I would be more optimistic about the economic recession

I think recession is just another word for dinosaurs getting wiped out. Every once in a while business practises and models that are no longer effective and efficient get removed from the ecosystem, and a whole new generation of species emerge because they focus on being innovative and doing things differently. In other words, an economic recession is the process of Natural Selection in the Market Evolution process. The problem is that for a while we have do deal with the disturbance and the smell of dinosaurs carcasses rotting around us.

I don’t think we can change that, but we can change the way we operate and manager our lives and businesses to coordinate with the changes in the environment.

I would also stay away from mainstream news media. Advertisement spending and market is in the historically low. TV, Radio, and Newspapers are pushing sad and depressing news more than ever to get some more audience. So their distorted view doesn’t quite reflect the realities of what’s happening today. “Experts” and “Forecasters” focus on things that people can understand rather than things that are actually happening. Reporters love the experts, because they generate content for them. Experts love to be on the spotlight to promote their agendas, and this vicious cycle continues.

On the other hand it is a great time to gather some people that you have good chemistry with and start your own company. After all that is where real job security is where you get to pull all the shots and if something doesn’t work, you get to fix it yourself. Or join a smaller niche market company where there aren’t many layers of management, and business operations costs are much lower so they hit the break-even much quicker and make profits.

A tip to make your price negotiation easier

Yaletown, 20-Oct-08

Here is a little tip to make your price negotiations easier during the 2009.

As technology experts we often like to use every opportunity to remind our clients that we are on top of things and perfectly able to take care of their problems.

It is a bad idea that while we go through their list of requirement to say:

“Oh that’s easy!”

“Oh that only takes 20 minutes”

“Oh that’s just a (insert fancy technical name) that’s fine!”

Because then client will be having a difficult time justifying why on earth they should be paying you big bucks for jobs that are too easy, take 20 min to implement, and use technologies that are common place!

The reality is that:

Easy jobs will still take up some time to be implemented and the Client is billed for those hours.

Once tunned into the work mode, Programmers, Designers, and those who are in love with their work often don’t realize how fast time is passing, so several hours actually do feel like only 20 minutes.

So next time that we see an “easy” list of requirements, it would be better to say, “Sure, we know exactly how to do it, how much time do we have for this?”

Trust me! Your price negotiation will  go through a lot smoother!

[tags]tips, consulting, price quote, business, negotiation[/tags]

Open Source developers aren’t free or cheap either

Joomla! CMS WordpressDrupal CMS

Just heard from a friend that a client looking for a “Joomla Expert” hung up on them after hearing their rates. Apparently some people still think that just because they can go and download a free copy of Joomla, Drupal, or WordPress that means any service provided in that domain should be cheap or free as well.

Reality is that Free in open source mostly refers to freedom to read and change the code to make it suit your project goals.

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Interview with Rastin Mehr on Inspiration Bit Blog

I would like to thank Vivien from the Inspiration Bit blog for the wonderful interview that she did with me over the skype last Monday. You can read the blog post here: Social Media As A New Way of Doing Business

Thank you so much Vivien!

:)

[tags]Rastin Mehr, interview, socialmedia, inspirationbit, vivien, vancouver, business, marketing[/tags]

How does diversity bring more security?

Imagine a neighborhood where all the door locks come from the same manufacturer. Once the bad guys learn how to break one lock, they’ll be able to break every lock in that neighborhood. (Hey that looks like most condos in Vancouver!)

Now if half of those locks came from two different manufacturers, that means the thieves have to learn two different ways to break those locks. Now imagine if different door locks were using five, six, or seven different technologies, eventually it would be much more difficult for the thieves to rob the entire neighborhood, even though they could still cause partial damage. Partial damage is always better than having the entire neighborhood exposed to the break-in threats.

The same analogy can be used in other ways, for example houses come in different shapes and forms so thieves have to come up with different plans or use different types of ladders to climb up and break-into those houses. Using different material to build houses possibly introduces further challenges too.

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