MUMBOE Updates » Just for Fun

Mumboe “Beta-bites”

We wanted to thank our friends at Celebration Cookie Co. for dropping off some delicious Mumboe themed cookies today.

Thanks, Jennifer! These were a great treat to wrap up our company lunch from Rudy’s today.

1 comment June 11th, 2010 Author: James

I never thought the subject of professional wrestling would appear in this blog. We actually have a few fans around the office (you know who you are Phil and Scott). Like most people, I’m aware of wrestling’s popularity and familiar with many of its characters. Over the past 30 years pro wrestling has become an undeniable part of American pop culture (see the South Park parody as proof), so from a business perspective they must be doing something right.

Fast Company ran an article called “10 Things Corporations Can Learn from Pro Wrestling.” I never really thought about pro wrestling as a business case study, but as the author points out, pro wrestling makes an emotional connection with its audience and continually innovates. From a marketing perspective, there’s a lot we can learn from these titans in tights.

Future Governor

Add comment... October 29th, 2009 Author: Bill

Steve Jobs’ 12 Rules of Success

This is for all the Apple fan boys at Mumboe who are charter members in the iCult. I’ve seen this list published a few times and I find it both interesting and useful. Not sure which book it’s from but I believe it’s one by Jeffrey Young.

Do what you love to do. Find your true passion. Make a difference. The only way to do great work is to love what you do.
Be different. Think different. Better to be a pirate than to join the navy.
Do your best at every job. Don’t sleep! Success generates more success so be hungry for it. Hire good people with a passion for excellence.
Perform SWOT analysis. As soon as you join/start a company, make a list of strengths and weaknesses of yourself and your company on a piece of paper. Don’t hesitate to throw bad apples out of the company.
Be entrepreneurial. Look for the next big thing. Find a set of ideas that need to be acted upon quickly and decisively and jump through that window. Sometimes the first step is the hardest one. Just take it. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
Start small, think big. Don’t worry about too many things at once. Take a handful of simple things to begin with, and then progress to more complex ones. Think about not just tomorrow, but the future. Put a ding in the universe.
Strive to become a market leader. Own and control the primary technology in everything you do. If there’s a better technology available, use it regardless of whether or not anyone else is using it. Be the first, and make it an industry standard.
People judge you by your performance, so focus on the outcome. Be a yardstick of quality. Some people are not used to an environment where excellence is expected. Advertise. If they don’t know about it, they won’t buy your product. Pay attention to design. We made buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them. Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
Ask for feedback from people with diverse backgrounds. Each one will tell you one useful thing. If you’re at the top of the chain, sometimes people won’t give you honest feedback because they’re afraid. In this case, disguise yourself, or get feedback from other sources. Focus on those who will use your product-listen to your customers first.
Innovate. Innovation distinguishes a leader from a follower. Delegate. Let other top executives do 50% of your routine work to be able to spend 50% of your time on the new stuff. Say no to 1,000 things to make sure you don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. Concentrate on really important creations and radical innovation. Hire people who want to make the best things in the world. You need a very product-oriented culture, even in a technology company. Lots of companies have tons of great engineers and smart people. But ultimately, there needs to be some gravitational force that pulls it all together.
Learn from failures. Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
Learn continually. There’s always “one more thing” to learn. Cross-pollinate ideas with others both within and outside your company. Learn from customers, competitors and partners. If you partner with someone whom you don’t like, learn to like them-praise them and benefit from them. Learn to criticize your enemies openly, but honestly.

My favorite is “better to be a pirate than to join the navy.” I know what he means, literally. Our developers will say “wait, you flew in the navy” but something they may not know is that my old squadron was the Jolly Rogers.

Add comment... September 15th, 2009 Author: Bill

The Vendor Client Relationship in Real World Situations

Anyone who has ever bought or sold software will get a chuckle from this video about Vendor Client Relationships.

Add comment... July 22nd, 2009 Author: Bill

The Quest for Queso and a Dessert Dilemma

While on a visit with a potential client in the Washington, DC area this week, Bill and I made a stop at Ceiba Restaurant for dinner. We were walking the streets hoping to stumble across a good dining location and I believe we hit the jackpot when we saw they had queso listed on the menu at Ceiba. Queso is very much a part of the Mumboe culture and seeing it on the menu was essentially daring us to try it out.

The queso had an interesting presentation. It was served in a hot lava stone dish that kept the contents at boiling temperature for the duration of the appetizer. Our appetizer and entrees were very good, but let’s fast forward to dessert and the main purpose of my writing.

The dessert menu had several interesting options that all sounded great. I choose churros with a fudge and marshmellow sauce (yes, it was delicious). Poor Bill was having such a hard time deciding between two of the desserts that he went ahead and ordered them both. Yes, you read correctly…Bill ordered 2 desserts and he ate them both. Below are very low quality pictures from my phone for evidence.

Add comment... December 17th, 2008 Author: James

Web 2.0 TV Interview

Check out Rebecca’s interview by Web 2.0 TV at InnoTech Austin 2008. I love the intro music.

Add comment... December 1st, 2008 Author: James

Mumboe word of the day

enterprisey [EN-ter-prize-ee] — (adj.): a company, web site or software application that is complex and difficult to understand and/or use. Often used to describe applications marketed in 3-word acronyms and text-heavy web sites that are as much fun to read as, well, a legal document. You know who you are.

Like a lot of technology companies I’ve known, we here at Mumboe often make up our own slang and creative terms to describe a concept when normal English doesn’t quite cut it. At one company I worked at, we even kept track of these terms in an internal glossary for fun. (Ok, yes, that was our idea of fun.)

So here we’d like to occasionally publish some of those terms, and ask you to add yours to the list. I’m not talking about industry buzzwords like “cloud computing” or “SaaS”. I’m talking about the words we spontaneously make up on occasion to describe the cultural oddities, technology quirks and market mysteries that make working in the software industry so interesting.

Have a term you’d like to submit? Post it in a comment here!

1 comment June 6th, 2008 Author: admin

James gives back

Our very own James Walley, Mumboe’s director of customer service, isn’t just a nice guy to our customers. As an alumni of Mississippi State University, he also volunteers his time to cheer up homesick Bulldogs here in Austin, Texas. This month, the MSU Alumni Association honored James as its volunteer of the month on the orgnanization’s web site. What we’d like to know: why no link in the article back to Mumboe.com, James? Where’s the love?

Add comment... April 21st, 2008 Author: admin

What’s in a name? Part Deux

Yes, we did sort of cover this information in an earlier post. However, twice now I have heard someone throw out an alternate explanation of where the “e” in Mumboe came from and I thought we might as well share it. Hint: Perhaps the better question to ask is, where did the “e” in flickr go? Finders keepers, losers weepers.

I won’t try to take credit for this as my own idea (nor do I actually think I want to claim it) so I’ll give credit where credit is due. Thanks for the laugh, Scott.

Add comment... April 4th, 2008 Author: James

What’s in a name?

Early in our development phase, we talked to a customer who was clearly frustrated with his attempts to sift through the arcane legalese in his company’s business agreements to find the information he needed. He told us in no uncertain terms: “I just need something to help me cut through all the mumbo jumbo!”. Our ears perked up. Oh yeah, we added the “e” because the self-styled “entrepeneur” who is squatting on the mumbo.com domain wanted a bazillion dollars for it. We declined, and Mumboe was born.

1 comment March 17th, 2008 Author: Bill