Probing the hive mind: an interview with Dan Benjamin

Save for a few brief experiments, Hivelogic has always been published with software I've written. Writing your own software is a great way to learn new frameworks and languages. It also teaches you the importance of a good user interface and workflow, and it helps you predict what clients might want out of a system they'll be using every single day.

As for the front-end design, traditionally, and at present, I've done the designs myself. There have been three exceptions to this, where designer friends of mine created a design for me. They were Jason Santa Maria, Dan Cederholm, and Meagan Fisher. And as much as I realize that these designers did amazing work for me, far superior to anything I can conjure up, the Hivelogic aesthetic just never feels "right" to me unless it's running on a design I've done myself, despite my preference for simplicity, and content-focused starkness.

You can see a retrospective of past and present Hivelogic designs in a Flickr set dedicated to the subject.

I think that accurately represents the general point of view, even if it's false. And it's one of the things I'll be addressing in some upcoming posts, as well as my talk at Railsconf - how can Developers stand out, even if it's among their own kind in their own world.

So much of what developers do is behind the scenes and invisible. And worse, it's expected that what they do will "just work." Good design is held in high regard by users, and great design is usually rewarded. But good code, efficient, thoughtful, effective code just flies under the radar. Things like github can help bring attention to developers and their work, which is just one small part part of the site's usefulness, but it's harder for great developers to reach beyond their own community.

Good usability, though, that's something else entirely, and that's why I love thinking about and working on usability. Usability is the crossroads where design and development meet, and even today, with people preaching about usability everywhere you go, it's too often overlooked and undervalued. Believe me, people notice when the usability is wrong. Sites can totally fail because of bad usability.

I'm one of the people who have said that there are few if any people who are great at both design and code. I think it comes down not to skill or ability, but rather to expertise. It's possible to deeply understand code, databases, Photoshop, CSS, and even be able to write very well, but it's the skill you practice on a daily basis, what you spend the bulk of your time doing, that you build up expertise in.

So while there might be people who have the potential to be good (or even great) at both design and development, it's rare that you find somebody who has enough time to be simultaneously great at both in parallel. I've seen people shift specialities, getting great at something additional as they focus on it more, building or refreshing their expertise in the area, but generally, my experience has taught me that the people who are greatest at something tend to specialize in it. Again, that doesn't mean they might not also be great at something else, but people who specialize are often the ones at the top of their field.

I certainly wouldn't mind if, say, the neurosurgeon operating on my brain also enjoyed practicing law, but I'd want him to have been focusing on the neurosurgery thing more recently, if you follow me there. Maybe that's not a fair comparison, but you get my meaning.

So, where am I on that scale? I think I have a good eye for design, and good design sensibilities. But I don't live in the world of design. I know what I like, and what works, and I can implement some of that, but I'm not on the same level of people like Jeffrey Zeldman, Dan Cederholm, Shaun Inman, or the less famous but highly talented designers out there, doing design work every single day.

You tend to be the best at what you do every day.

Without a doubt, especially in the design community. I've worked with many incredibly talented yet relatively unknown designers who are quite literally star-struck by the more famous designers, and I can understand that. Those "famous" designers have put in a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get where there are, and I think hard work like that deserves respect. Putting the time in and persevering.

Am I a Web Superstar? I've been blogging since late 1999 and I've worked with some incredibly talented people on some great projects, so I can understand how people might confuse me with a superstar, but I would only call myself very lucky.

Most publishing systems tend to have a lot of things in common, such as the management of date-based content like articles and posts vs. assets, static pages, images, and the like. You'll usually want user accounts, role-based permissions, WYSIWYG editors, archive pages, comment systems with anti-spam features, etc. So in that way -- basic feature sets a user would just expect to find in a system worth its salt -- there are many things in common.

The difference is in the way that those things come together regarding how people visiting the site will interact with it, as well as the workflow and administrative dashboard that staff members will use to manage content. The way a university staff or engineering firm manages content and how their site actually works for visitors is significantly different than the way a site like Hivelogic works, and that's different still from something like A List Apart. Sure, each one needs to manage and display some content, but how people want to use those systems is incredibly different. I tend to spend a lot of time focusing on usability, and while there might be shared components in the systems I've built, everything is being geared toward specific audience or client needs, so in that sense, it's not uncommon to build a big piece from the ground-up.

I think good developers are always challenging themselves to find better ways to do things. I feel like I'd be missing a chance to engage more fully in that exercise if I wasn't always trying to think of new or better ways of building software. And at the same time, Ruby on Rails, my development platform of choice, is evolving as well. New plugins come out every day. So it's always interesting to see how you can see what's new and leverage that to make products that are even more direct, more simple, and more elegant.

I probably wouldn't get involved. These days, I don't believe there's a right or wrong answer when it comes to selecting the framework to use to build an application. No one framework is better than another across the board, and I don't think an application is destined to succeed or fail based the framework you're using. They all have advantages and disadvantages. My preference is Rails because I like the elegant simplicity of Ruby and the way that David and the Core Team have leveraged it for the Rails framework. But I know people who prefer PHP, and others who like Python, and they like the frameworks based on that language.

It's more a matter of personal preference. Find something you like and run with it.

Neither of us are involved with Cork'd anymore. We helped transition the site when it was acquired, and Dan C. did some initial design work, but that was it. We’re as hopeful and exited as everybody else to see what Gary has up his sleeve for the website.

Building Cork'd with Dan C. was a great experience, and I'm looking forward to working on something else with him one day, but right now, both of us are too busy to take on anything new right now. But the space is wide open, for sure.

Tundro was the company we formed to build Cork'd. At the time we imagined we might one day create more applications. This is what the site used to look like:

The Tundro company, name, logo, and website weren't part of the Cork'd deal, and I've retained ownership of them for possible use down the road.

Dan Cederholm used the awesome beer icon he'd developed for a potential new site for one of his projects, Foamee.

He's got a crazy talent for coming up with amazing logos and icons. It's kind of wild to watch him work.

I do enjoy a cup of coffee from time to time, but I'm not a habitual coffee drinker. Caffeine tends to make me more jumpy than alert, so I watch the intake. I drink far more green tea (loose leaf, water at 180°, etc.) than coffee. My favorite cup of coffee comes from Stumptown in Portland, Oregon.

John is a great writer, and has a great eye for detail. He's also very devoted to his work and his family. And he is very, very smart. And as is often the case with bright people, he's somewhat eccentric. These eccentricities often come out in the form idiosyncrasies, like his obsessive attention to detail, his fixation on fonts and anti-aliasing, the hostility and rage against humanity, that kind of thing. It's impossible to schedule anything, such as the recording of a Talk Show episode with him, while he's focusing on writing, which is pretty much all of the time. Personally, I think the coffee just makes it worse.

We had so much fun when John was a guest on the Hivelogic podcast, and the response was so overwhelming, that we decided to make a regular thing out of it.

I think that just as blogs are now a requirement for most businesses with a public face, podcasts and video blogs will one day be just as important. It might take a few years, but it'll get there.

Well just take a look at What Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV has done with his family business using his video blog and social networking.

We're also starting to see more and more companies becoming aware of the importance of social networking. Southwest Airlines, for example, is on Twitter. So are a handful of other companies. And they respond to you!

John Gruber is my nemesis, so I've never really thought of us in terms of sidekick and superhero.

I've been practicing a style of Buddhist meditation, called Vipassana or Mindfulness meditation, for a number of years. This style is practiced by Theravada Buddhists as well as many non-Buddhists, and is often used outside of Buddhist circles for things like stress reduction, relaxation, and even in hospitals and therapy centres to help people with chronic pain.

I had studied Buddhism before, and it seemed like a cool philosophy, but before the integration of a regular meditation practice, I hadn't really delved too deeply into it. But after several years of daily meditation practice, I learned more and more about Buddhism, and it really made sense to me. The philosophies that it's based on, the idea that we're responsible for our own actions, that there's an opportunity for a deep peace in daily life, that one's life and activities can be understood when looked at with a very scientific eye, and that these things are all part of a bigger path was very intriguing to me.

I eventually reached a point where I was living my life as a Buddhist — not as a monastic, obviously — but it had become something that had become deeply integrated into my life, and that I found brought me, and subsequently people around me, a lot of joy. I was a much happier, much more calm, much more centered person.

Here are a few links:

• Mindfulness in Plain English
• Guided
• bfaq

I think it's my practice that allows me to spend the bulk of the day in front of a computer.

I'm being serious - the practice of mindfulness and concentration is tremendously valuable in dealing with stress, and very helpful in establishing focus. I work faster and more effectively now than I ever have.

Vipassana meditation is a kind of training for the mind. The same way athletes train and practice so they will excel on the field of play, meditation is practice for the real world, for real life. On the meditation cushion, we practice mindfulness of the present moment. I try and take that concept with me into my work day as well, trying to keep an awareness of the present moment. So in that way, although it isn't easy, it's possible to bring a clarity and focus into your workday.

In one of my favorite books on Meditation, Mindfulness in Plain English, the author (Bhante G) explains how you can take even the regular aspects of work and daily life and integrate your practice into them. It's a challenge, but engaging this way can really change how you feel about your work and how you connect with it.

As far as how I feel about spending a big chunk of my day in front of a computer screen, I am OK with it. I work from home where it's easier to get into the Creativity Zone. I get to see my wife and baby boy throughout the day, and although I do work a lot and have a number of projects ongoing, I get to structure my day in a relatively flexible way.

Thinking back, I've spent quite a bit of time in pretty difficult jobs, behind the stinking broiler at Burger King, pushing carts in the heat of the Florida summer and stocking shelves in a grocery store, working in a tiny, frenzied kitchen in an Italian restaurant, cleaning bathrooms in movie theaters, and working in plenty of mundane, unrewarding, punishing and abusive corporate jobs. By comparison, I'm pretty lucky.

Well I have a clear separation of work and non-work. Keeping those two things separate are key. And I value my family above all else. This value makes really helps me decide what to do and when.

It's a bit different these days now that we have a baby, and as his schedule changes, so does mine. But generally speaking, it looks something like this:

I should note that I find most days incredibly rewarding.

* Work includes checking email, responding to work issues, readers, initial catchup with news in the morning, etc. I don't allot specific time for those things, they just happen naturally as part of the schedule. I also take some breaks throughout the day, and because I work from home, I get to see my wife and the baby.