Geoffrey Grosenbach runs a company called PeepCode Screencasts that produces outstanding screencasts for learning a variety of programming topics mainly around Ruby on Rails. I’ve purchased a bunch of them and they’ve all been fantastic learning tools.
Recently he posted a transcript of a presentation he gave on the lessons learned from three years of running PeepCode.
One skill that is important is being able to respond to change. I frequently think back to a quote I saw in a skateboarding video from a few years ago where photographer Grant Brittain talked about the changes he had seen in the sport and business of skateboarding over the past 30 years. He said that everything changes, and if it stops changing, it dies. I think that’s part of the stress and unpredictability of running a business: you can almost guarantee that a success one month or one year won’t be successful the next year. Your skill as a businessperson isn’t about finding one hit and riding it out, it’s about learning the skill of understanding the present, looking to the future, and making bets about what might happen.
