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[Music] |
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hello hello it's dan and dave i hope you guys are doing well and gals |
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and all you wonderful people out there in the dnn community land world |
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atmosphere existence it's been a minute since i've been on |
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air i've missed you guys i've been dreaming though i've been dreaming about |
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things to kind of content ideas you know to bring |
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to you guys um been thinking about things like cool |
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technical solutions and geeky stuff and i don't know |
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i've also been thinking about some of the really interesting and cool and |
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brilliant community members that are out there and introducing you to them because |
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i mean you may not know a lot of the people that are out there and involved in dnn |
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and i'd love an opportunity to present them to you and help you to get |
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to know them a little bit more understand a little bit more about their skills what their passions are you know one of the things about this |
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community that i love so much and i guess that's why i've stuck around really so long it's |
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beyond just a having a really cool technical solution or platform to build websites |
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off of and applications and cool stuff like that it's |
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really the way the community operates and behaves the community was kind of established on |
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this abundance principle idea where you know you just help people |
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you jump in help people you don't want anything in return for that i mean |
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now don't get me wrong there's commerce in this community i mean there are great vendors out there |
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that build incredible modules and extensions and solutions on top of dnn |
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there are really cool integrators that are out there that |
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help you as a client or help you with your clients to develop really cool solutions for |
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them i mean there are theme builders there are module builders there are just some cool |
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good stuff i mean there's all kinds of open source stuff too but you know uh back i digress |
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to get back to it the abundance principle i mean there's so many people that are willing to help |
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in this community and you know whether it's on a facebook page or a uh |
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community forum on dnacommunity.org or whether it's in the dnn open help |
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slack workspace you may not have known about that one but if you get a chance check that one |
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out do a google search on it one of the guys that is always there to try to help whether |
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he knows the answer or not i want to introduce him to you today i want you |
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if you don't know him then this will be your chance to get to know him it'll give you a chance to get to know |
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his company and what they do but if you do know him maybe you'll learn some things you didn't know about |
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it maybe he will share that he does something and his company does something |
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that you had no idea that they did anyway that guy always jumps in with |
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either an answer or tries to go and figure out an answer i mean i don't think the guy ever sleeps |
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honestly uh he's always there like responding to stuff so anyways without further ado i wanted to |
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introduce you all to jeremy ferentz jeremy welcome i'm so |
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glad you're hanging out with me on this fine saturday evening |
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thanks dave i am honored to be here and a little overwhelmed with that uh |
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expansive introduction i don't i don't think i can uh well we'll see how it goes |
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you're such a humble guy you're so you know i'm i'm just here to help i don't know |
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much you know but like i mean my gosh like 40 of the whole answers that get answered |
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out there is coming from you dude like you're bringing it you're bringing the heat |
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i mean what what drives you um to be involved in this community jeremy i |
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mean tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of a little bit about the history uh that you have with dnn and |
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why you're even around still like what i mean what is it that drives you |
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yeah that's uh wow |
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that's far back so um |
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playing with it was probably around 2004 or five dnn4 maybe and um was working at a company |
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kind of getting frustrated with the whole uh boss type thing and decided to do my own company |
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and at first we were doing other things dnn wasn't the focus of the company but |
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by around 2011 dnn was front and center we were building websites doing advanced designs |
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um doing a lot of really interesting stuff we went to dnn world in 2012. |
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how's it going so yeah i had a lot of fun there so uh the name of the company's security |
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we're based out of champaign illinois always have been here so far and um |
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floated between eight and 11 people over the years since around 2012. |
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the majority of our projects are on dnn but we do all kinds of we've done apps we've |
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database work hosting um wide variety |
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expression engine um there was a drupal one once victim of drupal getting by the way and |
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uh all kinds of stuff so tend to have fun a lot of good employees here and |
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um it helps not having a boss for me at least and i try to make sure my employees |
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don't feel like they need to go start their own company appreciate you |
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explaining that and i i'll go ahead and apologize we are having a few little audio glitches here and there |
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i apologize i think something is taxing my machine even though nothing else is running except for this but |
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uh i apologize for that but i'm going to let it roll because um there's still pieces of this that you'll |
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you'll you'll get a lot of value out of um jeremy i'm going to uh flip over and |
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show your company website here and um you were explaining a little bit about |
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kind of how you know your humble beginnings and stuff with that and your team and all that you know your website out |
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here uh says that you do kind of kind of a wide range of things um everything from website design you |
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know and e-commerce and content management solutions and mobile website design that's a lot |
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so like to tell me a little about do you have a sweet spot or is it kind of just really all across |
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the board and you guys do it all um less ecommerce lately but otherwise |
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all of those are still prominent hosting has become more lately |
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and apps has returned back to the front we used to do mobile apps back in the windows phone days |
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and um all the way back in 2011 we were doing very early phone apps uh that went by the wayside but it's |
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come back pretty strong lately and um so yeah not a lot has changed we |
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do a lot of different things uh |
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yeah all four of those are there except e-commerce that's not as much lately okay so so now you guys don't you're not |
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focused solely on dnn though right it looks like you also dabbled in some other content management |
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platforms there as well i mean would you say that dnn is your kind of main focus or your choice |
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uh tool choice where is it just kind of you know in the mix with a bunch of other great tools as well dnn's |
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clearly the first choice it's probably in the 50 to 60 percent range on projects still |
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wordpress is second and then then things just get weird goes all over |
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the map it depends on the type of client if it's the type of client we like and they want to work |
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in a technology that we feel we can do well in we'll jump right in so um gotcha |
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i noticed uh i noticed drupal here uh are you do you have clientele that's in the |
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educational sector or is that kind of the prominent use of that or is it |
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other other types as well no that was exactly where the one drupal site was |
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same thing and then joomla same thing university of illinois yeah |
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that was their big jim lock proctor somehow they've gotten a a fairly large part of that market share |
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uh there so usually see that pop up and everything so so you said dnn's kind of your |
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your tool of choice when it comes to uh sites and everything are you using dnn |
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in any like obscure ways these day or is it uh pretty pretty standard kind of web |
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website focus and application focus on on there we've got some interesting ones um like |
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odd stuff too we use dnn as a tool to uh pull information |
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off the factory floor there's this software called wonderware and dnn |
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reaches into wonderware pulls out all these obscure tag values and then we use |
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sql to sexy and a few other things to build them into nice reports that people can log into and look up |
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online this is for a big company owenscorning and it also sends really nicely |
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formatted emails at 6am and 6pm we also have dnn feeding information |
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into apps so that people can get into dnn on the back end and edit and add new information change faqs |
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change locations change providers and the app updates instantly because it's all feeding from |
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nice web api stuff like that nice |
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so so not not your standard cookie cutter kind of uh usage of it there yeah no i like the |
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unusual projects anything that uh has a lot of data tends to be my favorite so nice nice |
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nice now i mean i i hate to like single out a few here but i do remember |
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back i don't know how many years ago it was you know you guys were involved in the bell website the |
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racing helmets company is there anything you can kind of talk about that uh publicly and some |
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of the things that you guys did there or yeah that was one of our favorite e-commerce projects |
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we built that on hot cakes one of the interesting things that happened there though is they |
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changed their commerce the stuff that was running in-house on |
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their their systems to some company in europe who i am |
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the name is escaping me right now eventually hotcakes couldn't adapt and |
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there was already a magento i think it was magento |
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adapter so they about 18 months ago completely switched web platforms so |
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oh really okay yeah it's very sad to see them go favorite client uh still talk to the |
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owner on occasion so uh sad pandas but that's okay that happens uh companies uh |
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evolve and their needs uh changed so they they have to adapt to them but i remember that being a pretty big |
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uh big site for you guys it was there was so many cool things on there we |
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actually had a company in canada photograph the helmet so they could rotate in 3d it was cool stuff that is really neat |
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i jeremy i'm going to kind of hit the rewind button here just a little bit and like what what was your first |
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introduction to to dnn and why did it stand out to you |
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wow that's hard i was really interested in microsoft stuff because i had uh i'd come from the |
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amiga community if anybody knows what that is all the way back in the 80s i was using a product called superbase |
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as the amiga went away and i was forced to get into windows for a job i was at the next thing was microsoft access that |
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led to microsoft sql that led to e-commerce projects on |
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does anyone remember site commerce 3.0 from microsoft site commerce wow that's that's a blast |
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from the past so those things uh through about 2002 |
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2003 were in my past and sql was my favorite tool at the time and |
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website started coming up at a new job i had in 2004 and i tried dnn because it was on |
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asp.net and it seemed to have all the toys that i liked and was interested in and i was |
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doing stuff in visual studio so i thought i could edit it and change it and never did that but anyhow that's where |
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dnn started and then it drifted away for a little bit as i started the company but then we came back around to it and it has been |
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the center of things for quite a while did you start um your company to be |
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a dnn shop or do you even consider yourself really a dnn shop or are you more of a you know |
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just an agency that happens to use dnn uh how do you kind of view view your |
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company hard to answer uh somewhere in between those two views um it was not started to be a dnn shop |
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that's for sure we but you know we always went with the tools that helped us build the products that |
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we wanted to do the things we wanted to accomplish for our clients and sure enough dnn kept being there |
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when we needed it so and we got good at it that's cool um i'm gonna ask you to tell me a little |
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bit about your your team here because you i mean i don't know if this is uh up to date or anything but uh you have |
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how many people in the company now and kind of what roles are they seven or |
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eight uh it's oh wow look you my picture didn't load look at that i shall reload |
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it again because i think that's actually a blimp on my side that i did sorry about that |
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all right this this is out of date um i'm there the big picture in the upper |
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left oh you're the coffee drinker dude okay oh coffee brewer there you are |
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nice um most of these people are still here in some way or other uh the person in |
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the upper right josh is one of our lead front-end developers really great at all kinds of |
| 15:48 |
javascript and css and does all kinds of interesting things and adds a lot of those elegant interactive |
| 15:55 |
animations to our projects that really makes them feel modern kiddo there uh he he decided to invite |
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his uh kid to the shoot huh you have no idea that kid is amazing that's awesome |
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love it i love seeing that uh two of the key people are not even in there we've got |
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uh one of the lead developers now is jared okay he's been here i think over a year |
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and there's also uh designer brittany she's not up there but um |
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john's still around part-time lucia there in the middle right kind of an intern who turned into an |
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ongoing part-time employee bottom rows kind of the |
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businessy side of things accounting finance uh the two lower left ones aren't here |
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anymore okay so tell me this because um |
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like i like to ask this when when you've got a company that's got so many you know |
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people and and you know diverse team members and different skill sets for bringing like what what stands out in your mind |
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and like if you if you were to put yourself in the shoes of somebody you know a client that's looking for |
| 17:17 |
a team to work with why why would they choose you guys and you |
| 17:23 |
know what what is it that you would bring to the table that you think offers a bit of a unique experience for |
| 17:29 |
the client that would really set you apart from some of the others |
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enthusiasm and experience come to mind first a lot of the times when we meet with clients |
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we have stuff to show off that is very similar to their needs so um pretty easy to |
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get ingratiated with those types of things and show them the pieces and parts of the project they want to build |
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we've already done something like it before so the experience comes into play and i think when we show off those |
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things and talk about them with clients the enthusiasm comes across hard not to be enthusiastic we do we do |
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a lot of fun stuff i noticed at the top it was talking a bit about your your process |
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uh well i'm sorry it was another page that i was looking at where was that at um talking a little bit about you |
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yeah your process here we see this on a lot of agency sites |
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right you know it's it's the discover you know plan build you know that kind of thing is you know it's it's |
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all cute and everything but like is this something you live eat breathe in the company |
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um and if so like how does that translate you know for a client and their |
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experience with you on a project uh it's interesting all those things are still there and i have to tell you one |
| 18:49 |
little note about those four boxes i tried so hard to get them all to start with the letter d |
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it was discover deploy develop and for some reason i never got |
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four of them and so it went back to this but yeah all those pieces are part of it |
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and they come across each project's different though some of them require a lot of learning a lot of new stuff some projects require |
| 19:15 |
quite a bit of creativity and design um it's different every time |
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not not many are easy that's one common thing no no they're not i mean and and each |
| 19:29 |
project has a unique aspect to it as well right you know it's it it's never just i just need a website |
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you know just something simple you know yeah it's interesting too because some of the ones i'm personally most proud of |
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or have the coolest database work uh aren't good ones to show off they don't look good you know no one |
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paid for any design work and nobody ever was interested in the public side of things |
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so yeah that's that's interesting how sometimes you can get some of these incredibly |
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complex or interesting ways to solve these these technical challenges |
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but it's hard to show it off but it disgusts it doesn't it doesn't look great or whatever um now |
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do you do you consider your agency a design agency i mean like |
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are you kind of a traditional agency or would you consider yourself a little more of a development firm i mean i know you're |
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tech heavy and all that as well but i mean like what what do you see yours i think that's |
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changed dramatically in the last five years i'd say in 2015 we were really pushing towards being a |
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design and creative agency and i think now where we stand especially the last 18 months |
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that is a huge part of it but i think we're much more in the squarely in the middle |
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with development playing a major role in it a lot of data work a lot of complex websites that need more |
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than just a modern or fancy design really good content organization is very |
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important lately and some of our projects are building under the hood stuf
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