What's going on in Silicon Valley at companies like Facebook, Twitter, and IDEO - what we learned.
This past December we finished out the year in San Francisco for the sold-out An Event Apart web design conference. If you've read any of their articles on A List Apart, you know this is a community passionate about making websites. If you ever get a chance to take in a conference – do it. Fantastic speakers and surprisingly great food make for an engaging and enjoyable way to spend a few days.
A couple key themes emerged across the presentations.
We were also fortunate enough to line up a few field trips to chat with some talented and interesting techies.
In preparation for an upcoming 99% interview on traveling and creating, I interviewed a JavaScript developer at their HQ over lunch. A very casual and friendly atmosphere, many of their employees were veterans of startup incubators like Y Combinator and you could see why the company was going after that type of talent. People who build businesses are restless and like to move fast. Twitter has definitely changed the world and it was fascinating to get a brief peek into theirs. Thanks again Alex for making time! Stay tuned for the interview coming in late-January.
Takeaway: Always be building stuff on the side.
Next up we hit up Facebook down in Palo Alto. Their designer, Ben Barry, had collaborated on a 99% interview titled “How to Hack Your Job”. Ironically, it was the last day the company was in their old headquarters and I was really surprised at how small their space was for what the company has accomplished. (We also visited the new campus which is Sun Microsystems old headquarters and its impressive for sure). We saw Zuckerberg sitting through a boring meeting and his desk really is out with all the other developers.
Ben's work adorns the walls and we even got to sign the physical 'Facebook Wall' by the entrance that he helped create.
Being a large company, their focus is to try and stay innovative and the Hack mantra is everywhere reminding employees to stay on the move. Ben was even kind enough to give us a few of his posters he designed for the f8 developer conference for our office.
Thanks again Ben!
Takeaway: Like Ben's poster says: Done is Better Than Perfect.
Having first visited IDEO's headquarters in July 2010, it was a real treat to go back again and see some old friends in the Toy Lab. It's a playful culture of really talented folks that are really nice people. We spent the afternoon chatting with the community manager of the website OpenIDEO – a crowdsourced model for doing innovation around social issues.
Next, we met with their global health lead on ways technology is changing how we consume healthcare and what Big Data is going to mean for all of us. Their design partner had some fascinating portfolio examples on different internal design challenges from their global offices. (Both of these designers were big fans of the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and its connections to Bozeman). We finished up the day learning about how they worked with the architect Michael Graves on designing homes for veterans. A huge thanks to Lindsey for lining all these meetings up – probably one of the best afternoons of 2011 for us.
Takeaway: Design thinking upfront makes marketing drastically easier down the road.
Over casual lunches, we learned that almost everybody we met with had side projects or was working on their own midnight startup. You can see why so much innovation bubbles up in this area. Nobody we met with gave you the sense they were “coasting” in their careers, even though they easily could be in other places – but the Silicon Valley culture wouldn't tolerate it.
Designers were coding their own websites. Toy designers were making movies. JavaScript developers were writing books. A good approach to try and replicate for us here at Digital Wax Works as we roll into 2012.
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