the clutch

Well now I’ve gone and done it. Now that we have another shark for sales (my idea) I have time for applying my creativity (also my idea) toward developing the Millstone project and its flagship app (another bright idea).

And now I’m project leader.

Doh.

Suddenly I’ve got exactly what I wanted and I do the ol’ clutch- can I do it? There’s so much involved that I know nothing about. Marketing. Accounting. Network behaviour. Coding.

But that’s kinda the point. I get to learn all this now on a very ambitious but realistic scale. It’s a doozy, but we’re up for it. And of course I’m not alone at the top or anything old school corporate like that. I’m part of a four-member team that moves like you seriously would not believe. No lag, no waiting for everyone to get up to speed. We’re on this baby like a… like a thing that is on really well. *shrug*

I have three days (yes, counting the weekend) to have everything organized to direct a meeting on Monday about just what it is exactly we’re trying to do. We had it mostly figured out three months ago but I got pulled off the project to keep sales up and things sorta lagged. Now I’m back and I have to re-learn everything we designed. A lot of it needs to be dragged back on to course and even re-thought from square one because so much has changed, not least of which my own knowledge of the technology.

A big part of the problem is that inevitably we all get different pictures in our heads of what this beast will look like. Sometimes those pictures are wildly different, like sure they’re both sand, but one of them is the middle of the Sahara and the other is nice and lake-ish. We hit one of those a while back, with Blake suddenly slapping his head mid-meeting and seeing what I had been seeing right from the start.

People do that. Different realms of experience breed drastically different perspectives. Most of us take driving cars for granted, but there are those that feel the same way about emus. And yaks. Well, not both. The emu-riders prolly think yak-riders are out of their minds. See?

There was a point to all this…

My job, when I’m not doing my share of work in sales, is going to be tricky. Not captain, not pilot, not navigator. Maybe navigator?

See, I have this firm idea of what I want this thing to do. I have to manhandle this project into making it produce this Thing That Does What I Want It To Do. We almost fell off the path a few times for things like ease of coding, simpler compromises, getting something, anything, out the door fast. We’re all excited about it but if we release a less-than-polished product how can we expect anyone to take it, or us, seriously? So my job is to take everyone’s knowledge and experience and direct it all into The Thing.

And it has to scale, because Grant has some totally kick-ass ideas for development that should keep us busy with this for the next few years.

We started a new book this year. Or a new book in The Great Book. Call it something fromage like The Great Book About The Wondermill Life Adventure, Book [thingy], 2003. We’ve hit the ground running with more energy and focus and mad determination that ever before. We’ve leveled again, and now all we have to do is keep this crazy beast in the air.

Hmm. Was I crashing metaphors?

“…we hit the ground running… keep this crazy beast in the air…”

hmm…

*wanders off…*