The MicroISV Digest for the week ending January 5th, 2009.

(If you have an announcement of interest to your fellow microISV, indies or startups, please email me at bob.walsh@47hats.com with the word digest in the subject.)

News and Announcements

• Jamie Gaines has jumped into the microISV waters with his startup Zig Internet Solutions, launching PhotoCannon. PhotoCannon is a cross-platform Adobe AIR application that makes it easy to resize and send multiple pictures at once. (via email)
• After a horrible time with a home grown ecommerce solution, then fixing the problem by switching to FastSpring, Hector Sosa of System Widgets has rebooted PainlessSVN Professional 1.0.1, resetting its 30 day trial so that customers can have another 30 days try it and offering a half-off sale until January 31, 2009. (via email)
• Sohail Somani, announced the official beta of Worklog Assistant (WLA). WLA gives you hassle-free time tracking for the JIRA issue tracking system so you never have to enter worklogs manually again. (via email)
• I announced the start of my next Apress book project, working title The Startup Success Guide. Thanks again for all the support here and here and keep those ideas on what I should cover coming!
• Pat and I released Show #10 of the Startup Success Podcast. We interviewed Scott Hanselman and announced the show’s new Facebook Page, where you can critique our questions for upcoming show interviews, suggest people to interview and remind me to speak faster, this is 2009 already!

  We’re especially looking for questions re the present and future of Delphi since we are interviewing Nick Hodges of Embarcadero Technologies. Thanks Zviki for your suggested questions! Who else has a question for Nick?

Relevant Blog Posts, Videos and Articles

• None found.

Further (mostly relevant) Reading

• None found.

Ryan Carson over at Carsonified opens up about some of his recent successes, and failures - which offer some interesting insights:

DropSend was built on a budget, grown to a profitable monthly revenue and sold for a healthy sum of money.

...

But we’ve also failed pretty badly with another web app called Amigo. We launched it in late 2006 and received some great press. The idea was solid (pay-per-click advertising in email newsletters) but the problem is that we were naive and we thought we could run it in our free time.

Then it gets good. He talks about a creative approach he's taking on his next venture, a new web application. In summary: he's contracting to have the developer (Elliot) build the application and be compensated with a revenue split of 10-25% of net, depending on a few factors.

First - the idea presents an interesting and thought-provoking (if not entirely original) approach, but as you might imagine, a wide range of vociferous comments in response ranging from claims that Ryan is exploiting Elliot, to accolades for the brilliant approach.

Ryan's various responses - including a rather touching chiming-in by Ryan's dad (!) make the entire post - and most of the 153 comments (so far) a very educational mental exercise for those considering alternative ways of moving forward during challenging economic times.

[Full Post]

Yesterday’s blog post about the best RPG character development system is getting series of good comments.

I spotted one comment, written by Jake:

The XP model, whilst commonly used, is weird if you think about it. You kill a load of monsters with a sword, then can spend your XP on magic. It’s totally unrealstic.

I agree that this type of development system (kill monsters, gain experience, spend points on whatever) is unrealistic but there are ways to make it more realistic.

For example, Lorezo Gatti commented:

I personally like (at least in theory) point buy systems, even if they are unlikely to be very balanced, because they are flexible: if some change makes sense (e.g. the GM decrees that during a long cruise everybody picks up some Sailing skill points), it can be compensated with available experience pools and other changes without changing the power level of the characters; if the power level changes (through experience awards or planned inflation) there is the maximum flexibility for converting the improvement to actual power; the character’s point value can take into account gear and other externalities.

This style works (I believe) well in some pen & paper RPGs: if the player can convince the game master that his character learned certain skills, then he can put some points to those skills. This can actually create more drama in the game as you try to find a way to convince the GM.

Another thing to ponder is: is it always bad?

It might be unrealistic, but does that really matter (in all cases)? Most games are unrealistic anyway. GTA 4 - you’d be dead very soon if those car crashes would be realistic. In Left 4 Dead you would be scared to hell if you’d see screaming zombies running towards you. There’s probably not a single real time strategy game where they would always display “failure” after campaign instead of “victory” (there’s no winners in wars) and no civilian kills or mental health aid that the soldiers require after killing people. All the games are somewhat unrealistic.

I think if the system works and makes the game feel fun - even if it’s unrealistic - it can be a good system.

I do agree with Jake, that there are games where this type of “kill monsters with sword, learn fireball spell” sounds dumb, and totally takes away something from the immersion. If it ruins the gameplay, it’s bad.

Your thoughts? (or suggestions for character development system)

I've got a guest post on the Avangate blog where I talk about Napoleon, hemorrhoid treatment, toilet paper and why interruption marketing isn't dead:

"As Seth Godin says, you should create purple cows: products that are remarkable. Products that people want to talk about. But no matter how hard you try, your cow doesn’t always end up purple. Sometimes you’re stuck with a product that is merely good, or a product that people simply don’t want to talk about. Like hemorrhoid treatment. What do you do then?"

You can read the full blog post here:

http://blog.avangate.com/interruption-marketing/

Liked this post? Please follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my blog's RSS feed.

Andy with a great quick start guide to starting a MicroISV. This covers all that boring stuff nobody covers in their starting a business articles. Well, maybe not nobody.

Consumers and businesses are being more careful with their money now, but they are still buying software if it will save them time and/or money. If you have been laid off in the current recession, perhaps now is a good time to start that microISV you have been thinking about. But starting your own business [...]

Just a quick post to let you know that if you join the GTD (Getting Things Done) group at Facebook.com you can get a 10% discount at the David Allen Company Store (Home Office Category only).  The discount on his new book (”Making it All Work“) isn’t any better than what Amazon.com offers, but the other items that are available may be a good deal.  The discount is good until 01/30/2009.

The Facebook Group: GTD (Getting Things Done)

The David Allen Company Store: Home Office Category

Coupon Code: FACEBOOK

The other day, I was chatting with a friend and colleague whom I respect and he mentioned that his idea well was dry.  That he's had lots of ideas in the past but didn't have any at the moment.  It got me wondering on something:

Why do I always have notes and ideas on another idea?

I didn't always have that.  I didn't always write down ideas, make some notes, and note questions and first impressions.  When did I start doing that?  What changed?  What made it so that I have a notebook of random ideas - don't worry, most are bad - laying about just waiting to be browsed?

And then I realize what the change was.  About 9 years ago, I worked for a complete nut.  No, I'm not exaggerating, the guy was committed both before and after I worked for him... and I finally had to file suit to get my last paychecks, but that's another story.

The point is that regardless of his crazy - like any stopped clock - he was right on one thing:

Always have a pen and paper nearby.

I can't begin to count the number of times I've been riding the Metro, waiting on a conference call, or even standing in the shower and an idea strikes.  The ability to flip out a piece of paper and write it down along with some first impressions is powerful.  It doesn't matter if it's a notebook, index card, or even just a napkin... some of the best ideas have been sketched out on a napkin.

The point is to capture the idea.  Not only can you use it to express the idea to someone else, but it can also serve to shift the consideration of the idea to another time.  When you have time to consider, when [choose some: business, financial,
time, contacts, market] are better, are when the ideas are just flowing
more smoothly is important.  But if you lose the idea, you can't even get that far.

The thing to consider and ask yourself is: How many of my good ideas are lost - even temporarily - due to the chaos of everyday life, bad ideas, other priorities, etc?  If that number is greater than zero, you have an easily solved problem.

A bit about my solution: Coming from an engineering background, I used to use engineering notebooks.  They're simple graph paper, bound together - useful for dating my notes - and I would use a paperclip to mark the current page.  At present, I'm using a little circuit board notebook filled with graph paper.

A year ago, this light-ped enterprise was brand new and i looked forward to the new year with excitement and very little experience as to how to succeed as an indy. As of today, i've released v2.0 of my flagship product, as well as the first version of my second product. I'm wiser if not wise and again look forward with excitement. For my loyal reader, here is a state of the endeavor: ...

I’m kind of scratching my head at this one so if anyone has any insight, please, I’d love to hear it: several hundred people have started downloading Football Bingo all of a sudden.  Not that I mind, of course, but I can’t square it with what I know about my target users.  I can’t seem to find [...]

I was discussing with friends of mine about the “best RPG character development system”, and here’s few of the ideas suggested:

• Using of skill makes the skill better (in other words: if you use sword, you’ll become better in sword usage)
• Experience points, that can be put to different skills (but so that you cannot develop everything, you need to choose which skills to develop)
• Description for skill levels (Cyberpunk style, where skills had values from 1-10 and for example value 5 in leadership equals plummer, value 11 is Captain Kirk (the value which you can never reach))
• Certain natural elements (race for example) define the maximum values, and then the closer the maximum you get, the more difficult it gets to develop the skill.

I personally enjoy a system where you have experience points (and even ‘levels’ - at least in some context) and then can put few points to different skills as you please. In addition to this, I like if characters have options to choose from different special skills, but so that they might need to choose their ‘path’ (bit like Jedi-style: choosing between The Dark Force or The Light Force, which then defines what sort of specialties you can get).

It was interesting to see, that people prefer to have very different ways on how to develop a gaming character. Some guys wanted a realistic approach, while others thought it was boring.

What about you? What kind of character development system do you like most?

Success Begins Today

12 Changes for 2009

John Richardson has written a tremendous post on how to make simple changes to improve your life.  He breaks down the changes by using 12 synonyms of the word change.  This is a must read.

2 Posts from Rock You Day

How To Make Your Goals Easier To Achieve This Year

How to actually make goals that can be achieved.  You didn’t complete all of your goals from last year?  Don’t become a repeat offender!

How To be Damned Serious About Your New Year’s Goals

This post details how to stay accountable when attempting to keep your goals for the year.

Amazon.com

Top 10 Resolutions

Amazon.com is taking a poll on the top 10 resolutions.

Dumb Little Man

22 Secrets to Discovering Your Dream and Living It

Great post with 22 steps on how to find out what your are meant to do in life.

Are you familiar with the old game production wisdom that says: “Fixing one bug just leads to 3-4 new bugs”?

I’ve just encountered it. Kind of. With my car.

Today we saw about -10 degrees (celcius) here, and the car doors were frozen. I tried opening one door, and then closing it, just to notice that it would not close anymore. I did all kinds of fancy stuff (no, I’m far from being a car mechanic) but with little luck. In the end, I just decided to try another approach and decided to open another door.

Bad move.

That door didn’t close either. The freaking door lock mechanism (or something) was simply so frozen that I could not close the door any more. I tried all sorts of melt-your-key-hole-thingy-sprays and whatnot but with little luck. Now I had two doors that could not be closed.

Eventually I just slammed the doors and thought that I let it be. It’s too bloody cold anyway so robbers won’t be stealing it (hopefully none of them is reading this blog now).

Nasty winter.

Luckily (like with any programming bugs) there’s always the ‘quick fix’ method. I’ve played so many adventure games that I know what to do when I see a long rope in the trunk of my car…

This is the fortune I got from the Chinese take-out my wife and I had last night:

It’s a great reminder about all of those ideas you have tucked in your head waiting for the perfect time.  That perfect time will probably never come, you have to just get out there and do it!  Good luck achieving the goals that you set for 2009.

Are you a software developer applying to a small company?

Here’s a tip from someone who has read thousands of resumes. When you’re applying to a startup, or a software company with less than, say, 100 employees, you may want to highlight the Banging Out Code parts of your experience, while deemphasizing the Middle Management parts of your experience.

When a startup CTO sees a resume that says things like:

• Responsible for $30m line of business
• Architected new ERP platform
• Managed team of 25 developers
• Optimized business processes

they think, “Spare me, that’s all we need, somebody running around trying to manage and optimize and architect when we just need someone who isn’t afraid to write code.” Here’s the stuff CTOs at startups want to see on a resume:

• Single-handedly developed robust 100,000 LOC threadsafe C++ service
• Contributes to OpenBSD file system in spare time
• Wrote almost 75% of the Python code running IsIt2009Yet.Com

If you’ve been in a large company for too long, you may feel that you put in your time, with all those years working your way up the hierarchy from the $50,000 coder jobs to the $250,000 Senior Vice President in Charge of Long Meetings With Other Senior Vice Presidents, and you’re kind of enjoying the nice parking space and the personal assistant and stuff, and coding? not so much, so now you’ve found a cool startup or small company, and you’re thinking, maybe now’s the time to jump ship? So you send your resume with your ERP stuff and SAP stuff and Vice President stuff to the startup, and it gets tossed.

Those VP jobs just don’t exist at startups, and the few VPs they have are the founders and a key early hire or two. Not you. And startups certainly don’t need extra middle managers. To a startup founder, middle managers just seem like added expense without more code getting written, and the only thing we REALLY need is

• code to be written, and
• customers to be called on the telephone.

Now, there’s a lot of resumes I see where, actually, I suspect that the candidate may have been (ahem) slightly overemphasizing the management/leadership/“architect” parts of the job, and slightly underemphasizing the banging out of code. And that’s fine if you’re looking to jump to a management position at a big company that, inexplicably, doesn’t have anyone to promote from within.

But for startups, everything about your resume has to scream getting your own hands dirty. Otherwise your resume makes you look like you’re looking for the kind of job where you can call meetings that take people away from coding all day long, which, to a startup, is about as useful as a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest.

(More resume tips, and, if you’re really looking for a job, don’t forget the job board).

Need to hire a really great programmer? Want a job that doesn't drive you crazy? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Now that it’s 2009, I’ve taken a little bit of time to update my web site slightly. It really hasn’t changed all that much:

• Updated copyright to 2009
• Updated services page to include more testimonials and reworked some of the text for the various services
• Added a new page for Pharmacaid, which warrants a separate post all its own
• Used RapidWeaver 4.2.1
• Tweaked the style template slightly
• Made contact information more obvious

It’s annoying how long these minor changes took, however.

I’ve started writing a new book for Apress: working title, The Startup Success Guide (SSG).

This is not Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality (MIVR) 2.0. MIVR did and does a good job of covering what’s involved in moving from being somebody else’s developer to creating, marketing and making money as a self-funded microISV selling a desktop app.

I just forgot to cover how you create a startup that launches a web app. Oops. My bad.

Seriously, since I started on MIVR in 2005, web apps - or more explicitly, Internet-centric applications running on the web, desktops, cell phones, iPhones, etc. - have taken off. And startups - what used to be serial Silicon Valley entrepreneurs convincing VC funds to pony up a few multi-million dollar rounds of funding - have furiously evolved.

If you’re looking for info on how to get your standalone desktop app into potential users’ hands, lessons from various microISVs, pros and cons of different business structures, how to build a decent site for your microISV, etc., MIVR is a good choice.

If you need info on the pros and cons of the multitude of web app platforms, how to get funding from angel investors, micro VC’s and VCs in [economically shell shocked] 2009, subscription/alternative revenue models for web apps, how to develop a web app that will make money, the huge role Open Source now plays, why, how, where to build your web app’s social media network, getting PR about your web app and a lot more, I hope The Startup Success Guide is a big help when it releases this summer.

Three last things (I’m an writer, I can say things that way :)): I need your help. Specifically, I need your suggestions on big things to cover in the startup/web app world now so I can work them into the existing chapter outlines, and later, I’ll need your feedback on specifics, recommendations of people I should interview, etc. Add them as comments, email them to me, tweet them: whatever works for you.

What about Project X Bob!? Well, you don’t have to do something to write about it, but it does add verisimilitude. Look for Project X very soon. And maybe another startup too!

Writing a book is more than a little like doing a bungee jump - something I did in Queenstown, New Zealand too long ago. They tie your feet up, you stand on a little platform looking down while your body is screaming, “What the hell are you doing, you’re going to Die! Die! Die!”, then you jump. Here’s to a happy landing.

Tom suggested that I use Animoto to jazz up the slideshow of Fog Creek pictures. Here’s what came out of that:

Animoto is very simple: you give it a bunch of pictures and choose a soundtrack, and it gives you a video presentation. The part I liked best was how easy it was to get your pictures... you just point it at one of the five most popular online photo sharing services, and it shows you a list of your albums on that service. One click and all your pictures are imported:

The service is free for 30 second videos (about 15 pictures worth). For longer videos, it’s $3.00, which gets you a low res version. To upgrade to high res is another $5. There are all kinds of packages available if you plan to make a lot of videos. I was pretty impressed by the simplicity of the whole thing. It does take quite a while to render the video, though, so unless you have all day, you can’t make very many adjustments before you get tired of fooling around.

Need to hire a really great programmer? Want a job that doesn't drive you crazy? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Chase Jarvis, if you haven't heard of him, is a very successful (by most any measure) commercial photographer. He's also a true mensch -- and as such -- the object of great admiration by many serious photographers.

He is frequently asked the secret to success in photography. I think his answer applies 100% to whatever you're trying to find success in. His answer?

1. Be undeniably good (quoting Steve Martin).
2. Dedicate at least 10,000 hours (quoting Malcom Gladwell from his new book Outliers: The Story of Success.)

[Full post by Chase]

Okay Dan, Gregg, Andy, Ron, Saurabh, Shane, Tom, Brad, Faik and Mike: I surrender! I’ve just applied to join the Association of Shareware Professionals.

When that many people tell you in one day to go see the movie, you go see the movie.

Besides Mike bet me a $100 dinner (the cost of ASP a year) in Boston at the next Software Industry Conference if joining ASP did not generate $1,000 in new startup/microISV consulting business for me between then and now.

Mike’s either very confident, or likes to bet dinners. From all the positive feedback I’ve gotten about ASP, I think the former.

Two aspects worth noting: ASP’s Code of Professional Conduct (= What happens in ASP, stays in ASP) means I won’t be able to report back here specifics of what’s going on there - but I do intend to see if the ASP’s forums live up to their rep - or collect on that dinner. Also, It’s a Good Thing ASP is a BizSpark Partner helping startups who want to Microsoftize. I am too, just to mention.

Daniel from GameDreamer.net joined the Insiders and asked if I could review his brand new blog. (Those of you who don’t know, the yearly Insider subscription comes with a review bonus) This is a review about Daniel’s site, but also article about “steps on game producer path”.

The two steps
While a blog isn’t a product, and reviewing a (new) blog seemed bit difficult, I still agreed to do this.

The first thing that caught my was the site slogan: “Steps On the Path of Becoming a Successful Game Producer”. I read Daniel’s first post and I get the feeling he really wants to become a game producer/developer.

I think that means the first step out of 2 necessary ones are fulfilled. The second step is “go forward until you are a successful game developer”. I suppose if Daniel really wants to become a successful game producer, and takes steps forward every day (even small steps) he’s got a good future ahead.

Take what you need and leave the rest…
Another interesting point Daniel mentions in his about page is that “take what you need and leave the rest”. I tend to think similarly, so here’s some tips to consider regarding the website. Take what you need and leave the rest:

• More content: Daniel’s blog needs more content. I realize it’s brand new, so I guess this is only a matter of time.
• Newsletter: I always suggest people to start gathering emails from people. It’s one of the best ways to keep in touch on those people who visit your site.
• Take away ‘visitor locations’: or put them somewhere less visible (like a separate page or something). Right now the ‘visitor locations’ takes the best space on the site.
• Site layout could use something, but I think this is simply a matter of taste…

Since the site is brand new, it’s quite hard to suggest major changes. I think the basics are okay. If the goal is to gain traffic, then getting more content (and frequent updates) is a good start. I think that alone will bring a big difference in terms of gaining traffic. Then spending time on marketing the blog by participating different forums for example, will be helpful too.

If the GameDreamer.net blog’s purpose is to simply log Daniel’s progress on becoming a successful game producer, I see nothing wrong with that approach.

FYI - just posted show #10 to the Startup Success Podcast - a really excellent interview with Scott Hanselman - yes, that Scott Hanselman - the man behind Hanselminutes and Baby Smash!

Listen/subscribe to it here.

Also, we now have a Facebook Page for the podcast where you can suggest topics, suggest specific questions for our upcoming guests and generally give use hell when and as needed. Please give it a look.

A question was asked on LinkedIn regarding these three CMS systems. Although I answered it there, I thought a longer post was warranted.

DotNetNuke

I probably have the most experience using DotNetNuke. I’ve built several sites using DotNetNuke, I’ve installed it on my own servers and have even attempted to build a module for it.

DotNetNuke (DNN) is incredibly powerful, but it’s also easy to use (once it’s installed). The best thing about DNN is that the administration of the site is completely integrated into the site itself. You can be viewing a page, click a button to edit it and have the change online immediately. With both Joomla and Wordpress you’ll have to go to a separate Admin area to do that.

DNN has a wide variety of free and commercial modules available for it. Frankly, whenever I needed to do something that wasn’t built it, I found a module already existed.

There is a significant downside to DNN, though: it requires Windows. DNN is built using the .NET framework and it must be hosted on a Windows server. It also uses SQL Server, which also obviously require Windows. This may not be a problem for internal use, after all pretty much every company has a Windows server running somewhere. And you can use the free versions of SQL Server. But if you want to host your CMS elsewhere, you’ll have fewer options than you would with Joomla or Wordpress. Most (all?) of the low-cost hosting services use Linux. There are some low-cost providers that host DNN (such as WebHost4Life), but I’ve found their performance to be terrible.

By far the best DNN hosting provider that I’ve worked with is PowerDNN, but they are expensive (plans start at $20/month and go up from there).

The other downside is that DNN sites seem to work best in Internet Explorer. That has been improving lately, but I’ve still run across some things that just don’t work right in Firefox or Safari.

Joomla!

The ARBP members site is built using Joomla. I didn’t do a lot of work on this, but I feel I worked with it enough to get a good understanding of it.

Joomla is written in PHP and uses MySQL, so it works on Linux. It’s often included with low-cost hosting packages such as FatCow or BlueHost.

Joomla websites can look really nice, but I found that the administration of them takes a little getting use to. You need to go to a completely separate area to administer the web site and things don’t seem to be as organized as they could be.

But overall, I’m impressed with the new versions of Joomla and will be investigating it more in 2009.

WordPress

This blog run ons WordPress (not the hosted WordPress.com) as does RBDevZone. Originally, RBDevZone was actually built using DNN (running on WebHost4Life). But I found the performance to be so bad, that I had to come up with another solution. I first investigated Joomla, but at the time it was incredibly slow and I found it too difficult to use. So I ended up switching to WordPress. This worked out well since RBDevZone has since evolved into more of a blog about all things REALbasic and no longer needed a true CMS.

WordPress is fast (it’s written in PHP and uses MySQL). It’s easy to use. It’s also pretty easy to customize themes and even the code. But it’s hardly a CMS. If you truly need a CMS, I would not recommend it. But I think it makes a great blogging engine.

Which to Use?

All things considered, I still prefer to use DotNetNuke. It’s CMS capabilities are not matched by the other two. Joomla has improved a lot in the last year or so and I have high hopes for it. After all, I’m a cross-platform developer so I don’t like choosing a CMS solution that really works best on Windows.

I don’t consider WordPress to be a CMS engine. If your CMS needs are light then maybe you can get away with it, but it’s really for blogs.

Choosing what single New Year’s Resolution would make the biggest difference in my life was easy: I just went over the last few weeks and compared the days I did this with the days I didn’t.

My New Year’s Resolution is not to check email or the web before noon. When I stick to this, I get things done - lines of code, paragraphs of prose, good ideas. When I don’t, I get involved in a dozen things, bounce through a couple of dozen sites and half dozen google searches only to look at time and realize I’ve frittered away what could and should have been a productive day.

I’m sure there will be times I falter, or rationalize a good reason to check email/web just once before noon. The saying, it’s not how many times a man gets knocked down that matters, it’s how many times he gets up, comes to mind.

People pay me for what I write. And until the day arrives somebody starts cutting me a check for checking email and falling down the rabbit hole of the web, enough is enough.

Anyone paying you to check email before noon?

My fever (and most of the other stuff like sore throat) seems to be over and I’m feeling better. I start delivering those Christmas gifts during the first days of January, so please email me in case you won something in the Xmas contest (unless you’ve already done that). I’ve emailed people, but haven’t got replies from everybody yet.

I’ll be posting the links and other stuff to people who participated in the GTA4 donation during the following days.

It’s a brand new year now. First day of the year, and I want to start it by doing one of the things I promised to do. Here are the list of donators of those who helped me to get GTA 4.

In order of apperance…

Ofer (link pending…)
Tobias (Spell of Play)
Penny (who game me the idea to ask for this)
Janette (Evolutionary)
Martin (Running Pillow)
Jake (Grey Alien Games)
Josh (Leadwerks)
Jay (Hobbit Hole)
Julio (Lemon Team)
Daniel (Game Dreamer)
Michael (Michael James Williams)
Ronny (no link)

Thanks guys.

I’m emailing the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Producers ebook to you now. Those of you who participated, please subscribe to the Dead Wake game newsletter to get informed when the game is released (so that you can claim your copy when the game is out).

Each year as I'm reviewing and closing out books, notes, and documentation for the year, I take the opportunity to make some comparisons.  Overall, it's been a momentous year personally, professionally, and industry-wide.

As always, I have some hard metrics to back each of these up, but here's the summary:

• Blogging - My goal for 2008 was to average 20 items/month across all my various sites which would make a total of 240 posts.  This year my posts have shown up on Blue Parabola (2), Zend's DevZone (1), PHP Advent 2008 (1), WhyGoSolo (20), and of course here (106) for a total of 131 or 10.9/month.  Oops, strike one.
  • For 2009, I'm going to scale things back and go for a total of 180 posts (15/month).
• Conferences - My goal for 2008 was to speak at three conferences and attend another three with one being a more strategy/direction conference.  The results:
  • In terms of formal conferences, I spoke at DCPHP, PHPWorks in Atlanta, Talkers (for broadcast radio hosts) in NYC and then attended ZendCon.
  • On the Unconference side, I cleaned up.  I cheated on the strategy/direction one when I helped organize the first SocialDevCamp in Baltimore where I also spoke.  Then I helped organize (but was unable to attend) BarCampDC (led by the great Justin Thorp) and the ZendCon Uncon (under the wing of community master Cal Evans), and PHPAppalachia (where I acted like I was helping Elizabeth Naramore) .  I also attended PodCampDC.
  • I consider this one a success... with the acknowledgement that unconferences are a bit different than conferences.
  • For 2009, I'm taking a different angle... My goal is to speak at two conferences this year while attending at least another 4.  Further, my goal is to give at least 6 professional-quality presentations to technical/business groups. 
• Publishing - I've never had an article published in a magazine.  Luckily, in the past couple years, I've made many friends and acquantences that have knowledge and understanding in this area.  I hope to learn from them and try something new:
  • For 2009, my goal is to have two formal articles published in professional magazines or journals.
• Revenue - Overall, revenue was flat for the year.  Oddly enough, the economic downturn has not affected CaseySoftware - or more importantly, Blue Parabola - in any appreciable way.  The failure to meet numbers for the year was due to my involvement in WhyGoSolo.  It was an investment that didn't pan out... more on that later.  ;)
  • This year, estimations in general were much better focused and consistently came within a tolerable margin of error (5-10%).
  • I kept a few collections people busy.  In addition to Dan [withheld] and Ed [withheld] from last year, I added Phillipa, Robert, and Brian which effectively doubled the amount out to collections.
  • Furthermore, I took a harder line with customers.  Most invoices go out Net-15 or Net-30.  For those who didn't pay in a timely manner, I turned off their services.  This was not out of malice or ill intent, just a simple matter of protecting my own interests in accordance with the means detailed in our contracts.
  • For 2009, unfortunately, I'm not in a position - legally or otherwise - to share Blue Parabola's projections.  For CaseySoftware, I plan to continue working with existing customers and convert the others to Blue Parabola as needed.
• Customer Retention - Unfortunately, due to a change in how CRM-type aspects are handled, I don't have a solid % of how many CaseySoftware customers did a second (or third!) project with us this year.  From my notes, it appears that it's above 80%.
  • For 2009, my goal is to completely rebuild and improve how CRM-type aspects (follows, tracking, informaiton updating, etc) are handled from top to bottom.  More on that one later too...  ;)
• Community Contributions - This is a new area for me, but I thought this was the best way to capture them:
  • In 2009, my goal is to have the Web2project v1.0 release.  Furthermore, my goal is to clean up the core of the code and make a real API available.
  • Updated 02 Jan:In 2009, my goal is to continue the monthly meetings of the DCPHP Beverage subgroup, launch a new easily-updated DCPHP website, convince the leadership to formalize the roles/responsibilities and then fill them, and grow the mailing list from 250 (now) to 400+.
  • In 2009, my goal is to continue contributing to the Open Source Community, not by releasing a new project or something that pushes technical boundaries, but instead by focusing on something that moves our processes and practices forward to improve effectiveness, efficiency, etc.  Obviously this one needs some clarification and specifics...

On the personal front, I succeeded in one of my goals and just barely missed another.  Thanks for tolerating the navel-gazing each and every year.

The 2007 End of Year Summary is here.