Antibodies

I really liked this article by John Udell where he introduces a great quote from James O'Toole (or is it Bill Drayton?) about groups resisting change with all the vigor of antibodies attacking an intruding virus.

It resonated with my own personal experiences really well. As ashamed as I am to admit it, I've been an antibody from time to time. The story that came to mind right away was one of my days at Accrue. Our company vision, and thus mine as well was completely intertwined with doing web analytics by capturing statistics passively off the network.

But then a few clever engineers at various competitors came up with a way to capture statistics by way of Javascript embedded in the client. And of course I dismissed it, and actively argued against that method, for a lot of good reasons. But fundamental to this innovation was simply that it was easier for a client website to implement, and they ate our lunch.

Unfortunately there are other stories I could tell. My life as an antibody.

The link to Miguel de Icaza's essay Lets Make Unix Not Suck was also good. Lots of great links.