browngeek

The SanFrancisco Intl film festival is playing this week. In addition to all the cool films playing, there is also a remixer that anyone can mashup. There are about 15 film-clips, each about 2 mins, to choose from. Also choose from a list of songs for the bkgnd track (cannot mashup the songs though). With these limited choices and a slick (but basic) editor, create a 1-min remix. The best remixes will be played as part of the festival. Cool!

They say constraints force creativity. Here is my remix, titled “the surprise ending” (also known as “open your conscience”). Check it out.

Basecamp is an amazing tool for project collaboration. Its core strength is its simplicity. Its built around the key building blocks of every project - Milestones, Todos and Messages. Thats it! Amazingly simple yet no one has done this before.

Here is why you should use basecamp for your projects.

Traditional project planning includes 20th-century techniques such as -

• creating a MSProject plan (which only ONE person sees, the person that created it)
• having extended status meetings to discuss the completion percentages of each task that week…”is it 60% or 65% ?”
• then send an email to the SAME people that were in the meeting about the status
• if a different project is dependent on a specific task in your project, that project’s lead has to talk to you in PERSON or EMAIL to know when that dependent task will be completed (dont ever think that lead will open up your MSProject plan…if you think so, you are naive)
• if there is a problem completing the task on time – the engineer informs the lead, the lead changes the MSProject plan and ASSUMES all other project leads dependent on that task will constantly OPEN MSProject plan to stay connected (oh yes, of course you send emails…ah, more emails, a joy to search)
• just imagine you are a collaborating with multiple projects…they each have their own SEPARATE MSProjects. Are you serious about OPENING EACH AND EVERY MSProject and somehow mentally extrapolate the dependency dates of your specific tasks (oh, yes – of course you will call a meeting for clarification, then followup with many emails and call another “decision” meeting etc)

Enough, Break out!

Go Basecamp-ing

• Basecamp provides a unified view of all projects.
• No need to keep track of email threads about projects. All messages are in one place. Project based. Searchable.
• No more silly project plans and weird guestimates. Just set milestones and to-do lists for the milestones.
• Messages can be tagged to a milestone.
• And Basecamp is great for Scrum!

To top it all, its built by some very opiniated folks.