Emerge Inc. Blog

Emerge is looking for 2 exceptional interns to join the Emerge team. The interns work will include a mix of social media and website development. If you or someone you know is interested in joining a dynamic, professional Internet development team and working hard to satisfy client needs, please view the full internship details here.

Regular readers of this blog will notice a lot of posts about LorainCounty.com. So, to avoid any confusion and to be completely transparent, I thought I should include a post about the relationship between Emerge Inc. and LorainCounty.com.

The simple answer:

Emerge Inc. founded LorainCounty.com and provides technical support for the site. From a purely legal and financial perspective, Emerge Inc. is majority owner of the business LorainCounty.com LLC.

The more detailed answer:

Mike and I registered LorainCounty.com on July 2, 1996; 3-months before we formally started Emerge Inc. At the time, we thought it was a good domain name, but had no idea how we would use it.

After starting Emerge, we decided to use LorainCounty.com to demonstrate the work that Emerge could do and promote the benefits of the Internet. We had a local search engine to link people to local websites and cyber news to talk about exciting things happening on the Internet. (Internet Archive)

In 2000, Emerge spun-off LorainCounty.com as a separate legal entity LorainCounty.com LLC. We raised a small amount of investment money and redesigned LorainCounty.com. Since that time, the site has been almost exclusively a user generated website with just about everything you see on LorainCounty.com being provided by users.

To this day, we prefer to say that Emerge founded LorainCounty.com. We avoid ownership words because of our strong belief that the user’s of the site ‘own’ the site. Without their contributions, the site would just be graphics and interesting computer code.

We also say that Emerge provides technical support for LorainCounty.com. Rarely is there a day that we don’t tinker with the site and make small improvements here and there. New features are added on a fairly regular basis and almost always based on suggestions for users. Why build something that no one is asking for?

Among his many other talents, my brother Dan is a spreadsheet expert. While I think I’m pretty good at developing spreadsheets for Emerge’s different business units, Dan knows short cut keys, formulas, macros, pivot tables, conditional formatting, you name it. So, when he sends me a Excel file and says it is worth looking at, I stop what I’m working on and take a look.

This morning he sent World-Cup-2010.xls(1.6MB) from flesport.com. The perfect companion for those who plan to immerse themselves in this summer’s World Cup (June 11 – July 11 from South Africa).

In the spreadsheet, you simply enter the score of each game and Excel does everything else. It automatically

• Tallies up the standings in each of the 6 groups (division)
• Color codes the team that wins each game
• Updates the tournament brackets with the winning teams

Deciding the winning team might sound easy, but in World Cup soccer, each team plays just 3 games in the group stage and the top 2 out of 4 teams in the group advance to the knockout stage. So, it isn’t difficult for two or more teams to have the same record (for example each team could have 1 win, 1 lose and 1 tie). Not to worry, the spreadsheet implements the official World Cup tie breakers to solve this:

• Points
• Goal Difference
• Goals Scored
• Concerned teams (Points, Goals For minus Goals Against, Goals For)

As if that wasn’t enough, the spreadsheet enables you to set your language (English, German, French, Spanish and Russian) and set your time zone so that all game times display correctly in your part of the world.

Enjoy the games. Go USA.

To signal that we would be starting soon, we played a short video at the beginning of each of the 3 Credibility Conversation events. There are a number of high quality videos on the Internet that pack a lot of interesting information into a short time span. As an added bonus, they almost always include compelling, upbeat music that set the right tone for our audience.

During the November 11th event featuring Lewis Howes and Shown Morton, we played “Did You Know 4.0″ from xplanevisualthinking.

In the first of the Credibility Conversation event, Shawn Morton, discussed how Nationwide Insurance uses Twitter to communicate with NASCAR fans during races.  Asking fans what information their pit reporters could provide and what questions they would like to ask NASCAR team members.  I would like to give two examples of how I have used Twitter in the past two weeks.

eNom’s DDOS Attack

On January 11, 2010, a client called to say that their website was unavailable.  Following our standard “My Site Is Down” procedure, I started off by checking the to see if the server was available, it was.  Next checked if I could visit other domains on the server, check. Next, see if there are any issues with the domain name registration and the DNS server.  This domain is different than many of our other customer domains, in that it’s DNS is hosted by a 3rd party eNom.com.

Using Twitter, I did a search to see if anyone was having issues with eNom’s DNS servers?  Typing in “eNom” in the twitter search, I found a Tweet from @eNom, “We are currently managing through a DDOS attack. All resources are focused on solving this issue ASAP. More updates shortly.” (http://twitter.com/eNom/status/7635807363)

I was able to inform the client of the issue and follow eNom’s progress towards solving the problem through twitter. When they posted that it was solved, I informed the client.

India Visa New Rules

In February, I am traveling to India to visit my younger brother Dan.  I recently sent away my passport to receive a Visa from the Indian Government.  I have received back my passport along with the Visa.  Tuesday, I received an e-mail from Travisa Outsourcing, the company helping facilitate my Visa, telling me effective January 15 there are new rules regarding multiple entries into India within a 2 month period.  I have questions on these new rules and if they apply to me as I already have my Visa.

The e-mail gives me information that Travisa Outsourcing is on Twitter.  I have questions, they have a Twitter account, bingo, I have a way to ask my question.  I go over to Twitter and ask my question.  ” @Travisa_Visa re Indian new restrictions: Visa issued Jan 11 will be taking trip to India, Sir Lanka and back to India, do new rules apply?”

Within an hour, my Twitter account shows I have an @reply (at reply), clicking the reply I receive “@mskimin The new rule of which you speak has been in effect since Dec., so the answer is yes, unfortunately.”

Now I have my answer and can plan my trip accordingly.  If I have further questions I know I can ask via Twitter.

If you have questions for me you can find me on Twitter @mskimin .

Emerge believes that the more value we create for others, clients, venders, team members, investors and our communities, the more valuable we become.

We believe in focusing on big goals rather than short-term revenue generation.

We believe in working on projects that 1) matter, 2) make a difference, 3) are exciting and 4) are noteworthy.

Note: adapted from Tim O’Reilly

Emerge believes that in order to create the sustainable environment where we work cooperatively with clients and fellow team members, our actions and intentions must be clear.

We believe that trust and credibility are values that underline every business relationship and that actions that are not authentic, transparent and ethical undermine trust and credibility.

Emerge believes it is vital to generate a sustainable, fair profit. This profit ensures the company will continue to grow to meet the needs of customers.

We believe that profit provides a measure of the long-term value created with clients.

We believe that profit enables Emerge to continue to build a strong team and reward team members who help create long term value.

We believe that profit helps add value to the community through taxes to support essential government services and charitable contributions to quality community programs.

Emerge believes that motivated professions should not be unnecessarily constrained.

We believe team members should be able to do their work in the time and place that is most productive for them and best serves the client’s needs.

We believe team members should be entrepreneurial and never be constrained by unnecessary corporate bureaucratic rules.

We believe that the applications and websites we develop should increase the ability for clients and their clients to become untethered.

Emerge believes in leadership over management.

We believe in defining a clear vision and a definition of success. We trust motivated, passionate individuals and self organizing teams to make fast and smart decisions to navigate a changing environment and achieve the vision.

We believe leaders take strategic risks, take responsibility for the occasional mistake and find amazing breakthroughs that would not be possible through risk-averse behavior.

We believe in continuous learning, proactive action and pursuing unexplored paths.