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Pursuing My Open Source Dreams

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Tuesday, August 15, 2006 4:05:00 PM

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After 2 years of working on mojoPortal in my spare time I've decided to follow my dream and form a business around it doing custom feature development and providing support. I've formed a company, Source Tree Solutions, LLC and posted some information about what I'll be offering here. One of the tricky parts is that certain projects I will only take on as sponsored open source work but there are plenty of things specific to a business that I'm happy to build and let the customer own the source code.

Its a big scary leap not knowing if there will really be a market for what I want to do but I'm afraid if I don't try it I'll regret it. So, I'm going to sell my house in Tennessee and move into my younger brother's house in Charlotte, NC. He's got plenty of room and with my equity and living frugally I think I could make it a full year with no revenue if I had too, but I'm pretty sure I'll get at least some work.

My Dad lives in Charlotte as well so it will be nice to be closer to him and if things really don't work out I can always take some non-mojoPortal related contract work or seek a new job. Lots of banking and other industry in that area.

I really work for a great company now, some of the nicest folks I've ever had the pleasure of working with and they are being very supportive of me. They want to keep me as long as they can and are even interested in having me do some remote contract work for them after I move. Though the work they need is not mojoPortal related its very comforting to be valued and have their support. So the timing of the move will depend mainly on the timing of selling my house but I'm shooting for the middle of October or any time thereafter.

To me its kind of an experiment in open source business models and I guess I'll find out over the coming year if I can make a living on top of the open source project I started. Maybe its just a pie in the sky dream but I'm determined to give it a try and do my best to make it work. I guess I'll be chronicling it here so stay tuned for more...

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re: Pursuing My Open Source Dreams

Tuesday, August 15, 2006 5:35:55 PM Matt Philmon

Hey there. I live in Charlotte, NC and work for a company called Elevator Channel.

There may be some additional contract work towards the end of this year or the beginning of next (C#, ASP.NET). I also know a great recruiter company here in Charlotte called Tek Systems that is particularly good in the banking area, which covers probably 85% of the programming jobs in the area. So, give me a shout sometime if you get stuck and maybe I can help you out: mphilmon_at_elevatorchannel.com

Good luck.
Matt

re: Pursuing My Open Source Dreams

Tuesday, August 15, 2006 6:00:35 PM Joe Audette

Hi Matt,

Thanks very much, I'll keep that in mind if things don't work out. Nice to hear from someone in Charlotte, looking forward to meeting some folks probably at .NET user groups meetings and such after I get re-located.
I think Tek Systems is everywhere, they are certainly here in Nashville, I know them well.

Cheers,

Joe

re: Pursuing My Open Source Dreams

Wednesday, August 16, 2006 4:02:17 AM Eric Windisch

Congrats Joe!

re: Pursuing My Open Source Dreams

Wednesday, August 16, 2006 4:56:07 AM Joe Audette

Thanks Eric!

re: Pursuing My Open Source Dreams

Wednesday, August 16, 2006 6:21:15 AM Paco Martinez

The best of luck for you and congratulations for your customers -- they are the real winners!

Paco

re: Pursuing My Open Source Dreams

Wednesday, August 16, 2006 7:16:50 AM K. L. Estes

All the best !

re: Pursuing My Open Source Dreams

Wednesday, August 16, 2006 8:47:28 AM Joris Willems

I like mojoportal but it could be even better if it would be more CMS oriented than a portal. I did a project using mojoportal but now I moved to typo3 because it's much more mature and it has a strong community. Please take a look at typo3. I think a lot of people need something like that but unfortunaly it's in php which I think is harder to work with.
Congrats with your new business !

re: Pursuing My Open Source Dreams

Wednesday, August 16, 2006 9:39:14 AM Joe Audette

Thanks to All for the good wishes!

Typo3 does look interesting and has some nice features, there is definitely no shortage of competition in the CMS space, even in the free open source CMS space. Still hopefully there is room for one more

I do have a lot more features and improvements planned for mojoPortal and hopefully development will move much faster with my primary focus on mojoPortal going forward instead of just spare cycles.

I'm really targeting mind share of .NET developers where DotNetNuke is the most well known, but I can certainly borrow ideas from CMSs in php or any other technology.

Cheers,

Joe

re: Pursuing My Open Source Dreams

Friday, August 18, 2006 1:36:49 PM Xiv

All the best and good luck!

I always admired you technical knowledge and attitude towards people, so hopefully it will work out well.

If I may suggest few things:

1. sort out a graphics - find a freelancer who would do cheap and professional standard theme [don't be afraid to look around for standard icons - somehow 3/4 of CMS use the same!!! - users/clients are keen to icons they are familiar] - your direct competition is DNN for example

2. build up the network of hosting companies, graphic designers, consultants (either public or private - up to you); there are tons of projects going on and from my perspective integration is the worst bit: one host provides old version of pgSQL, another designer knows nothing about skinning... lots of bad blood.

3. build up the community; now, I know that this recognised as a hard point, but from my experience is not!
- advertise on the website that you are looking for "community manager" - this person should not be very technical, but should have good inter-personal skills - let her/him handle forums/website
- have a clear vision what do you expect from people - have a list available and managed by a community manager - run a campaign for your priorities! (translations, hosting experiences...) - a very bad example happen recently on mono list, where a group of students from Egypt ask for a task - clearly no one was prepared for it
- drop a level of jargon from main website - [brilliant example was DNN website where for a year you could read that DNN is Versatile, Powerful etc... but you could not learn what exactly it is doing and what is it purpose] - your product has to be attractive to project managers/team leaders who sometimes are lucking technical knowledge

Finally, I wish I could be involved more, but my time constrains do not allow me. And everything is IMHO, of course.

Xiv

re: Pursuing My Open Source Dreams

Friday, August 18, 2006 1:37:59 PM Xiv

Could you delete wrongly formatted entry? Sorry about that. Xiv

re: Pursuing My Open Source Dreams

Friday, August 18, 2006 1:43:07 PM Joe Audette

Yep, no problem. Thanks for taking the time to share your ideas and encouragement!

Good food for thought.

Cheers,

Joe

re: Pursuing My Open Source Dreams

Monday, August 28, 2006 7:56:51 AM Allen

Joe,

Congratulations on your decision and good luck. I know how hard you have worked on this project and I wish you the best. Its always encouraging to see someone find something they love to do and go for it.

We'll miss you here in Nashville. We'll have to get together for lunch before your move.

Allen