Thomas Cannon

A new mini-tool from the Practical Computer labs: an Extism plugin to process Mustachio templates: github.com/practical…

Overall, I’m impressed with how Extism is structured. Being able to use WASM to deal with a thorny issue (running Mustachio’s official C# library in a Ruby codebase) with a small, cross-platform binary that can be embedded into the repo itself, dramatically simplifies the problem at hand.

The goal is to hand this off to Postmark directly, since this gives their entire ecosystem a huge boost in usability.

Hey there!

I wanted to give a quick status update on what Q1 2025 is looking like for Little CRM.

Tl;dr:

• It’s not going anywhere! I’m loving working on it, and seeing the path to 1.0
• I’m taking some time to get past a hurdle in my other craft, making music
• I’m still going to be tackling immediate bug fixes and hard blockers
• If you’ve got things that you’d really need for the first 3 months of 2025, let me know ASAP and we’ll come up with a plan
• If you need to pause your subscription, or hold off, that’s A-OK! We’ll figure out a plan
• I’m telling you this because I value transparency (especially in alpha/early stage products), and because the focus on sustainability and juggling multiple skills that Little CRM was designed for is a core part of the workflow here.

A bit more context/details

The back-half of 2024 has been a slog. The short list includes:

• One dog requiring double ACL surgeries, which was a 16-week intensive recovery period
• Hurricane Helene grinding my city to a halt for over a week
• Breaking my wrist cleaning up from said hurricane
• ✨Life✨

So, not a lot of free time for myself.

If you’re like me and have learned a new skill during adulthood; you’ve likely had to deal with the very long tail of getting into the zone. For example: it takes me approximately 2-3 hours to get out of my own head and “past the suck” when I take time to make music. For comparison, I can get into the zone ~15m, on average, for code.

My working theory is that since I’ve been programming for 18 years, the base skill set is just there.

As you can see, music had to be put on pause. Thankfully, I could continue to chip away at Little CRM, but the deal I made with myself was:

When this is all over, you swing the pendulum the other way. The work’s not gonna stop, so you got prioritize the things that got deprioritized to balance things out, then find the path forward.

That skill gap has bugged me for years, and I know the only way out is through (sheer practice hours clocked). I’ve gotta rip the bandaid and do that.

I want Little CRM to work for you; and things to be done fairly. I’ve seen too many alpha projects wither because the team got burned out, with customers left wondering what’s gonna happen to them. If you desperately need specific features in the next 3 months, let me know. It’s also totally okay to hold off signing up, or pausing your subscription. Little CRM ain’t going anywhere.

Because it’s me, I likely won’t be able to cold-turkey stop work on Little CRM during this “break”. It’s simply too much fun, and I’m eager to keep things going. Obviously, bug fixes and immediate blockers will get fixed ASAP! This is just a short-term, intensive focus change.

If you’ve got any questions, need anything elaborated, or want to chat more; I’m here! And thank you so much for your support of Little CRM. It has been affirming & the shot in the arm I needed.

This great thread came across my desk on Bluesky, so I wanted to muse about the ways I’m trying to avoid the pool of rakes it points out that surround Little CRM.

Because to quote my response at the end:

The eternal question: “How can I build a system to try to help folks who aren’t just plain weird, when the space is filled with just plain weirdos?” 🥴 https://bsky.app/profile/thomascannon.me/post/3ld3ewavtrk24

note fetishism and why it’s greedy & anti-human https://bsky.app/profile/amyhoy.bsky.social/post/3ld3bxzlplt2t

like notes are fine, complex notes, lots of notes all great — but that’s not actually what they were about. they weren’t wanting to learn. they wanted to POSSESS

and not in a pdf goblin way https://bsky.app/profile/amyhoy.bsky.social/post/3ld3bzqirqb2s

Note fetishism is definitely real, and adjacent (IMO) to falling into the Project Management Hyperfocus Hell. Both are focused on the desire to force the universe to bend to your will by documenting everything; as if brute-forcing knowledge into digestible bites will enforce order. In essence, possession as Amy pointed out. 😬

The ways I’m trying to address this in Little CRM are:

• Deliberately keeping notes short, by keeping the restrictions of microposting (240 characters)
• Likewise, threading has proven to be a great way to chain ideas together. It automatically provides conversational cadence, encourages wrapping ideas up, and orients people towards writing (more on this later).
• There are not going to be todo list/project management/activity streak features.

In my design docs, the exact quote is:

We have so many fuckin' todo list options The tool trusts you to be a professional

There will be prompts to follow up with folks, refresh your notes about people/teams, and a way to track actions you’ve taken; but I think the key difference is that they will be opt-in (you have to decide to engage with them). It’s important to refresh your notes, and these prompts will be designed to help you think about what’s next.

They were super into esotericism and pretty sure they thought the process of connecting bits of knowledge would magically uncover knowledge that was previously hidden

https://bsky.app/profile/joshuawood.net/post/3ld3ccsf7hs2y

they’ll do anything if it will reveal things to them, except live and learn like human beings

https://bsky.app/profile/amyhoy.bsky.social/post/3ld3d3frblj23

OOFA DOOFA. I’ve been grimacing & figuring out how to avoid this since I figured out what the flows would generally look like.

I think the biggest ways to avoid this are to avoid too much retrospection (the next quotes cover this!) and by actively encouraging folks to spend minimal time in the app. Two big ways:

• Having the UI use minimal JS, be performant, and optimized for information density & adding notes quickly.
• There will be an egg timer on every part of the app, with the option to dim the page or play an alarm. Let people know they’re not meant to have everything logged in the app, just the stuff that matters most.

I’ve never understood why people care about the graph view. Now I get it - it’s like looking at your porcelain figurines all lined up. https://bsky.app/profile/lukas.blue/post/3ld3fckyonk2b

Yuuuup. I, like all engineers, had dreams of having a graph view eventually, but this thread convinced me it’s not a good idea.

Honestly 60% of the value of note-taking is writing, 40% at best is retrieval https://bsky.app/profile/lukas.blue/post/3ld3fckyonk2b

One of the reasons why I didn’t ship the alpha with micro post searching or any reporting. Writing is rubber-ducking!

I definitely blogged recently about how a lot of my note taking often turned into just data hoarding, it’s easy to fall into that trap 🙈 https://bsky.app/profile/cassidoo.co/post/3ld3dsbhvhk2m

I haven’t talked about it much, but Little CRM is going to have limits in how much data you can have! It’s a design choice. A napkin number: only 1,000 active teams/people total. I might even drop that number lower. Think about it! 1,000 people is a staggering amount of data to consider important. To quote Dale Carnegie: “You unmitigated ass!” You can’t realistically expect to keep that many relationships fresh; you need to pick & choose where your focus will lie.

I don’t know what the limitations are on microposts/events/purchases/redemptions. I might punt on that until there’s better insights into usage. Maybe the focus on microposts/threading/thinking about “what’s next?” Will automatically guide folks away from this thinking.

the note fetishists don’t even do anything with their notes so it’s inverted productivity cult, in a way https://bsky.app/profile/amyhoy.bsky.social/post/3ld3cm7hsuf2i

Again, having prompts that focus on:

• proactively reaching out to folks
• figuring out “what’s next?”
• quickly refreshing a small part of their notes

Will hopefully mitigate this. TBH it’s going to be impossible to truly avoid inverted productivity, but I can try to design to avoid it.

This was a fun thread to dig into! As always, if you’ve got questions, ideas, or want to push back on it; reach out!

There’s so much left to do in the app, but it’s finally at the stage where people besides me can see & act on the vision I have. So it’s time to get out there, let the bugs roll in, and continue shipping it!

The vision

I want Little CRM to be a tool that helps you grow the relationships that are the foundation for your work.

That doesn’t just mean the people who have given you money, far from it! Some of the people most critical to your success will never give you a dime. Frankly, it’s insulting that traditional CRMs funnel everyone into “a source of money.” That framing makes my skin crawl: seeing people as a resource to extract from, a series of transactions.

From my perspective, a number of factors are true:

• We live in a world where no one does just one thing; which means that our internal recordkeeping is fragmented.
• Relationships have always been crucial, but that's never been more true. All we have is each other.
• Collectively, our ability to sniff out that "resource extraction" mindset is very strong as a survival mechanism (good! We need it! Do not accept bullshit!)

So: what’s one way to maintain genuine relationships in a working environment, that doesn’t skeeve people out? Figure out a good note-taking system, that focuses on people as people.

Let’s walk through a story, showing off what’s currently available & how things work. Hopefully it’ll help you see what I mean.

Coffee Talk¹

Saturday mornings are specifically for practicing making music. Usually. Today, I’m just not feeling it.

Once I’m there, I chat with my favorite barista, Alex. We talk about what we’ve been listening to, and they recommend Nilüfer Yanya’s latest album. I make sure to jot it down, particularly their notes on the back half of the album.

I also want to make sure I don’t forget to check in after their dog has surgery.

Coffee in hand, I sit down at the bar. I’m half-people watching, half-chatting with a friend who helps me edit my music.

Alex waves me to the other side of the bar to meet someone new. One thing I can count on is Alex knowing someone I’ve gotta know. 😂 Turns out, they’re a drummer! Which is great, because I am not one. 😅

Throughout the conversation, I jot down some notes. Music to check out, a YouTube series on candombe, a reminder to check out their band.

After they leave, I go ahead and add them to my contacts, then link them to all those notes. After all, I want to check out their album. I’m in a creative rut, I need some fresh tunes.

Once that’s done, I go ahead and send them a Bandcamp code for my latest EP. I’ve got a few lying around, and I want their notes if they have any.

I leave the shop slightly overcaffeinated, but with some new albums to listen to, some edits reviewed, and a new acquaintance in town.

What’s next?

There’s still a bunch I’m going to add, including:

• Team tracking, with the same importance as People (and flexibility too! Since you likely know someone in a variety of contexts, and people switch teams regularly)
• Tracking the avenues where you spend your time & effort, so you know what’s actually working
• same for specific initiatives & opportunities, acting as a running journal of your progress (great for when it feels like you’re stuck & going nowhere)
• purchase, discount code, and redemption code tracking. And, public sites you can link to for distributing batches of codes (great for street teams and QR codes!)
• A deliberate focus on allowing you to sustainably grow your business, freezing specific things, turn the heat on when you’re locked in, and put everything on pause when you’re on vacation.
• Other stuff I haven’t thought of! You can help shape it, this is an early alpha!

It’s serendipitous that I got the initial alpha out during the waves of Bluesky migration, because the main way Little CRM works is Posting™️. 9 out of 10 people love Posting™️, and Little CRM gives you 100% private feeds to Post Through It.

With private feeds, a whole set of features open up:

• Editing! You can drop the most half-baked, typo-ridden dictated note, and clean it up when you’re able.
• You get the freedom of your drafts, with the fun of actually hitting post.
• You can retroactively connect the dots on an idea, a note, or a quote you wrote down.

This sounds great! How do I sign up?

Practical Computer’s SaaS products are run differently than most: – They’re closed-invitation. That way I don’t have to worry as much about spam or bad actors, since I can vibe-check each customer. Which means less firefighting and more time building products! – I only add customers as I’m able to handle them. This makes sure it’s sustainable for me, you get the support you deserve. – There isn’t really a free trial, but I’m always happy to discuss the product, share screencasts, go over it in detail; so you can make an informed decision. If I’m going to build a product, I want to build it for folks that are actually going to use it and have skin in the same.

If what you’ve read is exciting & you want to really give it a shot, reach out! If you stumbled across this announcement and don’t have a quick way to reach me, our site has a contact form