The irony of creative change (via Forty Media):

The irony of creativity is this: people want to be creative without change. They want innovation with no risk. They want a new result with the same exact behavior. They can talk for hours about how passionate they are about creativity, but when it comes to actually changing anything, they’ll find a way to repeat the same thing again and again. That’s why books, seminars, courses and lectures on creativity rarely translate into much actual creation. No one can make change happen except the person who must accept the fears, and consequences, of change.

Mr. Robinson over on Blue Flavor started the new year off right with a nice little post about project management, which happens to echo our philosophy on the topic:

• Keep it simple.
• Stick with what works.
• Put the real before the ideal.
• Have a process but be flexible.
• When all else fails, just work.

We try to manage our projects just enough to get the job done. Anything else wastes your time and money. We do have a process, but we aren’t slaves to it. He closes with…

It’s far too easy to put a process in place that hinders more than it helps. If you find you’re working harder on the management of your projects than you are on the projects themselves, it’s probably a good idea to scale back, re-set expectations and focus on what’s important.

Anyone in business knows this rubric. The problem that designers have is that we always want to produce good work while clients always want it cheap and fast – perhaps this is why designers are so poor. Occasionally we succeed at making everybody happy but when clients expect all three every time – well, then we don’t expect to be working with that client for very long.

Indeed.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 17th, I’m giving a talk on business blogging to the Montana Society of Association Executives. I’ll post my impressions (and the PowerPoint) afterwards.

Report (aka, Gmail to the rescue)

Well, it wasn’t a total disaster, but if a technical detail could go wrong it did. My laptop wouldn’t display through their projector. I don’t yet know if it was my laptop, Linux or their projector; it’s entirely possible I have a bad video port on my laptop. The hotel didn’t have wired internet access like they said they did (if they did it was through an ancient 6pin [RJ25?] jack), and I didn’t have my wireless card configured yet in Ubuntu Linux because I didn’t want to risk bricking my laptop right before the presentation. The gentleman who brought the projector also brought a spare laptop, but I couldn’t open my presentation on it, and his copy of Acrobat Reader wigged out when I tried to load my backup PDF version of the presentation. Finally, my saving grace was the fact that the other laptop had wireless access, and I was able to display the raw text version of the presentation, sans titles and graphics, via the Gmail “view attachment as HTML” feature.

As if I wasn’t nervous enough.

You might think I’m being negative, but all things considered I think it went well. Hopefully they don’t think I’m a complete dolt. I’m going to send I’ve sent a copy of my presentation in PDF format (117kb) to my contact and she’ll distribute it to the members. Perhaps that will help me save face.

Goal-Driven Web Design

Understanding the reasons for building a website in the first place can give you a lot of insight into the specific strategies you should be using when planning it.

Here are some examples of reasons for starting or overhauling your business website:

• Present a stronger brand identity
• Increase the number of leads gathered through the website
• Generate online sales
• Automate or simplify current business processes
• Provide support to existing customers
• Bring additional value to customers

Forty Media also has a very good article on Setting a Web Design Budget:

If you think about the Web as merely an expense that you’re obligated to deal with, then you’re probably not going to get much of a return on it, and you might even better off without one.

However, if you consider the Web to be an opportunity to invest in your business, then you’re more likely to a significant return on that investment.

Sometimes a little change of perspective can make all the difference.