It will be LEGENDARY!

CentreSource is once again sponsoring the midstate’s leading tech-driven “unconference,” BarCamp Nashville. This free event will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Saturday, October 17 at the Cadillac Ranch on Broadway in downtown Nashville (map). At last glance, there were more than 60 presenters that had created sessions on topics on everything from Web development to entrepreneurship. We are also very proud that several of our team members will be presenting at this year’s event:

• Nicholas Holland – From Cave Walls to Facebook Walls
• Chip Hayner – Choosing the Right Tool for the Job
• Brent Shaffer & Travis Roberts – Test Your Might: Symfony vs Rails – Framework Combat
• Nicholas Holland (again!) – iPhone Development … or “Welcome to Crazyville, Population YOU”
• Jared Scheel – Whoa! Creating Engaging User Experiences
• Aaron Briggs – Getting a Pants-Free Education: E-Learning and Instructional Design

Visit the BarCamp Nashville Web site to register today!

The post Join us for BarCamp Nashville 2009 appeared first on centresource blog.

Our Director of Technology Chip Hayner was named the Software Programmer of the Year by the Nashville Technology Council at an award reception this past Tuesday. The picture is of perhaps one of the coolest trophies we have ever seen: a custom designed Gibson/Epiphone electric guitar!

CentreSource Interactive Agency was honored with four total nominations, including Technology Organization of the Year, Innovator of the Year for our Founder/CEO Nicholas Holland, who also earned a nomination for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Our hats are off to all of the nominees and winners for the work they do to make this an incredible city with a thriving technology community.

The post Nashville’s 2009 Software Programmer of the Year: Chip Hayner appeared first on centresource blog.

We recently launched a new site for Nashville Center for Laser and Facial Surgery. The practice is lead by Dr. Brian S. Biesman, a world-renowned authority on cosmetic, reconstructive, and laser surgery. For the site, the goal was not only to tell about Dr. Biesman’s practice, but to serve as a repository for helpful resources on a wide range of industry topics, including his own “Face Facts” resources. It was a lot of content — nearly 150 articles on research, services and treatments — and our goal was to make it user-friendly and easy to navigate. Think Wikipedia.

With all of that information, managing the taxonomy terms and categories could easily get out of hand. Working with his staff, we created a Symfony module dubbed “HyperWords” (the name is a work in progress) that scans the page content and recommends the appropriate taxonomy. Now, when a new page is created, it suggests to the author relevant categories and tags.

The new site is easy for prospective clients to navigate thanks to a clear strategy and professional design. The site is also easy for Dr. Biesman’s staff to manage thanks to innovations like HyperWords. We call that more than just a facelift.

Visit the site at http://www.drbiesman.com.

The post More than a Facelift: Nashville Centre for Laser and Facial Surgery appeared first on centresource blog.

This past Friday, Yazoo Brewing Company held their grand opening for their new Taproom in Downtown Nashville. To coincide with the opening, we also launched their new Web site. The site gives the visitor an overview of the brewery and invites them to discover the many lines of beer that Yazoo has to offer. The visitor can also buy merchandise as well as find out the latest news from their blog and Twitter accounts.

Check out their site at www.yazoobrew.com.

The post Bottoms up! CentreSource launches new site for Yazoo Brewing Co. appeared first on centresource blog.

You’ve probably caught wind of it already. A snide remark here, a subtle eye-roll there. What started as vague muttering in the ether of the twitters has grown to a dull roar of complaints: Barcamp Nashville is not legit. Whether or not these complaints represent a growing sentiment or a vocal minority remains to be seen. Never one to ignore the elephant in the room, I thought I’d talk about it a bit. I’m somewhat uniquely positioned to comment on this all, perhaps, because I can commiserate with both sides here. Centresource is a long-time sponsor of Barcamp and has been involved from the beginning. I even spoke at the first one in 2007 about something-or-other. I’m also a huge nerd, friends with many of the detractors, and one of the most cynical dudes around. So hear me out.

So what’s at the center of this debate? A cadre of Nashville’s more technically proficient programmer/engineer types feel that Nashville’s Barcamp is overwhelmed by “non-technical” people: entrepreneurs, business-owners, and self-proclaimed social media experts that have organized the event such that it’s hardly in keeping with the original spirit of Barcamp. In a nutshell: too many business cards, not enough neckbeards. More specifically, as Rick Bradley put it:

rickbradley> @cwage my (and others’) annual complaints would be silenced by (a) changing the name or (b) following the rules: http://t.co/TGRaeDm

Similarly, @BCN_Critic (an account created on twitter specifically to voice complaints about Barcamp Nashville) objects to the rigid scheduling coupled with the random session selection, among other things.

To be honest, I can understand this sentiment. When you read about the history and make-up of the original barcamps, Nashville’s event bears little to no resemblance. But Nashville has never resembled other cities. Nashville is not Palo Alto, nor Portland. In all likelihood if we “followed the rules” to maintain the true barcamp spirit, Nashville wouldn’t have a barcamp at all, because it would have never happened: the demand (and resources) weren’t there. We didn’t have the pool of nerderiffic talent in Nashville to pull it off — certainly not in 2007, and arguably not now. Nashville does have “open, participatory workshop-events” suitable for the level we’re at: it’s called JJ’s Market on Thursday afternoons.

To their credit, Barcamp Nashville has never pretended it was anything more than what it is: a uniquely Nashville event. The description on the website says it plainly enough, describing BCN as “new-media focused”. It’s very heavy on the social media aspect, yes, but there’s plenty of technical meat. Last year I saw a very good session covering the basics of Arduino. Your average ruby hacker might think banging out WordPress sites is beneath them, but it’s not non-technical. The worst offense you can justifiably level at Barcamp Nashville is that they’ve co-opted the name. Oh well. That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Nothing is stopping the neckbeards (I can say that because I have one) from creating their own event truer to the original spirit of barcamps. I hardly think anyone involved with BCN would mind — on the contrary, I think they’d encourage it. The people involved with Barcamp might be “marketroids” or self-proclaimed social media mavens, but they understand the immense value of Nashville’s nerdier contingent. Frankly, I think it’s time for the Barcamp-haters to realize the converse is also true: marketing, social media and entrepreneurship might not be your bag, but that doesn’t mean they’re worthless. We need them. For every Steve Wozniak, there’s a Steve Jobs. These are the people that will keep interest piqued, businesses running, and investment capital flowing into the city while we nerds are too busy riding out 72-hour mountain-dew fueled hackfests. The ferocity of the criticism and eye-rolling directed at Barcamp and many other Nashville technology-related institutions (NTC, JSF, etc.) is undeserved, and it’s not cool. It’s easy to complain every year — what’s harder is to contribute or create a viable alternative. Don’t like Barcamp Nashville? Last time I checked, the organizational meetings are open to the public.

Don’t hate. Participate.

Thoughts?

The post The Not-So-Great Barcamp Schism appeared first on centresource blog.

The Nashville Business Journal takes a look this week at the growing trend of ROWE policies, highlighting a few local firms that have taken advantage of it, including one firm that should sound familiar (hint: it rhymes with “enter force”). In the past, we have received no shortage of skeptical raised-eyebrows when we explain our ROWE policy, but it’s been nothing but a positive asset for our company — and it’s clear from this article that people are coming around to the idea.

“Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you’ll live… at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin’ to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take… OUR FREEDOM!” — William Wallace, on the traditional 9 to 5 office hour orthodoxy versus emergent ROWE workplace policies.

What’s this all about? See our past articles on ROWE.

The post NBJ Highlights Growing ROWE Trend appeared first on centresource blog.

I would not be where I am today without mentors. I am lucky that I get to do what I love for work and I am lucky I get to do it at Centresource. I am not one of those uber-geeks you hear about. I wasn’t building an intranet at 11 or cracking government databases in my early twenties. I played sports (badly), I played guitar (badly), and I chased girls (even worse). I didn’t know anything about development until nearly my thirtieth birthday.

One night, not long ago, I bought an old friend a beer. I told him about this idea I had to build a website to help audio engineers and producers make more money. Ever the pragmatist, my friend sat there and listened to me talk for a while before completely tearing my idea to shreds. It really wasn’t even that the idea was that bad, but it was pretty clear from question one that I had no idea how to build a website. Like many would-be entrepreneurs, I thought the web stuff was for someone else to build. Being a good friend, however, my pal decided to talk me through some basics. By a few beers later, he had laid the foundation for what would become my career. He now sits in the office next door to mine.

After those beers wore off, I found myself thinking more and more about development. I thought I’d give it a shot. I Googled and Googled. I bought a subscription to Lynda.com and tore through tutorials like it was my job. I thought I was the bee’s knees. Increasingly proud of myself, I told another old friend about my progress in my new hobby and he suggested I look into something called the Nashville Software School. It turns out he and some people he knows decided to do something about the shortage of tech workers in Nashville; so they started a school to teach people development and I (with a little help from my friend, I would imagine) got accepted into the first class. That friend is now my boss.

The Nashville Software School was a great opportunity for me. I got a chance to get extensive, hands-on training in a number of web development technologies while not going completely broke. More than the hands-on-keyboard stuff though, the best part of Nashville Software School was the access to mentors. I couldn’t believe it; developers (and tech people of all kinds for that matter) donated their time to fledgling developers like me. Looking back at it, it wasn’t even the troubleshooting that was the best part of the all– it was the sense that there are kind-hearted people out there who are willing to help out that really made the whole thing great. I got to gain experience from and befriend people who work for companies like Mozilla and Github (not to mention Centresource) and so many more. Even as a total novice, the developer community embraced me as one of its own.

I drink beer every Thursday with a group of developers and tech folk whose combined years of experience in the field must be somewhere in the triple digits. Whether they know it or not, I consider them all mentors of mine and I’m lucky to know them. I look around that table and see what I hope I can one day become.

Now I am a working developer in Nashville. I get to write code all day, solve problems, and create things. I actually love what I get paid to do. Here at Centresource, I am surrounded by a number of senior developers who offer their mentorship everyday (with a healthy dose of sarcasm, mind you). I’m not sure they know how much I appreciate it– even the sarcasm. And so I am tasked to go out and pay it forward. There’s been a new cohort at Nashville Software School. There’s been a new group of people like me, only on a six-month delay. Though I may not be an experienced-enough developer to have been a great asset on the technical side, I hope I taught them something. For them, for future developers,  and even non-developers I hope I can give what I have been so fortunate to receive:

A mentor (or twenty).

The post The Importance of Being An Earnest Mentor appeared first on centresource blog.

Over the last six years, we have opened our doors to the finest in Nashville’s technology, marketing, entrepreneurial and business communities via the Centresource Mixer. We are excited to invite you to our Spring mixer on Thursday March 27th at 5pm. We hope you can join us to celebrate the amazing work and people in our fair city as well as spotlight all that’s going on in Germantown. Let us know if you can join by registering via our Populr page.

This year the Centresource team committed to shaking things up a bit at our mixers. We have decided to use these mixers as a way to celebrate our partnership with our clients as well as the greater Germantown community.  Our friends (and soon to be neighbors) the Skillery will be hosting a co-working event at our office that afternoon and joining in on the mixer fun. The fine folks at Nibletz will also be there. And our new neighbor 312 Pizza Company will be giving us a sneak peek of their new menu.

We will also be posing a question to all those who attend, “What does this New Nashville mean to you?” To some, it might mean hot chicken appearing more and more on menus, to others it might mean innovation. At Centresource, it means community. We hope you will join us on the 27th and share with us your thoughts on the ever evolving, “New Nashville.”

 We’re looking forward to seeing you on March 27th at 5pm!

The post Centresource Spring Mixer is March 27th! appeared first on centresource blog.

So here’s the scenario: you have a product you want to build, but like most people you are not one of those “coder” types. At a minimum, you need to hire a freelance web developer to bring your idea to life. Ideally, this developer also has the vision and technical know-how to help with product development, too.

This means you face quite a challenge, especially here in Nashville. This isn’t Silicon Valley, where the developers grow on trees. This is Music City, where the only species of trees we grow are “guitar player” and “songwriter.”

If you need development help, you really have two choices: hire a digital agency or go find a unicorn.

In the web business, a unicorn is what we call a developer who can do it all and do it all really, really well. We call them unicorns because they’re almost impossible to find.

That being said, if you lop off the doing-it-well part, you can probably find  a person who at least can do it all. But is this unicorn a better option than going with a digital agency that might have more up-front costs?

I’ll be the first to admit I’m biased, but the smart move is to choose an agency for your initial product development needs. Here are five reasons why:

1) Finding a unicorn is hard

It’s hard enough just to find a developer-for-hire, but finding a unicorn can present an entirely different set of challenges.

Outside of trolling coffee shops, your best bet to find a developer is to look online. But generally speaking, individual developers don’t have the same SEO juice that an established firm will have. They might have a simple resume site, but marketing and visibility is more of an afterthought. Personally, if I didn’t work in this industry, I’m not even sure I would know how to find talented freelance developers. You might be able to find a freelancer on an outsourcing site, but that experience always feels so overwhelming– to say nothing of the quality or communication issues you will inevitably face.

In a company’s early stages, you’d be better off focusing on your business, rather than a unicorn hunt.

2) Vetting a unicorn is hard

Even if you found a bonanza of developers somewhere, how do you know who is good, who is great and who might be your unicorn? Do you know whether or not the alphabet soup of  skills in his/her resume is what you need to accomplish your goal? More importantly, do you care? You just want someone who can execute the idea you have.

The tricky part about vetting a potential developer is knowing if the developer is telling the truth or exaggerating. I could tell you I’m an expert in Java and bombard you with various official-sounding terms. You would have no way of knowing that, at least at this point in my career, I have not written a single line of Java– and I’m not even a good liar.

I’m not saying that freelancers are crooks and thieves. I know many freelance developers who are talented, honest, and hard-working people. I’ve just noticed they tend to have trouble having bosses.

If you’re fastidious, you can ask for references or to see other client work the developer has done. But at the end of the day, you, with your limited budget and your big idea, likely do not have the skills and experience necessary to accurately vet software developers.

3) Keeping a unicorn is hard

In the web business, a unicorn is what we call a developer who can do it all and do it all really, really well. (Image source.)

There are many reasons to be a freelance developer. Most will probably tell you they do it for the freedom. What does that really mean?

In my profession, freedom means two things: not working on projects you don’t want to work on and not working for people you don’t want to work for. (Remember what I said about unicorns and bosses?) What freelancer freedom means for you is that the moment you or your project becomes unpleasant or boring, your unicorn can simply move on.

Freedom is great for unicorns and terrible for you.

4) Continuity between unicorns is hard

If you think hiring a freelancer to build your project from the start (“green field”) is difficult, finding a freelancer to maintain and/or rescue your half-finished (“brown field”) product is nearly impossible. The market is so good right now that freelancers don’t have to take on the gargantuan task of picking up after the last developer, if they are even able to. Unicorns can just wait for the next “green field” opportunity and enjoy their freedom.

But let’s say you do find another freelancer willing to pick up your project. How much time do you think you will have to spend bringing him/her up-to-speed? Did your previous developer keep detailed and current documentation on the way your app works and plans for the future? Spoiler alert: he/she didn’t. You know how I know? Freelancers never, ever, ever plan for the next developer. That kind of thing is always the first thing overboard when there aren’t enough hours in the day — and there are never enough hours in the day.

Even if your old unicorn could find the time to keep detailed documentation, the amount of knowledge that must be passed from one person to another in this scenario is too great for the written word. I get chills just thinking about finding myself in that situation.

5) Being a true unicorn is hard

Above all else, I am a developer. My skillset leans heavily towards application development and not any of the other things that go into product development. Thankfully for me and the clients my agency serves, I do not have to do project management/UX/design/budgeting/billing, as well as looking for more work at the same time. I spend my time doing what I’m good at: web development.

When you hire a unicorn for product development, you are asking one person to wear multiple hats. Not only is it extremely difficult to find a unicorn who can do all of those things well, but it is nearly impossible to do it all at once. We’ve all heard the stories of “communication black out,” where developers just don’t respond for a while. Well, any time a unicorn spends answering your emails or creating a report is time he/she isn’t spending  on your code base — the very code that you hired them to work on.

Digital agencies to the rescue

Agencies are a great choice for early product development because they solve all the problems listed above with three, general traits: experience, consistency, and diversity.

Agencies are easy to find. In fact, digital agencies are generally falling all over themselves to find new business. Even if you have only heard of one (ahem, Centresource), most agencies will tell you about their competitors if you ask. They also should be able to show you recent work and give you verifiable references of past and current happy clients. This way, you get to leave the developer vetting (and the unicorn hunting) to the agency.

More than anything, you should look for the agency with the experience to understand your vision and the expertise to deliver your product.

Unlike the land of unicorns, agencies use consistency to marginalize the pain of keeping talented developers. Developers come and go, but agencies like Centresource have the experience to manage the turnover with well-tested company standards. This way, if I’m working on your project for my agency and I get hit by a bus, I know the next developer will find comfort in the fact that your project was done the way she expects. The standards, practices, and tools we use allow us to bring developers rapidly up-to-speed. With the support you receive, your agency is your team. And that’s what really matters: having the right people on your team.

With a whole agency working for you, offering a diversity of talents, you receive the sum of its collective expertise. I do Ruby on Rails pretty well, but the projects I work on have the benefit of input from UX Experts, Strategists, and Designers, to name a few. If I run into a problem I have not solved before, chances are someone on the team has been there before. I have task-master Project Managers who keep me focused and under budget. More than that, the Project Managers keep in contact with you, so I can stick to writing code. That is good for your bottom line.

Coming up with a great idea is hard. Executing the technology is hard. I hope finding the right people to help you just got a little easier.

The post 5 Reasons To Choose a Digital Agency Over a Unicorn appeared first on centresource blog.

“You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than you can from a lifetime of conversation.” – Plato

The Nashville Technology Council and Centresource are teaming up to present an event that aims to improve communication between technologists and marketers.

This event is for any team who has ever had miscommunication about technical specs and how they link to the marketing goal… basically, most of us.

This is a hands-on, minds-on, problem-solving workshop – not a presentation. It will be a professionally-facilitated process using a tested concept: LEGO Serious Play.

The LEGO Serious Play methodology has been used around the world for a huge range of applications including M&A, strategic planning, and other complex problem-solving in organizations.

Our facilitator, Jody Lentz, has worked for LEGO and used LEGO Serious Play with over 6,000 people around the world from Stockholm to Sacramento.

He says, “Communication is abstract and ephemeral.  But when you build it out of LEGO and make a story out of it, it has some heft to it.  It allows you to pick apart the meanings, and reassemble – like a good LEGO set.”

Just getting Nashville teams around a table to share about their perspectives is going to be valuable.  But there is an output – not just LEGO models – but also rubric, guiding principles, rules of engagement… things that will help us create better products AND avoid train wrecks that are almost always caused by lack of clarity.

“It’s an incredibly useful tool to get people to understand more about themselves, the people they work with, and the problem they’re trying to solve…and it’s fun!!”

How do you prepare for the event?

This is a 2-hour workshop, followed by a cocktail hour to debrief.

Bring your imagination.  You could come individually, or even better, bring 6 or 7 people from your team who often work together. If they can build together, your organization will get more out of it.

May 13, 2015
3-6 pm (2 hour workshop followed by cocktail hour)
Emma Bistro
Free as a member of the NTC, $10 for non-members
Register

The post A Team That Plays Together, Stays Together appeared first on centresource blog.

I would not be where I am today without mentors. I am lucky that I get to do what I love for work and I am lucky I get to do it at Centresource. I am not one of those uber-geeks you hear about. I wasn’t building an intranet at 11 or cracking government databases in my early twenties. I played sports (badly), I played guitar (badly), and I chased girls (even worse). I didn’t know anything about development until nearly my thirtieth birthday.

One night, not long ago, I bought an old friend a beer. I told him about this idea I had to build a website to help audio engineers and producers make more money. Ever the pragmatist, my friend sat there and listened to me talk for a while before completely tearing my idea to shreds. It really wasn’t even that the idea was that bad, but it was pretty clear from question one that I had no idea how to build a website. Like many would-be entrepreneurs, I thought the web stuff was for someone else to build. Being a good friend, however, my pal decided to talk me through some basics. By a few beers later, he had laid the foundation for what would become my career. He now sits in the office next door to mine.

After those beers wore off, I found myself thinking more and more about development. I thought I’d give it a shot. I Googled and Googled. I bought a subscription to Lynda.com and tore through tutorials like it was my job. I thought I was the bee’s knees. Increasingly proud of myself, I told another old friend about my progress in my new hobby and he suggested I look into something called the Nashville Software School. It turns out he and some people he knows decided to do something about the shortage of tech workers in Nashville; so they started a school to teach people development and I (with a little help from my friend, I would imagine) got accepted into the first class. That friend is now my boss.

The Nashville Software School was a great opportunity for me. I got a chance to get extensive, hands-on training in a number of web development technologies while not going completely broke. More than the hands-on-keyboard stuff though, the best part of Nashville Software School was the access to mentors. I couldn’t believe it; developers (and tech people of all kinds for that matter) donated their time to fledgling developers like me. Looking back at it, it wasn’t even the troubleshooting that was the best part of the all– it was the sense that there are kind-hearted people out there who are willing to help out that really made the whole thing great. I got to gain experience from and befriend people who work for companies like Mozilla and Github (not to mention Centresource) and so many more. Even as a total novice, the developer community embraced me as one of its own.

I drink beer every Thursday with a group of developers and tech folk whose combined years of experience in the field must be somewhere in the triple digits. Whether they know it or not, I consider them all mentors of mine and I’m lucky to know them. I look around that table and see what I hope I can one day become.

Now I am a working developer in Nashville. I get to write code all day, solve problems, and create things. I actually love what I get paid to do. Here at Centresource, I am surrounded by a number of senior developers who offer their mentorship everyday (with a healthy dose of sarcasm, mind you). I’m not sure they know how much I appreciate it– even the sarcasm. And so I am tasked to go out and pay it forward. There’s been a new cohort at Nashville Software School. There’s been a new group of people like me, only on a six-month delay. Though I may not be an experienced-enough developer to have been a great asset on the technical side, I hope I taught them something. For them, for future developers,  and even non-developers I hope I can give what I have been so fortunate to receive:

A mentor (or twenty).

So here’s the scenario: you have a product you want to build, but like most people you are not one of those “coder” types. At a minimum, you need to hire a freelance web developer to bring your idea to life. Ideally, this developer also has the vision and technical know-how to help with product development, too.

This means you face quite a challenge, especially here in Nashville. This isn’t Silicon Valley, where the developers grow on trees. This is Music City, where the only species of trees we grow are “guitar player” and “songwriter.”

If you need development help, you really have two choices: hire a digital agency or go find a unicorn.

In the web business, a unicorn is what we call a developer who can do it all and do it all really, really well. We call them unicorns because they’re almost impossible to find.

That being said, if you lop off the doing-it-well part, you can probably find  a person who at least can do it all. But is this unicorn a better option than going with a digital agency that might have more up-front costs?

I’ll be the first to admit I’m biased, but the smart move is to choose an agency for your initial product development needs. Here are five reasons why:

1) Finding a unicorn is hard

It’s hard enough just to find a developer-for-hire, but finding a unicorn can present an entirely different set of challenges.

Outside of trolling coffee shops, your best bet to find a developer is to look online. But generally speaking, individual developers don’t have the same SEO juice that an established firm will have. They might have a simple resume site, but marketing and visibility is more of an afterthought. Personally, if I didn’t work in this industry, I’m not even sure I would know how to find talented freelance developers. You might be able to find a freelancer on an outsourcing site, but that experience always feels so overwhelming– to say nothing of the quality or communication issues you will inevitably face.

In a company’s early stages, you’d be better off focusing on your business, rather than a unicorn hunt.

2) Vetting a unicorn is hard

Even if you found a bonanza of developers somewhere, how do you know who is good, who is great and who might be your unicorn? Do you know whether or not the alphabet soup of  skills in his/her resume is what you need to accomplish your goal? More importantly, do you care? You just want someone who can execute the idea you have.

The tricky part about vetting a potential developer is knowing if the developer is telling the truth or exaggerating. I could tell you I’m an expert in Java and bombard you with various official-sounding terms. You would have no way of knowing that, at least at this point in my career, I have not written a single line of Java– and I’m not even a good liar.

I’m not saying that freelancers are crooks and thieves. I know many freelance developers who are talented, honest, and hard-working people. I’ve just noticed they tend to have trouble having bosses.

If you’re fastidious, you can ask for references or to see other client work the developer has done. But at the end of the day, you, with your limited budget and your big idea, likely do not have the skills and experience necessary to accurately vet software developers.

3) Keeping a unicorn is hard

In the web business, a unicorn is what we call a developer who can do it all and do it all really, really well. (Image source.)

There are many reasons to be a freelance developer. Most will probably tell you they do it for the freedom. What does that really mean?

In my profession, freedom means two things: not working on projects you don’t want to work on and not working for people you don’t want to work for. (Remember what I said about unicorns and bosses?) What freelancer freedom means for you is that the moment you or your project becomes unpleasant or boring, your unicorn can simply move on.

Freedom is great for unicorns and terrible for you.

4) Continuity between unicorns is hard

If you think hiring a freelancer to build your project from the start (“green field”) is difficult, finding a freelancer to maintain and/or rescue your half-finished (“brown field”) product is nearly impossible. The market is so good right now that freelancers don’t have to take on the gargantuan task of picking up after the last developer, if they are even able to. Unicorns can just wait for the next “green field” opportunity and enjoy their freedom.

But let’s say you do find another freelancer willing to pick up your project. How much time do you think you will have to spend bringing him/her up-to-speed? Did your previous developer keep detailed and current documentation on the way your app works and plans for the future? Spoiler alert: he/she didn’t. You know how I know? Freelancers never, ever, ever plan for the next developer. That kind of thing is always the first thing overboard when there aren’t enough hours in the day — and there are never enough hours in the day.

Even if your old unicorn could find the time to keep detailed documentation, the amount of knowledge that must be passed from one person to another in this scenario is too great for the written word. I get chills just thinking about finding myself in that situation.

5) Being a true unicorn is hard

Above all else, I am a developer. My skillset leans heavily towards application development and not any of the other things that go into product development. Thankfully for me and the clients my agency serves, I do not have to do project management/UX/design/budgeting/billing, as well as looking for more work at the same time. I spend my time doing what I’m good at: web development.

When you hire a unicorn for product development, you are asking one person to wear multiple hats. Not only is it extremely difficult to find a unicorn who can do all of those things well, but it is nearly impossible to do it all at once. We’ve all heard the stories of “communication black out,” where developers just don’t respond for a while. Well, any time a unicorn spends answering your emails or creating a report is time he/she isn’t spending  on your code base — the very code that you hired them to work on.

Digital agencies to the rescue

Agencies are a great choice for early product development because they solve all the problems listed above with three, general traits: experience, consistency, and diversity.

Agencies are easy to find. In fact, digital agencies are generally falling all over themselves to find new business. Even if you have only heard of one (ahem, Centresource), most agencies will tell you about their competitors if you ask. They also should be able to show you recent work and give you verifiable references of past and current happy clients. This way, you get to leave the developer vetting (and the unicorn hunting) to the agency.

More than anything, you should look for the agency with the experience to understand your vision and the expertise to deliver your product.

Unlike the land of unicorns, agencies use consistency to marginalize the pain of keeping talented developers. Developers come and go, but agencies like Centresource have the experience to manage the turnover with well-tested company standards. This way, if I’m working on your project for my agency and I get hit by a bus, I know the next developer will find comfort in the fact that your project was done the way she expects. The standards, practices, and tools we use allow us to bring developers rapidly up-to-speed. With the support you receive, your agency is your team. And that’s what really matters: having the right people on your team.

With a whole agency working for you, offering a diversity of talents, you receive the sum of its collective expertise. I do Ruby on Rails pretty well, but the projects I work on have the benefit of input from UX Experts, Strategists, and Designers, to name a few. If I run into a problem I have not solved before, chances are someone on the team has been there before. I have task-master Project Managers who keep me focused and under budget. More than that, the Project Managers keep in contact with you, so I can stick to writing code. That is good for your bottom line.

Coming up with a great idea is hard. Executing the technology is hard. I hope finding the right people to help you just got a little easier.

“You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than you can from a lifetime of conversation.” – Plato

The Nashville Technology Council and Centresource are teaming up to present an event that aims to improve communication between technologists and marketers.

This event is for any team who has ever had miscommunication about technical specs and how they link to the marketing goal… basically, most of us.

This is a hands-on, minds-on, problem-solving workshop – not a presentation. It will be a professionally-facilitated process using a tested concept: LEGO Serious Play.

The LEGO Serious Play methodology has been used around the world for a huge range of applications including M&A, strategic planning, and other complex problem-solving in organizations.

Our facilitator, Jody Lentz, has worked for LEGO and used LEGO Serious Play with over 6,000 people around the world from Stockholm to Sacramento.

He says, “Communication is abstract and ephemeral.  But when you build it out of LEGO and make a story out of it, it has some heft to it.  It allows you to pick apart the meanings, and reassemble – like a good LEGO set.”

Just getting Nashville teams around a table to share about their perspectives is going to be valuable.  But there is an output – not just LEGO models – but also rubric, guiding principles, rules of engagement… things that will help us create better products AND avoid train wrecks that are almost always caused by lack of clarity.

“It’s an incredibly useful tool to get people to understand more about themselves, the people they work with, and the problem they’re trying to solve…and it’s fun!!”

How do you prepare for the event?

This is a 2-hour workshop, followed by a cocktail hour to debrief.

Bring your imagination.  You could come individually, or even better, bring 6 or 7 people from your team who often work together. If they can build together, your organization will get more out of it.

May 13, 2015
3-6 pm (2 hour workshop followed by cocktail hour)
Emma Bistro
Free as a member of the NTC, $10 for non-members
Register

When Kyle Duke joined PatientFocus, the company was feeling the kind of pain every company wants to feel. It was growing.

Fifteen years ago, the market wasn’t ready for PatientFocus. At that time, healthcare costs were primarily covered by insurance. Only 10 percent (or less) of a provider’s revenue came from individual patients. Of that 10 percent, only 10 percent was fully collected, but in the grand scheme of write offs, that wasn’t worth the cost of investing in a solution.

Things started changing in 2008. Today, individuals account for 30 percent of a provider’s revenue, but the collection rate has remained at 10 percent. Do the math, and you’ll see what PatientFocus founder David Frederiksen saw. That’s a hit to the bottom line for the big players. It would be devastating for the smaller ones.

PatientFocus serves hospitals and other healthcare providers by managing collections from self-paying patients. But they don’t do it in the same way it’s been done before. The company works on behalf of the providers, but focuses on patient experience. The system makes it easy for patients to ask questions, get clarity, and set up payment plans when necessary. Often patients don’t even realize they’re working with a third party.

Things were going well for PatientFocus. So much so that in 2015, the company realized a huge bump in sales. And then the technology-related problems started.

“In 2015, the dam broke,” Duke says. “We sold 15 new clients, and nobody could keep up. We couldn’t get them on the platform, it took too long to onboard them…so what we saw was this huge growth in revenue and huge growth in expenses because we were having to add as many people as we were clients.”

When Duke joined the company, he was tasked with finding a solution. His approach could be a master class in adapting technology to solve business problems.

Step One: You Are Here.

Before making a single technology decision, Duke and Frederiksen spent three or four months digging into the core of the business. They hired an outside consultant who guided the process, uncovering data and trends with the cold eye of a third party. With potential revenue being lost every day, and dozens of clients and employees to consider, throwing things at the wall to see what stuck was no longer a good option. They needed strategy a strategy to handle the Iron Triangle.

The timeline for building a new custom platform did not line up with the company’s customer and internal demands. Moreover, with the developer team already working nonstop just to handle maintenance, going back to square one would take substantial investment in technology staff. With serious timeline and budget implications at play, it was clear: rebuilding from scratch would not work for PatientFocus.

Instead, Duke and the team looked broadly at everything they needed their system to do in order to find alternative solutions. They looked at process, workflow, documentation, technology, and where the system was breaking down. The goal was to automate the process, making it repeatable and scalable, while also serving individual clients.

It became obvious that a third party solution–with heavy modifications to serve the PatientFocus purpose–would solve their problems faster, cheaper, and provide better service to their employees.

Step Two: X Marks The Spot.

After settling on a solution, it was time to start building. Which meant a hard conversation with the company’s developers.

“Ok, we are not going to rebuild the platform from the ground up,” Duke remembers telling them. “That was day one. By about day 10, all 8 of them {the developers} were gone.”

It may have been a painful time, but that firm stake in the ground served both PatientFocus and their employees. The developers were able to identify that it was time to find jobs that would meet their career goals more fully, and the company was able to funnel expenses to the right resources.

It’s important to realize, though, that the PatientFocus team could not have outlined this same map when the company was founded. They needed to dive in and build their first MVP in order to understand client needs, their own workflows, and what processes are most easily automated. They drew a solid map from their current location, but, like most successful companies, they had to do some learning and course-correcting in order to reach that spot.

Step Three: Take The Team With You.

Sometimes. As we’ve seen, when there are shifts in technology or strategy, there will be some people who will find new opportunities. But for the team members who stay, technology change is people change.

Frederiksen and Duke managed this change by extending their relationship with their consultant. They understood that even though the team was onboard, change is hard. Even good change.

Every week during the transition, leadership mapped where every single employee sat on the change curve. They made a plan for helping the ones who struggled or fell behind. With timeline as a driver (the rebuild was slowing sales), the company could not afford delays. Duke credits that level of employee shepherding with their success.

“For us being able to start building in December and put the first client on in August, that’s the only way that happened,” he says.

Lessons Learned

Decisions like platform and custom vs. third party seem like technology decisions. But these are really business decisions. With the right strategy, technology can affect every part of the income statement – it can increase revenue, reduce variable costs, and reduce overhead (or keep it constant in the face of growth), all of which results in a healthier bottom line.

For PatientFocus, changing their technology more than doubled their daily activity. On the old system, they completed about 500 outbound calls to patients a day. Today, they can manage up to 1200. Employees are now able to focus on high value work (talking to patients) instead of menial tasks like looking up phone numbers and records. That means more revenue, for them and their clients, while also keeping headcount and overhead low.

At a high level, leadership is no longer worried that the system may crash at any moment. Being secure in the knowledge that the core technology would run smoothly equals exponential return on the CEO’s brain space. Now, rather than praying the technology works again today, he – and the sales team – can focus on growing the business.

The PatientFocus story reminds us that business and technology are no longer separate. Finding the right technology is worth the effort because it can literally make or break your business.

The post What You Can Learn From The PatientFocus Tech Pivot appeared first on Centresource.

When Kyle Duke joined PatientFocus, the company was feeling the kind of pain every company wants to feel. It was growing.

Fifteen years ago, the market wasn’t ready for PatientFocus. At that time, healthcare costs were primarily covered by insurance. Only 10 percent (or less) of a provider’s revenue came from individual patients. Of that 10 percent, only 10 percent was fully collected, but in the grand scheme of write offs, that wasn’t worth the cost of investing in a solution.

Things started changing in 2008. Today, individuals account for 30 percent of a provider’s revenue, but the collection rate has remained at 10 percent. Do the math, and you’ll see what PatientFocus founder David Frederiksen saw. That’s a hit to the bottom line for the big players. It would be devastating for the smaller ones.

PatientFocus serves hospitals and other healthcare providers by managing collections from self-paying patients. But they don’t do it in the same way it’s been done before. The company works on behalf of the providers, but focuses on patient experience. The system makes it easy for patients to ask questions, get clarity, and set up payment plans when necessary. Often patients don’t even realize they’re working with a third party.

Things were going well for PatientFocus. So much so that in 2015, the company realized a huge bump in sales. And then the technology-related problems started.

“In 2015, the dam broke,” Duke says. “We sold 15 new clients, and nobody could keep up. We couldn’t get them on the platform, it took too long to onboard them…so what we saw was this huge growth in revenue and huge growth in expenses because we were having to add as many people as we were clients.”

When Duke joined the company, he was tasked with finding a solution. His approach could be a master class in adapting technology to solve business problems.

Step One: You Are Here.

Before making a single technology decision, Duke and Frederiksen spent three or four months digging into the core of the business. They hired an outside consultant who guided the process, uncovering data and trends with the cold eye of a third party. With potential revenue being lost every day, and dozens of clients and employees to consider, throwing things at the wall to see what stuck was no longer a good option. They needed strategy a strategy to handle the Iron Triangle.

The timeline for building a new custom platform did not line up with the company’s customer and internal demands. Moreover, with the developer team already working nonstop just to handle maintenance, going back to square one would take substantial investment in technology staff. With serious timeline and budget implications at play, it was clear: rebuilding from scratch would not work for PatientFocus.

Instead, Duke and the team looked broadly at everything they needed their system to do in order to find alternative solutions. They looked at process, workflow, documentation, technology, and where the system was breaking down. The goal was to automate the process, making it repeatable and scalable, while also serving individual clients.

It became obvious that a third party solution–with heavy modifications to serve the PatientFocus purpose–would solve their problems faster, cheaper, and provide better service to their employees.

Step Two: X Marks The Spot.

After settling on a solution, it was time to start building. Which meant a hard conversation with the company’s developers.

“Ok, we are not going to rebuild the platform from the ground up,” Duke remembers telling them. “That was day one. By about day 10, all 8 of them {the developers} were gone.”

It may have been a painful time, but that firm stake in the ground served both PatientFocus and their employees. The developers were able to identify that it was time to find jobs that would meet their career goals more fully, and the company was able to funnel expenses to the right resources.

It’s important to realize, though, that the PatientFocus team could not have outlined this same map when the company was founded. They needed to dive in and build their first MVP in order to understand client needs, their own workflows, and what processes are most easily automated. They drew a solid map from their current location, but, like most successful companies, they had to do some learning and course-correcting in order to reach that spot.

Step Three: Take The Team With You.

Sometimes. As we’ve seen, when there are shifts in technology or strategy, there will be some people who will find new opportunities. But for the team members who stay, technology change is people change.

Frederiksen and Duke managed this change by extending their relationship with their consultant. They understood that even though the team was onboard, change is hard. Even good change.

Every week during the transition, leadership mapped where every single employee sat on the change curve. They made a plan for helping the ones who struggled or fell behind. With timeline as a driver (the rebuild was slowing sales), the company could not afford delays. Duke credits that level of employee shepherding with their success.

“For us being able to start building in December and put the first client on in August, that’s the only way that happened,” he says.

Lessons Learned

Decisions like platform and custom vs. third party seem like technology decisions. But these are really business decisions. With the right strategy, technology can affect every part of the income statement – it can increase revenue, reduce variable costs, and reduce overhead (or keep it constant in the face of growth), all of which results in a healthier bottom line.

For PatientFocus, changing their technology more than doubled their daily activity. On the old system, they completed about 500 outbound calls to patients a day. Today, they can manage up to 1200. Employees are now able to focus on high value work (talking to patients) instead of menial tasks like looking up phone numbers and records. That means more revenue, for them and their clients, while also keeping headcount and overhead low.

At a high level, leadership is no longer worried that the system may crash at any moment. Being secure in the knowledge that the core technology would run smoothly equals exponential return on the CEO’s brain space. Now, rather than praying the technology works again today, he – and the sales team – can focus on growing the business.

The PatientFocus story reminds us that business and technology are no longer separate. Finding the right technology is worth the effort because it can literally make or break your business.

The post What You Can Learn From The PatientFocus Tech Pivot appeared first on Centresource.