For quite a while we’ve lamented the lack of whiteboards in our office and talked about getting some in. A week or two ago Brett actually arranged it and so I’ve wound up with a lovely big whiteboard above my desk that I happily draw all over. I’ve always been a big fan of whiteboards for problem solving or brain storming sessions, even if I’m working alone. Something about the big open space and ease of erasure makes it so much better than paper.

The other cool feature of my whiteboard is that it’s ferrous – or at least it would be cool if I had any actual magnets to stick on to it. After a tour around the every likely source of magnets I could find at the local shopping mall without finding anything suitable1, I turned to the internet. Turns out I found a company that not only is seriously into internet marketing, they also have some seriously cool looking magnets.

So, at this point I need to explain that I am absolutely selling my soul – I mentioned these guys were into internet marketing – they actually give free magnets to anyone with a page rank of at least 1 that links to their site. Frankly they are a seriously cool looking type of refrigerator magnet and I want some. So hopefully, that link there is my ticket to a whiteboard with magnetic push pins that are strong enough to hold a hammer (I’m hoping they’re easy to lever off the whiteboard again…). Seriously, go click that link just to see the picture of the hammer.

Now the downside of these magnets in a software development environment is that they are really strong and so quite likely to wipe hard drives, damage monitors etc. I’m going to have to sort out some way to protect my laptop which sits right under the whiteboard, but the ability to stick story cards on the board and be able to write notes around them, circle them in various colors etc is just too desirable to miss so I’ll find a way.

I am also a little disturbed by my inclination to want to start a magnet collection. The other downside is that I’ve just set the price of my soul at a half dozen cool looking magnets. Combine that with few people taking the initiative to send me cool looking magnets2 and the space on my whiteboard and my blog may suddenly be filled up…

1 – I did find one packet of alphabet magnets but as cool as they are, they didn't look like they'd be useful for sticking things to the whiteboard↩

2 – Just send them to our office, preferably the Australian one but they'll get to me eventually either way.↩