ChamberFest 2012: Austin Networking

For the first time ever, the Austin Chamber of Commerce has put together a showcase, ChamberFest, to bring all of Austin’s small business network under one roof. ChamberFest is part of an ongoing initiative to serve the greater Austin area’s small business community, which actually encompasses more than 85% of the Austin Chamber’s membership organization. The event will include door prizes, giveaways, and discounts from select area restaurants, and the ChamberFest 2012 Exhibitors include the following companies:

ISM Services, Inc.

Atchley & Associates, LLP

Focus Embedded

Fastframe & The Prickly Pear Galleries

Q2ebanking

ContractGurus.com

Capitol Wireless

VanDeWalle Chiropractic

Gail Darling Staffing

CAM-I

Rockford Business Interiors

Holiday Inn Austin Midtown

Caesars Entertainment

Advanced Mobility Systems of Texas

Austin City Living

Mercury Communication Services of Austin

Infintech LLC

AlphaGraphics

Goodybag, Inc.

RE/MAX Austin Associates

Doc2e-file

Austin Business Journal

PubCrawler of Austin

Strategic Payment Systems

QuintEvents, LLC

Baylor University – Executive MBA Program | Austin

Extend Stay America Hotels

Big Frog Custom T-Shirts & More – South Austin

Longhorn Office Products, Inc.

Austin’s Park

Frost

Austin Energy

Upstream Investment Partners

City of Austin – Small Business Development Program

Community Impact Newspaper

Rodan + Fields Dermatologists – Loree Hart

Speedpro Imaging

Allstate Insurance Company

Burnett Specialists, Inc.

Clear Spirit Corporate Massage

Legend Dental

Mothers’ Milk Bank at Austin

Rackspace Hosting

Texas DPS Credit Union

Westin Austin at the Domain

EQ Consultants Group, LLC

Texas State University – San Marcos

Austin Rare Coins & Bullion

American Diabetes Association

All Seasons Nursery

Bastrop Convention & Exhibit Center

National American University

Imagecraft Exhibits

LDRK Media

Hilton Garden Inn

ScanSee

Come by The Marchesa Hall and Theatre on Tuesday, October 23, 2012 from 4:00 – 8:00 PM to mix, mingle and expand your network or just say hello to your favorite Gennovacap folks! 

Website Development: Build it Yourself or Hire an Expert?

As technology grows ever more necessary for businesses to reach their audiences, technology companies try to offer solutions for non-technical people so that they can create their own websites.   Intuit's website building software or 1 & 1 My Website are the 2 most common sites that you may recognize.  For all of the advertising these companies spend to market and raise awareness for their website building solutions, the actual products fall short of graphical, structural, and functional design for most businesses.  The best example is my last client, Austin Simply Fit.  They began their website with one of these solutions and after they spent countless hours setting it up and then trying to design it within the software's construct they reached an unsatisfactory result.

A business website is the most effective piece of marketing material a business has to sell itself to its audience and keep them informed. Why go with and settle for a solution with an less than excellent result?    Companies like Intuit have a very strong brand name from products like Quickbooks and compared to the painstaking process of seeking out, vetting, and hiring a web designer  or web developer, the Intuit brand name persuades people to use their product.  Most of the time, these out-of-the-box type solutions yield a less than adequate means for a business to properly communicate ideas, services, and information to an audience.

When a web designer and web developer like myself encounter solutions like 1 & 1 My Website or Intuit Website Solutions they are a real let-down from a design, structural, and functional aspect.  Web technology and web programming has to be exact down to the very last punctation mark, yet at the same time it needs to be flexible enough because some pieces of code will conflict with other pieces of code and then you have to debug it to make it work together.  The problems with the out-of-the-box solutions, is that they DO NOT allow for flexibility in the layout code (CSS - Cascading Style Sheets) or functional code (programming) and therefore the user who is trying to design the layout will always end up with a bad graphical representation and a user who needs to add a functional database will not be able to do so.

If you are a small business owner and you want a website that will go the distance, the best option you have is to find a web designer  or web developer and let them guide you towards a viable solution for your business.  If websites consist of 3 moving parts: 1 part business, 1 part art, and 1 part technology- and you want your website to look good, work well, and convey the right information to your audience- you need to reconsider all your options and find a great technology expert, like Gennovacap Technology Services, to help you implement the best solution for your business.