Tuesday, August 8, 2006: Monthly Program (BayCHI)

I had the pleasure of hearing Matt Mullenweg speak at last night's BayCHI program night at Xerox Parc. Matt is a very articulate young man with a great deal of wisdom about the inner workings of corporate America.

His talk presented several bits of wisdom gleaned from starting a couple of different companies. Among my favorites were:

"Be a painkiller, not a vitamin!" Basically Matt's point was that if your product offering isn't solving a real world problem it is simply a waste of time. I whole heartedly agree! Companies that claim to have the best everything are simply pushing you a vitamin...something that may or may not help...even in the long term.

"Simplify!" The idea here being that companies often making their product offerings more complex than what the user needs or wants is, again, spot on. If we actually asked users what they need and why we'd be able to provide a better product overall.

With that said, I just wanted to thank Matt for his very engaging presentation. While I use MovableType to write my blog I would certainly consider evaluating WordPress just based on hearing him speak in public.