chunsaker's comments

chunsaker | 9 years ago | on: Okta Acquires Stormpath

While we are not porting the SDKs, we are targeting end of April for framework integrations, so most Stormpath users can migrate with a pretty simple version upgrade. Most users are working with these and not our base SDKs. We are prioritizing: Java Spring Java Spring Boot Node Express ASP.NET 4.x ASP.NET Core

chunsaker | 12 years ago | on: Intro Etiquette

One thing missing here: Ask the "target" person before lobbing an introduction into their inbox.

Intros aren't always welcome - the target could be busy, traveling or have a conflict of interest. They may not be in a position to give that person time, however helpful they would like to be. When the supplier assumes the introduction is okay, they can put both sides of the intro in a tough spot.

chunsaker | 12 years ago | on: An Early Retirement

The tone of this post is yet another reason to love team Watsi. Really fun for an early stage company (for-profit or non) to be spending time and money on this instead of on more interesting things like building their business.

chunsaker | 12 years ago | on: Hosted server status pages for startups

The upshot for us is that we can let customers know not just that we're having an issue, but also details about the issue that might impact the service. As a SaaS API, its important that we give good transparency into even minor blips in the service. Statuspage.io isn't as customizable as I would like it to be, but it makes it really easy for someone not on the dev team to manage communication while others fix the problem. Also, its hella straightforward to set up and use. http://status.stormpath.com/

chunsaker | 12 years ago | on: Recruiters Are Pretty (and how to find one)

I agree with the direction of the industry, and your abbreviated rant, except I think they are trying to get attention with... anything at their disposal.

For me what is interesting is how magnetically opposed developers can be to a perceived outsider. And how that works against the recruiter, etc. in question. E.g. We're really lucky with our outside recruiter and she has a lot of credibility, but when she hung out at our booth at OSCON with her lovely female assistant, they clearly stood out and attendees cut a wide swath. Same thing at a different con with one of our investors: extremely technical guy, but you can spot his BD/VC uniform from across the room. I shuffle their conversations away from my booth.

Conversely, I had an interesting conversation in a booth at a different con, where after 20 minutes of talking to me (messy ponytail, company tshirt, jeans, tigers) about our stack, a guy said to me, "Wait a sec, you smell like marketing." By which he meant that I was coming across as non-technical as we got deeper into the technical details (totally fair - I am not a professional developer). I think he felt bamboozled by my lack of shininess.

The shiny girl probably like being shiny, and don't care for the tshirt/jeans/ponytail uniform. There's actually a lot of cool ways technical women subvert the uniform without freaking anyone out (I have hot pink lipstick). I would venture they feel uncomfortable about standing out more than they are plotting to lure you.

chunsaker | 12 years ago | on: Recruiters Are Pretty (and how to find one)

David - you are one of my favorites, but what does Recruiters being pretty have to do with finding/not finding a good one? This is a great article, but is there a tie-in I'm missing here?

chunsaker | 13 years ago | on: How We Increased New User Registration 27%

Good question. The manual login ensures that a session is started with the correct authentication credentials. Its a good default way to protect against session hijacking attacks.

I suspect we will automate the first authentication down the road, but with such a small drop-off in the new workflow, we're focusing on more core product features first. There's still lots in the new workflow, website, etc. to improve.

chunsaker | 13 years ago | on: Secure Your REST API

That's a good suggestion - will see if we can add a para about it. We use digest authentication, fwiw.

chunsaker | 13 years ago | on: Doing Marketing (for developers) Differently

I'm particularly glad you highlighted that marketers often underestimate how social developers are. Analogous: tech marketers and BD people often overlook the fact that developers do a lot of business and share knowledge in social settings...just like people in every other industry. I think its important we get away from dumb tchotkes and focus on meaningful conversations.

Re the marketing systems - I think its less about marketers using the right system, and more about using those systems correctly. There are at least a dozen email automation platforms that can delivery responsive messaging, and most companies of any size have one in place. Speaking from experience, they are just a massive beast to manage - the more complicated and responsive your email set up, the more complicated and time-consuming it is to manage (and more likely you are to accidentally spam everyone). Marketing teams have the right systems, they just don't invest the time to do it right.

chunsaker | 13 years ago | on: Amazon turns Cloud Drive into a Dropbox rival with file syncing

Switched from Dropbox to Google Drive a few months ago. the UIs are very similar, and Drive is much cheaper. My only complaint has been syncing:

1) After a week of repeated attempts, I gave up trying to get video from Dropbox to Drive. Maybe the files were too large?

2) Also, syncs are faster and more seamless across devices with Dropbox. There are noticeable lags for most syncs with Drive, even small, single files.

3) Event when Drive thinks it has synced, it hasn't and I have to restart the app.

There are other benefits to Drive, but I never had any sync issues with Dropbox.

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