Scott Porad

After my deification of Microsoft Excel, I was thinking that there is one feature I wish Excel had that it doesn’t.  Note: this is a serious power user feature.

Why can’t an Excel Workbook be queried with a SQL Query Tool?  A workbook is a database, each worksheet is a table, and each row is a record.  Isn’t this obvious?

I often find myself importing an Excel Worksheet into Microsoft Access, so that I can then run queries against the data.  In fact, I do this regularly.

Does this tool already exist?

It doesn’t seem like this should be very hard to build, and I’m certain there are all sorts of people out there in the business and academic worlds that benefit from it.

An informal survey of marketing and PR professionals who work with social media asked the following question:

What is the one tool you can’t live without?

Do you think the answer was TweetDeck or an iPhone or the latest and greatest sentiment-reputation analytics package?

Think again. The answer: Microsoft Excel.

If you think about it, that makes perfect sense.   Excel is like Playdoh—it can be used for anything.  It’s powerful and malleable at same time.

It’s the perfect tool for the long tail…for all the little niche parts of business that aren’t big enough to have their own specialized tool.  Likewise, it’s the perfect tool for emerging industries that have not stabilized to the point where suitable tools can be built.

Excel is the MacGuyver of software.

My view is that Excel is the single most valuable software application in the history of software.

Is it more valuable than e-mail?  Well, before e-mail we still had means of written communication.  Email simply made it faster.

Is it more valuable than a word processor?  Well, before word processors we still had typewriters.  Word processors simply made drafting documents easier.

On the other hand, Excel gives us the power to do things we couldn’t do before.  In an instant, Excel can do calculations that would have taken a team of mathematicians to do in the past.  In an instant, it can do calculations that would have been prohibitively expensive for even a team of math whizzes to do…calculations that would have taken them years.  And, in an instant, you can tweak one number and it will do all of them again.

Just think about that power!!

But, aren’t there other software applications that have empowered people to do things that couldn’t be done before?  Yes, I’m sure there are, but here’s what pushes Excel over the top: this power is given to the masses.  For a few hundred bucks, you can have this power and it takes barely any specialized skill to perform these calculations.

My goodness, Excel is a marvel!!

When a good portion of your revenue is running on Wordpress.com servers, this is not a tweet that causes my heart to go pitter-patter:

It’s more of a sinking feeling, to be perfectly honest.

Recently, Wordpress.com was down for almost two hours.  Dave Moyer, the host of WordCast, interviewed me about the outage, how it affected our business and my thoughts about Wordpress.com going forward.  You can listen to the interview, and I’ll outline my thoughts here:

• We continue to be very supportive of Wordpress.com and view them as an excellent partner.  I recommend Wordpress all the time without hesitation.
• I did not view this as a serious issue because Wordpress has a history of outstanding reliability.  (OMG!  Did I just jinx them?)  The last outage of this magnitude was 4 years ago.  In addition to Wordpress, we run our own infrastructure and we’ve had at least one outage in the last 2 years, so they’re doing better than us in that regard.  Obviously, if a pattern develops, we would have to review our point of view.
• Yes, we lost revenue that day.  But, if you think about it, that lost revenue is simply part of the cost of the service.  If we wanted an even more reliable service (and by no means is Wordpress.com unreliable), then it would cost us significantly more than the amount of revenue we lost that day.
• Why do we use Wordpress.com?  Simply put, it’s cheaper.  It might not be cheaper cash-wise, but when you look at the total cost of ownerhship it’s way cheaper.
  • First, we’d have to own and manage all that infrastructure which costs money and management overhead.
  • In addition, we’d have to develop the expertise required to host an extremely large Wordpress installation.  Wordpress.com already has this expertise.
  • And, there’s the stress of operating a 24/7/365 operation.
  • Most importantly, the opportunity cost of focus and cost distraction.  At the end of the day, Cheezburger benefits from having our full attention focused on building great sites and creating a great community.

For those of you reading this who might not give a hoot about technology or Wordpress.com, that final point really is relevant to so much of life.  The opportunity cost of focus and the cost distraction are such critical elements to success.  I wish I had words to express that concept more eloquently; somehow I just feel in my gut that it’s true.

To buy an iPad, or to not buy an iPad, that is the question.

The answer is no.

I love the idea.  It would live on my sofa and everyone in my family would use it.  Instantly, it would become an indispensable part of our every day life.  Five years ago my friend Lee had a NEC Tablet which just ran ordinary Windows and used a stylus, but I thought it was awesome.  A perfect integration into everyday life.

So, why won’t I be buying an iPad?

In first place: no front-facing camera.  I’m sitting on the couch, watching a show or a game, I want to talk to my friend about it…video chat.  Awesome.  Except I can’t.  I have to get up to my computer.  In other words, it’s not a complete device.

Runner up: no multi-tasking.  Can’t write an e-mail and listen to audio online simultaneously.  Can’t write a document and research it simultaneously on the web.

Honorable mention: poor typing interface.  I’ll reserve my complete opinion until I have a chance to try it out, but from what it looks like in order to type I will have to set it down.  Lame.  I’m lying on the couch, watching a show our a game, I want type an e-mail.  Except I can’t.  I have to sit up and put it on my lap to type.  Major inconvenience.  In other words, it’s a laptop.

Maybe iPad 2.0 will have these missing features, but as far as I’m concerned without them it’s not a complete device.

Update: overnight, another deficiency occurred to me: the iPad needs to have a built-in kick-stand.  How am I going to watch a movie?  Hold in up for two hours?  It seems too heavy for that.  Set it up on a chair?  How will I be able to get the right angle on it?

At Cheezburger, we embrace incrementalism.  We’ve found that when we make changes in incremental, small pieces and there are several benefits:

1. Things get done and ship faster.  The result is regular progress and momentum.  Success begets success.
2. Things tend to be less late.  It’s hard to have a 2 day project be 2 months late.
3. You get the thing your making out to your customers faster.  As a result, a) you start learning if it works sooner, b) your customers get to start using it sooner, and c) assuming it’s valuable, you start capturing the value sooner.
4. There is less overhead (design, planning, etc.) in a 2 day project than a 2 month project.
5. Incremental changes have fewer dependencies.  Dependencies add complexity and can cause delays.
6. Developers like small projects because they seem easier and more fun.
7. A small project has less bugs and is easier to test.
8. It’s easier to A/B test incremental changes.
9. It’s less expensive to change your mind because changes cost less.
10. Incremental changes are less jarring to customers.

The bottom line is that we’ve found greater success through incrementalism.  I’m sure there are 101 other reasons that I’ve missed too  (and I’d love for you to share them in the comments…yes, I’m speaking to you Martin).

I just gave someone admin privileges to one of our Cheezburger systems.  Whenever I grant someone admin privileges to one system or another, I always give them this little speech:

You’ve been given the power, now keep these two things in mind:

1.  Play nicely with others.

2.  Think before you type.

We all have admin privileges in our own lives, so in general, I think these are just good words to live by.

P.S.  I can’t take credit for this speech: it was a given to me by a sys admin named Trey Valenta way back in the olden times.

I spent most of Friday and Saturday at Gnomedex 9.0–the most recent version of Chris Pirillo’s conference about the intersection of technology and humanity.  In my view, there are two reasons to attend an industry conference, regardless of industry:

1. To gain some practical skills or information.  For example, attending a training or sales conference.
2. To develop relationships with industry peers.

Without a doubt, Gnomedex is #2.  There were many excellent sessions, but what I value most from the experience is the people I met, and the exchange of ideas.

I’ve come to understand in a more personal way the age-old axiom that “it’s not what you know, but who you know”.  At a certain point, business is not a meritocracy–there are lots of smart people with good ideas.  It’s the relationships you have, and the ability to enlist others to support you, that separates the good ideas from the successful ideas.

Most companies don’t encourage their employees to attend industry conferences.  I would encourage you to make an effort to do so, even if you have to pay your own way.  The connections made at events like Gnomedex are worth every penny of the price of admission.

The line below is a lesson one of my mentors taught me long ago:

Software is simply a reflection of the people and processes that created it.

If you make a version 1.0 that does not satisfy customers, then don’t throw it out and start working on version 1.0′ because the same people and processes are going to end up with the same product.  Instead, re-engineer your processes and get your people in the right place, then iterate to version 1.1.

In other words, if you have a machine that makes widgets, why would you expect the new widgets to be different if you don’t rewire the guts of the machine?

I disagree with Steve Gillmor’s recent essay, Rest in Peace, RSS, that declares RSS is dead.  There, I said it.

Now, it’s scary to say that because Steve Gillmor is a legendary tech journalist whom I respect tremendously.  For me to even assume that I know 1/10th of what Steve Gillmore knows in his pinky finger is audacious.  Nonetheless, I think he misses the mark.

To summarize, Steve says that he’s completely abandoned his RSS Reader (Google Reader) and now gets his information entirely from Twitter.  In short, this is the money line:

Twitter, not RSS, became the early warning system for new content.

Well, yes, that is correct: Twitter is currently the best early warning system for new content.  Once upon a time, RSS played that role, but Twitter is faster at getting it out there now.

However, in my view, to say that RSS is dead is misunderstanding the inherent value of RSS.  First, with RSS I don’t miss anything because it’s all there in my reader.  With Twitter, if a tweet with a link to a blog post flows by while I’m out of town, then I’ve missed it.  Second, Twitter doesn’t push actual content, it pushes headlines and sound-bites.

In my mind, here’s the analogy: Twitter is to RSS as the newspaper is to news magazines.  In other words, Twitter is to RSS as The New York Times is to The New Yorker.[1] I subscribe to both (seriously), but value them for different reasons.  I will miss a story or two (or two hundred!) unless I read the NYT religiously every day, and the stories will become dated.  On the other hand, I pretty much catch every story in The New Yorker and they are far less perishable.

All that being said, Steve is right that RSS is no longer the early warning system for new content.  However, that doesn’t mean you should abandon RSS–not all content is about immediacy.

RSS and Twitter are just tools for consuming information, and what’s important is to use those tools appropriately.  In fact, I think you will be making a mistake if you do abandon RSS because there is plenty of great information that is just as valuable tomorrow as it was today.

You should sign up for my RSS feed which you can do by clicking here.  Subscribing to my RSS feed will save you time by pushing my blog directly to you, and ensure that you don’t miss anything important.

[1] – Perhaps a more apt analogy would be that Twitter is to RSS as network TV evening news is to The New Yorker

Below is a recently popular video from Google that interviews people in Times Square.  The interviewer asks a variety of very simple questions about the Internet and receives corresponding variety of very, very wrong answers in repsonse.  For example, “What is a browser?”  Among people who work with the web and computers, the typical response is to think, “gee, what a bunch of idiots”.

But, I think that’s missing the point: never underestimate how much you know.

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you work with the Internet professionally and understanding the notion of a “browser” is less than Internet 101 to you.  But, you have to remember that compared to the average bear, you’re at least five standard deviations away in understanding of the Internet.

I am reminded of a conversation we were having in the office a few weeks ago.  Under discussion was the design of a new image gallery, and the debate was over whether or not each picture needed a link that said “select” beneath it.  One side said that it’s obvious that you need to simply click a picture to select it, and seeing 25 “select” links on the page looks bad.   The other side replied that even though it looks less streamline, we can’t overestimate our users, so we need a clear call to action.

I sided with the later group, and I call this the “lead a horse to water” school of web design.  For most users, you need to put the action right in their face in order for them to see it.  Especially, for broadly based consumer sites, where the user is far less skilled than you, as an Internet Professional, can imagine.

That’s not a knock on users.  I love users; they feed my family.  Rather, it’s a compliment to you: the detail and minutiae that you have in the dirt under your the fingernail on your pinky finger is greater than the casual web user has in their whole lifetimes.  I’m not saying they’re dumb, just that you’re very experienced.

Just how much you know is something very important to keep in mind when designing your product.  Remember that, and you’ll go a long way.