The New Disruptors

Jason Fried co-founded 37signals, a Web design company that found one of its internal tools for managing projects could be something effectively used by others. Millions of users later, 37signals offers Basecamp (overhauled substantially a year ago), Campfire, and Highrise among other services. The founders not only transformed their business, but routinely help others transform theirs. Fried collaborated on a book called Rework that distills years of what he learned from running a successful company and helping others with theirs.

You can look at and sign up for Basecamp as a trial subscription, but this episode isn't a product plug; Basecamp fits the disruption mindset. Microsoft Project is perfectly fine software for companies that have employees in one place and need the top-down approach. Software as a service (SaaS) typically involves an application you access via the Web for which data is stored centrally, and updates to the software happen centrally as well. Salesforce, an early SaaS alternative to enterprise-licensed and -managed software, was founded in 1999, and had risen as a force that defined the industry by the time Basecamp came out. Rework may be purchased from Amazon.com and many other fine bookstores.

Glenn brought up three concepts relating to 37signals' work: The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric S. Raymond's explanation of the difference between software code controlled by a handful of priests and that in the marketplace that's open to all; The Cluetrain Manifesto, a provocative set of theses that turned into a revolution and a book by declaring, among other things, that markets are conversations; and Stephen Jay Gould's use of the term hecatomb to explain evolution's remorseless pruning of failed mutations.

Maker spaces are popping up all over where people can go and work with tools of all sorts, from woodworking to advanced 3D printers, to make things for themselves or prototype designs to manufacture. Seattle has been bereft of a large-scale facility with everything under one roof — until now. Ellie and Mike Kemery have just opened Makerhaus, a 10,000-square-foot building chock full of everything makers need. But their secret sauce, they hope, is community and education among their members. We talk about what a maker space can mean to bring all the hardware, software, and people together in one place to make magic happen.

This episode is the first in the series in which I talk to facilitators: firms set up to help artists and producers connect with an audience. I'll be talking more over the coming weeks to a mix of creators and these new kinds of intermediaries that help rather than hinder achieving one's goals and finding an audience.

Tonya and Adam Engst have been disrupting publishing for 23 years, starting shortly after graduating Cornell University when they founded TidBITS, a Macintosh journal that is now the longest continuously produced Internet publication. The Engsts took the first online ad dollars (probably), founded a DRM-free ebook publisher nearly a decade ago, and love their readers. The couple discuss their two-decades-plus of insights, including their love/hate relationship with content management systems for publishing.

Jim Coudal runs Coudal Partners, a small design firm in Chicago that crafts all sorts of things. More than a decade ago, the group decided to shift its business from mostly working for others to mostly working for themselves. Field Notes (with Aaron Draplin), The Deck advertising network, and Layer Tennis are some of the commercial and entertaining results. Field Notes is entirely a physical product ordered online; The Deck, a digital one that can't exist without a network of independent voices. We talk about these two extremes and taking your creativity into your own hands.

Andrea Seabrook spent more than a decade at National Public Radio, and covered Congress for a good part of that time. She left NPR to start something of her own: DecodeDC, a podcast and syndicated radio program (on this very network) that cuts through the blandification of politics, and speaks the unvarnished truth that gets lost in the interest of presenting supposedly balanced viewpoints. Andrea is fair, but she doesn't shrink from cutting through layer after layer of spin, something that's typically not possible in conventional broadcast media. We talk about the future of public radio and the joy of making your own decisions about what your audience wants to hear.

Mark Frauenfelder likes to celebrate and encourage creativity in every form. He's the founder of BoingBoing, a directory of wonderful things that's encouraged "happy mutants" for over 15 years (and was a zine created with his wife, Carla Sinclair, before that), and the editor of Make Magazine, one of the inspirations of and driving forces behind the maker movement. Mark's book Made by Hand documents how he turned to raising chickens, growing food, and pulling espresso as a counterpart to his increasingly digitally focused life. We talk about the revival of people's interest in making things and collaborating with others in communities, as well as his book and Make magazine.

Evan Ratliff is cofounder, CEO, and editor of The Atavist, a monthly magazine of long-form, non-fiction journalism, and, more recently, a platform (called just "Atavist") for other publications and organizations to use to publish stories to many destinations: the Web, mobile apps, EPUB for e-readers, and beyond. We talk about both aspects of the operation and what led the magazine to build its own content-management and publishing system, and then to turn around and resell that as a product. (We spoke just before the magazine part of The Atavist added a subscription option to its iOS app.)

Tony Konecny, better known as Tonx, has been sourcing and roasting beans for a numbers of years, and recently founded Tonx Coffee, a subscription service that delivers whole beans from small batch roasting every two weeks. It's not a bean of the month club. It's a way to bypass the overchoice that one can face in specialty coffee shops, and get the assurance that the beans are fresh and good every time. In this episode, listen to Tonx and his ecommerce guru Nik Bauman talk about the joys of coffee and the joys of starting a business in which you can talk directly to your customers without anyone else getting in the way. There's a brief interlude in which the host and a friend have a little Tonx tasting, too.

(Note: Although Tonx Coffee has sponsored other Mule Radio shows, this show is editorially independent and Tonx Coffee didn't sponsor this episode.)

Chris Anderson was the editor in chief of Wired Magazine for over a decade, during which time he wrote an "accidental" trilogy of three books: The Long Tail, Free, and Makers. His latest book details how a mild obsession with do-it-yourself drones (pilotless planes) sucked him into the maker community, and to co-found a business now producing millions in sales. We talk about the maker movement, the revolution of atoms that's underway, and his drones. (He left Wired just after we recorded this podcast to work full-time as chief of his business, 3D Robotics.)

Filmmakers Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky discovered the rich stories behind independently produced videogames, and turned some preliminary interviews into first one Kickstarter campaign, and then another. The resulting film, "Indie Game: The Movie," won an award at the Sundance Film Festival in early 2012. But then, rather than accept deals for conventional film distribution, the two organized their own tour, renting theatres and meeting Kickstarter backers around North America. They ultimately controlled their own digital distribution as well. We discuss their journey of the last two years, which remains underway as they ready special features.