The experience was worthwhile, and I learned a lot of good habits along with plenty of things I will forever know to avoid.  The most important takeaway is the value of good project management.  This doesn’t even have to do with following a particular development methodology — I am simply talking about having someone who is in charge of fostering and championing a clear vision of the product.  Someone with the time to keep the team organized and moving in the right direction.

Now that I’m out, though, I’m doing my best to hit the scalding hot summer ground running.  Between today and September I will be:

1. Working for a truly great startup called SpeakerText.  They provide interactive transcripts for online videos and I’m working on the transcript player.
2. Teaching a few friends how to create web applications (i.e. the art of PHP, MySQL, and jQuery), and working with them on a long-term pet project known to those that know me as The GPF (The Globally Personalized Forum).  It’s going to be a system for group-based-yet-still-personalized communication.
3. Watching the entire series of Battlestar Galactica for the first time.
4. Planning a wedding, spending time with my fiance before she has to leave for Spain, and finding an apartment in Cambridge before I have to move there for MIT.  You know, those little things.

Since it is 2:00 in the morning, I’ll abruptly end this ice breaker post with a comment:  If you have ever used Craig’s list to find apartments and said to yourself “damn it, I wish I could just see these things on a fracking map” then rejoice for Padmapper.com.