I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the size of things. In doing so, I’ve decided that in many cases, smaller is better.

Community
I live in a small-ish town. No, I don’t live in one of those places out in the country with one stop light and 100 citizens. In comparison to my neighbor cities however, my town is pretty small. To put numbers around it, San Ramon has about 60k citizens, Oakland has about 400k, San Francisco has 800k citizens and San Jose is over 1 million strong. It feels like I have so much more of a connection to San Ramon versus my time living in San Jose and the south bay. I run into the same people in local stores, I’ve been following local politics and I can notice the ebb and flow of the community because I can get my arms around it. It’s natural when living in a larger city to feel a connection to your neighborhood or burrow, but my town feels small enough that I can connect with its entirety.

Writing
Reading more and more online has taught me to appreciate concise writing. Khoi Vinh’s latest experiement “A Brief Message” tackles exactly this issue. This blog invites members of the design community to write short posts. Its wonderful to read authors who have to get their point across in under 200 words. Keeping writing concise pushes you to get to the point. I find that trimming my writing down often makes me realize that I really don’t yet have a point quite yet, just a lot of blabber.

Update: I found out today about Brijit, a site dedicated to boiling long articles into 100 words (Apr 4, ‘08)

Commerce
Production of items on a smaller scale offers consumer more diverse products. There’s three areas where I see this having the most effect. First, I am loving the success of America’s micro brew industry. The quality and diversity of beer that is available is simply wonderful. I can walk into most any grocery store or bar and find at least one interesting beer available in a bottle or on tap. Ten years ago this was not at all the case. Sure, Bud and Miller and Coors are still prevelant, but increasingly I have good, no GREAT options. The numbers supporting this are staggering as well. Year over year, micro breweries are growing by double digits and don’t show signs of slowing.

Second, I like the explosion of customized products being sold online. Etsy is a leader in this space, offering a marketplace for handmade products. All of what you find on Etsy is unique, made by a craftsperson whom you can truly find a connection with. Others like Threadless and Cafepress and Timbuk2 are making headway in this space. The increased diversity of consumer products makes walking through a community so much more interesting. On the other side of this coin is the seller, and these companies are empowering small (tiny, really) entrepraneurs to start a profitable business.

Thirdly, I enjoy actively supporting smaller businesses. This is tied into my previous mention of feeling a connection to my community. I want to support locally owned an managed stores and services. I would much prefer that my town was dotted with local restaraunts, bars and boutique stores. Living in a suburb makes this especially difficult as national chains and big box stores are attracted here. Nonetheless, I can make decisions on where to shop and dine and have been doing so with good success. I tend to get better service and a better experience from the small, local shop. There’s something powerful about keeping money circulating within my small community.

Companies
My last point is on keeping business small. I work for a small consulting firm, about 35 people. It’s just the way I like it. I found quickly at my last job, also a small firm, that this is a type of place for me. A small company has the ability to empower and respect the individual. Large companies inherently can not focus on each employee in the same way because personal touch doesn’t really scale. Sure, you can setup processes and policies to give awards from the CEO and to allow ideas to bubble up from the bottom, but it usually comes out feeling phoney. At a company of our size, I can have as big a voice as every other employee. I can directly affect the performance of the firm and directly reap rewards of success. Of course, there’s also the personal connections to be made at a smaller company which I found much harder to establish when working amongst 10k or 100k employees. Small companies can support small projects as well. A project with a controlled footprint has a much higher likelyhod of success. There’s less at stake and therefore fewer stakeholders to muck stuff up. Small projects are easier to define, so you know when you are done and you know if you were successful or not. I’m not saying that work should be inconsequential. Small projects should absolutely have meaning on their own, but string together 4 or 5 small projects and you are tackling something big.