Tumbleweeds

As you may have noticed, postings on here have been few and far between lately. This is partly due to other commitments (and UCLA going to the Final Four), but it is mostly because there just isn't much going on right now.

The site's development has hit some delays as the developers deal with fixing--and re-fixing--some design issues, and I have decided to save most of my advertising resources until the site is at least in beta version.

Things are coming along, however slowly. I encourage you to take a look at the updated site design here, and please feel free to leave feedback in the comments section.

In the meantime, I have been working with several organizations in order to develop mutually-beneficial partnerships. These include the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, which is a feeder into several job markets in the DC area and otherwise; MilitaryJobHunts.com, which helps military personnel transition into the civilian workplace, and InternZoo.com, which helps companies find interns (and vice-versa).

If you would like to get in touch about a mutually beneficial partnership, let me know. And if you're looking for a job or looking to refer one, make sure to pre-register here!

Design Updates

I received the updated design for the site today, and I think it looks rather sharp. I had quite a few comments on the design and layout, but I think things are coming along well.

If you have any thoughts on the design, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Choosing a Web Developer

As someone with little to no web development experience, it quickly became clear that I was going to need to hire someone to put the site together for me.

After asking around to see who knew good web developers, it seemed like everyone did, and collecting random tidbits from conversations was no way to go about selecting someone to whom I would be paying a fair amount of money. I had just read Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat and thought about a site I had seen awhile back, www.elance.com, which does the same thing for freelance consultants, web developers, designers, etc and prospective clients that Referral Union hopes to do for professionals.

With elance, you can can post a project and several (I had seven) providers can bid on it over a given amount of time (a week for me). Several of the bidders were based in India (hence the Friedman reference above, which talks a lot about outsourcing and off-shoring), and they seemed to offer the best value, in general. After they bid, I simply selected the one I thought would do the best job for the best price. A nifty feature offered by elance, which is common to other intermediaries such as ebay, is a provider feedback section, where each bidder is rated by previous clients. This really helped me make my decision and gave me confidence in the bidders' ability to handle the job.

Things are still in the development phase, obviously, but I have been very pleased with Manish at Web Integrated so far. The only road bump is the time difference, nine hours, which occasionally causes communication delays.