Evolution: A Weblog by Third North Creative

Sales of the Puck Systems product slowed ever so slightly in May, but the month did bring of number of new clients. It’s been interesting to see the Puck Systems brand recognition begin to grow on a more national level this month. New clients were added from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Vermont and Iowa, with a number of interested parties in other states across the country.

To help our communication with these “remote” associations and leagues, we’ve tried using a number of Screen Share and Online Meeting programs. Right now we’re using Go To Meeting which does a good job of sharing the screen, and passing mouse and keyboard control back and forth. It seems to run quite quickly on the average. The downside is that it requires to the client to install the free software and it is only available for the PC. I’ve looked high and low for a simple screen share application for Mac, with no luck. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!

Evolution. The name of this blog says it all. We as a company and myself as an individual are evolving. A sea of change is upon us. One change that will have a great effect, is the choice of computer language we use to develop in. Up to this moment, we have mainly been using PHP to do all our development work. It’s a great language, easy to use and relatively powerful. In fact Wordpress, the blogging software that is powering this site, was written in PHP. That being said, it has been somewhat of a hindrance as well (which I won’t get into here).

For our next project, a complete re-writing of our Puck Systems product, we are making the switch to the Ruby programming language, a very powerful object-orientated language with a syntax that is very natural language-ish (IOW, the way in which the code is written is similar to the way in which one would say it in normal, everyday conversation). More specifically, we are making the switch to Ruby on Rails (aka RoR or just Rails), a web-based MVC framework written in Ruby that allows for rapid and agile development with a minimum of tedious configuration.

The reasons why we are making this switch is many-fold, but I will try to lay out one of them here. Increased efficiency is a primary factor in evolution. The more efficient one is, the more work that can be done in same length of time. More work (with all other things being equal) means more code written (ie new features, improving existing product, etc.) or less time that needs to be spent on writing code and more time spent doing something else (id spending time with family, sleeping, working out, hobbies, etc.). How this relates to RoR is this, RoR was conceived and developed by its original creator, David Heinemeier Hansson, with two guiding philosophical principles in mind: “Don’t Repeat Yourself” (DRY) and “Convention over Configuration”. In regards to software development, having multiple pieces of code that do the same thing or perform a similar action is a big no-no. If an error is found or a new feature is added, it has to be changed or added to in each and every spot where the code is repeated. This is incredibly inefficient and also inviting to even more errors cropping up. RoR is written in such a way to discourage multiple copies of similar code from being produced in the first place, thereby making the developer more efficient (and in turn much happier). Another way in which RoR helps the developer become more efficient is in the standard conventions that it encourages one to follow. As long as one follows certain basic conventions in naming things (files, database tables, etc.) and also uses the default setup for file organization, one can reap large benefits in efficiency. The small loss in flexibility will be more than made up for in ease and speed of development.

That’s it for now on our switch to Ruby on Rails. It’s still early, but so far it’s been wonderful working with the Ruby language and the Rails way of doing things. I plan on writing more about it, when I can find some more time. Until then, happy coding!

This past week I was given an opportunity to see a speech by Keith Ferrazzi, the best selling author of Never Eat Alone. Keith and a number of other authors and professional speakers were in Minneapolis to film a series of live shows and DVD seminars. They were filming at Paisley Park Studios which are owned and operated by Prince. I was lucky enough to be invited to sit in the studio audience with about 25 other individuals.

I admire Keiths work, so getting to meet him and listen to him in such a intimate atmosphere was a treat. Of all the things he talks about, the one item that really stuck with me was the idea of making yourself and your company completely transparent. To not hide your flaws or shortcomings, to ask your clients what they like and what they think you could improve.

Thats a concept that we are embracing wholeheartedly with Puck Systems. We really do want our associations, districts and other clients to make suggestions and to let us know their thoughts on the product. As you can tell by our plan to roll out Version 2, we take your comments very seriously. Keep them coming, we’ll do everything we can to continually enhance our offering.

Over the past six months it has become increasingly clear that the photo gallery feature in Puck Systems would need to be rebuilt from the ground up in Version 2.

Functionality on the admin side includes drag-and-drop ordering of galleries as well as drag-and-drop organizing of photos within each gallery. Website admins, managers and coaches also have the ability to edit and delete individual galleries and photos.

We have completed a beta version of the photo gallery (which can be seen here) that will be included with Version 2 of Puck Systems.

Drop us a line with your comments if you feel so inclined.

Occasionally I’ll write a little bit about the progress of our company in terms recent sales numbers. With Puck Systems currently being our primary product, we look forward to each spring as the start of a new sales season. Traditionally the summer and fall months are very good, while the winter months slow down as associations and districts concentrate on the season at hand. With board turnover and annual meetings happening, April typically is not the ideal month for earning new clients. However, this year April brought a host of new customers our way. We added 15 new associations to the Puck Systems product line last month and early May shows signs of being very strong as well. A couple of Distrcit websites were also added; its great to see those leadership boards taking advantage of that products’s capability.

Its hard to say exactly what makes one month better than another. As Malcolm Gladwell explained in The Tipping Point, any number of factors can contribute to an epidemic or in this case, simply a solid start to the sales season. In most instances its not one event or even two, its a combination of factors that raise the public’s awareness, increase the stickiness of your product, and strengthen the number of connectors and mavens that are aware of your situation. In our case specifically, the steady increase in sales and interest is most likely due to our past print advertising, concious branding effort, recent trade show appearances, improvements to the product, the complete launch of our Online Registration Module, search engine listings, a slight change in pricing structure, and the public’s increasing acceptance of technology.

In any case, its fun to see the interest level continue to rise, especially considering the majority of V2 enhancments have not yet been released. On that topic….keep an eye out for future updates on the progress of those additional features. In the meantime, take a look the new University of Minnesota Goal Line Club website we recently completed. The website build gave us an opportunity to use a number of the same tools that will be added to Puck Systems this spring and summer. Take a special look at the Photo Gallery Tool which we’ll describe in detail in another post.

We recently completed a new site for the University of Minnesota Goal Line Club (the football program’s official booster club) and have been receiving a plethora of positive comments regarding the look and feel of the new site. We were fortunate enough to have complete creative freedom while addressing the previous outdated and irrelevant visual representation of the club.

Concept: The University of Minnesota Football Program has an incredible history that stretches well over 120 years. The first game took place on September 29, 1882 and Gopher Football fans have been the heart and soul of the college football experience in Minnesota ever since. The concept for the visual language of the site was to capture this rich collegiate football history. We wanted club members and site visitors to have a taste of the vintage football spirit that is at the core of Minnesota football. This is not the NFL, with its huge ego’s and huge contracts- no, this is college football where Saturday’s games are played for honor and steeped in tradition.

Execution: Research, research and more research. I spent a vast majority of my initial conceptual work digging up old football programs, vintage Gopher football artwork and other historical inspiration. Page layout sketches were transformed into basic HTML and CSS pages so that Mike could start building database driven functionality into the page structure and, as a team, we could start polishing the UI. Next, the finished graphics began to fall into place. Various textures, filters and brushes were used in Photoshop to “beat-the-snot” out of the original graphics and layout elements. Last, but not least, the overall color saturations of the graphics were lessened to give the site a truly weathered feel. The result: a powerful cutting-edge website that celebrates the history and retains the soul of the Goal Line Club.

Periodically I’ll be posting updates on the progress of the Puck Systems Version 2 updates. These updates will be aimed at Association Webmasters, Board Members and anybody else who is interested in the progress of the product. For those who are new Puck Systems clients, or may not be aware of Version 2…. here is a quick overview:Over the last year, we’ve received many helpful suggestions on how to improve and enhance the Puck Systems product. We’ve taken all of those suggestions into account and have chosen to build in the most popular ones.

The addition of these features to Puck Systems is being referred to as V2 or Version 2. For V2, these are some of the features that we are adding: Drag and Drop capability for items in a list (board members, forms, newsletters etc..), Improved Photo Galleries, Wider Physical Website Structure, Text Editors on all Text Boxes, and a Custom Page Builder Tool. Beyond V2 we will also be making additional improvements throughout the summer and early fall. Improved Statistic Tracking and a Multiple Scheduler Compiler are a couple examples.

So, be sure to check back or subscribe to this feed to keep tabs on the new features and their expected release dates. If you’d like to subscribe to the RSS feed, but don’t yet have a news aggregator, you can click here to see a list of popular readers. In the future we will post screen shots and even short demo videos of the new features to help you understand exactly how they’ll work.