Many of my friends and collegues will tell you that I’m a “rules are made to be broken” kind of guy. I don’t like working with limitations, I feel like they stifle my creativity. But, I’ve learned the value of tempered governance, and I hope to exercize those lessons here.
A successful project needs rules. These are the perameters that I hope to work within to make The MyPluribus Project a success:
- Time Limits
I’m a pretty busy guy. I’m a dad, a husband and a member of my local community (meaning I like to interact with people in “real life”), so, for this project to be a true success, it needs to fit within my schedule. To help, I’ll set a limit on the amount of time I’ll spend on this project. My current time limit is 1.5 hours per day. With that point stated, this is all kinda fun. I like interacting with the people I meet here, so on days when spare time abounds, I may spend a little extra time.
- Goals
Any good successful project needs goals. There must be a starting point, a direction and a destination. Something must be achieved, and there must benchmarks along the way.
- No Spam
I will NOT be sending any spam out to my network contacts. Spam is not marketing, it’s not networking, but it IS annoying. I’ll do my best to protect the members of my network from other spammers as well.
- Regarding Personal Opinion
As we all know, it’s impossible to avoid having an opinion. (I’ve heard that opinions are related to a certain part of the anatomy, in that we all have one.) On occasion, I will share my personal opinions and views. This is human nature. However, in this project I will only provide my opinion within a reasonable reach of my professional expertise. That means you’ll get my views on software, the internet, marketing, maybe a little politics, and topics related to technology. You will NOT hear my opinion on religion, the latest pop trends, fashion, drama, or other topics in which I have no interest or expertise. One of the goals of this project is to help educate my customers, potential customers and those who are following this project in hopes of repeating it. I’m here to contribute, not take away.
- No geeky intervention (at least very little)
Yes, I like geeky intervention. It’s what makes the world go ’round for us programmers. I like to be able to sling out a few lines of code and have something, somewhere do as I told it. Not to mention, a little geeky intevention in front of a client makes you look like a magician (geeks know what I mean). However, during this project I will refrain from most intervention. I will be using services that are available to the public in the manner that I assume they would. Gadgets that take a programmers notebook to install are not friendly to the general public, so I won’t be using many (I didn’t say any) of those in this project.
- Standards of practice
To ensure that my credibility remains intact throughout this project, I will set out a few standards of practice. I’m here to build a network. I’m here to build my business. I want to make this as scientific as possible. Here are a few guidelines I’ll use:
- Editorial discresion will be applied. Any marketing plan needs a carefully crafted message, this project is no different. I’m here to showcase my company’s products and my talents as a developer. The challange is to do it without imposing on the audience.
- Social networking services will be chosen based on preset criteria.
- Maintain the contribution. Good things happen to those who do good things. This project in intended to be a good thing. I will maintain this project as a scientific experiment, and its results as a contribution to the community.
These are the rules and regs that I hope will make this project a success, and finally anwer the question: Can you replace (or suppliment) marketing with social networking?
