As much as I am impressed by the moxy of Donald Trump, I don’t normally watch shows like the Celebrity Apprentice. This season’s episodes caught my attention though because of how Poison’s lead singer Bret Michaels handled himself. Kind of a weird topic to bring up in a Web Development blog – perhaps, but I felt there was a lesson to be learned.
Bret went through a truly harrowing experience with the brain hemorrhage – as Trump pointed out, something like 50% of people don’t even make it to the hospital. So if you call that lucky, I guess Bret was lucky. The lesson through all this was unrelated to Bret’s illness or diabetes for that matter – rather, what I am referring to was how he presented himself throughout the show, how he treated others and how he progressed to ultimately win in the end. Bret ran what I feel was one of the best marketing campaigns I have seen in a while and in a very pure way, without even really being aware of it. He really had no gimmicks or outstanding project results – he was just being himself and “keeping it real”.
One crucially important point to this blog post is that Bret’s opponent in the finale, Holly, raised considerably more money than he did and was, on paper, a considerably more accomplished apprentice. Last year’s apprentice Joan Rivers even stated it Live on the TV in the 2010 finale – something along the lines of, yeah sure Holly is quite clearly the better apprentice here but if you vote from the heart and not the head, Bret should win. I imagine music sales for Poison have increased from Bret’s appearance on the show and I even found myself listening to “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” on Pandora this morning. – All because Bret seems like a genuinely good guy, plain and simple.
So what’s the lesson out of all this? Well simply by being the best we can be, by being honest about our work and as straightup as possible people will come to trust and flat out like us more. Too often one can find oneself in circumstances where we don’t want to let the client know of some small issue or of certain limitations on a particular project because we feel that it is in some way unprofessional or that it shows weakness. I think Bret Michaels just taught us that in fact we can rise above all odds and shine when we try to be as transparent as possible. It’s OK to show some flaws as long as you show you are capable overall and willing to do the very best job you can do for the client. Above all else client’s appreciate honesty and often times when a client is badgering for answers on something or results they are in fact simply nervous themselves, perhaps getting pressure from above.
The moral of the story is that you don’t necessarily have to be the very best at what you do to be successful, you just have to do what it is that you do and do it to the best of your abilities. With honesty and integrity and treating others right you can win the gold! 
PS: No – I’ll not be reviewing the finale of Lost next week .
You can make a difference even just by making Google code available on your site
On January 12 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti. It’s easy to sit back and almost ignore the news reports. In most cases neither you nor people you know have been directly affected, however, as of this moment in time, estimates of the numbers killed in the Haitian earthquake range from 50,000 to 200,000. Did you know that’s about the population of Richmond, VA? It might be a cliche at this stage but even $1 can help and might be the difference in saving another Life. You can join recovery efforts mobilizing around the world to assist earthquake victims and your donation will help disaster victims rebuild their lives and their communities.
There are however other ways you can help too if you don’t feel like helping financially. Google Crisis response is an application which you can embed in your website or in your blog to help other peoples to share any kind of information they have about the victims of Haiti disaster.
Use the following code snippet and put it in the text/HTML box widget.
Quote:
<iframe
src="http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/?small=yes"
width=350 height=300 frameborder=0
style="border: dashed 2px #77c"></iframe>
|
You can also donate to save the lives there. Follow this link to donate.
The organizations are accepting SMS donations in the US :
- SMS text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts
- SMS text “YELE” to 501501 to Donate $5 to Yele Haiti’s Earthquake Relief efforts
- SMS text "GIVE10" to 20222 to donate $10 to Direct Relief
So much of our work these days is conducted by remote that it is very useful to be able to capture an image from a computer screen, make annotations, then send it to a client or colleague. TechSmith recently released Snagit in beta for the Mac. This tool is already available for those on Windows platforms, and it is quite useful in doing these tasks. Those using Macs probably are familiar with the built in screen capture using the Cmd-Shift-4 key combination, but I have found Snagit to have a couple of advantages. For one, it allows you to capture all of a window, not just what is showing on the screen. This is useful for long web pages that extend past the confines of your screen, for example. The other advantage is the variety of annotations available. You can use speech bubbles in addition to more standard fare such as lines and arrows, and easily adjust sizes, arc contours, etc. When trying to convey an idea to a client, or get markups out to a project team, the old adage of a picture being worth a thousand words is true. Perhaps even more important, it takes time to write those thousand words, so being able to convey your thoughts efficiently can result in improved project deliveries and economics.
We go to great lengths to provide products that fulfill the needs of our clients, meeting with them to understand their business models and needs before we even propose building a website or providing other Internet Marketing solutions. In fact, we won’t propose something unless we truly believe it will benefit their business. Over the years, this has resulted in a high degree of client loyalty and a large proportion of new business generated through referrals.
There are times, however, when things just don’t go as planned in development. This usually happens when the client says, “I hear your reasons for doing so and so, but I really want it this way instead.” This could be anything: eliminating key Calls to Action, wanting a Flash splash page, etc. In these cases we make our best efforts to explain the advantages of doing what we propose. In the end, however, if the client is insistent we will produce what they want even if it negatively impacts the overall quality and effectiveness of the website.
I’m interested in hearing the views of other web professionals and end users. Do you feel the adage that “The client is always right” is correct? The medical profession has the Hippocratic Oath, “Above all, do no harm.” For us it is not a matter of life or death, but the reality is that some websites don’t fulfill their business potential due to clients’ insistence on something that to them is sexy or trendy.
