Hogwash

One of the best things about working with FirePig (in our not so humble opinion) is the great bunch of people we get to work with. It just makes life a whole lot easier when you have a solid relationship with the guy or gal at the next keyboard - even if that keyboard is a few time zones away.

As we look toward the future, FirePig would like to expand the list of partners that we can call upon when a project requires a little extra muscle. Our projects typically involve data collection and reporting, and we rely heavily on Microsoft technologies: C# and SQL Server, mostly. We occasionally have a need for PHP and MySQL development as well, and telented graphic designers are always in demand. In short, if you are available for freelance work, are passionate about developing intuitive web systems, and have a high tolerance for quirkiness, please drop us a line. Make sure to include your skill set, average weekly availability, and hourly rate. Also, please make sure not to supress your personality, we want to work with people, not drones! And if you don't have any technical skills (hi, Mom & Dad!), please make sure to spread the word to anyone you think may be interested.

We here at FirePig have recently begun work on a new product: an online data collection and reporting tool for large scale collection efforts. About ten years ago (or, in Internet-speak, "back in the Paleolithic Era") I built such a system for my employer at the time. It had a fair number of neat features, and we'll be drawing on that experience as we move forward. However, the web has come a long way in the past decade, and we're convinced that we can use modern techniques to significantly improve the state of electronic data collection. We're not talking about simple polls or surveys with a handful of questions. While you could certainly use what we're building for those sorts of projects, there are plenty of existing tools that can handle that. We're talking more involved, complicated data collections - imagine a tool that could handle the Census long form, and you have a sense of what we're aiming for.

We're in the initial planning stages right now, and we'd like your help. Please share with us in the comment section your experiences with providing information on the web: the good, the bad and the ugly. We want to hear from everyone, no matter how web savvy you are. (In fact, the less savvy, the more useful your experiences will be.) If you have any suggestions for features, we'd love to hear those, too.

Saw this on xkcd.com. Hope we don't lose all our maintenance contracts.

Is the word "holistic" hippie-dippy? Some may say so, (ahem, you know who you are…) I'd say no, not when it comes to building a web presence. The holistic approach to a web project refers to taking a closer look at the past, present and the future. 

Lessons learned should never be undervalued. Although projects may be different, they all contain similar components and attributes.  Looking at each challenge and mistake may be painful; however, practical experience cannot be born from anything else.

Ready to start a project? Often a project involves a slew of stakeholders. Before sitting down with the development team, form a steering committee and do your homework. Start a list identifying goals and objectives. This lays the groundwork for the rest of the project. Begin by assessing the needs of your organization. Look at what is currently lacking and what functionalities should be improved. Most importantly, how can new functionalities or a complete overhaul improve your overall business process and performance?

While evaluating organizational needs, pie in the sky ideas are born and often shut down by budget restrictions. Don't be discouraged, hold on to them and share them with the development team. Believe it or not, we actually thrive on giving you what you really want… even with budget constraints. Never underestimate the power of phased rollouts. Foundations can be built and ready for future plug-ins during the initial release, this cuts down costs that will make your pie in the sky a reality, cheaper!

To sum up, the holistic approach isn't hippie-dippy, it's just good common sense. Don't be afraid to look at, and think about everything.

It's no secret that these are tough economic times. An unfortunate byproduct of all the uncertainty and rising unemployment is a marked decline in charitable giving. We here at FirePig would like to do our part in the economic recovery, especially for these charitable organizations that do such noble work. And so we are proud to announce our new referral program.

Here's how it works: if you refer a client to us that we end up working with, we will pay you 5% of the contract value. If you decide to donate that money to a charity, we will double the amount to 10% of the contract value. So, if you help us find a $10,000 contract, you'll get $500. If you decide to donate the money to, say, St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, we'll match your gift for a total of $1,000.

Of course, any program like this has to have a few ground rules. Here are ours:

• It has to be a true referral - you cannot refer yourself. (Besides, you can go blind doing that.)
• If you choose a charity, it must first be approved by us. We don't want to be making donations to "The Human Fund".
• Payments are made to you or your charity within 15 business days of when we receive payment for the contract in question. In most cases, this means you'll wind up getting multiple smaller checks over time.
• We can only offer a single commission per contract. In the event that more than one person refers the same work, we will honor the first referral we receive.

If you are interested in participating, please be sure to become a fan of FirePig on Facebook - that'll help us keep track of everything.

Welcome to FirePig's new blog, Hogwash, on our brand new site! We hope to use this space to talk about web development, usability, social media, and anything else related to what we do. We'll try to keep the geek speak to a minimum, we promise.

It seems appropriate to open up the blog with an entry about the new site. After two years of operation, we finally decided it was time to eat our own dogfood. The new FirePig site is running on the latest version of Umbraco, open source .NET content management system we recommend to all our clients. It is (of course) a standards-based design, complete with a totally different look when you print the pages - we don't want you to waste all your orange ink. (Go ahead, select "print preview" if you don't believe us.)

So please, take a look around. Then come back here and let us know what you think of the site in the comments section below, or just say "hi" to let us know you were here!