Long weekend

In Poland the beggining of May is always nice, mainly due to the fact that there are some holidays. Holidays usually form something called a long weekend - you take 1 or 2 days off work and have a week of free time. That’s exactly what I’m about to do - go live in the country for a few days and just chill. I’ll check my emails only once a day (oh that’s gonna be hard), so expect delays. Not that anyone reads this blog…

Care to Evernote?

I have just encountered Evernote, a new release of remember-it-all platform. I must admit it’s brilliant. For example it’s very good at detecting letters in images, even handwriting, which is nice especially if you are using a tablet or simply want to take a picture of your note, import it into evernote and convert to text. It works in three modes: desktop, web, mobile. All of which synchronize seamlessly.

Evernote is currently in closed beta testing, so I you want an invitation leave a comment.

Startup skill: taking a bucket of cold water

After two months of leading my startup, it’s time for a short summary. I hope you can use those as hints and be wiser from my mistakes

1. First of all there’s the problem of leading a geographically distributed team. Some say that thanks to skype, other IM and project management websites it’s not a problem any more. Well, believie me it is a huge one. Of course this corelates to the fact that we all have our paid, day-to-day jobs. Apart from one member of the team, who constantly underperforms even though he has nothing else to do. Because of all that we don’t have that startup culture, where a few people work together and make each other work harder. Plus there are all those issues to sort out, which we would sort out in a matter of minutes with face-to-face meetings instead of a few hours trying to catch one another on skype. I wouldn’t start over with a team living some 300km away from me.

Tough part: Finding and gathering a team in one location.

2. Secondly, you need to have a team of motivated people. Fortunately we are motivated (apart from one member), otherwise we wouldn’t make it this far. Motivation and belief are crucial to success. However, thay also pose a threat. If you believe in something so much, you don’t see and you don’t want to see its drawbacks. I had an argument the other day with one freelancer, an experienced one, as to what we do wrong. At first I didn’t understand his hostility so I tried reasoning with him. Of course it didn’t work, because I was a believer and he wasn’t. It’s like trying to explain to a Christian that Jesus was wrong - it’s like throwing rocks against a wall.

Tough part: Keeping your eyes and mind open.

Do you have any experience on startups you’d like to share?

Freelancer and requirements

Because I’m typically an employer more often than a freelancer, I wanted to share a few opinions of what is important to an employer when working with a freelancer.

First of all, employers are not technical. They don’t want to know technical details. They set a goal and want to achieve it as fast and as efficiently as possible. So don’t go into boring technical stuff, even though you may find it fascinating.

Secondly, employers expect a professional approach. They set goals, but they might expect your professional opinion on whether they’ve got it all wrong. Which is possible. Example? I wanted to have a two sided leaflet and my freelancer told me that he can do it in several colors, but if he uses just 3 it’ll bring the production cost considerably. That’s the experience am employer usually lacks.

Thirdly, it’s nice to work with someone organised. If your employer didn’t suggest any project plan or anything, do it yourself. You’ll not only work more efficently, but you’ll also be considered a professional.

What are your opinions? Is there something I left behind?

website update

I’d like to share a few thoughts on how to organize a website update, based on my recent failiure in that area.

The first error you can make, is to go on without a plan. I know this may sound hilarious, but the most important thing in this venture is to PLAN everything properly. Yes you must PLAN everything that’s going to happen. To be honest, I didn’t. And I believed my colleagues that everything works perfectly on their local pcs’.

That’s how you make your second mistake. Not by believing, but by not having a test environment, with exactly the same parameters as the production server. This might be difficult to achieve, but believe me when I say it’s worth the effort and money.  I didn’t have that either.

What happens when you don’t have those prerequisites? You end up with your webapp going nuts and instead of promised few minutes, the update takes more than a day. I’m learning through my own mistakes though and I’m not going to make that one again. If you’re still uncertain whether you really need to spend those few extra bucks on a test server, read this post once again.

How’s your startup?

According to Penelope Trunk, doing a startup is like nothing. (I’ve had the exact quote, but can’t find it now) I must say I never really believed that, but to be honest - it’s true. I’ve recently mentioned about my venture and I have to admit that doing a startup is never as easy as you think it will be. After all the entry level emotions and ideas are gone, you just sit and think, think and then think some more. Wherever  you are, whatever you do, you can’t stop thinking about your startup and if there’s any chance of doing something more to make it work. Two things never change though: lack of money and time. Even if you can think of something brilliant, there’s high probability that you don’t have enough time or money to do it.

I’m not talking about a startup with huge investment cash and I imagine finding someone, who’s willing to invest in your startup makes some things easier. You have more cash to finance your ideas and you can hire more people, which helps reduce the time needed to implement your ideas to life.

Speaking of hiring, read this if you haven’t already. I’ll share some thoughts on that matter next time.

corporate IT has to be business oriented

The IT department we have in my company recently implemented a few security solutions. Which is fabulous if you’re a security freak constantly looking for breaches, procedure compliance and that sort of things, which make all the normal employees hate you so much. A firewall is obvious and has to exist - no doubt about that. But trying to filter what people can and cannot see in their browsers is simply rubbish. I mean if someone’s lazy or doesn’t have anything better to do than reading stuff about semi-stars and watching youtube all day, filtering these sites will not make him work harder. Not to mention social networking websites and photo albums. Filtering potentially dangerous sites is fine and the idea of filtering itself isn’t bad, you just have to think of the business aspects, especially when people use their mobile computers for personal purposes as well. That’s all I have to say about this. Oh and btw it’s a good thing not all corporate firewalls and network software works on vista

Update:

I have encountered this image when trying to enter Swedish Embassy in Poland chamber of commerce website:

“Website blocked due to unallowed content, contact your IT department. URL: www.polcommerce.com Category: pornography”

How about that?

The element of networking

As you may or may not know, networking is the idea of creating opportunities and value through collaboration with your friends and colleagues. As the idea sounds simple, many people do not realize how important it is to properly use it. I don’t claim to be an expert in this matter, but having read one very interesting post (in Polish) on networking, I can see that I’m not a novice either.

Networking is especially important if you’re planning to start your own company. Doing a startup is hard itself, so trying to use your connections and partners to take adventage of some word-of-mouth is very important. Then again you need to be delicate with this, as no one likes spam and once you’ve crossed the line and your information has been considered spam, the case is lost.

Remember to use all the social networking sites you can find, as they are a free means of reching your audience. Starting groups and inviting friends is fun, but it can also prove crucial to success.

You want proof? I’ve recently mentioned that I’m doing a startup , which is never easy. Actions described above led my site to 5000 hits in one week and over 40 registered users (which is nice, considering that we’re operating in a niche and have absolutely no marketing budget).

Besides remember that customer focus is what people like and care about very much. It might not pay off right away, but creates potential for the future. When people write on ehire.pl blog things like: “thanks, you people are really dedicated and doing a great job. I’ll tell friends about you” is so rewarding that you can’t even imagine!

ehire.pl

Good news for Polish and Polish speaking freelancers around the world, there’s a new portal for you coming out. What’s even more, it’s made by my and a couple of my friends. And what’s even more, it’s going to be available for free. All you need to do is enter ehire.pl

I’ll be writing more about it soon, as there were many problems we had to face as entrepreneurs. It might be useful for those of you who think of starting your own company.

Plaxo Pulse

I’ve just got an invitation form my business contact (thanks) to join Plaxo Pulse, a new social network that from what I can see at first glance, wants to combine LinkedIn with Facebook. It can import your contacts from a few sources, i.e. LinkedIn. The design’s very nice, although plenty of options makes me feel a bit defensive. I’m sure i’ll develop a mutually beneficial reletionship with this platform too, you might want to check it out.

It’s still in beta testing. You can see my profile, although it’s rather empty just yet.