Ade in Business

Announcing FormSpring.com

It’s time to launch one of the projects I’ve been working on for the last few months — a web-based service at FormSpring.com. The service provides you with the ability to easily create, host and process data collected from any kind of online form.

There are a lot of people still pushing paper forms around in the workplace. Even though most of them would tell you they’d rather process forms electronically, they find there aren’t very many easy and inexpensive solutions to create online forms. What FormSpring offers is a completely web-based interface for someone to quickly create and host forms without needing any knowledge of HTML or scripting.

While online forms are nothing new, webmasters typically setup online forms to receive submissions via email. That may work for “contact me” forms, but it’s not a great way to manage the data if you want to collect information from hundreds or thousands of users. When you create and host a form at FormSpring, all the submitted data can be stored in a database so you can search and view the information online, or download it at a later date to use in applications like Microsoft Excel or Access.

Take a tour of the application, read more about the other features, or sign up for a free account if you’re interested. I’d love to hear feedback (positive or negative) from you if you give it a try. Feel free to post your thoughts on the blog, or email me directly.

Do you dream of electric sheep?

A few days ago Ian and I were talking about how funny it is when you’re doing one thing a lot and start dreaming about what you’re working on. He dreamt he was arranging people he saw with CSS and XHTML. I’ve dreamt in all sorts of programming languages (maybe (even (Lisp))) and every version of Mario Kart.

Last night I dreamt about a cool new feature for an application I’m working on, but then woke up to find my memory erased of everything but the knowledge that I just lost the greatest idea I’ve had in years. I also dreamt I realized some not-so-obvious bug in the same application, but of course I can’t remember what that was either.

Leaping off a cliff head first

… and not knowing whether there’s water at the bottom or large jagged rocks. And if there’s water at the bottom, not knowing whether you’ll find the elusive Jaguar Shark lurking below.

On Jan. 30th I sat down with my boss and handed him my letter of resignation. I was a manager in the IT department of the Indianapolis Star, a Gannett company, working with a great team of people and earning a respectable salary.

I had been given a lot of great opportunities there, and will always be grateful for that. Three years ago I was promoted and managed a team of people, 7 of 8 who were older than me, and 3 of the 8 who had worked at the Star longer than I’d been alive. I was the project manager or technical project manager for several 6-figure capital projects, learning a great deal about deploying and integrating enterprise systems. I was able to attend a 20-day management training program at Harvard, with speakers such as the CEO of Knight-Ridder and classes taught by Harvard Business School professors.

But even with opportunities like that, I still wasn’t happy there. Sure, there were little things that I didn’t like about the Star, but there wasn’t anything major making me particular unhappy about the place either. I’d been doing a lot of soul searching over the last year trying to figure out where I wanted to be, and sign after sign kept pointing to one thing — it was time to leap off the cliff.

Before I came to the Star I was a partner in Bottled Software, a small software company in Indianpolis, and for about 4 years before that I had made most of my income from freelance software development. I went to the Star after Bottled closed because I wanted something more steady and wanted to experience working for a large company like Gannett. But I’ve never been able to shake the entrepreneurial bug, and I eventually realized a few months ago that I wasn’t going to be happy in my career unless I was back working for myself full time.

So on Jan. 30th I took that leap, and yesterday, Feb. 24th, was my last day. I’ve been fortunate to have a couple freelance projects to start with, and have dusted off some product ideas, one of which I hope to have a beta launch of next week.

I’ll let you know if I find my Jaguar Shark.

Do we really need more blogs out there?

If you would’ve asked me that question two months ago, I probably would have said no. But I’m swallowing my pride and jumping on the bandwagon even though I promise to never ever use this word in conversation.

So why did I change my mind? A few reasons:

1. I’m writing a new chapter in my career life (more on that later), and see this as a way to chronicle my adventures. I’ve journaled in the past, but I think putting my thoughts together in a blog will only help me strengthen my thoughts and processes.
2. I’ve seen the light — blogs are a great tool to keep in touch with people. Since I’m setting out on my own, I want to use this tool to keep in touch with former colleagues, and get in touch with potential partners and clients.
3. I wouldn’t be able to embark on this adventure if it weren’t for the great resources out there for small business owners and software developers. The growing number of Micro-ISV blogs have invaluable in helping me point to all these resources. I want to contribute back to that community by sharing what’s working for me and what’s not.
4. My brother has one. I love him like *ahem* a brother of course, but we’re competitive that way. I’ve already ceded that he’s the slightly more attractive brother (to some people at least), but I’ve always been the technology guy in the family, and I’ll be remiss if he’s going to have a blog and I’m not.