2009 in Review: Extreme Highs and Lows

2009 was a year to remember, without a doubt.

The Highs

2009 professionally was an amazing year, as it marks my first full year of running my own company, fulfilling a dream I’ve had since I was a kid. The people I’ve met, lessons I’ve learned, and amazing products we’ve collaborated on have been a daily inspiration for me. 2010 will be spent working on my own products, help others devise and built theirs, and in general, crushing it. As I’ve learned through experience, the sky is the limit.

Of course there are other good things about 2009 – my first vacation to Mexico – and actually unplugging, my first cruise, and quality time spent with friends and family. And of course, nearly four years with some crazy lady from New Jersey.

The Lows

Personally, 2009 was tragic as my loving father, David Band, passed away in March – a scenario that one never wishes to happen on anyone, or thinks would happen to them. We all miss him. I’m not going to dive in to what we had to deal with, what we’re still going through, and feeling, as it is a bit too private for an online forum. All I can say is that we are so thankful for our family and friends through this tragic time.

Freelancing Lessons Learned: 1 Year of SkeevisArts

December 4th, today, marks a pretty big day in my life.

Since I was in middle school, skeevisArts was the moniker I used for any “professional” work I did (back then, I used the professional label pretty loosely).  Skeevis was my nickname back then, and considering that I was doing mainly creative work at that time, skeevisArts was appended to everything I created.

But on December 4th, 2008 – I began my journey as a full time freelancer, finally turning the dream of skeevisArts into a reality.

I’ve learned so much, met so many amazing people, and been lucky to do some pretty incredible projects – especially considering how “fresh” I was. Sure, I had done a decent amount of freelance work before, but nothing compared to the experience of the past year. When I compare an “average day” – which no entrepreneur ever has – to what I had experienced just a few years ago, when I was still full time at unnamed-ginormous-government-contractor…. its beyond comparison.

DISCLAIMER: When I was working at aforementioned consulting agency and dreaming about freelancing full time – and doing a bit of it on the side – I read… a ton. Everything I could get my hands on via social media – blog posts about lessons learned, war stories of entrepeneurs, Top X tools you need to Y… I consumed it all. Everyone was willing to hand out advice. Let’s face it, most of the content out there is regurgitating information found via other sources, mindless unfounded banter just to generate page views, or just monkeys mashing at keyboards. I don’t want to be any of that. Instead, I just want to reflect upon the lessons I’ve learned, primarily to cement them in my own head, but also hopefully, that someone out there will find it useful. This isn’t a definitive list of “Steps to take to Master Freelancing” or “Why it’s so hard to start a company” or any BS like that. This is solely what I have learned for myself. This might be completely useless to you, it might be just what you needed. Take this advice at your owk risk.

Here we go.

What I’ve Learned, In One Year of Freelancing

1. Do Amazing Work. Duh, right? I couldn’t stress this enough, and still have to remind myself of this every day. First off, there are so many other tasks and activities you have to deal with – new business, accounting, new business, partnerships, new business, internal projects and processes, new business, project management (and did I mention new business?) – that sometimes the actual labor is second tier, rushed through, or put off to the last minute. No. Amazing work is all that matters. The money will come in once that is taken care of.

1b. Do Amazing Work. I am blown away on a weekly basis by how much crap there is, especially stuff put out by other freelancers. I’m disheartened that some people would actually put this out, and that clients would pay for it. But, this is also an opportunity. If you come in doing good work, clients will instantly see it, latch on to you, and – best of all – be willing to pay nearly any price for that kind of quality. 1/3 of the work I do is replacing another developer (or team of developers).

2. Find What You Are Good At. Outsource The Rest. Just because a client is hiring you to do a project, doesn’t mean you’re expected to do all of it yourself. They’re paying you to get to the finish line.

3. Every Client is Valuable. When I first started, I took any client that walked through the door. I still keep in touch with them to this day, and it’s paid off – even if it’s at a lower rate, doing smaller work (example: I still do IT work for a couple small businesses at an hourly rate a fraction of my current rate). Just because a bigger, better, client has walked through the door, doesn’t diminish the importance of every single client before it. (I know, at this point, a lot of this is “duh!” stuff. I’m only saying it because every day I see more people who don’t think this way)

4. Don’t Mess Around (Too Much) On Payments - Invoice promptly. If the project isn’t a rush project, wait until you get the deposit. If you’ve set generous terms, and the client is still behind on paying you – alarm bells should go off IMMEDIATELY. I’ve learned this lesson a couple times already in a year.

5. New business is the lifeblood of a company. Don’t underestimate how much time it takes to process this. While so far I’ve been successful enough to build a business solely on word of mouth, I still end up spending 1/5 of my week in new business phone calls and meetings, writing proposals, and negotiating terms.

6. E-mail is not the lifeblood of a company. I’m still fighting with not checking e-mail every five minutes. Learn more from Jared on this, he’s the expert.

7. Rigidity will only lead to frustration. I’m at the point where, when I wake up in a day, I have no idea what I’m going to work on, unless I have a scheduled appointment. This is how I best function personally, as far too many things change in a day, to have a strict work plan. Keep an eye on your deadlines, get the work done, but know that every day, unforeseeable items pop up.

8. Surround yourself by people smarter than you, more dedicated than you, and more connected than you. Strive to be like them, every day.

9. Networking is crap. If you want to get business from people you’ve met, you have to do more than just the business card swap. Get to know them. Have lunch with someone every day. Follow them on twitter. Spend more than 30 seconds with them at a conference. 100% of the work I get is from word of mouth, usually kicked off by someone I know. 0% of the work I get is from a business card in an ever-growing pile on my desk.

10. Learn something every day. Stay on top of what’s going on. Clients may be paying you for what you know right now, but you’ll also need tomorrow’s skills and knowledge someday as well.

10b. Bring something new to every project. It’s far too easy to get into a rut of doing the same kind of project, for the same budget, over and over again. I keep myself on my toes by always trying a different technique, framework, or feature in everything I do.

11. Educate your clients. One of my tenets that I convey to my clients is that I want our professional relationship to be a learning experience, for both of us.  I clearly state that my goal is, once the project is complete, that they’ll almost never need me for that project, barring major changes.

12. Project management is incredibly important, but the hardest to quantify/charge for. Clients won’t just leave you alone until the work is totally complete. Be prepared to spend a lot of your time answering e-mails, taking phone calls, and in meetings to discuss what you’re doing, defend your approach, and talking to anyone you’re requested to speak to. Nicholas suggests tacking on a set percentage for project management on top of estimated labor charges.

13. Strive for a good work/life balance. Yes, I’m still easily working 80 hour weeks, but I’m happy with that balance at the moment. I still find time to spend time with Alex, see friends, read, watch all my TV shows, and play DJ Hero.

14. Project minimums are important. I say this because often times, the smaller the project, the more work it tends to be. Ask any freelancer about that $500 project that ended up taking them a week to complete. Work for full price, or give it away for free. The area between that is where it gets hairy.

15. Find time for personal projects. If you have your own product startup in mind, or just want to work on some personal projects, make sure to set aside time for that every week.

15. Enjoy it.

FixMyCityDC Receives an Honorable Mention

The DC 311 application I built and Zach designed received an Honorable Mention in the Apps for Democracy competition!

Read my full post at my other blog

Learning ImageMagick with Run DMC

Wait — what?

Every PHP Web Developer, or any other kind of web developer, has, at one point, butted heads with ImageMagick, or its inferior nemesis, GD. We’ve tussled with setup and installation, debugged scripts, and stolen code, but rarely do we look to it for anything beyond generating a thumbnail or resizing an image.

Armed with nothing more than the native manual, I started experimenting with its abilities. What could I make with it? I thought it would be cool to start out with making a script to generate your own version of the iconic RUN DMC logo, as I’ve seen many variations.

And so it was born.

Above is what my script generates… nearly identical to the original.

Of course..

It will also resize appropriately, given how much text you pump in.

I’ve made the source code available. Steal away.

Taking Opportunities

I touched on this before, but Marc Andreesen’s essay about careers and creating and accepting opportunities rather than having a definite plan really resonated in me.

I believe a huge part of what people would like to refer to as “career planning” is being continuously alert to opportunities that present themselves to you spontaneously, when you happen to be in the right place at the right time.

And with that in mind, effective May 2nd, I will be Chief Technical Officer of JESS3.



I couldn’t be more excited. Jesse has already built an amazing team, a huge and exciting client roster, and has the passion and drive to realize our dreams.

Plus I get to play on the web all day. Who can beat that?

Jesse had posted about this the other day, but I wanted to give my current employer proper notice before I started talking about it.

People often trash working for large companies, especially anything government related. I loved it. But, in the end, I knew where I wanted to be, and a stepping stone formed around it.

Real World, Stage 2.

I Made a Fire Eagle Application

Late last year I mentioned that Yahoo was coming out with it’s own location management platform. They launched it last week in private beta. At this point – it really is just that, a platform. Very few applications exist. Seth Levine was kind enough to send me an invite.

I wrote a quick application using Fire Eagle. Birdwatcher shows recent location updates on a nice pretty map (using the Yahoo Maps API, of course…).

The bummer is that I can’t get a feed of recent updates platform-wide that twitter offers, even if I’m not displaying any identifying information. So if you want your updates to be added, click the “Add yourself” link in the top right corner and the application will start showing your locations as you add them.

I see location as an upcoming feature in online interaction. As our technology usage grows more transparent and better integrated in our lives, including while mobile, where we are will play a role.

My ideal application is something that will automatically update itself on my location, and notify me if my friends are near me. From the screenshots on Fire Eagle’s site, it looks like they are planning a Facebook application that will do that. If they don’t come up with something soon I may do it myself…

I’ll eventually post up the source code for BirdWatcher, so others can see how it works + improve.

Some Overall Thoughts

• The geocoder is pretty robust. Just like Google Maps, you can type in a lot of crap and it’ll figure it out.
• The platform isn’t that stable yet. Was down for a while today.
• Don’t launch a platform with a total of zero demo applications (other than a very basic walkthrough).
• Don’t launch a platform with incomplete libraries (the PHP api had about half of the functions, and didn’t fully work).
• Fire Eagle is touted as heavily privacy focused – in face it’s about the same as Facebook. Once you grant permission to an application, they can see and do whatever they like.

UPDATE: I encountered some issues with the API yesterday, but they are resolved now.

UPDATE 2: Yeah, they changed their API around. Thanks for telling me… NOT. What has two thumbs and is really annoyed right now? THIS GUY. The app is broken right now. Fire Eagle is taking a ride on the FailBoat.

WhyGoSolo Facebook Application

I made the WhyGoSolo Facebook Application, which just launched. If you join WhyGoSolo, you can have any events you create or sign up for show up on Facebook automatically, so you and your Facebook friends can know what you are up to.

We’re planning on adding a lot more functionality to it in the future. Our main focus is bringing what happens on the main site into Facebook.

If you haven’t heard of WhyGoSolo, they’ve built a social network targeted solely towards offline meetups – NOT FOR DATING! So if you have an extra ticket for a show, are new in town, or want to find someone to go golfing with you (my personal use case), you can post a listing on WhyGoSolo and connect with someone who will do it with you.

I’ve come to know the founder, Ann Bernard, and her CTO, Keith Casey really well over the past couple months – they are both amazing people and an inspiration for any entrepreneur. I really want to see them and WhyGoSolo succeed like everyone knows it can. They also blog everything.

Speaking at WidgetDevCamp

I’ll be at WidgetDevCamp this weekend.

I’ve planned to talk about developing Facebook applications and how they “work”, with a particular spin on developing widgets. I may also be collaborating with one or two other people on some other topics – we’ll see how that plays out.

I’ll post slides after.

If you are there, say hi.

Year of the…

The beginning of a new year, like any other major milestone, is always a time for reflection, evaluation, and prediction. Main stream media, websites, bloggers, all give predictions (I’m guilty as well). This year, it’s one of three things:

• Mobile – We’ve seen this prediction at least half a dozen times. I still see too many barriers, and nothing to break through. Phone companies will still charge an absurd amount for what is nearly a free service. There are hundreds of different phone designs, browsers, and capabilities. Android will try, but it’ll be worthless if it doesn’t get accepted by the majority of carriers. And city-wide wireless? Still hasn’t been successful. More importantly, what can the mobile web really offer us? Other than giving us access to the same resources available on our desktop or laptop, what value does mobile add?
• Video – Sorry Scoble, while your followers might like to watch you talk for hours a day on qik or mogulus, doesn’t make it mainstream. I can’t imagine a time where this particular medium gains widespread adoption. Good video takes money, and can’t be distributed for free, unless there is some serious advertising revenue. Putting a camera on yourself and someone else and chatting for a while isn’t going to make any real money. The writer’s strike has completely cut off the supply of fresh TV entertainment (thank heavens The Wire is OK), but nothing has seemed to be able to fill the space.
• Recession – Crap.

I’m not going to summarize what I hope to see in the coming year in one word, or call it Year of the ____. My predictions/hopes?

• The technology entrepreneurial ecosystem will wake up, and start focusing on startups, ideas, and people that solve real world pains. We can blabber on about online video, social media, mobile web, VOIP, and on and on, but there has to be a focus on how it will actually matter to the world, not just us.
• 2008 will continue the trend of the reversing the Industrial age. Knowledge workers will move away from cubicle farms, code factories, middle management, employee ID numbers, and become a cottage industry of work anywhere freelancers, working under the umbrella virtual companies and relying on technology to reduce overhead and enhance communication.
• skeevisArts and Localnik will catch on fire.
• My life has undergone many changes in the past two years, and 2008 will be no different. I’ll realize and address my “Life Major” and, with the help of my friends, family, and peers I’ve met and will meet in the coming year, celebrate many champagne moments. L’chaim (“to life” in Hebrew).

Check DC Metro Times Online and On Your Cell! Metro Times Relaunches As GetMetroTimes.com

After considering it for a while, I decided to give my DC Metro Times checker it’s very own website! Everyone welcome getmetrotimes.com !

GetMetroTimes.com is a FREE service that allows you to quickly and easily check when the next metro train is arriving at your nearest station. You can check it online, or on your cell phone with just a quick text message! We charge you absolutely nothing, however your provider may charge you normal text messaging rates.

Additionally, I made some backend improvements to handle a wider array of queries. For example, to get the station info for College Park, you could type in coll, cOllEGe, collegepark, college park, collegepa, and similar variations. Have fun, and let me know if you break it!

FYI: Metro currently offers an online station monitor, as well as a WAP site, and Justin told us about an iPhone specific site. I created this because no service is currently offered that does this via text message, and it solves a real pain myself and many others have! Enjoy!