Why we custom build things only as a last resort

At the beginning of the year, we scrapped a custom time tracking system we had used for years in favor of a service called Harvest.  To be blunt, our custom system was dated and kind of sucked.  Harvest is much easier to use and has much better reporting tools.  The transition to Harvest has been super smooth,...

Brick Factory Website Gets a Facelift

We quietly launched a new version of our Brick Factory website on Monday.  I wrote a post a month or so ago with all the gory details about the redesign, so I won’t rehash all that here.

My favorite part of the site are the bio pages our design team put together. ...

Happy Birthday, Willie

Growing up in Texas, country artists Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson served as the soundtrack of my childhood.  Today, musical legend Willie Nelson, who still maintains a busy touring schedule, turns 79.  To celebrate his birthday and his show at DC’s 9:30 Club next week, we are paying tribute to Willie on our Brick Factory homepage. ...

Seven Ways to Prevent Human Error in Your Web Program

At last week’s Campaign Tech Conference, I participated in a panel entitled “If it crashes, they can’t come: Planning uptime in politics.”  During the panel, we discussed a lot of ways to minimize downtime from a technical perspective.  Choosing the right host provider.  Optimizing your site to improve performance.  Using CDNs to protect server resources....

Two Updates

I will be speaking on a panel at the Campaign Tech Conference, which takes place this Thursday and Friday in Washington DC.  The panel is called “If it crashes, they can’t come: Planning uptime in Politics”, and takes place on Friday from 2:00 – 3:00.  I will be joined on the panel by Matthew Dybwad of CRAFT | Media / Digital and Alex Griffis of the Prosper Group. ...