Get to know the people who make Springbox an exceptional agency.
What Inspires You? is a series of posts that offer insight into our
talented and creative staff.
Mike Nowlin
Director of Development
What did you do before joining Springbox?
I was a programmer for a dozen or so years — always on the web — for
big companies, startups, and everything in between. That morphed into
project management, product marketing, an MBA and now I get to run a
team of ninjas.
Where do you find inspiration?
I’m no longer a front-line developer, and I now have more management
and strategy tasks. Lately, I have been inspired by ways people,
companies, or products have dealt with the issues I get a lot of pain
from: dealing with complexity, efficiency, communication, planning and
good old management. I read a lot of business and management books (Barbarians at the Gates is my current one and it’s excellent).
I’m also very interested in cooking and people who run successful restaurants. Grant Achatz is a big one, and Thomas Keller. Books by Michael Ruhlman. I really liked Robert Mondavi’s book.
The other big source of inspiration for me is my team, and
specifically, watching and talking with them about what they do when
they have some free time. These guys are knee-deep in technology at
work, but also really push the boundaries in their free time. It’s fun
to watch.
Which websites have inspired you recently?
37Signals
is a big inspiration. I mostly work on strategy, sharing/collaboration,
and meetings, and they have some great products in those areas.
The guts of Facebook are very inspiring. Some of the behind-the-scenes stuff like Connect. Watching FB become the universal single sign-on is like watching Google ten years ago.
Google is actually the most consistently inspiring site suite for me.
Google IS search, period. And it’s just so pure, so correct in its
implementation. Google Maps is my most frequently used application
outside of the basics like email and Office (primarily maps on the
iPhone).
Which trends in interactive are you currently paying attention to?
I'm paying attention to Mobile sites and apps, Social media (especially integrated into existing corporate sites), HTML 5 and heavy tech stuff such as MVC, testing software and document repositories.