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Aaron Mentele, Charisma:18

personal blog of Aaron Mentele, web developer and partner at Electric Pulp

Append to my lastYesterday

It’s time to get off the previous topic, but one thing I left out was how easy it was to lose focus on anything outside of our own work. All the attention paid to getting clients in the door and keeping the business working resulted in a lot less attention paid to things like web standards, conferencing, and peer networking.

It’s with this in mind that I link you off to Greg’s mission statement. A clip:

In this new year, it is simply not going to be enough to just meet your bottom line, but to help others who may not be in a position to be so entrepreneurial or carefree.

I wish more people in the industry had this attitude and the character to follow through. I wish they could take it back in time about eight years and let it play forward. Go read (if you haven’t already.)

TurnsYesterday

In a previous episode, I mentioned I had a seat at the last down turn.

I won’t act like this gives me any special authority to make predictions or give advice or even suggest this time is like the last. But I will say I’m very much on the side of optimism when it comes to this industry. The issues we’re currently seeing have no relationship to the demand for web services. We’re in a growth industry. I should also say, though, that things are going well for us right now, and it’s easy to be optimistic when you aren’t having to make difficult decisions.

By way of history, Electric Pulp is a web-only shop, currently employing 11 people full-time. We’re physically located in Sioux Falls, SD, but many of our clients are only vaguely aware of this fact.

At the start of the last recession (Q2 of 2001,) we were still a young company figuring out how to take advantage of demand, so we’d have been all but unaware we were moving into a recession even if the news had been reporting it. It wasn’t until later in the year that things got crazy. The September 11 attacks were scary as hell on a lot of levels. And if anyone says the last time around was nothing like this one, they weren’t running a small business with little residual inc

The dude abides: 7 thingsDecember 24 2008

Relax your gag reflexes, I’m about to propagate a meme. I’ve been asked by Mike Langford of Tweetworks to spill 7 things you wish you didn’t know about me.

The Rules

• Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged

Okay, whatever.

1. I rank Roxanne very high on the list of best and greatest songs in the world.
2. I maintain two superstitions: $50 bills are bad luck, and I get to make a wish if I spot a clock that reads 11:11.
3. I have tattoos, a brand, and pierced ears. You’d never know.
4. I can watch Dream a Little Dream on mute. I already know the words.
5. There are handlebars named after me. I used to spend more time on motorcycles.
6. I have never found Sarah Michelle Gellar attractive. Her starring role in one of the best television series of all time did nothing to change this.
7. I have degrees in

These things bounceDecember 13 2008

This is the second U.S. recession since we’ve been in business. Electric Pulp had been a full time gig for 3 years when the last recession began in March of 2001.

We had some bad months. I’m not sure we can credit the stress to any single event or economic snap shot, though. We had adjustments to make. Either way, we made it out just fine, and 2004 more than made up for anything we might have missed out on.

That’s probably more personal history than you care to know, but it backs up a basic point. The web doesn’t contract. Uncertainty is short-lived, especially when it occurs inside a growth industry.

As a sidenote, I wrote a longer version of this post last week after seeing recession-proofing advice hit my feed reader from five sources in two days. I was so distracted by a particular post, though, that I wasn’t really making the point that these things bounce. Keep that in mind the next time you read a post on the topic. The negative forecasts would reverse if they’d widen their scope slightly.

DecencyDecember 1 2008

A friend died yesterday. There may be a hundred people more eligible to call him friend, but I knew him well and knew him to be a great person.

I found out about it over the Internet. I saw a strange comment on twitter as I was getting into town. Follow up seemed to confirm the accident. A facebook group and then an email removed any doubt.

I Googled the accident. A story from one of the local news affiliates gave a little more information. The single car crash took place 30 miles from here, shortly before 8am. The victim was 34. Alcohol was a factor, and he was not wearing a seat belt. A link reading “WATCH THE VIDEO” popped a map with audio of some douchebag reading the same teleprompter script, emphasizing the words was and was not.

I wrote the local newspaper, asking them to assign the story to a human. I was probably four hours too late. They printed the same script. A human later replied to my email asking if I had names they should talk to for their story. Apparently, the douchebag story will have a followup.

I Googled his name again a few minutes ago. The stories I mention above now rank higher than his facebook profile or his professional site.

I’d like to think the author of the original script was just being lazy, not taking a moment to consider whether or not the negative speculation was a necessary addition to the story. It’s worse if not. This accident was very sudden. Friends and family are searching against his na