The whole 37signals thing gathered in Chicago for a pow wow last week. How do we start a meeting? By celebrating.

No confetti or streamers. Just a recap of everything we’ve accomplished since we met last (we hold full-team meetings every few months). We tick off the accomplishments and let the champions of each one explain what happened and what was learnt. Plus, they get to bask in a bit of glory for (presumably) a job well done.

It’s easy for businesses to get caught up with looking forward all the time. Or to focus on problem areas. But it’s also smart to take a few minutes to look in the rearview mirror and review how far you’ve come. Celebrate your progress. Consider it morale fuel.

Programming/Tech Jobs

EyeWonder is looking for a Flash and Actionscript Software Engineer in Atlanta, GA.

Rally Software is looking for a Software Engineer – Java Web Application Developer in Boulder, CO.

D P Review is looking for a Web Development Engineer in London, UK.

Farstar Inc. is looking for a Rails Developer (Part-Time) located anywhere.

Cobra Creative is looking for a The Best Web Developer, EVER (Flash/HTML) in San Francisco, CA.

Cornell University is looking for a Webmaster in Ithaca, NY.

The University of Iowa is looking for a Rails Developer in Iowa City, IA.

ConsumerSearch.com is looking for a Manager of Search Technology in New York, NY.

Nemean Networks is looking for a Software Engineer in Madison, WI.

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

Design Jobs

Omniture, Inc. is looking for a User Interface Designer in Orem, UT.

Cars.com is looking for a User Experience Manager / Producer in Chicago, IL.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky is looking for an Interaction Designer in Boulder, CO.

Billups Design is looking for an Interface Designer in Chicago, IL.

VersaTables.com is looking for a Web Developer / Designer in Los Angeles, CA.

New York University is looking for Part-Time Faculty in New York, NY.

Sling Media is looking for a Design Director in Foster City, CA.

Sweetwater is looking for a Senior Web Designer in Fort Wayne, IN.

Kavi Corporation is looking for an Product Design/ UI Engineer in Portland, OR.

Check out all the Design 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.

From time to time during conference Q&A sessions I’m asked “How did you create the culture at 37signals?” or “What do you recommend we do to set up an open, sharing company culture like yours?”

My answer: You don’t create a culture. Culture happens. It’s the by-product of consistent behavior. If you encourage people to share, and you give them the freedom to share, then sharing will be built into your culture. If you reward trust then trust will be built into your culture.

Artificial

Artificial cultures are instant. They’re big bangs made of mission statements, declarations, and rules. They are obvious, ugly, and plastic. Artificial culture is paint.

Real

Real cultures are built over time. They’re the result of action, reaction, and truth. They are nuanced, beautiful, and authentic. Real culture is patina.

Don’t think about how to create a culture, just do the right things for you, your customers, and your team and it’ll happen.

“Designing is not a profession but an attitude” is an excerpt from László Moholy-Nagy’s 1947 book “Vision in Motion.”

The designer must see the periphery as well as the core, the immediate and the ultimate, at least in the biological sense. He must anchor his special job in the complex whole. The designer must be trained not only in the use of materials and various skills, but also in appreciation of organic functions and planning. He must know that design is indivisible, that the internal and external characteristics of a dish, a chair, a table, a machine, painting, sculpture are not to be separated…

There is design in organization of emotional experiences, in family life, in labor relations, in city planning, in working together as civilized human beings. Ultimately all problems of design merge into one great problem: ‘design for life’.

We often put “designers” and “creatives” in special silos. But when you look at it from this “design for life” perspective, everyone is designing: writers, programmers, managers, CEOs, HR departments, parents, etc. Design and creativity don’t belong exclusively to people who use Photoshop.

Related: László Moholy-Nagy’s visual representation of Finnegan’s Wake

Brad writes:

I’m curious what your policy is for public communication among employees of your company, particularly posting on the SvN blog. Can anyone come up with an idea and post it? Are there written guidelines? Spoken guidelines? An approval process?

This interests me because I’ve seen several broken processes for public communication and have better ideas in mind, but would be interested in something that is already implemented and working.

Our policy: Speak up! We want our people to post on SvN, use Twitter, post on the Product Blog, and generally be visible and vocal.

We don’t have an institutionalized approval process. If someone feels like a post may be of questionable content, they can run it past me first, but I don’t require people to run posts past me before they are posted. It’s up to each person to decide if something requires a second look before posting.

When you trust people to make a reasonable decision, they’ll usually make one. When you require everything someone writes to go through an approval process they’ll probably write less and be less interesting. We don’t want people to be afraid to write or afraid to think.

Got a question? Got a question for us about business, design, programming, marketing, or general entrepreneurship? Drop us an email at svn at 37signals dot com. Include [Ask 37signals] in the subject. Thanks!

Innovation requires a fascination with wonder

“Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain. If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from what we’re trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness.”

Larger design businesses don’t allow good design to happen

“The problem is that the structures of most larger design businesses cannot effectively facilitate the transmittal of ideas. They don’t allow good design to happen, because they are overburdened with the organizational overhead of running a business: org charts, jurisdictions, inconsistency, poor communications, etc. All the complications that large groups of humans create for one another when they work together, complications that are not about doing design.”

Pixar’s Brad Bird on fostering innovation

“Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center—which initially drove us crazy—so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. [Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company.” [via JK]

Must-see photo project examines death and dying

“This exhibition features people whose lives are coming to an end. It explores the experiences, hopes and fears of the terminally ill. All of them agreed to be photographed shortly before and immediately after death.”

A new spin on the RSS reader

“Instead of treating news like email (as most RSS readers do), Times presents you with headlines and photos from a variety of sources all in one place, letting you more easily discover the news you want to read. Like your own personal newspaper, you can put feeds into separate areas, create pages for different subjects, and more.”

Continued…

More ammunition for why you should fire the workaholics: They don’t actually get more done.

Q: Do workaholics accomplish more than people who work fewer hours?

A: Often, they don’t. That is because, as perfectionists, they may become so fixated on inconsequential details that they find it hard to move on to the next task, [Psychiatrist Bryan] Robinson said.

As Gayle Porter [a professor who has studied workaholism] put it: “They’re not looking for ways to be more efficient; they’re just looking for ways to always have more work to do.”

Good advice for anyone who wants to be more efficient: When you’re sweating for hours over a tiny detail, stop and ask yourself, “Is this really worth the amount of time I’m spending on it?” If not, declare “good enough” and move on.

Also mentioned in the piece: Companies that believe they’re benefiting from someone’s long hours should think again…

Most companies think that they are benefiting from a workaholic’s long hours, even if it is at the worker’s expense, Porter said. In fact, she said, workaholism can harm the company as well as the worker…

The person may look like a hero, coming in to solve crisis after crisis, when in fact the crises could have been avoided. Sometimes, the workaholic may have unwittingly created the problems to provide the endless thrill of more work.

Sometimes the real hero is already home, because he/she figured out a quicker way to get to “done.”

The Park Inn Hotel (and attached City National Bank building) in Mason City Iowa is the last remaining Frank Lloyd Wright-designed hotel in the world. It’s in desperate need of financial support to save the building.

On March 12, Wright on the Park (WOTP) received a Vision Iowa grant of $7,500,000 from the Iowa Department of Economic Development for the continuation of the rehabilitation of both building segments. Along with the Vision Iowa grant, the sale of Historic Preservation Tax Credits is expected to yield another 67% of the total funding. For the first time, Mason City residents watching the Park Inn’s gradual deterioration since a modern, 250-room hotel was built here in 1922, can believe the project is do-able.

The Vision Iowa grant is double-edged: while providing a great financial boost, it carries a 180-day deadline. Counting from the day after the grant announcement (March 12), a match of $4,300,000 must be raised for this grant. This will be a daunting task for a town of 28,000, without outside help. For $2,000,000 of this match, WOTP must seek help from the wider Frank Lloyd Wright Community. Contributions can be made to Wright on the Park, Inc. by credit card through the WOTP web site: www.wrightonthepark.org, or by mail to P.O. Box 792, Mason City, Iowa 50402-0792.

If you’re a lover of architecture, and you want to see the last remaining Frank Lloyd Wright-designed hotel in the world survive to see another day, pitch in what you can. You can read more about the project on the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy site.

Facebook
Sean Iams writes:

Very cool feature on Facebook: When you’re typing a message, and you happen to include a valid link (i.e. http://www.37signals.com) in the body, Facebook automatically looks up the site and pulls back a description and a list of images that help explain the site. You then have the option to send the message with the image + description as an attachment or send the message without any attachment. It drastically clarifies the message with no additional effort whatsoever. Quick, simple, and easy :)

MyPunchBowl
Matt Douglas at MyPunchBowl writes:

Thought you would be interested in this “pure design” feature. On MyPunchbowl.com (party planning site), users choose a party theme. Like most sites, you can choose by category and search by terms.

However, MyPunchbowl also has the ability to search by color—so if you’re looking for a red based theme, you can find it easily. You know what? Men seem to not care about this feature, but female users LOVE IT.

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