First Week Evaluation

It's Friday of my first full week of independence. I said in another post that this would be a germiniation week. I'm a little disappointed in my performance, but I've accomplished the major tasks I set out for myself:

• reading -- books and articles about how to be a consultant, start a business, etc.

I think I have a pretty good grasp on this now. The books I haven't read, I've skimmed through and found little value. Particularly the ones sponsored by Entrepreneurs' Magazine. It's like a Writers' cheerleading publication (probably the same publisher), vapid and contentless, meant for the gullible.

• networking -- contacting other consultants, joining web sites, etc.
  

Speaking of gullible, I joined the NWEN / WTIA (for $260) as part of my networking exercises, essentially paying dues for the privilege of networking with other dupes by paying to go to "lunches" and "talks" that no one is interested in. I see the value of a manager convincing an employer to pay for an excuse for them to get out of the office, but we'll see. The one thing I need to do less of is "getting out of the office."

I improved my LinkedIn profile and contacted some associates, including recruiters and a couple former co-workings. One think I notice that I lack is recommendations. I probably will continue to avoid asking, for fear that my performance wasn't up to par or just that I wasn't liked.

I filled out an exhaustive resume / survey on jobfox.com, only to find one job listed, which doesn't quite fit into my skillset, Mainframe testing in Oklahoma. Apparently there's no ability to search the site myself. However, I got a resume critique that was well beyond worth it. They pointed out that I don't describe my accomplishments and value. And, they didn't like my redesigned (simpler) resume layout with larger font.

I have relied almost entirely on my list of buzzword skills to get jobs, and it hasn't failed me yet, but I'm not looking for jobs -- and in this economy, there's a lot of competition. I don't know how I feel about "blowing my own horn" but I'll have to find a way to do it, hopefully tastefully. Self-effacement is one tactic I use, but that probably doesn't go over well with serious HR types. On the other hand, HR isn't the channel I want to go through.

I think my network of personal contacts will be more valuable. Nate, particularly, has been helpful. I'll keep hunting for more of those, and everyone seems to say attend "user groups", so I'll work on that more. I've had some reaching out through others' blogs. David, John, and Jennifer in particular. I hope to build friendships, but also as in the case with David, working partnerships.

I've poked around with some local business social networks, but that doesn't seem to be my thing. Biznik, Eastside Entrepreneurs, etc. Local startup groups are more where I want to be, but not early stage, a little later, when they start growing beyond the core team. If I were to get on as part time help for a couple core teams, though, one of them might click. I'm oly worried that might take too much of my time with little hope for short term payoff, or the possibility of turning into a job.

• marketing prep -- website copy, business cards, elevator script, value propositions

I didn't do too well here, spending more time on networking. I did spend a lot of time working on a presentation of an open source QA stack, but I'm getting mental blocks because I'm not focussing. I have too much to say about inter-related topics, and it's causing drift. I did publish a blog post about three target customers, but it was poorly written and flippant -- and still not on my website.

I haven't improved the copy on my website, either, but I decided the home page is okay for now. I need to edit it to be less passive and get rid of 'we' (and 'I'). The front page shouldn't be boring either. It should state succinctly what I do, and then offer content, not copy (such as blog info, links to articles, demos, etc.).

In line with that is moving the blog over to the site. Jennifer recommends it for google credibility, but I'm not worried about that. Having blog content on wordpress or blogger makes it more likely to be spidered, from a site with higher credibility than I'll ever achieve, and their (wordpress at least) indexing and ability for other bloggers to search within the network is worth more. However, I would like my blog to appear in my own domain name.

I need to work on articles, tutorials, and the tools wiki as well. I've found one of my weaknesses is the blockage when I'm writing something (like the presentation or the website copy) is an inability to stay focussed on one topic, and then a paralysis when it comes time to cut stuff which I consider valuable, but might not be on topic.

• business details

I've done a fairly good bit of prep work already, so there's not much to do here. One thing I did was get a more comfortable chair. That's helped

• brushing up on skills

I haven't done well here. Yesterday, one of the tasks I set was to do a Flex tutorial, but I haven't done it. I started on a wordpress theme for my blog, but haven't finished it.

Jennifer made a good case that web sites are a much bigger market, and easier to penetrate than enterprise software development shops. Particularly early stage enterprises. Particularly in this economy.

I wonder if I should seek out web-dev work, or try to hunker down for the long term, building credibility through writing and software tools, and try to cut costs as much as possible to buy longevity. That would mean cutting marketing and networking expenses, which so far have total almost $600.

Alternately, I could go after the international market, focussing on "consulting" in a more traditional sense-- for Indian firms, for example -- offering testing process, training, and especially stateside contact. I could be a local front for, and quality gateway for offshore shops.

My company name "one-shore" practically implies offshoring, but that's not what I've had in mind. I meant more a play on "onshore" meaning I'm local, except when I'm offshore literally, meaning sailing.

I'd also like to explore offshore partnerships, with system administration talent in particular, for qa-site management. But I think I lack the capital for that, and there are several months of R&D still needed.

I'd actually prefer partnerships where different highly skilled individuals worldwide can collaborate by subcontracting or refering one another, where one-shore would be one of several focussed small companies, the others including graphic design, web dev, database, systems, etc.

I'll post a more formal "things I did well"/"things I could do better" at the end of the day.

I'm going to adopt a scrum style individual accountability, with Kelsey as my scrum master, with daily morning stand ups, a whiteboard for tasks, and weekly planning on Monday and reviews on Friday. Yesterday worked well, except the three things she wrote on the whiteboard remain uncomplete, though I spent a good 2+ hours on the presentation which still needs split up, though is about 75% done in it's flawed form, and a couple hours on another task I added, local business networking research, which I did complete, culminating in the $260 expense mentioned above.

One thing that's been eating up time is travel. Going to Utah, to meet Jennifer, to the bank, to the library, to they eye doctor (who gave me a worthless prescription), and today to the dentist. That's where I could achieve the greatest gains, particularly if I could break up a full day into two segments, with for example a mid-afternoon walk and some reading.

Other things I did that took time include transferring the one-shore and foxfish domain registrations from godaddy to 1and1, and consolidating email. I now use the fastmail.fm webmail (and hopefully IMAP/POP3 soon) for one-shore.com emails. Besides a more reliable/heavier duty mail server, I also gain their spam filtering, which is better than mine, and allows me to use the aarone@ email address again