(Raw notes)

I attended the 37Signals "Getting Real" Workshop on Friday in Chicago. It was interesting to get an inside look at one of the most talked about and influential companies on the web today. 37Signals front man, Jason Fried, and head programmer, David Heinemeier Hansson (of Ruby on Rails fame), were the two primary presenters. Ryan Singer, a designer at 37Signals, also spoke along with occasional interjections by a couple other 37Signals people in the room.

I was a little skeptical at first about the tag team approach Jason and David used as they went through the slides, but it actually worked really well. Jason and David complement each other nicely so they often brought different, but aligned insights on a topic. They work well as a team, which speaks a lot as to why 37Signals has become so successful.

"Getting Real" is the 37Signals methodology that covers everything from conceiving new products to supporting them and everything in between. Overall, I thought they had a considerable number of insights that are very valuable to any entrepreneur or company. It was a lot to digest in one day, but I prefer a densely packed single day session than two days with ample time for breaks and unneeded filler.

Early on in the workshop I kept wondering if these guys were naive or brilliant or maybe naively brilliant. They've been living in a bubble of 37Signals fame and success so I imagine it is easy to only look through that lens. It is clear they don't understand how big companies work (which isn't a bad thing necessarily), but those of us who do know how hard it is to make something like Getting Real work in a large organization. One skeptical attendee asked if anyone from 37Signals had worked at a big company before and none had. Jason and David made valid points about why big companies are broken, but they trivialized issues that can't be trivialized when you have thousands of employees and hundreds of thousands of shareholders.

I found their advice to be ideally suited for people that work in small companies that develop web-based software (similar 37Signals of course). However, much of it is common sense stuff around reducing complexity that few companies seem to follow which is applicable to any field. Some of their ideas work only when you have nothing but very smart, empathetic employees that really enjoy working with each other. It will be interesting to see how 37Signals scales in the future (if they decide to grow much). "Getting Real" for 7 employees would look a little different than for 700. That's just the reality when you have a lot more "stuff" to deal with. Many of their ideals are centered on being extremely lean and agile. To me, it sounded like the ideal work environment.

The workshop was well worth the $895 and trip to Chicago. (Side note: Does it suck getting to O'Hare from downtown Chicago on a Friday evening or what?) I thought I took a lot of notes at Startup School (ten pages), but I ended up with twelve pages for the Getting Real Workshop. Jason said before we left that he didn't mind anyone posting their notes on the web, so here they are.