Jared Novack

Things I've Done

Upstatement Our work

In 2008 I started a design & technology firm with three friends from college. We're now a 40+ person agency in downtown Boston with clients all over the world.

Timber GitHub

Frustrated with how hard it was to build WordPress sites, I built a framework for doing it better. That code now powers sites for Upstatement and tens of thousands of sites around the world, including those for the PBS, Spotify and Barack Obama.

The Boston Globe & Houston Chronicle

I was the first newsroom developer at these newspapers. In my time I focused on building tools for the newsroom to multiply the power of producers and journalists to add visual and interactive content to their work. We also built some of the first live-data visualizations for the 2006 and 2008 elections.

The Daily Orange

My real education in college came from the student newspaper at Syracuse. We wrote, designed, broke stories, uncovered scandal, fought with administrators, managed a business — all without a single administrator or professor looking over our shoulders.

Podcasts I've Been On

Syracuse Alumni Conversations with my partners Mike and Tito, discussing the apps that Upstatement built in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

Pressing Matters on Timber and the importance of making the right technical architecture decisions.

Side Hustle to Small Business on how we grew Upstatement from a nights and weekends project into a full-time job for me (and the many other people who've joined our company since).

Talks I've Given

Fuck this Fucking Agile Bullshit Underneath the sprint reviews, pointing, and backlog groomings have we lost the true meaning of Agile? (Hint: we have)

Deploy First, Develop Later Deployment isn't a "last step" it should be the first step in a software development process to ensure the whole of the cycle is understood from the start

Positivity, Fuck Yeah! Being positive isn't about puppies, rainbows or even being nice — it's about describing your vision in a clear way instead of the things that "it's not."

The GTD Programming Language What do Tom Cruise, Will Smith and David Allen all have in common? If you said "IRS investigation" you're correct! But if you also said "a framework for organization and achievement" you're much closer to the relevant commonality behind this presentation.

Things I've Read

These are some of the books and articles that have mattered to me.

Homicide A Year On The Killing Streets

Nonzero The Logic of Human Destiny

Implementing Value Pricing

Why Buddhism is True

But How Do It Know? The Basic Principles of Computers for Everyone

Radical Candor

Wonderland How Play Made the Modern World

The Works Anatomy of a City

The Way to Go Moving by Sea, Land, and Air

Seinfeldia

Homo Deus

Messy The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives

The Heights Anatomy of a Skyscraper

The Skies Belong to Us Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking

Merger of the Century Why Canada and America Should Become One Country

Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future

Visual Explanations Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative

Please Don't Remain Calm Michael Kinsley Commentaries 1995 - 2008

The Information

The Looming Tower

The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories The Perry Bible Fellowship Collection

Traffic Why We Drive the Way We Do

First Light The Search for the Edge of the Universe