Joel - Still the Master
If you're in the market for a powerful and user friendly Help Desk solution, please take a look at my company's flagship product HelpSpot.Is any small ISV a better salesman than Joel Spolsky? I think not. Act one was his fantastic articles which are required reading for any software developer. Sure he likes to write, but of course this notoriety in the developer community has certainly been a major if not the major factor in the success of his FogBugz bug tracking software.
Now he's launched Project Aardvark. A fantastic idea to let his summer interns build a fully functionally software product in just a few months. Hey and why not have a professional videographer document the process?
You have to admire the guy. He's doing a great job of creating content which helps his business, but doesn't hit you over the head doing it. It's real content that has great value to the developer community and with this project, I would guess value even outside that community.
I still have so much to learn.
Discussion
Joel is undeniably a master. Though I don't always agree with him, his site provides real value. David Heinemeier Hansson of Ruby on Rails fame is also an interesting one to watch. From what I've read on his blog, he's a hypemaster.
The trick is to learn from these masters and come up with your own "free prize inside", to borrow from Seth Godin.
Created by Kevin Dangoor on 05.20.2005 11:05 am
I remember when Joel had a forum labeled, "Ask Joel". Someone posted a question that asked (paraphrasing), "Who do you think you are? You expect people to ask you questions, and then grace us all with your answer?"
I chimed in on that post and laid out the following.
How many of us know someone who has been a Program Manager of a product used by millions, at the largest software company on the planet? Not to mention someone who has started and is running a successful ISV? Being able to ask someone a question with that much experience and success is really cool.
Unfortunately, Joel closed the forum. I think it was a combination of not-all-that-great threads and the fact that he is just to busy.
The point is Joel is an amazing source of knowledge. And we all know it benefits Fog Creek to have all those people coming to his site, but like you said Ian, his writing benefits all of us.
Created by Michael Sica on 05.20.2005 11:05 am
Yep. It's really hard to keep that balance and he does a great job with it.
Running that type of forum is really hard. When you have a forum about yourself you're going to get alot of jerks in there messing with you. He's probably better off just having the generic categories and then chiming in as he does.
Created by Ian on 05.20.2005 11:05 am
No doubt. I think he has done fantastic job of balancing the fame and popularity he has and the business he runs. A+ from me!
Btw, that Ask Joel forum was really cool. I hated that because of few jerks it had to be taken offline.
JD
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Created by JD on 05.20.2005 11:05 am