What's in a Name?

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, Lux Worldwide

When one of us is asked where we work, we simply answer “Lux,” which is a foreshortening or our corporate entity name “The Lux Group, Inc.” “The Lux Group, Inc.” is quite a mouthful when you’re doing the elevator pitch, so the shorthand name “Lux” is just fine.

“Lux,” is our brand name by which we are commonly known in the market, and “The Lux Group, Inc.” is the corporate name by which we are known to the state and federal government. See? Not radically different than “Microsoft” vs. “The Microsoft Corporation.”

Why, you may ask do they need to be different, and why choose “Lux” as a name anyway?

Well, we chose “Lux” as a name because it is short (three letters with an “X” in it so as to make a snappy logo), and it’s Latin for “light” which suggests enlightenment, enrichment, and illumination. It also places the company about as far away as possible from my last company, “Saltmine” (salt mines being drab, dark, lightless places).

The difference between the brand name and the legal name is an important one—the legal entity has to have a very specific name which doesn’t resemble other pre-existing entities doing that particular line of work too closely. “Lux” is a commonly used word (as in the soap), and requires more specification and modification before the state will grant its use as a legal name, thus the appendages of “The Lux Group, Inc.” So, if you look at the bottom of our home page, you will see a copyright bearing our corporate name showing that we are indeed who we say we are and are in fact a legal Washington State corporation.

Pretty basic, huh? Now, here’s comes a curveball: the more astute among you may already be asking, “why is your URL ‘luxworldwide.com,’ clearly neither ‘Lux’ nor ‘The Lux Group, Inc.’? Well, as many of you know, options for meaningful urls in the .com domain are very, very limited. Sure, we could use some other domain--.biz, .net to name just two, but that doesn’t have the impact we thought we needed. Believe me, if we could arrange for a purchase of the Lux.com domain, I would be doing that right now instead of writing this blog (In truth, the Lux.com url is owned by a bunch of lawyers, the company that owned it having gone into receivership. They are unwilling to part with it right now, and yes, oh yes, we’ve asked. If you at Lux.com are reading this right now, we’d love to talk more!)

So that’s the basic run down. “Lux” = our brand name, “The Lux Group, Inc.” is our legal name, and “luxworldwide.com” = our url. Someday we’ll tell you about lux-seattle.com, but that day is not today!

All News That’s Fit [Not] to Print

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, Lux Worldwide

There is a natural antagonism between the traditional media and the Internet as an information delivery system—always has been. As we have seen in the case of music and entertainment, the Internet created a dilemma because it made content and intellectual property freely available to users, skirting the traditional mechanisms for revenue generation. The old newspaper media has been slow in adopting the new realities, because it would mean walking way from their time-honored approach to money-making—a leap few were willing to make. The results have been disastrous for the movie and music industries, with record declines in revenue. And the same issue is now facing the printed news industry.

The revenue model for newspapers is a simple one: develop/distribute news content, and take money from both subscribers and advertisers. As long as the content is under “control,” this approach is viable. But when the content becomes free-flowing, and the information is available without having to pay for a piece of paper, the model breaks down.

And it has been breaking down, with record declines in traditional newspaper circulations. A recent Washington Post article noted that 814 of the nation’s largest daily papers had seen nearly a 2% decline in circulation in the last year alone, continuing a slide which began in 1990 and is intensifying with each successive wave of Internet adoption. The newspaper industry, unable to face this basic reality head-on, goes on to blame changes in the nation’s new telemarketing rules, but the truth is far grimmer. If they cannot find a viable online advertising or subscription model, they are doomed.

And why not? Virtually everyone I know has a sentimental attachment to that newspaper and morning coffee, but let’s put it aside for a moment. Newspapers have had it too good – they take their money form both sides, both readers and advertisers; they are essentially non-democratic, reflecting the editorial view of major corporate and governmental entities (made crystal clear, I’m afraid, by the newspapers’ un-critical support for the Iraq War); they are fractious organs of argument designed to produce heat, but very little light, in a world of useless point/counterpoint skirmishing.

The Internet, gives users the power of multi-perspectivism, the ability to see different angles on the news expressed locally, nationally, and internationally. It delivers the information freely to one’s desktop, and is simply faster, cheaper, more convenient. And, while I know many would argue this point, I think the vaunted “Truth” which newspapers ought to be accountable to tell, is understood better as an amalgamation of facts and varied points of view—not the party line that is expressed by editorial boards and self-appointed pundits.

Of course the Internet is full of frauds and untruths as well, but it is our own responsibility now to act as the filter and arbiters of what is meaningful. In the Internet Age, we can no longer responsibly delegate that task to others.

Halfway Measures

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com

One of the first great promises of the Internet age is the convergence of various media systems into a single, unified information management system that would be easily accessible and extensible – in short, a blurring of the lines between the personal computer, the television, the telephone, the motion picture, etc. With each passing year, that promise has come closer to fruition, but it has been in fits and starts and there are still plenty of half-measures bridging the old and the new.

One such measure is optical media, which is a bridging technology between the old days of the floppy disc, and the fully digital future. The high-definition DVD debate currently raging on in the industry (that is, the debate as to which high-definition technology will prevail, Blu-ray or HD DVD) is really rather silly in some ways, since the entire issue of portable media is likely to be a moot point in a digital future where films and television are stored not as optical artifacts in one’s DVD collection, but in purely digital form in one’s entertainment data structure. Films, music, television and other digital media are becoming increasingly available as download, and the economics of distribution suggest that all of the physical trappings of the optical disc and the tape will be abandoned as faster more powerful machines and better connectivity come to hold the day.

Another halfway measure, it follows, are those who deal in portable media as intermediaries. As we have seen, companies like Tower Records which tried to hold on to the old model of CD and DVD sales, have been delivered a death sentence by the market (I wouldn’t invest in Hollywood Video right now either). Intermediary business structures such as Netflix have flooded into the market using a library model, allowing the digital ordering, payment , and management of media (in this case movies), but relies on physical mail to deliver physical discs to physical addresses. It too is a halfway measure that will convert entirely to a digital delivery system when the business conditions are correct.

Finally, let’s talk about the motion picture theaters. The economics of theatrical distribution reduced the movie palaces of old to the strip mall multiplexes of today, and now the only way that the theaters can compete against television, video games, and DVD, is to raise prices, introduce more expensive concessions, show commercials, and even try to break into the corporate meeting space business. Sadly, when digital film distribution becomes the rule shortly, the theater experience as we know it will be over.

So, go to a movie, grab a record at the local record store while you can—it is an experience your children will be unlikely to share. And while you’re at it, grab a newspaper … we’ll be talking about that next time …

All I Want for Christmas

*Not* By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com

Today's blog is being brought to you by Hubie Dolan. As the guy who is normally responsible for actually posting Jay's blog, Jay is slacking off today, so I've been left empty handed with nary a word to publish. [Not slacking off, he never slacks off. -ed.] Thus, I'm filling in today with my own thoughts.

And today we turn to the holidays...

About three years ago, I received a rather unique Christmas gift. It was an introductory package to a new experimental Samurai lifestyle program sponsored by the Society of Creative Anachronism.

First night we all sat around sampling sake. I don't like sake but after you drink enough it all tastes the same. They awoke us the next morning with buckets of freezing river water. Then they made us wear these skimpy little loin cloths, like the kind the sumo wrestlers wear, and told us to meditate. It's hard to meditate when you're freezing your keister off.

So, they lead us through chants, and songs, jumping jacks and all sorts of other tortures. That evening at dinner I got the distinct feeling that it was all a dreadful mistake. They fed us the equivalent of a small thimble of birdseed and all the water we could drink as long as it wasn't more than two glasses (there was supposed to be a lesson in this but for the life of me I couldn't figure it out).

Later that night, one of the senior instructors thought that he would take it upon himself to recite the entire script of the "Seven Samurai" to us. This fellow was about 5 foot 2 and 300 lbs. He had beady little eyes and a piggy nose and had his greasy hair tied up in a bun. The guy had the grace of a water buffalo that had just fallen down a steep hill into a muddy watering hole. Next day I went AWOL and hopped a freight train back to Seattle.

Lesson learned? Play it safe this Christmas and ask for some socks.

Merry Christmas from Hubie Dolan and the rest of the gang at Jay's Blog!

Bad, Bad, Bad Web Design

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com

Centuries of conversation about art and beauty, a history of artistic craft dating back to prehistoric cave paintings, the entire artistic output of millions of souls expressing themselves in figure and form…and it all boils down this the high-water mark of artistic output.

That lousy site, and many others, can be found at Web Pages that Suck, a compendium of all that is bad in Internet design.

So what makes a bad website? Let's start with the great bugaboo of online design-the so-called "look-and-feel." Indeed, a website needs convey the thematic elements of the client's marketing approach-somehow embody in color and effect the nature and qualities of the company-but it must never be lost that a website is an *interface*. Overwrought, over-colored, constantly moving websites distract, annoy, and baffle the user. Sadly, Flash animation, one of the great innovations in web design, is sadly overused, or used simply because it *can* be used. As much as I love the use of Flash, the expression "click here to skip intro" has become one of my favorites.

Usability must be the key element in any design with simple, practical navigation that gives the user the clearest possible sense of what content is available and where he/she is going. Sometimes in an attempt to take design to the bleeding edge, simple practicality is overlooked entirely. It's not that I'm advocating an approach to design that entirely robs us of the designer's doubtlessly superb sense of the "aesthetic," nor am I hell-bound to ratchet down design considerations to the lowest common denominator with the utilitarian. But a website is an interface, and bad design obscures content.

And content, as they say, is King. King Content, however, is a fat fellow who grows fatter with each new addition (or blog entry!). Websites need to be carefully maintained like a nice formal hedge by winnowing away excess verbiage, by beating back the oppression of the grey page, and by carefully auditing and editing what goes up there in the first place. As they say, in web design it is always better to show than to tell.

Finally, the architecture of the site itself is the ultimate determinate of the site's quality and usability. Without first understanding and arranging the site's content, and without arranging the content properly and sensibly into the appropriate hierarchy or overall taxonomy, there cannot be appropriate navigation ... there cannot be a weighing or prioritization of what the site is intended to express. In short, an improperly architected site is chaotic, like an organically built house without blueprint or plan.

At Lux we work to suss out the needs of the user, to build an appropriate look(s) and feel(s) based on well-architected wireframes and content analysis. And sure, we can make it sexy, too - although, to this day, I'm not exactly sure why clients want this or what this means!

Dark Rides

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com

In some respects, entrepreneurial business is like a "Dark Ride" - those spooky, old rides you used to go on when you were a kid ... well, when I was a kid.

At the old Puyallup Fair here in western Washington, there was a ride called the Old Mill, which featured little boats passing through various scenes from nursery rhymes, scary of course, because it was dark and just plain weird at times. But it was ultimately rewarding, highly entertaining, and memorable.

Now, there are those of us who don't like the Dark Rides, who prefer the roller coaster, where it's all about speed and everything is outside of your control. And there are those who like to just stroll down the midway, not really wanting to commit to a ride or preferring to follow other folks as part of the general flow of things. Still others are more interested in the sideshow because of their interest in the odd and unappealing.

But my favorite is the Dark Ride. You are tantalized about what might face you around the next corner ... you can never really prepare yourself for something jumping out at you (sometimes it's a skeleton, sometimes it's a clown, sometimes you get all prepared for it, and nothing happens at all). You don't know if you're going to hurdle over the edge of a waterfall, or be faced with brigands, like in the worlds' most famous dark ride, The Pirates of the Caribbean. Often, the highlighted tension of the ride is broken by a comic scene or by the surreal impact of the ride as a whole. In the end, it is the ride you remember the most and the one you always are willing to do again.

The Old Mill burned down in the early 70's and was replaced with a series of pre-fabricated funhouses that are neither fun nor memorable. They forgot the essential element of the experience-that you shouldn't *really* know what will happen next in spite of it all. So show some resolve, have that nervous laugh in the dark, and then plunge in. It makes all of the difference in the world.

I Sing the Body Electric

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com

The Seattle area is recovering from a tempest of noteworthy proportions, one which left most of the area without power for a quite a time. Many are still out there in their freezing homes waiting for the eventual salvation of the public power utilities.

For those of you not in the Pacific Northwest, this was a real howler - huge conifers smashing through people's living rooms, exploding electric transformers discharging in the night, and the dark sullen eyes of people standing in line at the Home Depot for hours on end, unshaven, hungry, exhausted. Several people have died as a direct result of the storm.

It has been suggested by some of my comrades (Luddites, the lot of 'em) that power outages of this kind point to the inherent weakness of the Internet as an information management platform. True, the Internet, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and the personal computer require electricity, but let's not take this too far. For those without power, there is no Internet access to be sure, but, for those without generators or sufficient battery power, neither is there television, lighting, radio, and, in many cases telephones. In fact, the two largest daily newspapers in Seattle ceased production on Friday until power could be restored to the printing presses.

The truth of the matter is that the information economy itself requires electricity, and in the event of basic system failure virtually all of our systems grind to a halt. My hunch is that if the power on the Eastside remains out for another 48 hours, it will revert to a Mad Max post-apocalyptic state with bands of hungry computer programmers wandering the streets in search of connectivity.

In spite of the winds, I stand firmly by my conviction that everything that can be digital, will be digital. In three days, this will all be forgotten and people will blithely begin downloading from iTunes again, as if it were a spring thaw. In truth, Al Gore, or no, the Internet was designed to work in the face of a nuclear holocaust, and a few powerless days isn't going to change that. So, gird thyself, have a cold Pop Tart out of the box, and spend a peaceful moment with a book. The rush of the world will be upon you again before you can say "extensible Internet solutions."

The Lux Whiteboard

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com

One of the grand, old traditions here at Lux is the kitchen whiteboard. I guess it's part of what people refer to as "culture" when they describe a company.

It is, admittedly a simple thing ... a blank whiteboard, a daily topic, and free invitation for employees and contractors to write their responses. Nevertheless, it has rendered up minor flashes of wit from time to time, however idiosyncratic or narrowly Lux-y.

So, I thought it might be fun to periodically crib the Lux Whiteboard and put it on public display ... if only to give the outside world a small, albeit delicious, taste of Lux culture.

So, without further ado, here is today's topic:

Storm Names
(see, we had a big, nasty windstorm here in Seattle last night ...)

• WindBlast 4000 (TM)
• Flooshie the Swishfoom (R)
• TomKat-rina
• www.plantingthateucalyptustreenexttothehousewasprobablyabadidea.com
• That Wet, Windy #@!$&@!
• The Rattle in Seattle
• Insurance Scam '06!
• Inauguration Day 2: This Time it's Personal

Maybe not our best work, but at least now you get the idea.

Look for more whiteboard posts as they develop. Maybe we'll even get a photo posted for you. Feel free to send potential whiteboard topics to: jaysonj@luxworldwide.com. Please use "whiteboard" as the subject line.

Ambiguity

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com

Software development is an exercise is "disambiguation." The success of a given project, indeed the very meaning of success in a project, can only be derived from needs analysis, the creation of a functional specification (including an agreed upon set of features), a technical specification, and the creation of a test plan to see whether or not those features work as planned. There are various approaches to how it can be done with regard to speed and risk, but the entire exercise requires uniformity of meaning and a mutually understood set of goals and processes.

Marketing, although quantifiable in terms of "impressions," "page views," and its effects on sales, is still a largely subjective field which recognizes and plays with ambiguities in reaching different kinds of people and customers. It requires an appreciation for the subtle shades of gray as it works with the inherent contradictions of the human psyche and the customer's wants and needs. Does that shade of yellow represent warmth, and an overall feeling of well-being, or does it represent cowardice and carry negative connotations? Perhaps it is both, and this is what marketing and creative services deal with all day long.

In the days before the Internet the distinction was much simpler - the software developers created a product, and the marketers found a way to sell it. But the web muddied the waters as the medium and the message, as McLuhan famously pointed out, have become the same thing: ambiguity and non-ambiguity living together in a yin/yang of dynamic, even ironic tension.

But perhaps that's the beauty of the Internet, in its vast muddled grandeur: it is a palpable marriage of opposites that produces a wholly new synthetic experience ... one that requires-in the creation of well-made websites-an appreciation of the inherent dynamic tension. Of course, this is supported by various theories of art and beauty, and on an anecdotal level, suggests that opposites indeed attract.

The Art of the Elevator Speech

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com

When you operate your own company, you are frequently asked to describe your goods and services in a pitch that lasts no longer than 30 seconds - this is the so-called "Elevator Speech." The Elevator Speech is so designated because, presumably, the length of the speech is tied directly to the amount of time it takes you and the listener to get where you're going in an elevator. It also presumes that you will have the listener's sole, en rapt attention for that period, so it better be good.

I have, on at least on occasion, actually been asked to deliver the elevator speech on an elevator.

As Shakespeare said (or, rather ironically, Polonius): "Brevity is the soul of wit," so here it goes, avoiding the tediousness and outward flourishes. Set your stopwatch, and ....

DING!

Lux Worldwide is an integrated services company that develops, designs and maintains websites; designs for print; develops identity materials for companies; installs and manages intranets; develops software applications and databases; creates and edits written content. Our clients include Microsoft, AOL, Boeing, Safeco, Pemco, World Vision, and many, many others. Our chief value proposition is that we integrate all of these services, wedding the creative and the technical. Here's my card. Oh, it looks like we're here!

DING!

Time it yourself. This is my floor so I've got to get off. Cheers!

The Integration of Design and Development

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com

While the left-brain right-brain model is under fire within the scientific community, I think it still remains an apt metaphor for Internet development. In short, in order to provide a good user experience on the web, there needs to be a collaborative approach which weds the creative and analytical aspects of the mind.

How many times have you encountered a website, beautifully designed but inert, difficult to navigate, and wholly impractical? Conversely, how many times have you found a shoddy-looking interface on top of useful online application rendering it virtually useless?

This goes to the very heart of web development-how companies are organized, how the process of building sites takes place, even which kind of companies produce the best Internet experiences. It is clear to me that both design and development are creative acts, and are inextricably linked.

The best companies that yield the best results understand this, and organize themselves accordingly. A design/advertising/PR company that attempts to move into the Internet space often fails because of its inability to understand software development philosophy and processes ... indeed, its inability to understand the software developer. Software and technical companies make the same mistake when approaching website development, when they see design and interface work as an after-thought, not understanding the vitally graphic nature of the web.

One might imagine that hiring one company to do the design and another to do the development might solve this problem, but they would be wrong. The two aspects are too closely interrelated and require day-to-day, even moment-to-moment collaboration between all of the moving parts. It is virtually impossible to create a great site by cobbling an interface together after the development has taken place.

So the right solution ... the best organization, is the one where developers and designers sit together as part of a unified process, and team project management (not unlike the corpus callosum in the human brain) links together and otherwise schizophrenic divergence of talent and creativity.

If this is wrong, and upon me prov'd, then I never writ, nor no man ever developed for the web.

Apocryphal Now

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com

Several entries ago I wrote about the pervasive and, frankly, entertaining spam I receive on a daily basis here at Lux headquarters. In that entry I also promised a brief discussion about apocryphal and/or wildly misleading websites. The Internet abounds in such sites, and here are a couple of my favorites.

The casual web surfer who, by whatever impulse or misdirection, finds himself at History of Robots in the Victorian Era will be treated to a thoroughly entertaining and totally bogus article about 19th-Century steam-powered robots. The star of our show is Boilerplate," a sad-sack Tin Man who, among other amazing things "embarked on a series of expeditions [demonstrating his] abilities…the most ambitious being a voyage to Antarctica."

The creators of Boilerplate were not 19th-century men of science, as the very thorough article indicates, but rather a group of 21st-century illustrators and web designers using the site as a promotional tool for their services. Be sure to check out the other Victorian robots as well including the "Steam Man" and the "Automatic Man."

Another apocryphal website worthy of mention that I've recently encountered, asserts that the United Kingdom has secretly been incorporated into the US as the 51st state. Indeed, England gave itself to the United States in trade for our protection during the Second World War ... FDR himself signing the "secret Executive Order 9431," or, as the site so eloquently puts it:

"In 1944, on the eve of D-Day, the ROYAL FAMILY, over the head of W. Churchill himself, made a DEAL WITH THE DEVIL. They agreed to hand-over sovreignty [sic] of the United Kingdom to the United States, in return for the participation of the U.S. in the invasion at Normandy ..."

Evidence for the secret US statehood includes a group of hastily doctored photos (like the one above), and a largely incoherent "blog" which, I imagine, is meant to serve as corroboration for the claims in the website. It includes one of my favorite entries on the matter, which I disclose below in its crude entirety:

"More Proof!

Mood: !incredulous
Topic: Proof of UK Statehood?
My daughter Cala came ack from Engalnd with two black eyes and refused to tell me what happened. I ASKED HER IF THEY BEAT HER UP BECUASE SHE WAS AMERICAN, and she started to cry and said, DADDY, THEY'RE ALL AMERICANS.

I didn't get it unti lI saw a website which confirmed it. That the US owns England and is going to turn it into a state. The guys who beat up my Cala did it because she knew too much about the plans. She was an intern in an architect's office who was making trhe plans for the new state capitol building which is going to be in some city north of Londun. THEY BEAT HER UP TO SCARE HER AWAY FROM TALKING."

One's mind simply reels at the immensity of the conspiracy, as well as the blogger's spelling of "Londun" [sic]. I'm particularly impressed by the circularity of the blog, which claims the very website it, in turn, supports, as evidence.

That's all for now, but I'll keep my eyes peeled for further sites worthy of our attention. And, as I've repeatedly said, if it's on the Internet, it MUST be true!

Now We Are Seven (With Apologies to William Wordsworth, Microsoft, the Reader, et al.)

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com

--A Simple Site,
On the Internet left
Text justified right
What should it know of death?

I met a brand new browser
From Microsoft, 'twas said;
The old site lost its power
And thus was left for dead.

"Which version, little Maid,
How many may you be?"
"How many? Seven in all," she said
And wondering looked at me.

Well, first let me say it could have been *a lot* worse! I could have tried a parody of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 and your website may or may not be performing as originally designed.

Every once in a while, I get the opportunity to blatantly shill for Lux, and this is one of those times. According to the Counter.com, IE7 forcefully entered the market in November with a 7% share of global browser usage. So far, in the month of December, usage has jumped to 11%, and within a very few months, adoption will grow to IE's typical 80% to 90% share.

While IE7 was deftly built to cause as little disruption as possible as it interprets the html built for previous versions, there are differences in how the browser operates that ought to be looked into. Or, rather, your site ought to be looked into, in order to see if it is entirely compatible with what will shortly be the dominant global browser.

Lux Worldwide can help you to ensure your site is displaying properly in IE7. Using Microsoft's 'Readiness Toolkit' and our own testing procedures, we can test your website for IE7 compliance and provide a written report on where your site may be falling down. At prices starting at $495.00 for an up-to 35 page static website, it's a genuine bargain, and very cost effective insurance that one of your key marketing tools - your website - is built for the 21st Century.

If you're interested in a website review, contact us and we'll get one started for you right away.

Seattle Web Development: A Brief History PART V: Elvis has Left the Building

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com

After receiving my umpteenth death threat, my carpool partners began to lag behind me each morning as we entered the Westlake Square area where our offices were located ... something about Dealy Plaza, they said.

It was true, after growing the largest Internet development company in the West, after banking millions of dollars for our employees and their families, and after establishing what was, at the time, one of Seattle's best new brands, it became apparent that I could not control the vicissitudes of the market at large. As the NASDAQ tanked, I became the bucket of cold water in the faces of hundreds of would-be millionaires, and, waking them from their dreams of fast cash and early retirement, they lashed out.

I pounded the LLC into a C corporation, so that there would be one board of directors (not three), I closed our offices in Bellevue and Chicago, paid off our bank debt, and, in order to ensure the survival of the company, went through the horrible task of making sure the staff size fit the revenue stream. The euphemism is "right-sizing," I believe, and it is one of the most genuinely horrible experiences a human can go through, no matter which side of the desk you're on. I went through it hundreds of times ...

I became, for the good of the company, a kind of piñata, and I made damn sure that at the end of the day, I was the last person to be severed in the wave of layoffs. There was no way I could effectively lead the company after all the bloodshed, and I resigned both my position as CEO and my seat on the board of directors.

And Saltmine, in some form or other, survived.

We were not alone in this turmoil: RealNetworks perp-walked its laid-off employees out of the building with rent-a-cops; MarchFirst's Eastside headquarters were closed overnight and the employees, arriving for work, apparently ransacked the building; laptops and expensive Aeron chairs flooded the market; the Internet world in Seattle ground to an abrupt halt.

Things went to pieces for a while, and I gladly will acknowledge to the satisfaction of anyone out there still holding a grudge, that I spent my fortieth birthday alone, broke, staring out of an apartment building window (after my wife had left me), wondering just what the hell had happened.

And I wasn't the only one.

So…what does one do when faced with humiliating defeat? Well, in the words of the immortal Ira Gershwin, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.

Seattle Web Development: A Brief History PART IV: When Dave Oreck Talks, Listen!

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com

On the fateful day that the NASDAQ peaked, Saltmine Creative merged with MPL2.com (an Eastside venture-funded company) to form Saltmine LLC, one of the largest independent Internet development companies in the world, with nearly 500 employees; offices in Seattle, Bellevue, Chicago, and London; and annual revenues of about $50,000,000.

Fifty. Million. Dollars.

When I look at that last fragment, it certainly suggests success ... but that was one of the worst years of my life.

I was President, and then President/CEO. I like to kid myself that we merged with MPL2.com in order to protect our flank and keep the larger national and international players out of the Northwest (MPL2.com itself was just a product of mergers - it had been stitched together from the remains of Meridian Partners Limited, Parallel Communications and Vista Internet Solutions). The truth was we were tired of being poor, and we wanted to be rich like so many of the other people we were watching prosper in the Internet space. You see, in the year Saltmine made all of that money, my partners and I still made very modest salaries, channeling all of the cash back into the company … even after our joint ownership eroded to 30% after the merger.

That's right, we were the founders and C level directors of a $50M company that had an estimated street value of about $200M, and we could barely pay our mortgages.

A brief digression: I am sadly reminded at this point of how I had run into Dave Oreck - yes, the vacuum cleaner CEO-at an Ernst and Young retreat in Palm Desert about that time. I had just done some interview or other and he was watching me. As he stepped up to clip on his mic, he felt compelled to warn me about the danger of losing control of Saltmine in the midst of all the Internet speculation. His words ring back to me through the years like a distant thunder clap.

The real reason for the merger, of course, was to create a package deal that could be sold to one of the huge public roll-ups, where the key investors and founders could take some money off of the table and everyone would prosper. Our hope was to develop some security for ourselves, our employees and their families, and for the investors we had inherited from MPL2 with merger.

Then the NASDAQ crashed, the VCs panicked. Many employees from the MPL2 side of the company who had been led to believe that riches were imminent, became ... angry (WARNING … this link includes explicit language!).

We had been told by grinning investment bankers with perfect suits and haircuts that the combined companies would sell in a matter of weeks or months at the most. A "no-brainer," they said. When that didn't happen, it became clear we would have to survive as a viable company without further investment or any buyers. My job was to make the impossible situation work without investor support, in a market with the bottom dropping out, and in an environment where the employee's expectations of getting rich quick had been utterly thwarted.

Seattle Web Development: A Brief History PART III: Striped Pants and Spats

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com

By 1998, Saltmine had become the largest web company in Seattle, and one of the largest independent web companies on the west coast. I say "independent" because the lure of the Internet had attracted a great deal of venture capital by this time, and no fund was complete without having an Internet property, or a roll-up of Internet companies, or anything in any way, shape, or form related to the Internet in its portfolio.

Saltmine's revenue had grown to nearly $10M annually, we were awarded Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards, our subsidiary in London was the first such office opened by a US company in Europe, and I would actually climb up to the roof of our old building on Westlake Avenue on rare occasions, and smoke a cigar...like some kind of ridiculous parody of the tycoons of old. All President Jarmon needed at this point was a pair of striped pants and spats, and the transformation into the Monopoly Guy would be complete.

The sad truth was, of course, that we were still paying ourselves very little and having to scrape, scramble and fight for every dollar. This was because, as a matter of principle, we neither sought nor accepted any outside investment and chose to grow only so far as the revenue would take us. Still, with each new Saltmine baby that was born, with each new house one of our employees could afford, and with each new employee to whom we could offer health insurance, we knew were doing good, if not always doing well. Plus, we were lucky enough to work on some of the coolest projects imaginable at the dawn of an amazing digital revolution. That almost made all of the madness that came later worthwhile. Almost.

Locally, the old horses were falling by the way side or were being rapidly absorbed into large, national chains seeking to go public. FRM had been purchased by Luminant (Luminant had sought us out originally, but we didn't want to join in with them). Cosmix joined with USWeb and eventually became MarchFirst. Fine.com, in a very bold move, went public all on its own. The two largest national players, IXL and Razorfish (not the little, watered-down Razorfish of today, but the sprawling Razorfish of old) came knocking at our door, but we never really bought their pitch that bigger was better, and we weren't sure that our employees were going to prosper under their leadership.

By 2000, there were a 100 of us in Seattle and 25 of us in London, and as far as mergers and acquisitions were concerned, we were the belle of the ball. Our chief concerns were staying rational about money, and keeping the big national players out of our market. As always, we were successful, but certainly undercapitalized.

And then, on the day that the Nasdaq reached its all time high ... we made a mistake.

Seattle Web Development: A Brief History PART II: All I got was a Lousy Studio Apartment

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com

As I mentioned my previous post, the initial Seattle Internet development companies were among the first in the nation to seize upon the idea that money can be made from the web.

My guiding philosophy in those days was that the rush to get a presence on the Internet was like the Yukon Gold Rush - there was precious little gold (initially, at least), but fortunes to be made supplying the pots, pans, and supplies for the miners. In a sense, that sums up the ethos of the entire service industry, and has a particularly Seattle-y flavor too ... it was the Yukon Gold Rush that established Seattle itself as a major city.

Those of us who started the first companies-again, this was before the vast sums of speculative cash came into the market, before the Internet was used as anything other than file sharing and a little bit of marketing-we sensed that a sea change was coming and abandoned our day-to-day software and marketing jobs.

When I left FRM after only a couple of months, I was convinced that Microsoft would move rapidly and affirmatively into the Internet space and, along with partners Ben Thompson and Pete Gerrald, pitched a thousand dollars into the investment and got underway. Saltmine Creative, Inc. was founded on April 1, 1995-a fitting date indeed.

I reduced my "lifestyle" to a bare minimum. I moved into a basement studio apartment, plugged in my 28K modem and lived, ate, and breathed Internet. Like my partners, I was a builder, a designer, a project manager and a business manager all in one.

For whatever reason, perhaps because of the challenges of working with the client, FreeRange eschewed working with Microsoft. Mind you, Microsoft itself had little or no public interest in Internet development until nearly 1996.

We couldn't afford to hire the best "Internet" people available because none existed. There were no businesses or schools turning them out. Everything was, in effect, homespun. We found bright ambitious young people (many of them the musician friends that my partners and I had known in our previous lives. They were particularly adroit at learning development skills, and understanding the bare-knuckle brawl of business. We used to joke that many of us had gotten our MBAs on the street hawking records and trying to get gigs.)

Growth was rapid in early 1995, and by sheer cunning and force of personality, we were able to establish relationships both with Microsoft, and (the other leader of the time) CompuServe. We paid ourselves nothing; we expected long hours of work doing things no one had ever done before. We were rewarded for our hard work with clients such as the PGA TOUR, BP, C-SPAN, (wow, that's a lot of capitals!), and of course, Microsoft, which had indeed realized the potential of the Internet.

Seattle Web Development: A Brief History Part I: the First Wave

By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com

Over time, recollections dim, and we tend to reflexively recast and recreate history. So, to get it all down, as it were, I wanted to respond to a question that I'm frequently asked: "how did the web development community get started in Seattle?"

How did it all begin here, back in the days of gray backgrounds and blink tags?

The first successful Seattle Internet service company, FreeRange Media was founded in 1993 by Mike Samsel and Andrew Fry. Samsel and Fry seized upon the idea of the Internet as a marketing platform for successful brick and mortar companies. This pre-dated e-commerce, web-based communities, all of the familiar Web 2.0 clichés, and yet those concepts, still nascent, were discussed and dreamt of by the founders and staff (a group of expatriate Microsoftees and various other folks looking for new direction. I was one of them, as was Lux Worldwide co-founder Todd Tibbetts. Our third partner, Ben Thompson, did marketing and design work as well.)

FRM grew rapidly and, because of its early position in the market, landed sizable accounts with Time Warner Books, Zenith Data Systems, the NFL, et al. As I have suggested, most of the work was marketing-oriented-essentially creating a site that showed or talked about the companies' attributes, and didn't really "do" anything. But FRM knew that software developers could build online databases, and content management systems, and even, gasp, sell things via the Internet. Alas, the market did not yet exist. There was no Amazon.com, no sense that it was safe to enter your credit card into a computer and that something would arrive at your house.

Two other noteworthy companies pursuing web development in the earliest incarnation were Dan Fine's company Fine.com, and Richard Lancaster's Cobweb.

For whatever reason, perhaps because of the challenges of working with the client, FreeRange eschewed working with Microsoft. Mind you, Microsoft itself had little or no public interest in Internet development until nearly 1996.

So, convinced that Microsoft would enter the market dramatically, a small core of us went on to start Saltmine Creative, Inc, the first in a second wave of Seattle Internet development companies. More on this next time, when I continue the history ...