has postponed our ability to get business cards. This is becoming troublesome as we talk with potential clients and we have to verbally give out our email, website, and phone number.

Also, you’re just cooler if you have a business card – it’s science.

Where We Are Headed

Over the last month, we’ve managed to hammer down our day-to-day operations, basic office services, and solidify some of our client relationships. It’s been good.

Moving forward, we’ll be focusing hard on continuing to do good work for our current clients while probably taking on some new clients. We’re also looking at getting into a real office space and hiring on some development help, in some fashion.

We’ll post again as time allows!

Scenario:

Project manager Timmy receives another email from his boss. "We've got the go-ahead for software project 'apples.' It's a big project that will take months to complete with a handful of developers. We need to fatten up the programming staff or we'll never finish in time and we'll get fired! omg!"

Timmy, having worked on numerous software projects, knows that getting more bodies probably won't help the project get completed faster. In fact, it will probably make things happen far, far slower.

Aye, but where's the rub?

The more people involved in a project, the more communication is required to keep everyone up to snuff on things. Communication has to happen between more programmers, project managers, designers, etc. In the end, more time is spent on talking and going to meetings than coding and getting things done... productivity drag, anyone? As Steve McConnell, the author of Code Complete, points out:

Communication flows more easily on small teams than large teams. If you're the only person on a project, communication is simple. The only communication path is between you and the customer. As the number of people on a project increases, however, so does the number of communication paths. It doesn't increase additively, as the number of people increases, it increases multiplicatively, proportional to the square of the number of people.

What's the solution for our friend, Timmy?

We suggest keeping the team for project 'apples' lean and focused. Cut out as much fat as possible. Protect the team from looming productivity killers like staff meetings, status report fi