Jorge Arango of BootStudio writes in about his team's use of 37signals products:
About our company
BootStudio creates and manages engaging websites for large organizations in Central America (and beyond). We have a passion for simple, eloquent, standards-based interfaces that get the job done with a minimal amount of fuss. We've been around since 1995, when Internet access was starting to become commercially available in this region, so ours was one of the first web design firms in this part of the world.
The 37signals products we use, and why we like them
Ours is an (almost) entirely web-based business. We manage our day-to-day work on the 37signals suite (along with Google Apps and a few other web-based apps):
- Basecamp is our main project management space; it's where we share files, project notes, deadlines, pending tasks, checklists, etc. We love that all members of each project team—including clients—can have access to the latest information at any time, from anywhere.
- Highrise is where we manage everything "meta" about the company: contract negotiation, business development, human resources issues, etc. Most of these threads are centered on people, so Highrise makes an excellent control center and filing cabinet for these activities.
- Backpack is our intranet. It's where we update each other on our availability ("working remotely this afternoon"), document processes, and interesting news and developments about our industry.
- We also use Campfire as a replacement for IM, although much of our use of this app been overtaken by Backpack's Journal feature.
Last but certainly not least,
- Getting Real has been influential in the way we think about our work. Central America is a "developing market": a euphemism that means that expectations are high, and budgets low. We've had to learn to be nimble and efficient, and the Getting Real ethos has inspired and influenced us.
We like that the 37signals applications have consistent, elegant interfaces; it's been very easy for us to get new team members up-to-speed. The apps also have a well-considered feature set that strikes a smart balance between power with usability. For example, while Backpack isn't as flexible as Google Sites (which we evaluated, given we'd paid for it as part of Google Apps), the former provides the features we need without the complexity that comes with the richer feature set of the latter. We've found that with a bit of ingenuity we can do pretty much anything with these tools. (The one thing we haven't been able to work around is that the app UIs are presented exclusively in English. While this hasn't been too much of a problem for our clients, we can see it becoming more of an issue as we start doing more business with folks in other Spanish-speaking regions.)
