“Act One: An Autobiography” [Amazon.com] is playwright and director Moss Hart’s look at the long, arduous road that led to his breakthrough hit “Once in a Lifetime.” Designer Michael Bierut calls the book “the best, funniest, and most inspiring description of the creative process ever put down on paper.” It really is a terrific read.

One thing I found interesting in the book is the way the play’s words on the page are often meaningless. The play is slaved over by its authors and rehearsed endlessly, yet it is still almost completely rewritten after it goes in front of early audiences. In this passage, Hart describes why the only genuine test for a play is a real, paying audience.

[Fellow playwright George S.] Kaufman did not hold with the theory or the practice of having run-throughs for his friends or friends of the cast, or even for people whose judgment he respected and trusted. He held firmly to the idea that no one person or collection of persons, no matter how wise in the ways of the theatre, could ever be as sound in their reactions as a regulation audience that had planked down their money at the box-office window, and in the main I think he was correct. There is perhaps something to be learned from a run-through for friends or associates; but more often than not, it can be as fooling in one way as it is in another. I have witnessed too many run-throughs on a bare stage with nothing but kitchen chairs and a stark pilot light and seen them go beautifully, and then watched these plays disappear into the backdrop the moment the scenery and footlights hit them, to place too much reliance on either the enthusiasm or the misgivings of a well-attended runthrough. The reverse can be equally true. however well or ill a play may go at a run-through, there are bound to be both some pleasant and some unpleasant surprises in store for the authore when it hits its first real audience.

It’s the same for plenty of other products too. You can do all the planning you want. You can focus group. You can beta test. You can theorize. You can project. But nothing will ever match the feedback you get from real people, especially ones who are paying to use what you’re selling. Everything up until then is conjecture.

It’s one more reason to kick your project, whatever it is, out of the nest as soon as you can. It’s often the only way to know if it can really fly.

I know it’s tempting to counter, “But it’s not perfect yet!” Does it have to be? Trying to make it perfect often puts a shield up that closes you off from what you need most: feedback. Instead of improving, you wind up delaying the moment of truth that can provide the map to improvement.

Reminds me of a quote in “How Google Decides to Pull the Plug” [NY Times]. Jeff Jarvis, author of the new book “What Would Google Do?”, says:

Perfection closes off the process. It makes you deaf. Google purposefully puts out imperfect and unfinished products and says: ‘Help us finish them. What do you think of them?’

Google releases imperfect, unfinished products intentionally. How much does what you’re making really need to be perfect before it gets out there?

Related: Race to Running Software [Getting Real]

David Pogue is bummed that Apple is no longer worrying about owners of tape camcorders.

In the days of olde iMovie, you could export the results back to your tape camcorder. You’d preserve 100 percent quality, you’d free up the space on your hard drive, ready for the next editing project, and you’d have a simple way to play the movies on your HDTV.

Apple, however, is convinced that tape camcorders are dead, and it seems determined to pound nails into that coffin. The company expects you to store all of your video, now and forever, on hard drives.

It’s easy to see why Pogue is upset. Soon, his tapes will be stranded and uneditable. He even vented his unhappiness to Steve Jobs himself a while back.

I must admit, [Jobs] gave me quite a wakeup call. He pointed out that in 10 years, there won’t be any machines left that can play them.

(He also mentioned that, realistically, the only time people really edit their movies is just after they’ve shot them. And sure enough: I’ve been intending to edit my tapes for 15 years now; what makes me think I’ll have time to do it in the next 15?)

Mac and video fans may not like it—especially the part about having to buy a new, tapeless camcorder—but the writing is on the wall. Tape is dead; camcorder manufacturers have been saying as much for years now. And Apple is not about to preserve some legacy jack just for the sake of the dwindling MiniDV cult.

It’s interesting to see this sort of public tug of war over a feature. Pogue knows what he wants and he’s upset Apple is taking it away from him. But Jobs has a point too: Tape is dying. As a company, Apple has to move toward things that show signs of life. That may upset some customers, but it’s still the right move for Apple.

Reminds me of way back when Apple stopped including floppy drives on Macs. People were upset then too. But does anyone look back now and think Apple messed up there?

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Basecamp
Basecamp integration added to The Invoice Machine
“With just a few clicks you can easily generate invoices of your Basecamp data. If the Basecamp integration is enabled, an “Insert From Basecamp” option will be available when you create or edit an invoice or a recurring template. You can also import your companies and people when you create or edit a client.”

CannyBill integrates with Basecamp to provide invoicing, billing & web hosting automation
“CannyBill integrates seamlessly with Basecamp, allowing you to import / export customer details, track project time and invoice clients for work or services rendered. CannyBill adds not only the invoicing, billing and paid time tracking functionality to Basecamp, but also automates the process of setting up new domain names, hosting accounts and even SSL certificates, by linking in with popular APIs from the likes of Enom, GeoTrust and Plesk.”

Last week we introduced custom color schemes to Backpack. While our customers love the new feature, we’ve also gotten questions about why we chose to build a color picker for Backpack. Aren’t there other things we could spend our time on? Why was customizing colors a priority? Actually custom colors were the latest push in a series of updates to take Backpack a level up. Here’s a look at the string of updates and how custom colors fit in to the story.

In late 2008 we decided Backpack was due for some development. The last major push was “BPMU”—Backpack Multiuser—in February ‘08. The multiuser capability gave businesses and small teams the chance to organize their lives and work with Backpack. Adding multiple users to Backpack was a big effort. As usual, we did the bare minimum necessary, but there were still a lot of details, edge cases, and challenges. By the time we launched in February ‘08, we were glad to be finished and also really excited to use Backpack together as a team.

Marinating with multiple users

The best part of building ‘as little as possible’ comes after launch. Every feature you skipped or held off on is free open space in the app for later development. Instead of a lot of baggage and maintenance, a bare-minimum release means new possibilities for feedback. After we launched BPMU in February, the customer feedback and personal experience we accumulated became a magnetic field that gradually pointed our compass for development. By late 2008, we knew where to go next.

How can you apply Getting Real-ish ideas inside a big company? Here’s an idea: Go rogue. Pick something and do it under the radar. Create something in a few weeks that normally takes a few months. Do something in a way that works better than the status quo (or shows the promise of working better), Then you won’t need to convince anyone with words — the results will speak for themselves.

Hot off my Axl vs. Frank analogy, let’s go for another music comparison: Imagine you’re the drummer in a band. If you ask the bandleader for permission to do something different, it starts a whole conversation that may result in an argument or your idea being shot down.
 But what if you just do what you think is best? What if you switch to the ride cymbal during the chorus or use brushes instead of sticks? If it sounds good, it sounds good. Everyone can agree on that.

That’s the approach you want to aim for. Take things out of the theoretical realm and put them into practice. Don’t waste time debating when you could be doing and trying instead.

Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation
Electronics retailing giant Best Buy offers one of the most innovative workplaces around. And much of it is because bold employees there decided to go rogue.

For example, Steve Bendt and Gary Koelling are the creators of Blue Shirt Nation (BSN), the massively successful online community for Best Buy employees. Within a year of creating the site, 20,000 (of Best Buy’s 150,000) employees had signed up. They meet there and share knowledge, best practices, ideas for improving the stores, and more.

And Bendt and Koelling did it all under the radar. They didn’t pitch it. They didn’t ask for permission. They just built it. Steve Bendt explains:

BSN started with an idea that we couldn’t get sponsored. When the site went live in June of ‘06, Gary had funded the whole thing on the QT. For the domain name and a year of hosting, it cost a hundred dollars. The software that built the site was free. There was one user, the administrator.


And the site is moderated by the community itself. There really hasn’t been much need for moderation though. Since the launch, BSN has only had to take down a total of three posts. Bendt says fears that executives might have had about letting employees speak openly never materialized:

The fear factor that so many executives seem to have with open forums did not materialize on Blue Shirt Nation. We put the responsibility on the community and said, “Listen, don’t be stupid and take care of each other.”

Words of wisdom there: “Listen, don’t be stupid and take care of each other.” Man, it’d be great to see more companies encourage employees to think that way.