This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Follow us on Twitter for more information on our products.

How different members of staff interviewing each other?

Go to other software/design studios that have Gotten Real and lets talk to their people.

Would love to see more of a “day in the life” of 37signals partners/employees. Maybe both in and out of the office, daily routines, office culture, interests activities etc.

Yes, drag the other 37signals employees in front of the camera to talk about their respective expertise and answer questions.

I agree with Charles. I’d love to see episodes on each employee and their roles within the company.

A mix of Ricky Irvine’s and Charles Dudley’s ideas would be nice, too. That is, making a “day in the life” video of other software/design studios that have Gotten Real.

I also like the “day in the life” idea. Would love to be a fly on the wall in a brainstorming/development meeting regarding a new feature for one of your apps, especially with the foreknowledge that the meeting will be quick since meetings are toxic…

what LBDG said sounds great. I’d love to see loads of behind the scenes stuff.

I’m not american, so maybe this is going to be a completelly off-topic comment…

I didn’t like your ‘lives’. I do not have a definitive idea, but what I’ve seen seemed… not right. May be there should be only one person in front of the camera each time, I don’t know… Or maybe the format should be an interview, like in talk shows…

As to which topics to cover for… I think that what you’re best at (design, programming, Getting Real, ...) does not get through using video. I know your presentations are great, but the live video, or at least answering your viewers’ quations… Just doesn’t look right, sorry…

jb

I like the current format as long as the questions are new and exciting. Otherwise, interview other places to get their perspectives as well.

Fly me to Chicago and I’ll interview y’all…Err, umm, it’s January so maybe not.

I do like the current format but maybe split it up a little bit with some behind the scenes, different employees, takes on design, “Getting Real,” and upcoming projects. I really like the day in the life idea.

I want you to not spend any time on it and work on upgrading your products.

I think the show format was great!

What about recording all the live shows and distributing them as a video podcast through itunes, or just uploading them to a youtube account (or both).

The live show is great, but with a video archive of some sort you can reach a larger audience.

Thanks for sharing your company with us all!!

I would have to say come down to FOWA in Miami in february. its cold as F$%! up in chicago, and nice and warm down here.

I’ll second Ricky and Charles’ suggestions :)

@Michael: Relax! Next you’ll be asking them to work on Fridays! :)

I agree with the folks who want to see the other 37signals employees. We know they’re all over the place, but hey, it’s the internet, anything’s possible. I still don’t know what half the team looks like. It’s nice to put a face on the names.

I would really like you to talk about what technological challenges you (37signals) will face in this year (besides ailing Macs). For example, will the new version of Ruby affect your code? Are there any database scaling or performance issues that need to be resolved, any areas of improvement that have been on the back-burner that will need to be addressed? Any new tools in your development stack?

Thanks in advance, and keep up the good work.

Charles Dudley++ Richard Wood++

I’d love you guys doing a session about the future of the Internet, the future of Web Applications, where you’ll see yourselves 3 or 5 years from now. Will basecamp still be there? or will something else radically different emerge? If there’s a new Internet revolution, would you be ready to join and start anew, or you’ve got too much legacy to support?

More videos of people being really creative, sitting on tables…

:)

+1 for ‘day in the life’.

I liked your video snippit of your away day on the shore a few months (or more?) back. It was an interesting glimpse in how you really interact (albeit in a special offsite session, not regular day to day biz).

Perhaps invite us in on 1 of your group meetings, or the launch of the next set of features for a product. If you’re really clever could you devise a scheme where the ‘community’ could interact and respond as well… that is, say you’re discussing new features for a product, we could chime in with ideas/pros/cons/concerns as well and have a bit of a discussion. Some filtering needed to handle the deluge of information so perhaps a more intimate setting than unlimited number of users…

Just some ideas!

Get all the Chicago employees together and do a webcast of some live half-court basketball. :)

I agree with Ricky, but instead of going to other studios, have them come on as featured guests on 37signals Live. I enjoyed when Jim Coudal was on the show and discussed with Dave whether or not you can develop a sense of taste.

I guess the formula for an interesting show to me is: 1. Bring other successful people onto the show. 2. Have them discuss/debate/argue the points you guys have made.

I’m going way to the other side.

I would like to see a member of 37signals go to diff small businesses (maybe 1 ev 2 weeks) and ‘pimp’ their business with all the best features of all the 37signals products implemented by 37signals.

Then tell the audience the business background (chosen sm business), what their needs are, what needs 37s can help them with. Implementation, and then followup with sm biz owner on how they like it.

I really enjoy the Q/A on Live…I would like to hear thoughts on preparation. What does it take to prepare yourself to be ready for launching a business, launching a product, hiring an employee, etc.

Looking forward to it.

I’d be interested to know how a 37signal’s working day looks like: how do you manage working in different places? What do you do to respect working time of each other ? How do you interact to share and optimize your work ? etc…

Record them or have them at a time when we’re not all at work/school (on the weekends, around 7-8 central, etc.)

Make the sessions easy to download so I can put them into iTunes or iPhone.

It would be very cool for you to do a day in the life of customers that use 37signals products – featured video and audio. This would give people other ideas on how to maximize usage of their favorite 37signal products. I would volunteer for it as Backpack and Highrise have saved my career a number of times.

Once thing that would be very interesting for smaller SaaS companies to know is:

What sort of legal challenges have you faced as a company and how have you protected yourself? Insurances, war stories, etc.

It may be worthwhile to try to get on camera with people who hold views that oppose 37signals.

And since 37signals is all about getting “real,” I think it would be a good idea to simply have a segment where you actually conduct a real 37signals meeting. This has the double effect of getting business done, and the live show done…

Take it to a bar in Chicago a few times, perhaps. I know a lot of people, myself included, who would show up.

I really enjoyed the posts that “shares experience”.

Like this post about the different iterations of the design of the Highrise sign up chart:

http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1496-design-decisions-the-new-highrise-signup-chart

I would be glued to the screen if you did something like that in a video format. It could fit nicely together with having employees talking about who they are and what they do. I imagine that a lot of them are really good at what they do, and would do well talking about their job and how they handle it on camera.

I prefer to know how 37signals scale their applications and what measures they take to server the traffic

More slapstick humour.

Live usability testing with new users would be interesting…

Management issues. As 37signals grow, how do roles change? What kinds of changes have Jason and David had to make as leaders of the company now that the company is adding staff?

How about “site makeovers” where SVN readers can submit their web businesses and get feedback from the 37signals team?

This would also be easy on your guys since you wouldn’t have to prepare any material. You could just walk through it – or even have the site owner as a guest? Sort of like getting real bootcamp.

If you decide to do it, would love to get your feedback on my rails/getting real site: http://www.UniversityTutor.com

Another +1 for the day in the life of idea. Would be great to see around the office and see other members of the 37 signals team.

+1 for a day in the life idea. I’d love to hear from the more quiet designers on 37s team.

You post great information and insight on development and user-centered-ness. I’m guessing your audience are people who recognize that they are developers. I propose you create a presentation for business users who don’t think of themselves as developers but who actually are. I work for a consultancy, and when we are preparing an ACL script-based tool to perform a specific analysis, it is sold as an ‘analysis’ but it is as involved as a small- to medium-sized software project, requires code writing and documentation, and even a manual (usually) of sorts, even if it just lumped in with ‘the deliverable’. Some of us try to apply lessons you and those like you teach – tell us how you would convince a non-technical senior management or c-level decision maker to invest in techniques and time spent doing the job right.