Cocktail Napkin to Startup (DIY Part Six)
June 20, 2006
This is part six of a series of posts describing how we are taking an idea from a cocktail napkin and putting into the real world. Start now, or read along from the start with: part one, part two, part three, and part four.
My next step was to create a project in our Spur project site. We use BaseCamp (for me it is a great tool - I have 15 projects on the site with more than 30 people assigned to various tasks and milestones). I laid out the tasks that I would need to complete:
- Talk to creator of hResume standard
- Find Working title for the project
- Set up a Blog/Wiki for the project
- Create specification for plugins
- Find coders to develop plugins
- Find Microformats expert to help with hResume markup
- Work with Biggu team to offer hResume version of QwikPing
- Find developer to create resume or interest search site
I decided that I would start by looking for developers who had previously created WordPress plugins. I searched the WordPress Plugin Database and found a short list of ten people that seemed like a good fit. I emailed each of them and described the project in some detail. Quickly I received responses from a couple and within a day I had narrowed the field down to Eric. He seemed sharp and he was very eager to get started. Later in the day I got an email from an Inidan programmer named Sajid who also wanted to do the project. He was willing to do it on spec - i.e. he had already started coding (I had sent Eric 50% of the payment in advance). I decided to give him a shot and we agreed on a price that was acceptable to us both. I added them both to the Spur project site (I was a little concerned about this as it might create confusion, but I decided it might create a little competition). We decided that the project and plugins would use the working title hResume for now.
Now that we had two developers, I needed to create a detailed specification for them to follow. I started with a Word document describing how the plugins should be developed. Next I used Adobe Illustrator to create a wireframe (or representation of what the pages should look like) to help express my ideas visually (I am a visual spacial thinker). Here is the wireframe:
I also completed a wireframe of the presentation side (i.e. viewed by anyone looking at their resume):
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Can’t wait for microformats to come into full swing. I’m ordering my t-shirt as I type…