Do you design and develop websites or apps? Are you really proud that you have mastered two distinct disciplines? Or do you feel a bit insecure that neither your design or development skills match those of a ‘specialist’?
If you’re anything like me, you sometimes feel a bit of both and wonder how to pitch yourself for potential work or where your skills fit as part of a wider team.
I’m going to argue that we should not undervalue our skills, I’ll share some ideas about ways of working and make a plea to the wider web world to take us more seriously.
When I started my business, in 2011, I didn’t think I needed a business plan, I only needed clients, tons of clients. Even though my title was web designer, I took every job that was asked of me: web sites, of course, but also graphics, print, social media management, training, basically anything!
In less than eight months I had to go back to work as an employee because I managed to spend way more money than I earned.
I kept doing some freelancing on the side with no direction whatsoever and finally I realised that I needed a plan. After implementing a proper business plan, I was able to recognise and concentrate on a niche market, become much more successful, raise my prices, and greatly increase my income.
It doesn’t matter what your financial goal for the year is, or what your mission for your small business is, having measurable goals and a clear strategy will allow you to do what you love and make a living out of it.
Together we will go over the basic sections of a business plan and we’ll learn a creative way to make one that represents you and your business. There will be worksheets to help you draft your first business plan and crayons and markers to make it more fun!
Workshop Length: 3hrs
Share Neil’s journey from concept to product, via famous 5 minute install (in fact it was more like 5 seconds thanks to $ wp valet new –project=bedrock ).
Neil will talk about how this project was conceived, what it’s like to be the geek in a team of psychotherapists but a doofus in the dev team.
See the mock-ups that landed them a £660,000 project (and how he got bullied into accepting just a fraction of that *and* had to launch a year earlier than planned!)
Neil will share the lessons he’s learned about being a good ‘client’ to his developers (two of the nicest people he’s ever worked with), despite wanting to learn how they do what they do. Cringe as he shares some of the questions he’s asked them, the very patient replies he’s had, and the comical initial estimate of how much time he needed them for.
Find out how Neil support 800 users, the dilemma of supporting vs solving, and having collaborators rather than customers.
Next steps – where will this product be next year, 2 years from now?
It is often noted that the last part of any digital project is usually the hardest and takes the longest as expressed famously by Tom Cargill, Bell Labs:
“The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.”
Why is this? What makes the last part of any digital project this difficult?
Have we become the “Snapchat” generation that can’t focus long-term? What does it means for our projects? It is us, our clients or the projects themselves that fail at this stage?
This talk will aim to focus on common project failings that I have seen again and again in the final stages and provide actionable advice for all team members involved in creating websites to help deliver better projects.
What comes to your mind when you think about technical requirements for successful SaaS company? Should it be lean and easy-to-build, but ready for continuous improvement? Should it have wide opportunities for customization but still be reliable and stay under the control? Should it be powerful and scalable, but still really easy to manage? We’ll see how to build such kind of Software-as-a-Service application using WordPress Multisite, from scratch.
