Charlie Rose interviewed Malcolm Gladwell recently. They had the following discussion on meaningful work (at 26:00 into interview).

Gladwell: Meaningful work is one of the most important things we can impart to children. Meaningful work is work that is autonomous. Work that is complex, that occupies your mind. And work where there is a relationship between effort and reward — for everything you put in, you get something out…

If you are convinced that the work you are doing is meaningful, then curiosity, there’s no cost to it. If you think there’s always got to be a connection between what you put in and what you get out, then of course you’ll run off with a great excitement after an idea that catches your idea.

Rose: People often ask me to define leadership and I say to them what you just said all the time. You have to communicate what the mission is all the time — and how meaningful someone’s contribution is to the mission.

When you believe that the work you’re doing has meaning, it’s an extra shot of adrenaline. Good food for thought for anyone trying to create a workplace culture that engages employees.

In the interview, Gladwell also mentioned he meets with Nathan Myhrvold once a month to discuss ideas. Myhrvold sounds like quite a character: formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, began college at age 14, worked under Stephen Hawking studying cosmology, is a prize-winning nature and wildlife photographer whose work has appeared in scientific journals like Science and Nature, is a master French chef who works at one of Seattle’s leading French restaurants, and he won the world championship of barbecue. Talk about a renaissance man!

A couple weeks ago we launched the new Highrise marketing site. We’re still iterating that design post-launch, and we have a big post brewing about that design process, but today I wanted to share some of the iterations we explored for the new signup chart.

The start

Here’s where we started. This was the signup chart for the previous site. You can still see the design action on the Basecamp or Backpack site.

Design A

One of the earlier design directions for the new Highrise site included a light blue background and dark highlight boxes. This was the signup chart direction we were playing with while this design was in style.

We wanted to highlight the main 3 differences between the plans (users, storage, and deals) so we darkened those boxes and colored the text blue. We also introduced a YES/NO list top right to get some key points across related to our signup policy. This was inspired by Southwest’s NO NO NO list on their home page.

Continued…

The media is biased towards stories that want to be told. This is especially true about the media covering the web world. It’s much easier to write a story about Facebook, Google, Youtube, or any of the other limelight stories where much of the juicy details are willingly shared.

We have so many visitors!
We make so much money on advertising!
We got so much funding!

Inflating evaluations are great when you’re listed on the market, gunning for more venture capital, or trying to bail with the biggest parachute. So naturally these companies drip and drop the honey for the journo worker bees and we get all these silly stories about younger and younger people being worth more and more monopoly money.

In the mean time, many of the real stories are never told. The quiet successes by small teams who stand little if anything to gain by sharing their numbers and telling about their success. Lest they attract competitors or other unwanted interest. They’re just happy making millions quietly from happy customers.

I’ve talked to so many of these entrepreneurs in private and have often been shocked by how well they’re doing. And I always think to myself: 1) why didn’t I know about this?, and 2) if only everyone else knew too.

This is especially evident in discussions about successful businesses online. People point at the big media stories and perhaps a few more and think disparagingly to themselves that this is probably it. If you’re not one of the high profile media darlings, you’re never going to get that trip to space. Bullcrap!

Know that the world of successful businesses online is much larger than that tiny tip that peaks above the surface for a reporter to find. There’s incredible wealth being created below. Sure, they’re probably not making billions (that’s hard to keep quiet), but there are plenty of untold millions.

A few weeks ago we posted a open survey for Signal vs. Noise readers. We were curious what people liked, disliked, what kind of organizations people worked at, how often they read Signal vs. Noise, if they thought the site got better or worse, what they’d like to see more of, their favorite posts, etc.

The survey was open for about 36 hours. 869 people participated before we closed the survey. As promised, here are the complete results.

Thanks again for taking the time to participate.

2008 is over. For all the economic doom and gloom as of late, 2008 was a good year for 37signals. We continued to grow our customer base and our revenues. That makes 5 consecutive years of double-digit revenue growth. We’re very proud of that.

We also hired four new full-time people this year. Sarah Hatter joined us full time in March (she was working on as a contractor prior to March). She heads up customer service/support. Jeffrey Hardy came on in January. He’s a remarkably talented and efficient programmer. Jamie Dihiansan joined us in September. You’ll be seeing a lot more of Jamie’s design work in the coming months. And Joshua Sierles also joined us in September. Joshua’s our second system administrator. It’s really an honor to be able to work with these people — and our whole team — every day.

We’ve also been very hard at work improving our products. Aside from some significant infrastructure enhancements to increase speed, capacity, security, billing, and reliability, here’s a list of some of the major public-facing improvements to our Big 3: Basecamp, Highrise, and Backpack:

Basecamp

• Image Grid View: Any images you upload to Basecamp can now be browsed in a thumbnail grid view.
• Post comments to Basecamp projects via email: Huge new feature. You used to have to log into Basecamp to post a comment. Now you can just reply to the message via email. Especially useful for mobile email users. Hundreds of thousands of comments have now been posted via email.
• More storage, same price: Double (or more) storage increases on all paying plans without a price increase.
• New project switcher: Moving between frequently accessed projects is a lot easier now.
• Bigger file upload limit: Moved up from 10 MB per file to 100 MB per file if you’re using Basecamp file storage.
• Much easier color customization: Brand new color picker brings color customization to the masses.
• Email replies can now include file attachments: Attaching a file to your email reply will post the file to the project now as well.
• Redesigned People & Permissions screen: All new, much easier to navigate, follow, and use.
• Comments (and file attachments) on to-dos and milestones: Huge new feature. Before only messages had comments and attachments. Now you can discuss a to-do item right on the to-do item. Same with milestones. Major productivity gains.

Highrise

• Deal tracking and a Deals API: Huge new feature. Track proposals and deals in Highrise. Keep track of deals won, lost, and pending. Keep track of how much money you’ve earned from each client.
• Advanced search: Search by location, phone, email, and more.
• Bulk delete: Top request: Delete multiple contacts or companies at once. Deleting people is no longer a hassle.
• Improved import review and undo: Review previous imports and roll-back with a single click.
• File view: Now you can just view files attached to a person or company. No more wading through all the notes and emails to find the PDF proposal.
• Major improvements to tasks: Cleaner UI, better date picker, iCalendar feed for dated tasks, and more.
• Bulk tagging: Tag multiple people or companies at one. Big request satisfied.
• Better contact filtering: Recently viewed, recently added, people without notes in 30 days, people who aren’t tagged, etc.
• Faster sidebar search: Major speed increase for the most commonly used Highrise feature.
• CSV/Excel import: Import your contacts from CSV or Excel files. Top request.
• Export all notes and emails: Now you can export all your notes and emails as well (before you could only export contacts).
• New marketing site: Total redesign.

Backpack

• Backpack Multiuser: Huge change. Backpack grows up. More intranet-focused, multiple people from your company can use the same Backpack account, share information and files and calendars across the office or group.
• Calendar strip in the Newsroom: Upcoming events now appear in the Newsroom. You don’t have to click to the Calendar to see if anything is going on today.
• Improved calendar reminders: Select multiple people to receive a notification.
• Introducing the Backpack Journal: Huge new feature. Keep track of who’s working on what and what they’ve finished recently.
• Share Backpack pages even if someone doesn’t have a Backpack account: Previously people had to have a Backpack account to view a Backpack page. Now you can just share via email without requiring the other person to have a Backpack account. Big.
• Reply to Newsroom messages via email: No more logging into Backpack to respond to a Newsroom message. Just reply to the email.
• Read-only page sharing: Now you can share a page with someone without fearing they are going to change or delete it. Big improvement for a lot of people.
• Page notifications and up-front sharing settings: Specify who can see a page when you are creating it. Before you had to adjust the sharing options after creating the page. Removed a couple of steps.

There have also been some big developments in the world of Ruby on Rails including the merging of Merb into Rails 3.

We’re working on some very cool stuff for 2009. We’re looking forward to getting it in your hands just as soon as we can.

Thanks again for reading our blogs (Signal vs. Noise and the Product Blog), following our company on Twitter, buying our Getting Real book, posting jobs on our Job Board, and, of course, using our products. Thanks for being our customer. You make it all possible and worthwhile.

Wishing everyone success in 2009!

Design Jobs

Meetup.com is looking for a Head of UI Engineering/Design in New York, New York.

The Shop of an Entrepreneur is looking for a Worldly Graphic Designer with Diverse Interests and Great Taste Who’s Sick of Hustling Gigs anywhere.

Kink.com is looking for a Senior Interaction Designer in San Francisco, CA.

Cities2night.com is looking for a Front-end Web Designer for Social Site with over 100k users in Philadelphia, PA.

An Internet Startup is looking for a Lead Interaction Designer in San Francisco, CA.

Slipstream Studio is looking for a Web Designer in Southampton UK.

Tuitive is looking for a UI/IxD Designer in Indianapolis, IN.

530medialab is looking for an Interactive Developer in Long Beach, CA.

Atlantic Media Company is looking for a Developer in Washington, DC.

New City Media is looking for a Designer with Flash Kung-Fu in Blacksburg, VA.

Check out all the Design Jobs currently available on the Job Board.

Programming/Tech Jobs

The Motley Fool is looking for a Front End Web Developer in Alexandria, VA.

Octopus Advertising LLC is looking for a Head of Web Development in Dubai, UAE.

Superkix is looking for a Senior Developer in New York, NY.

Firstborn is looking for a Software Engineer located in New York, NY.

The MITRE Corporation is looking for an Experienced Ruby on Rails Lead Engineer in Bedford, MA.

Deep Salt Inc is looking for an Experienced Ruby on Rails / RoR – programmer / codesmith in Atlanta, GA.

FIDM is looking for a Server-side Application Developer in Los Angeles, CA.

Sonic Boom is looking for Rails Programmers in New York, NY.

Peer Giving Solutions is looking for a Web developer in Vancouver, BC.

Check out all the Programming Jobs currently available on the Job Board.

More jobs!

The Job Board is flush with great programmer and designer jobs all over the country (and the world). The Gig Board is the place to find contract jobs.