Anyone going? Looks like a few of us from the Blogsmith team are going to be out there next week after all. Hit me up if your going to be in Vegas. Looking forward to catching up with some peeps.

Helped Launch Netscape.com

It was June 15th that we put the beta Netscape online. Love it or hate it, we certainly made waves ;)

It was a project I wasn't initially supposed to be involved with, at least, not to the extent that I was. When Jason and Brian took over the netscape.com domain, I was offered the opportunity to go to AOL sort of as a netscape/weblogs, inc contact for Blogsmith. Gavin, Mike and I had been working on Blogsmith for a few months and Blogsmith was a small indie startup still. Moving one of us to the "inside" made sense.

At some point last March, the three of us flew out to meet the Netscape team at the Viceroy in Santa Monica. One thing led to another, and I was asked to be the lead developer for the project through the product launch. The next couple of months were absolutely insane. Kathryn was out in California so I was left on my own in DC and pretty much worked around the clock. We launched the beta on June 15, 2006 and then spent the next month or two cleaning things up. We overloaded the servers, we got hacked, we had less functionality than we initially anticipated, we had scope creep into areas we didn't plan for -- you name it, and we dealt with it, all in a very short amount of time for a project of that size.

My reason for joining Netscape was to tackle the challenge of launching under such a tight deadline. Once things calmed down and things were humming along, Blogsmith happened to be purchased by AOL. I was able to slowly (perhaps without his full knowing/understanding) delegate most everything to Tom (suckah!), and transfer back to rejoin Gavin, Mike and by then, Celly on the Blogsmith project.

I was the first to drop off Netscape I guess, soon followed by Jason and then C.K.. The current team though is absolutely incredible and firing on all cylinders. The developers over there are top notch and working on some amazing technology that will certainly shake things up when its released.

It's been a hell of a year and a half personally, and Netscape is a big part of the story. I'll never forget someone ease dropping on our conversations out in LA, seeing it posted in the Digg comments and then everyone successfully burying it before it gained any strength. Riding segways around Venice with groups of people yelling "Freaks!!" at us and Jason, for some reason, acting like a Robot the whole time. Or discussing the merits of the Viceroy's amazingly delicious bacon with Wil Wheaton. Of course, using the then newly launched Emurse.com to staff up was enjoyable as well ;) (nod to Finke) (yea, I know, a plug.. I couldn't help myself)

I think the biggest lessons I learned was to sleep when I'm tired (oops), how to work with a boss like Jason (notoriously demanding) , script kiddies will always find a way, script kiddies don't like being called script kiddies, when talking to the press you're always on record and most importantly, anything in any amount of time is possible if you have a dedicated and focused enough team. Distance be damned.

Congrats on a successful first year for Netscape.com (the social edition). I absolutely can not wait to see the things planned for the next year. Trey and his team are men amongst men, and Tom's dedication and leadership holds great promise for the entire Netscape brand. Keep it up guys -- NETSCAPE FTW!

UPDATE: I've been quoted in the Netscape article on the same topic, "Happy Birthday, Netscape"

Original Weblogs, Inc management currently employed by AOL (in order of departure):

• Jason Calacanis
• Judith Meskill
  
• Brian Alvey
  

Mad congrats to Brian for making the jump. ComicMix.com, his new startup, is a "blue flame" project for him, and I couldn't be more excited to see him doing something he loves full time. Transitioning from a start up mentality to the AOL mentality is brutal, and may in fact be impossible. I'm sure he's anxious to get back into the ring for another go at it.

Again, congrats Brian, and thanks for everything you've taught us.

We're rolling out of Portland tonight to head north to Seattle. Portland's been a pretty cool place, sans the constant rain and cold. I've always heard good things about this town though, and from what I've been able to tell it's justified. We went and grabbed dinner at the happy hour at Portland City Grill last night, which has an amazing view of the city (it's on the 30th floor, with all glass windows looking out). The Saturday Market was a lot of fun this past weekend as well. Neat stuff. Too much incense, but.. neat ;)

Anyway.. more later.. lots of Blogsmith code to stamp out...

One year ago today, after speaking briefly with Brian twice on the phone, I quit my job as a contractor on a military project to join my business partner on a little startup project called Blogsmith. I left the office and went straight to the airport to board a plane for NYC. We were up all night coding the parts of the CMS that were slated to be demoed the next day at Winstock 2005. The next day, we streamed the UCF game in the 75 Rock boardroom while Mike passed out on the floor. I went from a government mandated 40 hour work week, to working a 30 hour day. There was no contract, no written agreements and I wasn't even sure there was going to be a paycheck. Gavin and I figured, at best, we had food on the table until February.

The past year has been a great one professionally. First Blogsmith as an independent company, then AOL for the Netscape re-launch, then back to Blogsmith as an AOL property. We wrote Emurse the July before all this started, which admittedly we had to shelve for a bit, but it too found traction. We juggled 3 major projects this year and I've spent more than 75% of the year living out of a suitcase (I just added it up...). I feel as if I haven't stopped since I boarded that plane to New York. It's been a heck of a trip.

We're here at the Pop Century Resort, 50's style, for another Orlando CodeJam. Celly, Gavin, Mike and myself holding down the fort the best way we know how. It's just us this time around, which for coding reasons, can be pretty nice. Not that all our AOL friends aren't missed. Just.. yea. It's got an oldschool feel to it.

Links:

• Benjamin Franklin's advice for picking a mistress: Ben, you ol' dog you.
  
• OrganizedHome.com: Embrace your inner OCD
• 102 Personal Finance Tips Your Professor Never Taught You: You shouldn't be able to leave high school without knowing this stuff

CodeJam 7 is winding down, and most everyone has already left us behind. Gavin and I are in the "office" wrapping up and preparing to check out in the morning.

Lots of discussions, lots of new people, and a little bit of new code here and there.

Good times indeed.

I'm tired as heck though, and strangely looking forward to going back to sleeping on Gavin's futon. It's probably more of the desperate need to do laundry than anything else. 8 more days until my glorious return to DC.

On the Emurse side of the coin, our friends over at SolutionWatch.com gave us a shout out on their Web 2.0 for Students round up. "One of my favorite applications of the year." -- We're flattered, and thank you for the continued support!

Me, Mike, Gavin, and Celly at the bar outside of the Portofino. Missing from the picture is Brian Alvey, Puggles, Christoph, and all of our new AOL friends.

The world is an office. Or at least.. The bar is.

Blogsmith CodeJam (number 7, btw) rolls on. The hotel we're at is great, much much more functional than our previous trips.

Found this picture on the blogorlando flickr stream (chris's, I think?). That's us launching Engadget HD while sitting in on one of the presentations. I'm not sure why Gavin's so sad. I think he was hoping to see Ryan Block's hat as one of the contest prizes.

Links:

• Testing out PRLeap.com - Our exploration of SEO/promotion continues.. Anyone have any clever ideas to share?
  
• TV Squad starts a Vodcast - Jeff Spicoli is going to play Einstien... sigh
  
• 6 ways to fix a Confused Information Architecture - Alert box, take it as you will.
• Free UCF Tickets For Southern Miss - Purchase a UCF/Southern Miss football ticket for tonight, enter "WINUCF" for the special code.
• It's somebody's birthday. - Or.... is it? Happy Birthday Gavin!

CodeJam Orlando: "About damn time."

We're out here near Universal Studios Florida gearing up for the Blogsmith CodeJam #i-lost-count.

We've got a ton of infastructure work to get done, a new kid to haze train, some AOL peeps to meet up with, and good times to be had. The room this time is a bit bigger than we're used to, which will be nice around day 6 or 7 when the stentch starts to kick up ;)

It's been known internally for awhile now, but it's time for me to transition off of the Netscape.com project and back to Blogsmith. As some of you know, Blogsmith was the project that I worked on prior to Netscape and is something that I thoroughly enjoy. It's the CMS that powers Weblogs, Inc., TMZ, and a host of other major sites in and out of AOL.

The Netscape project has been an amazing experience and I am thankful for having had the opportunity to participate. My involvement with the project related more to redesigning things quickly and getting it out the door on time. Tom, Trey, Craig, and Andy have been amazing to work with, and if it weren't for them, there's no way we would have succeed in that. Michael Rhing and Gavin Hall were also huge key components in all that, and aren't mentioned quite as much as they should be. The entire AOL hosting team we deal with as well has just been absolutely great. Forward looking, Chris Finke has come on board and I think he's going to be a fantastic addition. Tom will be taking the lead position, which I think is a perfect fit as well.

Next week a host of new changes are coming online at Netscape. Tons of bug fixes, polish, and security fixes (ahem..;) to help give this thing some legs. Trey and Tom both have busted ass trying to get it ready and out the door. I can only hope that we can one day switch the design over to Andy's double secret uber layout.. but.. thats probably a bit further a way. I really think a fresh design, combined with finishing the feature list, will give Netscape the unique personality and identity that it needs.

Also, we have a number of open dev positions on the netscape team -- if you're interested, send me your Emurse link and I'll throw your name into the mix (alex at newnetscape.com).

Last night I went out with Brian Alvey for a few drinks and dinner. It's great not because he's my boss, but because he's someone that I consider to be a friend and an inspiration as well. He's the guy who young techie entreprenuers like myself look at in awe of his ability to balance both work and family.

Brian's the technical mastermind behind all of this stuff that I've been a part of recently. He is Jason's business partner and co-founder of Weblogs, Inc. Blogsmith is his vision and his baby. He's the Chief Architect of the new Netscape.

Basically, he's the professor to our X-men.

Without Brian around solving our scaling issues, or figuring out the ad framework, or the traffic metrics, or ranking formulas, or handling our personnel issues, or taking care of our hosting configuration, or organizing and leading our code jams, or even simply talking me (and I'm sure others) off the occasional cliff -- None of this would be real.

So, yeah -- Congrats on all of it Brian. We truly appreciate (and admire) everything that you do.

Oh, and thanks for dinner ;)

Off to Westchester for awhile. Hopefully by the end of the trip I'll finally be able to blog about the double secret project I'm on. It's killing me inside, pretty cool stuff going down. Anyway, here are some links to chew on. Not a single one of them has to do with Taylor Hicks.

Links

• The first 25,000 users are irrelevant - For the most part, it's on the money. At the same time, it's those first users who are the most involved, and generally the loudest. The techcrunch crowd is certainly not representative of the mass market, but they'll help spread the word.
  
• How To Be Silicon Valley - It's been said that the Valley is a state of mind, a way of life. This essay is about the different factors that go into making a geek-centric town. Reading it, all I could think of is that Orlando fits the bill, the town just doesn't know it yet.
• GOOOAALLLLLLLL!!!!! - June 12th, at noon, ESPN2. US vs. Czech. The World Cup just might be the most exciting sporting event outside of March Madness.
• Top Ten Mistakes Managers Make When Leading Geeks. - This is a great post. If you're working for a consulting company with high turnover, check to see how many of these items apply to your firm.. Just.. you know.. saying. We had to fight tooth and nail to get a copy of photoshop, that's all... ;)