A Dilligent Process

Added links for Google Analytics to my project management tools site.

Worked on “Home Computing in the Cloud” concept.

Financial Planning

Worked on an article concept about using personal financial management as training for managing business finances. If you can discipline yourself to manage your own finances, this will help prepare you to manage the finances of a business.

Are You Average?

Working on draft on using “simple numbers” in management of a project or organization.   Most people I’ve worked with simply don’t understand something as simple as an “average.”  They can usually define it, but it you tell them a task is taking X days on average to complete, it is sometimes humorous what they will try and do with this information.   Once you have mastered simple management numbers then one is ready to do something really interesting such as using Six Sigma.

Getting Started Again

Since being downsized in February 2009, I’ve been working on getting a software and information technology consulting practice up and running.  This serves as something productive to do while looking for that next employment opportunity.

It consists of two primary parts:

1. Residential Consulting
2. Commercial Consulting

The residential is similar to Best Buys “Geek Squad” but with more an emphasis on helping people get the most out of that PC they have at home.  So while I’ve repaired a few PCs, the more interesting work has been to help folks learn how to use their PC more fully.   The most fun has been with folks who are retired or who have a small business and have never made much use of a PC.   Helping these folks consists mostly of being persistent, patient and following-up regularly so that what they’ve learned gets reinforced and used.

The commerical consulting is focused on working in my area of expertise with local companies.   This has primarily been helping companies to improve how they management their software development efforts.   While working with a few customers, I found I needed something to point to.  Something that illustrated the technique or approach I was describing to them.

The solution was obvious for a technology guy, I needed a web site.  If nothing else, that would be fun and would help update my skills in that area.

Wow.  It has been like drinking from the proverbial fire hose.   A lot of great ideas and great technology sitting right at one’s fingertips.  Almost too much.

So now for the moment I’ve set active consulting aside and I am focused on trying to figure out how to set up and market a web site.

I’ve come to appreciate the WordPress technology as opposed to completely designing my own web site.

The notion of marketing the site, driving some traffic to it so that my words could hopefully help sell some products and hence generate some ad revenue was an interesting discovery.  I like the idea of having multiple sources of revenue in a business, so I did a deep dive into SEO and related topics.   Woa.  Another drink from the fire hose.   So my notion of a web site is no longer a fairly static repository of information, but a long term investment with a purpose of establishing it as a point on the web where a certain niche of folks will want to visit periodically.  This is in addition to the site supporting my consulting business.

So the rudimentary outlines of a site can be found at Project Management Tools That Work!

I plan to use this blog as brainstorming and summary point for ideas on getting a consulting practice up and viable over the next few years.  Of course, if in the meantime the economy recovers and I get a great job offer, this might be a very short blog.

Bruce