Chuck Brotman is the Director of Sales Engineering for ON24, a webcasting and rich media marketing company based in San Francisco. He’s seen the web impact the sales organization in terms of convenience, speed and productivity.
Describe your job/career/business
I work as the director of sales engineering at ON24, a webcasting and rich media marketing solutions company. My responsibilities include running our proof-of-concept program, prototyping and building custom demonstrations for prospects and channel partners, and managing RFP and RFI responses. I also work as a liaison between sales and product management/engineering.
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Lea Woodward, profiled in a recent WWD Field Report, suggested this open thread topic to start off the week:
One of the benefits of being a web worker – whether you work for yourself or for a company – is usually the autonomy to work without having an over-bearing boss breathing over your shoulder.
But it also means you have to be your own boss – and an effective one at that. If you’ve never had the good fortune to work for a good boss, then here are some of the things they can be good at…
- Giving you objective and constructive feedback on your work and performance.
- Setting performance goals and targets that stretch your capabilities and help you improve.
- Providing mentorship, career guidance and helping you manage your long term career.
- Giving you cover, taking the flak and enabling you to concentrate on getting things done.
- Talking over difficult decisions to give you a different perspective and help you see the bigger picture.
As a web worker, who gives you objective feedback? Who helps you raise your game? Do you seek out mentors and take an active role in planning your future career? Who can you turn to when you need to make a difficult decision and get an alternative perspective?
Just how effective are you at being your own boss?
Joshua Porter runs a design and consulting company that focuses on designing social web applications. He left full-time employment this summer to found Bokardo Design and now works out of his home office. Josh blogs at Bokardo.
Describe your job/career
In August of this year I founded a design and consulting company called Bokardo Design. I focus exclusively on designing social web applications doing interface design, evaluation, and strategic consulting. The types of problems I help clients with are things like:
1) “we launched our web app and nobody is using it” 2) “we see the promise of social features, but don’t know where to start”. 3) “we have a great feature set but are having trouble generating interest and motivation”
So, basically, I’m a social psychologist in designer clothing. :)
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By Chris Poteet
Everyone, especially computer people, love lists of resources. I do as well, and I decided it’s time to share many of the resources that have helped me in my career. All of these resources (except for the print books) are either freeware, open source, or the application offers a free version.
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Stephanie M. Cockerl enjoys the freedom the web allows her to build things fast while keeping an eye on her grandma. She’s a great example of how the web can help you blend the professional and the personal.
Stephanie’s company next STEPH offers services including blog design and development, search engine optimization, and website design, development, and maintenance.
Describe your job/career/business
It depends on the day. Today I’m a freelance web analyst and SEM specialist. Another day, I’m a blog consultant or a SEO manager.
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Alex Harris of Alex Designs runs a 100%-online web consulting and design business.
Describe your job/career/business
Interactive creative director managing an agency (AlexDesigns.com) that is focused on Web Based Customer Acquisition and Conversion of eCommerce, Lead Generation and Traffic Building. Our team delivers effective creative that is tested to improve customer acquisition and increase retention while decreasing advertising costs and improving (long/short term) ROI.
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By Alistair Croll
The $1.3B bulk mailing industry suffers from channel conflicts and a conflicted triumvirate of “white label” mailing services, web designers, and campaign clients. Today’s web designers can’t build truly custom front-ends for their clients or add features (such as Google Earth mappings of campaign progress.)
Montreal startup incubator The Code Kitchen launched a new bulk mailing platform, Cakemail, to try and address this. Cakemail aims to let web designers and agencies build their own mailing service front-ends, without the heavy lifting of running the platform themselves.
To achieve this, the company has separated the entire UI from the back-end platform. This means that rather than going through a retail mailing list manager, agencies can custom-build list management tools for their clients.
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By Chris Poteet
As a web developer how we retain, organize, and use information is a high priority. One web application that has revolutionized the way I retain information is del.icio.us.
I originally used it just to save the occasional link. I realized that it’s much more than that.
Here are a few power tips to make the most of the social bookmarking application.
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Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
