Having a bit of personality

Trello is a bit of software that essentially lets you organise things by putting them on cards you have to move to “done”. I use Trello a lot. By a lot, I mean incessantly. It is there running my family whether they like or know it or not and it runs my business and work life. I use this software so much I feel like I’m living inside of it. This is perhaps sad, and justifiably so, but how things work in this day and age with software guys like myself. Software is eating the world, to borrow a meme, and swallowing our lives. I don’t feel sorry about these guys doing it though.

I was once told, by an actual Greek guy, that “trello” means “crazy” in Greek. Apparently this wasn’t their intention though. The guys making Trello might just be crazy, just like it says on the tin, by talking about what they do in such an entirely antithetical way. In fact, it’s more about how they’ve thought about how they talk to the world about the stuff that they put out.

Notice one of their amazing App Store description pages. It was so good I saved it. When was the last time you did that?



They’re taking the piss completely. For anyone outside of the UK, certain Commonwealth countries and Ireland, this means that they’re making fun of something, in this case, themselves, End User Legal Agreements nobody ever reads, and the software industry in general. This by a bit of internet that over 12 million people use to organise things. At the end, they even advise sending a fax.

Why I like this so much is that it has personality. It’s human. In an age of mind-numbing, bland app videos with ukulele soundtracks and smiling people in the San Francisco sunshine, it is beyond refreshing – inspiring even. To see that someone out there making software realises that maybe we shouldn’t take the world or ourselves being so damn seriously.