Enjoy the holidays and we’ll see you all in 2012.

When we relocated from the Upper East Side’s ground floor to the 6th floor our finger print recognition system had journeyed sans the override switch, an oversight on the suppliers part, but I’d signed off on the job so I must accept the blame for this.

I arrived at our offices, my mind spinning dollar signs as lost development time mounted. The team were without access to their workstations or wifi, at least they’d located coffee in the shape of Vida’s Upper East Side store. Fortunately we can all work remotely, so I sent everyone home and we successfully conducted a virtual stand-up, I can’t fault my staff’s diligence and we ultimately had quite a productive day.

After discussing the system fault with manager of Bytes Technology Group who installed the system, I was told that they would cover the bill to remove the glass from our front door. Tracy sourced a glazer to remove the glass pane from the door, and Bytes sent over a technician to fix the system and add a manual override switch. The Bytes technician spent most of the day installing the switch. When I returned from lunch I caught the technician at the bottom of the lift, “Are you going to show me what you’ve done?”

Exhibit A:

Me: “You’ve used 20mm screws that can easily be ripped out?”

Technician: “Yes, that’s a problem.”

Me: “But I wouldn’t bother ripping the screws out as I can just cut and short that exposed wire.” [Shorting the circuit is all the wire does.]

Technician: “You’re right, that would be a problem.”

What baffles me is that this supplier, and the unsupervised technician, expect me nonchalantly place the security of all our hardware, servers, mail servers, backups and data into the inert hands of an inexperienced technician. I was horrified! What would happen if I didn’t know any better? (An MSc ought to do it, but not everyone installing a finger print recognition security system has a basic knowledge of electronics.) I requested that he reinstall the system, “I want the screws to go through the door and be fastened on the inside of the door and I absolutely don’t want any wires visible”

And then I was presented with this.

Exhibit B:

Me: “But it isn’t attached to the door.”

Technician: “Didn’t think it had to be.”

Me: “And you’ve used the same 20mm wall plugs.”

Technician: “Yip.”

Me: “The same plugs that are easily ripped out! And if I don’t rip them out I can just unscrew the screws.” (normal bi-directional screws)

Technician: “Hmmm, ja that would be a problem.”

#FFS

It dawned on me, software is no different, in fact it’s more critical, you often can’t see what is being delivered. The client may not even completely understand what it is they are buying. They test the application visually but often don’t know what is happening under the hood, and yet they have to trust the development company with their entire business. What’s crazy about that is not the trust that is required but the fact that often clients will treat suppliers like second-class citizens and not as partners. I’m glad I can call all of my current clients, partners and not just clients and I think they would do the same.

Trust is a key aspect of any relationship, from personal to commercial, and it is something that is established, not immediately assumed. Trust, certainly on an industrial level, starts with communication, reputation and diligence and builds from there. It’s not something I take lightly, it is intrinsic to my working relationships at NML, beginning on interpersonal levels and extending to our clients, I believe we as a company exude this culture of trust to our partners.

As Gary Vannerchuck said in his SxSW keynote speech: “no matter what business you’re in, you’re also in the business of customer service,” and all businesses need to start “giving a solid f#$&” or else they’re going to lose.

Ps. As an aside, the technician once worked for me as an intern graphic designer, bizarre I know – but it is true. Yes he’s gone from being a one-time aspiring graphic designer to security system installer – it’s obvious why he did such a shitty job, his current job isn’t his calling. He probably doesn’t enjoy it, and can’t wait to get off site. Follow your calling people, find what you love doing and do it well. A lack of passion shows.

Pps. To make matters more awesome, on Friday I sent the bill to Bytes for the glazer and the managers’ boss sent it back saying he never authorised the R695 payment to the glazer – talk about disconnect.

As the Mother City stirs into action below me, I make my way down to the gym for my morning workout.  It’s one of the (many) perks working at NML and, not only is the gym conveniently located for a pre‑work workout, but NML subsidises our membership fee too.

Paul has set himself the challenge of making NML the best possible environment for the team to work from and there is a strong focus on work/life balance here.  Our office space plays a big role in this regard.  A converted residential loft space in the Upper East Side, it creates a relaxed and informal working environment that benefits from incredible views over the City, the harbour and the mountains.

Work/life balance is a key element in NML’s work ethic.  There is a degree of flexi-time to our working hours, so long as we’re all in by 9.30am, and Paul encourages not working more than 40 hours a week as anything over that leads to burnout – I’m told it’s one of the key tenants of The Agile Manifesto.

Our office is based in Woodstock meaning we don’t have to commute all the way to Town and a couple of us carpool in to work together from Tokai making the commute easier and more social.  There is a finacial incentive not to use a parking bay. Most of the team are members of the gym downstairs and the residential layout of the office means you can go downstairs, have a great workout, come back to shower (or even have a bath if you want!) and eat lunch (NML has a steady supply of sandwich ingredients, bread, various condiments and a snackwicher!) before getting back into the ‘work’ zone.

I use the term ‘work’ here, but really, each member of the team is so passionate about what they do, that it doesn’t really feel like work.  The developers get to while away their days coding, fixing bugs, testing new technology and creating new techie stuff, Andrew gets to do his copywriting, Raoul manages the team and makes sure the clients are happy, Paul gets to focus on the next innovative growth steps, reading, meeting and general plotting and planning and I get to spend my days ensuring that life in the office runs smoothly (each to their own!).  More often than not, the team have their headphones on to help them stay focused and in the ‘creation zone’.  Although we have an informal policy of ‘Do not disturb when the headphones are on’, it doesn’t mean there is any disconnect in the team.  Truth be told, NML’s team is one of the most functional teams I’ve worked in.  Every morning we do ’standup’ where we each recap the previous day’s tasks and what we plan to accomplish today – it provides a chance to report our progress, raise challenges in projects we’re working on, ask for help where we need it and just generally ensure the whole NML team is up-to-date on what’s going on.

The standup exercise is just one of the tools we use for staying connected as a team – we have others too: the Braai (weather permitting, the team downs tools at 4pm on Fridays and we head to the main balcony for beer and burgers).  Then there is the much loved Coffee Pot (fresh brewed coffee is a staple part of the NML diet!).  That’s not to say we don’t do the usual ‘team building’ type of events.  I recently survived my first game of action cricket as the only girl on the team and the guys were really sweet about the fact that I actually lost runs!!

All in all, life at NML is pretty darn good and I can honestly say, I’ve found exactly the type of job and working environment I was looking for and in the country that I love to boot!

There are two instances I should expound, my minute of airtime on the panel precluded these:

1) Immediately after starting New Media Labs I sold a 40% share to Global Vision for a significant sum, technically share capital, or maybe an angel investment, as opposed to VC, but that could be construed as semantics

2) Nearly two years later I “bought” back that share in a debt/equity swap after Global Vision owed me nearly the equivalent amount of money. The reason I don’t see that as receiving VC, while others might, is that Global Vision bought into a partnership with a services business in order to establish an affiliation with New Media Labs and have access to the skills I had already brought to the company. Venture capitalists almost always buy into product companies as opposed to service companies.

I know that as a service company New Media Labs is very unlikely to receive venture capital, we’ve developed quite a number of products over the last four years but it is very hard to sell the idea of a service company becoming a product company to VC and this article below explains why. It also explains what most service companies that are profitable, and have a good client base, should do about finding venture capital. With respect to New Media Labs, no article has resonated for me more in the past year than this one, even the numbers resonate, albeit in rands rather than dollars. Below is an essay that could only come from experience. Have a read, tell me what you think (my take homes in red).

What Should You Do With Your Crappy Little Services Business?

(This post originally appeared on TechCrunch)

There’s a line of thinking in Silicon Valley that you should build product businesses rather than services businesses. This thinking is largely driven by the venture capital industry (and a

It’s nearly impossible to get a services company financed by VCs. You’re a small fish.

So pervasive has this thinking become that on several occasions startup companies with profitable & fast growing services businesses have come to me wanting to show me the product businesses they created internally to see whether they would be financeable or whether they might be able to create “spin outs” that could be financed.

A great recent example of this was a successful group of entrepreneurs who had created a company that will do $10-12 million in revenue at their system integration business (read: services business) in 2011 after having done $5 million or so in 2010 and $2-3 million in 2009. They feel very confident they can hit $18 – 20 million in 2012.

They have created two internal technology “products” and wanted to figure out how they could turn their services business into a product business that could be financed. This team is talented. They wanted advice. And probably some money. I gave them advice I don’t think they were expecting from a VC,

“Don’t raise venture capital for this business. Ever. And stop effing around trying to create a product company.”

It is advice I give entrepreneurs often as I have written here on why most businesses should never raise VC.

Why Shouldn’t Most Services Businesses Raise VC?

Well, let’s look at this exact situation:

• I don’t have access to their actual financial statements but let me make some reasonable assumptions. It would not be a big stretch to image a well run service business like this making 15-25% net profit margins. Early in a services business there is usually no profits as the company reinvests in hiring people to grow, but by $20 million in sales the company should at least be pulling in 10% profits (if not more) depending on how much is reinvested.

• So assume that in 2012 the company would do $20 million in sales and $2 million in profits (10%) and 2013 they would do sales of $25 million and $4 million in profit (16% net margin) and then slow growth in 2014 to $30 million and $6 million in profit (20% profit). That is $12 million in profits over 3 years.

• The founders could reinvest this in growth (0% tax, focus on future equity growth) or take the profits of $12 million and divide amongst the founding partners. Assuming there are 3 founders and they own an equal amount (33%) then they’ve just taken $4 million each in profits and note that this is at a qualified dividend tax rate (currently 15%) versus an income tax rate (35%). True, the 15% rates will likely go up in the future, but I doubt they will approach the income tax percentage level.

• The thing is – even if your services business is a smaller scale than this – you have complete control over the decisions about where to take the business. There is no shame in making a few million dollars in profit and paying yourself dividends while still owning a large percentage (if not all) of your business. It’s how things are done across the country outside of Silicon Valley.
• The minute you raise VC you have one option – grow & try to become big. No VC is interested in dividends – they want growth. That’s the right answer for VCs.  It may be the right answer for you. But it might not.

• Trying to turn a successful services business into a product business is getting the cart before the horse. If you really want to do a product business then hire a professional manager for your services company, quit that job and focus 100% on your product company.

Why Build a Services Business in the First Place?
There are at least two types of tech services businesses in my mind:

1. Service as a bridge to a product business - One of the best ways for young startups to finance their business without any dilution is what I call “customer financing,” which is mostly only possible in businesses that target businesses rather than consumers. Customer financing often comes in the form of your company agreeing to build a product with a “sponsor” customer or two and helping them with the rollout / implementation. Often in this strategy you end up giving them the product for free and bill them only services fees. You own the IP you create.

The benefits for the customer are: a mostly custom-built product addressing one of their internal needs, the focus of a very talented young startup focusing on their business need & free product – potentially for life.

The benefits for you are even more clear: you get to build a product raising significantly less external money (if any at all) and therefore no dilution, you get a customer who will help you figure out the real requirements for your business and you have your first real reference client lined up, which should help with future funding and with future sales.

If you set out to build this kind of business you just need to be sure you don’t become a permanent consulting business by default. The “customer-financed” type of tech service business is never frowned upon by VCs – unless you’ve been doing it for 2-3 years with no product business to show for it, by which point they assume you’re the second type of services business.

2. Services for services sake - The type of business that is generally shunned in Silicon Valley is the “pure services” business like consulting, system integration, value-added resellers (VARs), customer support businesses, outsourcing companies, etc.  I have already outlined some of the economic reasons these can be good businesses as well as the one of the most important – retaining full control in your business.

But the broader reason that I often suggest them to entrepreneurs is that they’re much easier to build than product businesses even though they’ll never become Google, Twitter or Facebook. Trust me – it is far easier to persuade a business to pay you for your services (a concept they readily understand) than it is to persuade them to buy a totally new product concept and pay for that product.

“How much is that software really worth? Who else is using it? How much did they pay? Wait, I’m only paying “X” for my Salesforce.com licenses – and you want me to pay “Y” for your product? Who are your competitors – how much do they charge?”

I could go on-and-on with all of the sales-blocking messages you will hear when you try to charge for a product. I’ll repeat: everybody understands paying for services. It’s pure irony. At my first company we would have a product sale of $80,000 where the customer would grind us to get the fee down to $70,000 but would readily pay $25,000 extra for “implementation & post-sales support.”

We were building a VC backed software business so I had to focus on the product business. But this lesson in business was never lost on me. And some of my former teammates are now building really awesome services businesses in the exact same field and they own 100% of their companies.

Even tech blogs know this. You struggle to get advertisers to pay your CPM rates and get your page clicks up in a business where you become a near commodity to ever other website out there. Yet you can run a conference and mint money. If it’s well run, people readily pay for conferences and sponsors readily pay to become platinum, gold or silver sponsors. Tech blogs can theoretically scale, tech conferences are pure service businesses.

But How Do Service Businesses Grow?
I’m not saying the scaling a services business is easy – it’s not. One big challenge is how to grow the company. You end up needing to add staff and take on more risk without knowing what your future demand will be. There are a couple of ways to think about this growth.

1. Start with a network of independent contractors (1099′s)- When you’re a young company with 3-4 people and you land work that requires 7-8 it can be daunting. You don’t necessarily want to take on the extra employees and risks. I recommend that you establish a network of contractors who want to do similar work to you but don’t know how to sell projects or to build a company. They’ll be glad for the occasional extra work.

2. Vendor financing – When you start to win business – let’s say as an implementation arm for tech / business products or as an ad sales team for large tech / media businesses – you can often get financed in a small way by your vendors who are all to happy to have a bigger ecosystem of implementation houses. They won’t do this before you prove yourself but once you hit a minimum scale this is always an option.

3. Angel financing – just because VCs won’t back this kind of business doesn’t mean angels won’t. If you can show a few million in sales and the ability to return dividends in the near-term there are always smart businesses professionals who will consider financing this. What are there other choices these days – money in a bank at 0.5% interest?

4. Bank financing – OK, so this isn’t immediately likely to come from Wells Fargo, but there are tech banks like Silicon Valley Bank or Square1 Bank that are in the business of financing startups. If you can show regular cashflow and are willing to put your profits into their bank you can often fund expansion this way.

Final message on financing – just be careful not to let your fixed costs get too high as a young services business. In a booming tech market like 2011 it’s easy to think your business will always expand. The problem with service businesses is that when the economy turns revenue & profits take a really big and quick hit. Those companies that have a largely variable cost base and make the tough decisions survive for the next boom.

Why Shouldn’t Service Businesses Become Product Businesses?
If you build a true “technology services for services sake” business at some point you’ll likely build technology products as part of your projects where you either own the IP or you own in jointly with your customer or business partner.

This is where many service businesses make mistakes and go pear shaped. They get “product business envy” because they read too much TechCrunch about their product brethren raising money at crazy valuations and getting sold at even crazier ones. So they set out to build a product business within a services company.

A few problems arise. Firstly, they don’t realize how hard product businesses are. They mistake their successes in selling services as a competency in selling products. This is a huge mistake. Secondly, they often ramp up their cost base to accommodate these costs, which when a down market hits they are more effed than those that stay focused. Finally, the focus on the product (envy) means that they take their eye off of their core business, which is services. So the core business suffers.

I saw this first hand. My first career was at Andersen Consulting (one of the largest services businesses in the world). We built a hugely successful global services business yet we never got over our product envy from watching our tech clients. So we created internal software projects and all of the internal consultants on those projects became blowhards who thought they knew how to create software product businesses.

We stunk at every product we ever created. We had no sense for gathering real customer requirements. We over-spec’d products. We built for our over-intellectual selves. I can’t think of any great software tools ever created internally by Andersen Consulting. We were a great services business. Period.

What Should Services Businesses do with Their Product Businesses?
So back to my advice to the company I recently spoke to about spinning out their tech business or raising VC. My advice wasn’t to shut down all product / IP initiatives but rather to be clear on their purpose and how to monetize them.

1. Products as a service sales machine – My dear friend Franck Meudec in Paris knows this best. He has built some internal technology products to support his services business. They are “loss leaders” for his core business. In stead of going in and trying to hold the line on how much to charge for these products he can tell customers, “Sure, we’ll give you our planning software at cost if you decide to work with us.”

His business is booming. These products help him win his core sales. He is not confused about which is the horse & which is the cart. He is building a services business. Instead of owning 1% in options to join a startup tech company he created his own tech services business. He is the majority owner. Higher risk, higher reward than joining as a junior employee somewhere else.

2. Products as a key differentiator – Another important reason for having internal IP in your services business is as a key differentiator against other services businesses. If a customer is faced with two equal choices for companies who can implement Salesforce.com – how do they choose one other than references & price? Imagine if you had built a few modules on top of Salesforce.com that made that product more effective? Even if you didn’t charge for these it would sure increase your sales hit rate.

Tech services business in booming markets are mostly about how fast you can sell, implement, manage quality, hire and sell some more. In a down market IP can become a huge differentiator.

3. Products as a gross margin bump - Finally, it should be said that in a services business often your implementation rate becomes a commodity relative to others in the market. If you can make an extra 10% on each sale by selling your “ad on” products that are at 90% gross margins not only will you increase your win rates but you’ll also add valuable profits to your bottom line.

In summary: I’m not advocating that companies are crazy to try and be product companies. In fact, that’s all that I fund as a VC. But I don’t want the narrow world of venture-backed companies and the trade rags that report on them to dissuade the overwhelming masses of potential entrepreneurs from building meaningful businesses that are both fun and economically rewarding.

Build something you need and others will need it too, right? I must lose thousands to the tax man because I’m too lazy to keep a log book of all my business trips. So, the juniors at New Media Labs have built an iPhone application that logs your business trips to a web site (http://triplogger.info) via a web service. At the end of the financial year you can download a CSV of all your business trips and submit to SARS.

We would love you to try the app out. Hopefully you find it useful too. Feedback would also be highly appreciated.

Steps:

1) Download the “Business Trip Logger” from http://itunes.apple.com/za/app/business-trip-logger/id373066501?mt=8 or search for “Business Trip Logger” in the app store and install the app.

2)      The app requires you to register on the website. This is easiest done directly from the phone – a browser will be launched from the app. All that is required is your email address and a password (the phone id is already sent through to the website). Registration is necessary so that we know which incoming messages (trips) are yours and so that you can download your CSV from the website to submit to SARS at the end of the year. Also, local storage on the phone was not considered an option because the system allows for more than one phone per account. Also if you lost your phone, and we were using local storage, you would lose all your trips too.

3)      Start logging all your trips. SARS require a client name, reason for trip and start odometer and end odometer reading.

4)      All client names and trip reasons are stored so you can select those from the select boxes on similar or repeat trips. You can also delete and edit these in the traditional iPhone fashion.

5)      The end odometer reading must obviously be greater than the start odometer reading.

6)      If you have started the trip the app will expect you to close (end) the trip.

7)      You can also add and edit trips on the website.

Since we are focusing on iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile (6.1 and 6.5 and 7) expect to see this app built for a number of different phone operating systems (good practice for our juniors (Chris Goosen who finished the iPhone app and Ashraf Vanker who built the website and the web services).

Why didn’t we store the whole trip’s GPS points?

At the time when we started building the app, multi-tasking wasn’t possible so we figured we’d end up with a whole lot of broken trips that would leave questionable results.

There are lots of trip loggers on the app store, why did you make another?

Practice for our juniors. This app is specifically designed for submission to SARS.

Last thoughts: we have noticed some improvements we could make to the usability.

]]> http://www.newmedialabs.co.za/custom-development/business-trip-logger/feed 1 http://www.newmedialabs.co.za/new-media-labs/collaboration-between-nml-and-urban-ninja-raoul-de-jongh http://www.newmedialabs.co.za/new-media-labs/collaboration-between-nml-and-urban-ninja-raoul-de-jongh#comments Fri, 30 Apr 2010 12:01:32 +0000 Paul Cartmel http://www.newmedialabs.co.za/?p=1020 I’ve been acting as NML’s MD, Sales Person, Software Architect (occasionally), developer (even more occasionally) and a bunch of other roles for two and a half years now [typical entrepreneur stuff]. NML has always been a lean outfit made up almost entirely of software developers. If there was one role I’ve wanted to fill during this time it has been the one of sales person. I honestly think I didn’t fill the role simply because I didn’t believe I had found the right person – someone who really understood the Web, Social Media and the platforms NML enjoys building.

Well I’m happy to say I’ve, sort of, found the person I want to help me sell NML and our skills. I say sort of because a) this person can’t be constrained to a rigid job, so we have a relatively informal yet mutually beneficial arrangement and b) because he isn’t really a sales person. He is a connector, a deal maker, a bit of hustler (in the nicest possible way) and a full time urban ninja. Yes, Raoul De Jongh, Mr urban-ninja.co.za and NML are going to be working together. Having realised that we share a mutual work hard/play hard ethic we’ve been talking about combining NML’s platforms and platform building abilities with Raoul’s sales and marketing abilities for a while – now it is a reality.

Definitely such an exciting time for all of us digital people.   #BOOM

Recently NML’s shareholding changed and I am now the only shareholder, this has freed me up to make other exciting decisions which I will be announcing in due course.

Surviving two and a half years of tech start-up during these very difficult times defies the odds, building up an amazing team, powerful Intellectual Property and having a healthy pipeline is an amazing achievement and something I am proud of.

2008

NML was started in January of 2008 with an abundance of ideas and energy.  The sub-prime credit crisis was something that we thought would only affect the USA and we certainly didn’t conceive the pending global recession.

Usually it is intelligent dynamic people who are keen to take a risk.  So it wasn’t surprising that Richard Schroder and Debbie Derman were the first employees to join NML in April 2008 – both truly brilliant, they are hired knowing that in two months time they will be leaving on a three-month trip through Africa.  Their skills and the hope of them being long-term NML employees can’t be ignored.  The risk paid off.

NML commences work on Windows CE/Mobile GPS triggered tourist information software for Smartguide.co.za.

NML develops a custom niche social network in ASP.Net for Brandhouse.  Similar in complexity to Facebook (no jokes), the system allows for media uploads (video/photo), community, notifications, tagging, events, rating, commenting, FAQs and polls.  The system is fully integrated into the metrics and segmentation engine Eureka.  Eureka is Global Vision’s marketing automation engine used by Diageo.

Rogan Flitton, Gareth Saul, Yves Bamani and Gugulethu Ntombela join NML as permanent employees.  Cara Knight Dawson joins as my PA.

Mark Derman (founder of Safarinow.com) and Ernst Kuscke (Microsoft MVP) join NML as long-term contractors.

NML develops a financial services platform for a leading bank.  We develop the service layer, database and front end in Silverlight together with Global Vision.  Stonewall+ provides the front end designs.   The application is integrated into the banking backend and adds social software elements to their traditional business.

NML developers work on the Silverlight front end, middle tier and database for Global Vision’s next generation marketing automation engine, Adora. Read about the development process here – Adora Development Process

NML starts a junior developers program.  We give part-time work to students who are mentored and paid to develop applications for NML.

The NML juniors develop a Facebook competition portal that we re-skin and re-utilise as a framework for digital art, photographic or copywriting competitions – we reskin this for our clients and rent the framework.  A Facebook application called “My African Bucketlist” and a number of other web and mobile applications are also developed.

NML develops a giving portal TheTrust.org.za at cost as part of our corporate social responsibility initiative.  We aggregate charities into charity sectors and allow for payments using credit card, MiMoney, Ukash and EFT.  We also generate certificates of giving and a recurring monthly payment system.  TheTrust is sponsored by Pick n Pay, IBurst and Vodacom.

NML also develops a variety of micro-sites and applications during the course of 2008.

NML did not lose a single client in 2008.

2009

Christian Bamani and Ashraf Vanker are hired out of the juniors program – the juniors programme pays payback.

Finance Honours graduate Elsie Verheye joined New Media Labs as Operations Manager.  In addition to managing the finance, accounts and assisting with audits, Elsie’s expertise also extends to being NML’s qualified SCRUM Master.  Her exceptional organizational skill puts her in the forefront of what’s going on at New Media Labs.

NML releases the first iteration of the Google Earth, Flickr, YouTube and Smartguide content portal. Read about the development process here – Smartguide Development Process and view the application here – African Tourism Portal.

NML develop a Silverlight CMS for Smartguide.  Smartguide is integrated into our first client’s tourism portal – Southern Destinations. NML invests in Smartguide and becomes a 20% shareholder.

Andrei Dimitriu joins NML as an intermediate developer.

NML develops the CMS to illustrate Nedgroup Investments’ business model of fund management. Read about the development process here – Nedgroup Investments Development.

NML modularises and productises the CMS developed for Nedgroup Investements.

NML, together with Aurecon, develops the web-based incident management software.  All CCTV footage is monitored and the Silverlight web application is used to log incidents.  This product is nominated for an innovation award by Microsoft (Redmond).  Read about the development process here – Aurecon Dev Process.

Videos of the applicaiton can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/newmedialabs.

NML develops a mapping application for the Peace Parks Foundation using ESRI mapping and Silverlight.

Andrei Dimitriu develops the backend for GloMobile utilising NML’s base CMS.  Stonewall+ provides the front end designs, Global Vision provide PM, development and testing skills.

NML and Ilan Copelyn develop a bursary management system for the HCI Foundation.  The system engine ensures the accurate apportionment of funds across institutions (universities, technikons and FETs) and courses (medicine, law, engineering etc.) to the people who are deemed most needy and most deserving of a bursary.  This is calculated according to parents’ salaries, grades at school or in the previous year and number of applications per course per institution.  More than two thousand applications are managed through the system.

NML releases the WordPress site for the Vrede Foundation – a foundation in tribute to a friend of mine from way back when.  A charismatic legend.

NML starts developing in partnership with Heath Wallace, a leading user experience agency based in the UK.  Their services include research, information architecture, design and development.  Together with Heath Wallace, NML develops aspects of the websites for one of the top 5 banks in the world.  A second and third project in partnership with Heath Wallace starts shortly thereafter.  A good sign for our proposed long-term partnership.

At the end of 2009 each client has returned for at least a second or third phase of development.

2010

Most of our projects are still in development for this year and thus can’t be discussed yet.

Watch out for the launch of NML’s background project WeLove.co.za . We have utilise our service-oriented architecture framework to develop a front end that is re-usable across a number of niche social networks.  Multiple applications run off a single database, thus each service call is made with a unique application ID.  WeLove.co.za will be used to launch a number of our own social network applications all based on groups that share a common interest or passion.  Expect to see niche sites hosting WeLove communities such as WeLove coffee, WeLove our children, WeLove Healthy Bodies, WeLove Running etc.  You name it, where there is passion there could be a WeLove community!  The amazing thing about this project is the collective energy shared for it by all of the NML team.  We believe in this product and how it can facilitate relevant and engaging communal conversations around each of our own interests.

We have delivered a virtual itinerary for Smartguide. The software is integrated into the traditional itinerary building software used by a number of tourism operators. The virtual itinerary gives the client a map based view of their holiday and a day by day breakdown with routing drawn on the map. Over 100 tour operator commence integration of the virtual itinerary into their traditional systems.

NML assists Heath Wallace with the development of software for two of the top five global banks.

NML continues development with Aurecon on a number of projects that can’t be discussed.

NML continues to develop software in partnership with a number of the top digital agencies in South Africa.

Raoul De Jongh, the urban-ninja has joined us as a sales person. Read more about his joining NML here – Collaboration between NML and Urban Ninja, Raoul De Jongh

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Thank you for taking the time to read this post. These are exciting times, we would love you to be with us for the journey.

I was really happy when I was received with open arms by the people of Peace Parks – they made me feel like I belonged with their friendly and welcoming ambience and working in peaceful environment made my work that much easier.  The work that they do is inspirational and I support them all the way.

The Problems:

1.       Peace Parks Foundation wanted a SharePoint site that would assist them with their document management, since they are always travelling and have many departments.

2.       The SharePoint site had to have the exact style as their actual website to facilitate the users’ comprehension and usage.

3.       The site had to be fully searchable.

4.       When a new page or site is created within the SharePoint site, the theme had to be the same across all pages.

5.       Some pages had to add the voyager GIS that they always use for their work.

6.       Each department had to be able to add staff pictures of their respective department.

The Solutions:

1.       A strong knowledge of SharePoint, C# and Aspx was required.

2.       I modified a pre-existing site, which with all due respect required a lot of alterations – firstly, I had to modify the template which required changing the many style sheets and making one big one to which all the pages connect to, thereby ensuring style unity across all the pages.  Secondly, I had to modify all the images to suit the style – I used Adobe Photoshop.  The standardisation of the pages allowed for greater speed as all images are now optimised for web and only one CSS is accessed.

3.       The search engine was one of the most challenging sections to create.  The biggest problem was that the installation of MOSS 2007 was not implemented properly and therefore quite a few functions were not working as they should have been.  A few modifications to the installations and to the registry files fixed that.  Thereafter, I had to create content sources that crawled (indexed) the whole site.  And then it was just a matter of creating scopes for the search and ensuring that the search centre connected to those scopes.

4.       *View point 2*

5.       Adding the voyager GIS was one of the easiest requirements to implement.  All it required was the addition of a page viewer web part and the voyager GIS link!

6.       To allow for the ability to add departmental staff photos, I created a content editor web part and inside that web part I added a few html and J-query codes that showed the staff photos and allowed emailing the staff in question just by clicking on a button right below the picture.

As Global Vision made the decision to develop the Adora front-end using Microsoft Silverlight (at the time a very brave move – Silverlight 1.1 was VERY limited compared to Silverlight 3!), New Media Labs was asked to provide some assistance in the development process.  With full-time in-house User Experience (UX) designers and interface designers from Stonewall+, this project has really brought to light the power and flexibility of the Silverlight platform.

Design of Adora

The application is built along a classic Model-View-ViewModel (M-V-VM) architecture and utilises a custom-built framework for this that supports all the required elements.  We had a number of technical challenges to overcome along the way, mainly related to data storage and using the same Domain model on both the Client- and Server-side.  Most of these issues are posts in their own right and will be covered in the near future.

Adora consists of many layers, each with its own set of technologies.  Starting from the client and working our way to the backend:

• Client
  Silverlight 3, utilising the Silverlight Toolkit and numerous custom-built controls.
• Services
  The application services are provided by WCF services that are hosted on the server.  These are communicated with using a custom-built data-contract serialiser.
• Data storage
  Data storage is provided by SQL Server 2008 and data goes through many stages of filtering and matching to ensure maximum data integrity.
• Messaging
  A messaging and scheduling engine resides on the server side to handle all email and SMS communications with consumers.  Messages received are linked to the consumer’s profile.

The Development Process

The goal is to deliver a product that is not only scalable, flexible and fast but is also pleasant to use with minimal or no user training.  With a team consisting of UX designers, developers, graphic designers and QA testers, we are continuously and iteratively tweaking the design.  Using an Agile approach has allowed us to make fast-paced design changes whilst ensuring that the end result not only looks good, feels good and performs well but also matches the expectations of the Product Owner.

We currently employ a mix of various established practices – test driven development, peer reviews, daily stand-ups and whiteboard sessions are some of the things that we do every day.

Interface Design

Adora’s interface borrows heavily from concepts used by Windows Explorer to allow users to work in a familiar environment.  For example, “folders” represent brands and “files” represent elements such as email lists, creatives or even communication schedules. 

Adora Explorer interface

Wireframe designs are created by our UX designers and the initial development work to implement functionality is done by the developers and testers.  Whilst this is taking place, the interface design is UAT-tested by the UX designers – the interface is then sent to Stonewall+ for “polishing” and styling.  Due to Silverlight’s dynamic binding model, it is simple for the developers to drop the finished interface on top of the functional elements built.

All work with consumer populations is graphical – that is, instead of reams of confusing numbers that may not appear to have any significant proportions or relationships, Adora presents interactive graphs.  A user with little or no SQL knowledge is able to build up complex queries very quickly with this system and it provides a “quick-glance” overview of the consumers that the user is currently communicating with. 

Marketing List builder interface design

Adora Query Language

Central to Adora’s success is our own query language that we have developed: Adora Query Language, or AQL.  With a syntax that is similar to SQL, AQL allows developers to retrieve consumer related information using queries that are business oriented.  If that doesn’t excite you, how about this:

SELECT firstname, lastname, age FROM brandname WHERE gender=’male’ AND age>25

The result of this query is a list of consumers within the “brandhouse” brand that are male and over 25 years of age.  A complete subset of SQL is supported, including ORDER BY, GROUP BY, INTERSECT, UNION and many more.  On top of this, we have our own extensions to the language that allow us to apply pagination to data results or to even group data into ranges.  The result?  Our developers can focus on working with data, not on retrieving data.  It is envisioned that future versions of Adora will allow 3^rd party vendors to create add-ins to the Adora system using AQL.

What’s next?

Still to come – details on the technical challenges faced and more screenshots!  Beta 1 is scheduled for release in January 2010. 

Realisation 1 – facebook API didn’t expose the wallpost (obviously this was what got people coming back to facebook)

I’m determined and so we (Willem Odendaal and I) resorted to an old favourite technique of mine – Screen scraping or Indexing as google call it. Basically we made what is called “A Bot”.

Realisation 2 – you can only see the wall if you’re someone’s friend. No worries the Bot would be a Facebook user – enter Peter Lear (who Leared at your wall).

Peter (The Bot) had to login to facebook, check all his friends walls and screen scrape the html, check if there was a new post (the old highest value post was already loaded in the Database) pick up the new post and then bang it out to the “friend” as an SMS. The idea was that this would be about as prolific as Please Call Me’s – adverts [possibly contextual] would be attached and I would make lots of money. Boom.

Easier said than done. Attached is some of the code. The app worked a treat and within a week Peter had lots of friends - problem.

Realisation 3 – this could cost me a lot of money in SMSes (sent from a clickatell account) as some “friends” were getting 10 posts a day…

And so I tried to find an agency that would like to use it. But advertising doesn’t work like that. It is much slower and less dynamic than you may realise. Advertisers are often scared to try something new. If it isn’t in the strategy that was set x months ago - they won’t touch it was the message I got back. And so it wasted me money for a couple of months and I took it offline… only to see Vodacom integrated the wall into facebook 18 months later. Hmmm maybe I just didn’t sell it well enough or maybe it just wasn’t such a great idea.

Of course Peter Lear is still on facebook, he only has 17 friends, he plays Farmville now (Frances – my daughter – begged me) and when facebook is feeling kind they recommend that I make facebook better for him. Please write on his wall – http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=534167080

Attached is some of the code from Peter “The Bot” Lear. The login, the scrap, the send…

Interesting aside though – it was one of the things I showed Jon Jacobson that made him believe that he should invest in my company “New Media Labs” and that my ideas would slot into their marketing automation engine – Adora. And so it goes… everything for a reason – just do it.

 ps. Warning. The hot girl that’s following you on twitter and spamming naked pictures of herself at you – this is what she looks like! She also beats you at poker, chess, etc. She’s also tried to login to this wordpress site and take control if it over a thousand times. … just a thought.

pps. This is what geeks do for fun.

Get a list of his friends...

Login..push.

Scrape...aka Index

SMS Send