Posts Tagged ‘beerchief’

01 Feb 2009

January 2009 Review

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At the start of January, i told you guys what i was going to do. In a nutshell;

  • Get BeerChief online
  • Get my new netbook and kit it out
  • Revamp the BeerChief blog
  • Revamp smemon.com
  • Pass my Christmas exams

BeerChief Launch

bclogovector

BeerChief was launched on January 27th. We had some problems at the last minute, but we’ve worked through them and starting from tonight, we’ll be getting some of our major features back online. Once they’re all in place and thoroughly tested, we’ll be focusing on promoting the site for the first time.

For the past 6 weeks or so there hasn’t been a day where i haven’t done some work on BeerChief. That work rate is what’s powering the site forward and i intend to keep it up right through February and beyond. It’s becoming more fun to work with now that the community is giving me feedback and sharing in the changes with me…

Got my Netbook

I got my netbook in early January. It’s already become an essential tool at college for me. The consistent 6 hour+ battery life crushes everything around it… when batteries start to die around me, i’ve got 3/4 hours of juice left :mrgreen: Turning off wireless, on zero brightness and i could probably get 7 hours+

One problem i have though is with my college’s wireless network. It’s gone to hell recently and keeps dropping connections and blocking me from logging in on major sites. Further to that, college email is up and down like a yo yo and i can’t check my timetable due to our department’s website CONSTANTLY giving database errors.

More on this to come shortly – i’ll soon be taking matters in to my own hands ;-)

Revamp the BeerChief blog

The BeerChief blog was revamped in mid January. It took me a while to settle on a theme and kit it out, but i think i did a good job and the blog is looking fresh and unqiue. I still have to blog more on it, but finding the time is really difficult as getting BeerChief.com sorted is more important at the moment.

Revamp smemon.com

All of the above was complete bar the revamping of smemon.com. I just haven’t had the time to work on it. This blog isn’t just like a normal website for me – i’m using it and looking at it daily so there has to be thought put in to it. At the minute i barely have time to think about smemon.com, never mind act on those thoughts ;-)

Pass my Christmas exams

I got my results on January 21st from my christmas exams and passed all first time around. Average of 61% which is bang on what i predicted.

Other

In January, i really got stuck in to twitter. I’ve added over 400 people to my follow list and in return, i have over 200 people following me! I don’t really care who follows me – that’s not why i’m using twitter… i’m using twitter because it allows me to get real time news unedited, straight from the horses mouth.

Whether it’s football scores, airport problems, planes crashing in to rivers, bargain alerts or just talking with like minded people, i now rate twitter as the most important site i visit ahead of google reader, digg, bebo or any other social network.

It’s like a blog/social network without the crap and without the small talk and at the minute, manily used by IT professionals and enthusiasts. Long may it stay that way :mrgreen:

31 Jan 2009

keeping the pressure on myself

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Although BeerChief has been up since Tuesday, i haven’t stopped working on it or backed off any less. It’s a massive relief to have the site online as we’re now making real progress even if we’re doing nothing on the site – the community does the work for us. Or at least in theory that’s what can happen.

Merry Go building site
Creative Commons License photo credit: edmittance

First though, i need a community! The site itself is improving daily. I’m getting loads of feedback, some bugs and some suggestions for the long term. That’s all good, it helps me build and perfect something that people want, not what i think they want.

Overall, i’m happy with BeerChief’s progress this week. A membership and traffic blitz hasn’t come but as i’ve said before, that’s down to us sneaking the site out on Tuesday, rather than shouting it from the rooftops.

I’m still confident that getting traffic and members on to BeerChief initially won’t be a problem. Keeping them active on the site will. However, that’s my job, that’s one of many challenges facing me & BeerChief.

But the site is looking good, it’s looking unique and more importantly it is unique – there’s nothing like this on the internet. It’s not just a change of template and off we go… it’s been a long hard battle to get the site in to it’s current state and the battle for perfection is far from over.

Sitting beside me right now is a list of 20 improvements i want made to the site. Tomorrow i’ll spend the day working on some and coming up with more. Sunday i’ll spend a few hours working on the site… it’s that committment which keeps things moving forward.

20 improvements doesn’t mean 20 and i’m happy – BeerChief is finished. It means i want 20 improvements to the existing site right now in the short term. If you gave me blank cheques, i’d completely transform the site yet again to take it up another few levels.

At the minute, it’s a case of working with what i’ve got and getting the most out of it. You’ll never hear me say i’m happy with the site – let’s stop working on it – that’s a cardinal sin in IT. One which too many people suffer from.

30 Jan 2009

Why BeerChief is where it is today

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Christmas beers
Image by Drunken Monkey via Flickr

January has gotten off to a perfect start. Traffic and RSS subscribers on this blog are way above average. BeerChief has now been launched and is slowly taking shape… looking better by the day.

At college, things seem to be getting easier, not harder and i’m not sure whether that’s a case of me working harder or whether things are just actually getting easier – either way it doesn’t matter as i’m getting results in a results based business.

Driving force behind BeerChief v2

On the eve of my Christmas exams, i wasn’t up until the early hours of the morning studying, i was up until the early hours formulating a bullet proof plan to get BeerChief launched publicly ASAP.

My plan was simple; up my stake in BeerChief to 60% from 50% and in return, shoulder the last stage of development by myself – financially and management-wise. Delivery date i set myself was January 27th. That was back on December 14th.

So i was effectively ‘buying’ 10% extra in BeerChief. There were a few reasons for that…

  • First of all, an extra 10% gives me a 60% stake in BeerChief. Even though the site isn’t worth anything much at the minute, i’m confident enough in myself and in the site and idea to say that it was a wise move – it will be worth something in a couple of years time and my guess is that 10% will be worth a hell of a lot more than what i paid for it.
  • Secondly, BeerChief was going nowhere. It needed to be grabbed by the by throat and pulled forward. An added 10% incentive was enough for me – that’s what sparked me in to taking on a no-nonsense approach to development.
  • Thirdly, BeerChief is safe in my hands… i know in my mind that it will not be sold anytime soon or will not die so long as the majority of it is under my control. At 50-50 i might have been tempted to take a ‘well why should i do x, y and z if the rewards are being split down the middle’ attitude. With 60% – that attitude won’t surface as i stand to lose more if BeerChief fails. I don’t like losing anything :smile:
  • Fourthly, i knew i had a lot of time off over Christmas and the new year – about 4 or 5 weeks in total. In the end, that time off turned in to non-stop work from morning to night 5 days a week and then any spare time i had at weekends too. I set a deadline for myself for late January and the reason for that was because i knew i’d be back at college at that stage and strapped for time… i also knew that getting BeerChief up and running by the end of January would be a boost for myself – it would mean 2009 starts with a bang and leaves me with exactly 11 months to get members and traffic.
  • Fifthly, i knew that if i waited any longer, i could end up blowing what little cash i had on other things. A non-finished BeerChief isn’t worth anything. A finished BeerChief, even if it’s just let sit, is worth much more. With money scarce these days for everyone, it made sense to get rid of it now and put it towards something useful and something that could potentially turn itself in to a goldmine in the future.

Where too now?

BeerChief is by no means perfect. But what we’ve done now is given ourselves a solid base to work from. There’ll be more features coming over the next few weeks and once they’re all in place, the site should start to promote itself and attract beer lovers. Although we’ve just launched BeerChief v2, there is a 3rd already in development and that shows that (a) we’re thinking positively (b) we’re trying to improve all the time.

Although it may take a while, we’re determined to build BeerChief in to a large global community of alcoholics alcholol lovers. THE largest in fact. It’s an ambitious target, but now is the time to do it – when we’re young, broke and enthusiastic…

27 Jan 2009

11th hour problems

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With BeerChief due to launch tomorrow, it was typical that we’d run in to some problems. And run in to some problems we did. I’d planned on spending the day testing and tweaking more but in the end i spent most of it looking for a mysterious problem that arose – seemingly from thin air.

BeerChief Logo

We got it in the end but it’s destroyed my plans for the day (well yesterday) and all of a sudden we’re under real pressure now to roll out the site on time and with as few bugs as possible. I could do with another week really but a deadline is a deadline and i’ll not back out of it now.

If i weren’t so busy with BeerChief i’d be sticking the knife in to DKIT once again as i’ve got 5 hours between classes tomorrow but all of a sudden those 5 hours become very important. Provided DKIT wireless doesn’t let me down like it’s being doing recently, things should stay on schedule for an 8pm BeerChief launch tomorrow.

Whilst i’ve done some work in college on BeerChief, the college equipment and wireless network are too unstable for me to ‘trust’ so the vast majority of BeerChief work has been completed at home where i’ve got my own set up. No downtime, no network problems, no mice with no scroll wheels, no CRT monitors or firewall, no dodgy chairs….

Anyway, tomorrow, 8pm, BeerChief.com – our dedicated server won’t know what hit it – having sat in a hammock sipping martini’s for the past few months ;-)

Also, i do realize there’s a lack of depth in my last few blog posts – don’t worry, i haven’t changed my style of writing, i’ve just been too busy to sit down and think like i normally would. Once the dust settles on BeerChief and hopefully it won’t ;-) i’ll be sure to fill you guys in on exactly what’s been happening at BeerChief, what i’ve been doing and what i’m thinking.

26 Jan 2009

This is it

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BeerChief launches this week. Tuesday to be more precise. That means i just have tomorrow to get things in shape. There’s loads more stuff that has to be done, but now it’s just a case of prioritizing.

Work won’t stop once the site is launched on Tuesday, the pressure will just be off temporarily. This is version 2 of BeerChief.com and we’ve already started on version 3. That’s how fast things move and how motivated we are.

A lot will hinge on the initial reaction to the new BeerChief.com but whatever the reaction, we’ll still be pushing onwards and upwards and trying to fine tune the site until it starts reaching it’s potential.

We often see these new sites pop up every now and then… loads of hype, loads of controversy… then the wheels come off and the site dies for various reasons. BeerChief won’t fall in to that trap and although it’s not even officially launched yet, i think the fact i’ve been working on it for over 2 years shows that commitment isn’t a problem. It’s here for the long term.

I’m expecting a lot of traffic this week and throughout February. Members of course too ;-) I hate being pushed for predictions / figures when it comes to BeerChief, but realistically, we should be expecting about 50 new members per day, certainly 1000 new members by the end of February.

If we can stick to those targets or squash them, we’ll get BeerChief off to a solid start. Aim for the year? 10,000 members and if we can hit that, i’ll be delighted. It’s going to be a fun 2009 and i’ll have my work cut out looking after BeerChief but the rewards are potentially limitless and that’s what keeps me motivated.

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