Author: Brian Zimmer
Infotec 2017
Infotec 2017 wasn’t the first Infotec we’ve attended—and certainly won’t be the last. AIM continues to organize a solid conference full of great speakers and genuinely helpful material for IT professionals. And in that spirit, we really appreciate that slides from all the sessions are posted after the conference. This year we really felt at…
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An Innovator’s Reading List
Two years ago, I suggested a series of books helpful to innovators in both startups and corporate settings. Since that time, I’ve continued to see a flood of recommended reading lists (many with great recommended books) focused on the innovation process. It occurred to me this last week that many of these lists, including mine,…
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Our 10 Most Popular Blog Posts of 2015
As another year winds down, it’s only natural to look back at what we’ve accomplished. Just one part of what we do is share on our blog what we have learned and experienced. Since we’re not interested in keeping all of that just for ourselves, we hope the blog is a way we can help…
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The Day Microsoft Told Me “We should see other people”
In my July blog post (Why I’m Betting on Windows Phone), I shared my history as a Windows Phone user and continued confidence in its future. As a user of their phone/mobile OS for around 10 years, I was dumbstruck by the new Lumia phones: they’re not available or compatible with Verizon. The news was…
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ConAgra’s Departure Is Our Opportunity
News of ConAgra moving their corporate headquarters from Omaha to Chicago created quite a stir last week. Not surprisingly, much of the news has been quite negative. And with roughly 1,300 jobs leaving (approximately 1,000 from layoffs and 300 from relocation, according to the Lincoln Journal Star’s October 1st article), it’s likely that many of…
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Viewing Product and Service Failures as an Opportunity
As a startup community we spend quite a bit of time focusing on processes and techniques for designing products, discovering product/market fit, scoping/building/iterating on MVPs, and ultimately acquiring customers. And rightfully so — these are the fundamental actions of creating sustainable innovation. But there’s one aspect that I feel is overlooked in the early stages:…
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Backlog Visualizations: Tables Are Your Friend
Agile backlogs have become the standard tool used by software teams to document, prioritize, and discuss functionality requests. Although agile backlogs are simple to use and easy to implement, they suffer from the same problem as all lists—growing to a point where they become unmanageable. Although Agile methodologies suggest a number of practices to help…
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Why I’m Betting On Windows Phone
I fell for Windows Phone while attending Microsoft MIX 2010. The OS had a fresh, albeit flat, minimalistic interface. I loved the vision of a common design pattern shared between the Windows Phone OS and its apps. And appealing to my logical side, completing tasks was incredibly efficient and streamlined. As one of the few…
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Resources on Innovation
As we work with corporations seeking to innovate and entrepreneurs pushing the envelope, I’m frequently asked to recommend resources to help accelerate their learning curve. Here are a few resources that have been very influential for me. General Resources The Lean Startup by Eric Ries consolidates a ton of resources into a method to help…
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Infotec 2015 Recap
Our team made the drive up to Omaha this week to exhibit and present at Infotec 2015. As we continue to expand, we found this conference to be a great opportunity to make new connections and share some of what we’ve learned while building software companies and products over the past years. We were very…
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