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Everything Atomic, from culture and people to events and reviews

Thoughts on Consolidation

By Scott Miller | Published: February 18, 2012

What do the following enterprises have in common: Automobile manufacturing Banking Garbage collection Hardware sales Video rentals Give up? Each of them, at one time, were nascent industries populated chiefly by small, local, mom & pop style businesses. Also in common: they are all now dominated by a small handful of mega corporations[1]. Is it…

Also posted in Business of Software, Culture | 1 Comment

How do you build a positively charged feedback loop?

By Micah Alles | Published: February 17, 2012

People like to hear they’re doing a good job. They don’t like to hear that they’re falling short. This conflict makes it difficult to implement an effective, comprehensive system for feedback in an organization. Another more difficult problem is leadership lacking data on the positive things an employee is contributing to the organization.

Also posted in Culture, Startups | Tagged feedback, management, startup | 1 Comment

Be Memorable. Everyday.

By Mary O'Neill | Published: February 13, 2012

This month I lost my dad. He was a wonderful, imperfect man who was lucky to have lived a long, full life. In my sadness, I’ve been pondering somber topics like my own mortality. I’ve been asking myself what I might want people to remember about me after I shuffle off this mortal coil. My…

Also posted in Reviews | Tagged culture | 2 Comments

Objection is over 1 year old

By Justin DeWind | Published: February 13, 2012

Objection, the dependency injection library initially written for the iOS application SideReel, is over a year old. Shawn Anderson and I created it when he candidly pointed out how awkward my previous attempts at Dependency Injection were in Objective-C (NIB, manual construction, factory methods). Shawn’s honesty (something we all appreciate here at AO) motivated me…

Also posted in Culture, Languages, Mobile, Pairing, Uncategorized | Tagged cocoa, Dependency Injection, IOC, iOS, objection, objective-c | 2 Comments

Prepping for the Pitch

By Matt Fletcher | Published: February 11, 2012

About a week ago I had a wonderful opportunity – I gave one of the five pitches at the January 2012 5×5 Night. Mike Marsiglia, myself, and three others have been working on a side product for about a year now1 and I pitched it at 5×5. We were planning to use the money to…

Also posted in Events | Tagged grand rapids, lean startup, talks | 1 Comment

The Ethics of Our Gadgets

By Will Ryan | Published: February 10, 2012

There’s been a lot of news lately regarding Apple and its relationship with manufacturers and suppliers, particularly Foxconn. A lot of Atoms are big Apple junkies, but as a group we are very into sustainability, so of course it was quite troubling to hear that my iPhone might be the result of someone’s back-breaking shift…

Also posted in Community, Culture, News | Tagged Apple, ethics, foxconn, manufacturing | 1 Comment

Balancing Fatherhood & Software Development

By Greg Williams | Published: February 3, 2012

In my early twenties, I had the privilege of playing PT Barnum in a community theatre production of the musical Barnum. In that musical, I was brave enough to learn to juggle and walk a tightrope, 6 feet off the ground, in AirWalks. I picked up juggling rather quickly. But the tightrope was unlike anything I had…

Also posted in Culture | Tagged culture, fatherhood | Leave a comment

Your Business Will Fail Without Maintenance and Improvement

By Jordan Schaenzle | Published: February 1, 2012

Even since cavemen invented the wheel, people have been using specially designed tools to make their work and their day-to-day lives simpler. Can you think of a single profession today that does not benefit from the use of a tool of some kind? In an ideal world, a tool would be something that you invest…

Also posted in Culture, Iterative Development, Process & Practices, Risk, Tools, Workplace | Tagged business, maintenance, TDD, tools | Leave a comment

Thank You Economic Gardening Team

By Michael Marsiglia | Published: January 27, 2012

Late last year, Atomic was selected to participate in the Pure Michigan Economic Gardening Pilot Program. The program offered expert business consulting for growing companies. We focused the opportunity on Atomic’s strategic growth goal of opening an office in Detroit.

Also posted in News | Tagged detroit, econ gardening, medc | Leave a comment

A New App Marketplace: Your Car

By Nick Christensen | Published: January 26, 2012

January is a great time to be a geek. Even better if you’re also a car geek, because January is the month of both CES and the North American International Auto Show. New technologies continue to permeate every corner of our lives, and the car has never been an exception. It’s fitting then, that these…

Also posted in News | 6 Comments