All Hands On Deck

I guess that is an appropriate analogy given the title of my blog...
We have released Title Management Version 7 and really putting it through its paces. Given our recent successes, and heavy workload of projects, we have everyone at Firebrand Technologies pulling hard to deliver.

Guess who is writing SQL again? While integrating new clients, we have decided to move away from our existing report datawarehouse in favor of a new model of using functions and views for real time data access and simplified reporting. Now that we are officially on a single database platform - MS SQLServer - we can take advantage of database objects more readily. We had built many functions and views and used them in the past at different clients, but the time has come to standardize them and include them in the product. I have also started building out our new wiki at www.firebrandz.com as a permanent reference for these tools.

I was joking with Fran Toolan yesterday, saying that I was back to writing SQL and dusting off my old skills. His comment was 'For the 17th time...'.

Of course, that is what I love about working for a small company that is motivated as a team...whatever it takes. Enough jabber for the morning, I need to get back to my Query Analyzer and Crystal Reports.

ECPA PUBu

Fran Toolan, Ben Todd and I are at the ECPA PUBu event in Chicago last couple of days. This event is very well organized and well attended - not surprising giving the quality of planning and execution that comes out of ECPA at the events I have attended. Ben was a community leader, organizing several sessions on workflow. He and Michael Covington (from ECPA) approached me to deliver a session on efficient title management practices, which I did this morning. You can see an online video of this presentation at http://www.firebrandz.com, under the video section, or you can go direct to Screencast at http://www.screencast.com.

The premise of the 1 hour and 15 minute course is that efficient title management practices are the foundation from which to build a vibrant digital publishing house.

Thanks to Michael for his very constructive criticism on my original presentation and helping me put together a more vibrant course. Now that it is online, Michael, you can crtique the presentation in its entirety!

Tired and Happy

I have been running pretty hard these days - visiting people from publishing all across the states. This week, though, was a week where it all seemed to come together - for many reasons.

It was a busy few days traveling to visit publishers - from Alabama to Ohio to Kentucky. This was a great trip because I was able to visit a potential new client, but also to visit existing client for customer service calls. The travel was a bit hectic, but the trip was successful. The successes ranged from major milestones reached in ongoing projects, to a couple of small tweaks on Indesign catalog imports with our friends at Barbour.

I also have the pleasure of welcoming two new clients this week. First was Texas A&M Press who have signed on for the full contingent of our solutions - Title Management, Eloquence and Ecommerce - all hosted. We also signed off our project with David C. Cook in Colorado Springs and a member of the ECPA who will be implementing Title Management in our hosted environment along with the Eloquence service.

These additions to our community are very important to us - from a business standpoint and a personal standpoint.

But what struck me this week is that I simply like people in publishing. It is a pleasure establishing lasting relationships and friendships. It is enjoyable to see Firebrand in such a vibrant business position, but despite the necessity of this, what keeps me here is the simple fact that I enjoy working with the team at Firebrand and our community members.

So, as I close out a hectic week, on the heals of several hectic weeks (and another busy one next week), I simply want to say thank you to all whom I spoke with and met with this week - you know who you are!

AskBurnie and RSS Feed for Discussion Groups

We have been disappointed in the usage of our new discussion forums at our Firebrandz community site, although many users in the community have been asking for this tool. Not too surprising really - discussion forums are chicken and egg equations. You need activity to generate more activity, and we simply haven't accelerated yet. We have been building the community nicely though - with 140 vetted, qualified members, but that hasn't translated into discussion forum activity yet. We have had a very good response for our webinars and have seven new webinars scheduled as listed at Firebrand Events.

To boost activity on the forums, we just added an RSS feed, so that members can subscribe and see new posts. This can be found at http://www.firebrandz.com/phpBB3/rss.php. We have also added a new email that we will promote as one-stop shopping for all of our users - AskBurnie@FirebrandTech.com. Burnie will be happy to answer any questions, and relevant topics will be posted on the Discussion Forums.

Opposite Ends of the Country (and beyond)

It has been a busy September at Firebrand. After a surprisingly busy two weeks in August performing demos and talking with potential customers, followed by a couple of weeks off with my family, September hit with several new additions to the Firebrand Community. Literally from opposite ends of the country and beyond.

Hailing from Oahu, we welcome Kamehameha Publishing, who has adopted our full Title Management software and Eloquence Metadata Solutions for Onix XML. Kamehameha Publishing is part of Kamehameha Schools, one of the largest private schools in the country - with thousands of students from Preschool to 12th grade. Publishing books on Hawaiian history and culture, Kamehameha sees opportunities to build their publishing program and broaden their reach. Title Management and Eloquence will become the foundation for this initiative. And do you think there was a bit of a struggle as to who would manage this project?

From the opposite end of the country, a bit closer to home hailing from Cape Cod, we welcome Paraclete Press to our Firebrand Community. Paraclete is an established publisher of Catholic books and has joined onto the ECPA Title Management Web program, to take advantage of Firebrand's Eloquence service. Paraclete was setup and trained rapidly on Eloquence - within a couple of days - and is now prepping their Spring 2009 list to be sent via Onix.

Finally, we are pleased to welcome the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, who has joined on for our Eloquence services. Based in the center of Athens(Greece, not Athens, NY or Athens, VT), the school will be sending Eloquence title information for their published works.

Welcome Firebrandz!

Almost There! Title Management Version 7

Our major new Title Management Release 7 is just about ready..after months and months (and months) of work. In August, several of us on the Firebrand team met offsite to frame out the next several releases of the software, beyond 7.0. Due to the breadth of our functionality, migrating functions to the .Net browser based application is a huge task, and this version represents a major effort in that direction. Clients coming on board will be using the version 7 web applications almost exclusively - including the all new Production Scheduling with alerts, combined schedules across projects and titles and all the other stuff we have been demonstrating. Versions 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 then map out the migration of other key functions such as catalogs, publicity and more.

It is no easy feat performing a major architecture upgrade on so much software, while supporting backwards compatibility with existing clients. We are so committed to staying current on technology, that we are absorbing the pain (and excitement) of this migration. The last thing we want to be is a company with software on an 'old' platform.

Interestingly, this spirit is exactly what led me to leave a new career at Andersen Consulting to join Firebrand in December 1990. Fran, Susan and team at the time were developing Windows based business applications against relational SQL databases (Gupta SQLBase back then).

That was early...The now famous story is told over and over - while training new users at Simon & Schuster on our applications we first needed to teach users how to use a mouse - 'Please slide it on the desk, don't wave it in the air'.

Building the Firebrandz Community

We certainly did make a few promises when we re-launched Quality Solutions as Firebrand Technologies in April at the Firebrand Community Conference. Building the Firebrandz Community website was one of the promises that we have been working on throughout the summer. As our company has evolved to include more and more publishers, our lack of available community based support became painfully evident. The old days of exclusively providing custom training documents and on-site support are gone. During a Community design session at the conference, overwhelmingly, our community members requested a robust Discussion Forum. So that was the first tool we have built. We now have well over 100 Community members at Firebrandz.com, but the activity in the forums is very light. It is clear that we need to continually seed the forums with new posts to build participation.

We have had a much higher level of participation with our new Webinar series, however, with dozens of users joining in each session. We recorded these videos for later viewing by Community members, although we had a couple of mis-steps on delivery of these.

We are also on our third pass at dialing in the sign-on and activation of new users on the site, and the latest round promises to provide a nicely integrated, single sign-on for all of the community tools - Discussion Forums, Wiki for training resources, Videos and the rest.

The first couple of months of the summer were quite hectic, with brisk activity in sales - talking with lots of publishers and demonstrating Title Management, working on the webinars, working with clients and going to conferences. I never quite attacked those summer projects which I was holding on for the 'quiet' time. But this week, I am getting that sense of aloneness - when you shout 'Hello??' into an empty building and the only response you get is an echo. So now I have been working on a few of those tasks which simply must be done - like better documentation of key functions, working on Flash objects for the community and so on.

Of course, this is just in time for my own vacation. If you shout 'Hello??' into my Loft next week, the only sound you will get back is that lonely echo.