2010 has been an awesome year. Of course, after the previous year, I could have done nothing but sleep all year and it would have been better for me. A few highlights:
skeevisArts has been thriving. We launched a ridiculous number of websites (and those are the projects we can talk about), as well as diversifying into mobile development (both iPhone and Android, as well as some generic mobile web sites).
Launched Structo, my first “serious” startup venture with me at the helm. Initial feedback has been good, and I plan on continuing it in the new year.
Finally got real and took lessons on DJing, something I’ve wanted to do for years.
Moved from the ‘burbs into downtown DC. As much as I loved Bethesda, city life is completely different, and awesome.
Got more involved with the community, and had a chance to speak a few times. ProudlyMadeinDC is a big undertaking of mine, and working on it with Michael Mayernick has been awesome.
Best of all – celebrated nearly 5 years with Alex. Yay!
Further Lessons Learned
Building off of my earlier list – read that first.
16. Introductions are amazing. Give and receive. I introduce as many people as possible, and give referrals whenever possible. After two years, I can happily say I’ve never sent a cold call, never placed an ad, and never gotten any work off of Craigslist (though I tried to initially). All my work has been an existing client or someone I met referring me to someone else. I stated last year that building a network is important, and that’s been galvanized this year. And it’s true – give and ye shall receive. I do whatever I can to introduce people, and every time I meet someone, I’m always thinking about who in my list they should talk to, and follow it up with an email intro. DJ Saul really guided me on this, and it’s something I plan on promoting as much as possible.
17. Don’t do it all yourself. I got hit pretty hard with this. When I first started, I did every bit of work. Nowadays, I’ve become better not just at outsourcing or bringing on contractors for skills I lack (like good design), but to also assist in what I would be doing as well. So today I have a team of Flash developers, WordPress Developers, PHP + Rails, etc…
18. Ensure that you’re balancing time appropriately with non-revenue generating activities, and really think if an event is worth attending. When starting out, I attended every networking event, developer group, and conference – not only because I had the flexibility to, but because I thought that, in same way, it might help my business. Really judge whether an event or conference is worth your time. (Hint: If you attend a one day conference and you spend all morning on your laptop before finally zoning out at 2 PM to go to a side room to get work done… you’ve wasted your time)
2009 professionally was an amazing year, as it marks my first full year of running my own company, fulfilling a dream I’ve had since I was a kid. The people I’ve met, lessons I’ve learned, and amazing products we’ve collaborated on have been a daily inspiration for me. 2010 will be spent working on my own products, help others devise and built theirs, and in general, crushing it. As I’ve learned through experience, the sky is the limit.
Of course there are other good things about 2009 – my first vacation to Mexico – and actually unplugging, my first cruise, and quality time spent with friends and family. And of course, nearly four years with some crazylady from New Jersey.
The Lows
Personally, 2009 was tragic as my loving father, David Band, passed away in March – a scenario that one never wishes to happen on anyone, or thinks would happen to them. We all miss him. I’m not going to dive in to what we had to deal with, what we’re still going through, and feeling, as it is a bit too private for an online forum. All I can say is that we are so thankful for our family and friends through this tragic time.
Watched a really interesting film on SnagFilms (a great startup, and JESS3 client!) this morning, regarding how America, since 2001, has been heading in the wrong direction. It definitely has a propaganda element to the film, but it raises a lot of very disturbing points, especially how some of the tactics, and exact terminology, used in the past 7 years compares to Nazi Germany.
Alex and I went to Disney World mid-June, as a graduation present. While I had been to Disneyland every year as a kid, I had never been to Disney World in my life, let alone Florida!
The logistics alone were amazing, and worth the prices. I checked my bags in at Dulles, and we never saw them until they showed up in our room. Same going back; someone just came and picked them up, and again, didn’t see them until they showed up in the baggage carousel in Dulles. We gave them our flight info, they arranged shuttles to and from the park. We didn’t even have to get boarding passes, they showed up on our doorstep one morning, along with a note of where to meet the bus. Little things that, done in scale, cost little money to the park, but make a huge impact on guests. Props to you, Walt.
Lego store. Heaven. I’ve been dating Alex for 2 1/2 years, and only then found out that she had never once played with Lego. Nearly killed our relationship right there.
I think the most remarkable thing about Disney is not the branding, the characters, or even the rides. It’s the message that they focus on, that you can accomplish anything you dream about. It’s in every show, every ride, every song, every parade. You feel good when you are there, and never want to leave. I found myself looking online for a Disney Parks soundtrack, just to have in my office.
We were among the first 100 people to ride the Pirates of the Carribean ride the first day it re-opened (it was remodeled to look more like the movie, which was based on the original ride…). They definitely dumbed it down and simplified it, it used to be really fun, with lots going on, or at least the Disneyland one was.
Here is what Space Mountain looks like, with the lights on! It broke down for a little bit. Once the lights are on, it looks pretty dumb, like a roller coaster you might find in a parking lot carnival. But with the lights back off, it was still pretty thrilling!
The parades and shows were AWESOME. I know I shouldn’t like them as someone who was 10 years old fourteen years ago, but whatever. Admit it, you loved them too.
I touched on this before, but Marc Andreesen’s essay about careers and creating and accepting opportunities rather than having a definite plan really resonated in me.
I believe a huge part of what people would like to refer to as “career planning” is being continuously alert to opportunities that present themselves to you spontaneously, when you happen to be in the right place at the right time.
And with that in mind, effective May 2nd, I will be Chief Technical Officer of JESS3.
I couldn’t be more excited. Jesse has already built an amazing team, a huge and exciting client roster, and has the passion and drive to realize our dreams.
Plus I get to play on the web all day. Who can beat that?
People often trash working for large companies, especially anything government related. I loved it. But, in the end, I knew where I wanted to be, and a stepping stone formed around it.
This popped up on a picture I posted… Completely unrelated, but I wonder how they are doing it.
I doubt it’s any kind of recognition. My bet is it saw that I was attending these two events (or supposed to) at around the same time, and thought I might have taken it there.
May be more useful in the long run… if you’re the type that posts pictures during or immediately after events.
And yes, that’s a Macbook Pro. More on that later.
I was reading the latest issue of Wired the other day in the gym, and flipped to an article about tilt-shift photography. Tilt-shift photography is a technique of taking a picture so that it looks as if the shot is of a scale model. This used to be done with expensive camera equipment, but recently people have developed Photoshop tutorials that achieve the same effect. I decided to give this a try with a picture I took from a Maryland football game (we won ) yesterday, and made this:
I’m pretty bad with Photoshop (I prefer Corel products), so this tutorial was a little bit more helpful than the Wired article.
Fellow residents of the DC area! No more rushing to the nearest metro station, only to find the next train is 15 minutes away! Now, all you have to do is send a plain vanilla text message with the name of the station you are heading to, and receive the times for the coming trains! And it’s FREE.
WMATA offers train times over the web. They also have a WAP version – but very few people have internet on their cell phones currently (plus WAP is usually slow as !@#$ ). Happened across an iPhone version some time ago as well. These are good solutions, but there was no universal solution. But I realized, every phone out nowadays supports text messaging, and a large percentage use text messaging regularly (and if they don’t, it’s cheap to send individual text messages). The commands sent are simple – just the name of the station. The desired data is simple – how much time until the next train.
And if you have any suggestions/bugs/additions, let me know, by sending me an email at zvi AT zviband DOT com or posting a comment below. Thank you!
Over the past couple days, I took it from a small applet running locally on my computer and moved it to my server, and created a pretty frontend to it (OK, the HTML is horrendous, but I wanted to get it up fast). I wasted a lot of time looking for SMS gateways so I could text the user directly instead of going through email gateways, but the cost would be too high, especially for a free service. I had a personal issue (I hate having to wait for metro trains) that I knew many others had. There was great demand, but little to nothing in terms of supply (for the standard cell user w/o an internet plan). So I made it.
I'm a hacker/founder, I'm working on Contactually, an email interface to CRMs. I'm also a freelance developer, working as skeevisArts while working on Structo, a cloud service for web developers.
Personally, 2009 was tragic as my loving father, 
