Recently started programming again
 

So I've been in a sort of holding pattern in Adult for sometime now. I have my daily work down to about 15 minutes a day and some very reliable Fi;lipino employees that work their asses off. I haven't been doing much or really any adult development and took most of this year off. Climbed for the entire spring and summer as much as possible and focused on Jiu Jitsu and what not.

Now that the bad Weather is here I've been kind of bored. Well not so much bored, but unchallenged I guess. Before I was in Adult, I was a process engineer, programmer, database architect and project manager. I kind of miss building things but couldn't imagine going back to any sort of corporate enviorment or 9-5 day job. I figured, well why not open up a mainstream consulting and automation company.

I develop strict in the .NET world. I remember starting with Microsoft Databases as an original Access beta tester. These days the fusion of SQL Server, Exchange, Infopath, IIS, C#, VB etc etc makes things a whole lot easier. It's actually pretty amazing how integrated everything is these days. Since I started taking clients last month I've had a fairly steady stream of clients for all kinds of tasks from a custom CRM to database auditing and design. Even did an Adult project to auto extract thumbnails and http post movies from their file output directly on to a tube site.

Been interesting but hectic. Hoping to hire one or two people soon as the work load has been building. Be curious to see just how large of company I can build this in to.

Anyone else take on a totally new direction or projects that you wouldn't normally consider in the last little while? I think for me the change has been good. I've been a lot more motivated and interested in my work these last few weeks for sure. :thumbsup

interesting...how did you attract the mainstream clients if you dont mind me asking?

Just through networking for the most part. Either people I've worked with before in the IT world, or friends that currently work in the IT world.

What I do is pretty specialized. Especially when it comes to automation. It's fairly easy to justify spending when you can lay it out in the format of: Spending X amount of money will save Y number of employees Z number of hours of work. It's simple math to see the cost benefits. Most small to medium sized companies don't have programmers on staff and can't afford to be hiring large development firms to do small projects. The specific combo of being able to offer the skill sets of a Database Architect, Programmer, Project Manager and Process Engineer at one reasonable cost sort of sells its self. At least so far.