I don’t know what I’m doing

Posted by admin - 22/06/07 at 03:06:24 am

One of the directors here at work has just sent me an article of his about how we do it at work, what we’re about. He’s given me permission to reproduce it here:

I don’t know what I’m doing.

And why the future of business is to be where others fear to tread

As soon as you think you’ve got it sussed, it changes. This happens every week, no, make that every day, hour, minute and second. The old certainties are gone and in their place we have rolling never-ending disruption. Oh, what’s that you say? There’s a new format for this ad or that ad? Surprise me. Nothing stays the same. We live and work in a super fast, super fluid environment where there are no rules, really.

Now, depending on your bent, this is either a pain in the arse and an obstacle, or the best full throttle, jump out of bed, greet the day with a shout opportunity that you ever got. It’s like Christmas every day. We don’t create, we invent. And what’s better than that? Inventing doesn’t require rules - they’re for people who want to know what they’re doing, who like order and the fact that everything has its place.

Creative? That’s sooo, 20th Century. Where I spend my time we make stuff, we imagine, wonder, copy, borrow, steal and cobble together. We invent. ‘How do you do that?’ ‘I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out.’ Look at that, if you mix it with this and take some of that, it makes this! If where you work isn’t like this and you’ve got a bunch of people called creatives having ‘ideas’ then you work at an ad agency, a place with rules and people know what they’re doing because they’ve done it before.

As was, creativity is the preserve of the few, its top down and hierarchical, structured and rules based. Traditional. Its old and it doesn’t work anymore. Constant disruption requires people who embrace it and feel comfortable with it. Where we work, we don’t know what we’re doing because its never been done before and in order to remain fresh, smart and ahead of the pack, you have to be inventive. It’s the ability to invent that’s at a premium. Inventors have no fear of the unknown. They like change and a lack of boundaries, Its where they thrive.

And this is where we are; we’re all inventors, media planner, art director, Flash programmer, strategist, every last one. At the edge of knowledge, technology, understanding. Here I am. I don’t know what I’m doing, because if I did I would be yesterday.

© 2007 Rob Lawrence @ Avenue A | Razorfish UK

This place, the people that fill it, they “get it”.

Do i need much more reason to like coming to work on a monday morning?

Rails 2.0, out now!

Posted by admin - 16/06/07 at 12:06:08 pm

I’m a little bit late to the party on this one, but it would appear that Rails 2.0(.1) is finally out. Friday saw the birth of the second major release of the framework we love to love, and it jam packed with lots of loveliness and joy.

Rails 2.0 (i wonder how long until the trolls think Rails 2.0 is a Rails mash-up or something) brings with it lots of new features, polish, fixes and sexy, here are some of my favourites:

  • Namespaces in ActionPack
  • Seperation of view-type and renderer (ie. show.html.erb or show.html.haml)
  • Automagic record routing: form_for(person)
  • HTTP Authentication baked in!
  • Request Profiler
  • Sexy Migrations, say a big thanks to err.the blog for this one
  • ActiveRecord XML deserialization and JSON serialization
  • ActiveResource (like AR for REST api’s)

There are (obviously) tons more features to the release, i suggest you check out the official announcement as well as Ryan’s awesome post. Happy coding bitches!

That may be the first time anyone has ever said that to me!

Posted by admin - 03/06/07 at 06:06:17 pm

Unfortunately our toll free number at work is very… Very close to that of the Department of Children and Family Services for some undisclosed state, that I can only imagine, based on the accents of the people calling, is located somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line, where Nascar isn’t just a sports franchise… It’s a religion. And Bubba is not just your uncle… He’s your cousin too.

photo credit: The G-tastic 7

As you can imagine this can tend to create some annoying, albeit occasionally amusing exchanges between our employees and an assortment of nefarious scumbags ranging from dead beat dads, to drug addicted welfare collecting moms. They are always angry… They are always rude, and they are always ready for a fight.

You get the feeling that they are well aware that they are dirt bags, or at least considered to be, and are pretty well resigned to being treated as such. I’m assuming this comes from years of dealing with beauracracy and attempting to defend an indefensible position…

I guess…

From what my mom tells me anyway…

It’s pretty tough to explain how you lost custody of your 3 month old baby because you went on a crack binge for three weeks and ended up leaving junior at a crack house as collateral. So they’ve, for the most part become accustomed to being treated like shit!

I know… I know… My kinda’ people right?! So this morning the phone is ringing and I grab it…

“Thank you for calling (blank) how can I help you?”

“Uhhhhhh… Whatchoo’ say?”

“How can I help you???”

“Dis’ mus’ be da’ wrong number!” “Dis’ be da’ numba’ I call fo’ my benefeeits don’t get cut?” “I gotta report my baby daddy social security so ma’ benefeeits don’t get cut!”

“Ummmm… No. We’re a (blank) company, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“So who I gotta call?”

“I’m sorry I really wouldn’t know, as I said we’re a (blank) company.”

“Dis ain’t DCFS?”

“Ummmmm no (laughing audibly now) this is a (blank) company.”

“Damn… I thought so. You was too nice.” *click*

I set the receiver back in the cradle thinking… That may be the first time I’ve ever heard that phrase… Well the first time it’s been directed at me anyway. So thank you! Thank you un-wed teen mother, for making my day! If you only knew the real me… If you only knew.

Oh… And by the way. If anyone out there knows the father of Bristol Palin’s baby personally, you may want to tell him that I think she may be looking to turn his ass in!

I’m just sayin’…

If you liked that…

  • It’s Not Graffiti… It’s Marketing!
  • The top eleven Mexican one liners.
  • Celebrate May Day. Punch a communist!
  • Intervention is a real ego booster!
  • Why don’t more white people wear grilles?