06 Nov 2004
Salaries in NW up in techland
Now being someone who lives in the NW (actually, Victoria, BC but still below the 49th parallel), this is the kind of information I like to see. I was for
tunate enough to come out of University and land a job with an up and coming startup. Sure there were opportunities to go with much larger and stable comp
anies but I enjoy the sense of freedom and unconstrained growth that goes along with entrepreneurship.
It was the hey-day when I first started Univeristy 5 years ago. My first opportunity to go out on co-op presented
at least 8 or 9 different job offers. 2 years later and you were lucky to get 2 job offers. 2 years later again and the market
seems to be coming around with a definate need for people. We need people and I bet there are lots of other compa
nies in the same boat.
People are finding that the northwest is an attractive place to work and live with a fair share of start-ups and established companies to choose from. NW
VC’s appear active and that can only encourage growth and expansion.
23 Oct 2004
Kryptonite and Why Companies need Blogs
I agree. If you’re in a (commodity? I’m not a biker) market like Kryptonite, I don’t think you can afford to limit your corporate presence.
One mistake combined with a slowness to react and take responsiblity could seriously hurt a company. If I was a biker, why would I want to buy a Kryptonit
e lock? Even if I could be assured that my lock is secure, I wouldn’t feel comfortable with the company and their ability to handle any future problems.
Slowness to get the information out, inability to handle customer communication.
Luckily, I think that the bike stores (at least the ones around here), stepped up to the plate and supported their customers. A small store shouldn’t be
responsible for damage control but in order to stay afloat they were forced to support their customers. Why should this be any different for a larger corp
oration?
Bottom line, you want to improve your relationship with customers, try including a blog in your communication strategy (and not one of them corporation-fi
ltered blogs, we need and expect honesty).
07 Oct 2004
Neotonic ClearSilver
Playing with Bloglines led me to ClearSilver. Clearsilver is a fast, powerful, and language-neutral HTML template system. In both static content sites
and dynamic HTML applications, it provides a separation between presentation code and application logic which makes working with your project easier.
I haven’t played with Clearsilver yet but there does appear to be some significant use by Yahoo (Groups), Google (Groups 2), and Plaxo.
Interesting and might be worth a more indepth look when I have some spare time.
Here’s a page that talks a bit about Clearsilver and does a brief comparison with some
of its alternatives.