As promised, it’s time for the first Ditch the Office progress update.  These updates are supposed to give an idea of week just past so they’re retrospective.

So, without further ado, what’s happened this week? 

Well, apart from finishing setting up a working space after the move to Melbourne, it was getting down to business in planning for the education and training business.  If you saw the last post, this was quite important as it helped communicate what I’m working on to my wife.  Well, that was a success. Oh, and as a small side benefit I managed to gain an understanding the market, the segments and a beginning of the different training offerings that would match the requirements.  The next step is to now get a pitch together and get out there and talk to people to refine my assumptions.

furcle didn’t get to much traction this week due to the above.  Next week I will outsource the development of the placeholder web page to start soliciting people to help with testing and feedback of the service.

So, the week gone Motivation = Not too bad and Progress = Pitiful.  I’m thinking next week will be much better!

Until next time!  And in the mean time, let me know if you’re having a win yourself.  Making any progress?

If you’re thinking your typical business partners (e.g. co-founder, suppliers, affiliates, investor etc), then I’d say “any other partners in your life?”

I know some people don’t like the use of the term partner for their spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, defacto, wife, husband love of their life, soul mate or all of the above but I thought it looked good in the title. Now, I hope I haven’t scared you off yet, It gets better… I think.

This weekend gone ……

So, the last two days have been a little frustrating. I’ve been trying to get a basic homepage running for furcle. Nothing fancy, just a homepage and some supporting pages with information and a link to the blog. Now, this is actually harder than it seems. I simply want something that operates like a desktop publishing tool (WYSIWYG*) that will convert that into something I can publish to the web. Here’s my adventures so far**:

1. iweb – nope, templates pretty much fixed although I hear you can engineer your own… too hard.
2. rapidweaver – as above although I did get some good info from @WebKarnage on twitter on how to modify rapideweaver templates. I need to get savvy with style sheets and the like though…
3. Flux 2 – also on a lead from @WebKarnage. This looks like a great and almighty web design application, however don’t talk to me about learning curve. I can see mountain goats from here. This does seem the most promising though but it does seem a little rough around the edges and there’s very little documentation or tutorial information around. Maybe someone could tell me how to centre my block of text so it’s always in the centre regardless of browser size?
4. Dreamweaver – Another almighty web design application. I think Dreamwever is a career, not a piece of software. Not for me.
5. Nvu/KompoZer – I stopped as soon as I couldn’t drag the furcle logo to where I wanted it to be on the page. That logo image REALLY wants to stay stuck to to top left of the page…
6. Sandvox – I thought it was supposed to be WYSIWYG but turned out to be WYSIWYG in templates. No good.
7. Random searching of google using the same search phrase hoping that different results will be returned… Oh dear.

Sorry for the rant. I don’t like wasting time unproductively. I suppose I could have just have had someone do it for me and saved myself the trouble. In these times of more time on my hands and less cashola rolling in, I need to be able to do more of this stuff myself. Arrgh, the conflict. Maybe it’s time to call in a favour with mates currency – a case of beer.

* WYSIWYG = What you see is what you get = Draw it and they will come

** adventures may be result of incompetence or general lack of interest in spending time on stuff that wont work first time. If you know I’m wrong – let me know!

*** picture from e-magic on flickr

I know I’ve spoken of Google Docs before as a great tool for sharing and collaborating on files with people. Particularly people that aren’t sitting right next to you. For me, most of the people I work with are definitely not sitting next to me so it’s important to be able to share files seamlessly and easily.

Google Docs is great if you want to do basic documents, spreadsheets and presentations but sometimes you need to use the old Microsoft Office or Keynote and then you’re typically resigned to emailing items around which makes it tough to keep track of documents.

Enter DropBox. A tool that synchronises data onto the web where and allows you to seamlessly access that data from any computer or share it with specific people for collaboration purposes. I’ve been using it the last couple of weeks and have found it invaluable. With the free account, you get 2 GB of free storage and there are paid accounts above that for more storage.

I’ve updated the resources list with links to Dropbox. I’d recommend it.

After my arrival in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago, I was told about The Hive, a regular Entrepreneur networking event that I believe is available in Melbourne and Brisbane. I don’t know if the format is usually the same but it went something like this when I attended last Tuesday (June 9):

• Arrive, buy beer and meet some friendly people
• Talk by successful business owner (in this case Kristina Karisson from Kikki K stationary stores)
  
• Some more refreshments and discussions with friendly people

I met a few great people to start the networks in Melbourne and the talk by Kristina was great. I think I’ll attend again.

I’ve included a link in the resources as well for The Hive.

If you saw my last post, you saw that I’ve been off the air for a little while now due to relocating from Sydney to Melbourne. During that time of being removed from the Internet (Yes, it did hurt) but not removed from computing facilities altogether, I started to put together a new site design to help Ditch the Office work a little better. Actually, it’s probably due really to just one comment. And it was a good one. Anyway, as I’m back on the air now, I’ll be making a concerted effort to make regular updates with my initiatives to Ditch the Office and anything interesting I find on the way.

Depending on who you speak to, opportunity either comes a knockin’ rarely or every day. Well, an opportunity came walking my way about 2 months ago now and is the result for the Dead Air on Ditch the Office of late.

Rather than a rock solid business opportunity, I’ve been handed time. That’s right, time. My wife recently took a job that required we relocate from Sydney, Australia to Melbourne, Australia and my existing employer didn’t exist in Melbourne. So, what to do? Get back on the job market? Search for some contract work?

After some discussion, we decided that it would be good if I could dedicate some time to getting some of my initiatives off the ground. It had nothing to do with me campaigning for it. Nothing at all. I’m sure Jody is enjoying the breakfast and coffee deal that she’s now getting as well.

And no, I don’t really consider this to be the realisation of the goal to Ditch the Office even though technically that’s the case. I think that I need to be actually earning some cash to fund my high flying lifestyle before I can truly say that I’ve achieved the goal. Shame really.

Either way, everyone says the same thing now. “That’s a great opportunity” and “you should grab it with both hands”. Well, that’s what I intend to do, once I can get my hands away from blowing my nose with this damn cold*…

* If you’re following the swine flu pandemic news, it turns out that Victoria is leading the race with a healthy lead for the most infections. I think I’ve got a head cold, but you never know.

I’m on a bit of a roll today. I also found this link from a VC that gives a concise view of their requirements for submitting a business idea to them for funding. I found the Elements of Sustainable Companies particularly interesting. Check out the page here.

I just found a great presentation over at SlideShare. It gives a great introduction into the different pieces of documentation for your business concept and communicating the concept to different interested parties. It also include some very pragmatic advice on getting started and some basic templates for the documents.

Check it out here.