Happy birthday, Woubie!

It's hard to believe, but it's been a year since Woubie went live. In honor of Woubie's birthday we've given the Slam Industries web site a little face lift.

Thank you to everyone who has spread the word about Woubie over the the past year!

(click on the above image to go directly to the web site)

Slam's ChaoStructured Services

Although a good portion of our focus for the past year has been on building our flagship product, Woubie, we've also been working on developing our "ChaoStructured" services.

When we started the company, we intended to hire someone to build our web sites, so that we could focus strictly on the development of Woubie. We had the skill sets to handle what it took to build a program like Woubie, but we hadn't dipped our toes into the design pool. Yet. Then we found out that it would cost us upwards of $2,500 just for one basic web site and it wouldn't even cover everything that we wanted or needed. And since we wanted a company site and a Woubie product site, we quickly realized that it just wasn't going to happen.

So we learned how to do it ourselves. And let me tell you, it was a frustrating and hair-pulling process during which we frequently said, "huh?", "WTF?" and "Maybe if we try...". In the end it was worth it. We've learned several new skill sets and we're proud of the fact that we've literally built everything for our company ourselves. From our Slam logo to Woubie, every design element, web page, support process, tweet, blog, photograph, animation, video, etc was done by one of us.

While we were doing all of this we found that many writers, comedians, small businesses & NPOs would like to have a web presence and make use of social media sites to promote themselves and their business. But like us, they just can't afford to pay what it typically costs. Or, if they do pay to have one built, because of the way web sites are typically built and hosted, they're stuck paying more every time they want to update it.

So we began working on developing a way for those folks to have a well designed, branded web presence at a fraction of the typical cost, which they can maintain and update on their own.

The result is our ChaoStructured Services.

Over the next few weeks we'll be showcasing the sites we've built using this method and showing how easy it is to get your brand out there.

The first site in our showcase is for Freeman Solutions, Inc., a home renovation company with an excellent and well-deserved reputation for impeccable work. Click on the image below to go to the site.



P.S.
We're not a hosting company, a marketing company or SEO experts. But we do know some very talented people who are and would be happy to point you in their direction if that's the type of service you're looking for.

Balls In Motion

Wednesday, January 20th 2010, marks the one year anniversary of the creation of Slam Industries LLC.

We decided that the best way to celebrate would be to put our Slam balls in motion.

Check out the new design on Slam's home page at: www.slamindustriesllc.com

Quitting and Starting

In October 2008 I quit.

I quit the job I had for 11 years. I quit dealing with the frustration of working for a corporation that was rife with petty squabbles and tug-of-wars that blocked any meaningful progress. I quit having to deal with being told every other month to lay more people off. I quit swallowing the anger I felt about C-suite people getting large bonuses, while people who could barely survive on what they made were being let go and losing their homes.

A lot of people probably thought I was stupid or crazy. Good pay, long tenure, no real chance they were going to lay me off (no matter how much I wished they would). But it was one of the smartest things I've ever done. Because by quitting that job I also quit having stomach aches every day from the stress and frustration. I quit being too short-tempered and grumpy with my kid. I quit smoking. I quit feeling like my life was all work and no play.

Once I got over the shock of quitting so many things at one time, I started.

I started spending more time with my daughter and family. I started thinking about what I really wanted to do with my life. I started eating better, getting more exercise and sleeping soundly. I started laughing more. I started getting my life organized. I started helping my brother figure out how to manage his vast amount of comedy material. I started searching for some software that would help organize my own piles of research material.

I'm a great fan of technology. What I was searching for was software that would help me store detailed information related to facts, characters, locations, bibliography, quotes, ideas, and post-writing information such as submission and publication information. And I wanted to also be able to categorize and subcategorize it, sort, filter, print, and link pieces together. I wasn't looking for a program to help me format a manuscript, screenplay or article. I found that there are some great programs on the market for that, but they focus on the format, not the peripheral material and information. I tested a lot of programs, read through pages and pages of product descriptions, blogs related to writing, technical reviews and customer reviews. And in the end I realized that what I was looking for just didn't exist.

So I started building two more things: Slam Industries LLC and our first product, Woubie. Woubie is the software I was looking for.