What’s On Your Desk? With Telly Koosis
Note: What’s On Your Desk? is a series of interviews with friends who are doing interesting things. The dialogue always starts off the same way, by asking the subject to describe their workspace. The sixth in our series is the sunglassed Telly Koosis, who I met on the first day of fifth grade. We played basketball together, made flamethrowers out of hair spray and pretended we were astronauts at Space Camp. Telly was the consummate connector, always developing fun adventures and getting people to see things in a new way, even when we were 10. This makes him sound like a cult leader, perhaps, but he did have a magnetism that seemed like it was a part of his original equipment. When I left to go to a different middle school in seventh grade I didn’t see him for about 15 years but recently reconnected through my brother-in-law and Telly’s old buddy, Steve Jelinek. Now Telly is a grown up fifth grader, bending code and design and all sorts of stuff at Odopod in San Francisco during the day and planning barbecues at his garden manse in Emeryville in his free time. He is brilliant, inventive and eternally good spirited despite the crowd he keeps. Also, he keeps a rather nice little blog.
What’s on your desk?
Disclaimer: I just moved, so my desk is rather perfectly clean and organized. If you would’ve asked me this question in a month, it’d prob be a completely different picture. (Ed. note: as this interview was conducted over many months due to the author and subject’s incredible lack of focus, what you see in the description below is largely absent from the photograph above. No matter, carry on).
Not sure how detailed you want me to be but here goes (sweeping from left to right):
- Lenovo 15” T61 Lappy: When I’m at home the lappy is used it as a secondary computer where I have my mail open, Meebo and other tabs. I connect it to my main machine (desktop) via synergy so I can use the same mouse / keyboard for both.
- Old SATA Cable Box: Used to have all cables related to the internals of a computer (I build my own) in this box. Now it’s proved handy for things requiring my immediate action, like bills. Well, mainly bills. Ok ok. It’s a small slender box full of just bills. And due to their “immediate” status I put them in a box. Somehow that makes complete sense to me.
- Organizer: It’s a nothing special, brown leather box that’s neatly stuffed with stamps, envelopes, a handful of thin dvd cases (plastic & paper types) and an old but clean Illy Espresso container with Pens/Pencils. Yes, good ol’ non-mechanical pencils with separate erasers and a manual sharpener too (see sketchpad below).
The following are all resting a homemade monitor platform made out of books and a pilfered wooden shelf:
- Samsung SyncMaster 213T, silver: Got this monitor years ago and is one of the products that has made me loyal to the brand.
- Small Weeping Buddha: Got this wooden piece 10 yrs ago when I was lucky enough to return to Europe. I bought it from a store in a Western neighborhood of Amsterdam proper. The store had them in sizes ranging from the one I have (fist sized) all the way up to huge (bath tub sized). Half of it is bleached by the sun from its times on the window sill instead of my desk. I don’t really know what it’s supposed to represent or the story behind the statue. Regardless, it’s one of the things I’ve always kept with me and I dig it because it reminds me of why I work so hard: to travel. Yeah, it’s a classic means to an end type story.
- Rubber Ball ala Toby from the West Wing: This ball was purchased with the intention that I’d actually use it to reduce stress. Instead, I pick it up every now and again (once a month) toss to each hand a couple times then then put it back down into the monitor stand where it stays until next month.
- Metallic Lamp: The AC Adapter for the lamp that’s normally on my desk busted somehow so in the meantime I have this one. There’s a canister of Bali Shag tobacco (sigh) resting on its base.
- Homemade Coaster: Some one a while ago took pictures of punk bands. The black and white prints came out all messed up so they were turned into coasters. I’ve had it a while and it’s coffee stained to perfection. It’s been known to hold cups of water and other beverage types as well.
- Large Sketchpad: To be precise, this one. This is probably the most useful item on my desk. Before, during, and after every project I’m constantly writing in it. Notes, to-do lists, data modeling, UX flow sketches. I use a pencil and erase a lot. It’s also good for keeping Scrabble scores and Indian food delivery orders, mmm naan.
And to complete the freakish-level of detailing, the books holding up the shelf (resulting in equal heights) are:
* Left side:
o Spot of Bother
o Physics of Immortality
o How to Solve It
* Right Side
o God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
o Guns, Germs, and Steel
o Synthetic Worlds
Right on. Like a few of my friends, you seem to be a mix of coder and designer. How did you get into this and what do you like about what you do today?
Not surprisingly, a lot of what I do professionally today is a direct result of being in the right place at the right time and who I met along the way.
I got a Human Computer Interaction degree from DePaul and it set the foundation. Not only was I was exposed to a lot of industry disciplines (Dev, Design, User Experience (UX), Information Architecture (IA), etc) but also ones like physics, philosophy, and psychology. In the end, I gravitated towards development but that holistic exposure has had a permanent lasting effect.
In school, I became friends with way-too-talented programmers who shared a love of video games. Most things I know today about Networking/IT stems from setting-up multi-player/lan games. Those same friends worked for IT Services and eventually I did too.
The real luck came when I had to fulfill my internship requirements for school. Through friends, I lucked out and found an opportunity with a start-up interactive company. The company was created by five extremely talented individuals all bringing an overwhelming amount of experience to the table. I essentially had access to industry leaders in UI Design, IA, UX , Application Architecture & Development, Account Management, and much more. I quickly found my mentors (and some closest of friends to this day) who taught me by doing. They let me hang around beyond just the internships required hours so I soaked up all I could. I watched, listened, learned, and coded like a mad man. Being a newbie in a real-world environment and having these quality resources around me were invaluable in learning. They also showed me what it meant to be a professional, how to produce quality code/work, and have a sense of pride in your craft. I’m pretty sure I have them to thank for my workaholic tendencies too.
As time went on, I got deeper into development as a contractor but also sought out participation in UX, IA, and Design.
A couple years ago I left a Technical Director position because, while I learned a lot, I became unsatisfied with playing the role. Moving on gave me the opportunity to think about what I really enjoy doing in the industry.
I enjoy asking the core questions; the essence of an idea. I’m fascinated by the process of taking ideas, distilling them down into understandable parts then developing and integrating them as a functional system.
I thrive on collaboration: brainstorming ideas with others, critiquing designs, hacking at problems, and discovering creative solutions.
What I do today has come about in a very natural way and through that discovery I’ve really been able to identify the things I enjoy doing the most.
I’ve learned that a lot of people have the gift of finding the environments that meet their needs and goals, even if they don’t know what either of them are at the time. This might apply to you, it seems, but you likely displayed some of those same traits (finding the essence of an idea) when you were younger. Do you remember something (completely not business related) from your youth where you essentially played with the same set of philosophies / tools?
I’ve always been a social person, especially when I was younger. I think that might be a part of why I enjoy collaboration nowadays. That setting is very appealing to me. Gather a bunch of smart people whose company you enjoy (we’ll call them “friends”), and try to make things happen. Set the stage and see what comes of it. It works for me in any context and at any age: making forts in the woods, trying to sleep in the Sahara, or creating an unique web-based application.
When I was younger, I would organize activities like scavenger hunts and journeys around the lake. We’d plot our route, pack provisions, take off and explore. With the scavenger hunts, most times I’d be the one to create it and plan it all out. In retrospect, I guess I’ve always gotten great satisfaction from creating something from nothing, seeing how all the smaller parts can fit together, having a say in how things get done. Maybe I’m addicted to organizing, but I think it more about the experiences that come from it.
Translated later in life, those experiences are what makes traveling so self-gratifying. Allowing myself to simply zone out and observe how different places function and how other people live is really relaxing to me. And the planning is almost as enjoyable as the trip itself.
Growing up, I also had a lot of exposure to video games since my family’s business was in vending machines. There were all types around like pinball, arcade games, and then consoles and desktop games. So I was pretty heavily immersed in random story-lines and strategies.
All this definitely cultivated my present day nerd.
What is the best way to get groups of people — especially when they’re not in the same place — to work on a project successfully from your experience?
For me, getting people together is all about finding cheap (ideally free) tools that make communication clearer and getting stuff done more efficient. Minimizing overhead is always a concern, but there still are a lot of choices available. Staying on top of what’s out there keeps the search easier.
A new app has to satisfy what’s important to me: If the UI/UX isn’t astute or if the brand is annoying or if the design dominates or if performance is shoddy, it’ll be hard for me to stick with it no matter how useful the service. I prefer web-based applications since they’re inherently location independent. You find a lot of crap but every once and a while you find something valuable and get excited about it and want to share. That’s why I then tell my fellow nerd friends about it. We’re always on the look out for tools that improve or ones that satisfy a new need. We each have our own perspective filters which makes the collective feedback very useful to me. Sharing is caring, yeah?
Since I love lists, here some tools/services I’m using lately:
- Dropbox - File sharing, version control, and collaboration. The install is quick and syncing is seamless. The cost-per-gig isn’t friendly for large backs ups, but if you’re on top of archiving projects when done, you can typically stay in the free range.
- Google Apps Standard Ed. - Free domain mail hosting, free collaboration tools (spreadsheets, docs, presentations, etc): I use it all, everyday and at no cost. I’m OK with it all in the Goog-verse.
- Google App Engine / App Engine Patch - Free scalable application hosting
- Colabolo - Air-based application, not free any more but a great light weight issue tracker management tool for projects
- Basecamp or ActiveCollab - Neither are free anymore either, but their robustness and usefulness should justify the expense.
- Skype - The phone still remains a proper communication method.
- Gliffy - Web-based diagram software
Of course, there’s always email, but it’s often tedious and has the potential to get you into trouble (lack of tone, inappropriate medium for the topic, etc.).
With that in mind, the tool that trumps all the rest: Being in the same room with a white board, fresh markers, a sturdy eraser, and bunch of ideas to hash out; That’s the good stuff.
