| what is a pyra?
Stuff
So, we had this internal website called stuff. It's a weblog. When I started working with Ev and Meg at the company they started, they had a few months worth of posts on this site. It was mostly filled with business type links and quotes. And some funny comments. They were working on a web project management system. It was a way for them to share information quickly. And when I joined the team, I got up to speed very quickly on what they had been discussing. It was a simple and wonderful example of the web working.
At this same time, the three of us had home-brewed scripts for automating our personal sites. We didn't even realize they were called "weblogs" yet. I think stuff was just another version of Ev's script for his personal site.
Pyra
We spent days theorizing about how people use information. We wondered about the best ways to give information context. We believed we could help people manage information more effectively with the web. Once we had a beta version it was hard to explain to people. We couldn't come up with an elevator pitch. People didn't get it when they saw it. Pyra was difficult. What's a Pyra? people would ask. We had trouble explaining. For a very few, something clicked when they used it. And these people became fans. (There may still be a few people using it.) And during this time, we posted to stuff. Our idle thoughts. Our profound emotional statements. Our dreams. Our frustrations. We knew it was magic. We would often say, "If we could just make stuff a product..." and drift off. "It's so simple," I'd think. "A form, and a web page. Anyone can build that."
After the Pyra beta was out, we thought it would be fun to share snippets from stuff with the outside world. We modified the script so that we could check off those posts that could be public. This public version of our internal site became our company weblog called PyrAlert. There was one hitch though; It was hosted on a remote server that we didn't have full access to. We couldn't simply install the normal weblog script on that machine. So we had to think.
Aha! We could use a server in the office to generate the complete page and send it via FTP it to the remote server. (that was my contribution to the genesis.)
A little while later we were at this Industry Standard rooftop party being anti-social and geeking out while all of the movers and shakers were moving and shaking (er, networking). [remember when you could get free beer all the time?] We were talking about this new thing. It didn't seem like a new thing to me. It seemed like a problem solved. Ev saw visions of greatness. He felt that tons of people would want to use this. I was very skeptical. "It's so simple," I kept repeating. Meg was keeping us focused on Pyra, though, so I figured this "updater" would remain one of the hundreds of unrealized ideas we threw around every day.
Blogger
Then Meg went on vacation. Ev and I spent a week drawing on the whiteboard and furiously coding this new thing. We used a lot of existing Pyra code. And the existing stuff code. Once I really got into it, it wasn't as simple as I had imagined. He insisted on calling it Blogger. (I didn't really like that name very much. But then I'm pretty boring. I would have called it Remote Update Weblog Script or something.) When we were finished, there it was: stuff for others. Pyra had a little brother.
A lot of times, Blogger was the problem child. Granted, it brought in a lot of new people to Pyra. (we saw it as a gateway app.) When people saw it, it instantly clicked. There was no need to explain it. And once people tried it they were hooked. Meg was reluctant to accept it, at first, and understandably so because it diverted our focus away from Pyra. But soon she brought her ideas to Blogger, and we all improved it. But we were splitting our energies between the two. I loved Blogger more than Pyra from the beginning. I would speak softly to Blogger when no one was around, "Don't worry, I won't let them put ads on you." or "I won't let them sell you," I would reassure. There was something just as magical about Blogger as there was with stuff. It was connecting us with people. And connecting people with people.
Then we ramped up. As people joined the team they were allowed into the secret world of stuff. It was the center of our culture. Matt Hamer gave Blogger a Java backend we ominously called "The Framework". Derek gave Blogger.com it's current jazzy look. At South by Southwest there were so many people who knew about our little project. It was overwhelming. I felt we were on the edge of something big. (or maybe I was drunk.) Matt Haughey joined the team. Jack joined the team. Everyone contributed an aspect of themselves to Blogger. People on the web were calling it the dream team. But inside, the dream was over. Or was it? (It wasn't...yet.)
It's kind of overwhelming to try to sum all of this up. So much happened. We built things and shared ideas. We became connected with so many wonderful people. The press liked our story. We were happy, mad, excited, bored, frustrated, energized, lazy, focused, driven, tired, alive. But that's basically the way it became the Blogger you see today.
What Now?
So, what is a Pyra? Well, Pyra (the application) is a treasure trove of ideas for future projects. Pyra (the company) that I knew is no more. The day that Meg left it was over for me. Things had been rocky since November, but that was the final moment. Because to me, Pyra (the company) was about the people. My friendships with them are the best thing about the experience. Like I said, stuff (the website) was our common culture. Now as we all move in different directions we'll need to find new ways to share our idle thoughts, our emotional statements, our dreams.
And we will.
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