New year, new gig
To hell with New Year’s resolutions. How about New Year’s actions!
Remember that post I wrote about “planting a flag”? Well, I kind of expected it to flap aimlessly in the wind for a few months, but turns out it really struck a chord. When you boldly signal your intentions, people take notice (which was my hope).
One of those people was Andre Torrez, whom I worked with at Federated Media. We’d kept in touch since my return to San Francisco, meeting up for lunch now and again. I’d tell him stories about what it was like being back at work after traveling, and he’d tell me stories about the ups and downs of running his own business.
Then just before the holidays, he let me know he was on the cusp of landing a pretty big contract, one that he almost certainly couldn’t tackle by himself. An opportunity was there for me, if I wanted it. This generated a lot of reflection and discussion while I was in Austin. Upon returning to work, I decided with heavy heart to part ways with Kiva. In the end I decided this was an opportunity I did not want to pass up.
So last Monday I joined Andre at Simpleform, the company he started shortly after leaving FM. It goes without saying that I already owe Andre a lot. Not only was he responsible for hiring me at FM, but I can say with complete seriousness that “he taught me everything I know”—about being an engineer on a team at a start-up. Later, when I felt like I had more to offer than just coding, Andre gave me the chance to lead the team.
The Sign On Our Door by Andre
Now we’ll see if we can start over again. Andre has a genuine interest in rebooting Simpleform, learning from what worked and what didn’t over the last two years, and I’m looking forward to wearing multiple hats again, contributing in both engineering and management. In the short term, I’ll be coming up to speed on some new technology, and we’ll be working together on this big contract. Over the long term, we’ll be on the lookout for a steady stream of contracts to keep our mental tools sharp and revenue consistent. Given our collective skill-sets, we’ll probably be leaning more towards data-heavy, back-end web work, as opposed to front-end design projects. (This sound like something you need? Please get in touch.)
The big vision is that with regular client work, we’ll be able to fund internal “research” projects that either become revenue-generators in their own right or simply help us work more efficiently. To be honest, I don’t have any single outcome in mind. Kind of like traveling, I’m in this to see where it leads us.
Planting a flag in the sand
Over the last several weeks, an idea has crystallized in my mind—something I’ve known for a while, but just never put words to. Usually I keep these kind of things to myself but since it’s not something I can do by myself, this is an attempt to plant some seeds, solicit feedback, and hold myself accountable.
I have long known that I am not the stereotypical lone genius programmer (no matter how much I might delude myself into wishing that were the case). That’s not news. At best I see myself as a tenacious problem solver, a skill which up till now I’ve been able to employ gainfully in the art of coding. However, I am starting to wonder if being good with computers has become a crutch that’s preventing me from taking some bigger risks.
The fact is that I have these other hard-to-quantify, non-technical skills that I enjoy exercising. I know how to talk to both engineers and non-engineers (and translate between them). I actually enjoy meetings. I find that I frequently ask (what I think are) dumb, obvious questions (that no one else is asking, to my surprise), and watch them unlock a discussion. I like making order out of chaos, simplicity out of complexity. I love documenting standards and processes and systems in a way that makes it easier for the next person to absorb what I puzzled over. I like email and wikis and IRC. I really enjoy working with people. I get bored and distracted when I’m all by myself. I hate working from home. Collaboration tends to bring out the best in me—I’m amazed at what I’m able to accomplish when I’m working with others. I find it essential to know that someone depends on something I’m doing.
So here’s my idea, my realization: I want to start a company. But I can’t do it alone. No, more important than that: I don’t want to do it alone. My dream is to gather a small group of like-minded people with complementary skillsets and start a company together. I’m not looking for a big payday or expecting to change the world. I just want to work on something that makes me happy every day. I want to have control over quality. I want to have more freedom and flexibility over the types of things I work on. Heck, it could be something online or off. The “what” is almost immaterial, as long as I go home happy and look forward to working every day.
This, I think, is one of the first effects I’ve recognized to come out of the year I spent traveling. I’m no longer afraid of failure. In fact I find lately that I’m easily bored unless I’m taking a risk. Returning to San Francisco and buying a condo and assuming a mountain of debt was one exciting expression of that.
Ok, next…
New desk at Kiva’s new office
Last week Kiva moved from their longtime location in the Mission to a brand new office at 875 Howard in SOMA. The core services engineering team is off in the corner, so this picture doesn’t even begin to capture the spirit of the place. But that’s where I sit. The window looks out over Tehama Street.
My desk at Kiva (still perfecting my hardware setup)
There are 4 types of people on 5th St…
…and now that Kiva has relocated to 5th and Howard, I am one of them:
“Programmers”, a sketch from Meanwhile, 6th and Mission by Wendy MacNaughton
Tonight Kiva was welcomed to the 5th Street neighborhood by The Hub, a sort of coworking space on steroids. After work we walked over to be welcomed (and wined), and I discovered none other than Wendy MacNaughton’s sketches from Meanwhile, 6th and Mission on display in the gallery space. Unlike the linear display of her sketches on The Rumpus, here she had arranged them in two dimensions, to form a sort of visual map.
5th Street Map by Wendy MacNaughton at The Hub
I work for Kiva now!
I keep meaning to post something about having been offered a job, or starting my new job, but now that I’m already in my second week, I figured it was time to just come out and say it:
I’m a software engineer at Kiva.
Officially I’ve joined their “core services” group, which is responsible for the financial and database code that underlies kiva.org. I’ll be getting my hands dirty in the financials to start, but I’m also looking forward to helping tame their ever-growing database.
Update: Kiva just moved from the Mission to SOMA. Here’s a shot of my new desk at Kiva’s new office.
My elephant week
While Stephanie went down to Koh Phangan for a 10 day yoga retreat, I stayed behind in Chiang Mai to volunteer at Elephant Nature Park for a week. The park, founded in the early 1990s by Sangduen “Lek” Chailert, is a sanctuary for domestic Asian elephants that have been rescued from logging and trekking operations, street begging, and performing. Many of the elephants have serious physical and mental handicaps, due to mistreatment, malnourishment, and/or the hardship of the labor they endured.
Lek singing an elephant to sleep (it was standing seconds earlier)
I learned about the park when while traveling in the Philippines, thanks to Cebu Pacific’s in-flight magazine, Smile. Their January issue had a feature on 12 must-do adventures for 2011. One of them was written by bloggers Kyle and Bessie of On Our Own Path (who I later discovered also knew Jodi, my Chiang Mai connection). I read reviews elsewhere about the park, and found people’s reactions to be overwhelmingly positive. It was uncanny. Usually someone comes away from a tourist activity with a “meh”, but almost everyone counted the visit as a highlight of their trip to Thailand—if not their lives. My curiosity was piqued.
I expected to be one of maybe 3-5 volunteers. The online application is surprisingly thorough (educational and employment history, essays on why you want to volunteer, general interests, etc.) and it actually costs money: 12,000 baht/week (~$400 USD)—a little steep for your average Southeast Asia backpacker (though to be fair, they house and feed you, and much of the money goes to the elephants). As it turns out, there were more than 30 volunteers starting with me, many staying for two weeks.
The program was very well organized. From their office in Chiang Mai we were bused to the park an hour away, which included a viewing of a well-produced documentary about the plight of elephants in Thailand on the way. The first day was similar to what one might encounter on a day tour (which Stephanie squeezed in before she left for her yoga retreat), predominantly centered around feeding and bathing the elephants. Then we continued with various volunteer orientations, including a welcoming ceremony by the local village’s spiritual leader.
Trunk meet watermelon
Vacuuming up the scraps
Shoot thinning and wire lifting
After a short break in Nelson and later Blenheim, we found ourselves another wwoofing gig (previously we spent a week milking goats) at an estate vineyard and winery in the Marlborough region, well-known for its Sauvignon Blanc. The vineyard is composed of 3 separate tracts of land, totaling 163 hectares, producing around 25-30 thousand cases of wine a year (a case is twelve 750ml bottles). They also have olive trees on the estate for olive oil (did you know the oil comes from the pit and not the flesh? me neither…), some livestock (3 cows, 2 horses, sheep, and a dozen chickens), and vegetable gardens.
A week ago Friday (Nov 26) the estate manager picked us up at our backpacker in Blenheim and brought us to the house on one of their properties where we’d be staying. One of the full time employees lives there and looks after the wwoofers, which included one other person during our first week, an 18 year old from Canada. Afterwards he took us on a tour of the vineyard where we’d be working.
What are our days like? Every morning we set the alarm for 6:15 in order to have time to make breakfast and tea and get lunch together for the day. We leave the house around 7:10 on bikes they’ve provided, cycling 5km up the road to the main vineyard property. We find out what we’re going to be doing and usually start around 7:30. Most activities are done in groups, so we’re rarely alone—usually chatting with the people who work there full time. At 10:00 we break for morning tea—which amounts to a “second breakfast” given the substantial amount of food consumed for the day ahead. We resume working until 1:00 when everyone breaks for lunch—usually leftovers supplemented by eggs and olive oil from the vineyard. Then we take off after lunch and ride the bikes back to the house, to shower, relax, and eventually prepare for dinner, which we cook ourselves with food supplied by the hosts.
The primary vineyard activity we’ve been involved in is “shoot thinning”. Essentially we’re pruning the just-beginning-to-flower vines to concentrate the flavors and sugars in fewer bunches of future grapes. The more you thin, the better the grapes, the more expensive the wine. Of course very few people buy expensive wine, and cheaper bottles of wine sell in greater volumes with higher margins, so there’s a balancing act when pruning between maximizing quality and maximizing revenue. At least that was my understanding as we were taught to thin each bay (the area in a row of vines between two wood posts, about 7-8 meters apart, containing 3-4 vines) from 200 shoots to 100. Based on how much a bay had been thinned, and the variety of the grape, they could tell you how much a bottle of wine would be priced. In fact they’d often refer to certain rows as $25 Sauvignon Blanc or $45 Pinot Noir.
The other vineyard activity we’ve been involved in is “wire lifting”. The grape vines are grown on a trellise system known as “vertical shoot positioning” or VSP in which the vine grows vertically (like a tree) about 80cm off the ground, and then splits in two, running along a wire fixed to the posts about 80cm in each direction. Up from these horizontal “branches” (called cordons in French) the fruiting canes (or “spurs”) are spaced out every 20cm or so, and each branches out into six or more vertical shoots. Without any assistance, the shoots would grow in every direction and eventually be weighed down by the fruit. So once the shoots have been thinned, we walk along the entire length of each row (200-300 meters) and lift two sets of movable wires up to variously spaced clips on both sides of each post, in effect sandwiching the vines vertically.
Idyllic view from our bedroom
Taking a break from shoveling compost
Nice view between the vines on a hill
Stephanie shoot thinning
Justin shoot thinning
How a row looks after shoot thinning
How a post looks after wire lifting
