When you live and breathe one industry for most of your professional life, what happens?

Usually you end up living in a bit of a bubble.  That bubble is reinforced when your friends, peers and colleagues are in the same industry.  This is dangerous because it changes your perception of reality.

I recently moved from being a developer in the tech industry to being a techie in the publishing industry.  Here are a few of the many things I have had to learn so far:

• – JUST SHIP IT: In software development, even when you’re trying to ship a product and the deadline has slipped and it’s massive panic all around, there still comes a time when people staying awake and checking in code does more damage than good.  You tell everyone to go home, get some sleep and come back in the morning to finish the work.  In publishing, there is no concept of go-home-before-you-do-more-damage.  There is only the concept of the publisher’s deadline.  Which is gospel.  You stay until it’s published.

                                        [Photo courtesy of delgaudm]

• – NEW/SHINY == BAD: In the tech world, you can throw a new system, framework, device or design at people and they’ll intuitively figure out how it works.  In the publishing world, people rely a great deal on their systems working the same way.  You cannot introduce changes or features without ample training and/or documentation or you risk a massive productivity loss.
• – MY PHONE ISN’T BROKEN, THE SITE IS: Techies generally keep their software and devices up-to-date.  We’re interested to know if the new features are good, if performance is improved or if security holes are fixed.  Outside of the tech world, many people don’t update because they don’t know they can or they don’t know how or, more often, they just don’t care.  Telling people to upgrade their iPhone software can come across as an insult instead of the helpful tip you thought it would be.

Why does any of this matter?

                                    [Photo courtesy of shutterbc]

Living and working inside a bubble helps us to forget who our customers really are.  I observed this in my first full-time job working on a brand new development framework at Microsoft (codename Avalon, now WPF).  We spent months designing and architecting cool API test harnesses which dynamically integrated all APIs and extrapolated every possible combination of values.  It was a tough piece of work but no one else had done it, and we were so proud.

Walking into a meeting with the other 100 people on the team, we sat down ready to hear praise for our unprecedented and forward-thinking accomplishment.  Instead, the director got in front of us, said nothing and opened his laptop.  He opened Visual Studio, selected “Create new Avalon project” and hit F5 to compile and run.  Visual Studio crashed.  In all our discussions about ascertaining perfect quality, we hadn’t once thought about who was going to use the framework and what their process would be like. We failed.  From then on, at least 50% of my time was spent testing by “using the product as a customer.”  We shipped a much better product because of that change.

As G.I. Joe used to say, “Knowing is half the battle.”  Knowing you are in a bubble is the first step towards being able to change your behaviour and do the right thing for whoever your customers are.  My customers right now are editors, copy chiefs, photography editors and print designers.  I still have a lot to learn, but each time I observe their work styles and habits, I can creep a little bit more out of my bubble and build a little bit better software for them to use.

Funemployment is over.  I have work to do.

I made the decision last summer, when I was starting to look at new jobs, that I no longer wanted a full-time, all-consuming job.  I made a list of what I wanted, and it looked like this:

– Time to work on my own projects (2 days a week)
– Time to continue my graduate course work in computational linguistics and data visualisation (1 day a week)
– Working from home
– Working with smart people from whom I can learn loads
– The opportunity to teach others
– Cutting-edge technology
– Work in areas I’m passionate about: media, publishing, mobile, news
– Ability to continue to travel
– Complete ownership of my schedule
– Last but not least: stay in Ireland (at least until my visa runs out!)

I might be the luckiest person I know – things are working out great so far.  Here’s what I’m working on:

LECTURING: I have accepted a part-time lecturing position at the National College of Ireland for the Advanced Rich Internet Applications piece of their new MSc in Web Technologies program.  I start at the end of January, and I can’t express how much I’m looking forward to it.  During my time at Microsoft Ireland, my absolute favourite part of my job was being able to take small groups of developers and teach programming concepts and new technology designs.  I love teaching, so I can’t wait to get started.

PERSONAL PROJECTS: I’m continuing to work on my own projects, which are small prototypes that I will probably blog about later. 

NEW TECHNOLOGY: And lastly but most exciting, I’ve joined the team at Nomad Editions as their tech lead.  I can’t think of an area I’m more passionate about right now than digital magazines.  I’ve been a magazine junkie my whole life, and what magazines are doing with their digital versions is absolutely breaking my heart.  Nomad Editions is a mobile-focused start-up based in New York doing the right thing for magazine and news readers as well as anyone who loves narratives and storytelling.  Nomad Editions are small, focused weekly magazines downloaded to your desktop/laptop/phone/tablet/device that look amazing, no matter how you’re reading them. 

If you are a foodie, a surfer or a film buff, you can sign up for the free beta trials now at http://nomadeditions.com.  Or follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/readnomad (each magazine has its own feed as well which I’ve listed here: http://twitter.com/martharotter/nomadeditions-15).  Working with fantastically smart people like Petr van Blokland, Roger Black, Filipe Fortes and the superstar Nomad team means I’m learning all the time from the best of the best, which is an unbelievable opportunity.

Nomad Editions runs on top of Treesaver technology, designed and built by Filipe Fortes.  Treesaver is what makes Nomad work cross-browser/cross-platform/cross-device and look amazing the whole time.  To learn more about Treesaver, you can follow @trsvr on Twitter.  This video interview with Robert Scoble gives an excellent overview of Treesaver’s origins and how it works: Treesaver Shows HTML5 Can Hold its Own Against Flipboard-style Design.

So that’s what I’m up to for the next few months.  I’ll be in New York city next week for some new Nomad Editions developments and I’ll definitely have some news to blog about after that.