A few months ago, I was invited to take a look at a new product by 37Signals, called Know Your Company. On this call, Jason and I discussed perceived pain points of building the company's culture over time; one of which for me is our company blog. We have immensely talented people at Doejo (I've said for years that our designers and developers can contend against anyone in the world), these people graciously guide our clients and project processes, they frequently invent mind-bending technologies and craft incredible experiences… but, even as experts, there's still a sense of anxiety when it comes to writing and hitting the publish button.

So, for a little fun, I ran a contest to see if we could lessen the anxiety. The rules were simple. Draft a post. About anything. And you could win $250. I don't necessarily encourage the idea of incentivizing blogging, but I figured we could have a good time, come up with some good baseline content… and, well around the holidays a little extra cash is always nice.

But there was a catch… I really never had any intention of selecting one winner. I wanted to encourage writing, to see who would contribute for the hell of it, not for the money.

Everyone who wrote got the prize, and I believe some really thoughtful posts came out of it. A multi-part series on being a professional web developer, a short essay on open source software, the coverage of a new soup review blog, and even some internal lamp (not to be confused with LAMP) building.

You'll see those published over the coming weeks and months, and I hope everyone at Doejo sees this blog as an outlet, to share and explore the ideas and passions that makes this company so fucking awesome.