December 2011
3 posts
5 Reminders for Anyone Pursuing a Startup
In the past decade and a half, I’ve had the great pleasure of founding companies, helping early stage companies grow and starting new ventures from within an existing enterprise. In 1996, it took audacity, gumption and a bit of blind ignorance to get into the startup game. In 2011, with the price of starting a web technology venture greatly reduce (to almost nothing when compared with the...
The Age of Coding is Upon Us
“Learn to code.” It’s the phrase you’ll hear over and over again from so many who work in the world of internet technology. Usually the question that garners this response is “How can I make it easier for myself to find a job?” or “What advise would you give a kid who wants to get into technology?”. As a CTO and technology lead who has been...
Its Not You, It's Me ~ Leaving Simple Energy
After much consideration, I’ve decided to step down from my role at Simple Energy. My last day will be Thursday, December 8th. It will be exactly one year to the day that I joined Simple Energy, and if you know anything about me, a most fitting time to part.
You might ask, why leave an up and coming TechStars company that just received funding and is bound to change the world? In May...
September 2011
2 posts
What is Facebook Timeline?
I’ve spent some time today after the announcement of Timeline at F8. When I first saw it, I thought to myself, this is digital scrap booking. I showed it to my wife earlier and she was amazed that we could go back and see all the posts and comments around the time our son was born. For her, this was very exciting.
And as many are writing about the emotional tie we have to our past,...
My BCN11 two cents
I have about 100 Nashvillians in my Twitter feed. The vast majority of those have spent the last few days going on and on about BCN, specifically bitching or being bitched at about the format, the purpose, the process, etc… And as one who always tried to stir the pot when I lived in Nashville (see: http://chris.enn.is/post/1415442419/barcamp-nashville-inspired-rant and ...
August 2011
1 post
Startup Visa Now!
So, today is the culmination of three months of rigorous work and preparation for what has been a great demo day for the startups here at TechStars Boulder. One thing is really starting to irk me though. A few members of the TechStars class are having to leave Boulder and their other co-founders to return to their native countries, all because of the expiration of a visa.
I’ve never...
July 2011
1 post
A developer's confession
This should be a rule of the developer code, but there are certain things a developer does that constitutes a sin and thus should be confessed, like zero commenting on code and zero object orientation.
I sinned yesterday. And although I could make excuses, they are not allowed in development. We deal with truth in our work and must deal with it when mistakes are made. So, here it goes. I...
March 2011
1 post
The "My Allergies Will Hate Me" Spring Tour
So in case you haven’t heard, I will be spending some time in Nashville in mid-April. I’ll be in town from 4/15 thru 4/24. I’ve had some people reach out to me about meeting the next time I am in town, so if you want to meetup while I’m around, check out my schedule and reserve a time.
I’ve also been talking to some friends in town about organizing an event while...
February 2011
3 posts
Coders Wanted
Basic 411 We’re building our team at Simple Energy and looking for a developer who has worked with PHP and jQuery and understands the architecture of frameworks like WordPress and Drupal. You won’t actually have to work directly with either, but an understanding of how the theming/template engine works for each will go a long way to understanding what we’re building.
...
October 2010
7 posts
The New American Dream
For as long as I can remember, the “American Dream” always referred to owning a home, a car and having those possessions be in your name. My definition of “American Dream” changed in the fall of 2001. It was at this time that I had gone through a 3 year period where I worked for two Fortune 100 companies, where I was little more than a number.
I decided at that time to...
BCN Inspired Rant Rehashed
You thought I was done? I thought I was too, but I have several points that I wish to clarify. First, some might have seen my post as a call to kill what BarCamp Nashville is. This isn’t what I was implying at all. But what you need to understand that BCN is the exception to the rule when it comes to BarCamps. The BarCamp model is floundering a bit. Many cities who have held BarCamps...
BarCamp Nashville Inspired Rant
First off, I want to shower praise on the group that organizes BarCamp Nashville. How many conferences can you attend for free, eat for a reasonable price, attend great presentations and come out of the thing with a swag bag and a T-shirt? Oh, and lets not forget that through all of this, the event is not dripping with heavy corporate influence.
With all of this, BarCamp is hands down the best...
Slinkee: My Latest Project
So, after working with Drupal, Wordpress and other open source frameworks over the past few years, my frustration level for certain missing features finally inspired me to start work on a little project to create the perfect PHP-based framework for me.
I’m about a week into it, but the project that I am currently calling Slinkee exceeds the earliest expectations. I am excited about the...
If you build it they will come
My presentation this Saturday is about the hidden gem that companies and entrepreneurs have when they build apps that draw users in. Give them a cool toy and they’ll flock to you.
Take the BCN Social site as an example. Since launching yesterday, my session at BCN has gone from 30 attendees to 52. Coincidence? Hardly.
This is the dynamics of what I will discuss at work, in real...
3 tags
A social app for BarCamp
So, I made a commitment when I left Nashville in June to return for BarCamp… In doing so, I will be speaking about building apps to capture the moment, officially called 0 to 2 Million Views in 10 Days.
As a part of this presentation, I have created a tool set that will hopefully prove the theory of my session by making everyone’s BCN experience better.
Here is how it works. On...
2 tags
So, What's Next?
At the end of this year I will be leaving my role at OneRecovery, the San Diego healthcare startup that I’ve worked with since they acquired my previous product SoberCircle last summer. I leave OneRecovery with a sense of pride since we’ve gone from struggling startup to venture backed startup in that time. It’s bittersweet though because I lay down the torch that I’ve...
July 2010
1 post
May 2010
5 posts
1 tag
The Nashville Bucket List
If you had less than 30 days before you moved across country, leaving Nashville and Middle Tennessee behind, what activities, sites, restaurants, bars, etc would be on your must do list before you go? Here are a few of mine and I hope you’ll drop a comment and leave your top 10 suggestions of what you would do if your days in Nashville were numbered.
My first five:
Yazoo Taproom Flying...
Go West Young Man
I was born fifty miles southeast of Nashville. With the exception of brief stays in several other cities, I have spent my entire life in Nashville. It is home. So, today I can finally say that I, along with my wife and son are moving to Colorado in early June.
While I am excited to get the opportunity to work with America’s fastest growing tech startup community, the move is actually...
Where's the Silver Lining?
I see all of these pictures of debris lining the streets of communities in Nashville and I am starting to ask the question, where’s the silver lining?
It’s unmistakable that these curbside walls represent the hard work and dreams of our family, friends and fellow neighbors, disregarded en masse as if they were meaningless. The truth could be no further from reality. While the...
2 tags
Flash Recovery
The rivers and creeks of Nashville and Middle Tennessee rose above flood stage and encroached upon our neighbors homes so quickly that many had to scramble to abandon their homes before being submerged. Some made the narrow escape on their own. Others were forced to be rescued by boat. If there is anything that you’ll hear repeated over and over again by those who have lost so much, it is...
April 2010
1 post
Changing My Online Presence
I recently decided to change my website, chrisennis.com from my personal blog to a very simple snapshot of my online presence. I chose to do so because I am not the best at keeping a personal blog and felt tumblr would serve as a better outlet to express my thoughts and ideas about things that aren’t so technical.
For expressing my thoughts on technology, I am starting a new blog called...
May 2009
2 posts
Mother’s Day Thoughts
When I was little I spent more time around my father than my mother. My father was the one who was always at sporting events and taking me along. My mother, I guess you could say, was the quintessential housewife. She made the dinners, washed the clothes and mad sure everything on the homefront was in order.
Later in life I began to learn that my mother was the calming force in my life,...
this might be the reason for newpapers’ issues
every Wednesday, the Tennessean delivers a free lightweight edition for Nashville-Davidson County called ‘Davidson A.M.’. While I didn’t request it, they deliver it anyways, except in my case they deliver it twice.
So, it get two of a newspaper that I consider not worth my time to read. You may ask yourself, why do they deliver it twice? Well, I have an oval driveway with two entryways to...
April 2009
2 posts
1 tag
The Sasquatch of Twitter Error Messages
Is this like the Sasquatch of Twitter error messages? Its like an error message you get with the fail whale fails. This is a combination 502 and 403 error. In case you aren’t up on your HTML Server Status codes, 502 is the error message for a bad gateway. This means the server responsible for taking your request and sending it to the proper servers for processing has failed. The 403 error...
My funeral: Now with cash
I was joking with some friends at last night’s geek social about how I wanted my funeral and burial to happen. Some wanted their remains spread around the globe others want a standard burial. I initially wanted to be buried with a choir singing Queen’s “The Show Must Go On”. Dramatic I know, but with laser lights and smoke machines, it would be like a rock opera spectacular. Now, I’ve changed...
March 2009
4 posts
1 tag
SXSW Interactive Recap
Today, my SXSW experience comes to an end. With this, I return to my daily life a more enlightened person. This is an annual phenomenon for me. At an event like this, you experience an idea overload. This experience works in unison with sleep deprivation. This is SXSW. The discussions about new technologies, ideas and how we can change the world through the digital medium starts early...
Facebook’s Envy for Twitter
I made a comment on Twitter the other day that Facebook wants to be Twitter and Twitter wants to be Facebook. What I meant by this statement is that Twitter has a more robust community conversation stream. Facebook simply can’t match it because the social graph, as defined by Facebook, has inherent walls that prevent a wide open conversation. Only your friends can follow your conversations...
December 2008
2 posts
Symbols of the Downfall of U.S. Automakers
Much has been made of the recent bailout loans granted to GM and Chrysler. The response from most Americans is similar to getting the news that your least favorite relative or in-law is coming to visit, you shudder at the idea but you also know the ramifications of not letting them visit might not be good so you grin and bear it. Rather than continue to bitch about the bailout, lets look at a...
2 tags
Christmas makes me think of Lermoos
If you like the smell of fresh pine, Lermoos, Austria is for you.
Lermooos is a tiny village tucked in the hills of the Tirol region of Austria, right across the border from Germany. Its one of those places you don’t find unless someone tells you about it. My wife and I visited Lermoos in September, 2007. I found it to be a rarity in this day and age: a getaway destination that has a...
November 2008
1 post
1 tag
Twitter… Expanded.
I enjoy Twitter. I am more of a microblogger than a blogger. There isn’t enough time in the day for me to write blogs the way I can write tweets. Many people are this way. Time doesn’t permit many of us to write blogs. Others just don’t have the chops to write 300+ word articles about whatever it is that they have to say. This is beauty and charm of Twitter. You can blog without...
October 2008
1 post
1 tag
I'm a Daddy
At 2:28am on Friday baby Reed entered the world. It has been the most amazing 24 hours of my life. Words cannot explain the feeling of sitting through 30 hours of labor and finally watching a human being whose very existance is only possible because of you. What I can say is that my love for my wife multiplied a thousand times over in that moment where she pressed relentlessly to deliver this...
August 2008
1 post
1 tag
Long overdue update
So I havent updated the blog in a while so I thought I would drop in and say hey. Its been so busy lately, no time to update.
Jessica sent this to me today. I thought I would share…
July 2008
6 posts
2 tags
Smoking Nurses in the Parking Lot
Where I work there is a healthcare company that occupies a floor of our office building. Within that company there has to be at least 40 nurses that come to work everyday in their scrubs. I am not exactly sure what they do, but it must be stressful because they smoke a lot.
From the looks of things, they need a smoke. Today it was 95 degrees out, not exactly “I think I will go out and enjoy...
1 tag
I Finally Got an iPhone
After refraining to cave into the hype that surrounded the original iPhone, I finally gave in and got one. As a pure programmer and technology junkie, I always stay away from first releases. Whether it is iPhone, Windows Vista or the next generation Blackberry, I always take a wait and see approach. After exercising that philosophy on the first generation iPhone, I sit here today with the 3G...
1 tag
American Television has Gone to Hell
In the past day I have seen commericals for three different new television shows that feature a nanny coming into homes with undisciplined children and saving the day.
These nannies are all caricatures of Mary Poppins or something. They all have British accents and as you can tell from the getup on the lady above, they have taken this stereotype to ridiculous levels. Anyone living in the UK...
3 tags
Internet Addiction & How We Combat It
As the chief architect for a social networking website that caters to recovering alcoholics and addicts, I understand the power of addiction pretty well. I see its effects everyday. Addiction can tear its way through the lives of those addicted and close relatives and friends. It is a disease that really doesn’t care who you are, where you live, what shape you’re in or what economic class...
2 tags
Social networking deviants
As many of you know, I am a co-founder of the social networking website SoberCircle.com. SoberCircle is a community that caters to recovering alcoholics and addicts, a population that general websites do a poor job in delivering a service that allows them to communicate comfortably about their recovery. This is where we come in.
Recently, an incident occurred on SoberCircle where another...
2 tags
Our little baby boy has a name…
On May 5th, Jessica and I found out that we would be having a baby boy. Leading up to this day, we had discussed various names but never came to any conclusions. Shortly after this, we began having serious discussions about names. I threw the name of my grandfather out there. His name is Reed Brown and my wife just adores him because of the similarities between him and her grandpa who passed...
June 2008
1 post
2 tags
Mourning the loss of a pet
In 1998, I adopted two kittens from a litter of six. I initially went to get a single kitten, but when you see them there at a month old, you feel terrible about tearing a single one away from the group, so I took a second kitten. The first kitten was Chloe. She was a fuzz ball of all different colors. The second one was Maggie because she reminded me of Hershel, a cat I had as a child. Both...
March 2008
1 post
1 tag
SXSW
Its day 3 of SXSW Interactive and I have to say I’ve found some of the sessions very beneficial and informative. Other sessions have been a complete waste of time. Then we have the keynote today from Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. As a social networking community developer, I was really looking forward to this. What a disappointment. A complete debacle.
I’ve gotten more out...
October 2007
3 posts
1 tag
Longest Afternoon EVER
We’re here in the airport in Newark, NJ waiting for our connecting to Nashville. Its 5:30 PM local time and we have been up for 15 hours and the sun has been up the entire time and its not going down for some time. The fumes are starting to kick in as the fuel tank that has been driving us for so long has finally run dry. While I sit here, bitching and moaning about it, it isnt as bad as...
3 tags
Roma: 05.10.2007
So here we are, on the last day before we return to Amsterdam. On Monday we return to America and on Tuesday we return to work. Its been a crazy 3 weeks and I will spend plenty of time over the next few weeks reflecting and sharing the intimate details.
Buona Notte from Roma…
3 tags
Day Whatever: Lake Como, Italy
So I’ve kinda lost track of what day we’re on. I think its 19, but who cares. We are currently in Bellagio, Italy which is a picturesque lakefront town with views of the snow-capped that billionaires compete to acquire. Its 100% Italy, with a little feel that is not as Italian as say Florence, Rome or Naples. Our hotel is in Lugano, Switzerland, but everyone speaks Italian there too. I...
September 2007
10 posts
3 tags
Austria & Switzerland
This is my last update for a while. I have doubts about our ability to get internet access from here on out. We are currently in Zurich and are about to head to Lauterbrunnen, which is located in the Berner Oberland region of Switzerland. We will be 10 miles from the tallest peaks of Europe. Since the last update, we have been in Lermoos Austria at an resort area called Zupsitze. It is...