Justin (our CEO at Homestead) is doing a great job with his blog. I wonder if he read Robert’s and Shel’s book, yet…

• The title (CEOUnplugged) is excellent (he’s the CEO of Homestead and he loves to play unplugged music).
• The articles are great (he’s been writing about our customers and about the all the wonderful things that make working at Homestead awesome).
• He’s responding to his critics and otherwise in the comments section, furthering the dialogue.

Some things I’m looking forward to:

• Frequently, Justin tells stories about interactions he’s had with customers. I’d love to see some of those stories on his blog.
• He often has interesting comments about conferences he attends. I’m sure those observations will creep in.
• One of Homestead’s most important goals is to be active in community service. Last month we moved from monthly participate-at-your-own-discretion events to quarterly-mandatory-most-of-the-day events. I’m excited about the change, because 100+ participants can have a much bigger impact than a handful. I’d like to see Justin talk about these events and the other community service actions we take. One of my favorites: each employee was given several hundred dollars to donate to charities of their choice (I picked Child’s Play).

As Thai alluded to on his blog, we release changes to the Homestead.com site and the SiteBuilder/SiteBuilder Lite software at an extremely fast rate: our ‘small change’ cycle is every 2 weeks and our ‘big change’ cycle is every 4-6 weeks.  Our release rate is not nearly as rapid as myspace, I guess, but it’s certainly one of the fastest for an established software company with tons of paying small business subscribers.

That article about myspace is interesting because it implies the only reason frequent updates would anger users is if something breaks.  In my experience, many users are also resistent to updates that force them to alter the way they interact with the UI.  In general, we try to add features and update features without forcing users to re-learn the interactions they are already comfortable with.  I wonder if the younger crowd over at myspace is more resilient and more welcoming to changes that force them to re-learn or if myspace has found that they, too, try to keep the common interaction experiences unchanged.

I’ve been with Homestead Technologies for 9 years and I love it for a lot of reasons. This is recruiting season, so I find myself talking about those reasons a lot to interested candidates. While I’m at it, I thought I’d document them here, too. My five part series starts with Five Cool Recurring Events. [FYI: Follow this link to the JOBS page.]

1. Company Retreat – Each year, our HR team puts together an incredible 3-4 day getaway for the company. Last year it was Hawaii. We’ve also been to Mexico, Santa Barbara, Las Vegas and Tahoe. The format has evolved over the years, but the ‘agenda’ usually includes a lot of free time, one big dinner with everybody, a team building excercise and a working session. The company retreat is always a blast!

2. Talent Show – Held annually, the Talent Show is insane. Thai Bui, our CTO, organizes and hosts it at a local auditorium. Volunteers put together acts(sometimes funny, sometimes showing serious talent) in groups or as individuals. Family and friends are always invited and a dozen or so employees from Homestead’s past usually show up. A few years ago, one of our dev teams learned advanced jump-rope techniques and amazed us all.

3. Anniversary Dinner – In October, we all get dressed up and take over a swank San Francisco restaurant(a new one each year) to celebrate 52 more weeks of Homestead. Food, drink, dancing. Good stuff!

4. Monday Lunch – Every Monday, in ‘the lounge’, we gather for lunch(delivered by local restaurants). The executive team checks in on our current goals and interesting info about each team. At the end of each month, the financials are presented. This is also the venue for detailed presentations by individual teams. On a weekly basis, we are exposed to a ginormous cavalcade of information, reinforcing the fact that we are all working together to build a wildly successful business.

5. 1on1 Lunches – Everyone at Homestead has an open door policy, Justin(our CEO) included. But maybe that’s not enough. So, in case you don’t proactively take the time to talk to him, Justin schedules a lunch with you at least once a year to check in and get your opinion on the company’s progress.

I’m open to suggestions about what topics to cover in my next several posts. My current plan includes Five Cool Customers and Five Cool Projects. I’ll probably cover Homestead’s commitment to Community Service at some point, too.

Thai Bui, my friend and the co-founder and CTO of Homestead Technologies started blogging again today. Have fun, Thai!

The best part of working at Homestead is the people. The people we work for(our customers) and the people we work with(our partners and fellow employees). Thai is one of my favorite people to work with.

Random Thai facts:

• Once a year, he organizes and hosts the Homestead Talent show. We’ll have to put some video clips on youtube and google video. It’s really an amazing event. At each show, 10-20 employees from Homestead’s past show up, in addition to all the current employees and their families and friends. Good times!
• Every other year or so, Thai organizes a scavenger hunt for the developers. It’s a pretty involved problem solving adventure, taking us all over the bay area in teams. It’s like Stanford’s ‘The Game’.
• There is a Thai-oriented Easter Egg on the main screen of all of our SiteBuilder products(SiteBuilder Lite, SiteBuilder, SiteBuilder Classic(retired) and SiteBuilder Online(retired). Credit for that tradition goes to Michael Bender, who lives on a boat.

Anyway, Thai’s a great guy and I’m looking forward to reading his blog.