This past week was a blur! Plenty of standard operational stuff happened, as usual, of course, but since I tend to think with strong visual accompaniment, I offer this weeknotes entry in pictures. Topics covered: the wonders of video chat technology, internet enthusiasts, ten-year anniversaries, and yes, the iPad… Read More >
This past week was a blur, during which I found myself burning the candle from both ends and generally stressed out. Don’t try this at home. I did keep notes for each day, which, this time around, I’ll simplify to topics instead…
Work in Development: We’ve got a strong pipeline right now with some interesting potential projects in it. Mark and I also spent some time speaking with a former client who has moved on to a new venture and is hoping to work with us to build the website and application through which it will operate. Though this one isn’t quite yet “in the pipe,” it was encouraging to have a strong lead come in purely on the basis of work we’d already done. Another current client is planning for a major redesign. It will be great to see that one take shape as it’s been almost five years since their last design was created. Work Completed (for now): On Tuesday, one of Jason and Sarah’s projects, Quebrada Baking Company, went live. We worked with ThomasBoston Advertising on this project, which was beautifully designed by Justin. Also, I finally finished up this month’s newsletter, the second part of our series on How a Website is Built, which will be published tomorrow. Work in Progress: Mark and I have been planning for our winter company retreat, which will be this Thursday. Unlike our Fall retreats, which are several days in the mountains, this is a one-day gathering nearby where we spend a few hours talking about business and then the rest of the evening eating grilled pizza and enjoying each other’s company. Jim is flying down from Rhode Island today to spend the week working with us on site. Justin will be arriving on Wednesday evening by train, and Steve will arrive on Thursday morning by plane. I’m very excited to have us all in one place for a bit and am looking forward to our discussions on Thursday. Meanwhile, I spent some time with Nolan, Mike and Dave to check in on our mobile site project. We got to preview the mobile version of our analytics dashboard that Nolan has been working on, which was exciting to see. Things are looking good so far…
Other Threads: We had a lot of conversations this week about mobile technology and our ideas for how to integrate mobile development into our process. I also found myself talking about blogging several times with our Project Managers—discussing which of our clients are blogging well, common blogging concerns, and how they could do better. Don’t be surprised if a future newsletter revisits business blogging. Also, I received a robot watch in the mail (pictured).If you’re unfamiliar with weeknotes, check out theWeeknotes website or my first weeknote, which explains why we started at 741.
Week 743!
I think I’m starting to get the hang of this Weeknotes thing. So far, my system has been to keep notes throughout the week in a text file on my desktop, then refer back to them and other sources—like my Google calendar and email—on Monday to reconstruct the highlights of the previous week and match them up with my reflections. It’s interesting how little I actually need to remember on my own (but that’s another blog post). In fact, maybe next week I’ll try to write this up without any notes or help at all. In the meantime, this was… Week 743.
First thing on Monday, Mark and I had a call with an agency partner of ours to discuss a potential project for a wellness non-profit. Right after that, we got on the phone with Eric to have our weekly check in and talked about all things Newfangled—finances, pipeline, projects, people. Eric and his wife are going to be in town over the next two weeks house-hunting, so our next meeting will be in person over lunch! Later that day, I spent some time over coffee at Jessee’s with Dave to chat about development stuff, working on our Culture of QA, and some current projects. On Wednesday morning, Mark and I met with a local entrepreneur to talk about an application he’s building to help companies plan their social media strategy. It looks pretty interesting—we’ll see how it takes shape. Later that day, Katie, Brian, Dave and I did a final review of the prototype for the new site we’re building for Imprivata.com. Katie and Brian have done a great job on the prototype. I even got a sneak peek at Justin’s designs, which look great, too! Thursday mornings always include a brief review of our sales prospects with Mark and Dan. Mark has been having some interesting conversations with many different companies, so we’ve got a robust pipeline at the moment. After that, I had a meeting scheduled with Jason and Sarah (which I convinced them to have over coffee at Jessee’s) to help them plan their client strategy meetings. I wonder if Jessee’s realizes how much of our work gets done in their shop? We’ve even run into BlogAds folks there many times, too. In the afternoon, we had our usual client services meeting, and then I sat down with the engineering guys to plan out our mobile site offering. Finally, I published a blog post on mapping your professional network, which was an extension of some ideas we discussed at the client services meeting. We ended a very busy and intense week by having breakfast together on Friday morning at Elmo’s, a diner right around the corner. We had a great time together and definitely kept the staff there busy bringing us all kinds of good stuff—omelets, pancakes, pecan waffles, homefries, biscuits, and coffee. When we got back to the office, it was back to business: Bettina, Dave, Nolan and I took a close look at our production schedule to make sure we could fit in the extra internal work we want to do on building a mobile version of our site within the next month. The rest of the day was similar—lots of coordinating—including some additional engineering planning and an internal review of another prototype in process. We finished out the day with a few of us (Katie, Steve, Sarah, George, Nolan, and I) heading next door to Southern Rail for end-of-the-week drinks…and left almost four hours later after a nice time talking and laughing together!
Tuesday began with a continuation of last week’s meeting with Mark, Mike and Nolan to talk a bit more about nurturing that QA culture I’ve been talking about. We’ve gotten some great input from everyone at Newfangled, and I’m confident that we’re heading in the right direction. Mid-morning, Mike took SteriPEN.com, a project that Steve, Jillian, George and Justin have been working on for the past few months, live! Right after, the team walked next door to Townsend Bertram & Company, an outdoor equipment shop, to show off some SteriPEN products. Right before lunch, our letter carrier arrived (one of my favorite times of the day) and delivered a book sent to me by my new friend, Emmet Connoly. I met Emmet after reading and commenting on a post he’d written about creating a quick-and-simple printed collection of web articles. I was immediately inspired by the idea and created a few of my own, including one called A Year of Ideas. Emmet got excited about the last one, and so we decided to do a book swap. I sent him a copy of A Year of Ideas and he agreed to send me a copy of his latest collection called Stacks. It looks great! Last night I read the first couple of articles, one of which is an interview with Dave Eggers which I found inspiring and entertaining.
I’ve been observing several companies and people whom I respect keeping a weekly log of what they’re up to—a phenomenon now called “Weeknotes“—for a while now and, after realizing how valuable the practice could be in giving me a real sense of perspective over time, decided to jump on the bandwagon.
To my estimation, Newfangled, which was founded by Eric Holter in November of 1995, has existed for 741 weeks. So, my Weeknotes will begin with Week 741…
On Mondays, we start the week out with an internal resourcing meeting where our project management teams get together in the same room and look over all their active projects to see where they stand with deadlines and budgets. It’s a great thing to come out from behind our technology and do this as a group; each person has the opportunity to be exposed to the work that others are doing. It makes a difference. Meanwhile, every Monday morning, Mark and I have a conference call with Eric to check in on big-picture company stuff (finances, long-term planning, etc.).
Tuesday, I published our latest newsletter. This one was the first of a two-part article on the web development process as we know it. Boy, did it turn out longer than I thought it would! But hey, the images were fun (an homage to The Way Things Work, by David Macaulay). Mark and I also met with our engineering team to check in on how the upcoming update to our advanced measurment dashboard is coming along. It’s looking good! Then, that afternoon, Mark and I met with two local entrepreneurs to give them some feedback on a web application they are building a business around.
On Thursday afternoons you’ll find me in a meeting with our project management teams where we spend a bit of time talking about how to do our jobs better. This week, we spent the entire session talking about our quality assurance processes. Everyone had the chance to offer feedback and make suggestions as to how we can improve.
Other Stuff: Mark has been drafting an outline and some writing samples for a book on what we do. It looks like he’s got a likely publisher, which, aside from being exciting, will be key to keeping him working steadily toward completing the thing. I’ve been talking to another design publication about writing some articles on web technology and am looking forward to the publication of my first piece for Smashing Magazine exploring my holistic browsing technologyidea. One of Brian’s screencasts was tweeted by his e-mentor and analytics guru, Avinash Kaushick. Also, I tried out the Aardvark search engine for the first time on Friday. Have you tried it?
