Andy Milk Interactive

I recently made the acquaintance of a designer through a project we were both working on.  After checking out her work, I saw that her style might match up very well with a couple projects that I had coming up that needed design help.  I proposed her work to my clients, who obliged, and then proposed the work to her.  In her email response, not only did she response in the affirmative for helping on the projects, but she offered me a small programming project that she needed help on.

I didn’t intend to get any work out of our interaction, but I learned a valuable lesson through it.  Offer some work to people and they might just offer it back! Sure, it’s usually luck or good timing that creates a situation like this, but it’s also good business, a little tit-for-tat, and the kind of offer that strengthens relationships with your colleagues, clients, and subcontractors.

Found this quoted & linked on Signal vs. Noise:    http://venturebeat.com/2009/04/29/10-lessons-from-a-failed-startup/

They loved this quote:

If you review your first site version and don’t feel embarrassment, you spent too much time on it.

I’m a fan of these couple:

I would also avoid money pits like PR firms, CPM ads, billboards, and TV/radio spots.

and

What’s new for me is painfully experiencing the gap between knowing and doing. Advice is thrown liberally around the Valley, but like a surgeon who has studied but never practiced, I think it takes a lot of hands-on experience to learn intricacies and exceptions. I think advisers should more often say, “You probably won’t get what I’m saying until you screw it up.” Expertise takes time, and pithiness comes with a cost.

Thought-provoking stuff here.  In the spirit of Agile Development, these guys promote making something tangible without nailing every detail down first.  Amen!

I’d say I probably already have done about half of these tips but there are some great ones in this list:

http://e-strategyblog.com/2009/05/linkedin-best-practices-for-business/

I definitely like the suggestion to upload a photo to your profile.  My last name is Milk so most people who’ve met me usually can put the name to the face, but there are a LOT of LinkedIn requests I get from people I worked with years ago that I scratch my head and wonder, “Is that the art director from the North Shore?” or “Who on earth is this person?”  If they have a photo, the quandary is usually solved immediately.

Another great tip suggests to update your status often.  I try to update mine whenever possible. I could Twitter this kind of status or put it on Facebook, but the LinkedIn status is very specific to the type of work I’m doing on a daily basis. One day I could be wireframing a widget, another day I could be palms deep in PHP, and another day I could be jerking around some jQuery. (I couldn’t resist the alliteration)

Past and potential future colleagues might like to know on a daily or weekly basis what kind of spectrum I cover. Sure, it’s all listed on my web site, in my profile, and on my resume, but until you see what’s actually being done by someone real-time, it’s hard to get a feel for it.

That reminds me…I meant to write about my “Never Say No” philosophy to consulting. I’ll get to that later this week.

Cheers,
Andy

Blue Box Group

To put it simply, these guys are the best.

Here’s a few reasons why:

• They offer both Shared and Virtual hosting solutions for Rails
• Plans can start as cheap as $10/month.  This is a shared server but you have MANY Ruby gems at your disposal.
• Virtual plans start at $25/month and you can upgrade as the need arises (memory low, site lag, traffic increases, etc.)
• Their support is as easy as sending an email.  I usually get at least a “I’m looking into this now” email within 30 minutes.  I don’t have to use any sort of support ticket system.  They offer one (and the emails feed into it), but they don’t require it.
• These guys KNOW their Rails environments, deployment recipes, common bugs, and plugins.  There’s almost never a question they can’t answer, or at least point me in the right direction

I’m using them for several projects, both internal and client projects.  I’m recommending them to anyone who needs Rails hosting.

Here they are: http://www.blueboxgrp.com/

I love their tagline: “Where Ruby on Rails hosting isn’t a headache!”

I recently helped Endeca reskin their home page and the basic wrapper for internal site pages.

Check it out: http://www.endeca.com/

Here’s a screenshot of the new and improved home page: