Summertime at Unspace

posted by pete on August 14th, 2007

Lots of news to report! From a business perspective, we had our most successful month ever in July. Our team has never been busier. It’s hard telling awesome potential clients with fun projects that we’re at capacity well into late fall.

Lesson: Growing your team is easy to do, but it weakens your gene pool.

I snuck into the amazing wedding of Rails core team member Tobias Luetke. Tobi tied the knot with his best friend Fiona McKean, and I am so lucky to have been there. They made me feel like a long-lost cousin!

Lesson: Geeks are marrying brilliant, beautiful geeks.

In July I was invited to speak at The Ajax Experience conference in San Francisco. I gave two talks, “Custom DOM Attributes for Fun and Profit” and “Building Rich JavaScript Database Apps with Jester.” I had the cheerleading support of Ryan McMinn, who flew down from Microsoft in Seattle, and they went really well. I also participated in a lunch “expert panel” that I was really flattered to be part of.

(l-r) Chris Wilson, Douglas Crockford, Aaron Gustafson, Pete Forde, John Resig, Joe Walker

Chris created Internet Explorer, Doug created JSON, Aaron is a usability guru, John created JQuery, and Joe created DWR.

Lesson: Brush your teeth. Wear a good jacket. Smile.

Of course, you can’t have all of this good stuff without some controversy. There was a lively debate over DHH not allowing authors to put his copyright controlled logo on their books. At one point, David encouraged people to go ahead and create “Pete’s Swanky Framework” or PSF. Clearly a joke, right?

Quick Sketches for an Alternate Logo That Can Be Used by All Developers Without Any Restrictions

I’m pleased to announce that my Swanky Framework is gaining serious traction! We even have fan-created art in the public domain for your enjoyment, including:

and

Lesson: Be careful what you say in jest.