A few hours ago, just while Live Mesh was going public, I chanced to be in a meeting with Ray Ozzie. He is in India today at the IDC (India Development Center), and he was reviewing lots of stuff that’s being built here. Live Mesh is the first manifestation of Ray’s personal as well as the company’s vision for how computing will progress into the 202′nd decade (in computing, 21st century wouldn’t work).
It was a rushed meeting due to his tight schedule, but it was definately fun to get his perspective on the things we are building. It gave us reinforcement for what we were doing right, and a good opportunity to set straight, what we were doing wrong. It also gave me a chance to personally come back up out of the depths of hundreds of lines to code and take a look at our stuff with a high-level perspective which I haven’t done ever since I joined the project an year ago. The last 8 months have really been tremendously intense and it is important to ensure that as a developer, one maintains his perspective of the overall vision of the project.
I really didn’t know who Ray Ozzie was until fairly late in my career – after I turned 20 (he still isn’t one of my core icons – incidentally, one of them – Peter Norton read my blog last week and actually mailed me – which was just way too cool!) Lotus 1 2 3 was the thing everyone had to know if you wanted to claim you could use computers back in the late-80′s or early-90′s, I being one of them. The relevance of a spreadsheet never really clicked to me back then – and hence my most admired child-hood software doesn’t include it (QuickBasic tops the list).
However, when I came onboard this project and when I read the designs, and architecture – it was some kind of a revelation of what we really need in the world today. And by that, I don’t mean nice to have, I mean need. We all feel these minor nice-to-have’s and then I see someone actually executing the grand vision to unify all of them. What I really admire about Ray is the fact that he took the bet for doing something nobody had ever done before – on this scale, magnitude and with such efficiency.
What’s cooler is that it actually has executed well and you’re seeing the results in action for the past few hours already. Moreover, unlike Lotus 1 2 3, or Lotus Notes and Groove, this will be VERY relevant to the pre-teens out there. In fact, in my opinion, the usage scenarios that teenagers will work out will far surpass anything we use it for today. So the next gen teenagers are going to grow up with Ray as their idol from the very beginning!
Working with this team has been an adventure – and always a positive experience. Not once have I faced issues around politics or personal fights. Being a fresh-out-of-college guy in a team of superstars generally has that advantage – you get all the benefits of the doubt. On the other hand, everyone has been just so very responsive and helpful. Not once was I ever blocked because information was unavailable on time or an issue wasn’t getting attention from the senior folk. Every issue of mine was of P0 importance for the whole team.
I’ve never been more philosophical in my life – if this ain’t fate, I don’t know what is. Two years ago, I was struggling to get passing grades in college and was being harassed by the University. An year ago, I was wondering where my life was heading. And today, I have some kind of guardian angel looking over me. I don’t have the words to express just how glad I am to be a part of this team. It’s not just the product – even without the product, when I look at the whole thing retrospectively, in the future, I will choose such a team even on the seemingly most insignificant of products.
Right now, I’m just tired and relaxed. The whole team has been monitoring the high-level feedback and we’re just relaxing and planning for parties and planning 10-day-long vacations. It’s been a great one year but the component I work on isn’t out yet – so I still have a major code-cycle before I will be at parity with the rest of the team who has already shipped.
