Learning Mashups While Landscaping

I often get asked about 'best practices' when implementing enterprise mashups.  So my compadres and I often write about tips, techniques, and guidelines, both here on the Mashup Developer Community and on our corporate blog.  And recently I came up with an easy way to remember some of the more important best practices.

I spent most of my last 2 weekends moving 11 cubic yards of mulch. For those of you who have never encountered such a beast, check out the picture (that's after 5+ hours of work). 

'Mulch Mountain', as I call it, is the equivalent of over 300 full wheel barrels of mulch. At ~20 pitch-forks loads per barrel, that's over 6,000 'bend and lifts'.  Yes, 6,000.  Yes, my back hurts.

So, during my suffering work, my mind started to wander.  And I had a thought: there are a lot of parallels in the best ways to mulch and mash...

1st lesson: Bring your friends.  Mulching is simply more efficient and certainly more fun in a group.  In mashing, the exact same reasoning applies.  If you are mashing alone, you are getting 1/3 of the value of mashing.  Afterall, how are you going to reuse other people's mashups if there are no other people?

2nd lesson: Tools matter.  Professional landscapers know that there are many tools and they all have their uses.  In mulching, you want to use a pitchfork; it beats a shovel hands down.  In mashing, you could use an ESB or portal to mash, but it'd be simply more work for less results.  The best tool for mashing is an enterprise mashup platform (like Presto, of course).

3rd lesson: Technique matters too.  'Bend with your knees, not your back.'  We hear this all the time from exercise gurus but it's easy to forget.  In mashing, proper technique is important too.  We've talked about the 5Cs of Enterprise Mashups and 3 Parts of Mashing for quite a while.  Learn these techniques and then IMPLEMENT them!

4th lesson: Plan for the long haul.  My wife would KILL me if I decided that 1/2 of the mulch pile stayed in our driveway until next spring.  The 300th barrel of mulch is as important as the 1st one (arguably more so).  The same is true in mashing: it isn't about your 1st mashup but a virtous circle that leads to many mashups.

5th lesson: You can do it in ANY climate.  I mulched in the sun and I mulched in the rain.  Today's business climate is similar: one month you are in a hot industry, the next you are concerned about closing the doors for good.  Mashing is the same: your organization can adopt enterprise mashups whether you are trying to cut/save time/money or grow into new markets.

Final lesson: It can be very rewarding.  The best beer I've had in months was at the end of 8 straight hours of mulching.  In mashing, there can also be huge paback: every mashup may hold that golden nugget of information that determines your organization's entire strategic direction.  That's the kind of potential payoff every piece of software should have.

There's more but I gotta get back to my mulch.  Mulch/mash on.