Following are my notes on last night’s MIT Enterprise Forum event: “Lead Generation 2.0: How Entrepreneurs are Fueling the Next Wave of Innovation in Internet Marketing”

Moderator: Brian Hirsch, Managing Director, Greenhill SAVP
Brian Hirsch is a Managing Director of Greenhill SAVP and a Co-Chairman of the Fund`s Investment Committee. Prior to joining SAVP in 2004, Mr. Hirsch was a Principal at Sterling Venture Partners and led the firm`s investments in technology-related companies. Mr. Hirsch is currently a board member of BDMetrics, BestContractors, FTRANS, iKobo, Pontiflex and Serious. Brian previously sat on the board of YellowJacket (acquired by the Intercontinental Exchange, NYSE:ICE) and KnowledgeStorm (acquired by TechTarget, NASDAQ:TTGT). Prior to joining Sterling Venture Partners, Mr. Hirsch was a vice president at ABN AMRO Private Equity (AAPE”), the U.S. venture capital group of ABN AMRO N.V., one of the world`s largest banks. Before joining AAPE, Mr. Hirsch worked as a senior consultant at KPMG in the Information, Communications & Entertainment (ICE) practice, where his clients included General Electric, CBS/Westinghouse and the Tribune Company.

Hirsch: We’re very excited about lead-gen. 2007 Sales : $1.3b. Twice growth rate of search or email marketing. $2b in 2008
Have backed 4 lead gen companies in the last space

Drew Patterson, VP of Marketing, Kayak.com
Drew Patterson is responsible for product marketing and lead generation through Kayak`s travel suppliers and distribution partners. Kayak is the world’s largest travel search engine and was co-founded by founders of Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity. Kayak.com’s investors include General Catalyst Partners, Sequoia Capital, America Online and London-based Accel Partners.
Prior to joining Kayak, Drew held a number of positions at Starwood Hotels. As Director Pricing for Starwood, Drew was responsible for Starwood`s Pricing group, which develops and executes Starwood`s pricing and revenue management strategies. This includes management of the Starwood rate structure, analysis to identify effective pricing strategies, observations on company revenue performance and trends, and training for the field revenue management organization.
As Director, Distribution Strategy, Drew was responsible for the development and implementation of Starwood`s distribution strategy, including leading Starwood`s Best Rate Guarantee in 2002 and developing TravelWeb, the hospitality industry`s response to the independent lodging discount websites. Drew joined Starwood in 1999 as Manager of Business Development, responsible for developing partnerships and new business opportunities. Drew graduated from Harvard and received his MBA from Columbia University`s Graduate School of Business. He resides in New York City.

Patterson: We’re both a vendor and a buyer of leads.

Suaad H. Sait, Chief Executive Officer, ReachForce.com
Suaad Sait is CEO of ReachForce. ReachForce, based in Austin, Texas, provides data and software solutions that enable B2B companies to laser target marketing and sales initiatives at the right person in the right company, every time. As an entrepreneur and high tech industry executive, Suaad has played leadership roles at start-up companies as well as large publicly traded firms. Mr. Sait is the driving force positioning the company as a leader in the emerging marketing and sales force automation segments of the CRM OnDemand market.
Prior to ReachForce, Suaad was the vice president and general manager of Products & Markets at Pervasive Software (PVSW) with world-wide P&L responsibility of the entire product line. Suaad served as the Chief Marketing Officer and COO of Liaison Technology (acquired by Forest Express) repositioning the company into a software platform for supplier catalog content management. Before Liaison, Suaad served as vice president of product marketing at Motive Communications (MOTV). He was on the founding team for Ventix Systems and served as the vice president and general manager of the enterprise business and vice president of marketing. Suaad has also held leadership positions at DAZEL Corporation (acquired by Hewlett Packard), InConcert Software (acquired by TIBCO), CAP Ventures and Xerox Corporation. Suaad earned his Master of Science in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Rochester and a Bachelor of Science in electrical and computer engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Suaad has served as a Mentor for the New Venture Creation program at the McCombs School of Business - The University of Texas at Austin since the Fall of 2005. He also currently serves as an Executive Advisory Board Member of the Austin Chapter of the American Marketing Association. In, addition Suaad serves as a board member of the Austin Technology Entrepreneurs’ eXchange (”Texchange”).

Sait: Our founding team was tired of ’spray and pray’ marketing. We developed analytics around your sales funnel. We’ll custom-build leads databases for you.

Brad Powers, CEO Active Response Group
We’re getting 100,000 registrations/day. Strictly paid on performance.

Zephrin Lasker, Chief Executive Officer, Pontiflex.com
Zephrin Lasker is CEO of Pontiflex. Pontiflex, based in Brooklyn, NY, is the first open data transfer network connecting publishers, advertisers and agencies. The company allows advertisers and publishers to reach the entire lead generation market, find partners, make deals and transfer lead data through a single online platform.
Zephrin has been involved with online marketing since its inception more than a decade ago. Zephrin is also a serial entrepreneur, having successfully launched two start-ups prior to Pontiflex. Pontiflex is backed by New Atlantic Ventures and Greenhill SAVP.
In the course of his career, Zephrin has played a key role in shaping campaign successes for a variety of clients such as Sprint, Cendant, Earthlink, and eFax, helping them acquire over 8 million new customers. Prior to co-founding Pontiflex, Zephrin founded The North Road Group, an interactive agency. He has also worked as Vice President of Business Development at i33 Communications, where he managed sales and technical teams to help deliver new customers, launch state-of-the-art websites and deploy cutting edge marketing initiatives.
Prior to i33, Zephrin worked at Commerce One Global Services managing Sprint’s new web initiatives. He has also co-founded the e-commerce company Beautility, where he served as Chief Operating Officer.
Zephrin has a background in corporate finance. He has worked for Dresdner Kleinwort Benson in the areas of corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions. Zephrin began his career as an Equity Analyst at Creditanstalt in Prague. He is an avid fly fisherman and is currently learning how to spray cast. He has a BA degree from Reed College.

Lasker: Central place to buy leads.

Discussion
Hirsch: Define lead generation
Powers: Permission-based expression of interest.
Zephrin: Any media that can be sold on a cost-per-lead basis
Sait: Identifying the right buyer is important.

Hirsch: Distinguish b2b and b2c.
Sait: In B2B, Target person is often hidden within the organization. In B2C, it’s much clearer who the buyer is.

Hirsch: Distinguish marketing leads vs. sales leads
Lasker: We’re focused on ‘ marketing leads’, which we think of as generic rather than specific. A marketing lead is brand-specific. A marketing lead usually has fewer fields (just name, zip), whereas a sales lead will often have more data (FICO score, etc.)

Hirsch: How should a marketer think about allocating his budget?
Powers: First think about your maximum permissible cost per sale/cost per lead.
Lasker: lead-gen is half the puzzle; email marketing is the other half. Have a good CRM program, good KPIs set up. Follow your open rate.
Lasker: How do you define success? Leads are the lifeblood of business. A lot of people look at conversion.
Sait: Do as much experimentation as possible. It’s cheap.
Powers: We came up with some guidelines for data transfer for the IAB.
Lasker: We started as the Paypal of lead-gen—an easy way to transfer leads between advertisers and publishers.

Hirsch: What legal issues should you be monitoring?
Powers: we have many consumer-facing sites, and are very diligent about making sure we’re compliant. We’re dealing with PII (personally identifiable information) so you have to encrypt everything. In the EU, anyone providing you leads must be Safe Harbor certified. I.e., you’re recognized as having secure data and procedures. Also, must be compliant with DNC (Do Not Call) list. Lead-gen can create an implied business relationship with end consumer, so you don’t have to check against the Do Not Call list.

Hirsch: Where will lead-gen grow? Which verticals?
Patterson: search engines don’t like lead-gen arbitrage sites (i.e., direct navigation). We prefer sites (like Kayak) which add value to the funnel.
Powers: one month our #1 offer was prepaid funerals. I almost fired my VP of Sales for signing them, and it paid for a chunk of my kid’s college education. A big area of growth is building on-demand hyperqualified lists.

Hirsch: Where does Google sit in the lead-gen universe?
Powers: There’s a finite amount of search ads available at a productive cost. It can get expensive very quickly.
Sait: For clients way out in the long tail, with very niche sites, Google is very good.

Question: How do you assign a value for a lead?
Answer: Depends on what you’re seeking

Question: Compare quality of leads from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google? And how does ROI compare on display vs. PPA?
Answer: Google has better conversion but higher prices. So on a net basis, the ROI is comparable to the competition.

We have not figured out how to measure the value of display ads.
Powers: tail end of social network inventory is almost unmonetizable.
Lasker: we just rolled out a lead-gen box in a banner, so you get both the branding and the lead-gen benefit.

Company Presentation
Vitals.com
Vitals was created to give consumers the tools — for the first time — to make intelligent, informed decisions about which doctor to choose. The Vitals.com web site offers consumers a variety of ways to help in their choice of the right doctor. And it allows physicians to keep track of what others are saying, gives them the opportunity to let consumers know about their work, and lets them make sure their profile is complete and accurate. Vitals’ business plan will be presented by Mitchel Rothschild, Founder and CEO.

30m people per month search doctors by name or by location/specialty.

3 big issues: location, specialty, and insurance network
Then other criteria are on the softer side: gender, languages, bedside manner, ethnicity

Background data:
30% increase in ‘excellent’ rating when people rate people of the same ethnic affinity.
What people want in a doctor: takes time; honest & direct; eye contact

First, we built a database of the 720K doctors in the US
We then mapped the healthweb. Found 20,000 sources of data about doctors: hospital websites, board certs, licenses, publications. We extracted all that and applied it to our database.

Three parts of wheel clients use in judging a doctor:
1. Quality: education, special expertise (22% of drs. are not board-certified.)
Current profile:
2. Add in consumer ratings from various sites (TripAdvisor as model)
3. Peer reviews: Partnered with Castle Connolly. Over 200K peer evaluations

Went live in January. We have millions of home pages which match up with the search that you’re making. We’ve spent $8K so far on lead gen. 1M visitors currently. Great search engine optimization.

Sources of Revenue

1. We’re a media property
2. Data leasing. We’ll reskin our site for various health plans and employers. Most health plans built their directory back in 1998, and haven’t updated since. We get 15-20 commercial users per day, usually hospitals, medical centers, etc.
3. Three basic human emotions: Greed, fear and ego. Because doctors have lots of ego, we’ll help doctors fill out the wall of fame in their offices. Doctors will also pay a lot for this.
4. Lead-gen: personalized search. Appointment-setting thru hospitals. Elective care procedures. Expected cost of visit. Patient advocate for reimbursement with health insurer. Choice of hospital for procedure. Purchase of needed equipment/services. Second opinion.

Online consults mainly used by younger patients with younger doctors, e.g., a pregnant teenager.

We don’t typically have a lot of repeat visitors, given the nature of our site.

Today, we focus on advertising / data leasing. Lead gen is the long term future for us. We’re currently pricing our advertising on a CPM basis. Some are PPA.

1m visitors per day, about 85% unique
5 page views/visitor

Q: How did you get consumers to review the doctors initially?
A: We bought them initially, and now about 3-4 % of visitors will do a review. That’s 50,000 per day. We do a little SEM to get reviews.

John Peters, Tripology
Tripology is a new website aimed at connecting consumers with travel agents that specialize in the type of trip they wish to take. Tripology.com aims to take the hassle out of finding a great travel agent. There are a lot of expert travel professionals out there with a great deal of useful knowledge and terrific prices, but consumers don’t have a good way of finding them. And they don’t have a good way of finding consumers. Tripology`s business plan will be presented by its President and CEO, John T. Peters.

$3.25m raised
8,000 registered travel specialists
45,000 leads since june 07

Agent buys 16 leads ($5 each).
Conversion rate: 6.5%
Avg. # leads before booking : 16
Avg. gross booking: $5,000
Agent commission (10%): $500

We tell them to spend $100 on us to do a real test.

Currently flat pricing ($5/lead), but this will change to variable pricing
This is a $581m market opportunity across US, UK Canada, Australia, other Anglophone countries

eMarketer just came out with first market research on this sector.

Competitors include:
Zicasso, Respond.com, 4TravelAgents, VacationCompare

We sell a lead up to 3 times.
We’re building tools on backend for agent.

We say, this is not just a lead, this is a customer for life.

We don’t need to do much database fixing, because agents have very strong incentive to be honest about their expertise.

Agents will often list a very long list of specialties. But they’ll pay more for leads they’re convinced they can win.

Some people are probably going to think I’ve gone off the deep end. Others — those who “get it” — will understand this completely.

If you haven’t read yesterday’s post about the easy way to monetize your network, please start with that. This is radical, world-changing stuff. 100% free to join and participate, 100% automated income, and all you have to do is make one teeny-tiny change in your shopping habits. Tiny. Buy the same stuff from the same stores. That’s it.

I am so committed to this, I’ve decided to totally put my money where my mouth is (actually, my time, but as we all know, time is money). Here’s what I’m doing…

For anyone who signs up under me (at any level - not just directly under me), I’m going to be providing FREE weekly coaching calls in online networking. This is not coaching in how to grow that business — this is general business skills that you can apply to any business (or your job search). This is the same information I used to charge $200-$250 for a 6-week course, and you can get it completely for free.

And you don’t even have to promote that business in order to get the coaching — just sign up! How can I do that, you ask? Because I am so convinced that once you really take a look at this program, you will actively participate, that I think my risk of having any “freeloaders” is only slightly higher than zero.

But you know what? That doesn’t even matter. The best way to make money is by helping other people make money, so that’s what I’m doing.

One clarification… the weekly calls will be open to the first 250 live callers, but the call will be recorded and available to everyone in my downline, no matter when they join (i.e., new members can listen to all the archives).

One more thing… I will help you build your downline! There’s way more details in that regard than I’m going to go into here, but if you have ever thought you wanted to do anything like this, now is the time.

Social media, user-generated content, digital egalitarianism … big media has a big problem

… The second tectonic shift that rocked the Internet in recent days came from Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia that allows visitors to create and edit roughly 1.5 million entries in over 35 languages. The site’s name stems from old school programmer Ward Cunningham’s invention of the first wiki, which originally drew its name from the Hawaiian word “wiki,” which means quick. In the case of Wikipedia, this refers to the site’s facilitation of quick collaboration between users in the creation of informational pages. On Monday, Wales unveiled a new, free-hosting service called OpenServing, a site that will offer free hosting and use of the powerful Wikia software to anyone interested in creating a community site. The kicker: Wales intends to make this all available while permitting users to keep 100 percent of any advertising revenue they earn on their site from ad networks such as Google Adsense.

more

Back in 2002-3, Scott Allen and I started work on a book about online networks and social software, what today people call Web 2.0. It’s a great sign of the now-mainstream acceptance of these technologies that Time magazine’s Man “Person of the Year” is “You”—and discusses all of the technologies we cover in the book and the Thevirtualhandshake.com website.

It also sells more copies of Time magazine than writing about the other most influential men of the year: terrorists, the leaders of countries with nukes, and other more depressing (but very important) news.

From Harvard Business School Working Knowledge:

The researchers identified four successful tactics for obtaining stretchwork that were common to both groups:

* Differentiate competence. Anyone hoping to advance must distinguish his or her performance on the job. This is particularly true, however, for contract workers—because they are paid for each short-term job, their employers are likely to subject their work to close, frequent evaluation.
* Acquire referrals. Because high-tech contractors tend to work with a number of clients, brokers, and fellow contractors, they enjoy a broader social network from which to draw referrals than most permanent employees. In the film industry—where most hiring is done based on a production manager’s previous experience with an individual—referrals are a vital aspect of getting any job, particularly if it stretches a worker in a new direction.
* Framing and bluffing. “This is one of the most creative attributes for obtaining stretchwork,” O’Mahony notes. “People who are good at presenting their prior experience in a way that allows for an easy translation to the desired job can narrow the gap between their past experience and future capabilities.” Adopting a hybrid job title to identify oneself—”director-screenwriter,” for example—can also help establish authority in more than one area.
* Discounting. Accepting pay below the market rate is a temporary disadvantage some contract workers are willing to accept, if it means gaining the experience and exposure that will lead to a new position. One technical writer put it this way: “I turned down solid offers from three companies, all paying over $100K a year…I would take a job at $55K if they’re using a totally new technology so I learn something…It’s like playing pool…You hit the green ball with the white ball, and the point is to place the white ball to get the next shot. So I take that job in order to learn skills for my next project.”

More…

British broadcasting giant ITV announced Tuesday its intention to purchase alumni online networking site Friends Reunited for $208 million.

Intriguingly, while there have been a number of recent acquisitions in the social networking space (in case you haven’t been keeping score, MySpace was recently purchased by News Corp, Dodgeball by Google, Tickle by Monster, and Flickr by Yahoo), most have been entirely in the web arena. The ITV-FriendsReunited deal is the first I know of by a TV-centered media company.

I expect it won’t be the last, as highly sticky web venues like social networking continues to erode attention from TV and other traditional media.

BusinessWeek has a good piece about the expert-matching industry (page 52 of the
current issue):

“We cut out the analysis that clients are perfectly capable of doing themselves,” says David Teten, chief executive of New York’s Nitron Advisors LLC.

More…

and Yahoo! Finance reports: Consulting’s High-Wire Act:

David Teten says the consulting is very convenient, intellectually stimulating, and may help executives build their personal professional networks and learn how Wall Street views their industry.

more on how to consult with hedge funds and other institutional investors…

One of the reasons why I think the future of communication is online: because that’s how the next generation communicates. The LA Times reports on how Today’s teens are connected 24/7, in a way that their parents no doubt can’t fully comprehend.

“I had heard that a guy in my English class wanted to get to know me better, so we got each other’s screen names, and after one weekend of IM-ing we decided to be boyfriend and girlfriend, solely on the basis of IMs,” Bruno recalled.

“He would say something, and I’d have time to say, ‘What should I say back?’ instead of just mumbling something. I’d type something and just before sending, would rethink it,” she said. “Just the fact that you’re not expected to write back right away helps. You’re expected to be talking to other people. You can kind of use that to your advantage.”

Via Stowe Boyd

We are seeking one or more people who would like to co-write a series of articles on “social software”: blogs, social network sites, virtual communities, and so on. This is an ideal project for a journalist (or aspiring journalist) interested in learning more about writing, publishing, blogs, social network sites, social software, and other online business networks. These articles are connected with the promotion & marketing of TheVirtualHandshake book and website.

In addition, we are seeking additional bloggers to contribute to the Virtual Handshake blog.

BENEFITS
+ Most important, personal publicity and credibility as an industry expert. If you are a consultant, trainer, or in other ways want to monetize your expertise in this area, writing in this field is perhaps the single most important step you can take to accelerate your client flow.
+ Work with thought leaders and industry leaders in social software.
+ Very positive references (if merited).
+ Compensation: For articles published in magazines/newspapers/etc. (excluding The Virtual Handshake itself), you will receive 100% of compensation from the premier publications in which you are published. You will be paid at standard freelance writer rates. Bloggers contributing to the Virtual Handshake blog itself are not compensated (other than through affiliate programs).

YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES
+ Learn more about blogs, social software, and online social networks and how businesspeople are using these new technologies
+ Write articles and blog posts around these themes, e.g., “How to Use Online Networks to Become a Dramatically More Effective Salesperson”; “Online Networks for Korean-Americans”; etc.
+ Interview and learn from opinion leaders.

QUALIFICATIONS
+ Experience in writing, journalism, internet marketing, and online social networks highly desirable.
+ Excitement about being part of the team producing an innovative book.
+ Highly motivated self-starter who has a track record of continuous self-improvement, high achievement, and aggressiveness.
+ Strong interpersonal communication skills, adept writing, editing, and presentation skills.
+ Poised, professional demeanor.

INCLUDE WITH DETAILED RESUME
+ Dates/hours of availability.
+ Evidence of writing/communication/editing skills, including writing samples (e.g., articles you have written for a mass market, non-academic audience)
+ Physical location. You can do all of the work on this project remotely. However, if you are in the New York or Austin, TX, area, that is preferable.

HOW TO APPLY
Contact via e-mail only; do not call. Save your resume in Microsoft Word format with the name “Last Name_First Name_Year.doc”, e.g., “Smith_John_2005.doc”. Please make sure that you include all of the information that we request above, or we will not be able to consider your application.

Please send resume and cover letter to Resumes(at)Teten.com with “Writer” and your name in the subject line. For example, write “Writer–Smith John”.

My name is Jason Coward of OpenGeek.com, and webmaster of TheVirtualHandshake. I’ve been invited by David Teten and Scott Allen to post this quick case-study of our recent relaunch of TheVirtualHandshake.com web site, in order to explain what we did, why we did it, and how we did it while spending very little money.

Background
Scott Allen and I have worked together and been friends for many years. We have a shared passion for technology and even some affinities in our political and socio-economic viewpoints. Several start-ups later, Scott started sowing his own seeds of entrepreneurship, and I decided to start my own web design and development business, OpenGeek.com. It was only a matter of time before we started working together again, only this time as individuals exploring our own independent visions, rather than the corporate visions we supported together with relatively little return.

While Scott was writing articles and books, networking with other entrepreneurs, and blogging, I was exploring the world of LAMP development, open source business models, and doing contract work to pay the bills. The contract helped me strengthen my J2EE, XML/XSLT, and my SQL skills, while I worked on graphic design and PHP in my spare time for direct clients. I first got involved with the website because David and Scott asked me to provide hosting services through MultiDomain-Hosting.

Rebuilding TheVirtualHandshake.com
I finally got involved directly with TheVirtualHandshake.com, beyond just supporting the hosting account, in December of last year when David and Scott approached me with a web site rebuild project. The site was at that time a collection of Dreamweaver templates, html pages, php scripts, and a WordPress blog installation. For about $250, they received the following services:

• Replaced the header with TheVirtualHandshake book graphic, title, and background
• Cleaned up the HTML, removing TABLE tags used for layout purposes and converting all formatting to CSS
• Upgraded their WordPress installation (I believe 1.2 was released around this time)
• Added a plugin called SpamKarma to solve their comment spam problems

This was just the first step in crafting the current TheVirtualHandshake.com, but the new markup and CSS which better isolated the content from the layout, made the next steps much easier to accomplish.

Content Management
The next two months while David and Scott were busy finishing up the book, I spent exploring a new LAMP-based, open source CMS (or Content Management System) I found as part of the constant research and development I do as part of the foundation of my web solutions business. With a strange name, Etomite was the lighweight, flexible, and easy-to-use CMS I had been looking for, and I began a mass migration from the bulky and bloated world of the popular Nuke-based community portals (PHPNuke, PostNuke, MD-Pro), back to the emerging web and design standards I had been getting excited about, but could never use in my ‘Nuked’ sites.

When David and Scott approached me with a proposal for redesigning the entire web site, I immediately thought of how Etomite could help me re-implement and manage this rather large site with a lot less effort than making updates via Dreamweaver. So I proposed that I use it on the project, David and Scott agreed, and the project got underway.

Key Features
The project plan called for some fairly complex features. Here’s a list of those features, and how I approached each one:

• Easy to Update - It was important that David and Scott have a simple, web-based mechanism to update the site. Etomite provided this out-of-the-box, with each page in the site represented as a document in a tree, editable using a WYSIWYG editor or as HTML directly. And since Etomite allows you to separate templates from documents, changing the layout or look and feel of the site is as easy as editing a single HTML template or the CSS that is attached.
• Friendly URLs and Old URLs - For maximum search engine exposure, and better interactivity for users, Etomite provided the optimum platform, providing easily configurable URL prefixes, extensions, and document aliases. In addition, internal links within Etomite (in conjunction with Apache’s mod-rewrite module) provided a great way to support old site links, getting users to the appropriate location, no matter which URL variation they used to access the page.
• Secured Content for Book Readers - Providing extra content for those that purchase the book was another driver in my choice of Etomite, which along with some custom modifications being provided by the Etomite developer community, provided an excellent platform for building the Readers Guide.
• Turn Social Software Guide into Wiki - Providing a Wiki interface for users to contribute content to the Social Software Guide section of the site was another requirement, which we initially considered deploying MediaWiki (which powers WikiPedia) for. However, I found a very elegant and simple PHP wiki implementation which I converted into a snippet in Etomite (a snippet is a reusable PHP script element). I chose this approach as it allowed me to more closely integrate the Wiki into the site. This was especially useful when securing the Wiki so only Readers of the book could contribute.

The remaining PHP scripts I turned into snippets, and the site content was further cleaned according to XHTML standards and the principles of semantically correct markup. We upgraded WordPress yet again, to the latest 1.5 release, and created a new theme that used the same CSS file as the CMS-managed pages.

The entire project, started in late February, was deployed into production, replacing the existing site, in less than month, including several rounds of design and functional revisions. The initial test site was up within days of the start of the project, and provided a great place for David and Scott to review the new site, exactly as it would be in production. And, since we used free software, we were able to do the entire project for a very reasonable price; way under $1000.

The Future of the Site
There’s still much to do to improve the site, but the core is solid and will grow as the CMS product that powers the site continues to mature. Since the initial deployment, I began using a fork of the Etomite CMS that featured several mods to the core product that led the developers of Etomite to ban these mods from the forums at Etomite, as they prepared to abandon the GPL in favor of a commercial CMS venture. The fork, currently known as MODx, will remain GPL, and will continue to follow the core principles of the original product. The original decision to ban the MODx mods was disheartening at first, but I addressed the issue by joining the core MODx development team. In the upcoming weeks ahead, look for big announcements from the group regarding our new branding and product road map.

In any case, I replaced the Etomite core of TheVirtualHandshake.com with MODx a couple of weeks ago, and completed some more revisions to the wiki and Reader’s Guide this week. We’ll continue to add features, functionality and content. Immediate plans include adding advanced Technorati tag capabilities to both blog posts and other site content, creating dynamic taxonomies of categorized profiles in the Social Software Guide, as well as major improvements to the content manager interface and WYSIWYG editors used when editing the content.

We welcome feedback on the site.