When we first started kicking around ideas this past Spring, we weren’t completely sure what this partnership was going to yield. Matthew has loads of experience with real-world usability testing and interface design, corporate politics, and communicating with people who don’t know what you’re talking about. Paul has a Masters degree in Management Information Systems so he does “all that stuff” extremely well, he is a true technologist with multiple languages under his belt, and also is enamored with online communication and information architecture. I like to make things work better – and those things may include user interfaces, backend code for a content management system, or an unruly IA that doesn’t handle the site well anymore. So those are a quick overview of our best skills, but what now?
Saving Some Benjamins
There are lots of ways for your business to save money, no matter what size it is. We’re small business owners ourselves, so we know first-hand what you or your company may be going through.
Your business needs proper software and technology in order to function most effectively, however don’t get into the mindset that you “have” to purchase a full Oracle license to run a small database, or that you “have” to purchase Vignette in order to have a dynamically-powered website. There are tons of tech-alternatives out there that may fit your need without bursting your budget. Note: These recommendations are in no way tied to product endorsements or advertising. We just wanted to give you some ideas of how to save your company’s money — keep in mind that these solutions may not fit your business needs, so your mileage may vary.
Database
If you run a small ecommerce website where you don’t have thousands and thousands of people simultaneously querying the database, why not switch to MySQL? For small- to medium-sized databases it performs just as well as the big guys, but at a fraction of the cost. And by fraction, I mean it’s free. It still runs standard SQL, so you don’t need to learn anything proprietary to use it.
OS and Web Server
If your company isn’t neck deep into ASP or .NET development, why not move to Linux? If you have a small tech team, and performance and stability is at the front of your mind (and what else would be?), then you may be able to save your company money by moving to an open source operating system. No more expensive product upgrades, no more serial number nightmares, no more huge security holes or nasty viruses (for the most part). Now that you’re running Linux, you can move over to Apache and bask in it’s warm, beautiful glow. Apache runs the world’s largest websites, so I’m sure that it’s good enough for yours. It’s amazingly stable and extensible, and you’d be hard-pressed to find something you want to do with it that’s not already documented on the internet somewhere.
Content Management
D. Keith Robinson moved an entire hospital’s intranet to MovableType — software that is traditionally thought of as a “weblog tool”. Nope, not anymore. You can use weblog software (such as the free and open-source WordPress, among others) to power your entire company’s website. Distributed authorship, workflow publishing, version control, and easy updating without shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for commercial content management systems. Companies are making the switch to low-cost solutions such as MovableType and WordPress everyday, so why not give it a shot?
Phone Calls
The Business Logs team is physically separated — Paul’s in Florida, Matthew’s in Illinois, and I’m in Virginia (for now). Sometimes chatrooms just aren’t enough, so instead of killing our cellphone bills, we just fire up iChat, hook up an Audio connection, and chat away. Now all you pay is the cost of an internet connection, and you can have real-time voice conversations with anyone in the world for free.
These are just a few tips for saving money, they may not work for you, but on the other hand they may save you thousands of dollars.
Blogger Burnout
Blogs can become addictive for both readers and writers. Once you start to maintain a successful blog, you will find that it can be hard to walkaway from it. When the pressure from your community to continuously update builds to a level you can’t handle, you begin to suffer “Blogger Burnout”.
Wired.com has an article concerning “Blogger Burnout” and I recommend that you go read it. Effectively what it shows is how powerful a force a blog can become for the person who maintains it and the community that reads it.
Could you imagine a community being this passionate about a blog your company maintains? It’s possible. However, all the people mentioned in the article share a passion for writing on their blogs and therefore it is easy to see why they are so popular. I have written about passion and this article shows the negative effects of it.
If you are going to write daily on your blog over an extended period of time you have to understand that the readers of the site are going to expect writings daily. I am sure the majority of Kottke’s readers would like for him to write daily, but understand that this isn’t the case because his writing schedule has been more of an almost daily instead of consistently daily.
If your company decides to start a blog a key decision is how frequently you will write for it as this will dictate the mindset of your readers. Make sure that the individual or team that is going to maintain the blog is capable of keeping up with the schedule and that their passion for it does not die, because once it does the burnout sets in.
Michael Moore’s Weblog
It’s always great to see celebrities moving towards the weblog medium as a way to connect with their audience. I recently discovered Michael Moore’s weblog through a path down a variety of links, and am pretty excited to see what he talks about. Will it be solely political? Will it talk about exact figures he’s pulling down from the success of his new movie? Will he talk about taking out the trash last night, or how cute his dog is?
Only time will tell.