Gadgetopia

Wow, thanks so much for that kind review. We're glad you found the workshop valuable, and thanks for the feedback about the negatives. We'll work on those.

FYI, we'll be announcing a second date shortly. Stay tuned to http://www.basecampHQ.com for the announcement.

Jason spilled the beans on the name:

"Ever since the META and SETI project has been analyzing radio signals from space (and there have been billions/trillions), only 37 signals remain unexplained. At least that was how many in 1999 when we started the company."

Hang on -- we're going to have a geek core meltdown here in a minute....

37 Signals has just announced the next date: September 17, 2004.

http://www.37signals.com/workshop-091704.php

"They built Basecamp the way they wanted to. All of you guys stuck in the corporate software trenches, can you imagine that — building software the way you think it should be built, without stupid restrictions?"

Of course, 37S has it good: they've got a successful enough business that they can afford the non-billable time to design and develop unproven things like Basecamp. Getting a regular paycheck in the corporate software trenches does have some appeal!

Thanks for the GREAT review! I have been following 37S for some time (I'm in Uganda, East Africa!), and I think they are doing some wonderful stuff.

This review just goes to show how wonderful it is. Keep up the good work guys!

One pretty severe warning: when you're using any of 37signals' products such as Basecamp, make sure you backup your data thoroughly and often, in case the site has a bug or goes away. As a user of one of 37signals' previous products, Singlefile, I had over 3000 book records in their database. At a certain point, their export function ceased working for me. I alerted Jason to the issue, but the problem wasn't fixed. Then they took down the site two months later -- so no data.

From an outside perspective (they have refused to address the issue, nor followed through on their promise to get me a copy of my data, over 6 months after the issue first occured), it looked like the product simply didn't scale to this number of records. Their customer service response has been pretty dire. This was the last message I received from Jason, back in early March:

"At this time exporting a single person's data for a service that is no longer available, was run for free over the past year, and isn't even on a machine that can facilitate the export is simply not at the top of our list."

Which you might imagine was rather annoying, since the export of the data had already been requested well before the site was shut down, and was only necessary because of a bug they didn't fix. It's also not a stellar example of responsive customer service and the transparency they mention on their Basecamp Manifesto.

There's a reason that you don't usually make your evangelist your tech support person... and having one part-time programmer is not exactly reassuring.

Note: the issue with my Singlefile data has been resolved satisfactorily and amicably.

Dear Singlefile User,

That's the kind of customer support I've received from 37signals as well. I totally agree with you about having the CEO running frontline tech support. Talk about cutting corners in a bad way.

Jason is curt to the point of being rude and for some reason is surprised to find that he generates ire from his customers for his disobliging support.

Sort of fits into the no tables or proper chairs in too small a room for the fifty people spending $500/each ($25,000) for eight hours of his time.

Their XML export option for Basecamp is inconvenient (no useable file immediately) and limited (messages only). It would be no trouble for them to make a static HTML version of your project downloadable.

So the promises about exportability ring a little hollow.

In any case, I'm glad that the Singlefile data issue has been properly resolved for the Singlefile User.

My issues were not and my experience with 37signals has made me very wary of hosted software (for which no version of source is available).

Very good write-up. Thanks.