To ship or not to ship: Software is never ready, but sometimes you have to ship it. This week Paul and Rich sit down to talk about the difficulties of shipping software. We share tips on how to deal with numerous stakeholders and engineers so that you can release software on time. We also talk about the importance of setting deadlines and draw some parallels between software and Las Vegas buffets. 

Links: 

General Magic 

Tinysheet by Postlight

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Do Digital Boundaries Exist?: This week Paul and Rich sit down to talk about this week’s tech scandals. We chat about the security flaws found within email client Superhuman and teleconference software Zoom. Do these companies have an obligation to protect their client’s information? Should usability trump security? Do we have a right to be angry? If that's not enough, we also chat about summer BBQs.

Links: 

Mike Davidson: Superhuman is Spying on You

Superhuman

Zoom

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Technology is not a panacea: This week Paul and Rich sit down with Noah Brier, who explains to us why technology cannot solve all of our problems. Noah has done countless interviews with enterprises about their tech needs, and has created content marketing software for large enterprises. He shares his insights on current enterprise software trends and gives us some tips on how to better market our business. Pro tip: traditional marketing like billboards and taxi top ads give the most bang for your buck! 

Links: 

Percolate

Noah Brier’s Blog 

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Digital Transformation is like a Horoscope: In this week’s episode, Paul and Rich sit down to discuss need creation and the tech industry's move to talk about trends in such abstract language that it seems like it applies to everybody. We chat about the relationship between service providers and tech research firms and why you should be suspicious of new industry buzzwords and complex acronyms. Reminder: it’s okay to ask what that new acronym means!

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Focus on Core Needs: Lara Hogan knows and loves management so she wrote a book about it. This week she joins Paul and guest host Gina Trapani to chat about her new book and about leadership in the workplace. Lara breaks down her framework for managing different types of people and gives tips on how to adapt your management style. She also gives Paul some useful advice on where he should sit in the office and explains why moving desks can be so traumatic.   

LINKS:

Lara Hogen - Resilient Management 

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard 

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One size never fits all: This week Paul and Rich discuss two of the need to decentralize or centralize software platforms. Worried about the dozens of unintegrated platforms that have appeared over the years? Feeling restrained by the old legacy software system you’re using? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. We give some tips on how to move forward when dealing with these issues and how to avoid them in the future. Hint: get a product manager, develop a product roadmap, and be cautious of giant pieces of software that claim to solve all your problems.  

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Don’t hide what you want people to do: is the advice that Al Rotches gives Paul and Rich about online advertising. Al has built a career on making banner ads for clients like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. On this week’s episode, we chat with Al about how he gets people to engage online with his ads. He shares his insights about the importance of ad placement and about why most banner ads are so horrible. He also gives us some advice on how big and what colour the button should be on your ad. Hint: it should be big and stay away from red!

Links:

Al Rotches’ Website

Barack Obama’s Banner Ads

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No more slapdash, we want Slack-Dash: Ever get bogged down by a neverending Slack thread where few decisions ever get made? On this week’s episode of Track Changes we hear about a new Slack app that solves this very problem. Paul and Rich sit down with fellow Postlight employees Matt Quintanilla and Phil Johnson to chat about Dash, the app they developed that helps you organize your teams and deadlines in Slack. Matt and Phil tell us about why and how they created this new app and why it can be used for anything from preparing for a meeting to wedding planning.

Links:

Get Dash

More about Postlight Labs

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Is this really necessary?: This week Paul and Rich sit down to discuss the current culture surrounding software updates. Are constant software updates necessary? Are they improving the user experience or complicating it? We chat about our love/hate relationship with updates and get to hear Paul compare Spotify to a shapeshifting witch!

Links:

Updating Spotify

Postlight Labs

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Improworsement: is an improvement that makes things worse, and Erin McKean knows all about that. She's wanted to create dictionaries since the age of eight and this year she is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Wordnik, an online dictionary she helped create that has grown to 10 times the size of the Oxford English Dictionary. This week Paul and Rich sit down with Erin to discuss the evolution of Wordnik, from its humble beginnings in PHP to developing a full scalable API. Erin shares the challenges she’s faced, both technical and financial, and gives us tips on how to deal with failure. She also helps us expand our vocabulary and answers the difficult question: what is the best word?

Links:

Wordnik

TED Talk - Erin McKean: Go ahead, make up new words!

Wordnik on Twitter

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