Xerpi's Man of Mystery
July 13th, 2009
Last summer Andy Wall became Xerpi's newest employee — but I like to think of him as our man of mystery.
What exactly does Andy do? When I asked him that, he gave me a funny answer.
The problem isn't that he does too little, but that he does too much! "I've come on to do a little bit of everything," Andy told me during one phone conversation. "I've been doing design work on some new features, and I've been thinking about some marketing that we could do."
The new Xerpi email/web hybrid is a part of that effort, but Andy Wall hinted that it's just the first of many design enhancements to come. "We've got to sit down and prioritize them and figure out exactly what to do."
Andy's also checking under Xerpi's hood. (Or as he tells it, "I'm also doing a little bit of work on the core technology.") He's poking around the raw computer code that runs the site, including checking out its Ruby on Rails framework and an SQL database. Er, how many records are in Xerpi's database? Is it more than a thousand?
"More than a million," Andy replies.
And it all started when he'd bumped into an old friend on the street — Con Way Ling (the founder of Xerpi). "Con Way and I were old friends," Andy explained. "We lost contact with each other for a while, and then I randomly moved to New York, and Con Way moved here. And we randomly ran into each other on the street. It turned out we lived just a few blocks away from each other!"
Andy tested the beta version of Xerpi, and gave Con Way some useful feedback. But the first nice surprise was "Con Way actually worked on a lot of the things that I talked about." Soon Xerpi became the center of Andy's web surfing — and he loved the convenience and the ease of managing his bookmarks. "The thing that really captured me was that the bookmarks were laid out so well on the page. I didn't have to go through this process of hunting through folder hierarchies to find my different bookmarks. They're all just sitting there on the page."
The experience ultimately led him to a fateful decision. "I decided I'd really like to apply my work energy to continuing to improve Xerpi — given how much
I've gotten out of it myself." And Andy wants to share the same experience with you. "We've been hearing a lot of really good feedback from our users and we're trying to take that and work it into a development plan," he told me. Now he's encouraging Xerpi's users to send feedback — and to share the same exciting energy he feels when he's helping to build Xerpi.
"Hopefully Xerpi will be a big thing on the internet and make the internet better for a lot of people," Andy says. And Xerpi will be a little bit better because of feedback from people like you, me, and Andy.
"We just get really good ideas from people that way."
What exactly does Andy do? When I asked him that, he gave me a funny answer.
Q: I don't think I know your title.
A: I don't either.
The problem isn't that he does too little, but that he does too much! "I've come on to do a little bit of everything," Andy told me during one phone conversation. "I've been doing design work on some new features, and I've been thinking about some marketing that we could do."
The new Xerpi email/web hybrid is a part of that effort, but Andy Wall hinted that it's just the first of many design enhancements to come. "We've got to sit down and prioritize them and figure out exactly what to do."
Andy's also checking under Xerpi's hood. (Or as he tells it, "I'm also doing a little bit of work on the core technology.") He's poking around the raw computer code that runs the site, including checking out its Ruby on Rails framework and an SQL database. Er, how many records are in Xerpi's database? Is it more than a thousand?
"More than a million," Andy replies.
And it all started when he'd bumped into an old friend on the street — Con Way Ling (the founder of Xerpi). "Con Way and I were old friends," Andy explained. "We lost contact with each other for a while, and then I randomly moved to New York, and Con Way moved here. And we randomly ran into each other on the street. It turned out we lived just a few blocks away from each other!"
Andy tested the beta version of Xerpi, and gave Con Way some useful feedback. But the first nice surprise was "Con Way actually worked on a lot of the things that I talked about." Soon Xerpi became the center of Andy's web surfing — and he loved the convenience and the ease of managing his bookmarks. "The thing that really captured me was that the bookmarks were laid out so well on the page. I didn't have to go through this process of hunting through folder hierarchies to find my different bookmarks. They're all just sitting there on the page."
The experience ultimately led him to a fateful decision. "I decided I'd really like to apply my work energy to continuing to improve Xerpi — given how much
I've gotten out of it myself." And Andy wants to share the same experience with you. "We've been hearing a lot of really good feedback from our users and we're trying to take that and work it into a development plan," he told me. Now he's encouraging Xerpi's users to send feedback — and to share the same exciting energy he feels when he's helping to build Xerpi.
"Hopefully Xerpi will be a big thing on the internet and make the internet better for a lot of people," Andy says. And Xerpi will be a little bit better because of feedback from people like you, me, and Andy.
"We just get really good ideas from people that way."
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