Quintified

Quintify has a new client who’s going to use iPads to access their web database, and we’re also moving toward mobile app development including iPads, so we reached the point where it made sense to get an iPad 2 for development and education purposes.

Until today, I had seen the iPad as a media consumption device for watching videos, surfing the web while watching TV, and playing games. My mindset is much more production focused, so I was never that interested in iPads. (And, as an aside, my “media consumption” assumption about the iPad led me to think we’d be much better off getting a 3G iPad, which we did.)

However, now that we’ve had one for four hours, I must say I’m totally amazed at the “production” capability in it. My oldest daughter, the main benefactor of the iPad, had already picked out music composition and drawing apps, which she installed once we got home and has been playing with for the past few hours. I’ll say it again, I’m amazed at what she can already do writing music and creating art on the thing. And I took a sample HD video on a demo while waiting at the AT&T store and was super impressed at the quality.

I watched the Adobe MAX 2011 keynotes recently, and remember how they talked about touch being much more natural than a mouse, and how touch was revolutionizing the digital tools we use. I get it now.

We’re a Kindle family — we have five for the six of us — and now I foresee the day when we’rll be a tablet family too, and a family who uses them for creative production and not just passive consumption.

In the past, kids would help feed feed the pigs, harvest the corn, gather the eggs, and do whatever else was needed to help on the family farm. Through this they met practical needs but also learned the value of hard work, the satisfaction of a job well done, and “how the world works.”

My family has no farm, but I do have a software development company, and I’m excited at how our kids are becoming more and more involved in the family business.

Hannah, 14, is using Camtasia and Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection to create software overview and tutorial videos, and also do some graphic art work. Her Camtasia work is excellent, with her incorporating logo effects using Adobe After Effects, music, still shots, video captures, and a fine attention to detail when editing.

She’s done paid work for three of Quintify’s clients, and now alas I’m standing in line for her to do a major update and extension of Quintify’s own online tutorials as well as a sales-focused overview screencast.

Danny, 13, does testing for the web databases we create, making sure all is well as part of the development process. He’s also spending a lot of time learning Adobe Flex, which will enable us to offer iphone and Android apps for our database systems in the not-too-far-off future. (This has me excited!) He’s also learning PHP and MySQL, major technologies in Quintify’s arsenal.

Haneen, 10, fills out deposit slips and writes checks that I then sign. I’m also showing her how to enter the payments into Quintify’s database system, and hope to soon have her doing our invoicing. She’s also going to be learning Adobe Premier Pro once we figure out to how to transfer videos from our camcorder to the “Quintify laptop”.

And all three do data entry on behalf of clients’ system from time to time, and we plan for them to soon be doing writing projects that will help with Quintify’s SEO as well as give them something “real” to write about.

Micaiah, just turned 6, is about to be given perhaps Quintify’s most important job — making sure Daddy’s laptop is clean enough to be presentable at meetings with clients.

What enables us to run with this is the fact that we homeschool, so we can block out an hour or two from each kids’ day for “Quintify time”, which, I would argue, is some of the best education they’re getting. The other day Hannah met with a client to do a round of editing on a software overview video. During that time — at which neither Liz nor I were there — she not only used her Camtasia skills (information technology) but also got valuable experience interacting with a client (interpersonal communications), thinking through how to best present information to an audience (marketing), and made some money while at it (business 101). I’ll take that kind of education for my kids any day. (And they love doing this work.)

Like on the farm, there’s always much work to do, and I actually joked to Liz the other day asking if she knows any other smart teenage kids we can adopt into our family and put to work. Since that isn’t really an option, I’m now talking to another homeschooling family about getting their 14-year-old involved in some of the things we’re doing.

Side note: Two things we have found particularly helpful in these endeavors is Lynda.com’s training videos and the fact that Adobe offers it’s Creative Suite Master Collection on a subscription basis. We’re able to cover the subscription fees for both of these products through revenue brought in from Hannah’s work with outside clients, with Hannah still getting paid too.

Too good to not share… Click the image to see the whole thing.

CNN Money has an article today about how CEOs earn 343 times what the average American worker does. They mention paywatch.org, a website by the AFL-CIO that rants against this ratio. Neither website offered a place for comments so I thought I’d make mine here.

Sorry, but I’m sure I add 343 times more value in the work I do than some American workers do in the work they do. But I’m just as quick to say I’m sure there are others who add 343 times more value in their work than I do in mine.

Pay based on value added is only natural. If you don’t want to pay it, someone else will, as long as I can demonstrate and provide that value-added consistently over time.

You want more income? Figure out how to add more value, how to serve more people. (And that especially applies to myself!)

Business Coach Reggie Shropshire first introduced me to this video by Tony Robbins, in which he discusses how to keep your New Year’s resolutions.

Good stuff — worth listening to at least annually, if not daily!

The total running time is about 35 minutes.

Part one:

Part two:

Part three:

Part Four:

Happy New Year! Here’s to an awesome 2011.

Quintify has an outdoor (sand) volleyball team that plays Friday nights at Capt’n Bill’s — it’s a lot of fun. This was our first season, although the core of our team played on Queensboro’s team for many years. The team is composed of former Queensboro teammates, clients, friends, spouses, and myself — with several players falling into several of these categories.

Last night we ended the regular season beating Queensboro, putting us at 12-2 and in first place for the season. We’ll get a trophy for this, and will hopefully win another trophy at our end-of-season tournament in two weeks.

Outdoor volleyball is so much fun that one of my hopes for my kids is that they’ll be playing this sport competitively when they are my age. As much as they hang out at Capt’n Bill’s with us, they should be pretty good by then!

On Thursday (11/12) UNCW will be hosting the Wilmington Area Professionals IT Breakfast in the Madeleine Suite from 7:30 AM - 9:15 AM. The topic will be the “Impact/Future of Cloud Computing.”

I’m going to be one of the speakers, and will spend the majority of my time discussing things we and others are doing with Amazon’s Web Services for cloud computing. This is a fascinating topic for me and I’m particularly excited about Amazon’s Relational Database Service (RDS).

I’ve often said that I’d be Quintify’s biggest fan - even if I wasn’t working for the company. There are so many ways that a custom database can streamline your business and make it much more efficient. One of those ways is being able to do everything you need to do from one location. So many people I talk to are using excel to store their contacts, then are uploading them to an email sending service to be able to communicate to those clients. And then any time they add to that contact list, they’ve got to re-upload their files, taking more time out of their busy day.

With a Quintify database - you can do all of this from one place. Your client records are updated in real time and you can easily add them to specific segments when setting up the client. When you’re ready to send an email blast - you’re working with up-to-date client segments and you don’t have to re-upload your data. Super easy!

Today I recorded a tutorial on the basics of sending an email blast using a Quintify database. People send all types of emails with our databases - from newsletters and announcements to sales and promotional emails. You can click on the tutorial below to get a 7-minute overview of how to send emails to your clients. Creating, testing and scheduling!

In the very near future, I’m going to create a tutorial on how to uitilize our WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get) editor so you can make amazing emails to send out to your clients. For now, here’s the basic overview. Enjoy!

How to Send Emails to Your Clients: http://www.quintify.com/tutorials/emailbasic/emailbasic.html

We’ve added a new tutorial, this one focusing on how to add a client in your Quintify database.  You can view the video below.  We’ll be adding tutorials frequently - let us know if there’s anything specific you’d like to see!  You can view the entire tutorial library at http://www.quintify.com/tutorials.html. 

Now onto the tutorial!

Quintify Database Solutions is hosting a free seminar - “Database Success for Your Small Business”.  Learn how local businesses are using databases to achieve their goals, increase their revenue and become more efficient. 

Speakers will cover topics including email marketing and other CRM, project management, order fulfillment/operations, and accounting.

The seminar is being held Wednesday, October 14th, at the New Hanover County Library in Wilmington, North Carolina.  For more information or to sign up - visit http://www.quintify.com/seminar.html.