And when you have a choice between using the product of a small company or a large one, give the small one a chance. This helps protect choice and diversity. And if someone creates something new, and they are not working for a big company, celebrate that, make them famous, make sure everyone knows. The myth is that the only new stuff comes from big companies. That’s never been true. The only way to change that is to make sure people hear about the new stuff that comes from individuals.
Maybe this doesn’t count as completely objective feedback, but what the heck …
I received an email from my Dad today:
Dave: Just checked out the Butler’s Cottages site. It’s better than 99% of the tourist sites that I see. The pics are great quality—any visitor to the site would be impressed. Great!!!
Again, maybe not purely objective, but my Dad’s a pretty straight-shooting guy. He would have just as easily sent me a note letting me know what could be better. As a startup entrepreneur, my focus is usually on what’s wrong or what could be better. It’s nice to get small reminders about the things you get right.
Brenda & Larry Butler own Butler’s Cottages, two rental cottages near the beach in Stanhope, PEI. They’re down in Florida for the season and when they left they put their phone on a temporary Winter disconnect. But temporarily discontinuing their phone service inadvertently took down their website (hosted by their telecom), too.
They came to SiteValet hoping to get a website back up quickly. A few days after contacting us they were back online with a much better site than what they had. And for the first time they had their own URL: www.butlerscottages.com
When Brenda started to create her site, I received this in an email:
You and your group have really done a great job on this whole project – me doing a web page is not something that anyone, including myself, would ever have imagined.
Thank you SO MUCH Dave for your help and support – we are very pleased with this website – so much better than our previous one – we will definitely be staying with your company
Thanks again and let me know if you need anything else from us !!
And then, after we got their site published yesterday, she sent me this:
I saw the website – it really looks nice – thank you so much Dave. We are more than pleased with your help and with your SUPPORT – thanks so much. I never, ever, dreamt that I would help to create a web site.
You can certainly use statements from me for your blog. I was thinking that we would write something on it ourselves but by all means – anything that we can help you with in your endeavor with this new business of yours we are willing to help out.
So, once again, thanks – you really did help us out .
I love playing with this. It so cool. Just as you think of something you want to add to your site you can easily go in and do it.
I should actually be doing other work instead of playing with this.
Great to hear. And I’m not so sure that “playing with this” (i.e. adding content to his website) is a poor use of Scott’s time. We’re finding a lot of folks are hesitant to dive in, thinking it’s far more complicated than it really is. Using SiteValet to create and manage your site is really very easy, and the best way to see that is to signup and play around with it.
It’s been a bittersweet week. I’m excited to get SiteValet launched, but today I received some terrible news.
Ryan Lowe passed away today after a long, tough battle with cancer. Ryan was my lead (and sole) developer on SiteValet for my first nine months. Ryan conceived and developed much of what is SiteValet. I have been in the technology business for 20 years and Ryan was the best developer I have ever worked with. He taught me lots about Rails and agile development. He also taught me about making decisions and focusing on the right things. Most importantly, we had fun working together.
Here’s my favourite IM exchange with Ryan:
Me: when you say “OK” it sounds different than “you’re right” … it’s more like “I don’t agree, but you’re paying” Ryan: you’re steering this car if you’re going to run into a guard rail, I’ll say something … but you’re still at the wheel here; if you’re going to run over a squirrel, I won’t say anything because it doesn’t damage the car
Thanks to the wonders of modern communications, Ryan and I never met and we spoke on the phone only once to kickoff the SiteValet project. But we have exchanged thousands of emails and IM chats over our year of working together. We also share our eclectic taste in music. Despite never meeting, we became friends.
Ryan was only 31 years old and had a big, promising life in front of him. His death is a terrible loss and I miss him already.
Today at the the annual meeting of the Tourism Industry Association of Prince Edward Island (TIAPEI), I gave a presentation announcing the launch of SiteValet. We’ve been working on SiteValet for a year now, so this is an exciting day for us.
We encourage tourism operators to signup and get started on your new website. It’s incredibly easy to do and there’s no reason to wait. In fact, while we’re still working on our payment system, SiteValet is free to use and to publish your website.
My presentation is up on SlideShare if you want to take a look.
Thanks and congratulations to Scott Stewart and Hillhurst Inn, for being our first customer publishing their website with SiteValet. Hillhurst is a beautiful heritage inn in downtown Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.
Hillhurst is using our Decorum theme. It’s simple and almost monochromatic, and it suits the inn perfectly. I love the photo of the Mounties parading by the front. The red of the uniforms stands out nicely from the black & white of the website.
SiteValet is launching next Friday, November 27th. I will be speaking at the annual meeting of the Tourism Industry Association of Prince Edward Island (TIAPEI), where I will launch SiteValet and announce a special offer for PEI-based tourism operators.
It’s been a bittersweet week. I’m excited to get SiteValet launched, but today I received some terrible news.