We Are Integrum

We always eat lunch together at the end of the week. Though it was a short week, we decided it was necessary today. So much so, that when we couldn’t come together on ONE idea to order in…. We decided we ought to head to the mall for some food court action. It’s family, and so we make these things work – plus, you snag a copy of Geometry Wars for the Wii.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanks to Facebook, Terralever, Go Daddy, and Microsoft for sponsoring last night’s Facebook Developers Garage for Phoenix. Lindsay, Curtis, and I attended. While I’m a new, new Facebook user, Lindsay and Curtis both have a lot of experience. Each have developed their own individual apps and are currently working on a new application together (with the help of our fabulous designer, Gist).

The event was very nicely done. It was in a lovely space, the Tempe Center for the Arts, and we appreciated the drinks and snacks. We were surprised that the audience was made up of 80% marketing people and only 20% developers. The keynote speaker, Dave Morin from Facebook, was great.

Here are my notes from the keynote presentation (originally posted on ericalucci.com):

• Facebook is fundamentally a technology company. They make software whose goal is to be a social utility. They want to help people share information.
• FB has 50+ million active users.
• Over half of the FB users are outside the US. FB is the biggest social network in the UK.
• Over half of the users return daily. “We provide utility almost as good as email.”
• FB is #6 on the web. Below Google and above eBay. *
• FB’s key is the social graph. The social graph is a network of people connections.
• Build a FB application to “build a business of have fun on the side.” (At least Dave was realistic about it.)
• FB application developers have the same access to FB as the creators themselves.
• FB has a grant program for application developers called fbFund.
• Over 8000 applications built in just over 8 months. Dave said they are “humbled” by such a response from the development community.
• FB recently released “pages” which allow non-people to have a profile or page. This is for bands, companies, etc.
• When asked, Dave said FB is evaluating Open Social and they think it’s cool. But right now, FB is not participating. One of the reasons is their concern over people’s privacy and they don’t think Open Social has high enough privacy.
• For more information, go to developers.facebook.com.

*This made me wonder what stats Google shares in their presentations.

Lindsay’s comments on the evening can be seen on her blog, ooochie.com along with a link to the facebook app she made not too long ago.

Last Thursday, I attended the second annual Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference. It was a great opportunity to meet a lot of people with interesting businesses and hear some great speakers. My notes are on my blog. The entire conference was recorded by Grid7, which is fantastic for people who couldn’t attend.

The three things I brought back that I feel Integrum can work on are the following:
1. Our Pitch - Everyone in the company should be able to clearly describe Integrum and our business in one minute or less. I think we’re very good at our pitch with people working in the Internet or in technology. I think we could improve our pitch so that people in other industries could understand us as well. You never know who is your next customer.
2. Goals - Clear and measurable goals for Integrum in the short and long term. We’re really good at setting goals around improving our process or goals for a specific project. I think we need to think big and set goals for the entire organization too.
3. Be the Expert - Market yourself as the experts simply by sharing your knowledge. Share via the web or present at conferences. The more you do, the more you’ll be seen as an expert. Integrum does a great job of being the expert around Rails and is actively contributing to the community by hosting the Phoenix Rails Meetings every month as well as writing plenty about Rails (see our blogs). But we are also really, really knowledgeable about Agile practices. We need to get out into the community more and be Agile experts.

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