We just posted a position to our website today for a writing position at Thunder Data.  We are seeking an intern to write articles and blog posts for ThunderTix, a ticketing software to help manage events for small venues to sell tickets. We are looking for a talented writer to create both educational articles and short blog posts. We’ll provide the topics and concepts for each writing assignment.

This is a paid position with flexible hours for a college intern or graduate interested in part-time work.  All work can be performed outside the office, so close proximity to our office is not necessary.  Our preferred candidate would be working towards a degree in either English or Journalism.  Experience in marketing or public relations is a plus, but is not required. 

If you are interested in this position or know someone who might be, please send resumes and/or a portfolio to careers_info@thunderdata.com.

Come and join our team!

In a traditional store, paying by credit card involves swiping the card through a swipe machine, which reads the data stored on a credit card’s magnetic stripe.  The data includes a few key bits of information, namely:

• The account number and expiration date of the card
• The account holder’s name
• Some provider-specific data for verification

For a typical online transaction, the magnetic stripe on a card is not used.  Purchases are made by entering account information manually, along with verification values not found in the magnetic stripe.  This is acceptable for most people, as few computers come with magnetic card swipes.

However, what if someone wants to use an online system to run in-person transactions?  With ThunderTix, many of our clients use our system for ticket sales on site.  Typing every bit of data for each customer is slow, and tends to make people in line cranky.  Fortunately, the magnetic stripe comes to our rescue.  The first part of a magnetic stripe’s data looks something like this:

%Bxxxxxxx^LASTNAME/FIRSTNAME ^yymmzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz?

where the

xxxxxxx

is an account number,

LASTNAME/FIRSTNAME

are the account holder’s name,

yymm

is the expiration date, and

zzzzzzzzzz

is additional numbers.  Using the standard format to detect a card swipe transaction, we can extract this information to expedite order processing:

if credit_card_number =~ /^%B(.)*?$/
card_fields = params[:cc][:number][2..-1].split(’^')
card_number = card_fields[0]
name = card_fields[1].strip.split(’/')
first_name = name[0]
last_name = name[1]
expiration_year = card_fields[2][0,2]
expiration_month = card_fields[2][2,2]
end


A few bits of additional data (magnetic stripes do not contain the verification values used for online transactions), and we’ve managed to cut each patron’s wait time significantly.

I’m always pleasantly surprised when I stumble upon the result of a company’s marketing efforts and realize how perfectly they succeeded in directing their message. My favorite, a television ad campaign for Prego, used music to drive home the old-world style of their spaghetti sauce and succeeded beautifully.

In yesterday’s NY Times section on advertising, the article focused on Tropicana orange juice. Included with the piece was an ad image containing Tropicana’s new tag line along with a plain-jane carton of “store brand” OJ. At a glance, I assumed Tropicana was positioning their orange juice as a cut above the generic store brand. It was only upon reading the article that I recognized the simple carton design was actually Tropicana’s adopted new look–replacing the old straw and orange logo. Why would they choose such a simple carton? To appeal to budget conscious consumers.

Interestingly, Tropicana’s full brand name includes the words, “Pure Premium”. Coming at a time when buyers are eschewing luxury items, Tropicana needed to downplay “premium” without sacrificing their brand association with quality . The carton is an effective messenger. Throw in the cute new screw cap that’s shaped like half an orange, and Tropicana is poised to retain its 40% market share–even as shoppers trim their budgets. That’s effective marketing!

Though you hear it all the time, comparing Ruby on Rails to PHP really is not fair - they are different animals entirely, only sharing the goal of creating websites that do stuff.

Rails, being a framework, could be more aptly compared to PHP frameworks, such as CakePHP, or Zend View. But even then they are still very different - and the difference is Ruby.

Ruby is beautiful, elegant and easy to read. PHP is pragmatic and direct but disorganized (imho).To Ruby, everything is an object, which serves as a good organizational mechanism. In PHP everything is a global function, usually with funky names that give little indication to what it does. It is like the difference between an organized toolbox, with all the right tools in all the right places and one big box with all the tools thrown in haphazardly.

Let’s look at a overly simplified example of some Ruby code, often used in Rails.

1.day.ago

What do you think that means?

Let’s look at it in PHP.

time() - 86400;

Hmm, I think most of us could figure out the PHP but anyone could read the Ruby. Which brings up another subject. The Ruby code above is actually an extension of a core class/object in Ruby, which Rails does - a lot, to great effect.

There are many more/better reasons for choosing Ruby and Rails, of course. But, for me, it is the simple things that Ruby allows which makes Rails … different and better.

Somehow, I ended up on this mailing list about leadership.  The articles–put together by a local company–focused on teaching leadership and team building, and I always looked forward to reading them.

Last September, I took a few minutes to write the author and company owner.  I told him that I enjoyed the articles, and said I had considered signing up for his seminars. I concluded my email:

“As a reader of many business books (Good to Great, Breakthrough Companies, Small Giants), I can appreciate your references to Polaris and themes aimed at helping businesses grow.  Just my applause for a job well done.”

Guess what his response was?

Nothing.

Two months went by before another article appeared in my inbox from the author.  At the conclusion of the article, he suggested that readers share their ideas and feedback.  In fact, he welcomed it, he said.

Ah, he did, huh?

So, I wrote him again expressing my thoughts and informed him that I had in fact written to him once before–over two months prior, I told him.  This time, he did write back with a terse response that didn’t feel like he welcomed my feedback at all.

I decided that maybe this guy wasn’t the person I should be learning leadership from, because the way I saw it was this “leader” offered more words than actions.  So, I took action.

I unsubscribed.

In software, usability refers to the design of the interface that reflects an intuitive relationship between what a user wants to do, and how to do it.

We are in the midst of the exciting redesign of one of our core services, ThunderTix, our online box office management system.  In addition to creating an array of new functions for the software, we spent a considerable amount of time designing a streamlined web interface with responsive AJAX-y controls.

Yesterday, we were at a crossroads as to how to implement our seat pricing assignments.  The evening before, I spent several hours fine tuning the layout of various pages, and I was struck by just how far our system had grown. Yet with that growth in great new features,  we had also introduced more complexity.  As a company whose roots lay in educating a largely non-technical user base and boiling down lots of functionality into simple excercies, I was a little worried that the new features might prove a little challenging to our clients.

During our discussion about pricing, we were weighing issues that might affect the performance of the system against usability.  In a nutshell, in order to improve database performance, we had to introduce a new concept and series of steps to enable our clients to reach their primary goal–selling tickets.

Customer service time and training is a huge part of our business.  And every minute we instruct users how to get up and running, we lose profitability.  And for every second a user pokes about the interface trying to accomplish their goal, we are at the risk of losing a client.

So, we opted for a potential yet tiny performance drop for a greater increase in the ease of event setup.  Because in the end, usability is performance.

Over the last six months, I began looking into Agile programming practices leading me to the Agile Austin users group.  In April, Stacy and I attended our first meeting where we were fortunate to meet Nicholas Cancelliere–an active Agile Austin member, Certified Scrum Master, and agile instructor.  Nicholas joined our team on May 1st excited about the opportunity to introduce agile programming and Ruby on Rails, and we were thrilled to have Nick at the helm in leading us in this new–for us–programming methodology. 

While Rails itself is an exciting rapid development language stirring up a lot of media buzz, it is our adoption of agile programming practices that has transformed our business.  Previously, we scheduled client projects in a seemingly aimless juggling act.   With agile, our Monday mornings are dedicated to planning the week’s work, and we know exactly what we expect to accomplish. 

In addition to ramping up our own development and reducing our backlog, we’ve had other significant benefits.  Stacy and I confidently inform our clients about expected completion dates, and following the agile way of rapid development and customer collaboration, we schedule software demos weekly.  These weekly iterations allow us to unearth potential errors in communication early, which helps keeps development costs down.  Our clients thrill in seeing their software ideas take shape, and the open communication fosters their own confidence in us.  And our programmers set realistic expectations, gain satisfaction in achieving goals, and have control over their own work. 

Like Scott said today, yes, we could have learned and adopted agile and RoR on our own with help from the agile community and committed effort.  But having Nicholas lead the group allowed us to see dramatic results in a very short period of time, and the impact has been one of the most significant in our short history.   Sometimes, all the buzz is justified. 

“What items are we most profitable in?” 

Scott asked me that question a few weeks ago which set off a discussion about our primary project categories and the income derived from each: hosting related work (13%), ticketing software and customizations (13%), software development (43%) and website design (25%).  Then we looked at development time for processes required for the projects within each category.

For website design, we have created many scripts representing many, many hours of development that enable us to streamline our work.  For example, an image gallery used to take several hours, but a script that took the time, testing, and refinement of four people in this office reduced that task to a half hour.  Our editing software, PmWiki, once had an install process that took several hours.  Now, the task is five minutes. 

In addition to eliminating some of the tedium of required tasks, these helper scripts expedite delivery of websites, and the return is worth the effort it takes to produce them.  With all the extra time these scripts afford, we should be awash in extra profits, right?

When Scott asked the question about profitability, I thought a moment, and told him that these scripts enabled us to be more profitable because we still charged the full price for installation on these items, yet the labor was a fraction of the invoiced charge.  Then I had a jarring realization.

Websites are among our least profitable items for many reasons some of which I will save for another post.  Whatever the reason, we often find ourselves in a position where the clients want “just a little more” to be fully satisfied, and we often acquiesce.  Since Stacy handles most website sales, she is the one who hears these “final requests” and shares them with me.  Often, her justification for making the additions starts with, “Well, Dawn, remember they paid full price for the gallery, so we won’t lose money if we spend the extra time.” 

But what the client didn’t pay for was the time it took for us to create the scripts, and in cases where we extend the design or functionality of the site, the profits fly out the window.  Stacy has been notorious for this kind of no-cost upgrade request, and after years of this behavior, none of us realized we might actually be losing money! 

I am actually surprised that it took us so long to figure out this basic metric.  Over the last couple of years, we have really grown as a company, and we continuously strive to exceed performance goals set at the end of each year.  So, realizations such as this one are important milestones that help us achieve loftier heights. 

So, Scott’s question was an enlightening one, and our policy has changed.  We’ll be on the lookout for other profit-swallowing development costs as we prepare for yet another banner year as we strive to elevate performance and profits in 2008. 

I recently told Ross about a desire I’ve long held to try a Flash background for our website.  I hadn’t seen it elsewhere, and I wasn’t even sure it was possible.  Ross committed himself to the task, and sent me an email entitled, “I got it!” later that day.  Take a peek at the link–and you have to look closely for it’s very lightly colored and subtle animated background (http://thunderdev.com/flashbg ) along with his comment.

I have no idea if this is old news on the web, but for us, it’s new–and pretty darned cool from my talented artist!

Recently, I was invited to share some thoughts about myself and this business with the local community newspaper.  I thought this blog might be a good storage place for this miscellaneous data–just in case it never makes it to print.  :) 

Name:  Dawn Green

Place and date of birth:  Quincy, Massachusetts

Family members and what they do:  3 daughters at Westlake and Hill Country

Education:  BS Computer Science, Texas A&M, Corpus Christi

Occupation: Programmer/Project Manager

What’s your career ambition?   Every programmer or software development company strives to build great software.  Even better is to create software that incorporates enough functionality that it is sold repeatedly, a principle referred to as “write once, sell many.”  My goal is to develop a great software products that find a worldwide market. 

What is the latest project in which you are involved?   Our business developed a ticketing application that allows small venues–such as Zach-Scott Theater or the Westlake Chaps football program–to sell tickets online with the benefits of full reporting, assigned seating, and other important factors to venue management.  ThunderTix is the culmination of a few years of effort that is taking root and beginning to find an audience.

What is your favorite Westbank area business?  Westbank Flowers.  The first time I received roses from them, I was stunned by how beautiful they were.  When they began to wilt a day later, Keith, the owner, brought a new and equally beautiful batch.  Their arrangements and customer service have earned my repeat business!

Hobbies:  Taekwondo,  tennis, soccer, guitar, and reading everything!

What qualities in people draw you to be their friend?  My favorite people make me laugh, they inspire me, and they care about others.

I have a knack for:  Understanding the web and what it can do for a business.

The one thing I’d like to change about the Westbank is:  I’d put sidewalks on Bee Caves Road!   Most significant or interesting job:  The one I’m in.  I love my work!

Which of your professional or civic-oriented accomplishments make you the most proud?   Several years ago, several colleagues and I worked with a group dedicated to teaching young mothers and fathers how to parent.  We took their office from stone age to the digital age by procuring computers, network help, and all layers in between by soliciting donations from local businesses for labor and equipment.  The end result was immensely rewarding.

Excluding family members, who influenced you most and why?  There are too many people who have influenced me to name one.  In short, I have been most influenced and inspired by my colleagues.    What would you say is one interesting fact about you that people probably don’t know?   When I grow up, I want to be a woodworker!   

What is your fondest childhood memory?  Building tree forts with friends in the woods that surrounded my neighborhood.

A bad habit I have is:  You can see it in my waistline….beer!

My most humorous moment was:  When I was a teenager, I visited San Antonio with a friend.  Being from Boston, we were unfamiliar with the Texas twang–in particular, the pronunciation of the letter W as “dub-ya”.  One day, we laughed to the point of hysteria when we asked for directions and heard the location address:  “Ubby Dubby White Street.”  It wasn’t until my thirties that I saw the sign for W. W. White Street that I realized the street’s true name!   You can bet I called my friend and shared the news!

If you could sit down and ask questions of anyone (living or dead) who would it be and why?  I could not be more different than Martha Stewart, but I admire what she has done in business.  I would relish the opportunity to meet her, and learn about her challenges and successes.

My pet peeve is:  Waiting–especially if I have nothing to read.

In what historical event would you like to have participated?  Freeing the Jews from concentration camps.

What advice do you hope your child/children take(s) to heart?  Treat people like you want to be treated; don’t talk about others; and care!

Most exciting or dangerous thing I’ve ever done:  Lot’s of dumb things that I’m too embarrassed to share.

Besides raising children, life’s most challenging endeavor is:  Building a business while maintaining the respect and admiration of my coworkers and clients.

Is there anything in your lifetime that you passed up on doing and wish you had not?  I used to think I should have gone into the military, because I would have enjoyed the physical challenges, lifetime friendships, and camaraderie.  With the war we’re in today, I would give that decision a second thought, but back then, I wish I had joined.

How would you like to be remembered?  As a person that genuinely cares about others, and made others laugh.