Continuing on the Tuesday push initiative.
Managing designers is like herding cats, you can lead them… ooh! that’s shiny… sorry where was I?
As designers we tend to underestimate the amount of time it takes to do something. I believe it is because we love what we do and as the saying goes time flies when you are having fun. I am sure if we were filling forms for a living we would be counting the minutes.

On a personal level that is fine. But professionally it will not do. It effects how long you think a job will take. Which has a knock on effect to delivery times and client relations. Cash flow gets hurt as well as what you are invoicing for at the end of the month. Your first instinct is that you must work harder to deliver on time and bring in more money. What you should be doing is working smarter.

This year Spoiltchild has been on a mission to focus and become better and more efficient at what we do. For the last six months we have been looking closely at our time and ways to track it better. We have tried paper, excel sheets, web apps and big sticks all to varying levels of success. What we have recently settled on is 1Time Tracking, a web based time tracking system.

I was pretty amazed at what I found when I began tracking my own time. As a manager of the team I got to see a realistic report of how much actual design time I have each week. A figure which was much less then I expected. Which would explain all the late evenings I was having to put in to complete the workload I was taking on.
But perhaps even more scary was what the team as a whole began to see. We were loosing out on a large hunk of money each month for work we were just not charging for. You got to see just how much little jobs and tweaks and were adding up to.

How it works is simple. You add in your clients and projects (or simply import all these from Basecamp as we did). Keep a browser window open through out the day with 1time open and record all your activity throughout the day. The big stick comes into play at the end of each day as 1time automatically send out an email reminder to each of the team if they forgot to record their time.

It sounds simple and it is however not every application out there manages to do it right. And trust me we tried a lot. 1time succeed in not getting in your way and providing you the information and options when you need them. It’s not perfect by any means. Having tried a few of the competing applications in this space there are some features I would very much love in 1time. First of those would be a desktop widget/timer. But overall 1time offers a fuller set of functionality then any I have tried and it better suited us as a design and development company. And Derek Organ, the main man behind 1time was nice enough to listen to my feature requests and let me know they are coming soon.

So thanks to 1time we are now:
Charging properly for the work we are doing.
Estimating our time better.
Getting a better overview of what we are all working on.
Have happier clients.
And a happier team as we can all manage to get home on time.

We stated off on the free plan to try it out. When we liked what we found we upgraded to a paid plan to give the entire team access.

Comment [1] | Business | 15/07/08 11:25 PM

Toddle and the Spoiltchild team got a nice mention in the Irish Independent newspaper and Silicon Republic today.
The piece focuses on the Irish tech start up scene and how they find finance for their business.

You can read it here.

| Business | 10/07/08 09:52 AM

I am in the process of writing a beginners guide to simple email marketing and i am looking for some personal practical experiences of people trying it in the real world. If you have any stories that you think might inspire others to try it, warn them what not to do or just a simple tip that you find works for you i would love you to share. I cant promise i can include everything in this article but there are many more due over the next year. Every story will be fully attributed (or you can be anonymous if you wish, just email me).

A great example is Jim Brady of Brady wines. He put a small ad in the local paper and front window offering a free wine course by email. He sent out a short email every couple of weeks to each subscriber telling them about wine. He simply used the information cards provided by the wine dealers about what each type of wine and how to identify them. The cards were normally on display in the shop and Jim added a little of his own opinion also. So when the subscribers wanted a good bottle of wine to bring to a friend’s house they knew to go to Jim. Subscribers were armed with the right knowledge to talk about wine over dinner which in turn helped to attract new customers.

An example of what not to do was demonstrated by the The Goldenspider awards who were fined €500 last month for spamming Maryrose of Brightspark.

So what works for you?

Comment [1] | Toddle | 02/01/08 11:39 AM

As Toddle gets closer to going live and the trip to Silicon Valley looms we have been looking closely at what kind of investment we might look for and how exactly should we structure ourselves in preparation. Our goal for Spoiltchild is to build great products, grow them to great businesses and then spin them out on their own. An internal incubation space. With Toddle coming out we would like(but don’t need) a cash injection to help bring the application to market relatively quickly. If we do pursue investment in Toddle how should we structure the company to do that. If its to be just Toddle should we spin it out to its own Limited Company now with Spoiltchild Ltd as the main shareholder . What would be the Tax implications of transferring a new product with no revenues between companies. Or do we look for investment in Spoiltchild Ltd itself combined with the other products we have in the pipeline for future release? Is BES attractive to all Irish investors or only some. If we look for more then the current BES limits would an investor invest some through BES and the rest outside it?

I guess its time to talk to an expert. Any suggestions?

Comment [1] | Spoiltchild | 29/10/07 05:48 PM

Its a very late night of working, i am tired so it is very possible i am just not seeing it.
I received two renewal notices this week for a couple of .ie domains I own. After clicking the link provided i cant for the life of me find anywhere to hand over my money.
I am after spending 20 minutes clicking through every link and tab available and despite plenty of notices that renewal is due, no option to pay. I am going to have to ring their accounts tomorrow and pay over the phone.

A few suggestions:

• If you are providing a link in your email for me to pay, have it go directly to a payment screen with my details and the domain details pre filled.
• Is logging in to my account necessary at this stage? Only i got the email with the url for that domain and would i really pay for a domain that’s not mine?
• If you really can only provide a url for the homepage put in a big image link with “Renew here” that will bring me to a payment screen.

I wonder how their renewals compare to the other hosting companies.

UPDATE: I guess they know about the problem. Their automatic reply from support contains a link to the renewal form.

Comment [1] | Business | 09/10/07 03:55 AM

After reading Seth Godins book on Permission Marketing i began looking for a way to set that up a useful resource around Sheepstealer Clothing to keep people sticking around. Then after reading Mike Arringtons views on niche social networks and and speaking to Marc Canters at IT@Cork last year it seemed the obvious choice.

So here is Irelands first GAA specific Social Network.

Its powered by Ning which so far i have found great.

Comment [1] | Business | 21/07/07 01:19 PM

We are close to closing on some office space ending our 2 years as a virtual office. I am absolutely delighted to be honest. I would like to say it was an experiment but it was really necessity born out of being a cash strapped start up. While working from home has its benefits, to grow effectively and work efficiently there is nothing better then being in the same room. It will also be great to have a dedicated work space and a clear differentiation between work and home life. Its been a big focus of mine over the last 6 months to improve work life balance.

However when we move we will be keeping all our organisational tools as they are. So here is an over view of what we use.

First of all is email of course. Simple, fast and everyone can use it. We have the key accounts, info, support etc. forwarding to a Gmail account for everyone to read. I will show you shortly how the team get access to that.

Next is Basecamp from 37Signals. This is our main project management tool and I would be lost without it. It manages our internal projects and those with our clients. Its simple, effective and every client we have thrown it at has picked it up straight away.

We have a particular way we structure a project that works for us.
Through settings we place all the main project links on the dashboard for easy access. And we categorise message under the following headings.

• Design


• Code


• Market research
  I am lazy when it comes to market research, but it can often be a long term project anyway as you get to know the market you gradually improve your search terms.

  

  I have a simple effective trick, set up a few Google alerts for your key search terms and let Google deliver your market research to you. I then use Basecamp for copying and pasting links and notes to build up a full picture of the market. It means that when I hopefully bring on a marketing person in the future I can just direct them to that link on Basecamp.



• Features and wish lists
  This keeps track of all current features and spec but allow encourages everyone in the project to pitch and record ideas for future versions of the project which hopefully you will be called back for if it’s a client project.


• General


• Usernames and passwords
  All usernames and passwords associated with a project such as server access, ftp, admin, stats tracking, email accounts etc.


• Promotion
  Similar to Market research I keep an eye out for effective promotion techniques and ideas being used by other companies and I take note of them.
  Keep an eye on the advertising blogs for this.

We use the to-do list for our project plan and split it into point versions containing key features.
We then check these off as we work and it gives the team a nice sense of reward and satisfaction often in a long project as new versions are released.
This is then linked to the milestones to we can plan specific delivery dates.

We don’t tend to use Writeboards much.

On Basecamp we have also created a dummy team member with managed access so that we can get a controlled live RSS data feed from it.

Instant communication.
37 Signals have integrated their great Campfire chat app into Basecamp. While we love it and could easily use it we actually use Skype instead because we started on that before campfire came about. On Skype we have one shared private discussion between the team that we keep open all the time. Everything is recorded if needed and we can also share files instantly for comment. If things get complicated to discuss over text chat its an easy matter to start a call. Lots of our local and international clients and suppliers also use Skype. For ease of use and cost its an easy choice.

Tracking and stats
For tracking websites we use a combination of 4 tools. Google Analytics of course for detailed analysis, Mint for an instant overview and RSS feeds (its purpose you will see in a minute), Crazy egg for web apps and see where users are clicking on a design and AWStats just to double check stuff and keep an eye for hotlinking.

Accounts
I have tried quite a few accounting packages and for reasons I put down to my own shortcomings I have not been able to get my head around. I seem to have some kind of mental block when ever accounting terms are mentioned. So I created my own.
Using Google docs and spreadsheeds I created a simple spreadsheet to record my accounts in with a simple “Money coming in” and “Money going out” and a few simple sums to take that data and split it into monthly in, out and forecasting cashflow.
So a simple free online accounts system with from google. It tracks changes, who by and I can simply share them with the accountant when needed. The cashflow is based on Ryan Carsons example.

Pulling it all together
Lastly to tie it all together in an instant one page full overview we use Netvibes.
Netvibes is a web app to create a personal webpage. We use it to create a live dashboard for the entire business and websites by the use of RSS feeds.

As you can see we have 4 columns covering the 4 main parts of Spoiltchild and the apps. First we use the netvibes gmail widget to pull in the above mentioned emails. Everyone in the team can see when there is a new enquiry or support email and act accordingly.
We take in the RSS feed from the dummy team member in Basecamp so we can see any updates happing on projects.
Using the RSS feeds from Mint we can instantly see who is talking and linking in to our various websites and what pages are becoming popular.

We use another simple web app caled Domain Log Book to track our domain names. This gives us a RSS feed into Netvibes tracking all our registered domains, when registered and are about to expire, the current Google rank and rank in Alexa.

And lastly we use RSS feeds from our own blogs and forums to see when someone posts and replies so we can be straight in there to interact with them

For each application we run we have chosen 5 main blogs and 5 main discussion forums who are influential in that market to interact with. We have a second tab in Netvibes where all these are stored and we check in regularly to interact and contribute to and by association promote ourselves.
Again we pull in RSS feeds so we can monitor all of these at once.

And that’s it, that is how we manage our projects and sites.

Comment [6] | Business | 17/07/07 10:14 PM

Dave Davis of Redfly Search Engine Marketing has just released one of the most useful Firefox extensions i have seen for a while.

Quote:

As we move to launch a couple of our products to different countries i can see this fast becoming invaluable.

| Business | 17/07/07 08:26 PM

Michele Neylon offers great tips on how to squeeze the best from your advertising budget.

Quote:

Really it applies to any media, online and off.Go check it out.

Comment [1] | Business | 17/07/07 08:00 PM

I got a lot from the Curry 2.0 dinner in Dublin Organised by Paul of Seguela. Like Conor it generated some thinking on how to generate a culture of entrepreneurship I Ireland. It restarted some past thinking and resuscitated an idea I had. I am about to make the leap to dedicated office space to I would now also have the space if we were to do it. Conors proposal is great and very well thought out and I post this proposal not as a better suggestion but in the interest of continuing discussion on the issue. Its actually pretty similar but a little less reliant on other parties to make it work.

This is a bit rough as it was quickly written travelling between meetings today.

My proposal is to take a group of students from varying disciplines and combine them into a well rounded business group, give them space and a basic support wage and let then run at a project for the 3 summer months.

Its an idea heavily inspired by Joel of FogCreak software and their development of CoPilot.

A group of 3 students, consisting of a developer, a designer, a marketing person.
A build and launch deadline of 3 months.
A small space in an office with a company to act as mentor and provide resources.
And a budget of 6000 euro invested by the host company.

A business idea is proposed by the team (selection process ?) or by the mentor company that is achievable in the 3 months.

The mentor company gets a 10% share of the new business.

Ideal would be to develop a group of these student start ups around the country and get them to interact with each other through out the duration of the programme and beyond.

They get legal help to develop the business as a legal entity. Trade mark the idea.

They also get the usual work experience of being exposed to how the host company runs.

Budget of 6000 which they can assign as they wish or use solely for wages.

Students would then hopefully bring back their real world start up experience into the classroom to share.

I like the idea of involving the colleges more directly but my main worry is how slow these institutions can be to run and make decisions. Maybe their involvements can be looked at long term.

It would be great to document the process, perhaps just for a dvd at the end or an apprentice type programme for RTE or TG4. Even better a 5 minute weekly video like rockstartup.com
It would also be good to encourage the teams to blog.

Resources needed and possible solutions.
Host companies:
Summer months are often the quietest for businesses as staff and customers go on holidays. Hopefully that means they have a little more time to mentor.

Office space.
What is required is a short term solution for start up students.3 guys sitting around a big table should work as the absolute minimum. A bit of hardship is part of the norm in a start up.

Equipment.
There are not many students today who do not have access to a computer. Any self starter motivated person I am sure would have found a way to get a computer by now. Worst case scenario is they have to buy a couple of 500 euro dell laptops with their 6000 budget which they can take home with them at the end of the project.

6000 euro.
Ok, a lot of us start ups are counting every cent as we try and survive and grow but it wont always be the case. Don’t look at it as an expense but an investment. You will be an angel investor in a new start up that you get to mentor from the start. Perhaps a big corporate sponsor for the programme could be found or one of the funding bodies could match fund 3000 euro. However with the speed these agencies operate I am not sure that is feasible.
It breaks down to 666.66 euro per student per month.
Next summer I could see Spoiltchild being able to do this.

Legal help. We need to find a way for this to be donated by someone or one of the agencies. Or perhaps it can come out of the 6000 budget but it wont leave them much.

So that’s it basically. What do you think?

Comment [7] | Business | 04/07/07 09:19 PM