What Should You Build? - Flourish! 2011
Channel: Flourish Conference
Date: 26/01/2014

Flourish! 2011
Chris McAvoy is the VP technology of Threadless, is the founder of the Chicago Python Users Group, and a longtime advocate of open source software in Chicago. He helps build tools that allow artists submit designs that become great shirts at Threadless.

Talk Description: Organizations have a lot of options when they're trying to fix a problem.  The eternal question is: do we build this, or do we use existing software to fix it?  Hackers love to build, but sometimes it's best to realize your strengths and build to those, rather than spending valuable energy fixing problems that have been well solved by other smart people.  I'll provide a basic framework for making these sorts of decisions that focuses on discovering your strengths, rather than chasing rabbits.

The presentation is based on decisions we've had to make at Threadless on a daily basis, whether to continue to build our own web framework, or rely on open source packages that do exactly what we need them to.