Tapxe
Month
Every time I know we’re ready to deploy I get nervous. What if my code breaks everything? Have I tested everything? Have I remembered everything?
Is this my freewheeling system 1 taking over what should otherwise be a system 2 activity? Or is my system 2 stepping in, squelching my system 1’s desire to just deploy and move on by saying “hold on, let’s think this through a bit more?"
I hesitate. Almost as if I’d rather keep the code to myself. I test things again.
Whether system 2 takes over or lets go I’m not sure. But after a few deep breaths I remember what Steve Jobs said: ”Real artists ship“ or what 37 signals said: ”Shipping beats perfection…anybody can fix anything.“ Not that I think I’m an artist, and I probably can’t fix anything but I type in one of the most exiting phrases ever developed:
$ git push heroku master
After everything loads and restarts I do some quick click-throughs on the live site. Both systems are happy.
I managed to drop the one thing you don’t want to drop when I was packing a box in the kitchen this morning, fish oil. You know, the stinky stuff that makes Thai food taste like Thai. I was debating about throwing it away rather than bringing when it took matters into its own hands.
Off the counter it jumped. Splat. All over the kitchen floor and cabinets.
I guess it wanted to stay.
”—First off. It’s time to innovate. Fellow #agnerds, let’s move away from news/prices/weather apps, mappazines, one-off tank-mix utilities, and incomplete farm management tools. Our farms, fields, and futures deserve better. I’m surprised a bit with the big cos, but we shouldn’t wait for them to lead this revolution. Syngenta after all can’t even get a tank mix app right and we didn’t really see anything from Bayer or BASF in this list. Monsanto seems to be on the right track (though they’ll surely ignore my point number 3 below) and Pioneer is close behind.
Second. Design matters. Buttons should look like buttons and please don’t make them tiny. Our users drive tractors. Even expensive tractors bounce around. Ergo our users may be bouncing around and big buttons are easier when you’re bouncing! We love the Corn N Rate Calculator because with its clean layout and normal sized buttons it’s so darn easy to use - even in a bouncy tractor. Don’t make me think.
Third. Let’s think a bit more open. Every app in this list seems to be building its own walled garden to the detriment of its users. Just using the sign-up process as an example there was not a single common way of authenticating users to be found (Facebook, Twitter, Google, oAuth, etc ). We created almost 40 accounts and entered the same field information a dozen times to review 40 apps! As a user I don’t want to have to enter the same field information & gps coordinates every time I want to try a new app. And my data, well, no questions asked it should belong to me. Where are the apps that let compare hybrids across brands or which lets me pipe my Ag Leader generated data into my iPad one day and mash it up with my Trimble generated data the next?
You can find Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of our ag app review on the main Yield Pop blog.
@yieldpop alpha just shipped.
What do I mean by shipped? After a long day of deploying, configuration, and ironing out the final bugs (wireworms or nematodes I’m not sure) our excellent developer has called it a night (it’s well after midnight his time) and after checking every last detail of our launch email and target user list (a dozen times) have hit the button to send it. It’s out. It’s in the wild.
It’s time to see if we’re on the right path. As @mfperkins and I texted earlier ‘wrong path > losing trust’. Thanks Mailchimps for reminding me: This is your moment of glory. Time to find out.
September 26th was a particularly bright day for me. And it was an even brighter day for Yield Pop. Because on that Wednesday Alex decided to join me on this journey of building Yield Pop, our agriculture meets the internet venture.
Actually, Alex has been involved since the start….
It begins! (well, just publicly I suppose). Looking forward to to getting back into the online space, to building an awesome company with @mfperkins, and most importantly to helping farmers worldwide.
You and I face the difficult choice of trading meaning for money; we weigh the searing moments of real human accomplishment against the soul-sucking “work” of earning the next car payment by polishing up another meaningless PowerPoint deck packed with tactics to win games whose net result is the creation of little of real value for much of anyone who’s not a sociopath.
…So what can you do about it? There’s only one good answer, and it’s simple. Stop trading meaning for money. It’s the worst trade you’ll ever make.
”—@umairh
http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2012/10/making_the_choice_between_mone.html
Thoughts and photos from an expat-entrepreneur. The unlikely intersection of living abroad, the interweb, startups, switzerland, and agriculture. Perhaps the occasional post about running as well.