Blog Today, Book Tomorrow

I am a mother of two small children…three if you count this new business.  I am always finding parallels between life motherhood and entrepreneurship.  I figure that one day I will write a book about these similarities.  I might have to hire a ghost writer (maybe that lady who wrote the hilarious Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy), but all of the examples will be real.

Here are a few proposed chapter headings…

• It Takes Two to Tango: How all great ideas are mash-ups of other ideas
• Sharing the News: I’ll tell my boss about the business when I start to show
• Branding: Practicing yelling the brand from the back porch (or possibly “Branding-Branding-Bo-Fanding-Banana-fana-fo-fanding-Me-My-Mo-Manding-Branding.”)
• Trust in the Delivery Room: Finding the best vendors and partners
• Hormone-Induced Paranoia: Testing and retesting the business model
• Bed Rest: Maintaining momentum and urgency in times of lull
• Crawling Before We Walk: Teaching a business independence one army-crawl at a time
• Shower Games: How to launch the new business without silly games
• Your Baby Might Not Be Beautiful: How to take and use feedback without getting defensive
• Family Planning: What is your exit strategy or not

What do you think?  Any other chapters you’d suggest?

My Other Blog is a Ferrari

Have you ever seen those license plate covers that say “My other car is a Porsche” or something similar?  They are usually attached to older Hondas or an El Camino.  When I sat down to remind you all that I maintain another blog at http://jenniferbdavis.blogspot.com, for some reason those license plates covers came to mind.

My other blog isn’t an exotic sportscar (sadly), but there are some interesting things out there and I encourage you to check it out (or better yet, point your RSS reader to it so that you will see new posts).  I have been posting quite a bit there recently and have a long, healthy queue of other ideas, observations, and products to talk about in the coming weeks and months.  If you like learning about new innovations, the impact of design on business, the proliferation of customized products, or personal development, check it out!

Nothing Happens Automagically

After a brief hiatus (due, if you must know, to a relocation, several family emergencies, and general life upheaval), I am back in the blogging business.  I do wish that WordPress (or someone) would write an application that would “automagically” post whenever I thought of things that might be of interest.  While mind reading is still sci-fi fiction, I have enjoyed Twittering away and encourage you to follow me there (Twitter, as a micro-blog, probably being the closest thing to automagic, which ironically is a term I read for the first time in a Twitter post earlier this week).  I really do hope you missed the blog posts and the updates on the development of Remarkable.

So, on that topic, we have been working diligently on building out the application and are nearing a critical alpha milestone.  For those of you unfamiliar with software development methodologies, most have stages of development during which critical foundational code is written, but only used internally.  This stage is called alpha.  It is usually not in the final user interface (a $20 phrase that means things like how the software looks, how people would click around to do things, and the colors, font styles, and button treatments used).  It is usually pretty unreliable, but is a way to start testing and building out the core functionality. 

With the development of agile philosophies for programming and a “nothing beats real code” attitude, the alpha phases of development are getting shorter.   Even the alpha phase can have several sub-phases as you anticipate changes and iterations throughout the project.  Ours will be several months in total (hate to publicly commit at this point) before we turn our attention to the beta phase which comes next.

Beta is a word that has gotten a little skewed (or expanded, rather) lately as many companies have public, “all comer” beta periods that last a year or more.  In most companies, beta is reserved for either a select group of testers or product champions who can use the real application (usually still with some final tweaks and adjustments to be made) and provide feedback.  Usually beta releases are feature complete and try to represent, as best as possible, the real user experience.  Beta phases also allow a forum for testing pricing, promotions, and for getting the word out about the coming application.  If you haven’t yet registered to receive an invitation to participate in our beta , click here and sign up.

Eventually, you call the application “production” and the beta is complete (you never call it “done,” of course, as you always have ideas and things you can do to improve).  In my days of working in packaged software, we’d do the final release sign-offs and exclaim “ship it!”  With this web application, it is just a matter of pushing the code live.  Now that I think about it, I will probably still yell “ship it” when we get to that point, as “push it” doesn’t really have the same ring to it.

Yes, development is going well even though we are in the early stages.  Thanks for asking!  I am sure we all wish that the process of developing software, just like blog posts, could happen automagically, but alas…our hard work will be your gain when Remarkable is ready for you to use.