You’re reading Signal v. Noise, a publication about the web by Basecamp since 1999. Happy !
Jason co-founded Basecamp back in 1999. He also co-authored REWORK, the New York Times bestselling book on running a "right-sized" business. Co-founded, co-authored... Can he do anything on his own?
By popular demand we just launched a new Campfire feature. Anyone with Admin access can now kick a guest out of a room.
Hovering over a guest’s name in the “Who’s here” sidebar will reveal a red “Kick” link. Clicking that will boot the guest out of the room. It’s not a “ban” — they can enter the room again — but at least you have some control over rowdy guests.
We hope you find it useful.
A recent visit to the Apple campus left me with many impressions. The strongest one was that Apple works hard on getting their message in.
Getting the message out to consumers is something a lot of companies spend millions on, but getting the message in to employees isn’t something I see as often. At least not as seriously Apple seems to take it.
Apple sells Apple to its employees as strongly as it sells Apple to its customers.
The entranceway is flanked by huge 3 story banners (iPod Nano banners when I was there). Their hallways are lined with Apple marketing messages and materials. Every time you go to work you are reminded of the products you ship. In big huge looming living color. I was impressed.
Getting the message in is about feeding the culture. It’s about making people proud of the work working on. I think it’s an important lesson for anyone building a team. Getting the message in is as important as getting the message out.
Jason will be speaking at the following events:
If you’ll be at any one of these events please come up and say hi.
David will be speaking at the following events:
Ryan will be speaking at:
Sam will be speaking at:
Other talks are pending.
If you’d like someone from 37signals to speak at your event please get in touch by emailing jason at 37signals.com. Thanks.
“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.”
-Daniel Burnham, Chicago architect. (1864-1912)
Chicago gets the nod over L.A. to represent the United States for the bid to win the 2016 summer games. Now we’re expected to go up against Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, Rome, Tokyo and Prague.
Applause for Mayor Daley, Patrick Ryan, and everyone who put in countless hours winning the bid. Daley adores big bold projects, and often gets what he wants (sometimes through totalitarian force), so it should be interesting to see what happens next.
More coverage from the Chicago Tribune and details at Wikipedia.
A PR firm wrote us a letter to win our business. It was signed by their Director of Business Development.
The letter detailed the awards they’ve won, the placements they’ve achieved for their clients, and the number of clients they’ve had that have been acquired or gone public.
It sounds impressive, but it all started with “Dear <No First Name>.” Whoops!
We’d like to get a nice digital projector to hook up to a laptop for presentations, etc. I started researching these and have no idea what’s good, bad, or other. This space seems so cluttered with so many choices, sizes, and brands that all sound about the same. We’d like to spend around $1000 or so. Does anyone have any recommendations based on personal experience? Thanks.
One of the things that always gives us a good laugh over here is when people pull out the “real world” card.
As in “you don’t understand the real world” or “your products would never work in the real world” or “you’ve obviously never worked in the real world.”
It’s thrown around so often that it must mean something obvious. So, in 10 words or less, what does “real world” mean to you?
Did you know there are a lot of third-party products that integrate with Basecamp?
From time trackers to billing to mobile apps to widgets… And there are more on the way. Stay tuned!
You can extend your own product to work with Basecamp by using the Basecamp API.
Thanks to everyone who’s put in the time to make their product work well with Basecamp. Our customers really do appreciate it.
Over the years the “people don’t scroll on the web!” mantra has been both supported and denied. Today I think it’s pretty fair to say the majority of people have figured out how and when to scroll a web page. This has pretty much become a non-issue.
But there’s another scrolling issue worth thinking about: Email scrolling. Standardized emails are too long. These usually take the form of “Welcome to our product” emails or verbose auto-responders that have one line of steak and 150 lines of sizzle.
People don’t read these things. They’re too long, they’re too wordy, they’re too fluffy.
Welcome emails seem to be the biggest offenders. Welcome emails have become the place where copywriters and web designers shoehorn all the stuff that didn’t make it onto the web site. “Ugh, just put it in the welcome email.” They’re the bastard child of the signup process.
Long emails get ignored and filed away. Short emails get read. People see the value without having to get out the reading glasses. A welcome email shouldn’t be a novel.
We used to have a really information packed welcome email for Basecamp. It had everything you’d ever need to know about your Basecamp account. And guess what? We got lots of support emails asking about the things people should have spotted in the welcome email. But they couldn’t see through all the fog we put in their way.
Ever since we cut the welcome email way back we’ve seen significant reductions in basic support questions such as “What is our URL?” and “How can I upgrade” and “What’s my username?” Small change, noticeable results.
Here’s an example of the current Highrise welcome email:
Short, sweet, to the point. That’s everything someone really needs to know right now. And it’s everything they can find later on if they need to. No wading, no translating, no digging through piles of words to find the quick answer.