Yesterday was most definitely the most frustrating day so far in the short but exciting life of FR2DAY.com. As we speak our wonderful website has been down for about 12 hours and the only reason I am on here writing this blog is because I can not get on to the site to do anything more productive or continue with the humongous work load that caused me to set my alarm and crawl wearily from my pit at 4am yesterday morning.
Confusion and chaos leaps mercilessly from my outbox and the number of possible reasons has now hit at least treble figures. Me; a mere layman caught up in this day of terror and angst is beginning to think that maybe in an effort to be multi-cultural and all kind of cosmopolitan I might have just gone one country too far in my almost Barack style efforts to break down barriers, feed the third world and Skype the complete universe down to the size of Slough.
Content is king so they say in the publishing world but it has to be said that communications are almost nearly as regal when it comes to developing a website of this magnitude. There is something to be said for strolling round London’s WC2 and being able to sit on people and refusing to get off until they promise to deal with your problem. No time difference, no language barrier and even a crayfish and rocket sandwich en route.
I will give you my insight into the possible problems and hopefully some of you will see where I (and particularly our team) are coming from and maybe just why today was so chaotic. Karen and I are from London and live in France, the fella I am working with on the business lives in LA and is from Holland. Our server is in Paris but we deal with London because our French is so bad. I have great technician from New Zealand who also lives in France. Our wonderful support system is run by a guy just up the US coast (4000 miles away!) called James who manages three developers called Niraj, Viresh and Shahid who hunker down in various corners of the Indian subcontinent and who all probably speak different dialects of Gujarati. Usually we all get on as famously as a class full of school kids in a Peckham Primary but today was just not a great day at the curry house and chaos kicked in like closing time on New Years Eve in Newcastle.
Time difference, language barriers and generally different understandings of the word urgency have certainly not helped our cause but before we start going all 'local,' remember that at FR2DAY we love a challenge and our whole business ethos is 110% maverick and about breaking down barriers so we intend to continue in our search of the ultimate Peruvian print provider and a couple of Malawi marketing men to add to our already winning team of names to rival any premiership football side.
Tomorrow is another day. Niraj has promised to cheer me up by posting his recent Indian Holi Festival photos up on Picasa - he also said he reckons he might get the site back up if we are lucky! Shahid says it shahid be working too and as for Viresh he has promised to keep his fingers crossed and see how it goes!
That's the beauty of this business - You just can’t get that sort of culture in Slough!
WB
