Cactus Chords

Pain in the ass… So many things going on, I do not know what to concentrate on. My processing power is a bit too slow …I make a trip and visit my saviors Shoban and Sreenath in Kerala to decide on the upgrade. We have a round of 3 lengthy meetings where we decide what the site should look like and the new layout. But we did not have a design. So we turn to a professional firm for help with the layout, design (Graphical User Interface) GUI. Nisha who is a master at research starts her work and finds out 6 firms that could be of help to us. After a round of group research and discussions, we narrow it down to one firm as the rest were way too overpriced. How wrong could we be? We discuss with two of their employees, who love the idea and want in on it on a passion perspective than a project point of view.

Being a start-up exactly what we need, people who can work for future benefits that short term costs. Eventually, we finalize on the new design and we get the quote from the new firm…..I nearly popped my bloody balls looking at the quote INR 117,000/- Yes, you read right, one lakh seventeen thousand rupees. I didn’t even bother looking at the detailed proposal they sent and turned it down that very instant. Another moment when you realise that, finding a team that will stick by you and share your dream is a boon. Everyone works for money. All are puppets to the bills. No one works for free, no one works for passion unless they actually feel it is worth it.

These guys though said they were really excited to work on it, didn’t mean it. What the hell. What next? Look for a designer.

Who do I turn to? Nisha. She was amidst launching her own label as shes a fashion designer. Amidst all her work she, without a word she gets to work and within no time we have a brilliant design ready. But since she was not a professional website designer, the CSS part had to be done by someone else. I ring up Arun, another friend of mine who helps me out with quick development jobs. If there is anything Arun hates, its CSS, but the poor guy helps me out anyway and sends the files to Sreenath. A classy design along with some technical layout is a perfect portal. We went to work the very next day and decided to launch the upgrade on the 1st of December. Sreenath is on it, toggling between a part-time teaching job, he ensures that the new portal is up and running by the 27th of November to leave 3 days of day and night testing by 10 professionals. We were working round the clock, reporting bugs, fixing them, re-testing them and testing the portal again.

Everything looked fine and working well other than a few minor technical glitches which could be solved within a couple of days. All that was left was the sales part. We had EOIs from institutes like Symbiosis and IIPM and several engineering colleges in Bangalore. This interest by customers kept us going. At least we were sure, people wanted it or at least were curious about it.

Like they say charity begins at home, I went and approached my college to see what they would say R.N Shetty Institute of Technology. They listened to the whole presentation, fired a few questions, discussed amongst themselves and got back to us within two days with the cheque. They loved it and purchased it. But purchasing alone will not do, they had to upload content onto it. So we aided them to upload videos of lab experiments and the campus etc. All this with the first simple design we had. For a new user, it was not a catchy website at all. But when WE look at the hard work we put into it, it was the most beautiful site.

So far, we had our first client, content on the site, more clients interested. Meetings lined up with well known group of institutes, what and how else could anything go wrong? Keep following my posts regularly to see how life gifts you with the weirdest of opportunities and craziest of circumstances. No matter how beautiful life is, there is always something waiting for you that will turn the whole thing around. So make the most of now, so you can sail through the bad times for there are no regrets. Live your life to the fullest…….

to be continued……

image reference: http://www.gftgroup.com/Petrana_presentation.jpg, http://www.hotelmarketingstrategies.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/group_discussion.jpg