CoasterBuzz v4: Next week

Yep, it's going to launch next week. I'm not sure which day, or actually night because it's unprofessional to launch sites in the middle of the day.

It seems like I've been on a singularly focused death march to get it done, but actually I don't think I've spent more than eight hours in any given day working on it. It just seems different because of the strange hours, which have been in the 2 to 6 range and then 9 to 1.

I hesitate to talk much about what you can expect, because frankly I want expectations to be as low as possible. At my last job we talked a lot about "enabler" projects a lot, which create some kind of foundation for bigger things to come, without demonstrating significant value up front. This is kind of like that. Even when it's "done," there is a list of things to come still in the coming weeks and months. The goal is to have that architecture in place where I can deliver new stuff often. (Side note: It's hardly project management, but the very simple Ta-da Lists has served me well in prioritizing work, features and bugs.)

There were some relatively easy things to do that were new, most of them minor. Like the meeting calendar, for example. The UI is simplified, and now it uses the data in a smarter way. Park pages say who has been there lately and who plans to go, and it also shows your entries on your profile. That certainly encourages its use. Those are the kinds of things that I'm going for, to make it so that you want to use something other than the forum more.

The biggest win for me is just the self-assurance that I can complete a project. The site has been unchanged since 2003. I've had false starts every years since. But for better or worse, the site is a part of my life, for eight years now. I can't think of anything else I've done for eight years. It may just fizzle out at some point, but if that happens, I don't want it to be because I neglected it.

So heading into this weekend I'll finish up some things and do whatever testing I can. When I'm ready, I'll turn it off at 2 a.m. and start the hour-long process of migrating and transforming data. Then I'll sleep in. Then we're going out to celebrate.