Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » How I work: Dave Rosenberg, The Yeti of Open Source

May 11, 2006 | Comments: (0)

How I work: Dave Rosenberg, The Yeti of Open Source

TAGS: Random

This How I Work meme has been going around the internet since that Bill Gates article in Fortune. Today we decided we'd invite some of our friends to engage. I'll start with myself and we'll go from there, trying to do one a week or so. I think I am boring and pedantic in my work style but Matt and I agree its pretty interesting how people work/practice/develop. For me it goes back to learning to play the drums as a kid and my teacher telling me how he and his buddies used to play on bottlecaps to see who could be both accurate and fast. This always stuck with me for some reason and drove me to practice more.

As I got older and started to write, it went to Charles Bukowski detailing his writing, and my friend Ed Hardy showing me how he paints. I don't really care about process, but more about motivation that drives people to produce creative things. There is a book called Dear Scott/Dear Max which is a give and take between writer (F. Scott Fitzgerald) and editor (Maxwell Perkins) that is kind of a tough read, but really cool when you see how Fitzgerald was holed up in these hotels all over Europe asking Perkins to send him cash so he could up his lifestyle and keep on writing.

There you go, sorry for the long preamble, I finally have a bit of motivation to do some writing. The list of questions I follow below are what we'll be using for the rest of these.

What is your role?
CIO (financial services)
Analyst/Marketing (open source)
Blogger (open source)

Somehow I have managed to keep all of these things going for almost a year. I have always worked on more than one thing at a time. Thanks to Tivo and the internet I have a short attention span, plus I know how to type so I find myself able to generate a lot of content. But, I am also so busy that I find it hard to get motivated.

What is your computer setup?
I always run more than one machine because I am paranoid. Generally I do a main G5 desktop with a 20” Dell LCD and keep my 12” powerbook on the side. I am primarily MacOS but I have a Windows/Linux (Ubuntu) machine in my office so I can sync my Treo with Outlook and our corporate mail server. I also have a Thinkpad that runs Kubuntu but has power management issues so I don't travel with it. I sync my 2 Macs with Chronosync but I think you can do it with Automator.

What desktop software applications do you use daily?
Mail.app (I loved Thunderbird but Spotlight doesn't index the mail files yet)
Firefox (mainly for blog posting)
Safari (standard browsing)
Excel (I just love charts)
BBEdit (for blogging)
MS Word (ouch)
Adium (IM client that does AIM, Yahoo etc)
Preview (Acrobat is too slow)
iTunes (usually on party shuffle, I have 100GB of music to get through)
YouTunes (extension to control iTunes from the menu bar)
Dashboard (I use the dictionary and thesaurus all the time)
Skype (I have a good friend in London)

Frequently but not daily:
Photoshop
Illustrator
PowerPoint
Netnewswire
iCal
Camino
OmniOutliner

Online Apps I use daily:
MyYahoo
Gmail
Basecamp

What websites do you visit every day?
Freshnews.org
News.com
InfoWorld.com
MyYahoo.com
SFGate.com
NyTimes.com
Our blog ;>

I read a lot of blogs, news sites etc. I like writing that is either very specific news, or has a lot of personality. I hate typos and bad grammar though I am occasionally guilty of both.

I get pretty much every IT mag and read them all. I also read BusinessWeek and the Economist every week. In terms of books, my favorite authors are Haruki Murakami and Charles Bukowski, but I am guilty of reading all sorts of crap when traveling. I liked Freakonomics a lot, The World is Flat only a little (yes, I get it, the world is flat.) My favorite bands of all time are Black Sabbath, Black Flag and Today is the Day.

What mobile device or cell phone do you use?
I use a Treo 600. I am on #5 and it's dying. Can't wait til someone gives me a free device or the 700p comes out and I bite the bullet. Seriously though, Palm should give me a free Treo. I will blog about it. Or, Cingular should give me the Blackberry 8700C. Someone should give me something. I am an influencer damnit.

Do you use IM?
I do, but I find it terribly distracting. The weird thing is that I have found that there are certain people that I only talk with via IM and never in real life and that works just fine. With others, I want to talk on the phone. Matt and I do both, but we are far more efficient when on the phone. In the office, I find the IM to be stupid as I am big on interpersonal communication.

Do you use a VoIP phone?
Our office phones are VoIP and I use the AT&T VoIP in my home office.

Do you have a personal organization theory?
I work distracted. I need to have multiple things going on in order to get to a few bursts of productivity. I have yet to find a PIM, online or off that satisfies my needs. I usually break things into the following categories, which are pretty obvious: To-do, Calls, Notes, Pipeline. I would love to have a contextual menu of my recent websites, searches, and documents on one page. In fact, I always want everything on one page. Sooner or later Google or 37 Signals will do it.

Sad thing is that I can't find a unified interface to manage these things. The closest thing I have seen is a project called Tracks with is based on some book I have never read.

Anything else?
I hate when technology disappoints me by failing in some obvious way. I wonder if we are all too connected.

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on May 11, 2006 10:18 PM

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