November 2015 Summaries

The U.S. Army's approach to postmortems and retrospectives has evolved from lecture-based critiques to a more inclusive, participatory process called after-action reviews (AARs), which encourage open discussion and active participation among team members. This shift led to improved learning and a culture of continuous improvement. The article highlights the importance of these meetings in teams across various industries, including SalesforceIQ, Asana, and healthcare startups, where they help identify areas for improvement, assign action items, and track progress. Effective postmortems and retrospectives involve planning ahead, setting the right tone, selecting a suitable facilitator, converting discussions into actionable steps, and sharing learnings with the team and beyond. Various tools are available to support these processes, including collaborative platforms that facilitate brainstorming, prioritization, decision-making, and action item tracking. By adopting this approach, teams can foster a culture of learning, sharing, and continuous improvement, leading to increased productivity and success.

Creating a product with customers and revenue takes time, but having the right process in place can speed up this process. The idea behind GreenSocks, a lawnmowing-on-demand service, came about quickly, thanks to using out-of-the-box software pieces with Zapier, an automation tool that allows teams to tie together various apps without writing code. This approach has been successful for other startups and businesses as well, from simplifying hiring processes in the government to building prototypes and products without coding skills. By breaking down ideas into parts, finding the right apps for each job, connecting them with automations, and rapidly iterating, teams can create a product or service quickly and efficiently using Zapier. This approach allows companies to build and launch their ideas faster, without needing extensive technical expertise.

Fonts are a crucial aspect of web design, evoking emotions, associations, and moods that communicate messages. The Web Font Revolution has made it possible for websites to use thousands of typefaces, but choosing the right font can be overwhelming. Google Fonts offers a vast collection of free fonts with powerful features, including a script browser, easy-to-use font browser, speedy CDN, and option to select just the font weights needed for optimum load time. To choose the right font, consider communication and context, finding fonts that work well together, and selecting styles and character sets that fit your message. Once you've found the perfect font, packaging it involves adding HTML code and setting CSS declarations to make it visible on your website. With Google Fonts, web designers can add beautiful typography to their websites without breaking the bank or requiring extensive coding knowledge.

The Soylent team, led by co-founder John Coogan, is revolutionizing the way people think about food and nutrition. They're using Zapier to automate various processes, such as documenting every call with lawyers, creating a searchable database of legal advice, and sending targeted emails to customers. By leveraging Zapier's automation capabilities, Soylent aims to streamline their workflow, reduce costs, and build a more efficient system for providing daily doses of macronutrients, vitamins, and minerals in a convenient package. This approach allows the team to focus on building a compact source of essential nutrients while also exploring new research and transparency efforts.