Peter Armstrong

Flexible Rails: The Workshop

Sat, 5 Jan 2008 16:01:00 PST

I'm doing a 1-day workshop on using Flex and Rails together.

When: Sunday, January 27, 2008
Where: BCIT, downtown Vancouver

For more information, see here.

I'm really excited about it; it's going to be a lot of fun!

speaking at acts_as_conference

Sat, 5 Jan 2008 15:59:00 PST

Note: this is cross-posted from http://www.flexiblerails.com/2008/1/5/speaking-at-acts_as_conference

I'm going to be speaking at acts_as_conference on February 8-9 in Orlando, Florida.

The title for my talk is "Rails on AIR". The pompous title is "Rails on AIR: Best Practices for using Flex 3 and Adobe AIR with Ruby on Rails 2". I'd hoped to be done Rails on AIR (my planned sequel to Flexible Rails) by this conference; as it stands currently the book isn't even in alpha yet. (Finishing Flexible Rails took a lot longer than I naively expected: I now know how much work goes into taking a Manning book from "completed manuscript" to "fully typeset", and why Manning books have such consistent high quality...)

So, my talk will be some of the material from Flexible Rails, plus a good sized sneak preview of the new ideas and code being developed for Rails on AIR. The ideas and code are already far enough along to talk about, even if that book is not. So, you'll be getting a look at the material before anyone else!

The conference looks to be really great -- I'm really honoured to be included among the list of speakers. Also, the charity session looks great: learn about Rubinus from Evan Phoenix and Merb and Ezra Zygmuntowicz!

So, if you want to go somewhere warm and sunny in February, I'd definitely check it out...

Mow the lawn, mow the lawn just to make it grow

Sun, 2 Dec 2007 23:56:00 PST

This blog post is the first in a while, and it is just a collection of stuff I've been intending to blog about, whenever I caught up to my copy editor in Flexible Rails. This is done now (2/3 done Author Review, woo hoo!), so I have time to blog again...

"Mow the lawn, mow the lawn, just to make it grow"

I thought this was actually the lyrics to the song Move Along from The All-American Rejects (since I'm in my 30s and a bit out of touch, I actually had to google for the band name, since I've never known).

I thought this was a brilliant song describing a truth about the Sisyphean chores of "responsible" adulthood. I was especially impressed since it sounded like they were 20-somethings; the only popular young band that had that depth of lyrics I'd heard lately was The Arctic Monkeys. (Another sign of age: I actually "discovered" Arctic Monkeys by reading A VC: yes, I'm learning about good bands from someone I'd consider pitching a company to one day--how Web 2.0 is that?

Anyway, I eventually learned it was "move along" not "mow the lawn" (I think my friend Len in London told me). I don't remember what the real words for "just to make it grow" are.

It really doesn't matter, I suppose: I bet my words are better. Even though they're not "the" words, I enjoyed them when they were...

Anyway, it snowed here yesterday and today, so at least I don't have to mow the lawn...

Self Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing, in Response to Dave Thomas and Charles Petzold

Fri, 9 Nov 2007 22:55:00 PST

Any reader of Flexible Rails will know that I greatly admire Dave Thomas. He has recently posted an article about the future of traditional publishing, and referenced an article at Dr. Dobbs where he is quoted extensively.

I would like to point out two choice quotes from that article:

"I think that publishing in its current form is dead."

"authors are free to create information for themselves--a billion potential readers are just a few clicks away, and they no longer need publishers and distributors to get what they write into the hands of readers. Services such as Lulu even allow these new authors to have their work printed as paper books. Publishing has become an individual, not a corporate, act."

I completely agree with Dave Thomas on both counts.

Furthermore, I think that I have a bit of a unique perspective on this. I had articulated this previously in my "Books as a Service" post. Having gone further into the process of finishing Flexible Rails, I have a slightly more sophisticated (a polite way of saying less naive!) perspective now:

I self-published Flexible Rails in "alpha" form on Lulu when I was a software developer living in Parksville, working remotely for a Silicon Valley startup. I had no name recognition at all; my personal brand was essentially worth $0. However, even for an alpha, the book actually was helpful. (It was essentially the quality of a long, decent quality blog post.) So, word of mouth spread as I revised the book during many evenings and weekends over the period of a year, finishing a content-complete "Beta" of the book and updating it from Rails 1.1 to Rails 1.2.

Flexible Rails climbed to #73 all-time on Lulu. I was selling the PDF at $20 USD per copy (making $16/copy royalty, with Lulu making $4/copy for doing essentially nothing but credit card processing and web hosting). While it was a bit annoying to "give away" about $3.50 per sale to Lulu (compared to if I did everything myself), I liked the legitimacy it provided me (which increased as Flexible Rails moved up the long tail [starting from a rank of over 20,000] toward the short head). I justified the "lost" money to myself as "if I sell 25% more books this way, it's even".

Having said all that, is traditional publishing dead? Yes and no. Exploitative, "old Hollywood studio system" style publishing is definitely dying and will be dead--the sooner the better. However, there is room for more progressive publishers such as The Pragmatic Programmers and Manning. Even with all my success on Lulu, I chose to work with Manning to produce the print version of Flexible Rails, and while the process of producing the print book is not yet done, so far I am convinced that I made the correct choice.

I will have a lot more to say about this soon, but I just want to get a few ideas out there now:

One of the main contributions of self-publishing sites such as Lulu, as Dave Thomas has said, is to shift the balance of power from an oligopoly toward the authors. The negotiating concept of BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement) is a way to look at this: if you can make $16 per copy selling PDFs, why should you agree to the abysmal terms of the standard publishing contract? My understanding is that typically if a book sells for $50 in a store, the publisher gets $25 (minus returns) and the standard author royalty of 10% means that the author gets $2.50 (minus returns). So, typically, your $50 book bought the author a (small) coffee. So, if you are an author, Lulu gives you tremendous negotiating power: you don't need a publisher. You can make about 6x-8x as much money per book selling $20 PDFs yourself on Lulu compared to $50 books with a publisher. So, traditionally you need to sell 6x-8x as many books with a publisher with the traditional royalty rates just to break even.
The thing about the market is that it is segmented: some people buy PDFs online, some people never will. As an author, if you are interested in making money off of your book, you should attempt to sell as many of the higher-margin PDFs (via Lulu or an equivalent) as possible before selling print books to the remaining people who won't buy PDFs under any circumstances. Producing and selling print books is one thing a publisher is far better than you at doing: so you should attempt to "have your cake and eat it too".
Making a high quality print book is really hard. Typesetting, producing an index, ensuring the manuscript has a consistent tone--all these things are no fun whatsoever. They are horrible chores. So, if you decide to do them by yourself, you will do a terrible job of it. Hence, if you do want the final product to be of the best quality, involving the services of a very good copy editor, typesetter, etc., is a very good idea. You can get them yourself, of course, but this would require more effort on your part. Furthermore, if you contracted a copy editor, you would be in the position of employer, which means that the copy editor would not be as thorough or ruthless as s/he would if s/he was an employee of or contractor for your publisher.
The actual physical book produced by a print-on-demand place such as Lulu is decent, but it is not as nice as the physical book produced by The Pragmatic Programmers or Manning. (I made a dummy physical book of Flexible Rails and bought it from Lulu as a check: the printing came out fine enough, but the pages were too thick, and overall it seemed a bit amateurish in comparison to the (many) books I have bought from The Pragmatic Programmers and Manning.
People are impressed by the phrase "a Manning book". This is still true today. I have had the experience of telling people in my profession about being a self-published author and about being the author of an upcoming Manning book, and there is definitely more implied respect and prestige granted by being the author of an upcoming Manning book. So, I think that every author should do at least one traditionally published book, just to get the respect from the people who will not respect a high ranking on Lulu as much as they should. (This opinion is not correct, but that's your loss as well as theirs.)
Lulu is great as a tool for previously unpublished authors who want to be published either via Lulu or a traditional publisher. Once Flexible Rails got past a certain point on the Lulu rankings I got multiple pings from publishers. Publishers aren't stupid: if something is doing really well on Lulu with essentially almost no marketing, then it is a good candidate for being published traditionally. (On the flip side, if something isn't selling on Lulu, maybe it shouldn't be published traditionally at all? This certainly takes a lot of the risk out of the equation for a publisher: just buy and help polish the good and popular Lulu books. Lulu makes talent discovery easier.)
The crappy economics in #1 above mean that many authors see books as just marketing devices for their consulting practices. (I don't have empirical proof of this, but I have a strong hunch.) This is a downward spiral: if you can't make any actual money off of a book, and it's just a marketing device, then you can't actually afford to spend as much time to make the book a really good quality book--you have "real work" to do. Hence, you see so many books with 3-5 authors and overlapping content: if you're not going to make any real money, the "name on a book" glow wears off after a while. So, it only makes sense to contribute a few chapters to a book--anything more would be a bad investment...
Self-publishing yourself lets you release earlier and/or more often than some publishers would like: you can release as often as you want, without relying on other people in the process. Flexible Rails went through 23 (!) revisions on Lulu. Releasing really early lets you gauge demand: when I released Flexible Rails, I considered the very real possibility that only 5 people in the world would care. If this happened, I could have just sent them their money back (or even double their money back), and I wouldn't have wasted the time writing a book nobody wanted. Releasing often lets you evolve the book faster and fix bugs more frequently.

Anyway, I don't have any great sweeping conclusion, but I wanted to jot my thoughts down now. I'm sure I will refine them in the months ahead, as Flexible Rails finishes the "Early Access" program at Manning and becomes a Manning print book...

P.S. I had intended to write this after reading Charles Petzold's comments, but I didn't find the time until prompted by Dave Thomas' post. Hence the title of this blog post...

P.P.S. If you think that this blog post is verbose and needs an editor, you are right. It is itself a demonstration of both the strengths and weaknesses of self-publishing. Oooh, how meta -- I'd better stop before I float away...

[edited for clarity on 2007-11-11]

Speaking at Rails to Italy in Pisa

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 21:17:00 PDT

(Copied from my blog at http://www.flexiblerails.com/blog.)

With everything going on surrounding Flexible Rails, I forgot to blog this until now: I am speaking about using Flex with Rails at the Rails to Italy conference in Pisa this Saturday (October 27, 2007)!

I am very honoured to be included in this amazing speaker list.

The full title of my talk is "RESTful Rich Internet Application Development with Rails and Flex 2″. It's from 4:15 to 4:45 on Saturday, October 27, 2007.

I'm sitting in a hotel in Florence right now, having spent a few days in London and a couple days in a villa in Lastra a Signa revising Flexible Rails. Of course, I could think of worse places to write a book than overlooking the Tuscan hills. Still, it's a shame I can't spend the whole time sightseeing--not that I'm complaining though! Walking around Florence and seeing the amazing art and sculpture is a constant reminder not to take one's own work too seriously, since it is not even on the same planet as the accomplishments of the people who lived here hundreds of years ago...

I'm on the RIA Technologies panel at Office 2.0 next Thursday (September 6)

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 09:24:00 PDT

The description of the Office 2.0 Conference panel is here.

It's on Thursday, September 6, 2007, from 2:15PM - 3:00PM in the Conservatory.

Marc Orchant from blognation USA is going to be moderating, and Dion Almaer, Jnan Dash from Curl, Kevin Hakman from TIBCO, Ryan Stewart from Adobe and David Temkin from Laszlo will all be on the panel with me. (I'm very honoured to be in such company--I'd go to this panel in a second!)

The panel will be looking at the big questions surrounding Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) -- where do they fit, what are they best suited for, etc.

Speaking at Vancouver RIA Developer Camp, August 30

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 22:46:00 PDT

I'm going to be talking about Flex and Rails at a free (but space is limited, so go sign up NOW!) "Vancouver RIA Developer Camp", i.e. Flex Camp, on August 30.

Space is limited, so go sign up!

Besides me, there is a great line up of speakers including Andre Charland, Duane Nickull, Ross Ladell, Steve Bond and Ryan Stewart. I'm flattered to be included in this list :)

Flexible Rails Content Complete!

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 22:43:00 PDT

The first content-complete PDF of Flexible Rails has been released. It's 497 pages, and is one of the most difficult things I have done in my life.

All that is left is the editing process which turns it into a print book.

Woo hoo!

Company #1: Turn Tap Water Into Premium Flat and Bubbly Water, via "The iPod of Water Coolers"

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 09:12:00 PDT

Problem:

Bottled water, both in individual bottles of still and bubbly water and in the corporate water cooler, is extremely wasteful and harmful to the environment. However, while this is a growing perception, it is still not the prevailing view. Also, there is no compelling alternative: tap water doesn't have Apple quality marketing behind it.

Solution:

There needs to be a company that sells a machine which is a water cooler which turns ordinary tap water into premium tasting flat and bubbly water. It would also sell the custom branded filters and carbonation replacements.

The industrial design should be essentially WWAD: "What Would Apple Design?" This would be the ultimate geek + environmentalist lifestyle purchase. Everything about the machine and its consumables should be priced at a premium. The competition is not Brita: it is the corporate water cooler and expensive bottled water.

The marketing is extremely simple.

For companies: Companies will want to buy it to show how environmentally sensitive they are. The traditional water cooler will go from an automatic part of a standard office to a sign of environmental insensitivity, even hostility. In terms of getting this message out, all that needs to happen is for this product to be placed in a few select offices (e.g. Apple, Google). If Steve Jobs makes a pointed remark to a reporter about how much environmentally better Apple is than, say, Dell, because of all the bottled water it doesn't use, the press would write itself.

For individuals: Every Prius owner will want one. If an individual drinks lots of bottled water, it will be cost-effective. Even if it's not (or is just barely), it is a way to make an environmental statement with a purchase.

For restaurants: A restaurant can place it conspicuously to show how much better for the environment it is compared to its competitors. The restaurant could even charge for the water (for the bubbly water, anyway).

This is probably some of the lowest hanging fruit there is in terms of reducing environmental impact, since it has the potential to greatly reduce the massive harm created by the bottled water industry. (The recycling "R" has gotten all the press because it's hard to sell products for the reduce "R"; this changes that.)

Heck, buying this product should be worth carbon credits.

The great thing is that this can greatly reduce the harm we are doing to the environment with just some good industrial design and marketing, and with no breakthrough technology required.

Distribution of the machine and its consumables should be easy: Whole Foods should jump at a chance for a partnership. (If they don't, some other grocery store chain which wants to be greener than Whole Foods should do it.)

I used to drink a lot of bottled water, especially bubbly water. The cost was a bit annoying, but not as much as the environmental guilt...

Companies That Should Exist, But That I'm Not Qualified To Start

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 09:09:00 PDT

Now that Flexible Rails is winding down--wow, the self-promotional segues come easily now--I have decided to start blogging again. Furthermore, like all the cool kids, I'm going to have various series of posts.

This is my "Companies That Should Exist, But That I'm Not Qualified To Start" series. Since that is very negative sounding, I'm going to just call it "CompaniesThatShouldExist". The negativity will be implied--at one point, I was really excited about each of these ideas, and by blogging about it I'm essentially giving up on myself being the person to execute on it :)

[I have other ideas which I'm not blogging about, of course, so don't worry about me. Hopefully one day I blog about them in a series entitled ShamelessSelfPromotion.]

I have lots of ideas, especially regarding things where I have no experience. Once I decide I won't do anything with the idea, I'm going to share it here. That way, someone else might do something with it. I get to look like a visionary (hopefully) or a crackpot (hopefully not!). Also, it's good practice for me to write up my ideas in a public forum, so this is self-serving too. Anyone reading this will be able to tell that I currently have zero experience writing business plans.