Surreal Notions » personal update

Travis onboard

Josh — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:00:00 +0000

An old friend and colleague from Creighton University, Travis Graham, has decided to try his hand at product design. I am quite confident in his ability to design successful products. Granted, he doesn’t have much experience beyond a few small internal projects and coursework, but we all started in a similar situation.

I plan on helping Travis work through a couple projects to build up his resume and figure out if he really enjoys the design. If successful, I’d like to bring him on to support some of my projects over the next year. Then, with a little luck, the one-man band will start to become a more diverse organization allowing us to take on more projects and specialize to some extent.

The more the merrier. Travis will bring insight, talent, and perspective to future projects.

We’ve decided to start with a small website redesign. Travis has contacted the site owner, who seems very receptive to having a free redesign. In fact, the owner seems interested in changing the business focus and image a bit, so it’s a good thing Travis and I both have MBAs as well. I suppose being slightly over-educated does have its benefits on occasion.

Sojern, Inc.

Josh — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 17:00:12 +0000

I’ve officially started working with Sojern. We’re still ironing out a few of the contract details, but things should be finalized shortly. This should be an interesting experience, to say the least.

And people say I’m ambitious. Sojern has set out with a defined goal of creating $1 billion of shareholder value over the next 3-4 years. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great group of people with lots of talent. They’ve got the resources and management with enough business acumen and sales experience to probably pull it off. However, that’s one hell of a goal to start out with!

If nothing else, Sojern should be an interesting ride. I’m not convinced the business is ready (maybe in six months) for my skill-set yet; however, I’ll do everything I can in the meantime. Hopefully, I’m wrong and they will need to develop all of the components currently being discussed in parallel. I suspect quite a few components and concepts will fall into v3, v4, and v5 discussions, because this project strikes me as substantially larger than most people involved want to admit. I have been accused of biting too much off at the same time, but I’ve never seen an entire office do it at the same time. I hope I’m wrong, but it’s hard to not notice some of the signs.

Despite all of this, the monstrous goals, the gargantuan challenges, the short time-line, I still think Sojern will probably succeed. It is just a matter of time. Given the collection of experience already in the room and the several million dollars in angel investment already acquired, I doubt it’ll take very long for success to find Sojern.

Intuit leaves Omaha

Josh — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 17:00:50 +0000

“Struggle is good.” Or so my high school English teacher quipped on a regular basis. I suppose part of me, a big part perhaps, agrees. It’s a bitter sweet thing when Intuit closed the Omaha office. On the one hand, there is much I left unfinished. On the other hand, it forced me to find something different, which might be better in the long run.

I enjoyed my brief time at Intuit; however, with rising prospects elsewhere leaving opens up innumerable opportunities I would have either overlooked or bypassed while at Intuit. There is something to be said for constantly throwing oneself into the raptures of change and chaos. It might be crazy… or it might be brilliant. Haven’t decided which just yet

Maybe I’ll still have a chance to work on some of those lingering projects as a contractor in a few months. And, if nothing else, I learned a few things, made some improvements in a few products, and met some really great people. Any experience with all of that must have been worth it.

On the plus side, a majority of the people from the office are joining a new startup called Sojern. I’m not a big fan of the misspelling of sojourn (to have a safe and successful trip or journey); however, the business plan is interesting. I’m negotiating a part-time contract with Sojern along with a couple other possible clients.

Of course, I have every confidence that the entire group will land on their respective feet without any trouble. The whole office was comprised of experienced professionals with more than a bit of entrepreneurial spirit.

Philip Haine of Obvious Design

Josh — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:00:01 +0000

Great news everybody! Philip Haine (Obvious Design, Steal this Idea) has invited me to work with some of his clients, because he’s taking a sabbatical to finish his book on product vision. Philip and I worked briefly together on a couple projects at Intuit, and I’m really excited to have the opportunity to learn some more from him. Philip has been a user interface designer for years and consulting for about 11 years. Needless to say, I have much to learn from the Jedi Master.

Philip was the primary designer behind TurboTax Expense Pro (I had a bit of input simply because I sit 30 feet from the developers). He also worked on MyCorp and TurboTax Business. In fact, Expense Pro and MyCorp are the two products with the most potential at Intuit in my opinion. Philip designed very solid interfaces for both applications. Philip walked me through the terrifying complexity of MyCorp with ease… which is quite a statement considering the hundreds upon hundreds of offering combinations possible–each with legal and financial implications.

I should have my official LLC documents within a couple weeks, so it is looking up for the consulting gig. With Philip’s generous help and a little luck, I’ll be able to get involved with a couple Silicon Valley projects before the end of the year.

Surreal Notions, LLC

Josh — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 17:00:24 +0000

I am in the process of forming an LLC to start independent consulting. This, with a little luck, will help me put my skills to the test. Most importantly, I hope to get involved with some interesting projects around the country that push interaction design to the limits and test my ability to manage product vision.

Sorry about lack of content on this post, but I’m excited to see where this leads.

Intuit closing the Omaha office

Josh — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:00:11 +0000

Intuit has decided to close the Omaha office. Acquired along with It’s Deductible four years ago, Omaha has supported numerous Intuit small business products. The powers that be were looking at FY08 projections and found the company was running about $60M over budget. Although it is sad Omaha will be closing, the decision is hardly a surprise. It’s been considered numerous times ever since the acquisition. In fact, I only saw two possible courses of action for the office long term–close it or spin it off as a R&D product incubator. As much as I would have liked to work in a think tank, the later option would increase expenses while closing the office is an easy save of $15M. The team here is quite talented, so I don’t expect anybody will have trouble finding new employment. Of course a few will move to California and continue with Intuit.

It’s been real… It’s been fun… It’s been real fun, but all great things come to an end. We had a very talented group of engineering, support, and product staff, so I expect great things in the future even if we don’t all work in the same office.

Even though I only joined the team nine months ago, I see this as an opportunity to do something new. I haven’t decided if I’d like to move to California (oh so expensive) or not… but for right now I’m just looking for a great project to work on… location, income, etc. are all negotiable.