Yesterday, however, was Basecamp's 5th birthday. I saw this and it really sums up why I'm such an evangelist for this great collaboration tool.
From Jason Fried's post:
"Today is a very significant day in the life of 37signals and Basecamp (and, indirectly, Ruby on Rails). Today Basecamp turns five years old.
We launched Basecamp with a post right here on Signal vs. Noise on February 4, 2004. No traditional PR blitz, no advertising, no real expectations of big success. Just a product and a post and “let’s see what happens.”
Basecamp was a side project. We were a web design firm at the time. We built Basecamp because our projects and client communications were a mess. We were using email to update our clients. That works for about 5 minutes, then goes from ripe to rotten pretty quicky.
We looked around at some of the industry standard project management tools at the time. The leader was Microsoft Project. We didn’t get it. Projects aren’t about charts, graphs, stats, and reports. Projects aren’t broadcasts. Projects are about people and communication and collaboration. Projects are about back-and-forth, give and take.
Collaboration, not management
We also didn’t really like the idea of “management.” Management is hard work. Management is administrative. Management gets in the way. Collaboration better described what we were after."
I second all that. Happy Birthday, Basecamp!
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