(1) the core of any software project team is a software developer.  Without a developer, you won’t get much software development done.  (2) Having an awesome designer on hand is great for results and team morale.  (3). Having a disproportionate number of people who can neither design nor code will result in a lot of time spent on product naming.

We also linked to our set of photos. Enjoy!

1. I Dig Durham
2. Lunnnch
3. Tofu Engine

We’ll share more about the weekend and these projects in the coming weeks both here at on the Viget blog.  Thanks for keeping up with our Pointless endeavors!

1. We made some updates yesterday to get it working again, which happily included some moderate speed improvements.
2. We’re planning for some additional enhancements to HeyCraig that we think you’ll like.  The schedule for release is … undermined at present.

Thanks for using HeyCraig and our other pointless stuff.

I just got a peek at the new design for this site and it is sweet. We’ll be building it out over the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for an all new pointlesscorp.com launching soon.

We’re also cooking up some new Pointless Projects to share with everyone, so look for 2011 to be a lot more Pointless, if you know what I mean.

This is not your typical MBA internship.  Know someone who should apply?  Please tell them about the opportunity or apply yourself!

“Simple but useful — just how we like ‘em.”

Good thing, since that’s how we like to build them.

If you’re a speaker, you know that standing in front of a crowd isn’t half as hard as getting critical feedback on your talks. People who disliked it will generally remain silent or opt for a snarky tweet or two. Those close to you will tell you “You did great!” no matter how poorly you performed. Getting the feedback you need to improve can be the most difficult part of the whole process. 

Exactly.

While he liked the concept and UI, Rick found the LinkedIn validation step to feel a bit spammy, which is consistent with feedback we’ve been getting from other folks.  I commented on his post to try to clarify (updates to your LinkedIn profile can be temporary — we aren’t begging for links / mentions on LinkedIn!) but suffice it to say we’re working on changes to that part of the process to make it less scary.  

Keep the great feedback coming!

The most obvious use case for SpeakerRate is this:

1. Speaker creates an account and adds her upcoming talk (if it’s not in there already — many are).
2. On the last slide of her presentation deck, Speaker adds something like: “So, how’d I do? Let me know at speakerrate.com/[username].”
3. Attendees go to speakerrate.com/[username], rate Speaker’s talk, and leave some constructive comments.
4. Speaker reads the comments and learns how she can give a better talk next time.

Pretty simple.  The problem with the wall was that it blocked Step #3 above.  So, down came the wall.

Good ideas and feedback continues to come in, which is helping us make SpeakerRate better.  Keep it coming!