1. James Blake
2. Ryan Adams – Ashes & Fire
3. Bibio – Mind Bokeh
4. Wilco – The Whole Love
5. Joe Henry – Reverie
6. Washed Out – Within and Without
7. Gillian Welch – The Harrow & Harvest
8. tUnE-yArDs – w h o k i l l
9. Tom Waits – Bad as Me
10. Charles Bradley & Menahan Street Band – No Time for Dreaming

I’ve always been motivated by money and stability, and usually stay in a safe situation long after I should have left. So why the radical departure from my previous self? The inspiration of innovation.

The past three years have seen technology go through a massive upheaval thanks to three transformative innovations: iOS, Cloud Computing and the “Consumerization” of IT. Each individually changed the rules of the game. Taken as a whole, this triumvirate has changed every business user’s expectations about how products should work. If something isn’t easy to use and isn’t always available, regardless of how it’s consumed, it will not survive. Your biggest competitor is likely the one that doesn’t exist yet.

This is no grand realization, but it was enough to make me think about what I want to do now and in the future. On one hand, I had a very good job at a stable company, as well as an outstanding manager who was both an incredible mentor and my outspoken advocate. But in staying with the company, my future would have been stale technology, fear of innovation and tighter golden handcuffs.

This change in our technical world has been set in motion, and I can either be a part of or watch it pass me by. Both the newspaper and music industries saw the change for years and did nothing. Look where it got them.

I learn best by doing, falling over and getting back up. So I’ve decided to go all in and start Gantry, Inc., focusing on making ExecutiveView the best product I can make. This is a very exciting time for both technology and business, and I’ve never been more motivated to be a part of it.

As I left my previous job, only a single person there thought I was making a bad decision; everyone else was extremely supportive. And it was shocking how many shared the desire to build their own companies but couldn’t, for one reason or another. So to everyone out there who does not have the courage to go his/her own way, take advice from Steve Jobs, a man who always follows his passions:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

But commitment, I understand. Doing really hard challenging things, I understand. Trying to let go of my ego enough to focus my energies and attentions and ambitions on someone other than myself, I’m starting to understand.

Every demo BlackBerry gives usually goes something like this:

1. Launch Movie, play it
2. Launch eBook Store
3. Launch Calculator
4. Launch Web Browser
5. Switch between the applications to show that they are still running

Without fail, they say something along the lines of “this is true multitasking, we aren’t just freezing the applications in the background.” This, of course, differentiates the Playbook from iOS devices since Apple’s implementation of multitasking will freeze all background applications (save for a few functions such as GPS, music, incoming voip calls, etc).

So the PlayBook user can have a calculator and web browser actively running in the background while they buy a book? This offers nothing more than strain on resources, specifically the battery.

Any company who thinks it can innovate the tablet space by replicating a PC experience has already failed. Microsoft tried this for almost a decade and failed miserably. BlackBerry is on course to repeat history.

1. The New Pornographers – Together
2. Beach House – Teen Dream
3. Janelle Monáe – The ArchAndroid
4. Vampire Weekend – Contra
5. She & Him – Volume Two
6. Local Natives – Gorilla Manor
7. Hot Chip – One Life Stand
8. Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse – Dark Night of the Soul
9. The Divine Comedy – Baing Goes the Knighthood
10. LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening

The following five also made the list, but were made before 2010:

1. Passion Pit – Manners
2. Mayer Hawthorne – A Strange Arrangement
3. Theophilus London – Jam!
4. Lee Fields & The Expressions – My World
5. Menahan Street Band – Make the Road by Walking

In their follow-up email, they send me a high-level PowerPoint and provide a URL I should “send to my techies and see what they think.” Clearly I must not know my ass from a compiler.

On Thursday, I’m in a meeting with Even Bigger Vendor #2, and they are very interested in expanding their business with my employer. Surely using their newly acquired rules engine will solve all my company’s risk-management needs. My concern that they were providing a technological solution for a business problem that doesn’t exist didn’t stop them at all. They spent the rest of the meeting speaking down to me as if I was clearly a techonlogist who could never understand “Real World” business problems.

My years of experience in P&C Insurance and intimate knowledge of my company’s problems were trumped by Vendor #2′s countless years selling Websphere to investment banks.

Both vendors followed up the very next day, eager to know how soon we could move forward. Neither vendor took the time to get to know me, my place in the company and what I could offer to better position them. Why would I ever give them the keys to the kingdom?

When it comes to vendors, relationships are everything. An Enterprise Software company, whose only connection to a customer is its army of faceless, apathetic sales team, will not survive in the long run.

Anyone with an idea, a credit card, and the passion to succeed has access to world-class infrastructure. Regardless of your opinion of what cloud computing is or is not: it is a new paradigm, giving anyone the ability to compete on the same level as established players.

It isn’t the silver bullet nor does it guarantee success, but it does change the game. It will take time, years perhaps, but the Enterprise Software industry doesn’t stand a chance.

Acquisitions may buy you people and technology, but you can never acquire agility or passion.

“At the exact moment you had your idea, ten other people had the exact same idea. There was just something in the environment that made it the right time for folks to think that one up. The race has already begun! Who’s going to execute first? Who’s going to execute best? If you want to waste nine months trying to raise VC money for that idea, great. But six months in, you’re gonna cry when you see someone else put out that same product you’re pitching me right now. Like I said, forget everything else and just get your product out the door. Now.”

This weekend I also rediscovered Martin Kleppmann’s excellent blog Yes/No/Cancel. First it was building simple REST APIs in Scala but felt strangely validated reading The Python Paradox is now the Scala Paradox. He uses an argument from Paul Graham that:

“…a company can hire smarter programmers if it chooses to write its code in a “comparatively esoteric” programming language”

While Paul Graham was arguing about Python at the time, Kleppmann argues that Scala is this year’s black and has had great success using it to build parts of Go Test It:

“…but provided the technology is suitable and won’t increase your costs disproportionately, why not do something fashionable and adventurous? In an innovation-based technology business, the quality of your developers is key. Investments into things which make your good developers happy will pay off handsomely.”

I’m with Seth that every minute I’m not working on my ideas someone else is, but I struggle with what risks I add by using tech that is new to me. Is it worth adding a few months to get a solid architecture in place as opposed to throwing together a shell that’s mostly throwaway? When you have no product you can only consider the opportunity cost.

In the end none of it matters if I don’t have a working prototype, but this does continue to occupy me… especially as I wait on GWT to compile with Snow Leopard fixes.

As a result, I don’t give Guitar Center my business unless it is absolutely necessary. This isn’t too hard, as they normally don’t stock what I’m interested in. Drummer’s World, Sweetwater or Musican’s Friend fit the bill.

Less than 3 hours after I sent the seemingly innocuous tweet, I receive an email that Norman Hajjar is now following me on Twitter. Norman happens to be the Chief Marketing Officer of Guitar Center.

A quick look at his tweets and it was clear he understands the power of Twitter and how it can make a difference. If I had this connection a few years ago when I was literally fighting just to speak to someone who could help me locate my cymbal case, I know I wouldn’t have the resentment I now feel towards Guitar Center.

I’m not an overnight convert; having a C-level Exec that understands the power of social media doesn’t make a company automagically run better. But this does give me hope and I will give Guitar Center a second chance.

At least now I know that if the customer experience stays the same, I’m 140 characters away from someone who can do something about it.