Imaginary Landscape, LLC

I was watching Chicago Tonight on PBS the other week and they had a segment about the current financial woes, featuring a professor from the University of Chicago.

It seems that the blame game has included the "Chicago School of Economics" which gained international acclaim largely thanks to Milton Friedman and his Nobel Prize. As summarized by the commentator, the Chicago School leans heavily towards free markets and away from regulation.

It is this philosophy that has come under fire - that the current banking and financial market fiasco was caused by too little regulation. That this demonstrates the Chicago School does not work.

The professor predictably disagreed, but his reasoning was quite interesting.

He pointed out that banking and financial services have historically been highly regulated. This high degree of regulation leads to excessive risk taking around the edges of the regulations. This excessive risk taking is what produced the exotic financial instruments at the core of the collapse.

I found myself thinking more and more about this and how it intersects with human nature and wonder if there is a deeper explanation.

In the absence of rules, individuals have no choice but to be guided by their own iternal compass of right and wrong. Does the presence of rules relieve individuals from having to make these right/wrong decisions?

Could it follow that if a specific rule prohibits an action, then the absence of that rule makes the action acceptable? Would this be exasberated in industries that are heavily regulated already?

Perhaps those in the financial services industry simply surrendered their right/wrong compass to the regulators and spent all their energy finding and exploiting the complex and unsustainable loopholes.

Ponder that all my fellow dime-store psychoeconomists.

We have recently created a nice Web application that assists clients in building online forms. Most forms are simple tools and do not need to be custom crafted, just so long as they handle the back end properly. Forms are such a ubiquitous feature on Web sites that it becomes easy to forget that there can be some complicated maneuvers required under the hood. Because many of our clients handle sensitive information through their sites (hospitals, banks), we needed to layer in some simple-to-use yet industrial-strength security.

Of course, I could go on about how spiffy the app is, but that isn't the reason for this post. The reason for the post is, we can't figure out what to name the damn thing.

We are skilled at mapping things out, specifying them and creatively solving online problems. We kinda suck at names.

So far, here's what we've come up with:

FormBuilder
ForMaker
FormCreator
FormBundle
FormScaper
FORMulate
FORMulaic

Not particularly demonstrative of creative minds at work. Then it quickly gets silly:

Formidable
Formulary
FormalWare
Forment
Formication
Formaldehyde

Internally, we started calling it FormBuilder. Some now call it FormBundle. I've heard it referred to as The Form Thing. Undoubtedly there are other code names floating around Imaginary, most unsuitable for a general audience.

I entered this naming process believing it to be trivial. Now that I'm immersed in it, I shall never again mock the latte-sipping branding crowd (okay, that's probably not true). But I will pause to remember how close we once came to creating a product called The iFormScapeCreatorBundle.

In the final installment of the three-part "False Alarm" story and its intersection with the Chicago Police Department and Court System, here now is its conclusion. (If you are new to the story, part one "Caught in the jaws of the absurd" and part two "Update on absurdity" will provide the appropriate context).

When we left off, my feelings of frustration had been mitigated by a visit from an apologetic sergeant who offered to pen a letter to accompany us in our mandatory court appearance. And, indeed said letter arrived. The letter was four paragraphs. Excerpts include:

"My investigation shows that the [citation] was mistakenly issued to Imaginary Landscape..."

"The officer erred in citing Imaginary Landscape as the respondent for the false alarm..."

"Imaginary Landscape should be determined to be not liable in this matter. The undersigned would have requested cancellation of this [citation] had it not already been processed."

It was a clear and thoughtfully written mea culpa.

With letter in hand, I sent a staffer to court advising her to seek out the clerk or similar person of authority and show them the letter in the hopes of being the first on the docket. No such luck. It took a little over two hours of time before the case was called, following a stream of dog licensing issues. Once called, it was quickly dismissed.

I'm left with mixed feelings. The fact that we still had to blow an afternoon in court remains absurd. However the fact that my expectations were confounded by the quick, thorough and apologetic Police response leaves me with a glimmer of...hope?

This Friday Star Trek opens. To honor its legacy we are making it a special day at Imaginary.

We are closing the office at 3pm and drinking Romulan Ale (aka beer, dyed blue...although someone might forget the dye). Then we are all transporting ourselves to the Metra and riding to Evanston, where we have tickets to the 4pm showing.

Sure, you can make fun of us - work that whole Trekkie (we prefer Trekker) stereotype, call us geeky. To those who would disrespect us in this way, I have but one question...

What will you be doing at 3pm on Friday?

I get asked a lot about this Twitter thing. What is it, they ask. I say it is a microblogging platform, which mostly elicits blank stares. I go on to describe it in more detail, how people "Tweet" about what they're doing in short bursts. Most look quizzically, wondering why anyone would be interested in knowing when someone is blow drying their hair or eating a burrito the size of their forearm (no, really. I saw the Twitpic).

Mostly I agree that the content on Twitter is drivel. But not today.

I started today by taking the Metra commuter train into work. At around 5:15 as my day was winding down, I received a Tweet from the Unofficial Metra UP North Line Twitter account, created by Tony Zale. Last February Tony spent a couple hours programming a Twitter syndication of the Metra Service Updates.

Here was the Tweet:

UPN TRAIN 339 SCHED TO ARV WAUKEGAN AT 5:45PM IS STOPPED NUST OUTSIDE OF THE ROGERS PK ST DUE TO A PEDESTRIAN INCIDENT.

It wasn't clear what was happening but any "incident" involving a train and pedestrian can't be good. Another Tweet:

ALL METRA UNION PACIFIC NORTH LINE TRAINS WILL BE STOPPED IN THE VICINITY OF ROGERS PARK DUE TO A PEDESTRIAN INCIDENT.

Then another:

CTA RED AND PURPLE LINE TRAINS TRAVELING BETWEEN WILMETTE AND CHICAGO IN BOTH DIRECTIONS WILL HONOR METRA TICKETS UNTIL 8:00 PM THIS EVENING.

At this point, I decided to change my plans and switch to the CTA. It is somewhat less convenient but I figured it was my best shot at getting home.

I walked into the Argyle Red Line station, but the attendant was unaware of the developing situation. I brought her up to date and was ready to show the mobile Tweet to prove it, but she just let me through.

The upshot is that I got home about 15 minutes later than scheduled. Were it not for Twitter I'd still be on the Ravenswood platform.

All in all, there were 14 Tweets about the incident, including this last one which I am reading from home:

METRA UPN OUTBOUND TRAINS TRAVELING TO WAUKEGAN AND KENOSHA ARE NOW ON THE MOVE AND ARE UP TO 110 MIN LATE.

Brilliant.

Earlier this month, I wrote a post entitled, "Caught in the jaws of the absurd" about a ticket the company received from the Chicago Police for having an alarm system that sent a false alarm (we don't have an alarm system). The only recourse was to send an employee to court.

Here is the letter I wrote to the precinct commander:


April 8, 2009

Ms. Lucy Moy-Bartosik, Commander
Chicago Police Department
5400 North Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, IL 60625

Dear Ms. Moy-Bartosik:

As a longstanding business in your precinct, I want to call your attention to an incident that happened at our business address on April 3rd.

Most of my staff had left but I was in the office finishing up some work. I heard the sound of an alarm going off in some other part of the building. After a few minutes the alarm stopped. I figured that it belonged to one of the two new businesses in the building.

At 6:30pm, I headed out and locked up. As I exited the building, I saw an Administrative Ticket stuck in the door handle. According to the ticket, it was written and left in the door 20 minutes prior.

It seems my company – Imaginary Landscape – has been cited for a false commercial alarm. I have no idea why the ticket was made out to Imaginary Landscape – perhaps it was because my company’s name appears first on the door. We do not now nor have we ever had an active alarm system. Had the officer taken a moment to ring the buzzer before issuing the ticket, I would have let him know.

I asked a staff member to call the appropriate department and let them know the issue does not involve Imaginary Landscape. However, it seems our only recourse is to go to court on this matter. Now, I must send someone downtown to sit in a courtroom and then inform a judge that we do not have an active alarm system.

We have been quietly doing business in this location for 9 years and this is a significant and unnecessary waste of time.

I would appreciate if you would let your staff know that we do not have an active alarm system. On behalf of all businesses, I would request that before issuing a ticket that requires a court appearance, that the Police verify the violating business to avoid inconveniencing incorrect businesses.

In the meantime, if you or any of your staff needs assistance with anything related to this building or the surrounding area, please drop by. We are often here and always have a pot of coffee on for Chicago’s Finest.

Sincerely,


Brian J. Moloney
Managing Partner

I had every expectation that this letter would be ignored. I was wrong.

Last Friday a Sergeant from the precinct dropped by the office. The officer was apologetic, explained the circumstances that led to the ticket and, on behalf of the Police Department, took responsibility for the mistake.

Unfortunately, he said that once the ticket is in the system, it can not be diverted from its final destination - a court room. So we must still dispatch a staffer to court.

He offered to write a letter to accompany the staffer. In this letter, he would presumably say something to the effect of "whoops."

So, it is still absurd that we have to go to court, but the sting has lessened. It's hard to maintain a head of steam when someone comes to you and raises his hand saying, "My bad. Sorry." Well, at least in the case of the government, where my expectations are so low going in, that I am filled with shock and awe that they would actually send someone to my door to apologize.

Still, it would be nice not to send someone to court. Nonetheless, it was a smart move by Commander Moy-Bartosik and I appreciate it.

"To be frank, from the beginning, I have felt that we have been the one being interviewed in this RFP process and not Imaginary Landscape. "

I just received this today as a reason we were eliminated from consideration for a prospect opportunity. It would seem that, in this case, asking too many questions was a fatal flaw.

Could that really be the reason?

Perhaps it was the way we were asking questions that reflected poorly on us. Condescending? Demanding? I reviewed the correspondence and spoke with the account manager who lead the opportunity but found no evidence of anything but professionalism.

In fact, what I found was evidence that my staff is doing the exact right thing - asking questions, probing, determining if we are a good fit for the prospect and them for us.

Yes, we are absolutely the interviewers. We must determine if there is a fit. Do we offer the best solution to their needs? The RFP was pretty good, but still there was much left unanswered.

Each step along the way we asked questions. Questions about the RFP, questions about the organization, questions about the process. In this case, there was stiffening resistance to our questions, deferring to the next step in the process.

The next step was a 60 minute conference call where we were encouraged to demonstrate our content management system and "set yourself apart from the rest." At this point the field of vendors was "only" six.

We did not feel we had enough information about the environment or the specific needs of the prospect to properly demonstrate a solution. We could have taken a submissive role in the process and competed on a commodity level. However, that sets us up, not as a trusted partner, but just a subservient vendor. Not a good customer profile for us. So we said we would like the conference call to gain a better understanding of the opportunity (e.g. ask some more questions).

The email continues, "I no longer feel that you are a good fit for us and rather than waste anyone's valuable time, I think it is appropriate to part ways at this point."

No argument here.