Watch for it....

3SmallPixels.com is coming.

February 2009

Its the little things...

Today, the new air conditioning unit for the new "cloud space" (ok, ok, its the new server facility). Why did this make me happy? I was like a kid with a new toy.

I guess its because I LOVE to build things. The new server facility has been something that I have built from the ground up - by mostly me - my two hands and a couple spare brain cells (I have to gaurd them closely). The air conditioner is one of the final pieces to make this real and complete.

Also its a nice digression from the day-to-day management stuff. If the perks weren't available - I might have taken a different path ;)

Nothing like a power drill, some screws and some vision to make it interesting.

Surprises?

Keep an eye out this week - we have a couple of announcements! (well, at least we think its exciting)

3 months later...

Argh... It has been almost 3 months since I said we would be posting our new website with our new branding. (well, I have a slight excuse - my wife and I have had our first child July 20th!). I am still hoping to launch it still this month - I will keep everyone posted.

So I have come to believe that refreshing your web presence can be a great incentive to refine your marketing message - its just a little time consuming. I have tried to have other members of the team craft this for me but without defining the message myself it is hard to tell others to do it for you!

Speaking of team members -we have added Ms Danielle Long, as "Client Services Manager" to the team. This is a key position for client interaction - project management, contract creation (did I mention she is an attorney also!), and business development.

Here is the intro that was sent out:

"As Client Services Manager, Danielle Long brings several years of business and legal experience to our team. She holds a J.D. from Loyola University of Chicago, School of Law and was most recently employed as Assistant General Counsel with a large privately held corporation. In her previous employment, Ms. Long worked as a business liaison between her employer and over thirty franchisees. In this role, she was responsible for overseeing the offering and acquisition of several new subsidiary corporations. She also implemented an accountability and training program for all corporate managers. Her previous employment law and contract management experience will be a valuable addition to the Venturality team.

In the role of Client Services Manager, Ms. Long will be responsible for client project management for all phases of client projects, from initial project quotes to final project delivery. We are excited about Ms. Long's addition to the team and furthering our ability to deliver the quality that our clients have came to expect."

Marketing items- Too little or overkill?

Venturality is in the midst of a website overhaul. We have added some services and changed our logo - so the website needs to keep up. I have contracted a professional graphics/web designer along with kicking off some SEO efforts. I feel this is at least a base line requirement.

I have had some ideas of extending the website marketing effort with some podcasts and/or videocasts - waste of my time?

Also, my wife and I have really embraced the green movement. I am trying to move our personal home off the grid - a combination of solar, wind and energy use reduction. I am also toying with the idea of bringing this effort to the company - without being labeled with green-washing. While the primary goal is saving the Earth, I felt bringing our eco-efforts to our marketing would be help grow the company which would help fund our efforts and so on... So my challenge is to incorporate my green efforts without it seeming contrived. Any ideas would be appreciated!

TowerStream gets an A-

(A- grade will get me some grief....)

Uptime:

I have been constantly monitoring our uptime (mostly manually for now). And? --- The service has NOT been down in 2 months. I am pleased.

QOS:

Again, dilligently checking bandwith, response times and up-time, TowerStream provides about 95% near max bandwidth of 8Mb/s. There has been a few times that we have dropped to 50% of the contract bandwidth for a few hours. Its hard to determine though where the bottleneck is sometimes so many pieces involved.

Customer Service:

Tech support has been good and available everytime that I have called. (I think Bob is the only guy that works in tech support)

Sales support has been really responsive and attentive. They have made it easy for Venturality, as a new managed services provider, to ramp up without selling our souls to AT&T. Their whole team seems genuine so far. (Mike P. this was for you!)

Why the A- ? 2 items -

1. The bandwidth drops have me a little concerned but I am going to monitor for the next couple of months. I am trying to determine if it was one our switches... (but I don't think so)

2. Invoicing should be online and managable/payable from a web interface.

I would suggest this service to others looking to find an inexpensive high bandwidth provider that owns the last mile. (especially if hate AT&T like I do)

Internet Autobahn next exit... (part 4 - the finale)

All I can say is FAAAAAAAAAAST.

That is for both, the speed and the install. Within 1 week of requesting the service, I have a full 8 Mb/s synchronous speed (tested via 2wire.com) and 27ms response times from pinging yahoo.

Install was simple - they put the antenna on the roof, drilled a small hole in the side of the building, ran 1 single CAT5 cable and then connected the Cisco 1800 router. I received a block of IPs 10 minutes after the tech left via email from their tech coordinator. Plugged in and we were connected. Too simple :)

Once we have it connected to the rest of our network and we have completed some real testing after 1-2 weeks, I will give a review.