After learning in college about the downside of having a job where you sit on your butt all day long, I proceeded to do just that. So, today I created a hybrid standing desk by putting one of my spare desks on top of my main office desk.

It is pretty stable, so it should work, as long as I don’t get too frustrated and start pounding downwards with extra force.

One of the benefits of having a standing desk is that it helps you “harness your creative energy”. Rather, I think the soreness of your feet and constant shifting from one leg to the next hour after hour forces you to be ultra-productive, and not waste time.

Another benefit, mentioned by the NY Times in an article earlier this year is that it helps you burn more calories.

I placed my monitor at precisely eye-level, and the keyboard is directly in front of me with a less-crooked position for my wrists when typing. I think this may actually help my sore wrists after long days coding, as well.

Let’s see how it goes. But, for now I’m excited to stand up and work.

I was frustrated with my “lack of productivity,” and the waning hours in the day. So, I tried Cherry Picking.

Cherry Picking

Cherry Picking in business is often used in reference to selecting particular team members or clients who are the most profitable or productive, and directing all focus towards them. I’m using the term more closely related to how it’s used in Statistics;

“Cherry picking can refer to the selection of data or data sets so a study or survey will give desired, predictable results which may be misleading or even completely contrary to actuality.” Wikipedia

In, actuality I was spending a large portion of time working and a fraction of it getting work done. So, I picked the data points (in my case, the times where I was being productive) and only spent those hours in the office.

I worked much fewer hours, accomplished as much (or more, due to the creative energy and rest that I now had), and felt more productive.

This made me realize that productivity is a ratio of time spent attempting to be productive, and time spent actually being productive. The closer the ratio is to 1:1, the more productive you feel. While the output was close to the same, I was being more productive.

Of course, this may not work for your boss. But, if you’re self imployed, work at home, or work on commission, try and pick the data points that are skewed towards your favor and focus on those. Isn’t that what most books on strengths vs. weaknesses are all about, anyway?

Oregon’s unemployment rate is 11.7% and climbing. $20 is a quarter-day’s wages for many people. It pays the garbage bill for the month. It pays for my family’s groceries today and tomorrow.

Yet, no one that I approached was dishonest. And, no one watching – there were about eight others observing the situation – made claim to the money. I would have given it, without question. Honesty intact. Morals strengthened. I was proud that they were not vultures.

Perhaps the people involved thought I was participating in a psychology study. (Perhaps I was unknowingly.) Still, there was a sense of prideful ethics; not the random chaos science fiction authors dream-up when job loss is high.

Are businesses different? When one company falters, do the others jump on the opportune market like vultures on a carcass? Sometimes it is portrayed this way. Maybe it’s perceived as different, since it’s business. When one business leaves $20million lying on the floor, do the others jump to pick it up – or look around and ask if they did this knowingly? Doubtful.

Is it the quantity of money that makes the difference? Is it the arena of battle? I don’t know.

Regardless, I thought it was strangely fulfilling to walk around asking people if the money was theirs, today. And, it made me think of the stark contrast between doing it in business: “I’m sorry, but this client is offering me money to do work. Was he yours?”

I’m very happy with the final product. Take a look, and get in touch with him for your Windows if you’re local to the Willamette Valley. He’s a professional who takes his business seriously, and he does some great looking work.

We worked together with Trent Bingham to create the awesome logo. The site itself was built using Wordpress for the CMS, and XHTML/CSS for the front-end.

However, not all businesses are equal (or even good), and this sometimes leads to a less-than-optimal review. The social-media Luddite shirks in fear that the negative reviews are open for all to see. His business may actually be influenced if someone sees it, and the less-discussed competition is likely to reap the rewards. In a fearful last-ditch effort, he calls out the reviewer as being biased and too influential, and he must repent by removing the review. Resigned, the reviewer admits that maybe he had a singular bad experience, and is willing to remove his bad review. After all, he doesn’t want to harm anyone’s business. He just thought that he finally found a place where he could be honest. With a sigh of relief, the Luddite settles back in his seat, content in the silence on the social media front. “I would rather have nothing said than something bad said,” he erroneously thinks.

Noisy Logic

I heard this story last week. I knew the reviewer. I knew the business. I knew the problem. Here’s the breakdown:

1. I’m hearing this story. So probably 10-100 other people have heard this story, considering how quickly word gets out in Corvallis.
2. I know it was a bad review, otherwise there wouldn’t have been a confrontation, and there wouldn’t have been noise.
3. This was an opportunity, not a pothole, for the business to gain a ton of free visibility in a positive way.
4. Squelching a well-known and vocal patron is not the type of bent on publicity they wanted – but they ended up getting it anyway.
5. I now have an impression of the business as one who is fearful of a negative review and not looking for critiques.
6. I can extend this to my future experiences, and if I were to have a critique, I can expect to be squelched as well, not listened to.
7. Ouch.

What do I do?

Here’s what to do when you get a negative review:
You immediately have a choice whether to ignore it or address it. But first, rejoice in the fact that someone is willing to spend their time to mention you. A worse outcome is if no one talks about you at all, and you have to pay for every voice. This gets expensive, and the marketing budget will kill you, if your boring product won’t first.

Ignore the review

There is only one good reason to ignore a negative review. If the negative review is a Troll; someone aiming to be inflammatory for response purposes, not trying to critique, but rather trying to get a reaction.

The only other reason we (as potential patrons) see, is that you’re too lazy.

Address the review

Addressing the negative review is the only way to go. Because 1) It shows you care; and 2) Do you need a #2? Don’t you care!?

When a patron provides a critique or negative review, you can offer that her experience was one of opinion, taste, or difference in vision.

If your goal is to provide high-end Mexican food at all costs, and someone says that the molé was great, but the bill was outrageous, you are fairly within your means to defend your execution. This is a difference in vision, and you should welcome this by saying “thank you” for the molé comment, but explaining how difficult and expensive it is to bring in Oaxacan consultants to make it each week. Therefore, future patrons will see this comment, and if they want the ultimate dining experience, with no concern for cost, they will go here. It is a great opportunity to state your vision for the business, why this experience can be expected in the future, and how you are not trying to please everyone, but simply those who want to align with your vision – aka. be the hero in your story. Case closed. Objective satisfied. Free marketing (+1).

If a patron has a negative experience and it was due to something outrageous or somehow the result of poor execution, you need to redeem yourself. This is like spilling hot coffee all over someone. You don’t just say, “I apologize if I caused you any discomfort,” or something of that ilk. You say, “I’m so fucking sorry. What can I do?” Or, even take off the onus, and follow-up with a, “Here, let me help you in ___ this way.”*

Again, this is a fantastic opportunity for you to show that the down review was not due to a difference of vision, but rather due to a poor experience – or hopefully not, multiple poor experiences. You want to show that your goal is to execute successfully on the vision you set out to achieve when you started the business. If patrons are saying that you are failing to deliver, this is important for you to find out, and a great opportunity for you to right it. Be vocal about wanting to change, redeem yourself. People are inherently forgiving, and if you truly want to succeed, this is a great – public – forum in which you can show that your vision is still intact, and you’re growing/changing towards getting people there. Again, free marketing (+1).

Squelch the review

This is the worst option of all. You can’t stomp all the bugs, only the ones you see. And, inevitably the story will spread that 1) Your business sucks; and 2) You tried to keep it quiet. No one likes blood-sucking dollar leeches in this economy, and not just anyone willing to ship shit-on-a-shingle is going to get our dollars. At least not for long.

And, as long as you are running a business in My Town, you better be willing to keep your patrons happy. Otherwise we’ll be noisy, and form some sort of a brigade. Plus, we can’t all be squelched.

Free marketing (-3).

Takeaway

If there’s one thing worse than a bad review, it’s how bad we imagine a suppressed review to be.

*Readers of 37signals’ Rework will notice this is akin to their discussion on real apologies.

• Images courtesy of Yelp and Creative Commons:
  http://www.flickr.com/photos/yelp/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

When you first start a vocation, highlighting your strengths is the most pressing need. It’s difficult to stand apart from the crowd, differentiate yourself, and often justify that you’re worth the amount you charge. As you progress, your skills gain refinement, your strengths have been highlighted time and again, and the rate you charge is put to question less often.

Then there’s a shift in focus.

Some catastrophe occurs, or you’re put on the precipice of disaster. Inevitably, if you keep working in this profession, you recover, and the situation rights itself. But, you don’t want it to happen again. Hence, the shift in focus. Your weaknesses become the recipient of attention. Resources are allocated to fixing these weaknesses and tools are put in place to ensure success.

Some of these tools highlight strengths, as well. For example, CSS is a fantastic development resource that has forever changed the way I make websites. It works towards future-proofing a website, separating content from presentation. It allows for rapid development changes. And, it shortens the redesign life cycle one-hundred fold.

Here is a list of tools I now label essential in my development arsenal, and my reflection upon the days before…

CSS

The days before CSS. Ahh, font-tags galore. I remember spending a week adding tons of nested font-tags to individually color, size, and style each letter in a title on one of my cycling sponsorship pages. I can’t even imagine touching the markup in this manner now.

Includes

I first used includes not in PHP, but using Apache server-side scripting. Very old-school style:
<!--#include virtual="/footer.html" -->

This taught me about templating and creating a singular file to hold the header, footer, navigation, or whatever. I actually went overboard on one site and used includes for everything, just having an index.html file under each separate folder include all the pertinent content. I was actually simulating a CMS‘ behavior at the time, but didn’t know it.

PHP

My first taste of PHP was also in the manner of includes. However, after exploring and playing with it a bit, I found it could do dynamic copyrights, and other fun date checkers. When I discovered loops, switch statements, and boolean checkers, I basically thought the sky was the limit, and there’s no stopping me now! I was right…

CMS

Content Management Systems are a beautiful thing. I first created a custom one for a client in a very odd way. I basically had written the entire site with “static” PHP files. But, on a few of the pages that they wanted to have the ability to edit (“Why would anyone want this?”, I thought at the time), I included a call to a database that inserted whatever they put into the table directly into that section of the page. The rest of it was static, but they had the ability to add/edit/delete any of that content. Images were not changeable, but text and HTML were fine.

Wordpress

Then I discovered Wordpress. My love. “Why would anyone not use Wordpress?”, I postulated. Everything was done in Wordpress for the next two years. All I touched was Wordpress. Custom business site? Wordpress. Blog? Wordpress, duh. Online game? Sure, Wordpress. Magazine? Wordpress. It was awesome. It still is.

Javascript

Oh, the horror! When I first started working with Javascript, it was heavily reliant upon the Dynamic Drive libraries. I could make banners rotate, images lose opacity. It was cool. But touching the code was a horror.

One day I was asked to write a custom chess tactics engine that dynamically interacted with the user. I first thought I could try and do this in PHP with reloading pages, but that was just insane in practical use. So, I settled down and decided that I was going to write my own Javascript library that allowed for the insertion of coded puzzles to be called up and played with by the visitor of this (of course) Wordpress site. Lo and behold, it worked! It took some slick maneuvering, but I was able to do it. And, I overcame my fear of Javascript.

Now, I rely extensively upon the JQuery libraries for UI, AJAX, Form validation, and other dynamic behavior I used to have to code myself. Thank you John Resig.

Databases

While I use MySQL almost exclusively now, I first got started with Sybase databases. I much prefer the ease of developing in a MAMP environment.

Plowing through a ton of advanced PHP and MySQL books (there’s a billion in every library, and two billion at Borders), I found that I really began to enjoy developing my own applications. I created my own custom time tracking software, project management tools, workout logs, slick lean CMSes, etc.

But, the biggest benefit to learning how to create applications on my own, was that I began to appreciate the in-box development tools that were already out there. I could really appreciate Wordpress’ 10-table install, and vomit when looking at a CMS that takes 233 tables just to show you an intro screen. I could extend existing databases with PHP plugins, and not cringe when I need to go searching for something in the database, when I couldn’t find it on the site. Fear of the unknown is half the battle for those that dare-not look into the underbelly of a database schema. Now, I can really appreciate a nice looking one.

Version Control and Terminal Transfer

I group these together because I learned them together. I learned Git at the same time that I learned Rsync and Scp.

Not being a native CS guy, I wasn’t a jedi of the terminal. But, I wasn’t afraid to learn. I had a great sys admin send me some tutorial links, and I plowed head first. Now, I version control everything, even my laundry. Rsync and Scp are both cool, because I don’t have to rely upon the inaccuracy of my fingers with GUI FTP systems. This is a small concern, but I have overwritten folders in the past, due to accidental or sleepy stutter-clicks. Now, I’m batting pretty successfully (crosses fingers). But, still be careful what folder you type-in when you write rm -rf <foldername> -oops!

Cron

To my Nor Cal friends, a Cron Job is not when your neighbor asked you to deliver something for him last Saturday night. A cron job is short for “chronos”, Greek for time. It’s a time-based scheduler.

With a cron job, you can automate the backing up of databases on a daily basis. This is very important for CMSes and becomes more tedious the more clients you have.

At first, I used to backup all the databases and files on a weekly basis by hand, but then I would forget, and that’s not good. I never had an issue where I didn’t have a backup and a database became corrupted. But, you never know when this may happen, so backing up is important.

Now, I backup my databases in a nightly cron, and backup my files and the DB backups to an external hard drive on a weekly basis. This takes them off my server and keeps them safe from harm (or at least as safe as I can get them easily).

What’s next?

So, what’s next? Those are the tools that I rely heavily upon right now. If I had to start over, these are the insurances and bricks I would buy to begin construction. We’ll see what is next. I’ll definitely keep you posted.

This is a very important component to brick and mortar businesses on the Web that need to quantitatively measure the number of contacts, revenue generated from each contact, and cost to acquire these contacts. For a digital downloads site, it’s an even cleaner and more direct route. Set up an Google Adwords campaign, measure the number of exposures, cost-per-click, clickthroughs, and the number of downloads or purchases. It’s a direct funnel with little wavering and clearly defined holes*.

The analytics funnel can be measured simply with numbers in, numbers out, and diversions along the way. 0-100% optimized.

What about blogs, online books in HTML, magazines, or art exhibitions and galleries? An argument can be made that for these types of sites, the goal is to get the user to engage more than it is to get the user to click, buy, or contact. If you are using a photo montage, slideshow, or writing thought-provoking blog articles, is your goal to ship the user away via a click, or to get her engaged, talking about your story, and believing in your vision? A “call to engage” is what this site needs. Design to lead the user into your story, captivate her with your photos, and rid the landscape of peripheral “calls to action.”

Most news sites follow a three or four-column approach to their website. This can be understood, as the news business model is tied around advertising. But, wouldn’t it be nice if you read your articles with big type, restful whitespace, and engaging pictures? Many follow the recipe, but forget that the signal gets lost for the noise when your reading one amongst four columns, and the highest contrasting elements on the page are the banner ads, trying to get you to click away and buy a cell phone.

The next time you redesign, consider if it would be most appropriate to have numerous and loud calls to action, or provoking and relaxing calls to engage.

*The attrition and loss of users along the way due to checkout abandonment, site bounces, or click-aways.

“Stop and Smell the Roses”

…is a famous saying to people who are constantly rushing from here to there, without any enjoyment of the process, no time to reflect on life. In recent history, this statement had validity. People were goal-driven, results-oriented, and didn’t pay attention to anything but the bottom line.

Then came the “Social Web.”

The Social Web gets us all to “Smell the Roses” much more than we used to. We may not acknowledge it, given our history and value for results. But, it’s permeated our culture. And, it may be to our detriment.

Take Facebook, for example. Last Month, Facebook exceeded Google in the number of U.S. visits, and (I’m sure) has a significant advantage in time spent on site.

What behaviors are the average Facebook user engaging in? Social interaction, gaming, browsing photographs, notes, comments, etc. From a user-experience perspective, this is largely “browsing.” There is a frequent lack of purpose, motivation, or driver behind each click. There is a limited number of conversions, and searching yields only the next page of browsing.

One of the more frequent complaints I hear about social media is one of spending too much time and getting nothing accomplished. With a user-interface and design ecosystem engineered to reward browsing, it’s apparent that social media can be both addictive and quantitatively unrewarding.

The results may speak otherwise. I have on frequent occasion received a lead or project due to social media interaction. However, the deal was closed outside the social media arena, and measuring the resources of input in getting that job was difficult.

Facebook, Twitter, and blogs all have value. But, there have been many days where I’ve been socially engaged and feel extremely connected, but accomplish nothing towards my goals. I urge you to be conscientious of your behaviors and the results of those behaviors. Awareness is the first step.

Here’s a very simple script to replace all of your copyrights, so that they are constantly updated with the latest year.

<p>Copyright 2007-<?php echo(date('Y'));?>.</p>

This is, of course, assuming that your copyright began in 2007. Replace 2007 with the year in which the copy was originally created.