When I worked for Expeditors, a book circulating through management called Broken Windows Broken Business was very popular. It talks about how making sure to fix mistakes and problems at the detail level will lead to greater overall success, using the clean up of New York city as an example. Broken Windows is more than just a metaphor, in New York it was quite literal – areas with real broken windows invited break-ins, graffiti, and a rise in other sorts of crimes.

I am thinking about this today as I diligently work on fixing all sorts of little tiny data bugs. These are things that our beloved users might not even notice 95% of the time, but nevertheless I think it is just so important not to let these details slip. I look at local search service Citysearch, and see such a clear example of broken windows: listings for restaurants with data that has never been cleaned, or places that have closed years ago, and duplicate places. Another broken window is obnoxiously poor search relevance featuring paid ad placement. The site feels like a 1990s ghost town to me.

Fixing the little things can be tedious and time consuming, but I find myself so satisfied in knowing that I am helping (in my own small way) to create a user experience that doesn’t have those broken windows so common of content-driven websites. Since I work on the data and content side of the product, and not in software development, I love any part of my job that can actually touch the end user experience (since so much of what we do is important, but behind the scenes). I think Wikipedia is extremely admirable, in that they are a site depending solely on user generated content, and still manage to resolve debates between authors and present clear, grammatically correct and factually accurate entries. I trust Wikipedia implicitly, because I know they have a strong process in place to avoid broken windows in their product. I believe tht by working hard to eliminate tiny data bugs, I am working towards creating this same implicit trust in our content, for users of Whrrl.

At Expeditors, “attention to detail” was one of the cultural attributes , and I think this goes hand in hand with integrity (another cultural attribute). There were people who I had the good fortunate to work with who were so incredible, so reliable, so diligent in so many levels of the organization. Whether it was manual labor in the warehouse, data entry in the branch offices, or management at the regional and corporate levels, they were people who had this “broken windows” mentality ingrained into their very souls. This is something I want to take with me to Pelago and continue to cultivate in myself; I think it is highly admirable attribute to possess. I think you can be highly productive and intelligent and not possess this attribute, because it truly is a skill. There are plenty of messy geniuses and I couldn’t live without them, but I know that at least for me knowing the details are correct on a regular basis leads me to trust in myself and my judgment more completely and reduces my stress level significantly.

Buy this book at Amazon.com: Broken Windows, Broken Business: How the Smallest Remedies Reap the Biggest Rewards by Michael Levine

Pelago CEO Jeff Holden expressed the Whrrl team’s excitement about the iPhone SDK, as well as the announcement that Pelago is the first portfolio company for Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers $100MM iFund.

Read the full blog entry at Whrrl’s “Our Whrrld” blog.

KPCB announces iFund, Pelago Inc. (makers of Whrrl) among first recipients:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120482859010317101.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news

In a press release this morning, it was announced that Whrrl.com is the official web and mobile sponsor for Noise Pop 2008. Noise Pop is a staple of the San Francisco indie music festival circuit each year, and this years performers include Minipop, Stellarstar, She & Him, and plenty more. For a full list check out the official Noise Pop 2008 website.

Whrrl Team on the Ground in San Francisco

Starting Tuesday (2/26), members of the Pelago staff (makers of Whrrl) will descend on San Francisco to promote their product at the various Noise Pop events. They will be giving away all sorts of merchandise, including sweatshirts, stickers, buttons and they are also rumored to be giving away some mobile devices as well. This street team is interesting, because they are not just hired guns for this event – they are the people who actually work on bringing the product into existence. Engineering, design, infrastructure and marketing staff will come together to evangelize their product at venues throughout the city.

I flew in last Friday and I’ve probably already logged 20 miles on foot even with the rain – what a cool place to explore. I’m Danielle Morrill (or Danielle M.) on Whrrl – let’s be friends!!

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Disclaimer: I work for Pelago, Inc. the company that is proudly bringing Whrrl to hipsters, soccer moms, students, and generally people everywhere. Anything posted here may be biased, self promoting, and quite proud. Anything I see here is my opinion only, not an official statement from Pelago, Inc.

A quick heads up: I work for Pelago, makers of Whrrl, so this a shamelessly self-promoting, proud, and biased post – ENJOY!

Today Whrrl.com launched a new feature, which allows users to search for events in major cities across the United States. This means concerts, movies, gallery showings, and more – they are all on Whrrl and more importantly they are in your neighborhood, maybe even on your street, just waiting for you to discover them. So get onto to Whrrl, so you can get off the internet, and into the real world!!

http://www.whrrl.com

Today wrapped up day two of my new job at the Seattle start up Pelago, where I am working on the data team. I am very excited to be working for this company, I am surrounded by really smart passionate people and that is just the best thing for me. I have already been working on really interesting things that have me thinking in new directions and stretching parts of my brain that have be used, but never to this extent. I like that I am outside of my comfort zone, and my whole goal is to be as much of a sponge as possible. The work enviroment is really fun and laid back, and people still work really hard in this kind of enviroment. It is just a huge change from what I used to see – I can’t even imagine wearing my suit into this office and never will. I wore jeans and my chuck taylors to work today! It is really different, I am still figuring out what makes me comfortable.

Our new Dell computer came today at home and I am still enjoying my first hour of pleasurably faster, well, everything. Vista is actually really cool on a computer that is powerful enough to run it, and everything looks beautiful on the gigantic monitor. Kevin is de-cluttering the house and I suppose I should be helping, but I am not very motivated. He is talking about putting our condo on the market after looking at houses on the east side this past weekend, but I am not really interested in going through yet another major transition in addition to getting married and changing jobs, at least not just yet. He thinks that this de-cluttering has to do with staging the house to show – but really I think it is just about living better. No two people were ever better suited 820 sq. ft., mainly because neither one of us is here all that much.

I finally broke down and got a Gmail account yesterday, since most everyone in the office uses Gtalk to message each other. I actually really like it, it is much more user friendly than Hotmail/MSN/Livemail (whatever they are calling it these days). I think I am slowly being weaned off Microsoft products, although my new machine at work does run Vista.

The next big purchase thing I need to figure out is what phone I want to have, since I really need to upgrade to some kind of smartphone that has email and a web browser, at the very least. There is the iPhone of course, and also the Blackberry, Treo, and some other stuff. I am tempted to just go for the iPhone since I know I would have so much fun with it and I experience excruciating gadget envy whenever I see Blake or Andrew with theirs. I really should just do it – my hot pink LG Chocolate phone is all scratched up, and besides having a pink phone is so, like, 2006. hehe. I also would really like to have an MP3 player. I know this is really weird, but I have never ever owned one. My phone now can actually be an MP3 player for a fat fee – but we have iTunes on our CPU and I’d rather just upload my songs to the iPhone.

The only other big purchase that I am looking forward to is, eventually, having a car again. Basically what I decided when I left my job at Expeditors was that, since I was living downtown, I might as well let my Dad take over the payments on the Land Rover so that my sister could take it with her to college at Washington State University. I feel badly because the car has recently started to have engine trouble and I know it is a hassle for them, but he also had the car for a month while I was on vacation and even took it to mechanic so I don’t feel like I was dishonest, it’s just unlucky. He should have looked at the consumer reports. Of course, it was already partially his liability, since we were both on the deed together – now it’s just his sole liability. On the flip side, I am very happy to be rid of it. I am not sure what kind of car would be practical and enjoyable yet, I feel like I lean towards something with good performance – but I also like having a larger car that is a bit luxurious and can seat more than two people. I think the solution to this might be a BMW M3 convertible. 🙂