(01/28/2007)

Welcome to my new blog. I'm using Rapid Weaver software now on my iMac. My old blog software was a handy perl script that was great for the two years that I used it. In the time that has past, RSS feeds have become the norm for blogs. So I've moved on...

When I thought up my company name back in 1993, the idea I had was that systems development would be best served if we could scaffold systems around universal concepts that many people understood. In writing, these universal concepts are called metaphors. Writers use metaphors to layer on meanings, intention,voice onto stories. If a software team organized their efforts in this way, I thought problems could be solved more elegantly with less corruption and bureaucracy. I'm happy to say that I believe some of these ideas have been implemented in the real world by forward thinking folks. Some examples I'm influenced by include The Agile Manifesto, 37 Signals Getting Real, and The Cathedral and The Bazaar.

As explained on my home page, "Heart, Brain, Nerve" is a metaphor I am using to organize the services I will build and technologies I will focus on. In particular, I will keep up a blog for three or four major open source or free technologies: Pentaho Open Source Business Intelligence, Ruby on Rails, and Google Analytics and Google Maps. I hope that the blogs will help guide others on the path to building some elegant solutions on top of open source technologies.