So I gave it a try….my verdict? Won’t do it again….

Now this is no criticism of the company that does it, because they are good at what they do and serve a purpose. The only problem is that their purpose is not my purpose Its a good solution if you are not intending to work with the templates they provide, and possibly just use it for a static website.

Problem is that they don’t think of their CSS in a way that is re-usable, they create CSS styles for absolutely everything and don’t think about optimising the CSS for re-use across pages. The end result is that your XHTML is nice and concise, but the CSS is very verbose and long (100’s of lines).

I have ended up using their XHTML and re-creating most of the CSS so that I can re-use it in my application as a template. I am still going through this process and therefore, something that would have taken me a few days to do (create XHTML/CSS from Design), is still taking me a few days to do, but I have the added complexity of working with code that was written by someone else.

Oh well, a lesson learned

After going around in circles within this legal for some time now, I have managed to start getting a positive result. With the help of the Philip Argy (@philipargy) I have now hooked up with the team at Optim Legal. We had our first meeting last Friday, and it was great to chat with like-minded individuals!

They seem to understand what I am trying to do, and how I am trying to do it!

I really am after three things from my engagement with them;

1. Advice whether there are any gaping holes in the Business Model
2. Advice on how the whole thing needs to be structured correctly (legally and from a business perspective)
3. And finally, help with the Terms and Conditions for the site

I anticipate that they will get back to me in the next few days with a plan of attack and I do look forward to working with the team at Optim legal, they really are a breath of fresh air in the legal world!!!

After reviewing the business model with some of my (trusted) friends, some of the feedback I received was that I had to simplify one aspect of how users are engaged. And I succumbed to the pressure and agreed. I think they are right, I need to make this is as simple as possible for users, and remove any (be they not real) barriers in the process.

In my original business model, I had the concept of a user needing to subscribe (paid) to the Its4aCause.com service. But every time I described this to people, it was the point  where they got stuck. They started having all the ‘why’ questions. And this when the light went off in my head.

If friends that I am sitting with and explaining it to don’t get it, I am going to have problems with people that just happen across the site. So I had to swallow my pride and admit I was wrong. So I removed it!

This actually didn’t actually change my business model, or at least the financial projections too much, but it did change the functionality that needed to be developed. So, I needed to re-plan the functionality to be delivered (actually made it a little easier).

So onward bounds, I take this as a learning and it helps me build a better product! The interesting thing is that I now think that this has become a trigger for some more model changes to come. So listen out for that!

PS: Once again, I have to apologize my vagueness on this, but I hope to be able to tell you soon what this is all about.

Recently I have been toying with a small change to my business model. Although it is a small material change in regards to the technical implementation of one of the features, but there is a significant effect of how potential users would interact with the site. I have thinking about this for the last few weeks and I can’t find a clear benefit (or detriment) to either approach.

So today over lunch with my good buddy my best mate Joe from EmediaCreative (today is my birthday by the way ), he mentioned the idea of a Focus Group. I had thought of this before, but I thought as a one man show, how can I manage (or afford) to do this? But Joe mentioned something quite important “Between us, I am sure we could muster a dozen friends to sit down and do this with”. And he is right!!

But I then thought, why stop there? Why not work the social sphere. Time to mention it to people on twitter, followers to this blog etc etc! These random people are going to be more impartial than my friends that might be afraid to offend me.

So the offer is going out; Want to be part of a focus group for an exciting new start-up? Complete the form below!!!

So I reached out to a good buddy of mine over at emediacreative. He’s got some great people, and wanted to get him to help me with the logo and brand. Even though I had spent some time working on the logo myself, I was too close to the project and decided that I best leave it to the experts when comping up with the logo

So what I did was spent some time thinking about the brief. And I focused on the image I wanted to portray. And there were two elements to this. Firstly since that the site had a charitable and philanthropic angle, I needed to make sure that came across. But when looking at some comparative sites and logos, the general overtone to these was to be heart wrenching and have an element of sadness. They are trying to get you to donate money I guess.

But I felt that this was wrong for Its4aCause.com. I believe that I wanted to add fun, hope and optimism to the vocabulary. I wanted people to feel good about the web site and what they are doing on it.

And the vocabulary is a good place to start. That is something that EmediaCreative took me though. They helped me identify keywords that described the site and concept. Based on that I had several dozen logos to choose from.

I sat on these logos for about a week and showed a few people.  After getting a few comments back, I narrowed those logos down to 2 I liked that in my opinion, truly represented what the concept was about.

EmediaCreative then went away and provided some alternative concepts and colours for my 2 preferred logos. And after another few days of pondering and sharing the logos around, I came up with my final choice!!!

Who knows, it still may change, but I am happy with it at the moment. I am still pondering on the colours, but I think its the orange and brown that I will go with.

Over the last year, I have gone through 4 lawyers with mixed results. Not because they were not able to help me with what I needed, but they seemed to have a mixed commitment to the project. I don’t know why, but I just could not get a result of any sort out. The closest I got was  50% of the work I needed done, but not in the structure I liked.

So after some twittering, I finally came across @idealaw (Kay) in Brisbane, and she was extremely understanding and helpful. Kay was honest enough to tell me that although she could probably able to help me, that I was better off working with someone local (in Sydney), and recommended @philipargy. I spent one morning with Phil last week talking about my idea and project, and he got it right away!

So I am feeling rather optimistic about this. I hope to hear back from Philip in the next few days on how to progress!!!

I plan to update this blog look and feel and provide some updates over the next few days. There is actually quite a bit to report. Firstly, I have finalized a logo with a design company, and essentially have 2 colour variations that I might go with. But that’s certainly done a done deal.

Secondly, after several false starts, I think I have finally found a lawyer that I can work with and provide me wit the advice and business structure to get the business side of this project over the line.

Thirdly, rather than relying on myself to work on the UI totally, I have engaged a UI designer to help me with the User Interface, and I also have plans to engage a Usability expert to help me work through the screen flows.

Fourth and finally, I have made a small change to the business model that I think was a slight flaw in the in the original model. It is slightly simpler, and I think that is a good thing.

So expect a whole series of posts discussing all those aspects. I hope to get some momentum behind this as I go!!!

Anyway, the main reason for this post is to announce that Its4aCause is going to go under the banner of Organic Software. Organic is a new website and organisation that helps match entrepreneurs with exciting projects to developers and designers in return for equity. I am hoping that this will bolster the project along and I can get an initial release out in the newt few months.

Watch this space!!!