Fully-Inflated Tires

Uncharted, once again, has reached a crossroads, but as Alan said to me last night, "this time we're running on fully-inflated tires."

In that he means that we've filled two critical positions in the company that we've either lacked in the past or had to pay a pretty penny for. We've now got a volunteer business manager from someone who has actually managed businesses and written successful grants, and a Ruby on Rails programmer who is working full-time but wants a more creative outlet at a startup where he can flex his programming muscle. Also for free.

And we've got a director of creative content (that's me) who has mapped out what content we'll feature on the homepage for the coming year.

This is all very exciting news for us at www.uncharted.net, because it's been a long time coming. We've got a long list of features we'd like to add to the site, but because of monetary constraints we've just had to put them off because we can't afford the programming. Hopefully within the next six months to the year we'll have the ability to embed video (I'm not sure I'm yet comfortable with hosting our own video; I'm content to sponge off YouTube/Google for a while since they offer their service for free) and to more fully engage in the social networking phenomenon. Enon. (As if we need more of that.)

With more tools and ambition, however, comes more responsibility. We're going to have to get to work at a more accelerated pace. I'm hoping with a new business manager on board we can get going in the aspects of actually finding revenue in this cacti-infested wilderness of the Internet. Making money entails getting eyeballs to the site, and getting eyeballs to the site begs that they have something to look at to keep them coming back again and again and again and again and again. So I can't think the pressure is off editorial to perform. Though having a year's cushion of updates planned out (and at least half of them ready to go, just waiting in the hopper) is a comfort. That'll give us a better chance to cultivate contributions from our Explorers and truly make this a place where anyone can com to share their photos and write about their traveling adventures.

End of commercial.

So here's to hoping for good things to come.