Track of the Week: Get Lucky by Daft Punk

This week’s track is Get Lucky by Daft Punk (featuring Pharrell). Fantastic song that does all the talking for itself, so just a few notes: (a) it’s classic Daft Punk, down to the computer-Mr.-Roboto voice, (b) it’s Pharrell singtalking, and (c) it’s awesome funk.

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Goodbye Sencha (& Hello remind101)

Today was my last day at Sencha. On May 6th, I’ll be joining a very small startup in the education technology space called remind101 (remind101.com). I’ve wanted for a long time to go to a social-forward enterprise, and Remind101 was exactly that and thus I made the tough call to say goodbye. More on that in a second.

It’s been an awesome ride with a ton of excitement, launches, new products, events, community, customers, and more. I’m very excited about the future of Sencha, and the future of the frameworks and tools. For me, the opportunity to go to remind101 was so compelling that I decided to make the move.

I remember very fondly (and very stressfully) some of my favorite times at Sencha: defining our next generation products, putting on SenchaCon 2011 (the keynote, oy!), getting Ext JS 4.0 out the door, getting Architect 2.o out the door, shipping Animator 1.0 at Adobe’s MAX conference, flying 150k+ (actual, no bonus) miles in one year around the world presenting Sencha at conferences and perhaps the best part: doing a ton of writing. Being a part of the outbound face of Sencha was amazing, writing a lot of the blog, the website and the material that we used internally to move the ball forward. That, and all the thousand things I can’t remember, but loved doing.

For the folks at Sencha, I wish them all the best luck in the world. I’m rooting for you all, wishing you all the success in the world. I enjoyed so thoroughly working with you and the community that I look forward to our paths crossing again soon.

My new role is at a small company called remind101, a safe platform for parents, students and teachers to communicate. I’m still getting the public pitch down, but what got me really excited was the momentum they have and they vision the company has to help teachers. I’ve wanted to do something “that mattered” (in the social sense) for a long time and I’m excited about joining remind101 to help people. Expect me to be writing more here and on Twitter.

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Track of the Week: Hey Love by Delfonics & Playa Hater by Notorious B.I.G.

This week’s track is a twofer, a classic and a classic in two very different genres. We start with Hey Love by The Delfonics and close with Playa Hater by the Notorious B.I.G. Start listening first to Hey Love, a fantastic soul song from a group that provided the inspiration for many hip-hop samples. Then move on to Playa Hater, where Ditty and Biggie not only sampled it, but basically made a cover of the song with thuggier lyrics.

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Track of the Week: Lament by Groove 8

This week’s track is Lament by Groove 8 off of Debut. Unfortunately  there’s no album version of the song available on YouTube, so live set it is.  Groove 8 performed one of the side stages in the 2009 (or was it 2010?) July 4th Fillmore Jazz Festival. Straight up jazz fusion / jazz funk, the set was a ton of fun and probably the best act I saw that year at the Jazz Festival. This week’s track is picked off of their Debut album, a slightly slower, slightly more melancholy tune with big horns and a trombone for a lead. It’s a little drizzly in SF today and this seems to capture a sleepy Saturday morning — and a good song to bring Track of the Week back to life after a two month hiatus.

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