You know what’s awesome? When people you respect tell you how great you are. You know what’s less than awesome? When people you respect shit all over you. We got a little bit of both last week. And, “shit all over you” is probably a bit of an overstatement, but hyperbole and blog posts are the peas and carrots of the internet.
On Wednesday of last week, we hosted a Friends of Keen (Un)Happy Hour during which a handful of our super-talented developer friends stopped by to give our product a dry run. We polished and re-polished the Getting Started Guide, put together a sample project with a problem set, and set everyone to work. And, like all good developers, they skipped the instructions and tried to break us. It’s with great relief that I report, we’re still standing. We got some tremendously valuable feedback and spent the last few days putting it into action. And, our product is better for the help.
So, why did we put ourselves through this? Because pain is weakness leaving the body…and because we’re rolling-out the product to the hundreds of folks who signed-up for the beta release. (What? You didn’t sign-up? Get on the stick!) A few weeks ago, Jim Franklin of SendGrid spoke at a conference and noted that his company seeks to “maximize developer mojo.” We couldn’t agree more. And, we can’t get better without getting in the trenches with the folks using our product.
In keeping with our developer-centric theme, we’re thrilled to be a sponsor at re-route/sf hackathon, hosted by Hattery Labs. The goal of the hackathon is to, “help design and build innovative tools to improve transportation in San Francisco — and work with the city to make them real.” A great way to make anything better is to measure it. We’ll be there to help developers integrate Keen into whatever they’re building. But, wait, there’s more! For hackathon participants, we are teaching a class the night before on data science — Big Data and Bigger Data Science. Wanna learn, too? Sign-up for the hackathon and make a weekend of it!
