Health & Fitness
My Entrepreneurial Ack! Story (Part 4)
Parts 1, 2, and 3 outlined quite a few Ack! moments in my life... most of them lonely epiphanies; lonely bus rides, lonely reading, lonely thinking and lonely struggling to make ends meet. That was all about to change.
When I originally learned what a Content Management System was in 2004, I did a lot of searching. I wanted my own CMS and while Rob Place and I had one for storefronts, we still hadn't developed something for creating dynamic navigation and pages (that would soon come). So I turned to the web. A search for "CMS" led to the likes of James Robertson of Step Two, Carmine Porco, then at Prescient Digital in Toronto. Both of these gentlemen were producing articles that were ranking well. I called up Carmine Porco and told him I was starting a tech firm offering CMS and he was very encouraging, welcomed me to the eco-system and said he was from Prince Edward Island... ah, us good ol' maritimers know how to get along! He said Prescient was tech-agnostic, in that they did not in fact have a preference of CMS ... so I suggested that they reach out to me as I would be happy to support their initiatives (they were only consulting and very rarely implemented). I also asked if I could post copies of his CMS articles on my own site and reference them. "No problem Giff. Thanks for asking" Ack!
The other result that came up for a Google search for "CMS" was, of course... Wikipedia.
Wikipedia... oh how I would get mad on Wikipedia. I thought it was my God-given right to post at the bottom of this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system, links to five articles that were housed on my own site:
When I originally learned what a Content Management System was in 2004, I did a lot of searching. I wanted my own CMS and while Rob Place and I had one for storefronts, we still hadn't developed something for creating dynamic navigation and pages (that would soon come). So I turned to the web. A search for "CMS" led to the likes of James Robertson of Step Two, Carmine Porco, then at Prescient Digital in Toronto. Both of these gentlemen were producing articles that were ranking well. I called up Carmine Porco and told him I was starting a tech firm offering CMS and he was very encouraging, welcomed me to the eco-system and said he was from Prince Edward Island... ah, us good ol' maritimers know how to get along! He said Prescient was tech-agnostic, in that they did not in fact have a preference of CMS ... so I suggested that they reach out to me as I would be happy to support their initiatives (they were only consulting and very rarely implemented). I also asked if I could post copies of his CMS articles on my own site and reference them. "No problem Giff. Thanks for asking" Ack!
The other result that came up for a Google search for "CMS" was, of course... Wikipedia.
Wikipedia... oh how I would get mad on Wikipedia. I thought it was my God-given right to post at the bottom of this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system, links to five articles that were housed on my own site:
Articles About CMS and Web Portals
- What is a C.M.S?
- What is a Portal?
- Do You Need CMS?
- Want to Buy a CMS?
- Choosing the Right CMS
- CMS or WebPortal Software?
We were soon getting email from people from all over the world, thanking us. Soldiers in Iraq, diplomats and embassy workers... our work was reported by newspapers and radio stations.
In the interviews I didn't mention we used DotNetNuke. And it was brought to the attention of Shaun Walker, who sent me an email to the effect; "Dear Mr. Watkins, many DNN Community members are upset because you did not give credit to DotNetNuke... blah-blah... you should be more vocal about DNN... blah blah..." and that got me thinking... maybe I should... just maybe I should. Ack! If I was going to go "public" about DotNetNuke... I needed first to determine if the creators of DNN were committed, moral, and most important of all, going to be around for a long, long time. I wasn't going to commit to DNN, until I was certain DNN was good, right, and true... and more important to me; I was not going to be affiliate myself with people I knew nothing about.
My next step would involve some traveling... to meet Brian Scarbeau, the first DNN user group founder in Orlando. If the founder of a DNN user group could convince me that I should be more open about DotNetNuke, I would consider it. Ack! To be continued.
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