Anyone who has seen our original (and current) Consulting Intelligence web site knows that it's evocative of both wallpaper and brochure ware -- with a heavy leaning towards wallpaper. It was a very modest first effort and it served the purpose of establishing our new company's name and describing the services we provided. But, professionally appearing, exciting or even mildly stimulating, it wasn't. As we grew, that became more and more of an issue.
Our carefully constructed master plan to resolve that issue involved developing and unveiling an improved web site in early July 2006. Concurrently, we planned to introduce this new blog as a replacement to our infrequent newsletter. While the web site was being revised with a new architecture, a new logo, relevant graphics and pithy copy, the effort to develop blog capability was also started.
Following our own advice, we thoughtfully located, interviewed, selected and hired an excellent team of blog specialists who turned a generic TypePad template into something that more matched the look and feel of our new web site. In addition, they helped us work our way through the addition of RSS feeds and those little subscription buttons, links to Technorati and starting a list of our favorite blogs (appropriately, David Maister gets first place). We have been very pleased with the working relationship and the results.
To keep our blog development work on TypePad out of public view, we required a password to access the blog. We unit tested the various modules and then assembled and tested the entire system. Aside from a few minor additions and modifications we were ready to go.
Then fate interceded. I sent what I now realize was an ambiguously worded note to the development team, telling them things looked good to go. So, off came the password protection, up went the profile on Technorati and the blog went live. I found out last night, right after it happened.
After some discussion this morning we decided to leave it up. You may see some subtle changes going forward, as we tweak some of the functionality. The posts may not be as regular as they will be after the new web site development work is completed. With that in mind, we hope you enjoy it and find it useful.
And I hope our experience demonstrates again how important it is to be very clear when communicating with your consultants. The consolation is that even though I was inconvenienced, I have a new example of the importance of clear communications to use in my presentations.
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