1. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money.
2. You can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost.
3. I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch!
4. I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get.

Via Joshua Kaufman.

Back in early January I posted about our new way of working in 2010. Instead of working individually in isolation as we had in the past, we’re breaking into small teams of three (two programmers, one designer). We’re keeping the teams intact for two months at a time. During those two months, the teams will work on four separate iterations, two weeks each. The goal is to drastically cut down scope, set short fixed deadlines, and focus on improving our products.

How’d it go?

Now that January and February are behind us, and March is upon us, we can reflect on the first two month term. So how’d it go?

It went incredibly well. It was the most productive two month period we’ve had in a long time. It wasn’t all perfect, and some adjustments were required, but all in all we definitely feel like we made the right call switching to this new way of working.

The results

Here’s some of what we accomplished:

• HIGHRISE: A major redesign of the “stream” in Highrise.
• HIGHRISE: Jump to a case or deal from the sidebar search.
• HIGHRISE: Merge companies to help deal with duplicates.
• HIGHRISE: Email notifications, daily digests, and vCards for your Highrise Dropboxes.
• BASECAMP: Stylized HTML email notifications for messages, comments, to-dos, files, and milestones.
• BASECAMP: Post new messages via email.
• BASECAMP: Redesigned message section with active threads highlighted.
• BASECAMP: Replies to assignment emails are posted as comments.
• CAMPFIRE: Formatted tweets in Campfire chats.
• CAMPFIRE: Image thumbnails in chat transcripts, redesigned transcript view, starring chat highlights for easy future access.
• LAUNCHPAD: Jump deep inside an app right from the Launchpad.
• 37id: New help section.
• ANSWERS: Launched 37signals Answers.

Plus a variety of bug fixes, minor updates, infrastructure improvements, and design and language tweaks.

What did we learn?

We’re just a week away! REWORK is in stores March 9, 2010. Pre-order today from Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, Indie Bound, and 800-CEO-READ.

• Coudal Partners for filming, editing, and production. Special thanks to Steve Delahoyde.
• Mark Greenberg for the custom music at the end of each clip.
• Williams Labadie for lending us their conference room for the day for the Conference Call. Special thanks to Molly Connolly, Jeff Pazen, and Jason Dittmer.
• Sandy Marshall for his passive-aggressive acting in Staying Late and irritating voiceover on the Conference Call.
• Jamie, Michelle, and Dawson for their “give us your best annoyed hallway walk” acting skills.
• And Nick Campbell for the crumple, drop, and slide motion graphics that close out each clip.

We had a blast putting these together. We hope you liked them.

On March 1 it’s always a good reminder to look back at marchFIRST — an example of what big money and power thought was a good idea just 10 years ago.

• The original USWeb was founded in 1995 by a group of former Novell executives (Joe Firmage, Toby Corey, and Sheldon Laube)
• USWeb went public with an IPO in 1997
• USWeb agreed to buy the offline advertising agency, CKS Group, in a stock transaction in September 1998
• Whitman-Hart acquired Four Points Digital LLC, Fulcrum Solutions Ltd., and BALR Corp in 1999.
• USWeb/CKS and Whittman-Hart merged in March 2000 to form marchFIRST, Inc.
• John Guynn, a copywriter at Mckinney & Silver, thought of the name marchFIRST.
• Bernard resigned in March, and marchFIRST went bankrupt in April 2001
• Two companies (Avenue A and Divine) acquired several offices in April 2001
• Whittman-Hart re-emerged as a separate company under Bernard
• USWeb is currently an Internet services firm copying the name of the original USWeb
• Divine purchased several companies that struggled after the dot com bust, including some remnants of marchFIRST
• Divine went bankrupt in Feb 2003 (in April 2003, Divine’s assets were sold at auction)
• Gus Mueller received his final paycheck from marchFIRST, 6 years late in the summer of 2007.

Are we smarter today?

It’s been too long since we redesigned this blog. Years and years. It’s time for a complete redesign. We thought it would be a good idea to eat our own dogfood and choose a firm from Sortfolio to do the redesign.

Here’s how it works

On March 8th we’ll choose a firm listed on Sortfolio to redesign Signal vs. Noise (this blog). The firm will be a paid Pro listing, we will not consider free listings for this project. If you want to be considered, please upgrade your listing to Pro.

Budget, time frame, and scope

The budget for the redesign will be $8500. The time frame will be 30 days from start to final delivery of HTML/CSS templates. We’ll do the integration with our back end systems. The scope will be redesigning the overall look and feel, the main page including all the different post styles (long-form article, video embed, quote, link, etc), a post page with and without comments, the archive page, and possibly one more page yet to be determined.

We’d like the new design to accurately represent the 37signals aesthetic and brand, but we’re open to exploring alternate directions too as long as they are consistent with what we stand for. We can talk more about this with the firm we choose.

Interested? Here’s how to apply

We only want to consider firms that want the job. So here’s how it’ll work. If you are a Sortfolio Pro member (you have a paid listing), and you want to have a shot at the project, send us a tweet in the following format:

Hey @37signals, we want to redesign SvN. http://sortfolio.com/YOUR-SORTFOLIO-URL-HERE #sortfoliosvn

Your tweet must be in this format to be considered. We’ll review your work and get in touch if we have any further questions. We may also contact firms who haven’t tweeted if we think they may be a good match.

We’re excited to see how this works out.

REWORK is in stores March 9, 2010. Pre-order today from Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, Indie Bound, and 800-CEO-READ.

You can also watch the first REWORK trailer.