The focus is mostly on the startup/entrepreneurial side of things, but still a good write-up.

Thanks to Stephen, Kevin and the folks at Tnooz for the coverage.

Special thanks to Cheryl Paynter. Cheryl is the Director of Hotel Operations for D.P. Murphy Group, owners of Stanhope Beach Resort & Conference Centre. She said some great things about SiteValet. My two favourites are this one from the video:

We operate hotels. We don’t understand the technology of websites.

And this one, which unfortunately didn’t make the cut:

I don’t know why anybody in this business would build a website from scratch with something like SiteValet available.

Thanks to reporter Steve Bruce and his producer Tracy Lightfoot for inviting us and pulling this together.

Comments, thoughts, questions. Would love to hear from you in the comments section below.

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.

My thoughts are with his friends and his family.

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.

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.