2006: the year I adopt outsourcing

I shared something just now over e-mail with my good friend Joel Ross: my newfound resolve and embrace for outsourcing. Running a bleeding-edge web shop, I'm naturally victim to many of the organizational pitfalls shared by my marketing/developmental brethren, such as myopia from looking at the same problem set over and over, day after day; limited budget, narrow focus. I've got to rein my consciousness back every few months to make sure I don't start drowning in the pool in which I'm swimming.

One of the largest of these traits is a reluctance to use third-party products in my work as a web developer. That's all about to change in 2006. As part of my hyperdistribution strategy to merge all my company's multiplatform production efforts under a single branded umbrella, delivered through multiple formats across multiple devices, I've got to bring in other people.

Like most devs, I shy away from using other people's components because I'm an arrogant, ignorant SOB. I need to call on the depth of people's expertise in various aspects of development, like Flash and Win32 desktop development and widgets, to keep maintain an optimal user experience. I've always considered it an honor to work with talented, pasionate professionals, so I'm excited for all the work that's going to be done next year, but also bummed that I'll be more project manager than actual coder.

Most of the work will be collaborative outsourcing, so I'll still be designing, programming or testing certain components, but I'm chalking it up as growth. And in the end, we'll have some really neat stuff for our users to play with.