Results tagged “createnv”

Continuing from yesterday's look at the soundtrack to the creation of Lotus Notes, we can look more at the physical space where it was created. For contrast, I also throught I'd start looking at some of the responses I'd gotten from Jeff Bezos about the same questions.

Interestingly, when it came to the music or movies that were playing while he was first creatiang Amazon.com, Jeff's answer was succinct: "I don't remember." Maybe I might have done better to focus on what books he was reading. But when it came to describing the actual workspace, Jeff remembered a lot more details:

A garage enclosed so it was converted into a room. Whiteboard with long list of priorities -- didn't change much. Door desks. Costco swivel chairs. Big orange extension cords draped across the floor just about everywhere.

That sense of a chaotic but comfortable space is echoed in Ray Ozzie's description of the early offices at Lotus:

it began in a small office (actually an old home converted to an office) we rented in 12/84 in Littleton, MA.  The office was mainly just one big room for the three of us.  I founded it in December, and my co-founders Tim Halvorsen and Len Kawell joined me from DEC in January.

We used IBM PC AT's as our dev systems, which were released just as we were starting to work.  Even though our office was Spartan, we bought the best hardware available and tricked it out as best we could:

• a "massive" second monitor ("Genius" I think) - 1024-by-something monochrome portrait mode
• a removable iomega Bernoulli disk drive, so we could do builds, archive things, bring them to Cambridge where our partner lotus was located, etc
• we replaced the crystals on the motherboards to get 8mhz out of the computers, rather than the stock 6mhz
• sytek 2mbps (I think) LAN card
• a state-of-the-art newfangled "laser printer" - an apple laserwriter - that we all shared

You get the idea.

We went to a used furniture store and bought the CHEAPEST crappiest (but strong) fold-out tables, with strong/comfortable chairs.

We spared no expense on massive whiteboards that covered the walls.

Pierre Omidyar's description of the workspace where eBay was created is no less evocative:

Definite clutter. I worked primarily out of our spare bedroom that I used as an office. I had some sort of computer desk that had multiple Macs in various states of use or disrepair. I also used a Mac laptop, a Powerbook Duo among other models I think. Later I very reluctantly switched to a Toshiba laptop and Windows, because the Mac OS wasn't keeping up with the cutting edge back then. (A non-Mac hiatus that lasted until 2001 I think.) I had a wireless internet radio thing hooked up to it so I could access the Internet mobile. I used post-it notes on the monitor of my desktop Mac or in the laptop, but no whiteboards. It wasn't until I got an office that I started using a whiteboard. I like whiteboards, but the markers smell funny.

In each case, it's gratifying how familiar this combination of clutter and creativity feels to any of us who've ever pulled an all-nighter to get a product launched.

Early in my efforts to document the creative environment where great technology projects happen, I reached out to Ray Ozzie. Ray is of course a software industry legend, today the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft, in addition to having been the father of Lotus Notes.

Ray very graciously answered some questions about both the physical space and (most important, to me), the soundtrack of a roomful of hackers in 1985:

We went to a used furniture store and bought the CHEAPEST crappiest (but strong) fold-out tables, with strong/comfortable chairs.

We spared no expense on massive whiteboards that covered the walls.

Tim [Halvorsen] & I are messy-desk people - listings and scrawlings everywhere.  Len [Kawell] if I remember was an organized-desk person.

If I remember correctly, soon after we opened the office Sony came out with this amazing new thing called the "CD Player" - the Sony D5.  We bought one, with some awesome speakers.

We bought everything that came out in those early CD days; Dire Straights was big.  Since we all knew each other from college, lots of our college favorites.

But if there were ANY "theme music" for me, it would have been Stevie Ray Vaughan.  Texas Flood, Couldn't Stand the Weather, Soul to Soul, all big big big.  Played over, and over, and over.  Blasting.

It's a terrific, evocative image of a bunch of creators doing what they love in a place that feels comfortable. Some links for background:

• A fond reminiscence of early Sony CD players, including the D5.
• A somewhat-sanitized official history of Lotus Notes from IBM.
• Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits signature album and one of the most popular albums of 1985.
• Stevie Ray Vaughan's Texas Flood, Couldn't Stand the Weather and Soul to Soul, the blues guitarist's career-defining releases from 1983, 1984 and 1985.

In the world of business, and especially the world of technology, we have some archetypical stories of entrepreneurs in the garage, working to create new products and new companies. But too many of those stories seem to neglect the creative environment in which great ideas and inventions happen.

This is especially unfortunate because inspiration for this type of work doesn't seem to come from being surrounded by market analysis data, or charts and graphs about return on investment, but instead happens like so much creativity does, with a blaring soundtrack while sitting on a folding chair, inspired by the music, movies, books and art that surround us.

Worse, we hear about things like Celebrity Playlists and the artworks that people appreciate long after they've been successful, after they've already proven they have the ability to achieve, but seldom with a focus on what was playing at the time when they did the first work they were recognized for.

So, some time ago, I began a project to start to document some of these environments, inspired by the entrepreneurs and creative talents that I've had the chance to work with or be inspired by. Among others, I've gotten some great responses from Ray Ozzie of Microsoft (and of course Lotus); Jeff Bezos of Amazon; Pierre Omidyar of eBay; Dan Bricklin, co-creator of VisiCalc, and some more contributors along the way. As I start to share what I've found, I'd like to ask the same questions of you that I've asked of these people already.

1. What music, books or movies do you remember paying attention to at the time when you did your signature work? (This can be your "best" project, or merely your best-known, or the one you're most proud of.)
2. What do you remember of your physical workspace -- clutter on the desk, notes on the walls, whiteboards or blackboards, etc.?

The goal is to evoke a sense of what more subtle things may have been influencing the work that's created. There have, of course, been many similar or related efforts over the years, and I'll be trying to share and document of number of fantastic responses to these questions that I've collected.

If you'd like to participate yourself, you can answer the questions here in the comments, or post a reply on your own blog using the tag "createnv" (since it seems that's not taken yet) and/or embed this post on your own site with the code below. I'll be collecting responses from the blogosphere along with my own research and posting it all here in the days to come. (Thanks to Travis Isaacs for the image.)