Those We Have Learned From and Admire
Humbled and Inspired by Brilliant, Serious People and Organizations
The great Isaac Newton once expressed his profound gratitude to the innumerable people he had learned from and whose work he built upon by saying that all of his accomplishments were because he was “standing on the shoulders of giants.” We are certainly no Isaac Newton. But the wisdom of his statement resonates deeply with us. As a mature company, we have developed certain ways of doing things and achieved some modest successes. But we can’t claim true originality or to have developed any of this completely on our own. For we have been privileged to have been taught and inspired by people and other organizations too numerous to mention. We want to acknowledge just a small subset below. This page is in-progress and always will be.
Companies We Admire
- Menlo Innovations Custom Software and Design, local to us in Ann Arbor. These folks do outstanding work. Led by Rich Sheridan, a compassionate business leader, technology visionary, riveting speaker, and a genuinely nice man.
- Atomic Object Software Development and Design, based in Michigan. Truly outstanding programmers, excellent methodologies, top-notch design. Serious professionals always.
- 8th Light Custom Software Development, working out of Chicago. Fantastic code jockeys, really great people. They run an apprentice program for young developers that we wish could duplicate.
People We Admire
- Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown, technology visionaries and first systematic researchers of calm technology.
- Amber Case, researcher, author, speaker and design leader. The foremost contemporary expert on calm technology. Her book on Calm Technology is a must read.
- Robert Wilson, visionary theater stage director, playwright, architect, and visual artist. Our founder Kirk Williams worked closely with Mr. Wilson many years ago but his influence continues to shape KW Works today. His brilliant design aesthetics, maniacal commitment to quality, and sheer grit and dedication to hard work are things we can’t fully match, but we can aspire to them. He taught us what those terms really mean.
- Stanley Cavell, recently passed away, but during his life arguably the greatest living American philosopher. Cavell was an early teacher of ours, and although he never wrote explicitly about digital technologies, his humanistic vision is a primary influence on our notions and practices of humanistic software development.
