1. An insight into how we run our business and make decisions every day.
2. A place for us to make regular announcements.
3. Somewhere for us to showcase the work we (Or our friends and clients) have been doing.
4. And a spot for us to post all sorts of WP-related tips and tricks.

We held out until today to post this because we wanted to have something fun and exciting to announce with it and finally have our paperwork in line to announce it.

Our Decision Process

One of the fundamental things behind the company is that we’re generally pretty adaptable. We do this by sitting down every 3 months (In the first week of March, June, September and December) to plan changes for the upcoming quarter. We’ll then use the next three weeks to implement as many of them as we can, and work through the rest of them during the months to follow. This setup allows us the opportunity to keep up to date, and ensure that the business and our offerings continue to match what we (and the market) expects of us.

Back in early March, we sat down and set out the list for our 2nd quarter of 2010. Here’s a sample of the list we came up with:

• Discontinue the monthly service in favor of core upgrades and promoting alternate backup solutions
• Begin building themes (Free? Premium? Child?) and releasing them, 1/month.
• Adjust our invoicing system to reflect new Saturday “end of week”
• Develop and implement ideas to make the business more environmentally friendly
• Launch the blog & FAQs; Re-arrange portfolio pages
• Develop a new “client area” for custom projects
• And 3 others, too, that we’re not quite ready to talk about yet

Some of the items on the list are done, some are in progress, and some we’ve got yet to get started on… but we’re only 7 days into this quarter. Some may not even make it to final during this quarter – or at all – and that’s fine, too. But we wanted to focus on one of the items on the list that we are making progress on today.

It’s Not Easy Being Green

Ah, yes, the green initiative. Everywhere you look, folks are “going green” in one way or another. We are too. We wanted to share some of our current initiatives, and encourage feedback on what else we can do.

1. We discontinued free paper billing on April 1st… And within 48 hours, all of our paper billing folks went paperless. We were excited by that. We continue to provide it, upon request, to our clients at a fee. Money from this will be going to a recycling program (Yet to be decided upon).
2. Both Tommy and Owen re-evaluated the items hooked up at their desks and unplugged everything they could. Tommy actually eliminated an entire power bar of gadgets that were on his desk but not being used (or used regularly).
3. We shut down the office for earth hour – and then some. We actually powered off the office when earth hour started in Newfoundland, and didn’t power it back up until it had cleared BC. Some items (Like the printers) have been off ever since.
4. We’ve gone paperless – mostly: Sticky notes and paper notes for random things have been replaced with miniature white boards for anything we don’t anticipate needing in 48 hours and with Google Docs for things we know we’ll need or aren’t sure of. Client passwords are still on paper (To prevent discovery via hacking) and we use other paper when needed… But only as a last resort.
5. We’re evaluating a greener solution for the wasteful business card model. Here’s where we can use your feedback. What have you seen?
6. We’re planting tree. More on this in a minute.

Trees By The Minute

So, during our discussion, we talked not only about ways we could reduce our impact on the earth, but also on ways we could give back to it. One of the ideas that came up almost instantly was the idea of planting trees. So we did some research on what was involved and who we could work with, then contacted Tree Canada for their guidance and assistance. Tree Canada’s a not-for-profit, based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, who – according to their mission statement – “empowers communities to develop and maintain their green infrastructure by sustaining healthy urban and rural forests”. They seemed like a good fit for us, so we started talking, and had an agreement in place effective April 1st.

In short, it sums up to this: Every time we do a project worth $90.00 or more, a tree will be planted in Ontario by Tree Canada. We’re going to be pretty flexible here, too – projects with multiple weekly invoices who total 90.00 over the quarter will get a tree, too. Just because that makes sense to us. We’ll be exploring other creative ways work with Tree Canada as time goes on, too. Especially as we venture into the premium theme world.

But for now, know that we’re committed to our green initiative: one minute – and tree – at a time at a time.

Sort of.

It’s more of a placeholder, really. We’ll be around tomorrow (April 2nd) soon (We’re eyeing April 7th) with a real entry (and a fun announcement!). Go ahead and us up in your feed reader, though – we’re here to stay!