Tech Notes From The Trenches

The other day I was browsing through open source projects on GitHub and I found the topsy gem. (A gem is a ruby library that can be used for a certain purpose)

Initially, I was upset. It was a new gem for something that I had built more than one month ago. I thought that the programmer behind it (Wynn Netherland) should have collaborated with my existing gem: rtopsy.

After reviewing his code, I realized that he had developed a better version of my gem. So I decided that it was an opportunity to learn more about Ruby, gems and APIs.

I reached out to Wynn (via Twitter) and we decided to collaborate on the topsy gem. I added some ‘business objects’ to the gem. He added some logic for the rate limit status info. I added more documentation and examples. We worked through tests together.

The end result: A more stable version of the Topsy API Ruby gem. In the process, I learned a lot about testing code with fakeweb.

I just finished reading Permission Marketing by Seth Godin. I enjoyed the book and his point of view on marketing strategies. There is a clear distinction between interruption marketing and permission marketing. However, permission marketing cannot succeed without interruption marketing.

Permission marketing sometimes uses interruption marketing. At Aycron, we have not worked with interruption marketing. But we have worked with some concepts of permission marketing, without even knowing it.

I like that the book doesn’t talk about marketing in general/in theory. I like that it gives real life examples and steps that companies can follow to work on their permission marketing strategies. I hope to apply these steps soon.

Two more things I like about the book:

• It doesn’t talk about marketing as if it were an event. It talks about permission marketing as a process with different stages.
• It talks about the different levels of permission you can have with a client.

If you are interested in business development, you should read this book.