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.

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!