It's been months in the coming... but it's finally here:

WhyGoSolo is launched.

The bulk of the site was available at 2pm as planned but there were some issues in the last few hours... one developer was on the edge of sickness, our SVN repository was acting up, and our DNS was misbehaving, but we finally got the invites out just after 5pm EST.

The feedback has been fantastic. Some of the suggestions have already made it pretty high on the todo list. Some of the suggestions are more general on new Categories, etc.

There was one signup issue that was resolved in the first 30 minutes and we've since found another issue resolved later in the evening. Luckily, our initial invitations have gone to a very friendly and interested user base, so issues have been noted politely... even when it's annoyed someone. ;)

So if you haven't done so already, you might want to sign up for an invite!.

This is part of my coverage of ZendCon07. If you'd like to read the entire coverage, it is available here: Day 0 - Tutorials, Day 1 - Part 1, Day 1 - Part 2, Day 2, and Day 3. In addition, my presentation from Day 1 is available here.

I alluded to it earlier, but one of the best things about these conferences is the discussions that happen over drinks, over dinner, or sitting huddled around an electrical outlet. Unfortunately, some of these discussions have to end there... but the really interesting ones spark new questions. This year I leave ZendCon with more questions than ever...

I had a conversation about leadership within the PHP community. The other person works with a company that knows how to direct development communities and coordinate priorities but that's in a formerly relatively-closed environment. Unfortunately, that doesn't work the same in the PHP community. Yes, we have definite thought leaders who are pushing/pulling the community along. Yes, we have projects and project leaders who are doing amazing things. Yes, we have major companies that support and extend the community. But stop and look at all those groups. None of them have exclusive control. None of them can exist without the others. None of them can cut the others out. They effectively need each other and have to get along to some level. So the question becomes:

It's getting closer.

You see your todo list shrinking and growing all at once.

You see your inbox grow faster than you can read.

Your IM client is exploding with news... good and bad.

Ah, you must be making a release.

As I write this - 08 Oct 2007 - this month I've prepared two major sites for launch and actually launched a third. All were relatively well planned in terms of the todo list, critical pieces, who had what responsibilities, and where things were likely to go/not go wrong.

Of course, as one brilliant general - Helmuth von Moltke the Elder - once said:

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

There is nothing more true. No matter how well you plan, when you have a fixed deadline, lots of moving parts, and an imperfect set of information - sort of the definition of life ;) - some things are going to wrong. Some things can go horribly wrong.... but they don't have to. When you have a focused team, shared goals, and good preparation, it can actually work.

Last night, I had the opportunity to be involved in one of those. Yes, things went wrong. Yes, there were difficulties. Yes, we came down to the wire. Yes, there was lots of stress.

In the past 16 months or so since the Blog Roll here and on CodeSnipers was compiled, this space and the ecosystem in which we work has changed quite a bit... numerous people have dropped out or joined the conversation, new tools and technologies are steadily gaining prominence, and most importantly CaseySoftware has grown in new and unexpected directions.  Towards that goal, I've rebuilt the entire list from the ground up to better represent the direction of CaseySoftware over the last year.  If the person is not read regularly, they're not on this list... and if the tool is not used regularly - most of them daily - it's not on this list.

I have to say that I've been following the Java vs Ruby war for quite a while. Initially it started as a passing interest due to Nola Stowe's evangelism and heckling. I had a completely wrong idea of what it was and demonstrated that ignorance in this space but once I went to a presentation by Dave Thomas last year, I was convinced:

Ruby - especially because of Rails - is amazing and here to stay.

Therefore, in the past 10 months or so, I've watched technology with great interest. While the hype has been huge, there's been an even bigger warning sign for me. The sheer number of incredibly smart Java people who are picking up Rails. I don't mean that they've said "Hey, this is nifty". I mean people who have essentially dropped Java like a bad habit. There are
people like Jason Hunter (author of Java Servlet Programming), James Duncan Davidson (credited with inventing both Ant and Tomcat), Erik Hatcher (creator of Lucene and a coworker of a longtime friend), and probably more than I care to consider or admit. I've lived and breathed most of these projects since 2002 and can't help but notice that these gentlemen have been guiding lights in the community. When they make such an abrupt turn, you *must* take notice.